That was a bit of a turn of events huh? He totally did not expect to be called the threat in that situation. Read on to see his reaction and the events that unfold. Also just a fair warning this is one of those “info dump” chapters, but the book kind of needs it to progress so sorry for the lack of action. What’s the saying? Take it with a pinch of salt and read on. One last thing, I’m not the best comedian so during my attempts if they are bad, I apologize beforehand.
Chapter 4
-Me(what?)-
“Is that something a creature that can eat a human like a midnight snack should be saying? I mean you could easily take out a village or two by yourself. Not to mention the blue tails outside. Though when it comes to the city if you don’t have any armor it might be quite difficult. They have some crazy weapons there. Like the R72 rapid assault, armor piercing, railgun. Though it has rapid assault it can only fire a shot per minute. Or the T-168 anti-matter sniper. I’ve shot that thing for practice once. Thing nearly blew my arm off. The target? None-existent. Aside from those two the weapons are standard and for your case I doubt they’d cause much harm. Well. Minus the blue tails, they might get hurt.” I spouted out. Heh when it comes to guns I guess I get a bit carried away huh? Can ya blame me? My family ran a gun shop so they have become a hobby of sorts.
“Wow.” She said with a shocked face.
Hm? I say something wrong? Oooh, riiight. We’re different races so giving details about the enemy’s weapons is pretty much leaving us, essentially, weaponless. So to speak. Well honestly I don’t really care. Humanity could use getting grinded under someone else’s boots. Heh go alien creature guys!! And pretty alien chick…
“You’re strange. Very strange.” She said doubtfully.
“Yeah I get that a lot. I never blended in with the populous, I always did my own thing. I got an idea. I know pretty much everything there is to know about this planets weaponry. I can even say I know more than the military.” I chuckled at that part. The military is a joke. “And in exchange you tell me about you and those blue tails. Sound even?” I offered with a slight merchant’s smile.
She paused for quite some time, obviously thinking whether or not it was a good deal, or if I was going to be telling the truth. The look in her eye just now reminded me of one of my friends from a few years. Before he committed suicide. Whatever has happened before must have seriously been crazy. My friend was resilient. Not until he lost literally everything did he follow through. Damn, maybe I really am a threat. Though to tell the truth we did just meet so not like I knew or anything, but not knowing is really only an excuse made from people who are afraid of punishment.
After a while she spoke up “I can tell you about us to an extent. I won’t tell you our weakness or anything that could put us at jeopardy.” She said it with a stern look. I can accept that.
“All right then, I’ll go first. We have four types of weaponry, and three types of crafts. First the weaponry. The first and smallest type the side arm. As of right now we only have one and that is the 65RS dual system assault pistol. Dual system because it alternates between a railgun firing off 16 ounce synien rounds, which are composed of a heat resistant mid -tier metal. It’s penetrating power can go through those two doors stacked front to back.
The other is a normal firing method which uses a small explosion inside of a casing launching the projectile, which I’ll call bullet from now on, at extreme speeds. This system is the standard but it’s penetrating power wouldn’t even dent these doors.
By the way these doors are made of galgite. It’s what separates the top and mid-tier metals. It’s extremely versatile and dense so unless it’s a railgun or something equivalent you aren’t busting through these doors. Though like everything you can whittle it down, but that’ll take way to long.
Next I’ll talk about type two weapons. The ones you’ll need to worry about are the T-168 and R72. The others are bullet based. Wait, would bullets hurt?” I can’t believe I ask that now.
“Depends. I need an example of its power.” She stated.
“Right, so the pistol will penetrate the skull of a human but it will not penetrate all the way through the skull. The R72 bullet, which, by the way, all our weapons run the dual system, can pierce two skulls and enter a third. The T-168 can pierce ten and land an 11th.”
“hmm.” She thought for only a short moment. “It won’t hurt. Me or the others.”
“Wow, that much power and still won’t go through. You guys must be seriously tough.”
She only nodded at that.
“Well continuing. The 72 and 168 railgun can penetrate melstrom, which is a top tier metal. About an inch of it is as strong as ten of those doors combined. Though the 72 can only penetrate about 2 inches the 168 can penetrate about a foot of it.
Type three weapons include launchers, as I call them, but as the military calls them personnel to armorcraft grenade. PAG for short. These shoot at a visible speed, a high explosive round. These rounds destroy pretty much everything except for the highest grade metal, Tyrandyl. This thing, if compared to melstrom, is roughly the difference similar to you and a leaf. Though it is ridiculously rare and hard to forge. If someone could forge a weapon or barrier with it, you could only laugh in despair because it trumps everything we own.
Type four are the type we have on board our crafts. They are similar to PAGs with the exception of being about 56 times stronger. That and the shell is about as big as me. Well that’s the weapons. What’s left are the crafts…” I was about to continue but she interrupted me.
“It’s fine, I already know about them. They are the same for any planet after all.”
I was doubtful but she had that look that you know she meant what she said and understood as well. “Well if you say so. Well if that’s all then those are the strongest weapons of each type so anything else is weaker or newly created that even I don’t know about.” With eager eyes and the look of great interest I ask her this “So will you now tell me about you? Oh, I guess about your race as well.”
She pondered a bit, as if to try to find a place to start so that everything could add up correctly. I waited patiently for her to start. It was a conversation worth listening to so I can be patient for this.
And thus, she finally spoke “First I guess you would like to know our name. Our species are called the Syrlyn. We originally weren’t a parasitic based species but some circumstances happened forcing us into that state…”
“Circumstances?” I asked with both interest and concern. Oops, I interrupted her.
“Yes, um…” I guess she was thinking whether or not to tell me what happened. “Well our planet was targeted by marauders. An especially bad group too. Our race is strong individually and stronger when we work together but they had superior weaponry and had somehow knew the locations of our young…” she paused wit h a sad look. It’s natural too, especially with what happened next.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“After we had gathered, as per their demands, they did the worst. They began to hack and butcher the young. We could do nothing being surrounded, outnumbered, and out classed. A lot of us screamed out in pain as we helpless watched. Not long after they began collecting the legs and teeth of the young saying that they would fetch quite the amazing price. Then, simply put, the massacre of our species began.
One of us snapped and attack them. The surprise killed one or two but that was a mistake. They instantly opened fire on us quickly killing more than could count at once. We ran. We didn’t gather EVERYONE in case of this instance. If we had, I don’t think we would be here at this point.
The king at the time managed to escape and when he caught up to us he forced us into an ultra-fast regression.This regression turned us into our form next to our primitive state. It was that far, for we still had our intelligence and coherent thought processes. Then the king, with all his power, named the next ruler, a queen, the daughter of a couple that lived in the outskirts of our civilization. He then with all his might held off the marauders as we made preparations to leave our planet. The marauders were only a scout party so if we stayed and the main force came, we would be wiped from existence.”
While she was telling me the tale of her… correction, their, past I could see the pain in her eyes. I’m guessing she wasn’t born at the time and this story was told to her from the ones that was. Well then, this turned into a rather depressing atmosphere. I have an odd feeling this is only going to get worse… I breathed a heavy sigh inside. I guess bandits exist everywhere huh? Well let’s continue.
“In our regressed state we cannot easily gather nourishment therefore we must reside in the body of another and feed off the excess nutrients and energy stored in the body we inhabit. Even though I say we were a parasite we had no intentions of actually parasitizing. We would only feed on what was necessary to survive until we could find another planet to live on.
After a long battle resulting in the death of almost all the marauders the king finally died and the marauders began to search for the rest of us. The massacre left us with only a little under 2000. Before we were able to leave the planet a few more had to sacrifice themselves in order for us to have a safe escape, and we did. We regretted not being able to escape without more sacrifices but what happened was, unfortunately, the best course of action.
We were able to escape and formed a pod of sorts that could contain all of us at once and flew off towards a planet we heard that could possibly be a good place to inhabit temporarily. What awaited us was the cold hard truth and we wouldn’t be able to escape without more losses. When we landed the queen tried to reason with the current inhabitants but they turned aggressive saying if we do they will hunt us down. So we didn’t inhabit them but the wild animals of the planet. When they discovered that, well we had to leave. Of course not until a few more of us died.
We went from planet to planet at this point trying to find a suitable place to stay. We kept our existence secret from then out and fed on them quietly. Eventually one of us couldn’t contain its hunger and devoured its host. Causing us to once again be discovered, hunted, and then forced to escape with more losses. At this point our numbers were only a little below 1000 and we were on the 3rd ruler. A queen with a stern but good heart.
We found another planet that looked extremely promising. The queen was even able to find a person that would be her mate. Though, she had the form of the local inhabitants so the interest came from being of the same species. After a while she decided to reveal herself so as to not have to lie anymore to him. What happened after was the worse. He panicked, and ran away. The trust she had thought she built was destroyed in that instant.
He had reported her and our existence to the local military force and as you can imagine it didn’t go over well. We suffered severe loss on our escape from the planet. Over 500 hundred of us died, including the queen. We escaped but with numbers only a little over 300. Eventually I was then born and named queen. For a while we searched. Our hunger grew but we did not let it take over us. Eventually we found this planet. It’s our last ditch effort so we landed.
The best thing about this is that the inhabitants body are perfect for us. We can feed indefinitely on one body. That is if we are careful. Well we hid for a while and took over this building. Only a handful of people were not affected by us. The rest you know.” She finished. Wow. That was, well, seriously freakin depressing. I feel my eyes getting a little hot but I reframe from such thing. Don’t think it’s the right place to do so.
Now I see why I’m the threat. Their numbers are few, they are in a tight situation of fighting off extinction, and I’m an unknown existence that knows about them. The easiest solution would be to off me, but by my acting calm and instead of being frightened by her I was entranced. Though I could be said an unknown, my reaction depicted that I didn't hate or discriminate. Thus why I’m still alive. Why she told me this story? Simply because I told her the weapons as per the deal. Surprisingly honest. I’m going to go on a limb here and say they originally were a very kind race.
Hmm… I wonder. “Did I hear correctly that you guys don’t require to completely parasitize your host and you feed off of the excess?”
She looked a bit confused but answered with a nod.
Heh Heh. I laughed a bit inwardly. I can work with this.
-They-
They let them escape. The race that was on the wanted list. Though a small price, it was still posted. Was it an official wanted list? Of course not! It was an underground wanted list. Even small the price was still extravagant. An average citizen would be able to live like royalty for at least a few years with it. They let them go on purpose for this reason. Why catch a prey that only it’s parts could be used? Why not leak about their rarity and let the price of just one skyrocket. Whether alive or dead it would still fetch a good price. It was a good idea to let them escape after all.
The future looks a little bleak, but, that was if they continued to struggle alone…
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Whew glad that was out of the way. A little plan for the future I intend to get all those pesky info dump chapters out of the way first so as that when the story starts moving it will go unhindered. Obviously new stuff will be explained as it goes but after these info chapters are done I don’t really intend to make any more. What did you think of her story? What about his reaction? It seems like a plan is starting to be put into motion, but who is it for? Heh heh, well until next chapter!!!
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Okay so I changed the structure of the paragraphs a little, hopefully it looks better. If it does then I'll continue to have it structured like this. If you guys want I can go back and structure the other chapters this way as well.