Chapter 44 – Pine Tree Riots
The woods were silent, an oddity to Matt since he was standing abreast of nearly 30 pilots and dozens of classers. They had followed the leads provided by Tobias and some clerks that had tracked and mapped movements in the area. The end result was a roughly 10-kilometer-wide area for them to search which was better than the entire continent they were on, but still a large area.
One of Rohm’s scouts had called a halt over the radio before trotting back to the main element. She was the same wolfen that had acted as bait for the insect debacle. Matt had found out her name was Tasha and she hailed from the same world as most of the city. She was even from the same country as Jess.
“I think something is up.” Tasha said. “There isn’t any wildlife, the small kind, and there’s a smell to the air.” Her ears twitched atop her head, swiveling around like radar dishes. “I don’t recognize the smell but its… foul.”
Echo had given the same impression to Matt over their mental link. The drake had taken to ranging on the outskirts of the formation and had taken down a few beasts that had attempted to approach the group from the rear. If Matt didn’t know better, he would think his familiar was having fun ambushing the beasts in different ways.
Matt gestured to Jess and hailed her over the team channel. “Spread them out, keep a solid gun line wrapping the tails in.” He looked to Rohm. “Have yours do the same. Don’t let too much space open between them, keep the constructs as fire support just behind the classers.” Rohm didn’t question anything, just shutting the hatch on his construct and issuing orders over the radio.
Tasha fell back in with her team, and they moved into position off to the flank Rohm was on. Matt trusted the scout, if someone thought something was off, it probably was. He also didn’t know about the smell thing; all he could smell was the pine fragrance from all the conifers around them. The entire area was thick with them to the point that it was about all they could see.
This was only the afternoon of their first day and other than a few random beasts, they hadn’t run into anything noteworthy. But as they approached the area that Tobias had found; things began to get a little more…off.
The monsters and other creatures had been growing more and more scarce as they approached. The scouts found signs of fights as they went, leading Matt to the conclusion that they were on the right track. Now was the point that they would be moving into contact if Tasha’s nose was anything to go by. Matt guessed it wouldn’t be long, most likely once they entered the denser trees where the constructs would be more limited.
Sure enough, almost like he could have put money on it, Matt heard the first gunshot. It came from the left tail of their wedge, one of the single shot rifles going by the deeper tone of the shot. Matt heard the call over the radio, confirming that it was a mutant.
“Contact.” Jess said over the company frequency. “Estimate 40, moving from right to left toward the point of the formation.” Then as an afterthought. “500 meters out.”
Matt confirmed the call and moved up into the center of the wedge. He was dismounted with Van taking a position just to the left to support Rohm’s teams. He came up behind 3 of the commandos supported by Lisk. Giving them a nod, he took up a firing position between them.
Moments later, he heard the howl and the thudding of many feet racing toward them. He couldn’t yet see clearly through the trees but there were flashes of movement. Then they broke into his line of sight. He saw the levels all around 20 and sent that information over the radio as the teams around him began to fire on the incoming wolves.
Matt stood and fired at the incoming mutants. He would have stayed kneeling, but they were far too mobile, and the close range didn’t need the extra stability. The few front runners of this pack were quickly taken down by the commandos and their higher rates of fire. Only the main body hadn’t fully committed, instead they circled around and came in from the left.
It turned out to be a fatal mistake on their part. The main pack ended up presenting a nice, elongated oval to Lisk and the demon didn’t hesitate to exploit it. Boom-Boom. 2 shots followed by the sound of the ground and trees being pelted by fist sized balls of iron. The pack didn’t stand a chance and the remaining 30 or so mutants were shredded along with half the trees in the area.
“I want one.” Van said into Matts mind, envy tinging his rumbling voice.
Matt huffed out a single laugh. “Ha. Give it time, I think we might be getting more than a shotgun at some point.”
Matt began receiving calls over the radio from all the teams. They were reporting all clears and the absence of any wounded. After receiving the report, he gave his orders. The teams all got in line and began bounding up in pairs. Each team would advance to the limit of their visibility before taking a defensive posture and watching while the other team advanced.
The bounding overwatch wasn’t the fastest way to move but it was the most secure. It allowed one team to always be in position to engage while the other team moved. Matt controlled the formation, telling individual teams to hold when they started getting too far ahead.
Within 10 minutes, they took their second contact. Another group, mutated boars that walked on 2 legs, tried to steam roll the left flank and got their shit wrecked by a volley from construct cannons. With hardly a pause, they kept up the advance. Every time an enemy came calling, it was dealt with using massively overwhelming firepower.
An hour into the sweep, one of the commando teams broke into the command frequency. “This is Commando 3. I think I have something.” Matt called a halt and had the team leaders set up security while he moved down the line.
He reached the second to last team on the right side of the unit. Then found their team leader crouched under the boughs of a half-toppled pine. “It’s right there. Can you see the depression leading up to those rocks? If you stand and move to the left, you will see a distortion.”
Matt did as suggested and shifted his position. Sure enough, a few hundred meters ahead, at the base of a small hill, a black, smoke like haze could be seen. It seemed to be hovering above a hole between a few large rocks. What sold it even more was what he could see through the thermal cameras on the mech.
Van had sent him an image from his perspective and Matt could see the outline of several dozen mutated beasts. They were stationed in a ring around the base of the hill and atop it. They seemed to be holding position rather moving to engage them directly. Seeing the way they acted, Matt decided to make them pay for not using their speed to their advantage.
*****
Matt fired a long burst into the bear like thing that charged him. His 6-millimeter rounds shredding the chest cavity of the level 30 monster. As it fell in a heap, another took its place and was delt with in a similar fashion. He had put down 5 of the monsters as they closed in on the presumed entrance. It turned out there were another dozen of the beasts hidden within the pile of rocks that was their goal.
These monsters were relatively strong and fast. He couldn’t tell what sort of creature they were mutated from, but he would guess boars or something else with tusks. Each one was nearly 3 meters tall and packed a punch if they ever got within melee. Downside was they didn’t seem to use much in the way of mana skills. They had some sort of movement skill or charge skill based on how they attacked in stuttering rushes. Barely even worth it. Matt thought now that his blood was pumping.
He heard the long staccato bursts of fire from the machineguns, their overlapping fields of fire preventing any of the mutants from breaking away from their lines. Every so often, when they were clumped up, a blast of a giant shotgun would turn them into flying chunks of meat. Matt wasn’t part of a fight, it was a slaughter and these monsters didn’t stand a chance when facing even numbers of classers, let alone the constructs.
As the fire of the other classers began to die off, no more of the mutants could be seen around the hilltop or in the neighboring woods. “Scouts, push out and set up limit lines, Rohm take your and set up security on the far side. Jess, take the two close sides.” Matt said over the radio and got a series of confirmations in return. He moved off to where a few classers had set up a perimeter around the 2 wounded.
“How are they holding up?” Matt asked the healer that was tending to their wounds.
The human man looked up as Matt approached. “They should be back on their feet in the next few minutes.” He said as his hands glowed a pale green over one of the wounded’s shredded legs. “If it weren’t for those health potions and clotting agents Venri gave me, they might be out of the fight for the day. “
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Matt nodded, understanding that many were still trying to learn the limits of their skills and how their resources worked. “I will be sure to pass along the praise.” Matt said.
“No need, I came along.” Venri said, suddenly appearing from behind some trees.
Matts detection field hadn’t picked her out which really saying something. He wasn’t sure what her class and race evolution had entailed but she had been the most radical change he had seen. “Good to have you along.” He then turned to the second wounded man, one of the commandos who had caught a monkey like creature’s fist in his ribs.
The elf man looked up at him and smiled, blood still staining his teeth. “All… Ahck. All good here, be up and about in an hour. Ptwah. Ugh, rather have gotten stabbed.” He said after coughing up a startling amount of clotted blood.
It turned out that the healing would mend the wounds with amazing speed and thoroughness, but the secondary effects were always there. If you had a punctured lung, the fluid didn’t go anywhere after healing and had to come out the regular way. “Good to hear, I will leave you to the good doctor then.”
“Oh, I’m not a doctor lord Matt.”
Matt dead panned the man. “And I am not a lord.” Seeing the wince, he decided to play nice. “It’s all good, I was making a reference you wouldn’t understand.” He looked to Venri. “You coming along or staying?”
“If it’s all the same, I will come along.” She said.
Matt just waved her to follow and walked off, headed toward the center of the patrol base. When he arrived, Rohm was staring at black mist that was wafting up from the depression between the rocks. He was looking at it from some distance, not wanting to get too close. Matt and Venri walked up and stood beside him, staring at the ominous vapors.
“You could ask for volunteers, but I don’t think you will get many takers.” Rohm said after a few moments. “Honestly I don’t know a damn thing about dungeons, corrupted or otherwise.”
“Nothing to do but to do it.” Matt said after a heavy sigh. “Look, I’ll go scout it out, I can be sealed up better than anyone else if its toxic or something.”
“It’s not poisonous. If that’s what you are wondering.” Venri said. Seeing both Rohm and Matt turn to look at her, she elaborated. “Perk of my Alchemy class, it lets me know when things are toxic, poisonous, beneficial and such.”
Matt gave her a thumbs up and raised his rifle to a high ready as he moved toward the anomaly. He circled to the right, moving in an arcing approach to try and see inside. He didn’t see much, just a hole with giant boulders around it. Cautiously, he approached, keeping his rifle at chest level incase anything was still lurking.
As he got within a few meters, his detection field flashed red to his front and he jumped back. Or he tried to but was tackled to the ground instead. The beast was one of the ape like mutants, that had been lurking within the formation. Matt stowed his rifle in his ring and rolled over his right shoulder as he landed, ending up in a full mount atop the mutant.
He drove his fist into its face, hard. It seemed to stun the monster for a brief moment, and he summoned his tomahawk to his hand. He choked up on the grip, putting his fist right below the head of the weapon. After imbuing it with as much mana as he could manage, he drove the spike into the monster’s neck.
The impact seemed to rouse the ape and it bucked its hips up and tried to grab him. Matt slammed the spike back down, driving it into the beast’s forehead and meeting a startling amount of resistance. He reeled back and smashed it again. Even if the beast had enough resistance, the impacts seemed to stun it.
Matt finally flipped the tomahawk along its axis, putting the hooked blade forward. He then shoved the blade into the hole he made earlier, setting the pointed beard of the axe against the creature’s sternum. He then slackened his grip enough to slide down to the actual grip of the weapon. With the extra leverage, he wrenched up and backward.
With a spray of smoking blood and bone, the sternum was spit in half. Matt then drove the head of the weapon back down, crushing the heart and setting the interior of the chest cavity to smolder. The notification buzzed in his head shortly after.
You have killed: Mutant Ape Thrasher. Level 33.
Class: Pilot – Gun Fighter is now level 37
Stat points awarded.
Matt stood up, climbing off the smoking body of the ape. He immediately regretted the action, his back screaming in pain. He let out a long groan as he straightened. The initial tackle hadn’t done much but having a couple hundred kilos of monster land on top of him hadn’t been the most comfortable. He turned and looked around, scanning the area and finding Van standing nearby, Venri next to the mech and Rohm back where he had left him, mouth hanging open.
“Thanks for the help.” Matt called, putting some snark into the words.
Venri approached him cautiously. “The fight was over in less than eight seconds. There wasn’t much he could do.” Her voice was like someone talking to a startled dog, not sure if it was friendly or vicious.
Matt summoned a healing potion. “I will let him off with a warning this time then.” Matt chuckled as he took off his helmet and drank the contents of the vial. He had lost a decent little chunk of HP and thought he could feel fractures and muscle tears in his shoulder. As the flavorless liquid ran down his throat, he felt the healing energies directed to his internal wounds. The potion healed for 100 HP which was enough to nearly top him off.
Matt rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck. He didn’t feel any pinch or tightness anymore so figured he would only have some bruising. Even the bruise would fade within a day as his natural vitality restored his hit points.
Once again, he moved toward the rocks but stopped short this time and waiting. He gave his detection field a few moments to pick up any more surprises before moving in. As he reached the gap between the rocks, he noticed something rather odd.
There wasn’t enough room between the boulders to actually fit the creatures that came out of it. He had personally witnessed over 10 of them pour out of the hole when they began the assault. The only thing in there was a meter wide, red, glowing disk.
The disk was hovering vertically and almost looked like a clock face that was overly embellished with runes. It was also clearly the source of the haze. Leaking out from the center was the black miasma that they could see hovering around the small hill. He tried identifying the disk, but it didn’t return much.
Dungeon Entrance (Corrupted)
Matt looked at the stones around him and had an idea. He called over Van and a couple other pilots to help him. Each of the 4 stones was grabbed by one of the constructs and, as one, they pulled them apart, dragging and rolling the boulders away. Once the stones were moved away, Matt saw the disk change, growing to be about double its size but otherwise doing nothing.
“That’s it?” Jess asked from the open hatch of her construct.
Lisk looked over, leaning out from his own open hatch. “Well, what were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. Not a goofy looking clock.”
Matt sighed, grateful that nobody could hear it while he was sealed up. He felt Echo come up behind him and push his scaley head into his empty hand. Getting the message, Matt waked forward and touched the disk, immediately getting a System message.
Forest Dungeon (Corrupted)
Requirements: E Grade
Restrictions: 5-person party.
Detecting - Class – Pilot – analyzing.
Constructs Allowed? No
Override - Revision: Constructs allowed due to corrupted state.
Do you wish to challenge (Purge) dungeon? Y/N
When Matt touched the disk, the System Message had already populated the first 3 lines. The last half of the message scrolled in one line at a time. He took his hand off the disk and turned to face the group that had gathered.
“So, here’s the deal.” Matt began. He then proceeded to lay out his plan on who would take on the dungeon with him.
*****
Back in the city, Tobias and Franklin were looking at another map. This one was the expanded version that the expedition had used. Tobias was explaining how he had done some calculations and some complex mathematics and had to share the results.
“You pretty much just looked at the points of interest and went ‘huh, I wonder if there is one in that direction too?’ didn’t you?” Franklin asked after Tobias has spouted some nonsense about statistical averages and probability.
“Ahh, yeah. That’s pretty much exactly how it went.”
Franklin sighed as he looked at the stupid grin plastered across the human’s face. It made sense to him. So far, they had found 3 points of interest. Each one in a cardinal direction from the city. The trial to the South, the mines to the East and the dungeon to the West. It made sense that there would also be one due north. Into the valley and mountains beyond it.
“Any idea what it is or where? There was nothing on the map I purchased from the System, but it wasn’t very complete to begin with.” Frank asked after a few moments of contemplation.
Tobias started manipulating the map, zooming in on the northern area as he spoke. “So far, I can only guess at the distance. Given the location of the other 3 POI’s it would be around 75 to 125 kilometers away, if the trend is consistent.” Tobias paused, thinking as he highlighted the area on the map. “I would guess at another resource of some sort. We have the dungeon and trial for growth locations and the mine is the only other resource which is strictly producing metal ores so far.”
Franklin had to agree, it would make sense to get another natural resource. He had no idea what that would be, but anything had to be good. It was in their territory but now they just had to control it. “Should we send some people to check it out or…” he trailed off as he looked back to Tobias.
Tobias knew why Franklin trailed off and seized the moment. “Let Matt do it. He can probably run a solo recon over there when he gets back.” Tobias paused, walking over and shutting the door before continuing. “Frank, between you and me, He needs this. Not the resource or whatever is there but the agency and freedom to do it. If we pile too much responsibility on him, it will bury him under the duty and stunt his growth making him useless to the city.”
“What if he gets killed or decides to wander off, maybe finds another settlement or city to join.”
Tobias shrugged. “What if he does? Frank he’s a big boy that can take on his own risk and he’s not going to abandon us. I’m here and he actually does like you, Rohm and the commandos. We can be the roots for him to branch from. The other thing is the pilot traits and how constructs work.”
Franklin looked confused at the last part. “What do you mean how constructs work?”
Tobias sighed, face palmed and looked up at the orc. “Have a seat, this will take a while.” He then added as an afterthought. “Don’t spread this around, it’s not exactly classified but probably shouldn’t be common knowledge just yet.”
After an hour-long discussion on the nature of pilots and a little hint at Matt’s own. Franklin sat with his head in his hands. After a few minutes of digesting the information, he looked back up to Tobias. “If you will excuse me, I am going to check in on how his house is coming along.” He then stood, and quietly left the forge while muttering under his breath about the System and insane pilots.