Advent (Red Mage Book 1)

by Xander Boyce

  The reverberating force threw him back against the wall, and he felt a sharp pain in his lower back from a shelf he had been smashed against. Mana guard’s energy spent, he could feel the air around him loosen as its protection disappeared. But it was over; there was no way the spider had survived that.

  The door behind Drew clicked closed, denying him the safety of the former watch floor. His limbs were shaking from adrenaline, the aches and pains from impacts he hadn’t even realized had happened during the brief fight began to make themselves known. He quickly cast major refresh on himself.

  The pain receded immediately as he took stock of the situation. One of the duffle bags still hung around his shoulder; the other had been dropped sometime during the fight. The axe haft still hung in his trembling hands. He quickly pulled up his node structure and slotted minor acid dart and major spark in the constellation to the left of his origin node and confirmed the change.

  As the pain began, he realized he’d made a horrible mistake. If he lost consciousness again here where it wasn’t safe, there was a good chance he wouldn’t survive. His fingers tightened around the wood of the axe handle, turning white as he fought against the pain that burned throughout his entire body.

  Instantly, he could tell that it wasn’t nearly as bad as the first time. Six xatherite of higher grade clearly imparted more information into his brain than the two low-grade spells he’d just put in. Still, the pain was intense, and he started to see lights dancing in the darkness.

  Drew slumped back against the wall, not caring if the shelves dug into his back. His legs were shaking too hard for him to stay standing.

  He had escaped relatively unscathed from the ordeal. But at the same time, there were no notifications popping up in his vision telling him how much experience he had acquired. There was no level on the spider indicating how hard it was compared to other monsters. No system generated loot from its corpse. Everything was the same as before, except now there were monsters, and he could cast fireball

  Sitting in the darkness, Drew tried to catch his breath, the headache dissipating as he tried to collect himself. Casting dancing blade again, he grabbed the handle of the axe and pushed himself back up to an upright position. He groaned again, feeling where the sharp corner of a shelf had dug into his back when he collapsed earlier. He walked over to the remains of the spider and nudged it with the axe, then looked around the room for any loot.

  Monsters dropped loot and they guarded treasure chests. That was just how games worked, and while he was becoming more and more convinced that this wasn’t actually a game like the ones he was used to, his brain kept telling him that there had been more game elements in the world now.

  The only thing he found was a bunch of spiderwebs in the corner above the door. Small dark spots in the webs were remnants of the spider’s previous meals. If this were a game, he’d collect the webbing and use it to make some rope or some super strong cloth. But looking at the sticky stuff, he shivered slightly, having no desire to go about gathering it.

  Miraculously, both duffles had landed on this side of the door, but he realized that carrying both would make fighting extremely difficult. He would kill for a bag of holding or a magic system inventory. Or heck, a Tenser’s floating disk.

  With the duffles in a slightly better position on his back and the fire axe in hand, he cautiously moved to the next door. He pressed the side of his head against the door and listened for a moment. This little vestibule wasn’t soundproof, and the spider had screamed quite loudly. If something was out there, it probably would have heard the fight. But maybe the explosion would have scared anything off?

  Cracking the door open just enough to send a cone of frost into the hallway beyond. The tension of wandering the dark hallways was already making him a little on edge, and since the only ‘cost’ associated with casting his spells was the cooldown as far as he could tell, he figured it wasn’t a big risk.

  Nothing screamed on the other side as he closed it and leaned in to push his weight against the door, listening again. He waited for dancing blade’s cooldown to be up so that he would have some light, then opened the door again, glancing around at the dark hallway.

  To the left was the less secure facility where all the unclassified work was done, and to the right were offices of some of the chain of command. The way out was to the left. But the realization that he didn’t have a plan for how to leave the bunker caused him to close the door again and back up as he considered his options.

  He could follow his normal route out, which would take him across half the building and up and down eight flights of stairs. The bunker was built to house thousands of office workers. Granted, the only people in it when the advent began were the two people on his watch floor, the security guards and the other night watch.

  They were in the commandant’s plot room and had a couple people stationed there at all hours of the day. This meant there were four or five people in there; if he could meet up with them, he wouldn’t be alone.

  He considered his options. The building was massive. He had explored some of it, but he still got lost in the unmarked corridors. His best bet was to follow his known route, which would take him out to the ground level near the parking structure. There were a couple of vending machines along the way that could be raided for additional foodstuffs. That was, assuming they didn’t have spiders guarding them

  So, the plan was to head to the commandant’s plot, see if they were still in their watch room, and then escape the building along his normal route. With a nod of his head, he stood up again, his next few actions determined.

  Chapter Four — Logistics

  Stepping out into the hallway again, he had mana guard back up and the faint red light of the dancing blade was illuminating the hallway for a few feet either side of the door. The glow wasn’t even enough to penetrate to the far side of the hallway. “Frak, this isn’t going to work.”

  He needed more light. He’d acquired a few flammables from his raid on the locker room, but he needed a better option than dancing blade. He turned left into the large open space that was the cube farm. He stepped as quietly as his boots would allow. The sound of the cloth duffles rubbing against his uniform jacket reverberated loudly in his ears as he strained to hear anything.

  With a grunt, he swung the duffles down onto the floor, his fingers gripping the axe handle as the dancing sword blinked out of existence. He stood there on the threshold of the cube farm, his eyes peering into the darkness and his ears straining to hear the skitter of another spider.

  He waited a minute and then, on a hunch, he pointed his finger to the leftmost corner of the room and launched a fireball in that direction. The bright ball of flame moved quickly but still lit up the room better than the blade had. It revealed the dark shapes of massive spiders before exploding with another loud scream as two of the beasts were caught in its area of effect.

  Drew’s free hand was already moving in the pattern that would allow him to resummon the dancing blade. Meanwhile, he clumsily swung the axe one handed in a circle around him, as a deterrent against the now swiftly approaching forms.

  He hadn’t seen any of them that were any larger than the one he had already fought, so hopefully, that meant there wasn’t a boss type monster here. As soon as the axe had finished its arc without meeting any resistance, he dropped it. The hand that was previously holding it began casting cone of frost. The spider screams that followed told him that he’d scored at least a partial hit. His other hand beginning to cast major spark already.

  The flash of electrical power that surged from his left hand arced to a nearby spider that curled up on itself with a twitching motion. His right hand was already throwing a minor acid dart at the same location. His left hand moved to form another fireball. The pattern repeated, lighting the room in weird flashes of burning flame, arcing electricity, and red shadows as the sword attacked any spiders that came close enough to him.

  When it was over, there were a couple
of small fires throughout the room as paper and fabric burned. Using the firelight, he could see half a dozen spider bodies; some were half melted, others still twitching as electricity arced around holes eaten away by acid darts. The carpet around him had clumped bits of frozen blue ichor and sliced off spider legs.

  The adrenaline that had caused the full fury of his spells to erupt in bright flashes faded again, and he felt a weakness in his knees. The curious thickness in the air around him proved that the few spiders that had gotten close enough to be killed by the sword hadn’t even managed to deal enough damage to break his mana guard spell. The air smelled thickly of ozone, smoke, and burning spider flesh. “That...that wasn’t even that bad,” Drew said to himself, looking around the room. Open spaces were much easier for him to lay out the hurt. He leaned down to pick up the axe from where it had landed a few feet away from him.

  Congratulations citizen, you have attuned your first xatherite. Minor Acid Dart will now begin to level up.

  Congratulations citizen, your Minor Acid Dart has reached level 1. Damage has increased.

  Congratulations citizen, your Minor Acid Dart has reached level 2. Damage has increased.

  Congratulations citizen, your Minor Acid Dart has reached level 3. Damage has increased.

  Congratulations citizen, Major Mana Guard has been attuned.

  Congratulations citizen, Major Refresh has been attuned.

  The blue screen appeared in Drew’s eyes as he finally calmed down after the fight. He willed the blue message away, and taking advantage of the newly lit room, he left the duffles near the entrance as he advanced on the two side doors along the right side of the room. He was really hoping that there was a janitor’s closet in the storeroom area. He had some ideas for a more permanent light source. Or at least one that worked more than a third of the time.

  As he waited for the cooldown on dancing blade to end, he put his ear to the crack between the doors and listened. Hearing nothing, he tried the doorknob. Upon finding it locked, he threw a quick acid dart at the lock. The pop fizz of dissolving metal echoed through the room and then the door lurched slightly, the latch no longer keeping it closed. Pushing it open all the way allowed some of the light from the still burning fires to illuminate the room. Drew couldn’t help but laugh. The adrenaline of the fight coupled with the absurdity of his situation suddenly hitting him. He grabbed the mop and a couple of spare heads from the corner and then looked around for any other supplies that might come in handy.

  The problem was carrying capacity. He could only carry so many things, and he had to keep his hands clear and be relatively unburdened to fight. In video games, this would have been solved for him by a magic backpack or a bag of holding. Or the GM would just waive the weight restrictions as being too much paperwork. The reality of the situation was significantly different from those idealized versions he had spent so much time in before. He already had his hands full with the axe and the duffles. Adding a torch on top of it all meant he was going to have to give something up.

  He was reluctant to discard the axe. While he hadn’t used it during the second fight, if anything got in close, it was imperative that he be able to use its weight and reach to keep his opponent away from him. His defensive and healing spells didn’t seem like they would hold up to a major barrage, especially if he came up against something that had anywhere near the firepower he did.

  He looked around. The room was moderately large, containing several shelves with cabling and other electronics. All of which were now useless since nothing with electronics worked. But standing in a corner was a two-tier AV cart. Walking over to it, he pushed it a few times to determine how sturdy it was. Made of thick plastic, it couldn’t hold a ton of weight, but it was probably enough for the duffles. And as the round posts in each corner were hollow, he could put the mop turned torch in one of those and have light without sacrificing his casting and the axe.

  Sliding the once expensive laptops off the cart, he cleared the cart of everything but the wire and the toolkit. He looked around and grabbed two more unopened boxes of cabling, then some other cleaning supplies that looked flammable.

  The squeaky wheels of the cart wouldn’t help much for his stealth, but by the time he was back at the duffles, he had something of a plan. First, he set to coating the mop head in the shoe polish that he’d found in the locker room. He then soaked it in some of the cleaning chemicals that were labeled as flammable. While he waited for the mop to soak them up completely, he cut off several lengths of cabling and braided them together, giving him 8 feet or so of stronger ‘rope’ he could use to pull the cart.

  Tying the cabling to the cart and then putting everything on it only took a few more minutes, but it was enough for the scattered fires to begin to die down, their fuel consumed. Looking around quickly, he thrust the mop through several of the spider webs for good measure, coating it in the thick webbing. He lit the whole thing on fire with a quick spark into some steel wool. Mana guard prevented the resulting cascade of sparks from hurting his hands too much. He waited a few seconds to see how his new torch would work, then slipped it into the hole at the front of the cart, pleased with the height of the torch and how much light it gave off.

  Pulling the cart with one hand and holding the axe in another, he could easily drop the rope he was using to pull the cart if combat started.

  “Not perfect, but it’s better than I was hoping to get,” Drew said to himself as he surveyed his handiwork. He pulled a bag of chips from his supplies and munched on them while he did another quick raid of the desks, hoping to find more food, or a candle, or something.

  He found a few candy bars and lots of nonfunctional electronics that he couldn’t think of a use for. “Lots of metal here; would be nice if I found someone who knew how to make weapons or armor.” He shook his head. The lack of system generated loot meant that, eventually, humanity was going to need to make their own weapons and armor. However, how many people in DC knew how to use a forge, grow crops, or butcher a corpse?

  He glanced at the various spider bodies in different stages of burned, melted, frozen, and shocked. He had the three-inch folding blade he had started wearing after he joined the coast guard. The blade had been dulled by years of opening boxes and cutting rope (or line as all the ‘real’ sailors used to call it) when he was on the cutter, but it would probably work for a field dress.

  He probably should try to get something from the bodies; poison glands, chitin, and meat were all things he had harvested from spiders in games. But he wasn’t a doctor; he’d never taken an anatomy class, and he had hated dissecting the frog in biology. In truth, he had no idea where to even start butchering soccer ball sized spiders. So, he just left them there, in favor of moving forward and escaping the bunker.

  His next stop was the bathrooms. He wasn’t entirely sure how long it had been since the advent--a problem that kept nagging at the back of his mind--but as soon as he saw the stick figures, he realized he needed to use the facilities

  “This is where the zombies kill me when I’ve got my pants down…” Drew muttered to himself, as he looked around. The bathrooms seemed clear, no signs of spider webbing. He propped the door open and inspected each of the stalls. Finding that they were empty, he brought the cart into the bathroom and spent a few minutes attending to some bodily functions.

  He reached for the bar to flush the toilet out of habit. Nothing happened. “Right. No pumps to make running water a thing.” Human waste management was going to be a big issue, particularly if there were any large groups of humans around. This also meant he couldn’t wash his hands. “No running water; tons of people are gonna die from bad food alone.” He shook his head. “This is gonna suck.” He raided the bathroom for toilet paper, adding it to the cart, and then moved on to the objective at hand.

  The next few hallways were uneventful. There were just a few lone spiders that he could handle from a distance with his newly expanded light source. The only things of note were blue boxes
informing him that he had attuned major spark and received another level of minor acid dart.

  That’s when he got to the stairwell. He left the loud cart and axe behind, opting instead to hold the mop ahead of him while he scouted to make sure it was safe. Opening the door was simple; the electromagnetic locks that had kept it closed were no longer functional. The smell of iron immediately filled his senses.

  Looking down, he saw a thick trail of some sort of brown substance on the stairs leading down. Frowning, he leaned down and looked at it more closely, the red glare of the torch casting weird shadows. Then it clicked; the smell, the color.

  Blood. It was human blood.

  Chapter Five — The Stairs

  The stairwell served six double tall floors. It consisted of twelve switchbacks with two concurrent staircases, with a wide gap between them. Drew had never attempted to figure out where the other staircase went; he just knew that he had to go down a flight of stairs here. He was on the second of the six floors. The trail of blood led downwards, the direction he intended to travel.

  “Well, shit. If horror movies have taught me anything, it’s that I’m going to get jumped by something big and scary right now,” Drew whispered to nothing, the torchlight reflecting off the concrete and casting orange shadows. He put his back against the wall and then glanced up, having learned his lesson from the first spider.

  Nothing loomed above him, “Well at least my life isn’t a penny dreadful.” He glanced back down to the boot prints scuffed through the dried blood. “Please don’t be Lovecraftian. Please don’t be Lovecraftian.”