Chad watched as Darius spoke with Michael and Carlos. He’d already rounded up Javier, Mei Ling and Connor and was about to collect Carlos and his van when he saw he was occupied. Fortunately, Darius and Michael left for the Headman’s hut in short order, so the wait wasn’t very long. As Carlos closed the hood to his new car, Chad closed the distance. “Hey, Carlos. We have a mission.”
“A mission? Darius didn’t mention anything. What’s he got us doing, hein?” Carlos asked.
“Ugh, what a dumbass,” Connor said. “I swear, he doesn’t pay attention to anything past his own nose.”
“We get it, Connor,” Mei added. “You don’t like Darius. I don’t know why you have such a chip on your shoulder. I think he’s doing pretty well, all things considered.”
“He gave me the job,” Chad said while giving Connor the side eye. “But intended it for our group. He probably just forgot who that includes. The man has a lot on his plate, so I don’t sweat it. The Mission is in two parts. We need to start scavenging from nearby towns, and we have a recon mission with this new drone. he just got us.” Chad pulled out the drone from his storage ring and showed it off to everyone.”
“I guess it's as good a time as any to take this out for a test ride, né?,” Carlos said while patting the Van-like Vehicle.
“I’ve been meaning to ask, what are its stats like?” Chad asked.
“It’s not as fancy as those power armor suits, but here, have a look tá bom?”
E-Tech All Terrain Armored Utility Transport
Quality: Average
Rarity: Common
Durability: 200/200
Defense: 20
Power Bank: 200/200
Recharge Rate: 20 P.P./hour
Max speed: 75 MPH
Average range: 500 Miles
Passenger Capacity: 5
“That’s not bad. Better than some electric vehicles from before. At least this has a built-in recharger. The tires look good for off roading too. Okay, here’s my plan. I’m going to launch this here drone, and while we are driving, it will show us where we can find good salvage on the way to Albuquerque. Then we let it recharge and send her in. Sound good to you all?”
After a general round of agreement, Chad nodded. “Now, before we head out. Status check. How has everyone progressed after everything from yesterday? After the fight yesterday, I gained a few skill ups, including my two-weapon fighting and short blades. I used the Meridian Cleansing Pill and managed to clear my Bone Meridian, increasing my Agility by six, Defense by five, and unarmed damage by five. Carlos?”
“Ai, I cleared my Heart Meridian with the pill, you know? It increased my Constitution by six, and boosted my Stamina regeneration by a third, and Health Regeneration by the same amount. I also leveled up a couple of skills—unarmed combat, short blade, acrobatics, and athletics. But I still haven’t created any techniques yet, tá?.”
“You’ll get there. With the Heart Meridian, I’m sure you can easily make a healing technique. Javier, how about you?”
“Oh, me? I, uh, I cleared my Dermal Meridian, sabe? I also made a movement technique. It lets me move faster while being harder to hit, entendeu?”
“that’s amazing. You’ve made a lot of progress, good work. How about you, Mei?”
“I prefer Mei Ling, thank you. I also used the Meridian Cleansing Pill, clearing my Bone Meridian as well. As I was meditating while clearing my Meridian, my bloodline activated and I was able to gain a glimpse into my Dao. Before I knew it, I had also created a new technique that works with my Jian. When I use it, my Mirrored blades are no longer pure illusion. Each one gains a portion of Sword intent, allowing them to cut.”
“Sorry, Mei Ling. That sounds like a devastating technique. you can cut monsters to ribbons in no time. Thank you for sharing. That leaves you, Connor. How did you do after the battle?”
“Ugh, my new Soul-Bound dagger was next to useless against the damn undead. They don’t really have blood to bleed. They just oozed a bit more of that putrid shit. No extra damage at all,” Connor grunted with dissatisfaction, then let out a sigh. “I did reach Level nine, though. But I need over eight hundred more Experience Points before I can get my Advanced class. There some kind of Bottleneck to reaching Level ten. All the levels before this just needed fifty more experience than the last to level up. Level eight to level nine only needed four hundred experience points, but to go from nine to ten? Fourteen hundred fifty. An extra thousand experience points. Whoever designed the level requirements is a complete, sadistic, asshole. It was probably some single, fat ass neckbeard living in his mother’s basement.”
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The others in the group just shrugged. They were all cultivators, with Connor being the odd man out. Complaining about needing to kill more monsters to level up seemed ridiculous. They each had to spend hours focusing inwards, fighting to push through mountains of sludge in their Meridians just to get a trickle of Ki to pass through and advance. Gaining power through experience points, being able to just buy spells, that was easy mode.
Chad read the growing resentment amongst the rest of the team during Connor's childish rant and decided to head it off and get things moving. He was concerned that keeping Connor around would be bad for team work. But he was effective. His ability to hit creatures in their most vulnerable spots while the beasts were distracted, combined with his ability to increase the credits dropped from each kill, was valuable. But his inability to see beyond himself and his poor attitude wasn’t making it easy to keep him around. “Great update everyone. If we’re all ready, let's launch this drone and head out.”
Chad set the charging dock in the back of the six wheeled van and grabbed the control unit. Pushing the Power button, the Drone hummed to life. A faint yellow glow radiated from the bottom and it hovered a few feet off of the ground. Looking at the screen on the controller, he navigated through the menu and possible mission parameters he could Issue the onboard AI. He found a generic scouting mission that had variable parameters he could select from. He chose clusters of buildings, humanoid life readings, and threw in monsters with a high threat level, just in case. With the orders set, it flew off on its own in the direction they were going to travel, with orders to go no farther than five miles from the dock.
Carlos carefully navigated the van out of the compound and Chad closed the gate behind them before getting into the front seat. He was pleasantly surprised at how smooth the ride was, given the state of the packed dirt road leading to the former campground. His crew was silent as they made it to the highway and turned east towards the city. While the stat block said the van could go up to seventy-five miles per hour, Carlos kept it down to thirty. Chad approved. It was better to go slowly, and be able to react to any monster attacks, than to speed their way into a death trap.
After they had traveled about ten miles, the drone pinged a viable scavenging location; the downside was that it had detected a potential, high D class threat. For reference, Chad checked and found out that he and his party were classed by the drone at high E class to low D class. While it didn’t provide specifics, it was clear the drone thought the monster was stronger than they were.
Most of the others were hesitant to take on the unknown monster just to collect some salvage. However, between Connor wanting the experience points and the need to keep monsters from getting too strong close to their home, they all agreed to take it out.
Chad discovered that he could send the location to the Van’s display system on its dash. It popped up and gave navigation directions, based on the sensor information the drone had collected. In short order, Carlos had turned off of the highway and drove slowly cross country, avoiding the worst of the dips and mini ravines formed from the infrequent but fierce rain storms.
Carlos set the parking brake when they were about half a mile away from the edge of the town. Chad didn’t know its name, the sign having been snapped off of its post, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. There were no humanoid life signs, nor any monsters except for the one who’d made the town its lair.
“I’m going to use the drone to get in closer and scout the area before we go in,” Chad said, then took manual control. He was pleasantly surprised at how intuitive the controls were. It was like playing a video game. First, he engaged the stealth mode, then slowly flew in to the town itself. He saw several buildings that had been damaged and everything seemed to be weathering faster than he would have expected. Old blood stains decorated the streets, and long spines were seen sticking out of posts and walls all over the place.as he got closer to what looked like the town hall. He started finding bones and desiccated parts of monsters and a few limbs that looked like they came from people. The Town Hall had a massive hole in the side of the building, where the remnants of corpses were most numerous, along with more of those strange spines.
Slowing the drone down even more, he had it practically crawl through the air and approached the opening. Chad cycled between the different sensor options; he used the Radar system to help map out the interior of the building. The beast seemed to have busted down several of the interior walls and the first-floor ceiling.
In the back corner of the cavernous room, a large mound was detected. The sides of the mound flexed in and out rhythmically. Chad shifted from Radar to the Energy Sensors, and the readout showed high levels of Ki within the beast. It was able to measure the Ki signature, showing seventy percent Wood, twenty percent Earth, and ten percent Water Essence in its Ki, and its core held one hundred seventy-five points of Ki.
“Shit, It’s a Body rank Five Spirit Beast,” Chad told his team. “Two full ranks higher than the highest among us. It looks like it's about fifteen feet long, and probably six to eight feet tall when it’s upright. Lucky for us, it seems to be sleeping at the moment, meaning it’s probably nocturnal.”
“Sounds like a sneak attack is our best option,” Connor said with a grin. His Soul-Bound Dagger rolling through his fingers.
“I agree,” Chad said. “It’s Ki is made up of mostly wood Essence with some earth and water, so I bet its weak against fire, but unless you all got some new equipment or consumables, we don’t have any effects that can burn, do we?”
No one spoke up, and Chad sighed. “We really need to get more equipment for eventualities like this. Looks like we are using our standard plan for big single monsters.”
“So, Attack plan Kaiju?” Mei Ling asked.
“That’s the one,” Chad said. “Though I think we need a better name, it's not like this is some giant beast, just a large one.”
Everyone left the van, and Connor moved out first. They gave Connor a five-minute head start to get into position first, then the rest of them followed carefully into town.