‘Come on, you damn system! Let’s kill these bastards!’
Instantly, my vision filled with spheres over my targets, as I held both hands up, hoping my accuracy didn’t suffer now at a time when I had collateral damage to worry about.
All sounds in the world disappeared as everything within me began to hum, vibrant red cracks appearing all over my body, growing up my shoulders and down my arms, merging into my palms. My beating wings immediately froze in place, my acceleration turning into a stable glide as I let out a deep breath and held it.
‘Now.’
Ignoring all my other senses, my entire being became dedicated to the visual cues I was receiving from the system.
Two sets of rings collapsed at once.
‘Fire!’
Streams of infernal energy pulsed from my hands in the blink of an eye, two Night Stalkers instantly dropping from the ensuing horde.
Two more just took their place though, with the original ten having turned into at least twenty, accelerating even more as Randy tried to make a turn to get out of the parking lot. One of them slammed its entire body against the driver’s side of the vehicle, two wheels just barely coming off the ground for a moment.
Another ring collapsed, another pulse of fire obliterating this one’s leg, taking it out of the hunt.
Randy stomped on the gas again as the truck slammed back on all fours, peeling away. I quickly fired more shots as more rings collapsed around the spheres I was aiming for, attempting to get the ones closest to the truck.
Finally, they hit the road, accelerating to the point that the beasts were having trouble keeping up. I kept firing, taking them out one-by-one, occasionally two-by-two, until the truck was finally no longer in danger of being overrun.
I then dropped closer, firing almost endlessly as I grew more and more confident with how this aiming system worked. I already had a ton of experience with the hell-crows, but no one became a perfect aim in a day, even with an assist – not even me.
It was finally like shooting fish in a barrel now, like zapping ants with a magnifying glass, mowing down the flightless enemy with ease.
Once I had killed all the ones on the road, I began circling around to kill the rest that had poured out of the building, making sure I took out the ones I had only maimed previously, so that they didn’t regenerate.
Surprisingly, I was still doing alright on resources, though this fight hadn’t lasted nearly as long as the one in the sky earlier in the day.
Once I had worked my way back to the main building, I circled around the entire structure to see if there were any more stragglers, but I found none. I knew there were potentially more people inside though, so I went back to the front, setting my feet back down on the ground.
Considering there would be no quick escape for the rest of the humans inside, assuming they were alive, my goal instead was just to try to exterminate any enemies remaining – to make this a safe place again.
Walking back through the front lobby, broken glass crunching underneath my bare feet, I held my tail up behind me, ready to strike. My firepower wasn’t the ideal weapon inside due to the noise and the fact that I could easily set the whole building ablaze if I wasn’t careful.
I made my way back through the office, examining the overturned cubicles, feeling confident now that the Night Stalkers had come in through a different entrance. Otherwise, the place wouldn’t have been relatively untouched previously.
In the breakroom, what remained of the corpse had been shoved across the floor from the stampede. I ignored it and continued back down the hallway, attempting to move as silently as possible, no longer intending to actively look for survivors.
Instead, I was hunting.
As I made the turn where all the Night Stalkers must have been hiding, I reached the end, only to discover a broken door leading to a massive space that looked like a boiler room on steroids. I mean, it was enormous, with rows and rows of stairs and grated walkways that went as high as I could see.
Huge pipes were everywhere as well, along with numerous boilers that were as large as an entire normal sized room by themselves – like, the entire boiler room back at my building could fit inside some of these behemoths.
However, my attention quickly shifted as I caught abrupt movement from my right side, prompting my tail to flash out, the blade intercepting a Night Stalker in the face.
It died instantly.
And no others came in response to the noise.
Moving in that direction, I crept deeper and deeper into the room, still not catching any other heat signatures or movement. At least, not until I finally picked up a large sphere towards the other end, it having an unusual appearance in my heat vision.
For a moment, I thought it was just one giant monster, prompting me to proceed more cautiously, but then I finally got a clear view of the atrocity, disturbed to my core by what I saw.
Overall, it really was a bloated sphere, but the humanoid head on one end, along with the limbs that stuck out on the sides, made it look like a pregnant woman who had been tortured by having a full grown elephant shoved inside of her torso.
And if that wasn’t disturbing enough, then what was really nauseating was that something was alive inside – lots of somethings.
In my heat vision, I could see blobs the size of my head swimming around, as if a human Night Stalker had been made into a breeding aquarium for some horrifying parasite.
I flinched when the red eyes of the abomination focused on me, having spotted my hiding spot, revealing the poor creature was still alive, despite looking like its ballooned torso was about to pop at any moment.
Much to my surprise, or maybe I shouldn’t have been, it neither moved nor made any noise, appearing to be helpless to defend itself at this point. In a way, it was almost as if it was a queen ant…
Which had been protected by a horde of drones…
Holy shit!
The horde had been protecting this thing!
But then, what in the hell was swimming around in the atrocity? What was the horde defending? And why? Why would Night Stalkers protect this abomination?
Shit. I really wanted to know, but at the same time, I was extremely cautious of the things swimming around. The unknown of this nauseating sight was enough to evoke an instinctual sense of fear.
Looking around, I didn’t see anything flammable, which meant I could just incinerate the thing – put it out of its misery, even if it wasn’t actually suffering right now…
However, I also didn’t want the thing to pop either, not knowing for sure how many of those parasites were inside, or what they were capable of. Thus, instead, I aimed for the head with my hand, to see what would happen once it died.
A sphere appeared in my vision, and the rings around it collapsed.
I fired, disintegrating the head instantly, leaving nothing left except for the ballooned torso and limbs. Thankfully the whole thing didn’t pop, but it did begin to ooze a black fluid that reminded me of the thicker gunk I had assumed was similar to blood.
Shit, was that what the parasites were floating around in? Essentially Night Stalker blood?
Ugh, I had never felt so nauseated before. I had never been so disturbed, as far as I could remember.
I began considering another way to destroy it, wondering how much damage my Area of Effect move would do to my surroundings, when unexpectedly one of the creatures inside swam straight for the leaking opening. I stared in disbelief as it slowly squeezed its way out of the neck, wiggling free like a baby from hell being born, only to plop onto the concrete floor, with little black tentacles waving around everywhere…
Just like…
Just like the massive isopod Harper and I had been feeding off of the last week.
Suddenly, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
My mind was running a thousand miles per hour as I tried to comprehend what this meant. What this implied.
The isopod we had been feeding on wasn’t jus
t some random Night Stalker – it was the source. It was a parasite, one in which was using humans to breed, just like how many other parasites affected their host.
Except, this was like the ultimate parasite.
I wasn’t sure what kind of person I had been as a human – if I had worked in the medical field, possibly been a soldier in the military, or even if I was just some random nerd who knew a lot of facts – but for some reason, I knew enough about some of the craziest parasites in existence to begin putting it all together.
For one, some parasites had the capacity to control their hosts, literally making it do whatever it wanted, whether that host be a spider, fish, crab, or something else. And second, some had a complicated life cycle, where they might feed off one particular host to grow before moving to another host to reproduce. And even more crazy, was that some parasites even switched genders, starting their lives off as males, and then switching to females under the right conditions.
Granted, the gender of the parasite certainly had no effect on the gender of the host…usually.
I was pretty sure there was a particular parasite that could turn a male crab into a female one, attacking its nervous system and forcing its body to produce female hormones until it actually swapped genders.
I had no idea what was relevant in this situation, but what I did know was this – Night Stalkers were mindless humanoid beasts being controlled by something, as evident by the fact that the people inside could regain their consciousness, and I had an ‘unknown toxin’ in my saliva that I just now realized must be killing that something, freeing Night Stalkers of their bondage.
My bite was killing the parasite.
A parasite that was hijacking the bodies of most humans they invaded to grow stronger, and then using the body of a few unlucky hosts to breed inside.
I thought back to the one that had tried attacking Savannah, wondering what would have happened to her if it had gotten her.
Would that unfortunate nineteen-year-old girl have become a Night Stalker like me? Or was the bigger one a female? Would Savannah have become this atrocity? Would she have ended up a tortured soul, looking like someone had forced an adult elephant into her body?
I shivered at the thought, the idea truly disturbing me to the core.
However, the thought unexpectedly made me think of something else as well – a memory, one in which a large piece of Harper’s back had just sloughed off after biting her.
Shit, that must have been one of these parasites!
It must have been one of these smaller isopods, attached to her back, its numerous tentacles likely having grown throughout her whole body, controlling her at the root – taking over her entire nervous system.
So then, I really had killed the parasite with my bite.
Shit.
My focused shifted on the blob again as another squirming isopod squeezed out of the humanoid’s neck and flopped to the ground.
It took me a moment to realize the first one was gone…
Dammit!
I rushed forward, looking around frantically as I stabbed the newest one with my tail, quickly ceasing its movement. How in the hell had the other escaped me so easily?
Dammit, dammit, dammit!
I quickly rushed around the bloated body, relieved when I found the fugitive slowly squirming along the ground. In a flash, I stabbed it with my tail, killing it as well, only to make my way back to the oozing neck for another squirming out.
I didn’t want to chance losing one, wanting this to be a safe location again for the humans, so I meticulously just stood there, stabbing them one by one as they came out.
However, it slowly began to dawn on me that I was actually doing this for another reason.
A very different reason.
I couldn’t change the fact that these were parasites doing abhorrent things to humanity in order to breed. However, I also couldn’t change the fact that my body had been permanently altered by these creatures. And, as much as I hated this. As much as I hated the nauseating sight.
I also hated the idea of letting these points go to waste…
Chapter 19: Pursuit
After killing all the small head-sized isopods, as verified by there being no more heat signatures in the oozing body, I began searching the rest of the building looking for two things. First, I wanted to make sure I had killed all the Night Stalkers, which eventually prompted me to investigate the other buildings as well. But they were all dead, most of them having rushed out into the parking lot earlier.
And then, second, I was looking for some kind of item I could use to collect my disturbing catch.
After finding a tarp, I used that to gather the seventeen parasites, carrying it around like a bag full of decapitated heads.
I didn’t like this situation.
In fact, I hated it.
Because, while I didn’t particularly care about most other creatures, I couldn’t stop thinking about the bloated body, especially the fact that the poor soul had still been alive. Though, of course I knew that the human inside wasn’t conscious, but it was more than that. It was the fact that there would have been no saving that Night Stalker, even if I wanted to.
Not that I did want to, but still.
I certainly couldn’t just bite them, because all that would do was wake the human inside to probably the worst possible nightmare imaginable. Which meant my only option had been to kill it. But that wasn’t enough for me.
In an attempt to remove the disturbing sight from my memory, I decided to blast it with my fire magic after all, considering there was nothing flammable around – everything was either concrete or metal. However, Night Stalkers weren’t flammable either, despite the oily looking blood, and all I really ended up doing was just creating a larger mess as I blasted it into an unrecognizable heap of flesh and ooze.
Good enough, I supposed, even if I could still see those expressionless red eyes in my mind, staring at me prior to blasting its head off.
Shit.
Attempting to replace the imagery in my head with anything else, I found myself focusing on another pair of crimson eyes, coupled with a small smile. I was shocked to discover that visualizing Harper’s face actually worked, but it did.
However, that quickly made me recall that she could read my thoughts too, which meant she might have been traumatized herself…
Dammit!
I quickly checked her condition, verifying that she was still unconscious.
Thankfully, she was.
With a sigh of relief, I kept her face pictured in my head, knowing she would probably find it odd when she did wake up, but also feeling confident her confusion was better than me uncontrollably thinking of something else that would likely traumatize her permanently.
And I needed to protect her from that, because she was still just a kid.
Even if she thought she was more mature than she had been as a human, her relative innocence was still there and intact. It was one of the reasons why I couldn’t get upset at her anymore for doing things like running her fingers through my hair, because it was such an innocent act.
I mean, it was one thing for her to hear me cursing, and by human standards it wasn’t ideal that she had seen me kill. But this was different. She didn’t need to be exposed to something disturbing enough to even affect me.
So, I would just keep my thoughts on her, and forget about what had happened here.
For a human, I felt like it would be a near impossible feat to avoid thinking of a traumatizing image or thought, but I pleasantly found that the horror scene I was leaving behind remained hidden away, my focus nearly absolute.
One problem I came across as I finally exited a backdoor to leave, was that I hadn’t found any other survivors, nor had I even found any human corpses. I had no idea where they had gone, or if they were even dead or alive, but there was certainly no sign of them.
However, as I took flight, holding onto my makeshift bag full of points in my right hand, it occurred
to me that some of the Night Stalkers below could have been the missing humans. One of the men had claimed there were three other families living with them, which should have been less than twenty people at most, compared to the roughly hundred below, but that didn’t mean some of the weaker enemies hadn’t been new Night Stalkers.
For all I knew, that might have been how they got in. Maybe a small group of isopods had found their way inside, or even attacked outside during the daytime, and then the new monsters led a horde of older ones to this location in order to protect…
Nope.
Not going to think about it anymore.
I couldn’t change reality, but that didn’t mean I had to dwell on how disturbing it was either. All that mattered was getting stronger so I could survive – so we could survive, Harper included.
As I flew back home, not about to let the humans see what I had with me, I made really great time since I wasn’t following a truck – I could fly at my max speed. However, just as I was about three-fourths of the way there, an unexpected notification displayed in my vision.
Alert!
Sub-handler 001 update.
Physical Condition: Stable, Unknown Depressant Detected
Psychological Condition: Stable, Unconscious
Analyzing effect…
Unknown depressant? What in the hell did that mean?
Considering Harper was pretty well barricaded in the boiler room, the only thing I could think of was that maybe one of the pipes was leaking gas or something. Which, if that was the case, then I should be able to make it in time to get her out.
Shit, of all the things to happen.
I was already traveling as fast as I could though, and dropping the bag wouldn’t help much. Still, I clutched it to my chest anyway to reduce any drag it was causing, but doing so didn’t make much of a perceivable difference in my speed.
Rise of the Night Stalkers Page 21