Starting the next wave before the timer ran out did not advance our capture of the node point. That was still ticking down from 24 hours at a rate of 1 second per second.
Instead, our timer to clear the second wave was [1 hr 16 minutes], the leftover time from wave one rolling over to wave two.
"I wonder if that stacks?" I said, excited. "That could be really useful." I was already thinking of ideas. We could get 4 waves ahead and then take a couple of hours down time, get some big cooldowns back.
"Let's clear this wave first, then meet back at the node point and have a quick discussion," Grandpa said. "What do you see?"
I checked my map. "Three spawn points, same as before," I said. "Looks to me like they're slightly bigger." I pinged them so they’d show on everyone else’s map.
One wasn't too far from us. We decided to tackle that one as a group. Jones pulled out his drone and sent it out to scout.
"Cannibal pigs again," he said, "and this time they've got some lizard folk with them. The lizards don't have any weapons that I can see. Big sharp teeth and claws, though."
We agreed on a pincer movement tactic for this one and sent Team Mongoose to sweep around to the far side of the camp.
Then Grandpa, Sage, Lara, and I crept up closer. Lara was looking very uncomfortable. She had just seen a man bleed out and die in front of us, and even I was having trouble believing that he'd be back. I didn't blame her for being a little nervous.
Team Mongoose signaled when they were in position. "Let's do this," Grandpa said, and we charged in.
I had Lara throw a barrage of her orange grenades before anyone else stepped in. The smoke clouds went off again. I had a hunch it was those that had broken my crowd control and not any kind of sonic damage. Plenty of games had mechanics where you’d lose focus if line of sight got broken.After all, I would stop concentrating if someone threw smoke bombs into the middle of my camp, too.
The pigs and lizards seemed confused for a few seconds, especially once Team Mongoose started firing into their camp. Some of the lizards dropped to all fours and went charging into the brush. Sage cast Mucking Out the Stalls where they were going and tangled them up. She Lassoed one of the pigs who wasn't standing in a cloud of smoke and had him run around and attack the others.
I stepped in closer to get a decent shot. I could feel something sharpen as I did and a minute later I realized the totems were staring at me. There were three of them, about six feet tall each, each a stack of four non-human heads on top of each other. They looked like the pigs and lizards here in the camp. The bottom totem on each pole opened its mouth and spouted gouts of fire.
I jumped back. "Ah! Look out!" The gouts passed inches from me. I shot the nearest pig and dove for the brush. "Take out the totems!" I yelled and Team Mongoose started shooting them. One by one, they blew up into clouds of splinters.
That enraged the pigs. They started charging around the clearing, swinging their stone axes and javelins at anything that moved, including each other. The lizards weren't so angry, or reckless. They were still sniffing around the brush after us. I shot one as it charged Sage. She laughed and had her tamed pig take out another lizard.
We cleaned up the camp pretty fast. The enormous cauldron bubbling on top of the fire smelled suspicious to me. The pigs and lizards hadn't done anything with it, but I was concerned that each spawn wave was going to get successively harder and that we might find out what it was for sooner or later.
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After that, we split up to go clean out camps. This time, Grandpa sent Team Mongoose off to clear a camp on their own with no instructions except to report back anything that they thought we should know about. We took Lara with us to the closer camp.
The next spawn was located deeper in the jungle. We slogged up a heavily forested, vine-covered hill. I had to pull a machete out of my inventory and start hacking through the vines to cut us a path.
We were almost on top of the spawn point before I spotted the enemy. There were only three red dots and I hadn't been able to tell what they were, but as we approached the bottom of the hill, I noticed three piles of mossy boulders in approximately the right location. I pointed them out to the team.
Sage used her "Eye-Spy" ability. "Rock trolls," she said. "They're immune to fire, poison, drowning, and any kind of edged weapon."
"So what's that leave?" I asked.
"Sonic," Lara said cheerfully. She pulled out a stash of her orange grenades.
"Ice. Most of my bullets. Old age," I added as I thought about it.
"How about the boom rounds?" Sage suggested.
"We've only got ten of those," I said.
"They don't do us any good if you keep them in your gun belt the whole fight," Sage retorted.
"All right, I'll give it a try." I switched out my load to include two of Sage's boom rounds. We'd used them two missions ago and they had made an impact, that's for sure.
I looked at Lara. "Toss your grenades in to wake them up, then I'll take my shot. After that, we assess."
She nodded brightly. "Ready? Go!"
I was glad to see she was doing better. Ice Spice had messaged the whole team after respawning, assuring us that he was okay, that it had hurt to die, but coming back was fine, and that he was on his way back to the island now. That had lifted my mood and I’d noticed Lara had more spring in her step since.
Lara threw the grenades. They rained down around the three piles of boulders. I held myself ready as they exploded.
The boulders stood up. It was like watching a rock fall in reverse as the piles became coherent, humanoid-shaped lumps with rock arms, rock legs, and small moss-covered rock boulders atop the large shapes of their bodies.
Sage giggled. "They're like evil rock snowmen!"
The orange grenades had done some damage. The rock trolls’ maximum health was 120, and they were down to 105 each.
I took a deep breath and pointed my gun in their direction, then squeezed off one of the boom rounds.
My shot landed in between the three of them. It exploded a chunk of forest about 20 feet in diameter. Bits of tree rained down all around us. There was a crackling sound, and then smoke began to rise from small fires started around the edge of the circle.
The inside of the circle was just bare dirt. Even the plants and fallen leaves had been blasted away. Piles of loose stone lay scattered all about. I checked our progress bar. It said "Wave 2: 55% Cleared."
"They're not all dead," I warned and looked around.
"There," Sage pointed.
One of the rock trolls had five health remaining. It was trying to pull itself back together. It was a bizarre sight. Individual rocks rolled toward each other, and when they touched, they stuck together.
"Uh-oh," Sage said. "They've got a regenerate ability!"
"Well shit!" I really didn't want to have to use another of my boom rounds. They were expensive and, as we had just seen, very effective.
I turned my revolver's cylinder to a different chamber and fired a normal round at the largest chunk of rock I saw. It hit and did two points of damage, chipping away a flake of stone from the troll’s head.
I fired a couple more times, then reloaded, returning my boom round to my gun belt. It took ten shots directly on the reforming troll to knock it out completely. I was literally chipping pieces of rock away with each round. Finally, it was dead, and we were at 66% complete.
How's it going? Grandpa asked Team Mongoose.
We're finishing up here. Meet you back at the node.
"Should we go check on them?" I asked.
"They say they're fine," Grandpa shrugged. "Let's go. We'll meet them back at the node."
I hesitated. I was starting to have an idea. “What about starting the next round immediately? I think we could clear three or four rounds pretty quickly. Earn ourselves a chunk of time.”
“Then do what? Take a nap?” Grandpa scratched his head. “You’ve got a plan here, don’t you.”
“Not quite. It’s starting to form. I feel like we’ve got an opportunity here. Need a target to aim at, though.” I holstered my gun. “I’ll work on the thought while we get back to our node.”