Volper

by Ros Per

  - Irala, I'm sorry, but right now, I cannot help you. -

  - “Why?”

  - I cannot go any further for now; venturing deep into the laboratory isn’t possible, I don’t have the necessary equipment with me, as well as a team that could help me. I’ll have to go back and get ready to storm the lab. -

  - “But you will come back?”

  - Yes, I will come back, and, most likely, not alone; therefore, I have a request for you: when I return, if I’m not alone, please hide somewhere.

  - “Why? You will be coming to help me.”

  - Because I still don’t know who will be coming with me. Perhaps I’m going to recruit ordinary mercenaries, so it’s better for them not to know what you’ve become. I’m not going to share such a unique artificial intelligence with them. -

  - “Hmm ... well, I’ll wait, and if you come here with someone else, I promise they won’t know about my existence.”

  - I will try to return as soon as possible, - I promised her one more time, already climbing into the ventilation shaft.

  I really did plan to return, but first, I had to talk to professional engineers - if I could protect myself from Irala, then it was better to do it right away. It’s really suspicious that she tried to manipulate me at the very beginning. After all, Artificial intelligence can deceive a person very easily if it wants to do so. And I suspect that it’s even easier to do this when you look self-conscious.

  While I was making my way up, various thoughts about the composition of the future group were bouncing around in my head. At the moment, only one thing was clear: it would be extremely difficult to clear this lab if I came back alone. But inviting anyone into the squad is not worth it either. It’d be necessary to check everything very carefully so that each member of the group complements the others. In this case, it’s great if, in case of an extreme emergency, each fighter is interchangeable, but you shouldn’t inflate the size of the group, because larger units will not only attract stronger monsters, but also unnecessary attention from the other clans.

  After all, I wasn’t angling to get noticed by too many people, or, god forbid, start a clan war. Well, for now, anyway. Having thought over what I needed, I gradually compiled a list of the fighters I’d need. A tank is needed, someone who will take the enemy fire onto themselves; in theory, a Cyborg would be the best option for this role. By the way, it would be ideal if it’s also a machine gunner. So, intelligence is still needed - a fairly quiet fighter, who will be able to lead the group carefully, without running at the enemy. In addition, the sapper, the technician and the doctor are needed - situations can be wildly different and surprising, and any one of these three can be useful in almost every case. A storm trooper as well, but then, it would be good to also invite a sniper.

  Also, I should invite someone used to handling large caliber weapons. In general, it would be great if I found someone who uses a grenade launcher or someone with a heavy weapon. It turns out that the number of people I need is slightly less than the standard squad, but eight fighters isn’t a bad number. I’ll just have to train them in a safer place for a while, first. While pondering, I climbed up to the roof. Considering that Krill isn’t with me this time, I had to first look around. Somewhere several kilometers away from me, I heard the sounds of shooting, but it was slightly away from a direct path to the outpost. Then I was distracted by the system message, which broke through the filter and jumped out right before my eyes.

  Attention! According to court decision number ARN 1886478951478/116884, your neurointerface was given access to information about a number of items.

  The meaning of the message became clear to me only after I’d read it third time. If I’d understood correctly, then Carso had undergone the trial which had finally ended and, by the court’s decision, I got the information about those ancient objects. And this was, admittedly, great. Now, at least, I would sate my curiosity, which has been bothering me for quite some time. It remains only to get to the outpost, and then I can admire the attributes of these items.

  Having looked around through the monocular once again, I rejected one of the three streets that were heavy with traffic, and, after some thought, decided to go along a more inconvenient passage. If you use army logic, then ambushes and various unpleasant surprises are most often found on the most convenient roads. Still, maybe something unexpected would happen, I couldn’t discount the human element, after all. Okay, it's time to go down, because if I'm here, sitting on the loft, I won't get to the outpost any faster.

  While descending, some kind of worm leaped out onto me from one of the floors - white, flat, but at the same time, it was about five meters long. That alone was vomit inducing, but its mouth was also littered with large and sharp teeth. I reacted almost at the very last moment, when this worm was already aiming at my head mid-leap. I wonder if all the monsters here have a habit of aiming at the head, or am I just that lucky? Reflexively falling back at the last moment, I drove my left fist into the lower part of its mouth, changing the trajectory of its movement.

  Once on my back, I immediately activated the Battle Roll mode and, standing back on my legs with a raised machine gun, I shot two short bursts, with several cartridge cut-offs, into this worm, removing only one-third of its health. This was some worm, although, probably, the problem was in the armor-piercing explosive cartridges, which had simply pierced through it. And the small explosions of the shells had occurred when they were already behind the monster, when the bullets hit the wall. I opened my fingers, letting the machine gun hang on the belt, grabbed both pistols and began to shoot this wriggling muck with ordinary cartridges. A couple of seconds later, and it was already a corpse. The level 17 monster had been dangerous, but its name was odd to me: "Garkot".

  I changed the ammunition back to the usual ones in some of the magazine cases, and now I had three spare magazines for the machine gun, with each of the available cartridges, well, the main one in the machine gun was packed with ordinary cartridges. After checking the weapon, I continued to descend once again. Getting out into the street, I noticed, and was surprised by it, that the sounds of shooting had seemed to have gotten closer, but I’m not sure, because the acoustics could have simply changed, reflected from the remnants of the buildings. But I still got wary and moved along the previously chosen street, being already more careful, stopping every fifteen or twenty meters and carefully inspecting the path forward.

  I was especially cautious going into every turn. Visibility around them is limited, and even a herd of elephants can be lurking around the corner, literally a couple of meters away. The main requirement would be that they stay quiet and not give up their location. Just two hundred meters after the pass, I activated the mode “Scan Surroundings” and it highlighted one of the windows on the second floor in red for me, as potentially dangerous. I had to go to the other side of the road and move slowly for a long time, keeping this window in sight, which is why I didn’t immediately notice a new monster jumping out from the next turn in front of me. I was glad that it was still twenty meters away, and judging by its level, it wasn’t very dangerous to me.

  Shanshar, level 12

  I didn’t even squat to increase the accuracy of my shooting. Quickly dealing with this new mob, having spent only a dozen rounds, I approached the corpse, twisting its head around.

  Looks like this creature is a distant descendant of dogs. Thin paws, curved back, with rigid needles at the withers that are ten centimeters long – this feature was, admittedly, not common to dogs. But the shape of the muzzle and the characteristic, doggy-like elongated mouth just sort of made it obvious that it was a distant descendant of dogs. Quickly looking around and finding no danger, I moved on. I must first go toward the turn, check whether any relatives of this dog are there, and if no one is, then it will be possible to examine the mob, since it’s not interesting to return to the outpost empty-handed.

  I approached the turn by going to the opposite side of the road from the corner. I
f you were expecting a human ambush, on the contrary, you would lean against a corner before looking out, but the monsters use mostly claws and teeth, so it’s best to maintain a distance, if possible. Nobody lurked around the corner, but that didn’t bring me any joy, because, around the corner, there was a very long street and in the middle of it, about seven meters away from me, a huge number of monsters was rushing in.

  I could see at least a couple of thousand different creatures. From such a distance, their levels and names weren’t highlighted, but in just a second, the terrible reality was made clear to me: I managed to notice that there were both meat-eaters and various rats, shanshars, whom I had just met, and a couple dozen different monsters in this group. I didn’t have time to consider it anymore, because I rushed off at a breakneck pace in the direction of the outpost, completely ignoring security and caution. Understanding that there was almost no chance of survival, I tried to at least shorten the distance which I’d then have to travel to get my things after I revived.

  CHAPTER XXII: THE BREAKTHROUGH

  Well, why am I always the unlucky one? Not only did I get nothing out of the lab, but I also ended up in deep shit, right on the street. Where did such a large crowd of monsters come from? I’d never seen large numbers of monsters together before, hell, never more than ten creatures at a time, well, except for the rats. But this appears to be some kind of worldwide exodus of mobs. A huge number of monsters of all types and colors were rushing in an unknown direction. And the saddest thing in that situation was that I was in their way. I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t eaten each other, but I suspected that there was a reason for this. Well, the devs could’ve created something unusual: "We decided to do this, and so it shall happen!" They sure as hell weren’t fucking around here.

  - What the fuck, holy shit! - I shouted in amazement.

  Running past the next intersection, I turned right, and discovered another huge herd of mobs, which had tried to fill all the space available, not only on the road, but some creatures had also jumped into buildings and, judging by the two mobs that jumped out of the window of the building, they still had time to squabble with each other. I noticed all of this on the run, going in a straight line. I was running so fast that I didn’t see the point of turning or winding. And the hope was that the mobs would be distracted by the sound of guns that was coming closer and closer.

  It was the wrong time to wage war. Of course, it’s awful to drag a steam locomotive around with you and drop it on others, but given the sheer size of the group of monsters following me, I doubted anything short of a proper regiment should’ve been expected to stand their ground and fight. Moreover, what I was most worried about was not the courtesy of my actions, but the fact that my fatigue scale was filling up extremely quickly, giving me maybe 5 minutes of sprinting to work with. And without knowing the exact layout of the local buildings, I saw no reason to set anything up inside them - I would spend too much time searching for a suitable place, and it would take time to change magazine cases, and there would be a pause in my shooting, which will cause me to be torn apart.

  Thirty meters remained until the next turn, at which point, a man who was about two meters tall jumped out suddenly from around the corner, and his shoulders were so broad that you couldn’t help but admire such a fellow. Quickly throwing a glance in my direction, he muttered something and stopped. Resting his machine gun with a huge box on his shoulder, he fastened it underneath, and pointed the barrel in my direction. I was already preparing to roll away, but instead of opening fire on me, he just shouted:

  - Get away!

  Sharply changing my course, I leaned slightly to the left, moving away from the trajectory of his shoots. The machine gunner, waiting for me to get out of the way, fired five short bursts, removing several of the closest beasts behind my back. Then he turned to the passage from which he had come, and he screamed at the top of his voice:

  - Faster! There’s another wave coming to the left!

  At first glance, the machine gunner could’ve been mistaken for a beginner, judging by his bare head and light leather jacket. The massive manipulators, completely covering his hands and huge shoulders, showed that he wasn’t a simple man, however. It was also evident he knew how to choose his ammunition. His legs were clad in armor below the knee, with heavy shoes on a high metal platform. It wasn’t clear why his armor ended there, and the rest of his clothes were made from softer fabric or leather. On his belt, he had a few more boxes for the machine gun, the same size as the main one.

  And when he turned around to shout to someone invisible to me, someone who was around the corner of the house, I noticed a large backpack on his back, over which there was a half-meter teardrop-shaped plate and some kind of handle, with four thin plates fanning out from the handle at a ninety-degree angle. On the other side of the handle there was a massive knob, which, together with the plates, seemed to form the letter "T". When I reached him, he was already shooting in the other direction, most likely helping out his friends.

  - My friend, help me! Fighting alone is pointless. In the open space, they will kill us with the sheer weight of their bodies.

  It didn’t seem like an elaborate phrase, but it immediately became clear to me that a real player was in front of me. Looking out of the corner, he noticed two more players that had almost reached us. I saw a girl in light overalls who had two automatic pistols, and the overalls, contrary to what you might think, didn’t hide her sexiness, but actually clearly highlighted her allure. This was one sexy lady, here. Well, what more can I say? After all, they’ll even try to look good during a battle. Behind her, there was a man of about forty, out of breath, he had different scrap metal everywhere on him and a shotgun in his hands. Before they got to us, I turned around and started shooting at the monsters which had taken the lead.

  At first, I wanted to leave them, but the machine gunner had covered me, and I’d have to be a real motherfucker to leave him in dire straits after that. One good turn deserves another. Also, he could shoot me in the back, and I honestly wasn’t eager to get riddled with holes. The machine gunner was pretty experienced, so he could easily kill anyone and anything that left him behind. When the two players finally reached us, the machine gunner, without stopping his rapid fire, began to assign tasks for us.

  - Sini, go and look for an elite force to defend us, otherwise, they’ll wipe us out very quickly. - The girl just nodded her head and instantly jumped into the nearest building. – Buffoon, throw something to slow them down, then run after Sini, and as soon as you find a place for it, put a gun at the entrance. If the passage is wide enough, throw some bars at the sides, if you still have them. - Though I’m familiar with gaming slang, from time to time, I didn’t immediately understand the machine gunner. – Well, here we are, my friend, we’re going to shoot these mobs and try not to let them wipe us out while Sini is looking for a place to hide. -

  It seems I was starting to understand him: while Sini would be looking for a place to hide, I, along with the machine gunner, would keep the mobs away. Quite sensible, I would say. I was about to continue shooting the monsters, but I was distracted by that little man, who had the unusual nickname of “Buffoon”.

  - Well? -

  - “What?” I didn’t understand what he wanted from me.

  - Give me your nickname, quickly! I have to call you something. -

  - “Aah ... Volper.”

  An offer for me to join the group immediately popped up, which I immediately accepted. In the upper left corner, under the indicators, several images of the group members appeared. However, I didn’t look at the new icons, since there wasn’t enough time for that now - the only thing I’d managed to do was to see their names quickly. The machine gunner was called Elephant, and his profession was "Techno-Bear", the girl’s full name was Siniami, and she had a pretty much mysterious profession as well: "Stealth-support", but Buffoon was just an ordinary player and he was an engineer. It seemed to me, at that moment, that I
was the only one here who was without a profession, a fact Elephant immediately noticed.

  - Well, you’re a pro, and what do I see? You’ve got 15exp and no profession. How do you cope in here without any abilities and pro skills? -

  - “I just haven’t got enough skills for now, don’t worry about it.”

  - Alright, then, we’re going to shoot these Zerg Swarms and then we will have to wait until Sini reports that we have a place to retreat to… -

  Well, nothing I can add to that, is there? I had nothing to say, so I continued shooting my single bullets, trying to aim at their heads to do maximum damage. The main thing now wasn’t even to kill them, but just to slow them down, ideally knock them down, then the monsters would simply be trampled by those which come in after them. When the main mass of monsters was about two hundred meters that way, I ran out of ammo in the first magazine case.

  - “I’ve run out of ammo!” I shouted, letting Elephant know that I was reloading my magazine case.