Excise: A Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG (Ether Collapse Book 2)

by Ryan DeBruyn

  Unfortunately, while this was a relatively orderly retreat, the three tanks and a few mangled corpses of soldiers told the story of a few mishaps. In some cases, someone had closed in to release a skill and failed to keep a close eye on their enemy. In the case of the tanks, an overeager gunner had fired too many shots and overridden the safety protocols, allowing the turret to pull Ether from the engines. Often, the tanks had been empty, but in one case, the two soldiers inside had drained the battery so utterly that the electronic locks on the hatch had seized shut. That being said, of the nine hundred or so she had led to battle this day, only about twenty-five had fallen. Those numbers were the dream of any general, and Sela held her head high knowing her tactics now would keep more alive to shine tomorrow.

  Jack and Amber from the A-Team stood by and waited to see if their close combat skills would be needed. They both, unfortunately, had no ranged attacks that they could add to the mix. Even Smith was using but one of his three skills because it was the only one that had the range needed.

  Suddenly, one of the fifteen Abominations with low health stepped forward and was punched in the face by a massive arcane ball. The ball detonated and ripped the creature's stomach apart, leaving behind dragging entrails as the Abomination continued to stagger forward a few more steps before falling flat in death.

  Another Abomination suddenly was fighting a mud man that had risen from the trampled earth in front of it. At first, the Abomination was winning until the mud man got hit in the back with four spells Sela recognized. With each hit, the mud man grew larger, gained ghostly green armor, moved faster, and finally enraged. After its reinforcing, it pummeled the creature in front of it into the ground before throwing the corpse at the nearest Abomination and flowing across the ground in its direction. Well, this was unexpected!

  They could win!

  Sela looked beside her to see Derik give her a curt nod before casting another massive ball of arcane power. The other twenty-four exiles around him were adding their own class skills to the battle. While some of them were definitely NPCs, all of them stood together, showing a unified front in the face of the advancing death magic. Before the army even reached the kilometer mark, they had managed to down all of the remaining injured creatures, as the army was bolstered by Derik and the fresh exiles.

  Smith trotted up and patted his friend on the shoulder. “Good to have the big guns show up,” he drawled with his Native American lilt before pulling the man into a hug. Yeah, Derik was an ass to Rocky, but Sela knew Smith had been his friend since they were both young men.

  She looked away, scanning the group, looking for the real heroes of this battle and found them. Staring back at her pridefully stood the four men she had exiled outside of the Grotto. She nodded to them in appreciation, knowing that the mud man with the reinforcing buffs had done the majority of the work. They had been training alone outside the Grotto every day constantly, and it showed. If nothing else, this showed her the need to train herself!

  Sela simply ordered the army to continue its retreat to the border after acknowledging the four men. They wouldn’t be able to handle anything else today without waiting for the recharging of Ether batteries. As they turned to leave, she heard Azoth mentally say from above, “Sela, they go liquid again!”

  She growled in her throat as her body shot around to look, startling everyone around her, as all of the dead Abominations flowed into a single, roiling blob of white skin, innards, fetid blood, and cracking bones. She felt a dread well up inside of her at the familiar sight and what it had led to an hour ago.

  She Analyzed the blob to try to get an idea of what they were about to face.

  Hulking Abomination

  Level 65

  Master – Necromancer Champion

  Health Points 9,112/9,112

  As it grew its body and accompanying bulbous belly, Sela ordered a full retreat to the safety of the massive Territory trees. The army wouldn’t be able to hold this creature back as easily as its lesser brethren. If she was honest with herself, this creature could and should be able to wipe out the entire group in minutes. Her only hope was that if they got to the Territory, it might choose to leave them alone. She doubted it, but if it entered the Territory, the two Ottawa Knights would be obligated to join the fight as well.

  Warning! Someone has touched a place of power under your Territory. This has contested your leadership for Algonquin Valley. To cancel the contestation, destroy the force holding the Altar of Michabo. If you fail to destroy this force or to offer the altar a worthy sacrifice, the Leadership of the Territory will be transferred in six hours!

  5 hours 59 minutes and 45 seconds remaining.

  Now that your Territory is under contestation, all Territorial buffs, Territorial effects, and Territorial systems are currently unavailable to your population or you. To remedy this, capture the contested place of power before the enemy.

  She felt her body whip in the other direction, eyes wide as she looked in the direction of the cave she had exited weeks ago. The altar she had laid upon was a place of power?

  Places of power aren’t real! They are stories told to entice adventurers and treasure seekers!

  A massive, bellowing, multi-toned roar sounded, and her body whipped back again, making her look like a kid playing with a Barbie doll as her blonde hair streamed behind her. Her vision was entirely filled by a Hulking Abomination in all of its fetid, ghastly atrociousness.

  She screamed, “Retreat,” and saw the line that denoted the start of the Territory but not the Ottawa Knights that should be there to support them.

  Rocky

  Warning! Someone has touched a place of power under your Territory. This has contested your leadership for Algonquin Valley. To cancel the contestation, destroy the force holding the Altar of Michabo. If you fail to destroy this force or offer the altar a worthy sacrifice, the Leadership of the Territory will be transferred in six hours!

  5 hours 59 minutes and 45 seconds remaining.

  Now that your Territory is under contestation, all Territorial buffs, Territorial effects, and Territorial systems are currently unavailable to your population or you. To remedy this, capture the contested place of power before the enemy.

  What now?!

  He whined internally as a notification for something he didn’t even fully understand floated in front of him. There was a place of power below his Territory? And how in the fires of damnation was he supposed to stop the takeover?

  How the hell did they get by the boundary without it warning me of an invasion?

  With the army out of the Grotto, did that mean that someone had attacked the Grotto? How could they have taken it with Tao and Gamma present? Rocky increased his pace and checked his Ether pool to see it full once again. According to Azoth, the army had just managed to defeat the last of the Abominations before another bigger one took all of their places.

  Currently, the army was fleeing to the safety of the trees, which denoted the Territory line, as the thing formed. A massive, bellowing, multi-toned roar sounded from a good distance in front of him, and he clenched his jaw as he felt the ground shake under him. At first, he thought it was his imagination, but another quick tremor rattled his teeth together, causing them to grind due to his clenched muscles. He forcibly relaxed his jaw after that unpleasant sensation and continued sprinting forward as a hulking white humanoid shape came into view. He Analyzed the creature and froze stock-still; it was a damn Master class. Checking again with Azoth, he confirmed that Tao and Gamma weren’t at the Territory line as expected.

  In desperation, he rifled in his bag of holding, trying to find anything that might help. He had two remaining plasma grenades and five gravity grenades. If he could force the grenades down the creature’s throat, he might have a chance. As he pulled items and dropped them back into his bag scanning its contents, he was suddenly holding the massive tooth ring from the Dragon. He blinked and watched as it shrunk in size to something that he could wear on his wrist before
shrinking further to the size of his index finger. He Analyzed it as the creature began picking up speed towards the trees.

  Come on, be good this one time!

  Dragon’s Eternium Ring of Spell Storage

  This ring will store one spell or skill up to Legendary rank within itself. The wearer can expel the charge on the ring to cast the spell or skill, costing themselves nothing as the initial charge giver must pay the Ether or Essence price of the spell or skill stored.

  Current spell stored:

  Liquid Blue Fire Spit

  Charges: 1

  The Dragon had been breathing blue fire in the fight he had seen. While Rocky couldn’t be certain, he really hoped that this was the same destructive spell or skill he had seen Bathilda using. If it was, he could definitely use it to fry the creature in front of him. The problem was that if he did use it for that, he wouldn’t have it for whatever was trying to take over his Territory. His inner greed menagerie was going wild, and he was forced to fight with his desire to hoard the ring and never use it.

  He slipped it on to his finger regardless, for a situation was destined to come where he would need the thing. Then he asked Azoth to come to pick him up. It was time to take down a Hulking Abomination, and he didn’t want to climb the thing’s rotten-looking flesh if he could avoid it.

  Azoth took a moment to circle around and then landed beside him. When he did, Rocky clicked his radio and interrupted whoever was speaking, “Eagle Eye here. Everyone okay?” There was a long pause after his words, and Rocky assumed it was because he hadn’t finished with over. Azoth started descending towards him.

  “Selaphelia Ardensai. We won’t last for long once that thing reaches the trees. Where is the Dragon? Over,” came Sela’s voice in his ear, and he nearly threw the device away in a fit of rage.

  Then he mumbled to himself, “The Dragon was stuck in place because it didn’t have its pretty little necklace!” He didn’t send that over the radio as he realized that it wouldn’t be the greatest for morale, so instead, he blandly stated, “Otherwise detained.”

  Azoth thumped down beside him as the chatter of the retreat continued, no longer addressed to him. The Hulking Abomination was picking up speed as it moved, and its sixty-foot, fat body would soon be crashing through the healthy trees of the Territory and the army they hid if he didn’t do anything. “Let’s distract the giant, fat toddler!” he mentally screamed at Azoth as he tied himself in. Azoth didn’t hesitate and launched himself into the air with a tooth-clattering leap.

  As they approached, Rocky saw three black circles on the ground with nothing inside them. From the air, he couldn’t be sure especially against the black of the contorted foliage, but it looked like Zippo had been at play. He shrugged as he continued speeding towards the disgusting form of the beast.

  It turned out that it was easy to distract the creature but much harder to avoid it once you did. Azoth zoomed by ten feet from the Abomination’s nose, and Rocky saw its black eyes lose focus, then track the Chimera as it swung its arms to bat them from the sky. Luckily, Azoth was moving very fast, and an arm whooshed by. The displaced air was enough to force Azoth into a barrel roll due to turbulence.

  Steadying back out with a white-knuckled Rocky on his back, Azoth watched as the creature came to a sliding stop and glared at them before throwing a bone chain affixed to a hook that Rocky had failed to notice. The hook would have skewered Azoth if Rocky didn’t bat at it with his sword and all his strength. Even then he only managed to move it a few feet, which when combined with Azoth’s banking, avoided the projectile.

  Rocky ordered Azoth to dive again and tightened the straps on his legs that tied him into the saddle. Azoth swooped back as Rocky brought out plan A. He linked together all five of the gravity grenades and got ready to launch them into the thing’s open mouth as it tracked them. Just as Azoth reached a point over its head, the Abomination looked up, unhinging its jaw and opening its mouth wide as it did so. Rocky dropped the payload and depressed the pin on one of the grenades. The hook the enemy fired passed within centimeters of Azoth’s rear end as he sped by, and luckily, the grenades hit their rather massive mark and ricochet down the creature’s throat.

  This may need to become my signature move!

  “Bank!” Rocky shouted in celebration as the payload hit a tooth before sinking into the massive basket of a throat. Nearly instantly, he saw the creature's stomach begin roiling and sucking inwards. Azoth continued to speed away as distant squelches could be heard as the creature’s skin, fat, organs, and other body parts liquified in the blackhole blender. Rocky watched as it sat down, no longer having the muscles needed to carry its skeletal structure. Then he flew over to the trees to find Sela looking on and smiled at her. “That seemed to take care of it!” he exclaimed cockily.

  Sela’s answer was a shake of her head and a mute point backwards. Rocky whipped around and saw that flesh was re-affixing itself in place in much of the creature’s body. He used Analyze.

  Hulking Abomination

  Level 65

  Master – Necromancer Champion

  Health Points 4,523/9,112

  “Oh, come on!” Rocky exclaimed and thought about the rest of his grenades or making an Azoth-assisted trip to the shop. However, he knew that the thing would be in their Territory and wreaking havoc if he did that. Rocky looked at his new ring and sighed, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it but feeling deep within himself that it might be inevitable.

  In the heartbeat he had spent contemplating, the bones of the creature had suddenly shot erect, and twenty small chains with hooks erupted from the creature in a wide arc. One wrapped up Jack who was standing right beside him. All across the trees, silence descended for a heartbeat, then screams erupted from twenty throats as the chained people flew towards the creature. Rocky thought desperately, trying to see a way to save the people who were now chained to one of the creature’s rib bones.

  He considered trying to charge it and break its bones, but then watched on as Jack unleashed his full range of skills on the creature to no effect. Amber screamed out her rage from where she stood, not four feet from where Jack had been, and began to glow a golden color. Sela placed her hand on Amber’s shoulder. “You cannot help him now. Charging in there will only increase the butcher’s bill.” She turned to Rocky and screamed, “We need to destroy that thing now! As soon as it is done digesting those twenty, it will probably grab another twenty to continue healing from the damage you did!”

  As he watched, skin began forming over the struggling Jack, and his bellowing screams told them of the pain he was in. Rocky jumped on to Azoth’s back, and they leaped back into the air. His only option was the ring, and his only chance to save the rest of the army was to use its charge. It was no longer a question.

  Once they reached a point above the reforming creature, Rocky leaned far out from Azoth and held his closed fist out, aiming it at the Abomination beneath the hovering Azoth. He could see Jack still screaming and the other nineteen people looking up at him with pleading in their eyes. He closed his own eyes, trying to not see them, then unleashed the charge in the ring. A pillar of blue fire burst to life, blinding Rocky through his closed eyelids and anyone who was watching from the trees was forced to look away. Through his blindness, he heard a wailing hiss from beneath him, and he felt a scorching heat wafting up from below.

  Azoth asked, “Why you blind Azoth?”

  Ten seconds later, the world was still white, and the sounds of evaporating flesh were gone. Rocky heard the radio in his ear click on, “What in the tarnations was that?” Joe had forgotten to use radio etiquette, and a blind Rocky normally would have felt vindicated, but all he could picture was the struggling twenty people he had just put to the torch.

  When his vision began to clear, he realized that he and Azoth were far higher than they had been when he unleashed the Dragon breath charge. The superheated air had most likely created a powerful updraft that had made Azoth’s constant flapping rais
e them instead of holding them steady. Azoth shook his head a few times, trying to clear the vestiges of his vision as they both looked down at a smoldering, blackened pit where a monstrous form had stood moments before. Anything left of the creatures seemed to have been converted to carbon before blowing away on the cleansing wind.

  Rocky directed Azoth to join the army in the trees, and the Chimera obliged, only mumbling mental oddities again that Rocky didn’t fully understand, “Azoth was above… creature burnt dead… Azoth use new ability?” Rocky wasn’t sure, but he thought perhaps his pet was trying to understand what had just happened, and he thought it might be slightly more humorous to see what he came up with than trying to explain the truth of it to him. Right now, he needed that humor.

  The group in the trees had begun forming back up and heading back to the Territory. Only Sela, Zippo, and Smith were still present and waiting on the two to rejoin them. As they landed, Sela immediately asked, “Did you receive the notification?” Rocky nodded to her, his eyes sad and distant. In response to his look, she overdramatically stated, “I am worried that Tao and Gamma didn’t arrive to provide aid. I have already sent the army back, but we should return to the Grotto ahead of the army!” She put a bit too much emphasis and volume into her announcement for him not to understand what wasn’t being said.

  She thinks that it could be Tao and Gamma who are contesting the Territory?

  He hoped she was wrong because the only weapon he had that might have damaged the two Master class Knights had just been used to save the majority of the army from a Master class pet. Also, he rather liked Tao and Gamma.