The Culling of Man: A litrpg adventure (Peril's Prodigy Book 1)

by Craig Kobayashi

  Note: Effect can not occur more than once every 5 seconds; only effective against enemies with a Level equal to or less than your own; Reanimated beings possess only 50% of the Attributes they had when alive.

  Cost to Unlock: 1

  Unused Skill Points: 0

  ‘Coooool!’ Garath thought to himself. Skills like Death’s Medium were exactly why he had chosen the Necrologist Class in the first place. To be fair, he was a little sour that he wasn’t able to purchase the hidden Skill immediately, but at least he had a reason to look forward to Level 22 - apart from living long enough to make it there.

  With his Attribute Points allocated and his new Skills purchased, something else occurred to the Necrologist. In every Raid he had ever organized for an online game, and in every player versus player battle, he had always had a thorough knowledge of the Skills and limitations of his teammates. It had always been important to him to have an intimate understanding of those things to effectively lead the team to victory. Without knowing the spells each party member could cast, and their respective cast times, Mana costs, and cooldowns, victory (or in this case survival) would be left largely to chance - even in a game he wouldn't allow that. With over 100 lives at stake, including over ten children and a handful of disabled folks, he knew he had some work to do.

  With just under an hour until the final wave of The Culling and the increasing absence of Wyverns daring enough to brave a life or death battle with The Band of the Hawk, Garath spent his time going from one person to the next asking questions about their respective Classes and taking note of anything he found particularly interesting. He didn’t waste time trying to memorize every Skill, cost, and cooldown but he did find that each Class he asked about had three unique Skill Trees, just like Necrologist. And, also just like Necrologist, each Class received a predetermined set of automatically distributed APs each Level. The part he was surprised to find out though, was how few Classes were Mana dependent. TodoroKen, for example, had chosen the Alchemist Class and he didn’t have Mana at all. Instead, the Alchemist depended on a handful of different Elemental Runes - TodoroKen explained that he had unlocked two Oxygen Runes, one Sulfur Rune, one Silicon Rune, and four Carbon Runes. He then went on to explain that using the Runes in different ways, such as initiating a chemical change or combining the elements in a certain order or quantity would give different results. Garath was so interested to learn more that he almost had to physically stop himself from asking more questions and made a mental note to sit down with TodoroKen for lunch or something after The Culling to ask the doctor more questions.

  He also found that he was able to modify his Raid Group settings to display each of the member's nameplates along with their respective Level along with their Health and Mana bars in a semi-transparent grid along his peripherals. It didn't impede his vision much and it would allow him to keep a closer eye on how the group was doing as a whole and on an individual level.

  At 20:30 as defined by the new GST, the perfunctory prompt appeared… With an alarming new addition.

  Monster respawns will be halted for the next 30 minutes as the next wave is prepared. Rest and hone your skills, human. The Culling continues at 21:00(GST).

  The Culling Totals

  Global Death Count: 6,799,463,123

  Community Death Count: 101,982

  The final wave of The Culling brings with it the first new, permanent residents of Earth - the Dragons. A beautiful and sentient race, the Dragons were promised a new home on Earth. Before they search for a suitable habitat, the mythical reptiles are tasked with lowering the population of humans. Avoid them at all costs.

  Garath swore loudly.

  “Wow,” gasped Sharon, a cough drop falling from her open mouth. Garath’s neighbor looked seriously impressed. “In all my considerable time on this earth, that was the single most profane string of words I have ever heard, young man.”

  Garath didn't respond. He didn't want to explain that it wasn’t the increasing number of deaths he was swearing about. That had more or less stopped affecting him somewhere between alot and four billion. He was swearing because he had spent the last hour learning about the other Classes he was fighting with to strategize for the final wave, when all he really needed to do was tuck his head between his legs and kiss his ass goodbye.

  Chapter 21

  Apocalypse 3/3

  Exhaustion had set in on The Band of the Hawk in the nervous silence between the death toll and final wave. The fighting force was battered and bruised from hours of combat. Even the children were drooping, their previously adrenaline-induced mania petering - everyone was running on empty.

  At 21:00GST - the scheduled start time of The Culling’s final wave - nothing happened. For long minutes The Band of the Hawk waited, wary and weary near the doors of the battered stronghold. The chain link fence that had been so useful during the initial waves of The Culling was now nothing but a few metal poles sticking out of the ground at seemingly random angles.

  At 21:09GST Garath and the others started growing restless. The ranged fighters and healers came out to join the Necrologist and melee fighters on the asphalt outside, cautiously scanning the burning city. Children pressed their faces against the windows of the old school building, watching and waiting.

  The night did not lend itself to observation though. The smell of burning rubber and plastic filled the air. Heavy smoke hung low, limiting visual range. Everything was still until a throaty roar from the south pierced the silence, ripping the battered Raid Group from their sleep deprivation and trauma induced melancholy.

  Garath's glowing eyes darted in every direction, frantically seeking out the source of that roar in the smoke filled sky. Scarcely visible - yet somehow still unmistakable - the Necrologist spotted what could only be three Dragons. They were flying parallel to each other from south to north, a few hundred yards between them. The massive winged lizards seemed to be moving at a relatively slow pace, arcing their destructive beams left and right to spread the damage to as much of the surface below as they could.

  Directly above the coastline, and making a beeline in their direction, Garath could make out a white Dragon hurling a storm of ivory death from its open mouth. A few hundred yards inland, east of The Band's stronghold, a blood red Dragon spewed large gouts of flame that seemed to spread in wider and wider as they glided toward the land below. East of that still, Garath could just make out a glimpse of an electric blue Dragon and - though he couldn't be sure - even farther to the southeast, he thought he could see a fourth Dragon hurling magic as it made its way north. The Raid leader cursed under his breath as the massive white draconid drew closer. Every member of The Band stared open mouthed and wide eyed at their impending demise.

  ''Avoid them all all costs' my ass,' he thought bitterly as the school-bus-sized flying reptile got just close enough for Garath to see the area of effect of its torrential attack - a half-mile-wide world of white in its wake. In place of houses where families once lived and parks where children used to play, now lay a white-washed, crystalline forest of jagged ice pillars. Out of context, the scene could have been beautiful - like some fairy tale Christmas in a magical wonderland. Nobody saw that beauty though. Most of the people who used to walk to work or school through these streets would never see the light of another day.

  Garath rushed everyone back into the building as death came on white-scaled wings to within 1500 meters. The Dragon continued its attack, sending wicked ice spikes the size of baseball bats to rain murder from the sky as the last members of The Band of the Hawk hurried through the double doors and into the brick school building.

  The savage spears of ice shattered on impact when they hit the asphalt outside the building, sending pointed shards hurtling through the air like frigid shrapnel. Garath slammed the glass doors behind them. Just as the handles came together, dozens of the frozen projectiles crashed into the glass, sending spiderweb cracks stretching across the doors.

  ‘Hail has got to be my least fav
orite form of precipitation…’ Garath thought to himself, pouting in a way unbecoming of a nearly thirty-year-old man. He snuck an upward glance right as the Dragon was passing over the old school building - he had been wrong, it was definitely bigger than a school bus.

  For seconds that seemed to stretch into hours, the tempest of white and cobalt ice-shards battered the roof of the brick building as the mammoth reptile passed overhead. Garath cringed with each crash and boom and breaking of glass, wondering if the building could stand up to the onslaught and knowing that they had taken a risk by hiding inside their stronghold. He had seen the buildings already laid to waste in the wake of the great white Dragon and prayed to whatever god would listen that The Church of Immaculate Conception would hold, but there was nothing for it - all he could do at that point was wait, and hope.

  The sound of breaking glass and the hammering of ice against as it pelted the roof finally subsided and all was strangely quiet. The temperature plummeted at an unnatural rate and, in the muggy heat of summer, the moisture in the air flash froze - leaving sparkling fractals of white-blue flakes hanging suspended, floating and motionless. Not a breath was taken as The Band stood motionless in fear.

  The surreal moment of relief was short lived, and ended abruptly when the white Dragon landed down with a deafening boom only twenty-meters in front of the cracked and frosted glass doors. Garath had fantasized about seeing an actual Dragon in person regularly ever since he read Dragonriders of Pern in the fifth grade, but even he wasn't prepared for what they saw. The mythic reptile was absolutely terrifying.

  Every inch of its muscled body was covered with thick, overlapping white scales. Its long, sharp claws tore rents in the asphalt like it was butter. Its harshly angled azure eyes were staring intensely right back at them, unblinking. It opened its fanged mouth and bellowed a challenging roar to the worried warband hiding behind the brick walls. Garath hesitantly triggered Inspect, almost not wanting to see what they were up against. He immediately wished he hadn't.

  Aldrasyl

  Health: 49,500/49,500

  Race: Beast - Ice Drake

  Level: ???

  Mana: 14,750/15,500

  Specification: Mythic Reptile

  Description: Mysterious and powerful, Dragons were the masters and apex predators on the dead planet of Thysandra for millenia.

  Traits: unknown

  Garath's jaw dropped and his mouth hung open stupidly. Not only did they have to fight a freaking DRAGON, said Dragon's Level was apparently beyond Garath's ability to Inspect and the damn thing had almost fifty-thousand HP!

  The Necrologist was almost positive that this foe was beyond the capacity of his make-shift Raid Group - made up of random, exhausted people - to handle. He was even more sure that the damn thing could easily bring down the building they were hiding in and kill them all where they stood. And if the chances of hiding from it were low, the chances of outrunning the winged reptile were even lower than the odds of Garath ever coming up with a decent joke about the Church of Immaculate Conception. The last thing, this one he was sure of, was that this 'Aldrasyl' wouldn't just stand there while Garath weighed his options. If they were going to survive, there was only one option left. They would have to fight it.

  Garath shifted seamlessly into his small, white House Cat form. Less than a foot tall and fuzzy once again, the Necrologist addressed the Raid as he slipped through a hole in the glass doors and stepped out into the frigid night.

  *It's not going to let us hide,* he told them, sinking his needle-like claws into the ice with each step for sure footing as he sprinted toward the Ice Dragon. *Tanks, we're going to do a taunt rotation. When I call your name, use your taunt and strongest defensive abilities. Melee fighters, attack but stay on its flanks - away from its tail and face. Casters stay close to Athios and give it hell. Athios, save your Mana and only use your dimension shit to get people out of danger. AyAyRon, play whatever song is going to increase our damage output the most. Everyone, just… just do the best you can and don't die.*

  Camouflaged and unseen with his white fur, Garath maneuvered across the preternatural winter landscape. He didn't have much of a plan but he knew a good place to start. He could get behind the Dragon and attack to get its attention, hopefully turning it away from the doors long enough for the fighters to get out of the building and for the tanks to get into position.

  The Ice Drake flexed its wings and hissed menacingly at the doorway as Garath dashed between the Dragon's front legs to its underside. The Necrologist had planned to continue below the creature and then attack it from behind, but was forced to reconsider when he was nearly knocked off his feet by a swinging white penis so massive it may as well be a wrecking ball to the kitten sized Necrologist. Garath stopped on a dime to avoid being the victim of a full body mushroom stamp. That was one of the things a game designer would typically just leave out. Nobody wanted to see a dragon dong, Garath was no exception, but it did give him an idea. He had been so enthralled with the new game-like aspects that he had nearly forgotten he was still on Earth, that he was not constrained by the limits of game design. Cats can't smile, but if they could, Garath's small white House Cat form would have been grinning devilishly. Aldrasyl's intense, angled and azure eyes never left the front doors - the poor Dragon never saw it coming.

  Garath briefly considered not taking the cheap shot but he knew he would have to take any advantage he could if they were going to live. And hey, fuck it - it's not like a house cat against a house-sized DRAGON was a fair fight anyways. He jumped and latched on to the dangling phallus with all four clawed feet. Aldrasyl roared in pain and rage, rising to stand on its - well, his, Garath corrected - hind legs with his neck craning to see what was causing so much pain to his most sensitive appendage.

  'Great,' Garath thought as the Dragon's underside was revealed to the entire raid group. 'The eyes of over 100 people are on me, and I'm literally riding a massive Dragon cock.'

  At Athios' command, The Band's fighters ran out of the building, fanned out around the struggling Dragon in a wide arc and the ranged combatants unleashed a volley of multi-colored, magical attacks.

  Trying not to think too much about it, Garath extended his claws as far out of his little toes as he could and gripped the gargantuan genitalia for dear life with his front paws and teeth while his hind legs scratched repeatedly downward, tearing rents vertically along the shaft. Even though each cut was miniscule and the 'damage' inflicted on the white Dragon was negligible (in all, Garath's cheap shot had only taken down 113 HP and added a bleed status to the enraged reptile), the pain it caused was far from a minor annoyance. The Ice Drake roared in pain even as his body contorted in a writhing struggle to reach and destroy the fluffy Necrologist.

  In his rage induced urgency to slaughter the tiny creature rending his most sensitive area to ribbons, Aldrasyl lost his balance and slipped on the ice he himself had created. The sheer velocity of the several-ton beast's serpentine body as it whipped and then came to an abrupt stop on the asphalt ripped his savaged penis free of Garath's death-grip and flung the tiny Necrologist into the air. Gravity, Garath noted while doing his best flying squirrel impression, could be a powerful enemy.

  The ranged fighters had kept a continuous stream of spells and curses at the Dragon throughout G's absolutely-fucking-filthy opening attack and just kept pouring it on as the Dragon twisted and jerked on his back with his scaled wings against the ground, struggling to get back to his feet. The red health-bar displayed above the Dragon let the Raid group know they were making progress, even though they had only made a dent in Aldrasyl's impressive Health pool.

  The steady stream of attacks picked up in frequency and intensity as AyAyRon lifted his ocarina to his lips and started playing an urgent and eerie melody. The ranged volley of magical attacks and projectiles quickened into more of a constant kaleidoscope of spells and, still soaring through the air, Garath stole a glance at the new icon below his Health and Mana bars.

&nbs
p; You are empowered by AyAyRon’s ‘Stormy Song’ (effects will last as long as the song is being performed):

  Your attack and casting speed have been increased by 25% and all Skill costs have been reduced by 10%.

  As cats do, Garath landed on his feet about fifteen-meters from the seething Dragon. The previously pure white Necrologist was painted blue with steaming hot, cobalt Dragon blood. The copper smell filled his nostrils, flooding his improved sense of smell and making him dizzy. The tangy, hot liquid in his mouth forced a sour expression onto his feline features. Garath caught a glimpse of a prompt appearing and minimizing - he couldn't help but wonder what the hell kind of prompt appears for being covered head to toe in sticky, blue, Dragon-cock-blood.