Brad
The bone golem's fists rose up, huge white pillars of death, and slammed down onto the head of the hell brute. The force of the blow shattered its skull and sent black blood spraying in every direction. The brute’s body trembled, trying to remain upright before it fell backward onto the cracked gray asphalt of the road that stretched over the steel bridge. The zombies that had followed the brute onto the bridge scattered as the body fell, and plasma fire from the elite guards blasted the numerous but weak creatures.
The battle was going perfectly. Brad and his followers quickly routed the hell-cursed army that they had silently followed, waiting for just the right moment. He had expected the battle to go smoothly the moment they hit the bridge.
“Defend the left flank,” Brad ordered his bone golem as he gripped the handle of his ten-foot-tall banner and pushed past the tight formation of his troops to make sure he was at the front of the group, his banner glowing brightly. He turned to the people behind him. “That’s it! Show them what humanity is made of! Drive them into the river! Push these foul fiends from our fields!” Brad yelled, fully committed to the character of the revolutionary war leader, the type of hero who had wrested power from the monarchs of old. He lowered his banner like a spear and charged at the hell-cursed, hoping his efforts to remain on the front line, ahead of his fellow combatants, would not go unnoticed as he pushed into the crumbling ranks of his foes.
The tip of the glowing gold banner that had been illuminating the night was pushed into a charging six-legged hellhound. The bright gold turned a dim red as its length was enveloped by the beast’s body. Darkness fell on the battlefield, the only remaining light coming from the energy weapons that shredded through the hell-cursed’s pathetic charge.
“PUSH! VICTORY IS BUT A HUNDRED FEET AWAY!” Brad cried. He finished the beast off with a swift thrust of his spear and pulled the weapon free of its corpse. The bright golden light returned to the field with a vengeance, bathing the area in its warm hue.
Brad wanted to take a moment to say a few more words, but he already saw the shield bearers pushing past him, borrowing the strength of the rifle-users behind them.
The thought of not being in the forefront, leading the charge, was unbearable for Brad. He activated his group-wide buff, Champion’s Shout, and the area around him was filled with a powerful light. Everyone in the group experienced a surge of strength based on Brad’s Charisma, and he himself was granted an additional burst of speed. With his banner hoisted high, he sprinted forward and watched as the shield bearers unleashed their skills. Red fire blasts and blue crystal shards erupted from their hands, the force of it smashing through the zombie horde.
By the time the fires had died down, Brad stood at the top of the small river’s bank, watching the hell-cursed that hadn’t been completely burned alive or shot to pieces by lasers or crushed by the melee weapons of his soldiers be turned into chum to be eaten by the mutated fish swarming through the waters.
As Brad turned around, he saw the weary faces of his soldiers. This is why you were never meant to lead, he thought, suppressing a smile as he scoffed at how quickly they tired and wore themselves out. If they had been real men, worthy of his throne, even a dozen more marches and two dozen more fights like this would not wear them out in the slightest.
“How cruel fate is,” he remarked, thinking back once more to the young man that had spent hours trying to get with that perfect woman back at the supermarket base, only for her to die in a patrol before he could ever close the deal.
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“It is indeed,” Clare said, walking up beside him as her flying bowie knives returned to her hands. “I know how much it must hurt you, being forced to kill and destroy people wearing human faces, walking and talking like they’re still like us, you knowing that if they had just been a little luckier, they could have still been alive.”
Brad nodded. “Indeed. While they live, they claw at our bodies with every fiber of their beings, trying to drag us into the pits of hell from which they came, and when they die, they claw at our conscience, never letting us sleep as we are forced to suffer, knowing that the monster we put down today was likely once a respectable, honest working member of society. A good, honest human.”
“I am sorry we’re constantly depending on you to shoulder the burden,” Clare said, putting a hand on his back. Looking down at her hot, tight sweaty body as she did her best to comfort him, Brad had to do his best to stay in character and not stop everything just to drag her back to a tent and claim the prize he’d been working so hard for—that he had worn the persona of a good man so long for.
“Steward! Steward of Humanity! I need a moment! Please!” one of the younger soldiers, no more than fifteen years old, called out as he pushed through to the front. Brad had no idea who he was at first, rarely paying attention to any man, until he saw the green bandana with a red stripe tied across his left arm signifying he was a scout that had killed over a hundred hell-cursed.
Clare pushed herself between the two. “If you have something important to say to him, tell it to your superior so that—”
“Let the young one speak. He’s no less important than his superior. I thought you understood that all mankind is equal beneath me,” Brad said as he gestured for the young man to come forward. “Now tell me, what’s the urgent news?”
“It’s an Insectoid Chimera group, there are only a few of them, but the things are quite massive,” the scout answered. “They’re also heading straight toward the nuclear plant as well. I think, even if we move as fast as we can, we won’t outpace them. They’re going to reach it first.”
“I see . . .” Brad stroked the beard growing across his face as he thought about the situation for a moment. “If we’re going to let the people at the plant know in time, we need to find a base nearby so we can use their hub, or by the time we call them, it’ll be too late. Even if we can’t reach them, if we have a hub, we might be able to generate a quest to warn the soldiers.”
“Umm . . . Steward of Humanity,” Casey said timidly as she pulled her headphones down from her ears. She had just returned with Brad’s bone golem from the left flank and was likely a bit uncomfortable speaking with so many people around. One person after the other had started to flock to Brad’s banner after the fight, forming a circle around him that Casey and the scout had both needed to push through. “We have a small issue.”
“What is it?” Brad felt his heart racing. First the insects and then Casey showed up with another problem. Even if the battles went smoothly, every single confrontation was a chance that a beautiful girl might die.
“It’s . . . It’s this,” Casey said, opening up her communication menu and showing a quest to him.
Duke It out at the Nukem [Nuclear Power Plant Location]
Objective: Defend the nuclear power plant.
Description: As we speak, there is an army of hell-cursed rapidly approaching the nuclear power plant, and should they succeed in defeating us and seizing the nuclear material within, there will be no safe space here or anywhere else.
Hey, while it was a fun game, no one wants to actually live in Fallout!
Rewards: One laser rifle before the battle, XP from the fight, and as many cards as you can collect. When the enemies feel endless, so too shall be the loot.
“I don’t see what the issue is,” Brad said as he looked at the notification. “We already told them about the army heading toward them. We knew about it already.”
“Right, but look who created the quest,” Casey replied.
Then, Brad saw the problem. His blood started to boil. He had to hold the handle of his banner as tightly as he could, squeezing as much anger away as he could so he didn’t burst with rage. The person who had created the quest was not Colonel Hooker. No, the quest giver was the one person Brad never wanted to see again. It was Archimedes.