“What did you do!” Richard mutters as he grabs my arm, dragging me aside the next morning. They had gathered around the sternwheeler near Rotary Park and when I drove in, late, Richard had immediately spotted me.
“…”
“My sister’s been on the warpath all morning!” Richard growls, gripping my arm tight. “She’s insisting on being part of the main teams instead of the reserve.”
“What makes you think I did anything?” I ask innocently, giving him big eyes behind my mask.
“Because she only ever gets that angry when it comes to you!” Richard mutters again and then lets go of my arm, glaring at me. “If she gets hurt…”
“You’ll get your puppies to tear me limb for limb. Got it,” I reply and shake my head.
As Richard opens his mouth to say something else, he is cut off by a short, angry man in a suit. A suit in this day and age! And in Whitehorse too where formal attire is your best plaid shirt and a pair of clean jeans. His voice rising as he speaks, shorty says, “What is he doing here?”
I turn and grin at Eric Roth aka Minion, “Just ambling along. How you doing?”
“You! Get out of here. This is official Whitehorse City Council business and you are not invited,” he snarls at me, stepping forward. I tilt my head as he steps forward, feeling one side of my lips tug up and he stops and steps back.
“Trust me, I’m not here for you,” I drawl and then raise a hand. Minion flinches slightly, probably remembering my hand wrapped around his throat and I flick it. “Go do your thing.”
He glares at me, opening his mouth to say something else before he is cut off by a low rumble. “Are we to begin Councillor Roth? I am being paid by the hour…” The speaker is a nine foot tall bull-man hybrid, a full-on Minotaur from legends in full battle armour. He even has an axe - though the barrel shape in the centre lends credence to the idea that it’s more than just a melee weapon. Tells you how low on the totem pole of popularity I am, when the Yerick are invited and I’m not.
Minion’s face twists again in a sneer before he hurries over to the group leaders where Lana and Mikito stand. Lana shoots me a glare that could freeze water solid while Richard mutters next to me, “You have got to stop antagonising that man.”
“Better to twit him than kill him,” I reply, flexing my hand by my side.
“Sometimes, I’m not entirely sure if you’re joking,” Richard says and I don’t let him know that I’m not sure either. Minion had almost literally admitted to burning down the Yerick’s buildings, but here he is, walking around free and clear organising everyone and I’m persona-non-grata. Okay, fine. Choking him out in broad daylight might have been a bit of an over-reaction to having my name sullied but even now, I can feel my blood boil slightly at the betrayal. Having him disgrace me like that, take away my face… I exhale, forcing myself to let it go. The past is pain after all. What is, is.
I shake my head slightly, realising that Richard’s left while I was caught up in my thoughts. As much as I believe Minion was the culprit, there is no evidence. He never directly admitted to anything and the actual culprits have been caught and tried. They’re working their debts off in the compound that the Yerick had built in their burnt-out plots of land and as far as the city is concerned, the case is closed. Tensions between the races are high still but between the increased surveillance drones and a few, very public and nasty beatdowns by the Yerick, direct attacks have stopped.
As I stand by myself, apart from everyone, I idly watch Minion speak to the groups, reading lips and picking out where he’s sending everyone. Ali helps by hacking his System window and displaying it for me, adding annotations as each group is directed to a different Boss.
If I have to say one good thing about Minion, it’s that he is highly organised. Ten minutes later, the groups are disappearing and that even includes time to answer any questions asked. I let my gaze wander over each group once more, watching as Capstan splits a few of his men off to join different groups. It’s not a horrible set-up, other than the fact that Minion only intends to keep a single reserve team - the Chaos Hands. I check their levels again, seeing that nothing is over 25 and I wince. We’re all still under-leveled for this area.
I let my gaze sweep over the group again and realise that gathered here are the careful, the lucky and the crazy. The brave, the rational and the unlucky are dead, murdered in the first few days of the System for the most part. First responders, the RCMP, the burgeoning heroes all mostly died in the opening scenes of the Apocalypse, fighting creatures that out-leveled them. It’s only through the mercy of the gods and Lord Roxley that we’ve survived as long as we have.
“So, boy-o, we following the girl?” Ali sends to me mentally and I nod. “You know she’s going to be pissed right.”
“Better pissed than dead,” I send back and then add. “We’ll hang back a bit though.”
Ever since the Mana flooded the world and the System came, monsters have been appearing all over Earth. There are two kinds really, the ones that have evolved from Earth and the ones that have been ‘imported’ into the world via the System. Occasionally, those monsters have a particularly nasty one - a System designated Boss. Or maybe they are Bosses and the System just tags them. Either case, they are nasty fellows and their presence means that particular group is going to be populating even faster than normal. Leave them alone long enough and you get monster swarms and they become a mainstay in a region, flooding outwards. If you’re really unlucky, they find a lair that is filled with Mana and stay there, eventually creating a Dungeon.
Since the entire world has been designated a Dungeon world and we’re getting the overflow of Mana from every other System controlled world, it’s pretty much a given we’re going to get a ton of Dungeons and Bosses. The goal today is simple though - just like we used to manage the wildlife up here, we’re going to manage the monster population. Just like you kill the bulls to reduce the monster herd, we kill the Bosses. Of course, along the way they’ll be killing a ton of others too but that’s the way it works.
Loping along far behind Lana’s group, I have a lot of time to do thinking like this. The occasional monsters they miss and the ones that try to sneak up on aren’t even a challenge. I have Ali patched into their communication channel as he floats alongside me, listening in just in case something important comes up. Mostly though, the two of us are along for the ride today. If we’re real lucky, I won’t even need to get involved.
An hour later, I come to a stop as Lana’s group hits the boundary of their targets area. I pull up my minimap, focusing on the green dots.
Knight Beetle (Level 29)
HP: 180/180
Ali pulls up some information for me, flicking the System window over and as I read the information, I relax. Each beetle is purple and grey in colour, about two and a half feet in length and a foot tall with armored carapaces that give them their name. Tough and they have a tendency to swarm but Lana’s group of five humans is augmented by Lana’s three oversized Huskies and a mutated fox. While Lana might not have been going out as often, she certainly knows how to control her animals and the way the dots keep disappearing tell me they are doing well.
I rub at my neck, trying to get rid of the tension there and eventually give in, just pulling out some chocolate to chew on while I wait. Ali has his head tilted to the side, obviously listening in before he grunts.
“John… how much do you like Jim?”
“What’s wrong?” I start looking for where Jim should be and realise he’s only a few kilometers away.
“Nothing yet, but I don’t think his group can deal with what he’s going to be fighting,” Ali says. “So, we going?”
I hesistate, looking back up to where Lana fights. She hasn’t hit the Boss yet and those things can always change the flow of a battle. On the other hand… I bite my lips, twisting to where Jim’s boss marker is and take off running. I hope I’m doing the right thing.
Stolen story; please report.
“What’s so bad Jim can’t handle it?” I ask as I pound through the dirt, the powered armor covering ground at a good klip. I shatter rock and the occasional fallen tree, knowing that I don’t have a lot of time. His Boss wasn’t that much further out than Lana’s after all. Still, Jim was a big boy - he was the seniormost of the City’s Hunters and a tough old coot.
“Lightning Squirrels,” Ali explains, floating alongside me with ease as I activate Thousand Steps, a skill of mine that lets me move faster. “They’re mutations of your ground squirrels. Individually, they’re really low level. However, in a swarm, each of them feeds off the other and there’s a LOT more of them then Minion knows about.”
Even as we talk, my map starts updating with little grey dots. Low level indeed. I watch as the dots start disappearing in front of the friendly blue dots of Jim’s group. No surprise that they’re electing to take them out range - his entire group is composed of rifle users. Unfortunately, what they can’t see is the swarm of grey dots that have begun to converge on them.
As the swarm closes in, I spot a blue dot flicker and disappear. I grit my teeth as the dots begin to pull back in a somewhat orderly fashion but they can’t keep ahead. I can see with my eyes now the flashes of electricity, the never-ending arcs that have lit the undergrowth on fire. Beam weaponry stabs out from the embattled group, killing individual squirrels along with the crack of projectile fire. There’s even the occasional explosion, but the swarm is just too large.
I’ve begun to open fire myself, keeping to normal projectiles as I unload on the squirrels. Each shot disintegrates the small creatures, turning them into red mist and I even occasionally manage to get more than one with a shot. Problem is, killing one when there’s a hundred doesn’t work.
“This isn’t working!” I yell, bouncing forwards. The occasional lightning arc at this distance feels like a static electric discharge through the armor but we’re going right into the centre and I know it’s going to get worst. I draw a deep breath, letting the shooting and running go on autopilot as I reach into myself, finding my own link to the Elemental Affinity and push it out of me, letting in envelope me. As the next lightning strike hits, I use the Gift to re-route it around me and Sabre rather than through us. Once that is established, it takes me a moment more to cast my other spell, Greater Regeneration to deal with the bleed through.
“I got a plan,” Ali shouts as I keep firing. “Just follow the bouncing ball!”
“Aaargh,” I snarl, running ahead and following the bouncing ball that appears in my Heads-up-Display as I keep shooting. Occasionally, my path intersects an unlucky squirrel and I either stab or stomp it. Electricity keeps building around me and we’re almost constantly wreathed in lightning now. Ali isn’t speaking, his face set in grim concentration and my jaw hurts from clenching it as the lightning shudders through me, the electricity forcing its way through my Affinity, Sabre and my regeneration to slowly drive my health down. A slow ticking down in the corner of my vision tells me Sabre’s not doing great either.
“Okay boy-o. Grab me when you reach me and lend me your Mana and strength!” Ali says as he darts head, right to where the bouncing ball lands. He appears for a second, his hands raised as the lightning flows through him. I extend my sense, my Affinity, and I begin to see what he’s doing. Everything that hits him, he attaches a thread to, sliding it into the bodies of the squirrels. As I reach him, I place a hand on him and make the connection, feeling the lightning rip through me and Mana out of me at the same time.
Pain fills my world, consuming me and all I can do is go along for the ride. Muscles clench and spasm, my heart beats erratically and I’m pretty sure I voided my bowels at some point but I keep holding onto Ali, refusing to let go. Pain, anger and stubbornness - linchpins of my life.
As Ali works, a part of me watches as he threads all of it together, faster and faster until everything around is attached to him. Ali snarls, twisting with his hands and I feel the change as the threads of Mana he has connected via the Lightning tug on the Squirrels. It’s just a little, a small alteration in their atoms but at the speed of well, light, the change happens. More electrons slip free, loosened from their moorings. It’s a small change to each atom, a tiny alteration but multiplied thousands, millions of times.
The lightning explodes, Lightning Squirrels no longer able to contain and direct the overflow. It heats them up - heats us up - and I know I’m screaming. One second we’re in the middle of a maelstrom and the next, it disappears. Stray arcs jump and skip all around us, the ground underneath my feet molten glass. I stumble away, brute forcing Sabre to move because its still re-routing from all the damage. I fall on my face, landing on smoking, ashen ground as Ali slowly floats down, his eyes sparkling.
“What a rush!” Ali says, holding a hand up and waggling fingers as he mutters. “Whoah! That’s a ton of notifications - wait one second!”
I just stare into the sky, my muscles twitching occasionally from the after-effects. Eventually, I reach out with one of my Shop purchased Skills, dumping Sabre directly into my inventory. Quite a useful Skill to have, being able to put anything that the System registers into my inventory directly just by being in contact with it. I drop onto the scorched earth and groan, rolling up as the heat begins to cut through my skin-tight armour. I don’t even want to know how much it is going to cost to fix Sabre. Not a moment too soon as the remains of Jim’s party with an added golden-brown minotaur slowly stumble over, staring at the twitching and smoking corpses around me, their eyes wide.
I look around for a moment, taking in the smoking grass, the occasional glassy spot and the hundreds of corpses as well as the occasional burning trees and realise I’m having one of those post-apocalyptic moments in real life. Hell, I can’t even blamed for this one.
“John…?” Jim stammers, the big First Nation Elder stammering as he limps up to me.
“Yeah,” I look to Ali who continues to float, muttering to himself. “I thought you might need some help.”
“Shit, you got that right,” Jim says, his voice rising and falling as he tries to stay calm. “It was supposed to be a relatively easy kill, just a bunch of Ground Squirrels. I lost half my men…”
“Sorry,” I apologise, looking around and then sigh. “You guys should get going, get back. I got a lot of looting to do.”
The group jerkily nod and turn to go, shooting looks over their shoulders as they move off. I start the process of Looting, taking a moment to eye Lana’s group in the map. Seems like they survived without me. A short while later, Ali finally perks up and waves his hand, flicking a series of System windows to me.
Level Up!
You have reached Level 22 as an Erethran Honor Guard. Stat Points automatically distributed. You have 3 Free Attribute Points and 4 Class Skills to distribute.
Resistance Improved: Electricity +10% (50% Total)
Well, that was interesting. I’m grateful I don’t have to wade through all the text about how many monsters I killed. Looking at Ali, I point to the bodies while I pull up my information to take a closer look at my Status.
Status Screen
Name
John Lee
Class
Erethran Honor Guard
Race
Human (Male)
Level
23
Titles
Monster’s Bane, Redeemer of the Dead
Health
1070
Stamina
1070
Mana
840
Mana Regeneration
70 / minute
Attributes
Strength
66
Agility
102
Constitution
107
Perception
42
Intelligence
84
Willpower
90
Charisma
16
Luck
20
Class Skills
Mana Blade
1
Blade Strike
2
Thousand Steps
1
Altered Space
1
Two are One
1
The Body’s Resolve
1
Greater Detection
1
Instantaneous Inventory*
1
Cleave*
1
Spells
Improved Minor Healing (II)
Greater Regeneration
Improved Mana Dart (IV)
Tinder
Enhanced Lightning Strike
I nod slightly, glancing over the basic screen. Got to let Ali know to add a section about Resistances to this, but it looks a heck of a lot neater without my Skills. It had started cluttering up and like Ali said, what’s the point? I can either do it or not…
Mental note - time to purchase another area effect spell that isn’t Lightning. Maybe a Fireball or something like that, though maybe there’s a Skill? Then again, all the really useful Skills are expensive. Not that Spells aren’t either but didn’t I come along just to watch out for Lana? How the hell did I end up in this situation again?
I glare at Ali who, at least, is helping with the looting and storage of bodies. This is going to take forever, but every single Credit is going to count.