“Master, this message isn’t something of yours, is it?” Stefan asked with a great deal of caution in his voice.
“It is not.” Vlad stated, turning his head in Stefan’s direction, the message following his movements, impeding his view. He moved his hand through it in a ‘shooing’ motion which didn’t disrupt it in the slightest. Turning his head more quickly had no effect either, as it stayed positioned squarely in the middle of his vision. Blinking had no effect, nor did fully closing his eyes, as the message stayed visible even then. Before anger got the better of him, he simply wished it to be gone and it vanished.
Once his sight was unobstructed, he looked back in Stefan’s direction and saw the man moving his hands through what he assumed was his own message in a manner similar to what Vlad himself had just done. Deciding to experiment for a moment, Vlad attempted to will the message back and was surprised to see it appear, with a refreshed countdown. That aspect of the message was more than a little vexing.
“Stefan, simply will it to go away. I must investigate whether this was an isolated event with us since we are approaching the spell’s cast point, or if it is more wide reaching. Continue your preparations.”
“Yes Master.” Stefan responded.
Vlad turned back to the cockpit, opened the communication array, and was bombarded with messages asking if the mysterious message was his. He dismissed the messages immediately and sent one of his own to Natalie. She responded instantly advising that not only she, but her entire personal team and all of the transport team had acquired the same message.
Vlad began sending out messages to all of the leadership within his communication sphere advising them to ignore the message for now as the zombies were a priority. He spent the rest of the flight to Temuco scanning high population areas through live satellite imaging to attempt to assess the global situation.
Vlad and Stefan both felt the aircraft slow and descend to its destination, it hovered above Temuco where they both looked at its screen, seeing the ocean of zombies moving in all directions throughout the city looking for life to feed on.
“Are you ready?” Vlad asked Stefan, getting a nod of approval in response. “Then let us get this over with. I will take the east side, from the ground level, you can take the west with your greater area coverage. Start with any that have moved from the city and work your way in.”
Once more Stefan nodded and Vlad opened the bomb bay doors which Stefan dropped through and began descending to the west. Vlad positioned the aircraft to the east and set it to hover. As Stefan continued his descent, Vlad internally admonished himself for having never created the bombs this vehicle was meant to deliver. Flattening the city wouldn’t have been the desired outcome but it certainly would have been faster.
Once in position on the east side of the horde, Vlad set the aircraft to maintain position and dropped through the bomb bay. Whilst falling, he reached out with his senses, looking for the animal population of the city, only to find it had largely fled. Not even rats remained. The animals he could sense seemed to have been pets, locked in their domiciles. On his way down, Vlad had noticed small pockets of zombies that laid motionless in various states of ruin. Some dismembered, some charred and smoking, they looked to have been destroyed by stationary weapons near a building’s entrance. As he neared the ground, he slowed his descent with his limited flight capabilities and landed softly.
Curious, Vlad teleported to a shadow near the corner of an adjacent building to where the destroyed zombies laid. Vlad observed the walls and doorway near the zombie bodies and caught a glimpse of a camera. He scanned the surface of the walls more closely and saw panels that appeared to be able to slide up. Vlad did not sense any life in or around the building, so he dismissed it and decided to get on with his grim work of dispatching this horde.
None of the zombies approached Vlad even as he got closer to them. He figured this might be the case, as he was not alive, but his movement should have at least gained a modicum of their attention. He put his gauntlet back on, felt for the sword at his hip, the shield and spear strapped to his back and readied himself.
“Stefan, are you in position and ready to begin?”
“I am, Master.”
“Excellent. I will await your beginning then.” Vlad said as he pulled the spear from his back and snapped his head downward, which dropped his visor.
Vlad only had to wait a few seconds before he heard what sounded like the roar of a tornado followed by a concussive thump that shook the ground and rattled buildings. Thousands of zombies lost their footing and fell in all directions. Vlad rushed forward at superhuman speed and thrust his spear, its bladed end stabbing through the back of a zombie’s skull and pulled back so fast it didn’t have time to get bloody.
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The motion, combined with the sound of one of their kind being dispatched caught a few of the zombies’ attention but before Vlad could tell if they planned to attack, he became a blur of motion. A single thrust for each face that had turned in his direction, through their mouth, out the back of their heads. As he killed them, more of their tightly packed neighbors began shifting his way.
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Stefan set the Implosion Cannon aside to let it recharge. It was an interesting weapon that fired a single, spherical, plasma round to a set distance, dialed in by the wielder. Once the round hit its location, it detonated. It was meant to be fired above the target and was modeled after a bomb that had a similar function. It used a super-heated explosion to remove the atmosphere from its field of influence which caused a concussive implosion that devastated personnel, their equipment if they had any and the ground underneath them if they somehow survived. The crater it left was impressive for a gun that had no recoil.
Stefan drew his next weapon, another rifle. This one was labeled as ‘The B.E. Rifle’. Stefan took aim and pulled the trigger. The rifle made a quiet ‘thp’ sound and the head of the zombie he targeted exploded with so much force that fragments of its skull became deadly projectiles.
“Master, what do the B and E stand for in the B.E. Rifle?” Stefan asked telepathically, impressed with the performance of the weapon.
“Butterfly and Effect. It is poorly named but the weapon itself is quite powerful.”
“It really is.” Stefan said gleefully.
Stefan continued to fire the B.E. Rifle into the crowd of zombies below him. He alternated body parts on the zombies to see the effect of the gun. If he targeted their chest, their vertebrae and ribs would be launched like missiles, causing tremendous but often non-lethal damage to the zombies around the target. Their heads exploding would often kill one or two more, but their shoulders were a different story. If the initial target survived the shot, it would stand back up and offer another chance at destruction. Stefan quickly began to love the rifle and the mayhem it sowed.
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Vlad continued his work dispatching the zombies one by one but realized that even with his speed, strength, and accuracy, it would take too long. The spear he used was less a traditional spear and more a short sword on a stick, similar to a naginata but clearly crafted by a European. It was a beautiful weapon, made of the same Blood Iron from which his armor was crafted. The shaft was six and a half feet long and the blade was two feet in length. The coloring was the same as his armor, a deep, nearly black red. It did not have any unnecessary decorations; its beauty came from its simplicity.
The blade of the spear had a razor’s edge that always looked freshly polished. When it reflected light, it would shine crimson. Vlad switched from thrusts to wide, arcing swings that left crimson crescent shaped after images when it caught the light of a streetlamp. Vlad swept the spear to the right in a half circle in front of him, the blade meeting no resistance in the necks of the ten zombies it met. Letting the spear wrap around the back of his own neck, he grabbed the spear and threw it with his left hand hard enough to remove the head of its initial target and continue through several more, dragging them to the ground.
Vlad drew his sword, a finely decorated saber, with his left hand and pulled the shield from his back, holding its inside grip with his right. Vlad adjusted his stance and casually marched forward, his sword moved so fast it was nearly invisible. Everything on his left side was left headless or split in half from head to pelvis.
On his right, zombies met their end by way of a bludgeoning force that peeled away their skin before obliterating the bones behind it. The shield was thrust so fast and often that each impact sounded like a miniature clap of thunder within an ever-escalating storm. Multiple bodies of the undead crumpled before being blasted backwards into the sea of their ilk.
Vlad still wasn’t pleased with the speed of his slaughter. He didn’t lean into modern weapons like his two subordinates, preferring to depend on his traditional style of combat and his beyond human physical and mental capabilities. He decided to switch tactics once again.
Vlad hunkered down, bending at the knees and waist, he launched himself forward like a bullet, shield facing forward, the pavement beneath his feet buckling. Every zombie body in his path broke upon his shield, the first few having burst like melons and many of those behind them were broken enough to no longer be mobile. Vlad adjusted to the weakness of pavement by bolstering himself with flight after his initial launch.
At each break in momentum Vlad would pivot and charge again, crushing ten to fifteen zombies with each explosive motion. Once he attained a rhythm, he added sword swings at the end of the charge, decapitating several undead before blasting off like a rocket in a different direction.
Vlad continued to dispatch swaths of the zombie horde for close to an hour when he received a new message from the mysterious ‘RULE’ and simultaneously felt a surge of magical power that dwarfed the spell that set this catastrophe in motion. The surge came from the sky, miles above his current location. That would have to wait, as the message caught his immediate attention.
Alert
You have destroyed more than twenty thousand Bio-Curse Infected.
As one of a few major contributors to RULE's imminent integration you are being awarded.
You have received five free Attribute points.
You have received the achievement, Undeath's End
For more information, think "Menu"
Continue to eliminate Bio-Curse Infected to expedite RULE System Integration.