Chapter 29
New day, new problems
The following day’s council meeting was brief, so I decided it was time to share. While everyone was gathering their stuff and chatting a bit at the end of the meeting, I cleared my throat loudly to get everyone’s attention. Everyone turned to see what was up, and I spoke up.
“Hey guys, so… really quick, as you probably guessed, I continued to work on moving my mana after our little party two weeks ago, and I finally made some progress.” Everyone was now much more interested than a second ago, except Janet. She just laughed and said,
“Nice, Travis, let me guess, you can now move it twice as fast,” She laughed again and rolled her eyes at me. She was giving me a big shit-eating grin the whole time. I just flicked her off, then stood up and moved. I did a few laps around the room with my new Mana-based movement technique, then ended up back at my chair. Everyone looked slightly surprised at the sudden movement, but no one seemed too surprised.
“Travis, we all know you can do that. You just use step lightly to zoom around.” Janet scoffed and rolled her eyes at me again.
“Are you saying you did that by channeling Mana to your feet?” Beth asked me, and ignoring Janet, I nodded and smiled at Beth.
“You get it’s hard to take you at your word on that Travis, right? Devin chimed in. That made me frown, but then I thought of something they couldn’t argue. If I could use mana manipulation to empower my feet, I should be able to do the same with a punch. I mean, I had already done it once the first time on accident. The smile reappeared on my face as a plan came to me. No, it was definitely not a great plan, but I felt it would get the point across well. I told Devin I’d give them proof if he wanted proof.
I walked over to the wall and stood there momentarily, circulating my Mana. Then, as fast and as hard as I could, I hit the wall with my fist. Bam!! The next moment, I punched a four-foot hole in the wall, dust drifting off my knuckles as I let my arm hang in front of me. The room was silent as I turned around.
“So, Janet, what was that about, twice as fast?” Then I gave her the same shit-eating grin she had shown me a second ago. For a few moments, after I was done, Janet and the rest of the council were still kind of in shock at what I had just done to talk. I don’t think it was just the Mana manipulation but also how I showed then. Kind of cool-aid manned them button in reverse. After a moment, Janet managed to get out,
“fuck me.” Then she started chuckling and shaking her head at me. There were a lot of explanations after my little exhibition. After all was said and done, I told everyone about my new ability, Mana Manipulation. The council deemed it a worthy endeavor and should be investigated more thoroughly. As soon as we were done with the meeting, Janet found Dean and told him what I had done in the meeting. Dean was shocked at first, and then he laughed so hard he started crying. After he got control of himself again, he was just as eager as Janet to start practicing Mana Manipulation again.
Both Janet and Dean attacked the task with renewed vigor. It was only a week after the meeting that I displayed my new control of Mana to the council. Now, with a bit of help from me, Janet and Dean could move their Mana throughout their entire body. It would take a while, but they could now slowly fill one foot with Mana for a single-use burst step. The Burst step is what we had started calling the pure Mana-based movement technique. When Janet and Dean both learned the ability Mana Manipulation, I was super proud of them, like a mama bird watching her babies leave the nest for the first time. It was so precious. They both also got the bonuses for teaching themself the ability as well. On a serious note, Mana Manipulation was a fantastic ability.
The ease at which I could now move my man around would have made the me from three weeks ago cry with envy. Ever since I had put a hole in the council meeting room wall, I wanted to see what else was possible. One cool trick I figured out was that everything had Mana in it. The walls, the trees, and even the air had Mana in it. I had been sparring with Janet and had been using a pure Mana burst step. When Janet caught me in the chest with a kick, that sent me flying. I was about to hit the training room wall, so I flipped midair and hit the wall feet first.
When I hit, I was about to use another Burst step to jump back into the fight when I realized the Mana that filled my feet was letting me stick to the wall. I was so shocked I stopped channeling and, as a result, promptly fell and hit the ground. I lay there on the ground for a second, not so much in pain, which was minor, but really from my own embarrassment. That probably looked so dumb. Janet had walked over to check on me, laughing the whole time. I told her what had happened, and the script flipped. Then it was Spiderman this and so cool that. Inevitability, she figured it out, and we were running on the walls till my Mana ran out.
Janet wasn’t quite as good at it. She would lose control of her Mana and fall, but she still had a blast. We could run on fucking walls. This shit was sick! Oh fuck! I bet I could totally use the same principle to run on water! Call me Jesus bitches! Call me Jesus!! I woke up a few days after me, and Janet had figured out the wall walking stuff, and it could have been any day recently. People were moving about with their daily activities and responsibilities. Today, I didn’t have much going on. I had been going pretty hard on my Mana Manipulation training and had been all introvertie lately.
I figured it was time to change that. A lot had been happening in the village lately. Shops were starting to pop up where local people were trying to revamp the free market economy. We also had a brewery now. It was entirely made up of amateur brewers. You know that guy at work who’s always talking about the new batch they had going. They had really gone after it with gusto and were about to put out their first beer. Their first couple batched had been a more vodka-inspired drink, but this would be a proper beer. They had been experimenting with how to drive the alcohol content up as well, without losing flavor. It was a battle, but they weren’t giving up. If anything, they were more enthusiastic about it.
Most people just drank malt liquor and ever clear lately. People liked it because the higher your level and stats, the harder it was to get drunk. That shit got you there faster than anything else. The most popular area of the villages had always been and still was the training building. There were multiple fighting areas, a fitness center, and meditation rooms. Janet and I had spent many a day there beating the shit out of each other. Aww, such fond memories. We had been slowly finding small groups of people, so we were still sending out groups to look for survivors.
I decided to do a few laps of the village to get a quick bit of exercise in, and I was enjoying the day. I arrived by the gates and saw just one such party returning. They looked like it had not been the cleanest of extractions. This group looked like they had been through the wringer. Even our recovery team looked fucked up. Their armor had large rips and holes all over. One recovery team member was completely missing their weapon, but anyone who still had a weapon looked like it had been put to good use. The recovery team had brought fifteen new members back to the village. This was one of the smaller groups that had made it to us.
Usually, our ten-man recovery teams would return with groups of twenty to thirty people at a time. Every once in a while, we would get a group with ten or fewer, but it did happen. Fifteen was a solid group, but it looked like they might have started as a larger group.
“What the fuck happened to y’all,” I said as I approached the group. The team leader was talking to the gate guards as the rest of his team was drinking water and catching their breath. He turned to see who was addressing his group, and when he saw me, he smiled and seemed to let go of something weighing on him with a large sigh.
“Travis, good to see you. Yeah, we got hit during an extraction. We had been following up with this group we made contact with about a week ago. We planned the extraction for today. We were returning to the village with twenty-six folks when a group of, best I can describe then, would be zombies. It was strange, man, Travis, I’m telling you. They all had a large hump on their back that throbbed with orange vanes. I swear something was growing in them.”
The man continued describing the altercation, and I could tell it had shaken him. The guy’s name was Darian, and he just seemed relieved to be able to tell someone what had happened. They had lost people in the attack. Everyone who died had also been part of the group joining us from the hospital, and they had taken the loss hard. I could tell Darian was ashamed of letting this team down after, as he put it, “they finally were saved.” I’d been there, and he’d get through it. We all had dealt with more death than anyone should have sense the integration. This new threat to Treehouse was interesting.
As Darian decried it, their attackers were zombie-like creatures that had once been human. The odd thing was they had some kind of large hump-like incubation sack at the top of their backs with orange glowing vanes running throughout their entire bodies. They didn’t sound too strong, but being a cocky shithead could definitely get me killed. Nowadays, every enemy has to be taken seriously. I helped Darian and his team bring the new people to intake, an area we had designed as a welcome to Treehouse Village and the processing office.
As more and more people moved to the village, we set up an intake office, and it turned out to be a one-stop shop for moving in. We had a couple of therapists, some members of the medical core, and some town administrators. The administrators would give you a room, introduce you to the rules, and schedule a village tour. They were only getting better and faster with every new intake. After we had got everyone in the capable hands of intake, Darian and I made our way to the council meeting room. Someone was usually in there doing something or other. I was hoping it would be Beth. Beth often did paperwork in the room. She said it felt nice to go somewhere to do her work. She just got lazy if she worked from her apartment.
Lo and behold, Beth was there working, Devin was with her, and Tilly was eating some chicken nuggets. It was the ones cut in the shapes of dinosaurs. I fucking loved those when I was a kid. As we walked in, Tilly ran over and gave me a hug. I picked her up, hugged her, then walked her back over to her food. Devin silently thanked me, obviously struggling to get the girl to sit in one place long enough to finish her food. I plopped her down in the chair and snagged a nugget of her plate.
“Hey! Those are mine!” Tilly yelled at me.
“Then you better eat them, or I’m gonna steal more,” I said back, and she moved her arm around to circle her plane.
“Mine!” She said, then she kind of hissed at me. I laughed, and she smiled after acting like an angry cat for a little while. I tousled her hair, and she yelled at me and pushed at my hand. I turned around to talk with Beth and Darian, who started to get into the reason why we were there.
“You hear this already, Travis? Fucking zombies, is this fucking actually happing?” Beth asked me.
“Yeah, Darian here told me the same thing; he just told you. That’s why I figured we should head over and chat with you,” I said.
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“You think,” Beth said and started pacing a bit. “Fucking zombies, I hate zombies. I was really hoping we wouldn’t run into anything like this in the new world. I figured with magic that, yeah, sure, it was a possibility, but aw zombies, though. Real-life zombies, this is insane.” Beth finished her little tirade and looked at us. Darian was just kind of blinking in shock. I don’t think he was ready for that kind of reaction.
“Well, if it’s any comfort to you, Beth, my battle log called them Ectovizzors, not zombies, so there’s that?” Darian said. It sounded like he was trying to help reassure her, and to my surprise, it did seem to help.
“Not zombie? You’re sure?” Beth said with a weary look at Darian. He blinked a couple of times, then managed to get out, “Yes, positive. They are called Ectovizzors. I’m sure of that.” Beth let out a breath.
“Well, that’s good. Holly, fuck, I hate zombies. Before the integration, it was always one of my biggest nightmares just pouting that out there, but Ectovizzors. Is there anything else you can remember about the encounter? Even the smallest detail could make the difference.” Darian thought about it for a little while, and then he spoke.
“Well, and this may be too bold of me to say, but they looked like they were using the humans as hosts. I have no evidence to back up my theory, but that’s the feeling I’m getting from the encounter. Their movements were strong and ferocious, but as I think about it more, their coordination was sloppy. They moved as if new to their bodies. It was fucking creepy.”
“I guess it really comes down to if you think they will be a problem for the village?” Beth asked. I turned to Darian, and again, the man looked like he was thinking. When he spoke, he had a slightly uncertain tone to his voice.
“Maybe? Honestly, they weren’t that strong. They were just extremely aggressive. If we left them alone, they might eventually make their way to us. If it was up to me, we should root them out to the core. They must go if they use humans as vessels or anything close to that. They look like an invasive species, a parasite. If that is the case, and we’re on the menu? Then fuck that, kill ’em all I say, but I might be biased base on their creep factor. That’s just my thoughts on the matter.” When Darian finished, I thought briefly about what Darian had said, then pointed a thumb at him and told Beth I agreed with Darian.
“As I see it, they have already shown themselves a danger to us. I’m over being pushed around. I think it’s time to let this fucking world know. You fuck me and mine, and I’ll find you and fucking put you down.” When I finished my little pledge, Darian and Beth looked at me like, well, okay then.
“Am I good to go, Beth? I should probably get back to my team and check on them.” Darian asked, filling the awkward quiet that had come on after my pronouncement.
“Oh yes, of course you can, Darian. Thank you for this information. We’ll assemble an intel force to learn more about this new threat and go from there. Would you like to stay in the loop? If you want to be part of the force dealing with the Ectovizzors, I can make that happen”, Beth asked Darian.
“It’s fine, Beth. My men and I are happy to help anywhere we’re needed. Just let us know.” With that, Darian saluted Beth and me and left the room.
“We need to gather the council to discuss how we will handle this new threat to the village. Travis, can you go grab Janet, Tess, and Brianna? I think they were using one of the sparing rooms today. Meet back here in fifteen. That sounds good?” Beth asked me.
“Sounds good. I’ll be right back,” I said. We got down to business once we were all gathered in the council meeting room. In the end, it was decided that we didn’t have enough information about our targets and that a scouting mission would need to happen if we were going to move forward in eliminating the Ectovizzor threat. That was another decision altogether. As for the scouting mission, I made a strong case for me to go alone. Janet wanted to join me, but I successfully argued that stealth was the number one priority on this mission and I would have better luck alone.
It was decided, and the next morning, I headed out. I didn’t take one of our sheep buddies with me this time. They were great for speed but not so much for stealth. So, I was really on my own this time. I started to make my way north, towards the direction Darian’s team had said they encountered the Ectovizzors. It didn’t take me long to reach the point where Darian said the attack occurred. Darian had been moving with a good group of people, and I was solo. Once I arrived at the scene, I could see signs of fighting all over the place. The bodies of our people were scattered around and looked as if picked through by scavengers. The bodies of the fallen Ectovizzors, however, were left to rot. Those bodies looked like they hadn’t been touched by the scavengers that had gone after the human bodies.
As I approached the body of an Ectovizzor, it appeared to be rotting rather quickly for it being flesh. Maybe if they inhabited human bodies, they were halfway to rotten already? As I approached the Ectovizzor bodies, I had to pinch my nose closed. The smell was so bad it nearly made me sick. I left the bodies where they were and kept heading north after collecting the corpses of our fallen and putting them in my bag of holding. I had been walking for almost an hour after passing the fight scene and hadn’t seen any sign of the Ectovizzors. Every once in a while, I would find bodies of creatures or humans with what looked like bites taken out of them, but I was struggling to tell if it was just regular nightmares of the apocalypse or the nightmares I was hunting.
I figured I would head north for at least a few hours, and if I still found no sign of the things by then, I would retrace my steps and head in another direction. It wasn’t the most thorough or thought out of search techniques, but they were so aggressive I was sure I’d stumble onto a group of them sooner or later. I had been searching for the past hour and a half now, and I was just about to give up and turn around when I found what looked to be a group of the Ectovizzors rounding a building off of the street I was on about half a mile away. I made my way quickly and quietly to where I thought I saw them turn. Lo and behold, a pack of twenty walked down the street carrying what looked like human bodies in their arms.
There was no way to tell if the people they carried were still alive or dead, but the Ectovizzors? I think that’s what Darian said they were called. Well, whatever they were called, they were clearly taking those people somewhere. I had a brief self-dilemma where I had to decide whether to try and save these people now or wait and follow the creatures to wherever they were taking these people. In the end, I figured they could be dead already. At that point, I would have to find another group and follow them home, which would waste time.
I was going to follow this group. I only hoped that the people being carried off by the creatures were still alive. At least then, I would still get the chance to save them later. I followed from the few still-standing rooftops, and they didn’t seem to notice me. They didn’t seem all together that bright, just like Darian said. Their movements were jerky and uncoordinated, like they were getting used to their new bodies. They still looked strong, however, and it didn’t look like they got tired either. I followed them for what seemed like hours, and not once did they slow or take a break.
It was inhuman, oh, well, I guess that checks out, you know, them not being human and all. I smacked myself in the forehead softly for that one. When they finally seemed to be reaching their target, it ended up being a cave cut into the middle of the street. It looked like the cave had been dug so that it sloped gradually into the ground as well. We were somewhere in what used to be Richmond, but it was hard to tell from all the damage and fallen buildings around me. I decided to look for a less direct entrance into their cave, and about a hundred feet from the entrance, I found what I was looking for. A manhole, that might work. Come on, Travis, have more confidence in yourself. It will work. Good idea, man. I gave myself a quick pat on the back, then returned to it. I looked at the hole, thought fuck it, and headed down as quietly as possible.
It smelled like fucking shit. I mean, it was a sewer, so… yeah, there was that, but it still smelled really fucking bad. My senses were a lot more sensitive than before the integration, and right now, that really sucked. My willpower was also more substantial, so it didn’t bother me for long, and I managed to push the smell into my subconscious. When I landed in the sewer, I picked what I thought was the direction of the cave and started making my way down the sewer tunnel. It was small, so I was crouching down and moving slowly. It was a good thing, too, because only about fifty feet down the sewer tunnel, it dropped off into an ample space.
I almost went off the edge, but I quickly caught myself. When I reached out with a cautious foot and found nothing, I shifted my weight and pulled my foot back. I looked down, then cracked and dropped a glow stick. With that done, I could now make out the ground below. I couldn’t see the entrance to the cave from where I was, but I could see light filtering in from where I assumed the cave mouth was. I sat there on the edge for a few minutes, but it seemed like the cave below was empty, or at least I couldn’t hear anyone down below.
I decided it was time to drop down and move deeper into the cave. It only looked to be thirty feet or so. For the post-integration me, this was nothing much. I hung from the bottom of the sewer and dropped. I hit the ground a little louder than I wanted, but I was still a moderately quiet landing with bent knees to absorb the impact. If anything were close by, they still would have heard me, but that didn’t seem to be the case as I went up molested. I stood there in the gloomy atmosphere of the cave for a minute, just waiting to see if something would happen, but nothing did, so I figured I was good to move on.
I started heading deeper into the cave and soon began hearing some noises. It sounded like people moving around, well, more shuffling around, but it was a good sign I was headed in the right direction. I made my way through the cave, and as I turned a bend, I saw a campfire and threw myself against the wall as fast as possible. I was reminded of the time we were in the dungeon dealing with the Caprainkis. All at once, I decided this would go much differently than that encounter. I was a beast now. My stats were monstrous, and I was not fucking around. These Ectovizzors bitches, or what the fuck ever they were called, were going to get fucked up.
I pulled myself away from the wall, dusted my armor off, composed myself, and strolled into their camp. It took a second for them to notice me. Even when I was standing five feet from their camp, fully lit up by their fire, they were more focused on securing their prisoners. I wouldn’t let this opportunity pass and immediately sprung into motion. I pulled a short sword resembling a Roman Gladius, decapitating an Ectovizzor, then ran another throw with my short sword. At that point, I threw my sword at one of the Ectovizzors, and it landed up to the hilt in its face. They had all realized they were under attack and turned on me with abandon. They were throwing themselves at me in an attempt to overwhelm me with pure numbers.
I released a few burst punches to significant effect, and then it was time to practice my boxing. I fucking lit them up. Whenever I hit one with a burst punch, I would blow a hole in their body, taking them down with one hit. I almost always double-tapped with a dagger I had pulled from my bag, and they were going down fast. When only one was left, I grabbed it by the neck and held it down to the ground. It would not stop trying to kill me. I eventually had to cut its arms and legs off to control the creature more easily.
When I was done, and it was just a torso with a head, I felt like I finally had things under control enough to start trying to ask some questions. First, I used General Identify and found out they were indeed called Ectovizzors, but that’s all it said. The Ectovizzor was lying on the ground, wiggling around, still trying to bite me.
“Why did you take those people?” I asked the creature as I pointed to the tied-up group of people in the back of the cave. It was still trying to bite me, so I reached down and slammed its head into the ground, then got in its face. It still was, all together now, trying to bite me, so I slammed its head into the ground again,
“hey, mother fucker anyone in there? I’m talking to you, asshole. Why take these people?” It met my eye after a third slam, but anger was the only emotion I could read off its face. More than that, it was pure rage staring back at me. I just smiled back at the creature.
“Yeah, there we go. The people, why?” I pointed at the group again and waited for a response. The Ectovizzors opened its mouth, and I thought it would try to bite me again, but a harsh, raspy, choking sound emerged from the creature’s mouth.
“Feed. You must die. Die to live.” It still looked furious with me, but that was fine with me as long as the thing kept talking.
“More of you, where are they?” I kept my words short but to the point. Again, the creature spends its lips to speak, drawing in a long, hollowing breath before it does so.
“more? Many more. World ours now. You feed us now.” The Ectovizzors finished and then let out what must have been its version of a laugh. That was just a bit too creepy for even me. I let the creature go, brought a mana-empowered foot down, and squashed the Ectovizzors head to moosh. With my interrogation now concluded, I made my way over to the group of humans tied up at the back of the cave and began to cut them loose. I was so glad they were still alive. They were extremely grateful that I had come to save them, but I was now in an annoying situation. I wanted to continue searching for the home base of the Ectovizzors, but these people needed to be escorted back to the village, and it couldn’t be helped. That doesn’t mean I was happy about it.
I was mentally preparing for the long trek back to the village and the equally long trip back to this location, where I would have to hope I ran into another pack of Ectovizzors. Then, an idea came to me. An idea that Beth was definitely not going to like. After I had gotten the folks free and gave them each a Senzuketa Bean and some water, we headed out of the cave. Once outside, I told them something that made them very unhappy.
“So… um, yeah, here’s the situation…”