Archimedes
Three hours later, Archimedes looked over the reward he’d received and wished for a moment he’d had higher agility to take advantage of them.
Holy Shield
Current Classification: Bronze
Current Level: 01
Ability: No enemy can touch you with melee attacks for 3 seconds. Cooldown: 10 minutes.
Shrapnel
Current Classification: Bronze
Current Level: 01
Ability: Shots that hit non-living materials are more likely to cause shrapnel damage to surrounding targets. Passive.
Riot Shot
Current Classification: Bronze
Current Level: 01
Ability: Next shot ignores 25% of the target's defense. Cooldown: 5 minutes.
Burst Shot
Current Classification: Bronze
Current Level: 01
Ability: The firearm shoots a burst of five shots with reduced accuracy and range. Cooldown: 5 minutes.
With a shrug, he took Holy Shield for himself and distributed the rest of the skill cards he’d picked up to Danielle and Nguyen, the group's best shooters, and put them out of his mind.
Archimedes returned his attention to the show in front of him and watched in awe as the S.A.N.E. system scooped dirt away, one pile after another, as it formed a ten-foot-wide trench around the perimeter of the power plant. Reinforced concrete buttressed the retaining walls, creating the exterior of the moat, and as the last pieces of the moat were formed, the river connecting each side rushed along its banks like a fierce torrent, crushing any hell-cursed that had made it past the defenders’ fire and been unfortunate enough to stumble in during its construction.
A cheer went up from the walls as the soldiers manning it saw the moat completed. The water was already filling with the hard-shelled hermit crabs of doom, which would be another layer of protection against the oncoming army.
With the moat done, Archimedes turned his attention to the coral reef wall as it continued to grow, one twenty-foot-long section at a time. It wouldn’t be completed before the hell-cursed army arrived, but it would still provide another layer of defense on the west side of the power plant.
Suddenly, a shout from the southern wall interrupted Archimedes’ concentration. “Something is trying to cross the river!”
Archimedes Leap-Rushed through the air to land on the wall and see what had alerted the guards there. He could see the hell-cursed contingent across the river gathered and bunched up, and then they exploded backward, thrown into the river as two figures released a burst of power. The blue energy blast lit the area for only a fraction of a second, but that was enough for Archimedes to recognize the red-striped Hot Sauce and Redeyes, whose eyes glowed in the darkness. The two were devastating the hell-cursed but were still outnumbered a hundred to one.
Archimedes worried about how they planned to cross the river, knowing the deadly monsters in its depth were capable of easily tearing through the reinforced steel of a boat like they were snacking on crackers.
“Who is it?” a voice below shouted. Archimedes looked behind him and saw Chedderfield, Danielle, and the rest of his team armed and ready for a fight.
“It’s the sirrušu!” Archimedes shouted down. Then to the soldiers beside him, who had all started aiming rifles at the two, he called out, “They’re allies! Don’t shoot!” Then calling out to his team he said, “I need some help up here. I think I can help them cross the river, but I need Danielle and Nguyen.”
Nguyen took a running start and then scaled the side of the walls, climbing up the steel posts till she reached Archimedes. Chedderfield scooped up Danielle, and his legs burst with power. He ran up the walls and then across the walkway in a blur until he crashed into Archimedes, the three of them nearly tumbling over the steel crenellations that lined the top of the wall.
“Sorry . . . Sorry,” Chedderfield apologized as the three disentangled themselves. “I just needed something to target for my Meat Slam, and you were it, Arc.”
Archimedes pushed his friend off of him and got to his feet while chuckling. “You know Chedderfield, there is such a thing as ‘too close’ in a murder-space environment. I’m going to have to talk to HR if you keep trying to Meat Slam with me and your girl on the battlefield.”
“Awww, but things were just getting hot,” Chedderfield joked as he used his cleansing fire ability to generate a small blue flame on his index finger.
“Hey! No fair! No three-ways up there! I was saving that kinda stuff for Arc’s birthday!” Lucy shouted from below, a wide smile on her face.
Danielle got to her feet, giving Chedderfield an annoyed look, but when she turned back to Archimedes, she was all business again. “You said you needed help?”
“Uh, yeah. Could you and Nguyen light up that bone bridge that hangs over the river? I figured the sirrušu could leap from it and make it across the river.”
Nguyen and Danielle looked at each other for a moment before shrugging their shoulders, and Danielle replied, “Yeah, not a problem. We could turn down the laser setting on the rifles and hold the trigger for an extended shot. It would sorta be like using laser pointers if you could see the beams.”
“What she said,” Nguyen agreed.
The two women did something with the knobs on their rifles and then took firing positions, using the flat surface of the crenelations as a shooting platform. They took aim and pulled the triggers of their weapons. Bright beams of light shot out from the barrels. Unlike the short deadly bursts, these kept a steady beam like they were some blue Asgardian bridge cut through the night, extending from them to the half-finished bone bridge across the river. It was hard for the two to keep their aim perfect, and the lines of energy skipped around, but they did their job.
The lizardwomen dashed to their left and cut a swath through the hell-cursed that were in their way. They charged over the bridge and, without a single moment of hesitation, leapt off its unfinished edge, shooting through the air like two reptilian cannonballs. They arced over the middle of the river and came down a half dozen feet from the bank with a splash. Another jump put them on land, and they ran toward the walls of the power plant.
Once they were in full exposure of the floodlights, Archimedes could see that Hot Sauce carried a large sack on her back, and Redeyes had something like a brown backpack made of wet, matted fur. It puzzled Archimedes until the backpack shook its head and shouted out, “Master Archimedes, please tell your allies not to fire upon us!”
“It’s Chip!” Danielle shouted as she got to her feet. “Let them through.”
The gates of the powerplant opened, and the three wet aliens walked through the doors as the group raced to meet them, the soldiers giving the strange creatures a wide berth, the colonel and sergeant watching them warily. For their part, the aliens looked around and took in the mass of humanity.
Chip dropped from Redeyes’ back, shook his wet fur, and then gave a grin before addressing the crowd, “Hello, servants of the mighty warrior Archimedes! Rejoice that the chosen ones have come to aid you in your upcoming battle against the hell-cursed!”
There were grumbles from all around, and a few soldiers were shouting curses when Archimedes and the rest of the group made it to Chip and the sirrušu.
“Chip, they are our allies not our servants,” Emma insisted.
“Has Archimedes not dominated them all and taken over this base?” Chip asked.
Emma’s brow scrunched up. “Well, technically . . . but—”
“Then they are now bonded to you as servants, and you are their rulers,” Chip explained as if it were the way things should be. A hiss from Hot Sauce behind him prompted a translation, and the lizardwomen were nodding their heads at the end of it. “They agree with the statements, Warrior Archimedes.” Before Archimedes or anyone else could say anything, Chip took the backpack from Hot Sauce and presented it to Archimedes. “Here are the cores that you have requested. It is all of our remaining stores after building our portal and communications systems.”
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“Fantastic! I’ll take those and get this base building a portal,” Chedderfield blurted out and whisked the bag of cores away to the base hub.
“While the base builds the portal, there will be a massive response from the monsters in the area. What are your plans to deal with them?” Hot Sauce asked with Chip translating. Even before Chip translated though, Archimedes found himself nodding along with the words he understood, surprised at how fast he was improving his linguistic abilities.
“We don’t need to do anything about them,” Lucy answered with a laugh. “If anything, the more of them, the merrier. Those turrets are going to riddle them with enough tightly packed holes to make anyone with trypophobia have nightmares for days.”
“Do we even need to bother wasting ammunition? That moat seems to do the trick now . . .” Danielle remarked, looking over at the colonel.
“The turrets somehow don’t use ammunition, so it’s fine,” the colonel replied. “If anything, it’s good for the soldiers operating them to get practice shooting at moving targets before the battle is too tense for them to make a mistake. They need to get comfortable with the firing and loading rotations so they can get the most out of those guns.”
As the colonel was talking, a message appeared to notify the group that the portal construction had begun, highlighting exactly how fast Chedderfield had moved, since Archimedes knew it wasn’t exactly a short distance between their spot on the wall and the base hub.
All opposing factions within 100 feet of the base have been notified of the new construction. Please be advised: The construction may be halted at any moment if the creatures reach the contested zone. The contested zone will be marked in yellow. If enemy faction members can occupy the yellow zone for 30 seconds, all construction will be terminated, and resources will not be refunded. Please enjoy struggling for our entertainment.
“Then we shall see the power of your human-fortified bases,” Chip noted as he looked out in all directions, scanning for enemies. “Where are the hell-cursed?” he finally asked after thirty seconds had passed and nothing had happened. It was then, though, that life began stirring from the moat, revealing a familiar foe, the same kind of crab monsters that had quickly and easily destroyed their pontoon, surged from the river. They scuttled forward, screeching and clicking their pincers as they advanced on the base.
Chedderfield joined the rest of his group on the walls as the soldiers and turrets atop the walls hummed to life. Lasers shot out like tongues of fire, illuminating the night sky as the fortified castle defended itself against the crustacean onslaught. The gunfire splashed off the hard, thick shells of the hermit crabs of doom, but the intense and powerful laser bolts from the turrets burned right through the creatures while Archimedes’ ice ballista shots slowed the creatures down, freezing their wet bodies as they tried to advance.
“HA! SEE! I TOLD YOU IT WAS USEFUL!” Archimedes shouted triumphantly as he pointed at two frozen crab monsters only for a laser turret to destroy them a second later.
“I think that’s just proof the laser turret is more useful,” Lucy countered.
“It could only do that so quickly because the targets were standing still!” Archimedes insisted, ignoring any further arguments from Lucy.
By the time the remaining monsters reached the coral wall, the first line of defense on land, more than half their number had been taken out. The coral wall struck out with whipping tendrils as the remaining crabs reached it. The attacks didn’t do much damage, but they overturned the unbalanced creatures as they scuttled along, flipping the monsters on their backs and leaving them wide open for the turrets and soldiers to finish off.
Out of the entire wave of monsters, only six creatures made it to the coral wall and were able to use their spinning, drill-like appendages to tear through the tendrils and wall, but they were quickly obliterated as the defensive fire from the walls concentrated on the few remaining targets.
A cheer went up from the soldiers that manned the walls as the last of the monsters fell, and the sirrušu hissed and chirped. Chip translated, saying, “Your world is so generous that it even provides a last meal before a fight. How do you prepare these creatures for consumption? Shall we cook them up first or eat them raw as they are?”
“I like crab cakes,” Emma suggested.
“Nope. When you have to spread it out among this many people, the only practical option is crab soup,” Danielle added, gesturing toward the soldiers beside them. “Especially when we lost a lot of the meat to the laser fire.”
“Wouldn’t have been lost if they had only been frozen, not burned,” Archimedes muttered in continued advocacy for his ice turret.
Nguyen shook her head at him. “It’s not happening. No matter how much you argue, lasers are always cooler than ice bolts.”
“Cooler. Good one,” Emma said with a snicker.
“A good, old-fashioned seafood boil. Corn, potatoes, crab, and spicy sausage cooked in a broth of water, beer, and bay leaves,” Chedderfield suggested.
Archimedes held his hands up and said with as much seriousness as he’d ever had, “You’re all wrong. The only proper way to prepare fresh crab is to get yourself some chili powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper, onion powder, and Old Bay! Then steam them and then slather them with garlic butter and serve it with corn.”
“I like coriander with my crab,” Nguyen remarked. The rest of the team gave her baleful glares.
“No one wants your cilantro ruining our crabs,” Lucy shot back, using the American name for the herb.
“Well, however we’re going to cook it, someone has to go out there and collect them,” Archimedes said as he walked to the edge of the wall, ready to hop over.
“Not it!” a chorus of voices said at once, leaving Archimedes looking around at his friends, unsure if he could call them lazy since they had done so much work already. But this definitely gave him rights to mock them somewhere in the future.
“What does this ‘not it’ mean?” Chip asked as he stared at the group.
“It’s something kids without a strict hierarchy get to say to avoid work,” one of the soldiers grumbled. “Wish I coulda said it when it was my turn for duty. Not sure what genius decided we needed to stay up twenty-four hours straight with a log book to be productive.”
“It also means that you, me, and the sirrušu are on crab pick-up duty, and the others will get to watch as we eat them with the soldiers that help,” Archimedes explained.
“We got cooks that’ll prep that up any way you want to,” one of the soldiers said. “Old Bubba the Shrimp King can probably do it better than any of us.”
Chip translated, and Hot Sauce and Redeyes hissed their agreement. The three leapt from the walls of the nuclear plant and landed with a thud on the field. While the group had been quite insistent on not helping out with the gathering of crab meat, the moment Archimedes threatened them with not eating, they scrambled faster than even he was moving, Emma jumping over the wall first. They worked together to collect and transport the remains of any of the doom crabs that were whole enough to serve as meals, Chip noting loudly how intelligent it was to freeze some of them.
Once the crabs were in the base, the soldiers moved with a frenzy only known to a hungry soldier, organizing benches, utensils, dishware, and all the other sundries needed to feed an army.
While they were enjoying what Archimedes knew might be the last meal for many of the soldiers there, the system-built kitchen somehow magically cooked the crabs way faster than Archimedes thought physically possible. He couldn’t help but take in the mood of the soldiers around him. Everyone was joking, laughing, and eating like there wasn’t the possibility of a world-ending catastrophe befalling them in less than an hour.
Feeling bad for the soldiers who were still on guard duty and didn’t have the chance to stop and eat, Archimedes quickly finished his food, grabbed a few extra bowls of food and silverware, and began walking out to the wall. However, as soon as he reached the top of the wall and could look over, he nearly dropped the bowls.
“What the fuck is that?” one of the soldiers asked as he pointed at the same thing they were all looking at: a giant blob of flesh. The hell-cursed had formed up into a massive blob of zombies, brutes, and catapults with hordes of converted animals flanking their sides and undead birds and floating jellyfish flying above them.
Archimedes had seen outlines of armies in the distance, but seeing it much closer now, he began to lose the confidence that the base improvements had given him.
“That . . .” Archimedes hesitated, looking at the faces of the men, who looked even more terrified than he did. “That, my friends, is a lot of cores for our base. We’re going to be able to get system-powered hot tubs and video games at this rate.”
As the army drew a little closer, it slowed down to a halt in front of the base.
Your base has been declared an enemy of the Demonic Faction. The commander of the army, General Atilius, has sent this message.
“Weep, humans, in the face of the overwhelming might of the Demonic Faction. Lay down your arms, and you will be allowed to evolve past the limits of your puny race. We are inevitable.”
Terms of surrender are offered: Abandon your base and surrender within 30 minutes.
“They want us to surrender, sir?” one of the soldiers asked as Archimedes handed him a bowl of crab meat.
“Well, should we fire a few shots at them first, or do you want to eat some of this so you don’t have to kick their ass on an empty stomach?” Archimedes asked as he finished handing out the food.
“You . . . You really think we can win this?” one of the soldiers asked, and at this point, Archimedes realized it wasn’t just the one soldier looking at him for an answer. Everyone on the walls and within earshot of him was. They had all stopped what they were doing when the hell-cursed showed up, and now they were all looking to him for assurance. With the number of fortifications their base had before Archimedes arrived, they had clearly gone through a lot of battles, but this upcoming one was something they probably had never seen the likes of. They didn’t know what to think. Just the night before, a fraction of that number of hell-cursed had sieged the base and killed several of them and destroyed some of the fortifications, and that was only the ones that could be stuffed in one unit of flying jellyfish. Now, there were more jellyfish, more zombies, and more threats than ever.
He had to do something, or their morale would collapse, and he knew well enough how important morale was in battle. “I’ll tell you this,” Archimedes said as he raised a hand and rejected the surrender. “Nothing I say will give you the confidence that we’re going to win. Your eyes are seeing more than your ears can hear. But as you start to kill those bastards, that’s where the confidence will come. You’ll start off just as terrified as I was the first day I had to fight those bastards without a gun, without even a knife. You’ll kill one of them, and you’ll feel a little less nervous. You’ll kill ten of them, and you’ll feel like, just maybe, just maybe you can live through this. After you finish killing fifty, you’ll stop being that afraid of them. When you finish killing a hundred, you’ll see the finish line in your mind, and you’ll start counting the number you have left to kill, and by the time you finish killing the last one, there will be no fear left in you. That’s when you’ll know that your eyes lied to you and that you always had victory in your hands.”
“Oh my God, hermano.” Chedderfield shook his head as he came up and put a hand on Archimedes’ back. “Will you stop trying to give speeches like this is some soccer match?” He laughed a little. “All you need to do is tell them the truth: We got this. It’s no problem at all.”
“Yeah, we do.” Archimedes appreciated Chedderfield. He had to admit, as terrified as he was, seeing his friend with him and hearing his friend’s confidence, he finally believed the words coming out of his own mouth. “Now, what class are you taking first?”
“Purgator all the way, bro,” Chedderfield said. “I’m going to turn the whole army bluer than Lucy’s hair.”
“That’s if they reach us,” Archimedes countered as he quickly equipped his Automator class and summoned his turret to him.