by Ros Per
- Ellie, sweetheart, so when will Uncle Krill get here? - I asked the girl who was sitting next to me, huddled against my side.
In response, I received only a shrug of her shoulders. Okay, let's not count on this Krill, then. Only one option remains: to break through into the street and leave the area of the jamming system, and from there, I would call in reinforcement forces from the outpost. If I were alone, I would just go back upstairs and leave the same way I’d gotten here, but with a little girl in my arms, I doubted very much that I would be able to pull off such a trick. In reality, when I’d been the same age as my game character, I could’ve easily done it. But, here in the game, there is such a harmful stat called strength, and if you are overloaded, then you can barely drag along, that is, without taking into account adrenaline and all kinds of stressful situations in which an ordinary person can do outrageous things. Since I don’t see any other options, we will act according to this newly formed plan.
- Dear Ellie, do you think it will be a success? - I decided to try my luck. Maybe her super ability has already vanished, but I wonder…
- "I don’t know," - she drawled, shaking her shoulders. Well, it was worth a shot.
- Then, my little one, you should do exactly as I say. And please try not to get scared. If it happens, close your eyes and that’s all, okay? - She nodded vigorously. - Go back to the middle of the site, and when you see me waving my hand, run to me quickly. -
Making sure that she’d understood everything and gone to the place where I’d asked her to, I went downstairs. I dealt with the first two fighters; I figured out how to do it easily, I still had that recent vision in my memory. But then I acted completely differently. Throwing both smoke grenades into the two corridors, trying not to make any noise, I ran up the stairs and, when I saw Ellie, waved my hand to her. Together with the girl, I went down to the eleventh floor and, boldly, having collected myself, like the great hero of a blockbuster, I rushed downstairs, even further away from Alckor and his ambuscade regiment. That’s enough for him to win in the vision, and I, being a true hero, wasn’t going to rush to the barricades.
Between the ninth and tenth floors, I stopped for a while, quickly put all the remaining plasma grenades into one heap and made a trap out of them on the steps, at about the level of an adult's knee. The main aim of this grenade trap was not to kill people, but to bring down the flight of stairs. Although I doubted that its power would be enough to destroy the concrete walls. Having installed this “surprise” trap, I asked Elli to go down a bit lower, and I shot all the lights that I saw with my eyes, making it difficult to detect the trap. We continued our descent. Reaching the eighth floor, I was unpleasantly surprised by a droid flying over us. We were lucky that, when we appeared in its cone of vision, it had just flown through a hole in the wall and couldn’t detect us.
Putting a finger to my lips, I showed Ellie that she should be as quiet as a mouse. Going down to the landing, I found that the staircase leading down was littered with fragments of concrete, completely blocking the possibility of descending at this point. It was very strange, because, judging by the words of the captives, this should have been one of the warehouse floors; and now the droid is flying toward us. And the floor itself looks very bad: scraps of hanging wires, breaks in the walls. It’s as if a violent fight had been going on around here. However, there are no holes from lasers and bullets. So, maybe they’re just re-decorating? Who knows?
I wonder why all these piles of rubbish are here, such a mess... Pressing my back against the wall, I began to move toward the hole in the wall where the droid had passed through and missed us, with a smoke grenade in my hand. It’s not the best protection, but there is a chance that the droid's sensors can lose track of us in the smoke. Climbing to the breach, with an abrupt movement of the head I looked out and moved back to hiding instantly. Even if I hadn’t planned to do it right away, the thing that appeared in my view would’ve simply forced my head back. Now I was really panicking, and my knees failed me.
(Illustration: Volper and Ellie on the eighth floor)
Behind the opening in the wall, there was a huge room, where an anthropomorphic robot that was three meters, perhaps even four meters tall, was heading toward us. His right-hand manipulator ended in a chainsaw that was practically my size, but the left one resembled a machine gun very much, near the muzzle of which there were four claws, just like fingers, allowing the manipulator to catch various objects. I also noticed that, at the end of the hall, where the flying droid was hovering, there was a large staircase, which, judging by the fresh welding joints, had been installed quite recently. Now we were in deep shit. Ahead of us was a large robot, designed for combat. Judging by its weaponry, it could be assumed that its mission was to battle at medium and short distances, against enemy infantry. And above its head, there was the description:
The guardian of the Den - level54
In addition to all of that, he has an assistant - a flying reconnaissance droid, with a light mobile machine gun in the frontal part of its body. Behind us, a mined staircase awaited us, and a little higher, Alckor was in fairly potent armor, wielding a pulse shotgun, which, in my vision, had taken 95% of my life and given me a ton of debuffs with just one shot. Damn it, this was just like the saying that I’d heard from my grandfather. How had he said it? Let me remember it – “Between the devil and the deep blue sea"… That’s probably how he’d used to say it. Random bullshit was getting stuck in my mind again. This shit always starts when the situation becomes critical. I feel ashamed of it, but, over the course of my rather long life, I haven’t been able to get rid of this problem.
I didn’t have the slightest idea how to walk past such a guard unnoticed, but now I realized why Alckor was hiding quietly in the barracks. If you remember that he gets the logs of his fighters after death, then he’d known for sure that I was coming to his den, so he’d turned on the jamming system and a new security system that cannot be circumvented without heavy weapons. Looking out again, I noticed that the spy droid was coming back. There were no options: I had to leave. Holding the girl in my arms, I ran up the stairs to the ninth floor quietly. Lowering Ellie into the corner of the platform farthest from the stairs, covering her with my body, I started racking my brain. No matter how hard I tried to find a way out of the situation, I couldn’t come up with any feasible options. I thought that if I got killed, the girl would be left alone here, which I couldn’t do to her.
But wait! I'm on the warehouse floor! It's worth trying to open those doors; maybe there would be weapons I need for the fight there… Having checked my equipment over well, I chose one of the magazine cases for the Viro. Quickly flipping the cartridges out of the store, I began to disassemble them, clamping the bullet point in the knee joint of the metal plates protecting the lower leg and knee, and loosening the bullet in the sleeve in different directions. Having examined about fifty cartridges this way, I took out, through the tips, the high-temperature mixture that was inside each bullet. I was lucky - before the detonation, the mixture was just a paste with an indoor temperature; otherwise I wouldn’t have managed without special tools.
Adding gunpowder from the cartridges to the mix, I evenly distributed the resulting mixture along the contour of the right door and, inserting a detonator from the edge of a smoke grenade, I took Ellie to the staircase below. I tried to angle myself so I was safe too (in case of some mishap) and then pulled out the ring of the grenade. After that, I rushed down the stairs and, picking up Ellie, covered her with my body, squeezing the tiny girl in my arms. A small pop-up message alerted me about the activation of my device, and a flashing alert about achieving the current development limit of the mechanical hacking skill came up – so I understood that my plan had worked. Also, I’d acquired a new skill.
Attention! You have received access to the skill "Explosives"
Getting back to the door, I found it dangling on the lower door latch. Several kicks and it fell inward with a bang, giving me an
overview of that rather big room, divided only by supporting columns. The whole room was filled with metal boxes of two meters in length and a meter in height and in width. The boxes stood stacked one on top the other, right up to the ceiling, with only small passages for navigating around them left. The first thought that flashed through my mind was that I had gotten into a “gun paradise”, but the harsh reality dampened my high spirits. In the first box I opened were packs with combat rations, as in the second one, the third and all subsequent ones.
What bad luck this is! It seems that I shouldn’t have pumped up any other skills but good luck when creating my character. I feel utterly discouraged. I’d spent a lot of time breaking through the door and ended up in the food warehouse. Kicking one of the boxes with all my strength, I felt the whole building shaking. While I was backpedaling, looking from the toe of my boot to the drawer and trying to understand what had caused the building to shake, I felt another strong quake, that caused several of the upper drawers to fall onto the floor. Quickly placing the fallen boxes into one heap, I formed a kind of barricade out of them, and, having sat Ellie on the floor behind this simple cover, I held the entrance door at gun point. I didn’t know what was going on there, but now I just had to wait. In just a minute, an envelope icon flashed in my field of vision again, informing me of a new incoming letter.
Sender: Alexander Carefire
Text of the letter:
Well done! Signal received, we’re on our way to you. Estimated time of arrival is eight minutes. Hold on!
What was odd was that I’d never gotten to the jamming system, but Carefire had been able to catch the beacon’s signal, and the quest was now closed for me. The corresponding system messages have popped up as well, notifying me of the increase in my reputation. My musings were halted by the explosion below, and the building shuddering once more. Something is clearly approaching, and it’s moving in from the lower floors. Getting all unnecessary thoughts out of my head, I stared at the doorway, aiming down the sights. My thoughts would now interfere, surely. Breathe in and breathe out! I am trying to calm down my nerves. Breathe in and breathe out! My pulse returns to a normal speed. I don’t plan any actions, giving control of the body to my instincts and my subconscious, because it works several times faster than my conscious thinking. Then, the floor below me begins to tremble.
I reacted instantly - by jumping to the side, grabbing Ellie in my arms along the way, rolling over a couple of times, to slow down after my jump, and letting go of the girl. And then I got down on my knee, covering the child with my body. In front of me, in the doorway, stood an enemy. Seeing it – I got goose bumps up and down my back. He himself wasn’t too scary: wearing dark gray, protective overalls made out of some elastic material, a half mask of the same material that covered the lower half of his face, leaving only his purple eyes visible, with dark hair, pulled into a small tail. In his hands, he held two thin, curved blades, which were fifty centimeters long. It seemed to me there was nothing unusual about him, well, if you didn’t take into account that he’d broken through the guards so easily and violently. The sign above him made me panic a little more.
Unknown mutant – level 217
So, this is the end! The only thought that ran through my head was that she should escape.
"Ellie, run!" – My hoarse voice rang out sharply and I put my finger on the trigger of the submachine gun.
A greenish energy field formed in front of the mutant, which my bullets couldn’t get through. They only made small ripples in it, just burning up when coming into contact with such a high concentration of energy. At that moment, I didn’t care that I couldn’t damage him, I had to give the girl at least one extra second of time so that she could escape. I would have to respawn, but I was hoping she wouldn’t.
- “Mister Volper, don’t do that!” She cried from behind me, touching my shoulder. “This is Uncle Krill, he’s come to get me.”
-Well ... I’m so sorry, I didn’t recognize him, - I said in shock, no longer firing at him.
After standing still for about five seconds, in one quick move, he pushed the sword blades behind his back. His arms were loose against his body and he gestured toward me with an open palm.
“Uncle Krill wants to thank you for helping me out, and now he will take me home,” Ellie said, coming out from behind my back and patting my cheek; she then ran up to Krill and he hugged her.
Krill picked the girl up in his arms and turned to the crack next to the door. Apparently, he wanted to jump off, but stopped and turned his head to Ellie. The girl also turned to him and began to occasionally nod her head, and sometimes shake it from side to side. A moment later, after that silent conversation, which I observed mutely, blinking owlishly, Elli turned her face to me and, wrinkling her forehead, began to speak loudly.
“Uncle Krill asked me to tell you the following, word-for-word: Tell him... ask this replicant to not tell anyone about meeting us, it will be better for him, otherwise, he will have a hard time explaining to everyone what he did and what he saw. Although I don’t understand why they would pester you, Mister Volper,“ - to which Krill only chuckled. – “No, I'm not going off topic. Anyway, Uncle Krill will then find a way to express his grati- ... Uncle Krill, that’s a very difficult word for me," - she said to him. - "Oh, yes ... I understand. Uncle Krill will find a way to thank you properly for saving me. There it is!”
- Not at all. Children shouldn’t suffer, no matter what, - I smiled back.
Krill simply shook his head in reply, apparently agreeing with me, after which Ellie waved to me, and Krill, holding her in his arms, jumped into the hole. I was now left sitting and trying to understand how fast he would have turned me into ashes, if I hadn’t saved Ellie. I got up, went to the hole and looked down. Directly below me were the remains of the guard, consisting, approximately, of fifteen uneven parts, cut by something extremely sharp, and here and there, in certain places, the metal was still glowing a reddish color –it probably hadn’t completely cooled down yet.
I rushed to the stairs, looking around, searching for danger. I understood that this super-mutant had passed here twice - first in one direction, then the another, but the problem was that it had been moving too fast. There could still be a lot of dangers left, which he’d simply ignored. When I went up to the stairs and examined everything, seeing how safe they were to descend, I heard an explosion at the top. It looks like Alckor had sent the fighters down after me, and they’d just triggered my last gift. I passed level 7 without any difficulties, going down the stairs, but on the sixth level, I had to take another detour - the staircase was again at the opposite end of the floor.
The concrete walls were a real labyrinth. There were potholes everywhere, making traversal difficult. After walking around this labyrinth for a little while, I found the right passage. I set up four anti-personnel mines with laser detonators, designed to burst immediately upon interruption of the laser beam and deliver a lethal, explosive payload. Also, along the way, I found several false plates on the floor. What was under them – I didn’t check, to avoid accidentally detonating them, and I just tagged these spots on my map and, carefully circumventing them, I moved on.
But on the fifth floor, I saw the remains of two automatic laser turrets, which had before been hidden in the floor, it seems. If Krill hadn’t gone through here, I would be having a hard time right now. I needed to completely change my plans again. The reality of this virtual reality (wow, what an expression!) forces me to find different solutions to the problem, changing my approach several times a day. Earlier, in my youth, that was good - you were given a task, and you fulfilled it. And later, it wasn’t so bad either - for example, an order would come from the general staff, and you just had to accept it and develop a plan for the operation itself, having intelligence, analytical calculations, a large number of fighters to use in your planning, relying on the skills of each individual fighter and taking into account their strengths and weaknesses.
Now
... I don’t even know what to do first. You need to do everything, but there’s a lack of information. But the worst thing is that even when I have access to sources of information, I just don’t know what to ask about. And this infuriates me a lot. And so, thinking about all this nonsense, I made my way through the fortification of the bandits. When I reached the stairs leading to the fourth floor, I received a message from Carefire again. He informed me that they were already on location and were breaking through to get upstairs, and I specified the exact place where I was so that the fighters wouldn’t accidentally shoot me. Having reported on my location, I attached a map of the building, along with all my notes. In a nutshell, I described the situation, recommending that he assign a few fighters to the first floor, because a detachment that had been sent to punish me was about to return; I didn’t want the soldiers of the outpost to be under threat from the back.