I was crouching low and halfway uncovered, moving slower than molasses, when one of the creatures lifted its head and sniffed. The creature’s shriveled nose-hole twitched, but then it looked back down at its feast for a moment.

Nothing attracts attention as quickly as movement where there shouldn’t be movement. We’d been trained to spend hours crossing a single clearing slowly enough to not trigger a sentry’s twitch sense. There was also the supposed ‘sixth sense’ of noticing when something was watching you.

Look, it was probably a superstition, and maybe luck, but it had been proven again and again, that many humans, at least, had a weird ability to feel when someone was watching them with hostile intent, even if they couldn’t see them. It was lumped in with psychokinesis and mediums as unproven, and it seemed like someone didn’t want to open a barrel of ‘psychic abilities’ by giving it any official notice, but it was real, and it was a fact that certain professions were forced to account for.

I was creeping ever closer, when one of them lifted their head, when I was about 15 feet away, sniffing and then finally narrowing their gaze on me. So, to keep the advantage, I went ahead and used the fire extinguisher.

I expected a cloud of billowing gas, powder, or foam, but what I got instead shocked me so much that I dropped the canister, which shut off the moment my hand left the trigger.

An expanding cloud of fire, the ‘foam’ was more akin to napalm, spraying in a hot wash that made me lift my knife hand to block my face. Both of the creatures exploded in screams, dashing around covered in flames and trying to escape the burning fire that coated them, their prey, the floor, and part of the wall behind them.

Stop drop and roll didn’t seem to be their catchphrase, as their rushing fanned the flames higher. I was ready to stab whichever one could finally attack, but after a few steps the first one, the sniffer, its front ablaze, fell to the floor, twitching. The closer one, whose back had been coated liberally with burning foam, finally slammed itself against a wall, and then, still burning fitfully, turned and charged me.

I was sort of expecting it, although a human probably would have rolled around on the ground crying instead of attacking. It was very straightforward, charging at me and screaming with a keening note that sounded halfway between that of a human throat and the awesomely weird harp roar from Godzilla movies. It was frightening, sure, but it didn’t stop me from dropping low and guarding with my free hand and weapon as it charged.

With a quick chop, I drove the bayonet into the top of its skull as it folded around my fist towards me, leaning forward to put as much of my weight as possible into the blow, despite it bringing me a little closer than comfort to the fire sputtering on its back. The thing was not only sharp enough to pierce its skull, but it drove down through its head, and I could feel the crunchiness as it drove through the bottom of the skull and several pops as the tip smashed its spine, finally stopping as my fist and the hilt smashed into its skull.

I pulled back, dragging the wonderfully sharp knife back with me, and the thing collapsed into a burning heap on the floor. I was rushed with adrenaline, but I felt a secondary sort of rush… kind of a boosting feeling, much stronger than the goblins had given me. It was entirely weird and a little distracting, but I cleaned the black gooey ichor off of my blade and wrist on a bit of reasonably clean unburnt uniform that the… whatever they had been chewing was wearing, before stashing it back in the scabbard at my hip.

The transtator, which was back in its smaller form, was blinking at me again, so I touched its face.

You have defeated two ghuls (Tier 1, rank 6 creatures)

You have defeated a creature more than 5 levels higher than you solo and gained the title ‘big game hunter’, as well as an advancement and Energy Credit bonus.

Big Game Hunter- You are talented at fighting creatures that are considerably more powerful than you. You may add 10 to your effective rank when using traits and abilities that are affected by level against higher-level entities.

You have proven the trait ‘ambush’. You have defeated two creatures more than 5 levels higher than you by ambush, without other assistance. Ambush increases your chances of remaining hidden when you are prepared for conflict, even under circumstances where effective cover and camouflage are limited.

The traits Ambush, Stealthy, and Critical Attacks have been merged into the ‘Bushwack’ advanced trait. Physical affinity has improved by 1 point.

Bushwack has been advanced to apprentice.

Bushwack- You are trained in striking targets by surprise and unaware, in the most damaging fashion possible. If you are within short range of multiple targets who are unaware of your presence or not expecting an attack, you gain a temporary boost of speed, allowing you to strike several targets critically before they can react to your attack. This can be nullified by individuals who have much higher reflexes or special abilities.

You have gained 1 rank in chimera, due to diligence in exercise.

You have gained 1 rank in imagination, due to standing firm in the face of horror like a true action hero!

You have gained a level! You are now a returner (Level 2). You have gained 2 free points.

You have gained 100 Energy Credits

Level 2 already? I had agreed to be… beholden to the Unification until level 5, but it looked like that journey was going to be much shorter than anyone had anticipated. The secret, clearly, was to attack creatures more powerful than I was, but if there were more of these ghul things, finding them was not going to be much of a problem. The thing that worried me, though, was the ‘hag’ that was mentioned in their description.

Resources, resources, resources. I didn’t really understand what they meant. Was I looking for food? Hard Drives? Metal? Rare herbs? Was the fire non-extinguisher considered a resource?

After hunting around for a bit, I realized something very interesting.

Whenever I let my watch pass near something movable, like the non-extinguisher, it would light up for a moment before I moved it away. Walls, doors, lockdown bars, and even the red box that had contained the flamer didn’t light. Was this the way that I could tell what qualified as a resource?

Fire Amplifier

3/6 uses

This device creates an expanding ball of flame. Limited uses. The longer the handle is compressed, the stronger the flame becomes.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Value: 250/400

The biggest question for the moment, though, was why? Why would there be a wall-mounted flamethrower? Was it supposed to be a weird sort of trap or something?

I hovered my watch around the beaten and burnt room, and finally, when I was about to give up on any ‘resources’ I caught the faint hint of a flicker. Interestingly, it looked like a sort of access panel, like you might find on a piece of heavy machinery. I flipped open the panel, and inside was something that I guessed fit the category of ‘resources’

a large green ammo box was the first contender. It had a value of ‘5’ but when I unclipped it, it was full of small green metallic wafers

Greenback

A common minor currency.

Value: 10

There were probably 200 of them in the box, so I closed the lid and lifted it. I was a little overloaded with my knife, the box, and the Amplifier, so I stashed them back in the airlock-looking thing, before continuing to another door in the room, also dogged down.

Carefully lifting the bar, which made the dogs holding the door closed slowly unscrew and pull away, I was aggravated to hear a wheezing squeak before I could finally push the thing slowly open and stay hidden behind the doorframe.

Inside the room, lit by flickering fluorescent lights, was another medium-sized room. This one looked like it had been in a fight, though. There were several heavy suits, which had similar colors to the uniform that the ghuls had been feasting upon. However, the room’s air smelled like a tomb, and in each of the suits, there were still the remains of what looked like humans.

The bodies looked like they had rotted away, with yellowing skeletal remains protruding from terrible rents in the suits. The air didn’t smell that bad, just sort of musty, so they must have been destroyed a very long time ago… but it was just another weird and illogical flaw in this place. These people must have died decades ago to have decayed so thoroughly, so where did the ghul’s fresh meat come from?

It felt like the place was trying to tell some kind of story, but I had no idea what sort of story was being told. Horror, obviously, but when I didn’t see any movement, I started to ease myself quietly into the room.

Whatever had attacked them looked like an animal. The suits, I guessed they were space suits, had horrible rents in them, tears from what looked like sharp claws. I supposed that the ghuls could have done it, but the skeletons were not torn into pieces like the body in the prior room, so if they had done it, they could not have stayed to feast on their efforts.

There were two more doors in this room, and it was set up a little like an emergency armory. There were five of the suits still hanging on hooks on the walls, unoccupied, with coiling cords leading from them to little displays. Which had flickering green bars.

I quietly moved towards one of the suits along the edge of the walls, because… well… I was not terribly squeamish, but stepping over dead bodies was pretty high on my ‘don’t do it unless you have to’ list.

Finally, I was able to hover my watch over one of the suits.

Ancient Spacesuit (Humanoid)

Fully charged

4 hours of breathable atmosphere without air cable or EVA tank. 200 hours of power.

Multiband network, heads-up display, emergency beacon.

Emergency suit thrusters reduce breathable atmosphere duration.

Minor armor value

Value: 2000

I wanted one, but at the same time, I realized that ‘minor’ armor was probably less than light. The suits hadn’t saved the people on the floor, but I was pretty sure that they qualified as ‘resources’. The power lines plugged into the suit were very simple, and probably kept the batteries fully charged, so I carefully disconnected one, which was a simple two-prong power cord. The whole thing felt like a Kubrick film.

The slight ping from disconnecting the power cord, though, was apparently enough noise to disturb something, because I heard a rustling noise coming from behind me.

One of the skeleton-occupied tattered suits was nearly to its feet when my head swiveled. Several others seemed to start moving as well. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I had seen the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad at least a dozen times. The skull inside of the suit had green-glowing lights in the eye-holes and looked tremendously dangerous.

Fortunately, they didn’t seem to react as quickly as either the Ghuls or Harryhausen’s monstrosities. I stabbed the one that was standing and kicked it towards a wall. It stumbled several steps and then fell over, but apparently, stabbing didn’t have much effect on… a skeleton. My bayonet went through the suit easily enough but seemed to have almost no effect, and soon there were three, with more trying to scramble to their feet underneath them.

I got it, this was like one of those games I used to play when I was a kid. But in those games, you usually had a crowbar, or a shotgun, or something. Something I didn’t have. Knives had no effect. But kicking it had slowed it down pretty effectively.

Sure, I had the fire Amplifier, but each of the suits on the walls had some sort of internal oxygen supply. I didn’t want to create a raging inferno with myself as the focal point. However, it still looked a lot like a fire extinguisher, a large, blunt metal object.

I hit one of the suits in the arm as it reached for me, and I heard a crackling noise from the suit. I quickly dived backward away from its companion and noticed that the arm that reached for me was now down at its side, bent at an odd angle where I had cracked the bone inside the suit.

Important tip. They were terrifying, but not terribly strong or fast, so I quickly tucked the knife into its sheath at my belt, and backhand swung the extinguisher at head level.

This place was freaking me out, violating all the laws of reality as I understood them. Walking cadavers, skeletons in space suits, Alien spaceships… It didn’t seem animatronic, but I could be wrong, and yet the extinguisher smashed through two skulls easily, sending bits of bone and sparkling bits of green light flying. In a moment, the two sort-of animated spacesuits dropped.

I felt a terrible tearing at my left shoulder and swung at one of the skeletons that had gotten close enough to take a chunk out of my left arm. It was not very strong, but the bones that made up its hand were sharp enough to have left a nasty hole in my bicep, where the finger-bones had run under the submerged plating in my flight suit.

Second important tip. My armor was decent, but it could still hurt me if a claw caught the wrong spot. Friggin’ ow, I needed to look for ‘first aid kits’ in the store when I had enough e-credits. I could still keep going despite the pain, since pain and I were old companions, but that didn’t mean I was happy with it.

After I figured out how to defeat them, the space-suited skeletons were not that bad as long as I kept moving. They were not slow like zombies, but they were considerably less dangerous than a comparable group of humans. They didn’t seem to like dodging, and even when they saw a fire extinguisher flying at their head, they just kept trying to come at me.

Ironically, the fight got harder as I took them down, working my way back towards the door that I had come in. At first, they seemed so eager to get at me that they were stepping on each other and tripping each other up, almost as if each one of them thought that they were alone with me, and couldn’t even tell other skeletons were trying to fight as well.

By the time I got to the door, and started controlling the avenues of attack, there were only three of them left, from the original two dozen or so. I was back halfway through the pressure door, and they seemed to stumble over the lip, making them easy prey for head-banging action.

As I stood panting, I wondered about something. My bleeding seemed to have stopped, so I leaned forward and started scanning my watch across the corpses.

Oh. Oh. Crap. Well, I guess the monster corpses counted as ‘resources’. Why was I here again? I shook my head, trying to clear it.

Dead Ghul

Ghul bones and cores are worth a great deal to an alchemist.

Value: 1300

Destroyed Animated skeleton

This is a human skeleton, but the necrotic energy that has infested it has seeped into its bones and has made it useful for necromancers and alchemists.

It is wearing various pieces of armor that have innate value.

Value: 500

You have defeated 12 skeletons! (Category 1 rank 2 creatures)

You have defeated enemies that are more than 10x your number in a single fight and gained the title, “Scotsman.”

Scotsman gives you a 10% bonus to advancement when similarly-leveled enemies outnumber you.

You have gained 1 point in imagination, due to standing your ground in the face of terror!

You have gained 1 point in (undefined) due to rapid awareness of threats and appropriate and well-timed responses to those threats.

You have gained a level! You are now a returner (3). You have gained 1 point in chimera, and 1 free point!

You have gained 250 Energy credits!