Archimedes
The skinless elephant raised its trunk and trumpeted as the hell-cursed conscriptor mentally shouted, “Rise, my brothers! For the future of humanity! Defend the hell-matrix! Do not let them reach the core!”
A blast of purple erupted in an expanding wave from the conscriptor, and the entire world seemed to tilt as the energy washed over Archimedes. He tried to take a step forward but stumbled and caught himself with his hands, and a splash of muddy water greeted him.
“Get up!” a voice cried out. Archimedes’ head rang as he tried to right himself. Then he felt a sharp pain at the back of his head and an immense sense of relief. He got to his knees, turned, and saw Chedderfield swinging his macuahuitl at him. He immediately ducked. There was a wet thunk, and he was covered in some smelly fluid. Looking up, he saw a tall decayed zombie topple backward, its bloated stomach slashed open and the inner fluids pouring out.
“Get up, asshole! We have undead to kill!” Chedderfield shouted.
Archimedes’ spear appeared in his hands as he jumped to his feet and lunged forward. The razor-sharp spearhead passed within inches of Chedderfield’s head before it pierced the half-masticated skull of another hell-cursed zombie, causing its head to explode like an overripe melon filled with lit firecrackers.
“I’m up and, as usual, here to watch your back, Queso,” Archimedes said with a grin and laughed.
Chedderfield smirked back as he ran toward Lucy, whose head had been in her hands when he had been curled up in the mud, his middle finger covered in blue flame. Everyone else, except Danielle, was down, still under the effects of whatever skill the conscriptor had used.
Archimedes did his best to survey what was going on as he killed another half dozen of the partially formed hell-cursed zombies that tried to attack him. Danielle, mud-splattered, fired her laser rifle, burning holes through any monster that got close. Archimedes heard the boom of his turret behind him and saw one of the monsters turn into a bloody mist, and he was barely able to catch sight of his mud-covered turret before it fired at another hell-cursed monster that was pulling itself out of the massive pit he’d seen from the roof of the cafe. One after another, the horrific creatures trying to escape the pit of darkness were cut down by the powerful shots of the turret.
Archimedes didn’t get a chance to admire the turret’s work though. Five zombies crawling out of the mud around him tried to grab him and pull him down. He quickly backed up, and his spear flashed as he swung it in an arc, decapitating three of the creatures in a single blow. The last two were easily dispatched and Archimedes wondered just what was happening with these creatures. He’d expected fierce opposition but so far had only faced zombies weaker than the ones he’d been able to kill at the hotel before he had even leveled once.
“Goddammit. I’m covered in zombie goop,” Lucy complained, and Archimedes turned to see her trying to distance herself from three zombies that had exploded in putrescent fluids as she’d cut them in half with her funny bone short sword. Red energy flowed from one of the monsters up her blade and into her as she shook her matted and muddy blue hair.
Chedderfield was slapping Nguyen across the back of her head with his debuff skill, the blue fire erupting around her skull as it burned away the effect of the conscriptor's mental attack. Emma was up now, and she was feeding her turret spoons so it could generate rounds and join the fight.
There was a roar off to Archimedes’ left, from the west, and Archimedes turned to see the two eight-foot-tall, five-hundred-pound undead gorillas beat their chests, the bone blades extending from their forearms cutting their flesh as they did so. Archimedes roared back. His time on the alien sirrušu planet had engraved an instinctual response to a challenge. The gorillas stood taller before pounding the ground with their fists and then charging toward Archimedes. He ran toward the two monsters in response, aware that, even before evolving into hell-cursed, the creatures were likely even stronger than the crystal brutes he’d faced earlier. Mere feet before he would have collided with them, Archimedes activated Leap Rush, jumping up in the air. He didn’t have a target, and the semi-translucent wings from his gold-tier upgrade appeared and gave him one second of hang time before he deactivated the skill. He dropped like a boulder, spear glowing and pointing downward at the larger of the two gorillas. As he crashed down onto the monster, his spear skewered it, and then the spear let out an explosive blast of energy, shredding the insides of the creature. A card appeared above its head.
Archimedes only had a moment to appreciate his victory before he felt a hand grab his body and toss him like a child’s toy. He flew through the air and would have crashed into the ground, but he activated Leap Rush’s wings to slow him down enough to arrest his flight, the wings disappearing when his feet touched the ground.
He would have charged back into the fight except more hell-cursed animals appeared from every direction around the pit, the call of the conscriptor having been heard. There were tigers wreathed in flames, shadowy lemurs, half-decayed crocodiles, a panda with long demon horns, and ostriches who breathed fire as they gouged the ground with elongated, raptor-like claws.
“Nope! Not dealing with all these things,” Archimedes said to himself and drew power for another Leap Rush back to his friends. Then he heard the sound of rhythmic chanting and stomping from the north.
A moment later, fifteen people broke through the artificial bamboo treeline, their bone armor and shields covered in black blood and mud. They spread out, the shields nearly touching edge to edge as a voice behind them called out, “Hey there! Need a hand, mate?”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Archimedes recognized the voice of Asim, the leader of the Australian rugby team they’d met. While he was happy to see another group of fighters, he hadn’t forgotten their bet. “Nope, no trouble for me. I’ll just leave these guys for your team. I’m going to destroy that base core.”
He heard grumbles and shouts as he activated Leap Rush and leapt back toward his group. He felt no guilt for leaving the Australians to deal with the new creatures. They were more than badass enough to deal with them, and his priority was to help his team get to and destroy the base core, an act that would hopefully end the fight entirely.
As he landed next to Danielle, who was firing at zombies still trying to climb out of the pit, he heard Chedderfield chuckle, “Aussies chase you away?”
“Yeah, I figured they could handle that side while we took care of that conscriptor,” Archimedes replied. “We should—”
The ground shook as the twisted elephant, her conscriptor rider atop her back, ran toward the center of the eighty-foot-wide pit, where a large base orb floated at the bottom.
“Don’t even think about escaping,” Danielle, only a few feet from Archimedes, said as she took a knee to steady herself. She took aim at the conscriptor, and a charging red glow appeared around the tip of her rifle barrel.
“That’s it, kill the general,” Nguyen agreed, her laser rifle appearing in her own hands as she took post right next to Danielle, putting the conscriptor in her sights too.
A second later the two thick lasers shot out, their straight trajectory targeting the conscriptor as it and the elephant dropped into the dark pit. Archimedes had seen the bolts of futuristic laser energy burn through steel, and the shots should have killed the conscriptor, yet neither of them landed. The moment that “Peanut” and its master entered the pit, a pulsing wave of darkness washed over them like a protective blanket, and the shadow absorbed the laser fire.
Nguyen and Danielle started lining up second shots when Chedderfield, who had been helping Emma feed her turret, yelled out, “Danielle! Above us!” at the top of his lungs. It only took a moment for Archimedes to see what he was talking about and why he was so panicked: there, in the air only a hundred feet above them, was a pair of twin dragons flying down, spitting out a wave of fire as they swooped like dive bombers toward them.
Archimedes reacted without thought, grabbing Danielle and Nguyen by their collars and tossing them out of the way with every bit of force his nineteen points of strength could muster. The two women went flying backward, surprise evident on their faces, but the whole thing left him off balance and smack dab in the middle of the streams of fire. He heard a roaring woosh and could feel the terrible heat as he desperately raised his arms to protect his face before the twin dragons engulfed him and the ground around him in flame.
“Fucking hell! Arc!” Lucy yelled from somewhere.
For a moment, there was only fire as his lungs took in superheated air, and he was surrounded by yellow and orange flame. He thought from her scream he might have been really messed up, but then he realized that he wasn’t burning to death from the gradually lowering flames that surrounded him. As the fire burned down to knee level, he lowered his arms, looked down at himself, and realized he was safe. Sure, his lungs hurt, and all of his clothes except his upgraded orange fireman’s coat were burned to ashes, but he’d barely taken any damage from the flames.
“Thank god for your fireman’s coat,” Chedderfield said.
“Yeah, I’d totally forgotten about that massive fire resistance bonus,” Archimedes agreed as Lucy nearly tackled him to the ground with a hug.
“You forgot, and you still did that?! YOU CAN’T JUST DO THAT!” Lucy lectured.
“Well, what I meant was that without it, you’d be completely naked again, and not just acting like a billionaire cartoon duck too good for pants or shoes,” Chedderfield laughed.
“Damnit, I just got those,” Archimedes groaned as he looked down and saw his pants completely gone.
“Nope, nope, nope,” Emma whined, turning her reddened face away. “Old men need to keep their pants on.”
“Enough of this. We’re still in a fight. Nguyen, Danielle, that barrier might have stopped the shots from hitting the elephant, but it seems to be strictly within the pit, so focus your efforts on the sky and kill those flying bastards,” Archimedes cut them off before they could go any further, barking out orders before he had to deal with any conversation.
“They’re evolved hell-cursed komodo dragons,” Nguyen clarified, explaining the creatures’ origin.
“Whatever. Lucy, I’m going to need you to protect me while I carry my—” Archimedes was about to say “turret” when he looked over only to realize that, while he had survived, his turret hadn’t. There were three more trails of fire behind the group, and they had quite literally melted the turret where it stood, and what was left of the machine was still burning.
“Fuck it, I’ll just kill them all by fucking hand!” Archimedes shouted in anger as he pulled out the stim packs he had been saving and started handing them to the group while he switched his skills up, replacing the Turret skill since it was now broken, for Fire Breath. “I’m leading the charge. Chedderfield, you take my left. Lucy, you're on the right. If anything looks amiss, or you see something I don’t, you let me know.”
“And what? The rest of us are just going to sit around, twiddling our thumbs while you take on whatever is down there?” Danielle asked, her brows furrowed in concern.
“Yeah, we want to fight too,” Emma added.
Ignoring the teen, Chedderfield took Danielle’s hand and answered, “You have my back, baby. I’ll be able to fight better knowing that you’re keeping anything from sneaking up on us or those dragon wannabes from hitting us from above.”
“Yeah, we’ll stay up here and keep those skies clear,” Nguyen agreed, firing up into the air as one of the evolved komodo dragons tried to circle above them. The beam missed it, but the creature veered away.
With an agreeing nod from Danielle and a reluctant agreement from Emma, Archimedes grabbed a chunk of flesh from the zombie Chedderfield had cut in half earlier, pulled out a stim pack, and got ready to inject himself with it the moment the fight truly began again.
Archimedes, Lucy, and Chedderfield marched toward the dome of darkness, where Archimedes could barely make out the large elephant and its master summoning up large hell-cursed gorillas, the undead apes slowly assembling in front of them from the mangled body parts of dead gorillas that were scattered around the floor of the pit.