Then

The true boss suddenly appeared in front of Nila. It drove its hand through her shield like a blade. The only thing that saved her from a similar fate as the unfortunate old farmer was the thickness of the shield and her strength and reflexes. She pushed out and leaned back with inches to spare. The monster’s pointed nails just barely penetrated the visor of her motorcycle helmet instead of going through her face.

Seeing Nila in mortal danger spurred Cal into action. He tried something he had only practiced with Eron. He imagined his telekinesis was a giant blanket. He reached out with it and wrapped it around the monster.

It struggled mightily, just like his brother had. Perhaps even stronger. Cal knew instantly that he couldn’t hold it place. The best he could do was slow it down.

The monster was no longer a blur, but that didn’t make it slow by any objective measure. It struck at Nila repeatedly. It was all that she could do to keep it from getting past her shield.

Cal wasn’t able to do anything else for his love. He couldn’t let his concentration drop for even one moment.

A loud battle cry split the night air.

Cal saw Eron launch himself at the monster from thirty feet away.

Nila threw herself back.

The monster did the same, but it wasn’t moving as quick as it was capable of. Eron crashed right into it. They rolled in a ball slashing and punching at one another.

Eron ended up on top and he grabbed the monster around the throat in a grip that was capable of crushing bricks. The monster frantically clawed at his arms tearing the tough sleeves of his jacket and drawing blood. Eron held on and squeezed tighter. His face was a rictus of rage.

The monster suddenly bucked. Eron wasn’t in a proper mount and the monster’s strength unbalanced him. The momentary surprise was enough for the monster to pry his grip just enough to gain some air. It got its legs underneath Eron and flipped him over its head. It moved quickly. Before Eron could stand the monster scrambled to its feet without letting go of its grip on one of Eron’s wrists. It grabbed his wrists in both hands. Spun in a circle with Eron in its grip and let go.

Eron went flying into the air, spinning like a frisbee. He went through a third-story window of the most distant building with a loud crash.

The monster let out a high-pitched scream of triumph into the dark night.

“Shoot it!” Demi shouted as she fired at the monster with controlled three round bursts from her assault rifle.

The quiet was lit up by the sounds of gunfire.

The monster flinched from the bullets that struck its body. It moved, but with Cal slowing it down it wasn’t able to get out of the line of fire.

Small blood splatters appeared all over its body.

“Why isn’t it dropping?!” Rebekah spoke over the blasts from her shotgun. Ron was passed out at her feet from the pain of his broken limbs.

“The bullets are barely breaking its skin!” A young man, a teenager really, pulled a small stone from the bag at his side and hurled it at the monster with perfect pitcher’s form. The stone fastball cracked against the monster’s head with a sound like an explosion.

Cal recognized the teen. His name was Trevor and he was something like a star baseball player from the very same high school that they were fighting in. His class was the same as his position, pitcher and it let him hurl small objects up to the size of regulation baseball with velocity and accuracy that surpassed the traditional sling.

Trevor had recently turned eighteen, so he didn’t need anyone’s permission to join the raid team. He had volunteered immediately.

The teen was about to pay for that bit foolhardy bravery. For some reason it was his throw that drew the monster’s attention. It charged right for him.

The others kept firing at it, but it ignored the rounds impacting its body as if they were mere gnats.

Cal wanted to send a telekinetic shove to knock it away, but he knew that if he released his blanketing hold on the monster it would regain its impossible speed and turn Trevor into paste before his shove got there.

Trevor wasn’t an idiot. He turned and ran right toward Cal.

“Oh shit! Don’t run this way you asshole!” Johnny took a deep breath and Cal lost track of him.

Good. There was no reason for the teen to put himself at risk. Cal hoped that he had moved somewhere safer. Though if they couldn’t kill the monster then was there any place that was safe?

Trevor bought himself a second of time as the monster slowed upon setting eyes on Cal.

Black eyes in a child-like face narrowed. Did it realize that Cal was the one restricting its movements? Whatever the case it was wary.

“Power Throw!”

A sledgehammer struck the monster’s back and forced it to stumble forward several steps.

It was right in front of Cal. As good an opening as any, but he dared not risk taking it. His effort was the only thing that was letting the raid team land anything at all on the monster.

The monster turned and sneered at Keisha, who was about forty feet away. She was doubled over at the waist, breathing heavily. Clearly, she had used up what was left of her stamina on that attack.

Trevor was lucky that the monster forgot him.

Whether Keisha knew what drawing aggro meant or not. That was exactly what she did. She would’ve been proud of her throw if she knew that it did enough damage to draw the monster’s attention when dozens of bullets couldn’t. As it was she was simply too exhausted to care much that it looked like she was next. She grimly took her stance and held her riot shield in front of her.

The monster charged at Keisha.

A blood-stained chain speared the true boss through the arm as it grasped for Keisha.

Remy pulled hard on the chain.

The monster skidded across the slick grass, which was wet from the moisture in the cool night air. It went a good twenty feet before it planted its clawed feet into the ground and stopped.

Remy’s eyes widened.

The monster grabbed the chain with its free hand and started pulling.

Remy grit his teeth and braced himself against the monster. He pulled on the chain with a combination of a magnetic field and his own physical strength.

“It’s not even moving,” Remy said through grit teeth. “I can’t hold it… Cal! Do something!”

“It’s taking everything I have just to slow it down!” Cal screamed in frustration. The knives in his brain were twisting even faster than before.

Rebekah ran up to the monster and planted her shotgun’s barrel right up to its back. The blast pushed it forward and allowed Remy to regain the advantage in their high-stakes tug of war. “I’m out,” Rebekah said as she backpedaled away from the monster.

“Everyone else, save your ammo!” Demi switched out her empty magazine for a half-filled one. It was all she had left. “Face or head shots only!” She spat it out. It went against her training, but center mass shots were doing nothing. The monster was leaking blood from dozens of tiny pinpricks all over its pale-white skin. She was hitting it with 5.56mm rounds and it looked like the damn thing was being hit with pellets.

“You heard her.” Johnny popped up suddenly next to Gene, Bastien and Mads

The three jumped.

“Fuckshit! Don’t do that.” Gene lowered his machete.

“Why aren’t you shooting it in the eyes with your magic missile? I thought it’s like heat-seeking or something?”

“Not exactly,” Gene said. “And I’ve used them up for the day. I’ve got a Flame Spray spell, but I don’t think it’s going to help.”

“Guys, shut up. We need to pay attention,” Bastien said.

“Yeah,” Mads said flatly. She had her shotgun ready and was watching the struggle between the Remy and the monster with laser focus. She had two shells left. One was filled with buckshot and one was a slug. She was going to make them count.

Cal was losing his telekinetic hold on the true boss monster. The strain was too much. He reached his limit. At the worst possible moment he failed everyone. He failed his brother.

Cal collapsed to his knees. Blood flowed from every orifice in his head. He could barely see through the tears in his eyes.

The monster’s eyes widened a fraction. That accursed feeling that it was being held down, as if it was moving through sludge, had suddenly disappeared.

It moved in a blur and caught Remy off guard.

It tore the chain out of its arm and whirled it around its head. Remy went flying with it. The monster released the chain. It felt a certain sense of satisfaction at dealing with the second being that had managed to actually hurt it properly the same way that it did to the first.

That feeling didn’t last long. It was suddenly, violently replaced by the feeling of something spearing right through its stomach and out its back.

Remy had sent his second spear-tipped chain into the monster. It arrested his flight, but now he was in danger of being slammed into the ground and he wasn’t sure that he could walk that off. Hanging in midair for a split-second he half-turned and sent his other chain, the one that the monster had used to send him flying, through the building next to them.

There the middle Cruces brother hung in place. One hand holding a chain attached through a wall with a magnetic field, while the other held a chain attached through a terrifying monster’s guts.

The monster pulled on the chain and it took all Remy’s strength to resist. An uncomfortable image of being drawn and quartered flashed through his mind. “Crap, I didn’t think this through,” he whispered. Out of the three Cruces brothers, he was the weakest, physically speaking, still superhuman and stronger than everyone else, except Cal and Eron.

Unfortunately that didn’t matter to the monster he had on the end of his chain. It was clearly stronger than any of them. As it was now amply demonstrating by threatening to pull Remy into two pieces.

He had a tough choice. Hold on and lose an arm or worse. Let go and the monster goes back to tearing through the raid team. It wasn’t a choice. Remy closed his eyes and thought of Megan, Tessa and Veronica, his wife and daughters. He tightened his grips on the chains. He wasn’t going to let the monster free to hurt his family.

Remy heard a loud pop and a sensation of tingling at his right shoulder, immediately followed by intense pain as the muscles around it started to spasm. He bit back a scream.

Two loud bangs in quick succession. Remy heard it dimly through the pain in his dislocated right shoulder. He thought it odd that there were than many. He only had one more shoulder, so why two pops?

The pull on his right arm suddenly stopped and he heard screeching.

He opened his eyes and looked down.

The monster had ceased pulling at the chain in its stomach. It had its hands up to its face. Remy could see blood pouring out of its ruined eye sockets.

“Nice shots!” Johnny enthusiastically clapped Mads on the back.

“Is that a skill?”

Mads gave Gene a flat look. “My only skills have to do with seeing further and quicker reloading.” She tilted her head up slightly and looked as cold as ice. She ruined the image a second later by suddenly doubling over and throwing up.

“Ewww,” Johnny took a big step away.

The true boss monster thrashed around blindly.

Remy let go of the chain lest he risk losing his right arm in the monster’s frenzy. He swung back towards the building. He absorbed the impact against the wall with his legs and used a magnetic field to pull the chain out of the wall, so that he was able to drop down to the ground. His right arm hung limply at his side, but he still ran toward the monster.

His brother beat him to it. Eron appeared out of nowhere. He hit the blinded monster from behind with a bone crushing shoulder tackle.

They rolled across the lawn. The monster kicked up with its feet and pushed Eron away, cutting through his shirt and scratching his flesh with its sharp toenails. It came up in a crouch with a snarl on its face. Its clawed hands swiping the air in Eron’s general direction.

Even blinded it was still dangerous.

The youngest Cruces brother slowly moved left to draw its attention. Once it turned, he burst in the other direction.

Eron landed a crushing right hook to the side of the monster head. It wobbled a moment and slashed a backhand. He blocked it with his arm. The sharp nails stung his arm.

From his vantage point in the classroom building furthest away, Eron had seen the monster tear through the raid team. His brothers were seriously injured and people were dead.

“Just a scratch.”

Eron landed a straight left into the monster’s chest. He felt and heard something crack. Whether it was his fist or the monster’s ribs he didn’t know. With the adrenaline flowing he wouldn’t have even been able to tell if it was him.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The monster swiped at Eron. He jumped back. Then jumped right back in with a flurry of wild punches to its face and chest. He didn’t even care about cutting his fists on its teeth. He saw some of them go flying, so that was good enough for him.

It seemed to him that the monster was moving slower. He was able to keep up with it now.

“Not so tough now are you?”

Eron sidestepped a maddened lunged and dug into the monster’s kidneys with a pair of low hooks. Assuming it had kidneys. From the sound the monster made it definitely hurt.

The monster turned and swiped at Eron. Again he just barely dodged out of the way. It was definitely slower. All of the damage it had accumulated must’ve finally taken a toll. After all it had been shot dozens of times, had its eyes shot out and even had one of Eron’s chains sticking out of its stomach.

Eron blinked once. Twice.

He bent down and quickly grabbed the chain.

“Your turn.” Eron’s smile was positively feral. He was going to enjoy this.

He ran back to get the chain taut. He had to pull and tug to get the monster off-balance. It still had considerable strength and it likely would’ve won a straight up physical contest between them.

He went left then right, pulling and whipping the chain around. The monster finally tripped over its own feet. Eron had it.

He whirled the chain over his head with the screeching monster attached to the end.

After a couple of full rotations and when the chain was about to go behind him, Eron whipped it up and brought it forward over his head.

He slammed the monster down with earth-shaking force.

Eron was breathing hard, but he didn’t let his guard down. He held the chain tightly in his hands and watched the monster for any signs of movement.

When the dust from the impact cleared, Eron could see the monster stir. It turned from its back and got on to its hands and knees. It looked like it was going to push itself up off the ground when it was suddenly flattened. It was as if an invisible force had suddenly pushed it down.

The monster writhed and struggled to push itself up against whatever it was that was keeping it down.

Eron suddenly realized what it was. He looked for his brother and found Cal on his knees. One hand was held out in front of him as if he was trying to press something down. The other hand was gesticulating some thing at him.

“What?!” Eron shouted across the lawn.

Cal was pointing at him, then up into the air and then at the monster.

Eron narrowed his eyes. “You want me to slam it again?!”

Cal shook his head and resumed gesticulating. He didn’t look good. His face was a red mess and he looked like he could barely stay conscious.

“Just tell me what you want me to do!”

Nila rushed over to Cal’s side and put her ear near his lips.

It occurred to Eron that if his brother was using his telekinesis to hold the monster in place then perhaps he didn’t have enough strength to shout. He shook his head. That sounded dumb. Then again this was the stupidest apocalypse.

“He wants you to jump on its back from really high up! As high as you think you can do without killing yourself or maybe that was as hard as you can!” Nila shouted.

Cal wanted to groan, but it was taking all his concentration and strength, physical and mental to keep the monster pinned to the ground with his telekinesis. He was barely able convey his idea to Nila. It was going to have to do.

Eron’s eyes brightened. “Okay,” he gave them the thumbs up, “I think I got it.” He looked up to the building. Maybe he could jump from there. Would that be enough height for gravity to give him the necessary force? He glance at the chain still in his hand. It gave him an idea. He searched for Remy and found him standing protectively near the rest of the raid group as they watched the silent, invisible struggle in front of them.

“Hey, Rem. Cal has a plan.”

“I heard and I think I know what we can do,” Remy nodded. “I’m thinking that you have the same idea as I do.”

Eron grinned. “Yup.”

“Are you sure your body can handle it?”

“I went flying through a building a couple of hundred feet away and I’m pretty much okay.” Eron paused. “The question is can you handle it? Your arm is hanging a lot lower than it should be.”

“Magnetic powers are going to be doing most of the work. I’m not a meathead like you,” Remy said. “Here, grab on.” He extended the end of his chain to Eron.

Eron stared at the blood and bits on it and sighed before grabbing it.

Remy levitated the chain with a magnetic field, while Eron hung from it. He walked closer to the pinned and struggling monster.

It seemed to sense something was amiss. It started to thrash with real panic.

Once he had judged that he was in the right position. Remy called out to Eron. “You ready?”

“Do it.”

Remy brought the chain and Eron back over his head and whipped it down toward the prone True Boss. His magnetic field gave the chain velocity that was impossible for any of them to match physically.

Eron landed feet first right on the monster’s spine.

The resounding crack echoed in the silence.

Cal’s vision went black and he toppled over to be caught by Nila, who cradled him in her arms.

Eron winched and limped away from the monster. “Jesus! This thing is still alive.”

The monster clawed in Eron’s direction, but it was weak. The lower half of its body was limp.

“Just end it,” Demi said.

The rest of the raid group gathered closer, but kept their distance.

Eron looked them over. He counted eight missing. He could see their bodies or parts of their bodies scattered around. He didn’t want to think about them now, so he tried to banish their images from his mind.

“Yeah, but I think everyone should get their shots in,” Eron said.

“Is that really necessary? Just put it out of its misery already,” a woman Eron didn’t recognize said. “Anything else is just cruel.”

“I actually agree with you in theory,” Eron said lightly, “but… since we have no idea exactly how rewards and point distribution for this works then it’s a good idea for any who weren’t able to get hits in earlier to do so now.”

“Alright, that makes sense,” Demi said. She unloaded the rest of her magazine into the monsters back. “Line up, anyone with ammo left use them. Then anyone with melee weapons.” She looked at Eron.

“I’ll make sure it can’t hurt them,” Eron sighed.

It was grim work and it made Eron feel dirty inside. Especially when he held the monster’s arms down for the people with melee weapons to take their whacks at it. It was a huge relief when the last person in line stepped up.

“Uh… I still have a spell,” Gene said.

“Well stab it a few times first.”

Gene did so and Eron stepped back from the monster.

Eron felt sick to his stomach as he took in the carved mess that they made out of its back. The thing was still struggling, which made it even worse. What was it going to take to kill it?

“Fire Spray!” A wave of fire sprayed out of Gene’s hands and engulfed the monster’s head.

It screeched and beat at the flames with its hands. After a few seconds the flames disappeared to reveal the charred, weeping mess of its flesh.

The smell threatened to push things over the edge for Eron. It took a supreme force of will to keep from gagging.

“How is it still not dead?”

Eron ignored Gene. This had gone on long enough. He had lost his stomach for it. He walked up to the monster and stomped on its head until a chime sounded in his ears.

The voice and text appeared to all of them, even Cal, who had suddenly been ripped back to consciousness by the chime.

Congratulations!

You have defeated the True Boss.

Success Parameter: Defeat the True Boss.

Rewards: Control of Martin Luther King Jr. High School Encounter Challenge, varied.

Go to the Spire to claim your individual reward.

After several minutes of stunned silence. Gene raised a hand. “So… does anyone know what having control actually means?”

“You may purchase the appropriate tutorial at the Spire.” A voice that came from everywhere and nowhere was suddenly in their ears.

They all recognized it. It was the same voice that spoke in the spire.

“Well that’s new,” Eron said.

----------------------------------------

“Now what?” Eron looked to Remy.

Remy glanced at Cal, but he was in and out of consciousness.

“Try to figure out what control means,” Remy said.

“I don’t care about that. We came here to shut this place down. Not turn it into some kind of monster zoo,” Demi snapped.

“More like a game reserve. We can use it to train and farm Universal Points. Get stronger and get more practice at using our abilities,” Eron said.

“No. We shut this down.”

“Okay…” Eron took a deep breath. “I don’t have any idea how this works, so good luck.”

“Maybe it’s like inside the spire. There’s got to be an interface or something,” Gene said.

Demi nodded sharply. “Alright, everyone try to focus on bringing this thing up.”

Everyone in the raid team, at least the ones that were still conscious or not in too much pain to concentrate, was able to bring up the control interface. Just like inside a spire it appeared as a floating ethereal text, while at the same time as a voice in their ears.

“Woah! This is crazy as fuck!” Johnny said.

Remy ignored the annoying kid. He focused on reading and listening to the information presented by the interface. There were dozens of different menus for lack of a better word. He wondered if the others were seeing it the same way that he was, as an instruction manual. Did his work as an engineer influence what he saw? He’d have to compare notes with his brothers later.

The instructions on how to run an Encounter Challenge unfolded in front of his eyes and in his ears. They could set where monsters spawned and how many. It looked like the area would generate a fixed amount of Universal Points on a regular basis by simply existing. It was from this budget that it paid out for killed monsters and for Quest rewards.

As far as Quests were concerned, they could even create simple ones through the Encounter Challenge. It was mostly kill X number of monsters. There were a few variations along the lines of time restraints and specific monster types.

There were several sections that were grayed out in Remy’s view. Perhaps those were features that needed to be unlocked or were disabled since they were still within some kind of tutorial period according to what the voice in the spire had said in the past.

Remy searched until he found what he was looking for. Eron wouldn’t like it, but he felt that Cal would agree. Eron was technically right about the Encounter Challenge’s usefulness, but their community needed to rest and recover from the terrible last few months.

He stared at the solution.

“Crap… this is going to be a problem,” Remy muttered to himself. He glanced up and noticed that everyone else was still engrossed in looking at the interface, so he went back to it, while he waited for them to discover the same thing that he did.

It took almost ten minutes for the last person to finally finish.

“It says we can turn this place back into a high school,” Demi scowled at no one in particular, “except it doesn’t say how.”

“The raid leader of the team that beat the true boss gets to decide,” Gene said.

“Well, when I tried it didn’t let me,” Demi said.

“That’s cause you aren’t the raid leader,” Eron said.

“I was appointed by the council.” Demi narrowed her eyes. “Explain.”

Eron shrugged. “No idea how it works, but I guess that wasn’t enough to be official raid leader according to whatever criteria the spires use.”

“The raid leader is out cold,” Remy glanced over at Cal, who was unconscious again with his head in Nila’s lap.

“Let’s just wait for Cal to wake up. We can deal with this later. It looks like a couple of people need serious medical attention.” Eron pointed at the unconscious Ron. “If someone could find a cart or even a car I can take them all for treatment faster than walking them back.”

“Wake him up,” Demi snapped. “We didn’t sacrifice our lives to leave without making sure our community is safe from future monster attacks.”

“Just clearing this place doesn’t mean that there won’t be more monsters. There are thousands of high schools just like this in the state alone. Even if they all didn’t get turned into Encounter Challenges or Spawn Points, there might still be dozens or hundreds,” Eron said.

“We can revert it back to normal without Cal,” Remy said. He wanted to calm things down. Eron was starting to get heated and Demi was the hard-charging type that wasn’t used to taking lip from what she saw as a mere civilian. “There’s an option to put it to a vote if we want to override the raid leader or he is incapacitated. So, we need to do two votes. One vote to bypass Cal and then another vote to decide what to do with the high school.”

Eron threw his hands up. “What’s the rush? The monsters aren’t going to spawn until midnight anyways. We’ve got like twenty-two hours. Plenty of time to rest up and approach this decision from a rational standpoint. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’m not in the best frame of mind right now myself to be making such an important decision.”

“Exactly,” Demi said. “And you have strength and safety that none of us do. You swing your fists and the monsters die. They cut you and you laugh it off. We can’t do that. The rest of our community cannot do that that. Try to imagine how the rest of us feel.”

“This is where you get stronger,” Eron jabbed a finger toward the ground. The youngest Cruces brother glared at the police officer.

“Eron…” Remy warned.

There was a tense beat. Then Eron raised his hands.

“Sorry, fine… I’ll vote.”

The rest of the raid group exhaled the breaths they didn’t realize they were holding.

Demi let out a long breath that shook in her chest. She was forced to close her her hands into tight fists to keep them from visibly shaking. She hadn’t dared look away from the rising anger in Eron’s eyes, but it was a close thing. She had almost wilted. It was a remarkably similar feeling to the moment that she had momentarily locked gazes with the true boss monster.

“Um… sorry, but how exactly do we vote?”

Remy turned his eye on the speaker. One of the teens that mostly liked to bother Cal and Eron. If they weren’t around, then he had to deal with them. He recalled that the kid’s name was Bastien. “Hold on.” Remy navigated his way through the interface until he found what he was looking for. Several focused thoughts later and everyone was presented with a floating bit of text.

“This is so crazy,” Bastien said in awe. “It’s like a fu— freaking video game.” He pawed at the air. “So, vote yes right?”

“Everyone vote yes.” Demi confirmed it with a glare at everyone around her.

When that was done. Remy went through to the next step. This time there were three choices before them. They could keep the high school as a spawn point or revert it back to an encounter challenge or turn it back into what it was originally, just a set of buildings.

Remy voted to turn it back into a plain old high school. He was surprised to see that his vote was worth 23 points. As each person voted the number climb until it stood at 76 out of a possible 100.

“Now what?” Demi said.

“There’s a timer, five minutes,” Eron said. “Just wait. I’m guessing Cal has the rest of the voting points.” He moved over to Remy and spoke in a quieter voice. “I had 27 points. If Cal got 24. Then I’m guessing you got something in the same range.”

Remy nodded.

“It means that everyone else combined to get the same amount of points that we got individually.”

“We’ll have to get those tutorials the voice mentioned to confirm, but my thought is that the points are awarded based on contributions to completing the Quest,” Remy said.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

Five minutes passed and another chime sounded.

You have voted by a simple majority to turn the Martin Luther King Jr. High School back to its original state.

It was as if a weight was lifted off of the raid team.

“Alright, people. Let’s prep our injured for transport.” Demi snapped her fingers. “You, kid,” she pointed at Bastien, “you’ve got some kind of healing magic?”

Bastien nodded.

“See what you can do for the worst off.”

Demi pointed at Eron. “You, find some cars or maybe trailers. We’ll need two. One for the wounded and one for…”

“I got it,” Eron nodded curtly. “I’ll take care of them too, so you don’t have to handle them.” He turned to Remy. “You’ll check up on Cal? I mean he’s probably fine, but—”

Remy clapped his younger brother on the shoulder. “It’s all that blood on his face. Makes it look worse than it probably is.” He tried to smile. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

Remy moved over to where Cal and Nila were. He was tempted to call Bastien over, but there were others in the raid group that didn’t have Cal’s superhuman levels of constitution. Despite how bad his older brother looked, those people needed help more urgently. At least that’s what he kept telling himself. He thought of his family and how they were now safe.

The war with the gremlins was finally over.