Slowly, I climbed to my feet. I tried to analyze the feeling of the crash, and the memory of Epsilon’s ship crashing into the ground came to mind. The two sensations felt identical, though the impact felt much closer this time.
As soon as I was back on my feet, I walked over to the pile of steel in the center of the room and began working on deconstructing the remaining ore into usable blocks of raw material. I couldn’t hear myself give the commands, but the ore still split into cubes without resistance.
[STARSTEEL ACQUIRED: 554]
[TOTAL STARSTEEL: 1,251]
My earlier calculations were evidently incorrect. I only would have been able to build seven Sarcophagus Starships. It didn’t matter at that point, but I would have just barely had enough escape ships to save everyone present, Professor Carlyle, and John.
Where was that guy, anyway? He must have lost his phone during System Integration. He was probably somewhere else in the city, leading a group of survivors to safety. It was only a matter of time before he found some way to contact us. John was probably already level 5 or level 6. He probably took the [Mage] class.
With the threat of total planetary obliteration no longer hanging over my head, I decided that the next most pressing issue was our lack of weaponry. Society was still collapsing even if the planet wasn’t being destroyed.
Now that I didn’t need to make the starships anymore, I could use the Starsteel on the creation of shield generators, laser pistols, and ammunition. I did a quick calculation in my mind before starting to craft.
[TOTAL STARSTEEL: 291]
Within a few minutes, the pile of raw material on the ground was replaced with enough weaponry and ammunition to arm a small platoon of soldiers. I had created 8 laser pistols, 8 shield generators, and 32 extra battery packs.
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO MOVE 51 STARSTEEL TO YOUR INVENTORY?]
“No,” I said, and the notification disappeared. Since I would not be able to move my [Workshop] or use [Bypass Limitation] for at least half a day, there would be no reason for me to take any excess raw material with me.
Loud enough to be heard over the echoes of the original blast and the lingering ringing in our ears, I shouted, “Everyone take a shield generator, a laser pistol, and four extra magazines.”
The others in my group followed my command quickly, though it became clear after a few seconds that Carlos was the only one with any knowledge of firearms. We had gone to the range together a few times, and I knew he had a basic level of proficiency. Beyond that, however, Carlos had basically no experience with firearms. He knew how to fire the gun, but his accuracy would be abysmal.
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As for the others, they would probably be more of a hindrance than a help in a fight. I remembered the police officer holed up in the Carolina Union and decided to give him a laser pistol the next time I saw him.
“I hate guns,” Liz muttered as she tried to hold her laser pistol as gingerly as possible.
“Carlos and I will go out to find what caused that noise,” I said as I took two of the charged battery packs and used them to replace the battery packs I had previously expended.
The others weren’t ready, but I was confident that an hour of training would put them into fighting shape. From cultural osmosis, they would have some basic understanding of how guns were used. All it took was a short lesson on firearm proficiency for them to be able to utilize that knowledge.
Carlos and I set out from Phillips Hall, and we immediately saw that much of the area outside the hall was damaged. Windows were shattered, branches were shorn from their trees, and cracks had appeared on the buildings’ exteriors.
Still in cover, I peeked my head out and looked around. A large plume of white smoke emanated from my right. I looked toward the smoke and saw that the damage became much worse in that direction.
The Old Well was especially close to the detonation. The wooden dome and surrounding pillars had been completely uprooted and were lying on the ground a few dozen feet away. Though the dome had been forcibly removed, however, the marble fountain beneath was damaged but unmoved.
Across the road from the Old Well, the South Building had not fared nearly as well. Something had struck the South Building with enough force to destroy it completely. Every brick and every stone contained within had been removed from its foundation in an instant.
We approached the impact crater carefully, using the nearby walls and destroyed stone foundation as cover. As we got closer, the smoke became denser, and the heat became much greater. Our shields flickered into visibility and remained as the smoke sought to overwhelm us. The space within our shields remained clear, so we could see a few feet in front of us.
The sound of crackling fire and sizzling stone was interrupted by the sound of a door clicking open. Hearing the sound, Carlos and I ran to cover. We kept our eyes out on the smoke and searched for any movement.
A voice emanated from the cloud of white smoke, speaking in an alien language that sounded completely foreign to me. The language sounded ancient, like the myriad tongues from the fertile crescent and the Arabian peninsula.
Whoever or whatever was speaking was clearly annoyed at something, like a driver shouting at his car after it broke down. Despite the alien language, the speaker sounded like a human man, and the emotion expressed was very human-like.
The source of the shouting voice moved away from the crash site, and I heard the crunching sound of stone and glass as the speaker climbed out of the crater. With my eyes peeking out from behind cover, I saw the speaker leave the cloud of white smoke and enter my field of view.
The man I saw exit the smoke cloud wore the eclectic leather-and-steel armor of a medieval mercenary. He wore a sword at his belt, his skin was dark red, and two ram horns grew out of his forehead.
More than anything else, the man resembled the devil himself.