The next morning comes without incident. I wake to the sound of people killing monsters at 6:00 AM. It looks to be the standard monster clearing that they must have to do every morning to get their main area of operations clear. I wake Andy and tell him to let everyone sleep in until they wake up, or 8:00 AM, then have everyone head to breakfast. Andy assents with a nod, and I gather my gear to leave. Before I exit the house, I stop in the bathroom and check the injury on my left arm. There's really not much of it left, barely a scar on my forearm, and just a scabbed over cut on my bicep. I wonder how fast my healing will get in the future considering how much faster it already is with only a few extra stats in Vitality. Though I have a feeling I'm not going to be insta healing everything as soon as it happens without thousands of stats in Vitality. I leave without applying new bandages.
Upon exiting our temporary abode, I'm met with the sight of multiple teams of four killing monsters everywhere along the street. I wonder if the groups of four sleep in houses together. That would actually be a really smart play from the Breakpoint leadership. Every professional military I have ever heard of trained, fought, killed, slept, and ate together. It's how teams who encounter death constantly are able to build comradery and trust. If Jax put the groups together for anything more than just "it was easier that way", then I underestimated him. Regardless of intent give it three months and he would have impressive death squads under his command.
My plan for this morning until breakfast is to help these soldiers clear monsters in a way that will impress them without showing them my full capabilities. It shouldn't be too difficult; I will just use a decent percentage of my full speed without using my skills. At least, I hope that does the trick, I'll find out soon enough. Walking over to the nearest squad, I hale them. Startling killers of any caliber is truly stupid in my opinion.
"Good morning soldiers." I call out to their backs as they finish the last beetle in front of them.
"Huh? Oh, you're one of the city people, right? What do you want?" It was the only woman in the group who responded to me.
She was tall, maybe five foot ten, and she looked like she went to the gym for more than squats if you know what I mean. She carried an axe; I was starting to get the idea that the people in charge usually carried and axe around here. Most likely it was because that was the deadliest of tools they could find. I could tell she was in charge of this group too; she stepped forward when she spoke to me, and the three men around her deferred to her. The axe wielding squad leader had vibrant red hair and ice blue eyes. I wasn't sure if her hair was naturally that color if she had it done before the initialization, but she looked good.
"Yes, I'm from the city. The names Reaper, how about you?" I asked her.
"Names Angie, and you didn't answer my question. Why are you here." She said, sounding less annoyed than I expected.
"Nice to meet you Angie, I'm here to help out with clearing monsters. And before you say anything I'm well aware you don't need my help, but I'd like to offer my assistance regardless." I shot her a smile.
She frowned like that was exactly what she was going to say. As Angie was about to respond, no doubt to shoot down my offer, one of the men next her spoke up.
"Why not let him help kill the monsters sarge." Said the man.
He was maybe six foot one and well built. He was carrying a sledgehammer. Those really can't be that common. I thought, though I suppose I've only met two people using them as weapons. Angie shot a look to the sledgehammer wielding man, though with his comment she stopped to actually consider the offer instead of shooting it down out of hand. I sent a silent thank you to guy, this was going better than I thought it would.
"Hmm, you're a rogue then?" Angie said, glancing at the dagger on my hip.
"I am indeed, I assure you that I won't get in your way." I sent another smile her way.
"Fine, you can join us in killing the monsters, but you better keep to your word and stay out of our way." Angie said tersely after a moment of consideration.
"Yes ma'am." I winked at her and gave a decent salute.
She snorted, but I saw her smile before she turned away. She didn't say anything else, so I just followed after her until we came to a pack of Saber Wolves. They set up for the battle, Angie in the center of the formation, with sledgehammer guy on her right, and a man with an edger as a weapon on her left. The fourth man moved to the left flank and was using a knife, likely an actual rogue. I moved to the formations right, and advanced at the same pace as their rogue. Angie was the one to start the fight, she charged forward with the other two a pace behind her. The first strike she made was to a wolfs skull, it bludgeoned the skull, instead of cutting, hard enough to pierce the bone and leave the axe head stuck inside of the creature's brain. With the fluidity she removed her axe and readied another strike I'm sure she was at least level 5 if not a little higher. By the time she engaged her next target the men on either side of her were attacking their first wolf, and the rogue and I were moving to kill the wolves trying to flank the center line.
I moved quickly and with a level of predatory grace that made me grin as I reached the side of the wolf and slit its throat with my dagger. At this point these monsters were not my match and I had no need for skills to take them down as long as I was careful to control the flow of battle. With a group distracting most of the wolves I had free reign. As the first wolf fell to the ground, I was upon the next cutting its throat the same as the first. My third and final kill was a strike through a wolfs right eye into its brain. I turned back to the squad of four Breakpoint soldiers as the last wolf collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Angie had both of her eyebrows raised in a mild show of surprise. It was the other three's reactions that told me I might have gone a little overboard. It only took a few seconds for them to close their mouths so it really couldn't have been that bad.
"What's next Angie?" I asked with casual nonchalance.
"Ahem, we'll just keep working our way down the street, then move from street to street killing whatever monsters we find." She said schooling her face into neutrality and moving our group along.
My plan was to show enough prowess that word would get around, hopefully aborting any fledgling ideas to take us out, but doing it in a way that shows I can be helpful so as not to warrant an immediate extermination squad. The other objective of my plan was to create a persona with the regular soldiers of Breakpoint in case anything did happen, I wouldn't just be some unknown who slaughtered whoever came after me. And I would slaughter anyone who came after me or my group, I had no reservations about that. I was hoping that if that happened I would have enough of a reputation to be heard by the faction and sway some of them to my side. At that point I could quietly take care of anyone who disliked me and keep a friendly relationship with the rest.
It was a lot, but I wanted to keep a good relationship with the remnants of humanity around me if I could help it, though if all went completely to shit, I wouldn't hesitate to kill most people with classes and move on. That sounded psychotic but there was no way in fuck I was leaving enemies alive to powerup and come after me later. I had read and watched way too many books and shows to make that mistake if I could at all help it.
The next few fights were just as easy as the first, it was actually becoming boring to kill these kinds of monsters, but I was still not going to let my guard drop even if I was killing snails with tactical nukes. I wasn't at that level yet though, and neither were the squad around me. I had to save one guy twice, once from a Saber Wolf that almost took a bite out of him because he was too focused on another one, and the second time was from a Barbed Panther that he walked past without seeing. The other guy I saved from a raptor that tried to find out what his liver tasted like.
By the time two hours were up and it was 8:00 AM and time to head to back to get breakfast with my group, we had cleared eleven entire streets by ourselves. I could tell this was not the usual pace for these guys. At the end of the eleventh road, I stopped Angie to tell her I was leaving for breakfast. To my surprise they decided to call it a morning and come back with me.
"Yeah, we usually don't eat until later, but with our progress we're actually farther than when we usually stop." Angie explained.
I simply nodded and started the walk back. I had learned the three men's names while we were out. The man with the sledgehammer was named Alvin, the guy with the edger was Lerry, and the rogue was named Tran. After the first hour everyone started opening up to me and we had some fun conversations, mostly banter as we walked between fights laughing at death and all that good stuff that soldiers everywhere do. I'm not an extravert, never have been, but I was able to comment here and there, mostly it was them talking to each other while explaining backstory, and funny or scary situations they had found themselves in, to me. It was good, I had accomplished what I intended, and hopefully word would spread. I didn't expect just one morning of helping out to do much, but it should allow me into different squads later on. I planned to help out every morning we were here and maybe some other times too. I had nothing better to do until we left back to the city where I could hunt real prey.
I arrived at the mess hall with my morning hunting buddies and found my companions at a table off to the side. They hadn't been here long they were just starting on their food.
"Reaper, do you want to eat with us?" Angie asked me.
"Afraid not, I'm supposed to meet up with my group for breakfast, maybe another time. It was nice working with you four though." I said before shaking their hands, and leaving for the table my companions were seated at.
"Where have you been all morning?" Lilly asked as soon as she saw me approaching.
"Yeah, we thought maybe something had happened Andy just said you went out." Gideon echoed the sentiment.
"Ah, don't worry about that I was just helping the locals kill some monsters." I smiled at Gideon before I saw another bowl of stew that looked the same as yesterday next to Lilly and sat behind it.
"Thank you, Lilly." I said motioning to the stew with my spoon.
"No problem, but why were you helping them kill monsters, couldn't they handle it themselves. They were doing fine before we arrived." Lilly returned to the previous conversation with a heavy dose of curiosity in her voice.
"Oh sure, they absolutely could have handled it just fine by themselves, I wanted to help so that we could start building a good reputation with them." I stated casually, deciding not to explain the full reasons behind my plan, at least not out here in the open.
"Oh, that makes sense I guess." Lilly nodded before going back to her stew.
"Thats an excellent plan, did you uhm ... find out anything new." Gideon asked me.
"Not really, though I didn't press too hard, nothing that anyone said contradicted what we were told." I wasn't surprised though, unless Jax told us outrageous lies an hour of small talk wasn't going to reveal much.
"We should still stick to our plan though; I want more information to go on." Lilly said. While she had an alterior motive, she was also absolutely correct.
"Absolutely." I confirmed.
With nods all around we turned to small talk while we finished our meal. As we finished and moved to leave, Grover approached us. I was starting to think he was Breakpoints ambassador or something. Maybe he was just good with people and Jax knew that, so he sent him to deal with us.
"I heard what you did this morning. Thank you for the help." Grover nodded to me.
"Oh, it was no problem, I was just having some fun really, that's all." I said nonchalantly and waved it away.
"No really, they say you're quite good with that dagger of yours, and that you even saved two people's lives. We lose too many people to the monsters, I'm truly thankful for any that can be saved." Grover said and walked up and shook my hand.
I was a little taken aback, I had assumed he was here to schmooze us, which maybe he was but he was truly grateful that I had saved those people from what I could tell.
"There aren't enough of us left, I couldn't let someone die if I could help it." This was of course not accurate, I wasn't going to put myself or my companions in danger for someone I didn't know, and what I did was also beneficial to me as this conversation proved.
"I'll tell you what, why don't the three of you ladies stay here and take a break. Me and the boys will form our own little group of four and go kill some monsters." I said, sending a wink to Lilly. This should give them ample opportunity to mingle with the female heavy population of the headquarters.
"What do you think guys? Grover does that sound all right to you?" I received nods from my companions and a bright smile from Grover.
"Of Course, that would be wonderful, truly any help we can get with keeping the monsters at bay is appreciated." He said with approval, respect, and gratitude in his voice.
"Very well gentlemen, let's go hunting." I announced grandly with a chuckle.