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The team knew more of the rules of the hunt now. They had four targets to hunt and collect. Taking possession of the “heart” would alert every predator within miles of their presence and enrage them into a berserker status. They had a time limit to get each “heart” to the rest zone. The heart's taunting signals would last 10 long minutes of terror, where whoever held the prize had to run for their lives.
After the heart calmed, its holder could hide and rest. It would still ping and trigger nearby beasts every fifteen minutes, but it only pulled very locally and subsided again after thirty seconds. The team has found out the hard way that the heart would dissolve if you didn’t get it to the rest zone within an hour.
Fortunately, the their experimentation had helped them locate the safe zone. The heart’s pinging was received and answered with a ping from the safe zone that only the prize holder could sense. After two separate attempts, the team had finally zeroed in on its location.
Four days of camping in the dangerous artificial woodlands had left everyone on edge and hungry. Max had leveled his recycling skill twice and everyone on the team had now activated theirs. Now, no one would lack energy from food, but the hunger never faded.
Finding the rest zone was like paradise. It looked like a stone house built into the side of an exposed cliff face. The team took two more days to recover from the unplanned camping excursion; to eat, bathe, and sleep without worry about creature attacks.
The team made meticulous plans, coaxing attacks from the new targets to learn each creature’s capabilities. They planted tracker motes on each so they could be tracked and found easier; and then they planned their hunting campaign. Sherlock had suspected that the hour time limit applied to all the hearts, and all at once. Everyone agreed that they would each take a target solo and return to the safety zone at full speed.
They sat together for a big lunch planning the final details for clearing the level. Xavier hoisted his newly armored Rambler Board on his back. Max downed supplement bars between bites of bacon.
His extra arms were still underdeveloped. He had simplified the design to get some use from them. Double-jointed and ending in blades, rather than articulation fingers, was a lot simpler. He had duplicated his augmentation’s design for his claws to include his vorpal and poison abilities with the blades. He had broken his acquired katana early in their hunts.
“I still think I should go after the giant centipede. I’ve got a pair of fragmentation grenades, for god’s sake.” Charlie groused.
“I’ve leveled all my special attacks and now I’ve got two extra-long blades in addition to my claws. I can handle it. Save your grenade, we might need it later.” Max said.
“It really sucks that the dungeon MC has governors preventing weapon duplication, we all could have had a barrel of grenades.” Xavier complained.
“That’s exactly why those limitations are there. Some ass probably did it and now the AI managers put a stop to it.” Leah said.
“Alright. Max gets the centipede. I’ve got the Moose with the flaming antlers. Leah gets that Razor wing thing and Xavier gets the 100-pound groundhog.” Max said.
“Soon to be 100 pounds of ground beef.” Xavier said, lighting up a pair of his plasma sabers.
“Aniya! Put those things away at the table. You burn me one more time and I’ll skewer you with my claw blades.” Leah said. Max laughed.
“Let’s get out there. We all need some action, sooner rather than later. Keep connected and shout out if you run into trouble. All the trackers are about a 30-minute run from here. There’s a river passing the south quadrant and that gorge to the northwest. Be careful if your hunt takes you close to them. Don’t get trapped.” Max said.
“Be careful out there. Just like we planned, and we’ll be on the next level tonight.” Charlie said.
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Max lurked in the forest, following the signs left by the gigantic centipede. The wind shifted and his keen nose picked up on his prey again. The team was almost in place, in another 30 minutes they would execute their plan.
Max knew precisely where it was, thanks to the tracker mote it had eaten, but he was practicing his tracking for the benefit of the SkillZ trainer. Over the last couple of days, he had tons of opportunities to use it. The scent, the disturbed ground, and now the lingering thermal traces all told him what he already knew. It was just around the next rock outcropping.
[SkillZ input skill Instinctual Tracking - complete. SkillZ +1, SkillZ reaches level 6]
[Mind Skills - SkillZ: 6 Inputs: Swim, NanoCraft, Brachiate, Tracking, Meditate 0.91, searching]
[Mind Skills - SkillZ: Out: Katana, Kempo, Kunai,
[New SkillZ selections available: Houdini escapism, Negotiation, Advanced Motorcycling, Phishing for Fun and Profit, Advanced Nano Crafting, Advanced Drone Piloting]
[Select SkillZ output ability now?]
“[Mal, can I defer my selection? Kinda busy right now.]” Max thought.
“[Of course, Max. I would have suppressed it, but you weren’t in the fight yet, so I let it pass in case there was a weapon skill for you.]” Mal said.
Max pulled his motes into special recesses he had designed into his outfit. He would likely be running soon and didn’t want to lose any more motes. Even though he leveled the skill and doubled his quantity again, he had done a hard count and realized he was missing quite a few scouts and some scanner and power bank motes as well.
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He pulled off his backpack and took the robo-raven out to assist in building his WorldMap. He split his focus and piloted it away. His Multitasking was at level 5 now. He could form another three streams of independent thought. He pulled two of Casa’s sym-hornets with Cold attack special abilities. In the team’s probing attacks, the centipede had proven to be extra sensitive to cold. It had been very sluggish when chilled; making it much easier to both attack and defend against.
He left one thought stream open for emergencies. He still didn’t trust Mal could keep it together in combat and would use himself as a system’s support if he needed to cut her out of his augs. He perched the hornets on his shoulders for now. Their noisy buzzing flight was a great distraction in a fight but would also give away his stealthy approach.
He silently climbed the rocks and hid in the bushes at the top. He saw the synthetic centipede burrowing into the roots of a tree. All alone it was still huge, over thirty meters long and about a meter in diameter. Its mandibles chewed through the wood roots faster than a chainsaw.
Max steeled himself. It was just one bug. A big one to be sure. But not the rolling, slithering, apocalypse-beast charge from nights ago. He could do this. His timer ticked down and hit zero. Max leaped.
His aim was good, assisted by his [Leap] and [Ballistics] skills. He landed straddling the beast's upper section and he struck with two claws and his two new blade arms. Both were charged with [Vorpal] and [Poison].
The energy draw of a double special attack multiplied by four. Max had some depth to his power reserves thanks to his trauma-induced evolutions in his PowerCore. He amped his thought speed and raked with claws and sword arms, again with a special attack boost. Hoping to sever the things head off.
His [PreCog] skill picked up on and helped him to anticipate the thing’s next movement. Max performed a dodging leap up onto the nearby tree trunk, avoiding the centipede’s deadly mandibles as it twisted and bucked. His sym-hornets buzzed and stung the beast as Max clung to the tree using his claws.
The hornets had struck it a few times. Max debated his next move, as his power reserve rebuilt, slow as molasses in his sped-up time sense.
Shit! It’s going to run. Max thought as the damaged and slowed insect wheeled about seeking a clear path away from him. Not today!
Max shot his grapplers out, his left into the base of the thing's head and his right into a tree across the small clearing. Both landed deep. He power-retracted his right cable and he was pulled himself across the opening space. He landed just above the large branch he needed to use; and dove over it retracting his left grapple as he fell.
The front of the centipede was lifted as Max fell, the cord sliding over the tree branch. As they passed each other, Max blasted it with an EMP pulse and scored a [Disable] strike with both blade arms. Max landed hard, but quickly detached the grapple cord; a modification he made during his rest time to avoid self-entrapment.
Max made a snap decision and stood his ground as the monster fell to the ground. At the very last second, he scissored his arm blades at the centipede's damaged neck as it landed and dove out of the way. His vorpal blades penetrated fully this time, and the creature's head came off.
Max rolled to his feet, panting heavily. Around him, the silence of the forest was punctured by the fading mechanical whirring of the disabled creature. He looked at the severed head of the centipede, a slight grin tugging at his lips. He had won.
“Augh, nasty. Why would they simulate blood and tissue? This is disgusting.” Max said out loud.
'“[Excellent fighting, but your job is not done yet, Broken Cup. The heart must be retrieved from inside. Perhaps your system will offer you a butchery skill?]” Musashi said with a chuckle inside his head.
Max grumbled and gagged, but soon was cutting into the carcass. He used his [DigiSense] to shut off his smell and his [EM Sensing] to locate the core. He exposed it and took a deep breath as his energy began to replenish. He pulled the detached kunai and reset it and then reached for the heart with trepidation.
The heart screeched in the EM bands with a siren call. Bestial screams and roars peeled out, most distant but at least a couple were far too close. Max secured the core in his pack and took off as fast as his enhanced legs could carry him.
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Max navigated the most difficult part of claiming the heart. The initial rush came from every direction. He managed to take to the trees to avoid any monsters that came at him from his planned path back to the sanctuary. His time in the Grand Oaks, training with his [Leap] skill and his Grappler, came in very handy to slip the beast horde’s entrapment quickly and easily.
When the claiming siren stopped, Max settled into a fast run. He was halfway to the safe zone when the plan began to falter. Xavier was screaming for help. He checked on his companions using the shared OverLayer.
Both Leah and Charlie had obtained their hearts and were headed back. Max was officially the closest to Xavier. Tesla had taken the initiative and replayed the trackers on the map. Xavier had beaten his opponent, the big groundhog, but hadn’t cleared the monster surge.
“[Guys! I’m in trouble! I got boxed in! I’m up a tree with no paddle.]” Xavier shouted over the team's network.
“[Damn! Hold on, Xavier. I’m on my way.]” Max cut sideways with his run leaning deep into his growing speed. Mal spoke into his head.
“[Max, I’m afraid that even with a flawless run and with no difficulties extracting young Xavier, there won’t enough time. Both your and Xavier’s hearts will time out before you can get back. That ravine is going to add at least 10 minutes more than you have.]” Mal said. Max continued his breakneck pace.
The problem with most AI and all daemons was a lack of creativity. Casa had the spark, but Mal seemed to focus too much on the negative, Max split his mind again, searching for alternatives as he continued to drive forward. He reviewed his skills and equipment. He soon realized he only had one viable plan. It was something he really didn’t want to do but the alternative was potentially another week or more stuck on this level.
He looked for a thicket of dense brush. No sense being too obvious about it. Mal saw what he was doing and triggered his EM pulse for him, hoping to disrupt any sensors that might be about in the dungeon. Inside the thicket, he opened the Tesseract portal and used its manipulator arms to push his brother's Speeder Bike out and into his waiting hands.
Max deactivated the portal and emerged from the thicket. He dropped the bike’s storage case and quickly triggered to expand. It rapidly expanded into its racing configuration. Max was already mounting it as it unfolded. He accessed it and fired up its engines as it was still expanding its airfoils and steering vanes.
[Privacy +1, Privacy reaches level 7]
Max grimaced. The Labyrinth AI was most definitely watching him now.
He tore off into the sky in the direction of Xavier, climbing to dangerous speeds quickly. As he struggled to slalom between the trees, a near crash scared Max badly. He quickly picked the advanced bike-riding skill from his SkillZ list. Bolstered with newfound confidence and assisted motor control, he opened the throttle and went even faster.
Soon, Max soared over a tempest of bugs. His tracker on Xavier aligned with a struggling figure, encased in a cocoon of webs, and being tossed about in the scrum. The insects were fighting to haul away Xavier and his heart.
“[Xavier, are you ok?!]” Max yelled?
“[I’m okash. I’ve got...heart. Hurrup, pleash. I think...I'm...have been...poisoned!]” Xavier slurred slowly.
“[Xavier! I’m sorry but hold on…I’m really sorry!]” Max yelled and launched his kunai into the cocoon. The blade sunk in and hooked as Max flew over the roiling mass of bugs and turned back towards the rest zone, opening up the throttle on the speeder bike. Xavier was hauled skyward, trailing behind and dangling by the grappler.
“Ooooww! Fucking hell! You maniac! Arghh!…]” Xavier screamed over the line. Max muted his feed and flew as fast as he could.