Roy fidgeted with his pitchfork, turning the well calloused shaft in his hands a he read the description of his newest ability.
Charge - Novice I
The user charges towards the enemy, building up momentum at an astounding rate. The melee attack immediately following the charge deals additional damage based on the amount of momentum built up. The rate of buildup is based on skill level and AGI. The maximum buildup is based on skill level, AGI, and STR.
Tires the user based on the duration of the charge. Tiring effect decreases with skill level and CON.
All in all, the recent fight had gone splendidly. Not a single scratch ailed him and he had gained a skill level and ability. The additional level meant Pole Weapon Mastery was only a single step away from the first minor perk. It was exciting, even if he had yet to really put his previous perks to work. Not that he wanted to get hit with a heat based attack or find himself ambushed at night.
Spirits uplifted, Roy dismissed the blue screen and joined the others as they prepared to move on. They took up their umbrella shaped position as they headed further east before turning south and entering into small streets lined with houses. An idyllic suburban neighborhood, peaceful and quiet, not that it wasn’t still quiet, it was just a different brand of quiet.
The silence blew away like smoke in the wind as the small team’s footsteps splashed across the two lane road, some cars were still parked by the curb, their tires fully submerged, but they otherwise intact and whole. The heavy rainstorm that preceded the arrival of the monsters probably drove any sensible person into the shelter of their houses, wrecked cars would hardly improve the dreadful atmosphere.
But the figures that walked beside Roy did, his time spent alone had been stressful and fraught with danger, but now, as his eyes glanced from one ally to another, he felt safe. It wouldn’t do to become careless though, he had to keep in mind that there were bigger fish out there, like the goliath.
One final turn up a driveway and Nolan came to a stop, pulling Roy out of his thoughts. The walk had taken no more than fifteen minutes, it would have been a stroll in the park had the neighbourhood not been the playground of horrendous monstrosities.
“Alright, we’re here,” Nolan looked over the outside of the house, noting down the barricaded windows and chewed up orchid caps which decorated the front lawn like some twisted gardner’s gnomes, “Karl, Dan, you’re on guard duty, be sure to shout real loud if you see something. The rest of you, we’re gonna go do the usual shtick.”
“Oh god Nolan, please don’t do the ‘usual shtick’, don’t we have enough problems already?” one of the brother complained as he took up a position on the porch.
“Put a lid on it Dan, unless you wanna go and lug all their furniture back to base,” Nolan rapped at the door with one gloved hand.
“Come on, it was just one chair!”
Before Nolan could retort a muffled voice sounded from the other side of the door, “Hey, you guys are from the grocery store right?”
“That’s right, so open up,” the man brushed his graying hair as he shifted from side to side, impatience already starting to take hold.
“Are you…” before the disembodied voice could continue another voice cut in, this one softer and feminine.
“Harold, come help me move the sofa, you can ask questions later,” dull screeches followed and Roy imagined the two on the other side dragging an old sturdy looking sofa across the wooden floor.
The swish of deadbolts sliding back into the door frame heralded the opening of the door. Standing in the hallway was a man and a woman, both in their late twenties and sporting dark bangs underneath their somber brown eyes.
“Please come in, I can’t express how glad I am that you’re here,” the woman’s face beamed with joy as she rushed forwards to shake their hands. “Harold, I’ll go get the girls, and the bags... oh, and check over everything one last time, you can handle things here,” she rattled off as she turned away and rushed up the stairs, footsteps a staccato of noise.
“Right, that was Emily, my wife. Come on in, we can talk after we take a seat, I’m sure you’re all tired from… that,” he gestured nebulously.
Roy trailed at the end of the line as they entered into a small dining room and took their seats around the table. Harold offered cookies and pop, which Roy accepted with gratitude. The meagre meal he had at lunch was already starting to give way to peckishness.
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The woman, Emily, arrived downstairs a few minutes later with two girls and two bags in tow. All the little kids looked the same to Roy, but if he were to guess, and he really didn’t have anything better to do, the older girl was probably in grade five or six, while the younger was still in kindergarten. The past few days had probably been tough on the younger children.
“That’s all you’re bringing?” Nolan pushed his seat out and asked with a hint of surprise.
“I have two more bags if that’s fine with you,” Harold grabbed his own luggage from inside a cupboard and showed them to Nolan.
“Won’t be an issue so long as you carry them. In fact, if you got any more food we can bring along that would be great,” for the next couple of minutes Roy watched as the couple gathered up a small pile of pastries, and candies, before stuffing it all into the backpacks that each group member carried. He certainly wasn’t expecting for his bag to be packed to the brim with jelly beans and chocolate eggs.
“Heh, I have a bit of a sweet tooth you see,” Emily pocketed a bar of chocolate as she gazed at the place her stash had once occupied.
“Alright, if that’s all, let’s get going,” Nolan stated, prompting Roy and the rest of the group to shuffle towards the door in response, “Form up position outside. Harold, you and your family should stick to Lucy, that’s the blonde with the big backpack.”
The trip back was uneventful, the road lined with houses was followed by the community center, and then finally the parking lot of the grocery store came into view. The roads were just as deserted as they had been on the way there, there was not a out of place thing in sight, not even the corpse of the brutes decorated the road side.
That was strange, what happened to the two heaps of vines that had become of the monsters. Was it possible that in the short span of an hour they had been completely eaten by some stealthy scavenger, or perhaps there was magic at play? In retrospect the brutes could hardly be called animals, neither could the orchid caps, but at least they didn’t turn into conspicuous piles of plants when they died.
It was almost as if the brutes had been cobbled together and broke back into its constituent pieces after its HP hit zero. Cobbled together by magic, it was an eerie thought, but not as eerie as the figures standing outside the grocery store, huddled around a car with jerry cans and pipes in hand.
“Fuel?” Nolan shouted out as they approached.
“Jonas wants some more just in case, the paranoid bastard ought to do this stuff himself,” Greyson sat on the hood of the car, gun out as he surveyed the surroundings and guarded the group working at the makeshift pump.
Roy could recognize one of the figures as Jake, he averted his eyes and tried to act inconspicuous. It wasn’t as if the man was going to try something here and now with all these spectators around, but the sight of him made Roy uncomfortable. He couldn’t really escape either, there were just under two hundred people gathered under one roof; he would be seeing Jake again, and probably the other unfriendly individuals.
Roy had never been popular, neither had he been unpopular. But now he found himself at the receiving end of quite a few penetrating glares. Looking elsewhere, Roy waited for Nolan to pass Harold and his family off to Owen, who would probably then direct them towards Lestrat. Never had a wall of mist been so interesting before.
It was a short but still unpleasant wait, and Roy let out a breath of relief when they finally set out again. They had just completed their first ‘evacuation’ run, they had one more, followed by a supply run. They started off heading east again, passing by the community center and allowing Roy to confirm that the corpses really had disappeared. This time they turned north, bringing them closer to Anamosa High.
As they passed by another empty house a sudden splash of water in the distance broke the monotony. Before Roy could even face the threat several gunshots rang out around him, followed by a hoarse croak. Around ten meters away a frog monster lay, the water around it taking on a scarlet tinge. It was the same monster he had struggled against on his first day, the same monster he had stabbed to death with a pencil, and was almost killed in turn by.
He had come full circle, a sense of déjà vu overcame him, barely a week had passed and already the past felt so distant.
It was a dangerous though, but he felt that the frog would hardly be a match for the new him. It wasn’t very powerful in the first place, looking back the only reason he had been so severely injured was because he had been frozen in shock. Looking forward he needed to be more proactive.
“One of those things, they always come in really big groups and are like really annoying” Lucy looted the corpse after a few wary glances and they moved on.
“Our goal is just a bit further ahead, over there,” Nolan pointed towards a house in the distant, a faint shadow in the mist. His finger wavered, a second shape, stood beside the house, almost like a twin, except its craggy form spoke of something else entirely, “What the…”
Before he could continue a booming voice echoed across the empty streets, it was monotone, almost robotic if it weren’t for its fluidity, “Announce yourselves.”
Its towering form turned towards Roy’s group and it began to walk forwards, each step sending tremors across the earth. As it pushed through the shroud of mist its form began to become more distinct. Four large tubular legs as thick as the trunk of a redwood projected from a spherical torso. It had no arms and no head, only four circular holes adorned the great mass of mud that made up its body.
“That is like, I don’t even,” Lucy commented as the group pulled away from the approaching thing.
“What do we do?” Dan thumbed his rifle as he addressed Nolan.
“It talks, we talk to it, easy,” despite his words he seemed visibly shaken. Just the form of the titanic monster was intimidating, but…
Roy concentrated on the target of all their attention.
Earth Elemental LV 105 HP 32803 / 32803
The amount was enough to boggle the mind, he wasn’t even going to bother estimating how many bullets it would take to down the creature. The answer was probably too many.
“Hey! What are you supposed to be?” Nolan’s response was probably hazardous to their health.
“I am Metapelon, guardian of these marshes, elemental of the earth,” its body ‘descended’ with surprising alacrity as its pipe like legs bent like rubber. Now its house sized torso loomed above the group, the four pitch dark holes on its body directed towards them, “You are the lost looking for safety.”
The two brother recoiled from Metapelon’s approach, but Nolan stood firm at the forefront, “We do more of the saving than the being saved.”
“Then you are guardians of the lost,” the being rose to its full height again A tentacle like appendage grew from its body, wiggling into form as the brown mud like substance that constituted the being shifted and flowed across its ‘skin’.
Metapelon pointed at the house before it with its newly grown arm, “The lost inhabit this house, they will not heed my words, but you will fare better.” The elemental stepped aside as if gesturing the group forwards.
“That’s what we’re here for.”