I clicked Summon to Waypoint, and I sent him off south toward the rift, roughly in the direction of Bast. I needed Jenk to think we were in Bast, and we were summoning the kaiju to us. Once the kaiju got there, I’d have him burrow into the ground where hopefully he wouldn’t get too molested by the demons.
If I could get into Medina before Jenk figured it out, we’d have many more options. I sighed, looking at Clara. You-know-who misses her mommy. Should I tell her? I didn’t know. My instincts told me it would be a bad idea.
“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow we’re going into the old city. We’re going to find the Shrill, heal him, find Bernadette the quantum mechanic lady, and we’re going to get her back here to fix the damn transport gazebo.”
Clara nodded. “You got it, boss.”
Part 3 – The Shrill
Chapter 31
Feedings left: 142
It took us a day longer than I anticipated to get out of Charnel and off toward the devastated city. While Clara slept, I spent the time using my newly acquired mapping ability. I noticed a small town not too far away called Yelm. It was a nerve agent village, home of the same ogre people as SmashSouth. But they had a stable within and a few other shops. I was hoping to get Banksy decked out with a saddle or whatever was required to get me able to ride him. Now that Clara could fly, the two of them had been able to travel across the map much more quickly than they’d be able to with me.
The world map on this game was big, but not huge. Dominion of Blades was a one to one map of the real world, and it would take someone years to travel from one end to the other if they tried it without the travel nodes. Some of those space games had maps literally the size of the galaxy. This map was much smaller, just a couple hundred square miles if I was reading it correctly. So walking from one end to the other was possible, but it wasn’t really feasible. That’s why there was fast travel, mounts, teleportation, and vehicles. And the kaiju themselves.
But we couldn’t yet teleport, and we couldn’t use the kaiju or vehicles without attracting attention to ourselves. So we were stuck on foot.
It took most of a day to walk north toward Yelm. We kept to the outskirts of the old city, avoiding the flying demons the best we could. I walked with Banksy slithering next to me, occasionally darting off to kill something. Clara flew, but she only dared to venture a couple feet off the ground. Winky blinked back and forth throughout the day, fluttering haphazardly by Clara’s head.
We sporadically had to stop and fight small groups of flying demons. These smaller ones were yellow and green-tagged. As long as they weren’t in groups of more than five or six, they weren’t a problem. The dwarf-sized demons were fast, though, and we had to keep a wary eye out. They carried nets and flaming swords that disintegrated when they died. Clara’s fully-automatic Uzi usually made short work of them. My slower-shooting Epiviper was enough to one-shot the green-tagged ones, and it stunned the bigger ones long enough that they would fall from the sky and usually die on impact.
These things sometimes traveled in groups of a hundred or more. Massive flocks patrolled the skies, and when we saw them, we had to quickly find cover.
The larger vulture demons also had to be avoided at all costs. The further north we traveled, the more they darkened the sky with their blazing red tags. I used seven of my 19 skill points to buy a spell called Leaden, which caused flying demons to slam to the ground. The spell used a lot of soul power, though, so I had to save it only for emergencies.
We passed through the encampment Clara and Banksy had liberated. The bodies of the four-armed ant demons were all gone, but the camp was bigger than I thought it was.
“How many of them were there?” I asked, looking about at the still-smoldering wreckage with awe.
“A lot,” Banksy said. “Clara flew in the air and shot them up good.”
“The zippers don’t have guns,” Clara said.
“Zippers?” I asked.
She nodded. “Renault says they’re called zipacna demons, but everyone calls them zippers. They don’t use guns, just these dragon-headed clubs or these things that look like segmented cricket bats. But you gotta be careful. There’s usually a couple of the bigger ones in the camps, the two-headed dreadnoughts with the hand cannons. Once you take those out, it’s cake. As long as the sky is clear, the zippers can’t reach me as I float above them and fire. It’s like free experience. Once the shooting starts, they get flustered easy. I had Banksy rush them after I killed a bunch. It was pure chaos, and it was over quickly. They’re strong, but they don’t work well individually. They swarm, and if you upset their order and kill the leaders, they’re mostly harmless.”
“They taste spicy, too,” Banksy said.
I remembered watching a swarm of these demons take Bast down during the opening game sequence, so I knew they were more than “mostly harmless.”
Less than twenty minutes later, we came across a small pack of the zippers. We spied about fifteen of them ranging across the road, headed into the abandoned city. They were all green tagged. We hid behind the bombed-out husk of an old school bus that had “Lake Travis I.S.D.” written on it in faded letters. The four-armed demons were about seven feet tall and scary as hell. Their chitinous armor gleamed red and black. Two of them wore large helmets made of the skulls of larger, dragon-like demons and adorned with a full headdress of long, turquoise feathers, reminiscent of Mayan or Aztec armor. The two with the headdresses each carried a pair of the dragon-headed clubs in two of their arms, and the others carried long sticks that appeared to be covered with obsidian teeth. I’d seen similar weapons before in school. They did look like cricket bats, only much deadlier. I couldn’t remember what they were called, but the swords were of native South American origin.
Winky blinked into existence next to Clara. Clara nodded and said, “How far back?” A pause. “Okay, good girl.” Winky disappeared with a pop.
“There’s a much bigger contingent about 10 minutes behind them. A couple thousand at least. We should probably leave these guys alone. We might attract the main hive.”
I agreed, looking nervously toward the woods to the east. The further north we went, the denser with monsters and roving armies it was getting. We waited for the zippers to pass, and we hustled out of the area.
The town of Yelm bordered a lake an hour north. A steady cloud of white smoke billowed into the sky from the direction of the town. As we advanced, the rattle of gunfire rose in the distance, followed by an explosion. The gunfire and explosions increased in ferocity the closer we got. By the time we reached the base of the hills outside of Yelm, it sounded as if world war three raged just over the rise.
Entering Yelm Outskirts.
We crested the hill, hitting the dirt as we looked upon a blasted and blackened valley. My first thought was this valley was probably once quite beautiful. My second thought was: fuck.
“This looks fun,” Clara said.
A pitched battle raged in the valley.
The large nerve agents used a combination of steam and earth magic, and their town reflected that. The town, if it could be called that, appeared to be the remnants of an old factory built around a massive steam engine. And it didn’t border the lake like I’d assumed based on the map. It sat upon an island in the middle of the lake, making the water more like a moat. Smoke and steam poured from multiple stacks on the building. A wheel that stood at least three stories tall spun, half-buried in the water. Several gun emplacements dotted the roof of the old building, similar to the ones Charnel used. The defenders poured tracer fire into the horde of demons on the ground below.
These demons were not of a kind I’d seen before. These were fat, pink-hued humanoid cyclops with rotting flesh and patchwork skin, like they’d been sewn together haphazardly. Living, overstuffed ragdolls. Some had pointed heads, some had swirls of skin, like flesh soft serve on top of their heads. Others were perfectly round-headed. They varied in size from about five feet tall to almost twice as large, as big as ten fe
et. They each had two arms, two fat legs, a swollen belly, a single horn on their foreheads, and a giant, plate-sized eye in the center of their misshapen heads.
The fat creatures crawled across the valley toward the moat. They were armed with machine guns and what appeared to be grenade launchers. They also had a pair of tracked vehicles. Not quite tanks, but they were like moving flatbeds, each with a colossal cannon on top. A strange, black substance covered the ground around the tracked vehicles.
Fire raged back and forth between the two groups.
“Cyclods,” Clara said. “I hate these guys. They have a thing for nerve agents, I guess. They were always attacking Warble.”
The creatures were all green tagged, which meant we could take them easily. At least one on one.
“Should we go down there and help?” I asked, pulling my gun.
“Fuck no,” she said. “They’re harder than they look. Oh man, they’re going to fire the spider gun. Watch this.”
A group of four of the bigger cyclods manned the steel cannon on one of the tracked flatbeds. The gun was huge, a relic from some battleship. One of the demons deflated before my eyes. His flesh caved in on itself, falling into a pile on the platform like he was a balloon with all the air let out. A second and third cyclod did the same.
Only a single demon remained on the platform, standing at the very back of the gun. The cannon fired with a resounding thwump.
A black ball smashed into one of nerve agent gun emplacements on top of the town. I watched in horror as a seething, living black mass splattered over the three nerve agents. The ogres writhed, screaming and batting at themselves before dropping dead. Another nerve agent appeared on the roof and blasted the group with a flame thrower.
“Spider gun,” Clara repeated. “The cyclods are filled with venomous bugs and spiders. Never get into an enclosed space with one.” She shuddered. “They won’t fight you. They’ll just deflate and overwhelm you.”
“Well that’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen,” I said.
“Some of them have small, handheld spiders guns too. They’ll shoot you from a hundred yards out, and you’re covered with hundreds of biting spiders and beetles before you know it. We’re going to need more antidote potions. We are too low on supplies to fight them properly.”
“What we are is too late,” I said. “This town is screwed.”
“Something is coming,” Banksy said. “From below. I can feel it.”
A moment later, the earth parted, and several dozen skull-masked nerve agents burst from the ground. The screaming ogres were mounted on the backs of giant millipedes, each about the size of Banksy. The nerve agents held large, hand-cranked flame throwers. They leaped off their mounts, took a knee, and started pouring jets of flame into the scattering cyclods. One of the tracked vehicles detonated, blown sky-high from an attack I hadn’t seen. A moment later, the second also exploded.
One of the millipedes, now without a rider, curled into a ball and rolled through a group of cyclods, bowling them over. The bodies split open, the flesh bulging and ripping and popping, spraying black bugs everywhere.
I could feel the terrible heat of the flamethrowers wash over me, even up here on the hill.
“You have to use flamethrowers if you want to tangle with these guys,” Clara said.
I nodded. Killing a cyclod with a gun would be like poking a hole in a water balloon. Instead of getting wet, you got covered in spiders.
The tide of the battle had switched in a matter of moments. Less than a minute later, the remaining cyclods slinked back west, disappearing back into the hills. The nerve agents cheered, raising their giant arms into the air.
“These guys like us, right?” I asked as we stood, preparing to go greet them.
“Earth tends to not get along well with wind, so they’ll like you more than me, but neither of us are their typical enemies. Since they’re steam and earth, their traditional adversary will be whoever is wind and technology. I think that might be the alienists. Those bug-headed guys.”
“I haven’t seen too many of those about. The alienists I mean,” I said as we trudged down the hill. The nerve agents were using the millipedes to drag the wrecked flatbed vehicles away, northeast toward the woods. I wondered how often these attacks happened. In Charnel, it was about once every hour. But that was only a couple flying demons. This was a full-on attack.
Clara shrugged. “Most of the technology races seem to be more antisocial. There are a couple hidden towns and planes and stuff like that. That place you mentioned, Necroshire, where you did your upcycle upgrade. It’s one of those hidden towns. That’s a leecher village, I think. I have no idea where it is or how to get to it.”
The nerve agents noticed us, and a pair mounted up on their millipedes and approached us. They wore their flame throwers, brandishing them menacingly. Winky, who had randomly reappeared a few moments earlier, hissed and popped away at the sight of the large ogres.
Shit. The last thing we needed was a repeat of the last town. I pulled the charm potion from my belt. “How long do these things last?”
“I don’t know,” Clara said. “Probably a couple hours.”
“Okay, then we’ll have to make this snappy.” I downed the potion. I cringed, hoping I wouldn’t end up poisoned. I wasn’t. Thankfully the game made a distinction between food and potions.
Charm has temporarily been boosted by five points. Your charm is now 13.
I raised my hand in greeting, and one of them waved back. Both nerve agents seemed to relax. They lowered their flame throwers.
“Greetings, travelers,” one of them called, still twenty meters away. Their millipede mounts made an odd rustling noise as they zigzagged over the blackened ground. Beside me, Banksy tensed at the approach of the twin mounts.
I examined the nametag of the bigger nerve agent.
J-Beefy – Town War Chief (Level 52).
“J-Beefy?” I said to Clara. “What the hell kind of name is that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. These guys all have stupid names. I saw one in Medina named Cheese Nostril or some shit like that. The developers were probably smoking weed when they named them all.”
J-Beefy had an easy, relaxed manner about him. At level 52, he was one of the most powerful NPCs I’d seen so far. The other nerve agent was named “Hairy Bill,” a level 16 town guard. He didn’t seem any more or less hairy than the others. He seemed much younger, though it was hard to tell the ages of these guys. Both of the blue-skinned nerve agents had the hanging jowls indicative of their kind, but J-Beefy’s hung much further down.
“Hi there,” I said. “We caught the end of the battle. You have to fight these guys a lot?”
J-Beefy shrugged. “They harass us about once a day. Some days they bring more. Some days they bring less. It’s almost always just the bug sacks.” He patted his flamethrower. “They’re not too tough as long as you got gas in your tank.”
I noticed he had “Velma” etched onto his flame thrower. I wondered if I should name my own gun.
“Listen,” I said. “I heard you guys have a stable in town.” I eyed the large factory dubiously. “I’m hoping to purchase some supplies for my worm.”
J-Beefy scratched the head of his millipede affectionately. The black creature made a chittering noise and thrashed its mandibles. The nerve agents rode close to the head of the long bugs, sitting astride leather saddles that appeared to be made specifically for the millipedes.
“We do indeed have what you’re looking for. And more if you got the money for it. Yelm can always use fresh business, especially these days.” J-Beefy looked Banksy up and down appraisingly. “That’s a mighty fine hook slayer you have there. I’m sure ol’ Crust Sock will have what you need.”
“Crust sock?” I asked.
“Yep. That’s our stablemaster. Follow me.”
Chapter 32
“What do you do with all that stuff?” I asked, indicating the piles of guns and debris being
stacked by the nerve agents. We approached the large, chugging building that represented the town of Yelm. Nerve agents swarmed the fields, cleaning up after the recent attack.
J-Beefy waved vaguely north. “We have an ironworks outside of town. We melt most of it down. We gotta be careful to get it all. After we pick it all up, we douse the ground out here again with fire, just to be sure. Can’t have any bugs crawling around.”
I stepped on what looked like a black squirt gun. I reached down to pick it up. I examined its properties:
Spider Gun (Empty)
This weapon can only be fired once. Once fired, it needs to be given to a Cyclod to reload.
Fires Cyclod hive colony members at target.
“You best be careful with that,” J-Beefy said. “That there is a spider gun. See that little cap on top right there? You screw that off, and you’ll be covered in biting, venomous bugs before you can say ‘barbequed ballsack.’ Even if it says it’s empty, there’s always some of them critters still in there. They get all over. If that happens, I gotta use Velma here to clean them off of you. You won’t like that much.”
I nodded. I tossed the gun back on the ground.
The bottom level of the town of Yelm was not anything like I expected. We crossed the bridge, guarded carefully by dozens of mean and angry-looking nerve agents with names such as “Garbage Stan” and “Dank Tank.” We passed through the large, metallic double doors of the factory into a large, open space with a dirt floor.
The ceiling here was lower than I expected considering the height of the nerve agents, though they walked freely about, their heads in some cases brushing underneath the low roof by centimeters. The moment we entered, J-Beefy and Hairy Bill dismounted. Their millipedes burrowed into the dirt and disappeared.
“There are a lot of things moving around underneath us,” Banksy said, looking at the ground uncertainly.
Wide, leather belts zipped about the ceiling in some places, driven by cogs and gears, all hanging low enough to brain me if I wasn’t careful where I walked. They whizzed merrily about with unknown but determined purpose. Most of these contraptions were below chin level for the nerve agents. The maze of belts and spinning cogs made for a set of pathways on this open level.
Kaiju- Battlefield Surgeon Page 27