Archimedes
The glowing arrows whistled through the air, punching through the hell-cursed they hit, shattering the hard crystal brutes and tearing whole limbs and massive chunks of flesh from the zombies. The powerful barrage didn’t wipe out the enemy, but Archimedes thought it gave his group a chance against the remaining undead.
“Thanks for the backup!” Chedderfield shouted as the archers ran to the group. He pointed over to the glowing white circle that surrounded Emma, “Just get inside Emma’s Ring of Purity for protection.”
“Man, that sounds illegal,” the bald, bearded archer replied.
Archimedes, who was more concerned with the fight than juvenile banter, turned to Emma and pointed at the large flying jellyfish monster descending toward them. “We can take out the evolved brutes while the turret focuses on the closer fliers if we can keep that wave of brutes far enough back so they aren’t targeted.”
“Don’t speak so soon. Those five we just faced were only the tip of the iceberg. There are at least twenty more, holding weapons and marching toward us in formation six or seven blocks away,” Nguyen said, pointing toward a line in the distance that was partially obscured by buildings.
“Fuck, they’re in formations? The hell? When did they freaking learn how to use tactics?” Lucy griped.
“Who says they haven’t always been able to? Don’t you remember those dumb conscriptors turning zombies into organized rock throwers? And don’t forget that bases might be different. Don’t take anything for granted,” Nguyen replied as she lined up and took another shot. “This is their turf.”
“At our size of a group, we don’t have the luxury of proper formations,” Archimedes said as he gripped his spear tightly. “We just need to stick to our roles, kill what we can, and get out before it gets too ugly.”
“I mean, squad tactics or something? Why do I wish one of us had actually joined the military or something . . .” Nguyen said as she readied her weapon to take a shot at the slow-moving wave of incoming evolved brutes, zombies, and the remaining jellyfish.
“Well, we can’t fire another volley of charged arrows for a few minutes, but we’ll do our best to help with regular arrows,” the bald, bearded archer said. The dozen men and women that had joined him nodded in agreement. The archers lined up in rows of two by three on either side of the turret so that they were all within the Ring of Purity that Emma had laid down.
Chedderfield rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck as if loosening them as he looked south down the street. “Well, there are only, what? Thirty or forty enemies? So that’s twenty or so a piece for me and Arc? No problem.”
“It’s only thirteen, ‘cause I’m not staying behind again, Queso,” Lucy added, gripping her curved and faintly glowing funny bone short sword.
“Just thirteen? Come on, Luce, you gotta keep up!” Archimedes said with a smirk as he activated Leap Rush, taking off in the direction of the enemy.
“Yeah, gotta keep up!” Chedderfield echoed, rushing toward one of the evolved brutes that were now only four and a half to five blocks from the turret and activating Meat Slam.
“Hey, no cheating!” Lucy shouted after them.
Archimedes flew through the air in a low arc, almost skimming the surface of the street with his jump. He felt his health drain as he charged his spear just before he reached the hell-cursed formation, which had only just recovered from the powerful volley of arrows. Archimedes’ spear, backed by the momentum from his jump, punched through the chest of a crystal brute, the tip of the weapon exploding with devastating force and cracking the monster nearly in two.
Chedderfield crashed into a group of four zombies, his macuahuitl severing them all in half as he spun upon impact.
While their initial attacks were powerful, Archimedes found the following fight to be more challenging. He had to quickly backpedal from the fallen crystal brute he felled as three others swung at him with long-handled bone sledgehammers. The weapons were nearly as long as his spear but were much slower, which he realized as he took opportunities to thrust with his weapon. Uncharged, the instrument scored shallow gashes on the hard crystal bodies. But Archimedes was willing to sacrifice the health it took to charge the spear as each use pierced through an enemy like it was made of clay, and the explosive aftereffect blew away huge chunks of each struck monster.
Chedderfield was not doing badly either as far as Archimedes could see from the glances he made. The man had quickly killed the low-level trash zombies and had moved on to tangling with the weapon-wielding brutes. He used his whip and enhanced strength to trip and tangle the brutes and then followed up with a cutting chop to a joint or a spray of melting Acid Breath.
“Watch out!” Lucy shouted, and Archimedes instinctively rolled forward and heard a thud and the crack of breaking sidewalk behind him as he came to his feet. He turned and saw a crystal brute trying to pull a beefy sledgehammer up from the broken cement, where it seemed to be stuck.
Lucy sprinted toward it, her left hand held out, and shouted, “No Brainer!” The creature froze in the middle of its attempt to retrieve its weapon, and Lucy ran up its extended leg and back and straddled its shoulders. Then she stabbed her sinuous blade right through the monster's eye just as the stun effect of her skill wore off. The creature screamed in pain as it abandoned its weapon and reached up to tear the woman off its shoulders. But Lucy was having none of it. Instead, she rammed the blade even deeper inside the creature's head. The monster grunted dumbly as its arms dropped to its side, and then it collapsed. A silver card appeared above its body. Lucy snagged it in one smooth motion as she smiled at Archimedes and said, “Sorry I’m late, but a couple of assholes decided to cheat with an early start, and us regular people can only run so fast.”
With Lucy joining them, Archimedes went to town. His charged spear cut through crystal arms, sliced through knees, and tore apart the bone weapons of the enemy. All the while, Lucy and Chedderfield harassed and chopped apart the brutes that were on the other sides of their formation.
Archimedes cracked the knee of a brute that had tried to bash his head in with a club, and the creature stumbled as the ground rumbled and shook. Archimedes was surprised when the tremor did not abate. Instead, the rumbling increased in volume till it sounded like the roar of a giant monster. Archimedes turned and saw what had made the sound: the charge of an undead zoo cavalry that included spear-wielding undead riding a six-foot-tall black rhino, four large-tusked warthogs, and six grotesquely mutated zebras.
Archimedes felt his heart drop. The undead riders leaned forward as they charged from the street to the west, their spears extended as they aimed for Emma, Danielle, and the archers. He wanted to turn and Leap Rush to them, but a meaty hand grabbed his legs and pulled, yanking him off of his feet.
Archimedes used his spear to impale the spine-tailed brute in front of him, the spear point digging just underneath the sternum of the monster and into its heart. As he dug the spear in deeper, finishing the kill, he heard a loud scream from behind him.
He turned around, looking for Emma, but by that point it was already too late. The large rhino, now fully ignited by the white fire of the Ring of Purity, ridden by a now-burning Amazonian hell-cursed, gored Emma just under her left lung with its horn, impaling the girl and lifting her into the air at the same time. Her body jolted with every thudding step of the charging rhino as she cried out in agony while being carried across the battlefield.
Nguyen was being attacked too. Her blue shield skill activated as a flaming warthog and its rider tried to kill her with tusk and spear. The mount and rider bounced off the barrier, and the warthog was sent tumbling, crushing its rider, as Nguyen’s shield broke into a thousand pieces.
Danielle and the other archers weren’t so lucky. The zebra-riding undead was able to stab and trample them freely. Danielle took a spear to the shoulder she was using to brace her rifle as she fired off one last shot into her opponent’s face, burning a straight hole through the rider’s forehead before the hooves of the zebra it was atop crushed her chest as it barreled over her.
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Archimedes saw that Danielle was in pain and looked like she was dying, but she reached out with a glowing hand toward the rhino, which was still bouncing Emma’s bloody ragdoll body atop its horn. A moment later, the rhino’s head was covered in a matching black glow, and the creature stopped dead in its tracks and rolled over in place as it used its entire body weight to crush the rider on top of it. Then, Danielle crumpled up on the ground.
“Get your girl!” Archimedes shouted as he Leap-Rushed toward Emma, landing with a spear attack straight into the still-dazed rhino’s neck. The skin was so thick that Archimedes was barely able to dig his weapon more than six or so inches into the rhino’s flesh, but fortunately enough for him, those six inches were all he needed to get through the neck and into the throat of the rolled-over beast. The skin of the rhino had somehow tightened around his spear though, as if it were trying to heal itself while he was trying to kill it, and he gave a hard jerk with all of his strength to pull the spear from the creature’s flesh. As the spear came free, there was a gushing spray of blood in all directions like the end of a fully turned-on water hose covered by a thumb. Since he didn’t see any cards even after the stab, he drove his spear in one more time. With the creature helpless and trying to move away slowly, he was able to line up a couple of clean blows to its eyes this time, stabbing both of them in quick succession while pushing the second thrust through the ocular cavity into the brain.
“I got you now. Don’t move,” Archimedes said as he leaned over and did his best to try and help Emma, reaching into his inventory and searching for anything to heal her until he spotted a bronze I’m Not Dead Yet card that he must have recently snagged as loot. “Take it quick,” he insisted. “Come on, take it. Just pick up the card and heal yourself.” He kept trying to wake her up and make sure she switched to the healing card while he looked around to take note of what was going on near him.
The archers that had been hiding inside the Ring of Purity had been wiped out by the charge. Not a single one of them had survived the trampling, their bodies impaled by the spears or crushed by the heavy hooves and tusks of the undead cavalry.
While Archimedes was still trying to get Emma to wake up and heal, Chedderfield had Meat-Slammed over to Danielle. Nguyen was force-feeding the knocked-out woman chunks of undead meat, massaging her throat to get her to swallow, while Chedderfield was stalking around his girlfriend in an effort to intimidate or push away any of the cavalry that might charge them, but, to the Ring of Purity’s credit, it didn’t look like she would be charged. The skill’s white fire had consumed the cavalry units, the flames still fresh across their bodies as they continued to slowly disintegrate, and the ones that weren’t already dead were being shot down by the turret thanks to the fact that Danielle had managed to stop the rhino carrying Emma before it carried her outside the turret’s tether range.
The entire scene felt wildly chaotic, like Archimedes was actually in hell, as he watched the flaming zebras and warthogs getting torn apart by the turret as they circled his three friends.
“Arc! I can’t hold these forever,” Lucy shouted from the area where they had been fighting earlier. He wanted to jump over and help her immediately, but Emma still hadn’t taken the healing card from him, and he could tell from how fast the body of the rhino was dissolving due to the Ring of Purity that soon the horn impaling her was going to dissolve with it, leaving a gaping hole in the teenager’s body.
“Just . . . Just run to us if you can!” Archimedes decided, not sure what to do. He didn’t want to leave Emma to die, but he didn’t want to leave Lucy to fight on her own and potentially die too. He was hoping that Lucy could get away and that at least with the Ring of Purity and the turret’s help Lucy would be able to hold them off without getting hurt.
“She’s back! She’s alive!” Nguyen called over from Danielle’s side, the sound of Danielle coughing up zombie flesh as Nguyen helped her clear her throat with a back slap was almost as loud as Chedderfield’s sigh of relief.
“Chedderfield, Nguyen, one of you . . . either help Emma here or go back up Lucy! Please!” Archimedes pleaded once he saw Danielle was okay and didn’t need the same help.
“I got her,” Nguyen said, rushing over and pulling out her gold-ranked I’m Not Dead Yet card. “The cavalry is done, and Danielle doesn’t need a babysitter. You two go help Lucy.”
“That I can do,” Archimedes said, picking up his spear once more and leaping through the air with it charged. He couldn’t heal people. He could only hurt them.
With an angry shout, Archimedes came down like the hammer of a vengeful god on one of the five brutes Lucy had squared up against. The charged tip of his spear pierced the creature's head, and, as it exploded, Archimedes kicked off its body and spun to slice through the nearest crystal creature, ignoring the growing pain in his chest from charging so many spear attacks with his health. The monster was midway through raising its heavy club to bash Lucy when Archimedes’ weapon sliced through its neck, decapitating it.
Archimedes landed from his spin on the ground with bent knees that absorbed the fall, and he coughed once, noting in some distant part of his mind that blood came out with the exhalation. He pushed off. He thrust his spear again and again, scoring a strike on one monster before he twisted and stabbed at another of the remaining brutes, pushing them back with each attack until he heard the words he’d been waiting for.
“No Brainer!” Lucy shouted, a cone of black energy washing over the three monsters.
Archimedes struck lightning quick, his glowing spear draining his life as it cut through the stunned and vulnerable creatures. A second later, the stun wore off, and the brutes staggered for one step, before all three of their heads tumbled off their necks, and their bodies collapsed backward.
Congratulations! Through continuous combat against the factions vying for control of your world and others, you have gained enough EXP to advance to level 7!
You have unlocked access to class selection.
Warning: Class selections are permanent and will alter the way in which existing cards will interact with the user.
“Did they really all die?” a woman called out from inside one of the buildings. “Did you actually manage to kill them all? Is it finally safe to come out?”
At this point, Archimedes turned around and saw a tiny flash of moving glass, which, after a second, he realized was a little periscope device popping out of one of the lawns halfway between where Archimedes had killed the evolved brutes and where Emma’s Ring of Purity had been.
“Yeah . . . they’re dead. It’s safe to come out now if you want,” Archimedes answered.
“It’s never safe to go out,” the woman replied. “You shouldn’t have come here. Go away. It’s not safe.”
“We came here because it wasn’t safe,” Archimedes replied.
“Yeah, and look how many dead bodies there are to show for it. You’re no different than the last group that came here, and let me tell you what happened to them,” a man said, his voice coming out of whatever device was transmitting their speech. It wasn’t a traditional speaker or microphone, but it still managed to reproduce the sound perfectly. “You need to get out of here before they come back for the bodies.”
Archimedes frowned for a moment as he looked back at his group. Danielle was healing faster than Emma thanks to the Undead Delight skill, but she was still clearly recovering. Nguyen wouldn’t have her shield again for probably an hour. Lucy had taken a few cuts and scrapes but was otherwise holding up okay. However, Emma was a different story. Even after Nguyen had somehow gotten her conscious again and patched her up, she was struggling to move and walk properly, her whole body shaking as she quietly sobbed. He could see the new flesh created by her body as the skill forcefully healed the massive hole in her side, but the process wasn’t quick, and it looked like she might need a short rest at the very least while spamming the skill before she’d be battle ready again.
There was also the fact that the two skills that had kept her safe before the cavalry charge, the turret and Ring of Purity, were both on nearly hour-long cooldowns. There was no way she’d be able to defend herself for a while.
“We’re not in the condition to travel yet,” Archimedes finally admitted after taking stock of the situation. He wanted to ask these strangers for help, but given where they had hidden while others died, he didn’t have much hope. “Do you at least know which building around here might still have medical supplies in it? Which one of your neighbors had guest rooms?”
“No!” The man’s grumpy tone permeated every word he spoke. “So go away and—”
“He’s being difficult. You can hide here for a bit if you—”
“We can’t let them in our bunker! I don’t even want them on my lawn! They’re—”
“What? They’re the first people we’ve been able to talk to in a week! And you saw how they tried to help others! They’re not some random thugs. They’re people who need our—”
“Oh my god, not this again. What is with the constant nag—”
“If you say ‘nagging,’ Lucas, so help me you won’t have to worry about the zombies,” the woman warned angrily.
“Mom, you know you’re still pressing the button, right? They can hear you,” a young kid’s voice said.
“It’s also too late. Rory already went to go open the hatch,” a much older-sounding kid added.
“I swear, that kid will be the death of us, Loralei,” the man said before the voices stopped altogether.
Then, after a moment, a part of the lawn opened up, revealing that the grass above it wasn’t actually real grass but a plastic material laid down to hide the hatch to a shelter beneath it. After a second of anticipation, the head of a girl who looked no older than ten years old popped up from the hatch.
“Hey mister!” the girl called out. “We have beds down here. You should rest with us. Your friends don’t look so good.”
“Isn’t she adorable,” Nguyen said as soon as the little kid came into view, a thought that Archimedes shared with Nguyen until he saw the hot pink .22 rifle strapped to the kid’s back.