Chapter 3

The snarl awoke the room into action. Another figure dropped from the roof, and a third came up from behind a pillar. Logan took few steps back and shone the light at them. They were grey of skin and blue glowing veins criss-crossed their muscular bodies. They were hunched and thick of build, and with their rabid blue eyes they glared at Logan, snarling ominously.

The first one charged at Logan and leapt at him arms extended.

“Shield!” Logan shouted and a blue umbrella of energy sprouted from his left hand’s middle finger-ring. The force of the protection tossed the attacking creature on its back, but another one was on Logan.

The Armor sprouted thick spikes, which impaled and trapped the second attacker. In the next breath, a shadow quickly passed Logan and the creature’s head fell off. A form barely an outline in the shadows beyond the light was attacked by another two of these odd monsters.

Logan shook off the headless assailant and dodged another charge at him. The creature missed and its leap lead it to the corridor from where Kat came running in full speed. She kneed the creature in the face, which produced a loud crack and threw the monster against a wall. To Logan’s great shock, the headless creature bounced back on its feet and jumped on Logan, squeezing his body. The creature bounced back by Logan’s shield came at him, clearly intending to bite his neck.

Logan stomped on the creature’s foot that was holding him, clearly feeling the bones crack and the whole foot smash. The creature barely grunted, but it did lose its balance enough for Logan to duck. Logan threw himself on the ground and rolled on his feet. Wasting no time, he sent a mental prompt to Tumor to create the zweihander. Logan slid back and cut in an arc, decapitating the other monster and cutting an arm off the headless one.

Knowing that wouldn’t be enough, Logan dismissed the blade, kicked at the closer monster in the chest and from the force of that, rolled back to the other side of the room, as Tumor had created rolling balls on his heels.

[Skill Level Up!]

[Power Armor Fighter level 12]

Logan extended his arm and shot a volley of sharp black missiles at the two monstrous headless figures that were still coming towards him. Tumor kept count of the ammo he used, and after fourteen shots, the glowing blue veins on their bodies dimmed and the creatures fell limp on the ground.

Interesting…

Kat was in the process of smashing in a jaw with a straight, followed by a rib-cracking hook to the body. Another one of those monsters was about to jump at her from the back, but it was pierced by the extending black rapier of their resident [Phantom] who had cut off the heads from the remaining monsters.

Logan waited for the little Black Missiles return to his arm and watched his two comrades fight. They would hate it if he intervened, because the other one was too proud and they were both insanely gung-ho about getting levels. As they both had a fighting class, it was fair that they’d get a lion’s share of the combat.

Logan crouched and kept ready though. He’d hurt a pride to save a life.

This time there was no need. The two fighters kept each other’s backs. Or rather, Kat was a dervish of destruction with her roundhouse kicks and arcing haymakers, and Balmer made sure she had room and no threats at her back.

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They work well as a team.

[We work better.]

“Well that’s a given,” Logan said and smiled. “You can literally read my thoughts.”

[While I appreciate the compliment, for the eleventh time, I am not reading your thoughts. Even with my processing speed, it would be too slow in a combat situation. I am using a predictive model, which learns from the combat data.]

Logan grunted at that. He went up to one of the heads and picked it up. It had a prognated jaw and rabid icy blue eyes, but other than that it looked eerily like a human. Brown shaggy hair, normal shaped ears and blocky teeth.

“These can’t be the First Folk, right?”

[I would give a 3.88% chance of that. The body looks fresh. Of course it could have been preserved by some method of magic. I find it interesting that they could function without a head. Please investigate further.]

Logan didn’t need to tell twice. He glanced at Kat and Balmer. They were doing alright, smashing in the last two of the enemies still on their feet. He shuffled close to the two bodies he had shot down.

They aren’t bleeding.

[Acute observation. This brings me to believe that they are dead, but animated by some force. Please check the heads.]

Logan could feel what Tumor meant, through the connection they shared. With the powerful fingers of his Armor he pushed into the shaggy hair and made a face as the skull crunched and the brain squished. Even the brain had blue tendrils circling around it. They were dim now.

“Well would you look at that,” Logan said and plucked a Numa crystal. It was an E-grader.

These creatures were much stronger than a regular E-grade fiend like a troll

[A troll is an E+ grader, but you do make a point.]

“Even still,” Logan said to himself. Without the Armor he would have been super dead. “There is something weird going on here.”

Logan mulled over the fact that the monster had attacked him without a head. It seemed like a rather important little detail. On a hunch Logan pushed an Armored hand inside the belly of one of the creatures and peeled him open.

The stench was purely demonic. Logan had gotten a lot less pansier after spending months in fairly simple conditions in a jungle. But the rank odious attack on his nostrils was too much. He took a few steps into the corridor they came from and retched.

After wiping his mouth, Logan held his nose and looked at his work. Indeed, it was as he had suspected. Another Numa crystal was lodged in the abdomen.

In total there were four. One was in the brain of course. One in the heart, one in the lower belly, and one somewhere near the genitalia. All of them E-graders.

“Theory time, buddy,” Logan said and sat down. Kat and Balmer were done. They were now sliding down against the wall and breathing heavy, with their eyes closed. It hadn’t been an easy fight. Kat was slightly wounded, and was holding her left bicep.

[I maintain that these creatures were animated by the Numa. Perhaps there is someone with a very insidious class.]

“Yeah, maybe,” Logan said distracted by his thoughts. “But that’s not what I want theories on. These are people, right. Who were they?”

[There is not enough data to make conclusions.]

“What do you guys think?” Logan asked his comrades.

“I think,” Balmer said between breaths. “I need a minute.”

“Can you fix me up with something, Logan?” Kat asked, wincing.

Logan got up and walked to Kat. as he moved, he heard something break under his foot, and something cracked and clinked around the floor. Logan shrugged and went to his friend.

He produced a piece of cloth from his spatial storage. It was costly in terms of Numa to use his storage only to produce a bandage, but he couldn’t have Kat bleeding out.

The bandage glowed blue as Logan wrapped it around Kat’s bandage. It had been [Enchanted] by Logan and [Blessed] by Freya. When it came to health and healing, they took things seriously. Every person was precious, when there wasn’t more than eighty of them or so in the camp.

Balmer gave him a look. “I could have done that.”

“Calm down, cowboy,” Kat said. “Your minute isn’t done.”

“Damn that stings,” Kat said and hissed as Logan tightened the bandage.

“These guys were strong,” Balmer said. “Why haven’t we seen them before.”

“Because they’re new,” Logan said.

“Did you learn something?” Kat asked.

“Just a hunch.”

Balmer got up and went to inspect one of their fallen foes. “New from below or new from above?”

“Good question,” Logan muttered. Was this some scheme from Levemoth, or were these indeed some revenants of the First Folk.

“Guys…” Kat had moved behind Logan to look at the bodies. She lifted up a pair of broken glasses. “You think the First Folk had Ray-bans too?”