by Macronomicon
That got a reaction. Oh, crap they’re fast! Jeb turned and ran – well, flew – as fast as he could, aiming for the safe zone, a cloud of death following after him.
It was a short but tense race between him and the flying defenders, and if they weren’t poisoned, they probably would have caught him.
You have gained a level!
You have gained a level!
You are now level 32!
Jeb glanced over his shoulder and saw the fire on top of the enormous tortoise spreading, a thick fog of poisonous smoke spreading in every direction.
He also saw a pair of mandibles from a horse-sized dragonfly rapidly gaining on him.
“Pip one,” he said, pointing over his shoulder.
The creature effortlessly dodged the invisible bullet, huge eyes glinting in the sun with what Jeb could swear was amusement.
Dragonflies were the apex predator of the dogfighting world, most of their brain was literally devoted to it, and trying to alter his course wasn’t going to do anything. He was right on top of the safe zone, about to get eaten by a bug monster, so Jeb did the only sensible thing:
He dropped his flight entirely.
Concentration freed, Jeb whipped his hand around and caught the creature in a magical fist, crushing its wings against its body an instant before it cut him in half.
He lashed out with his good foot as the creature approached, knocking it up, and sending himself tumbling downward, earth and sky spinning around him at ridiculous speeds.
Jeb hit the ground head-first, a half ton of earth trying to ram itself into every orifice on his face, legs dangling over him like one of those yoga chicks. You know the ones.
Jeb’s pegleg fell off, bonking him on the skull before it rolled a couple feet away.
“ow.”
Jeb’s spine creaked dangerously as he straightened it before he pulled himself out of the man-sized divot in the clearing.
Jeb hauled himself to his knees, rubbing his back as the sun was gradually choked off by the enormous swarm of high-level monsters surrounding the safe zone, buzzing, flapping, growling and generally making a din.
When he looked in front of himself, he saw Eddie staring at him, mouth gaping. The warrior had his hand elbow deep in Jeb’s duffle bag, and a good portion of the contents were strewn around the packed earth of the Safe Zone.
“What, um…what am I looking at, exactly?”
Jebediah Trapper
Mystic Trapsmith, Level 32
Body 16
Myst 58 +2
Nerve 21 +3
Abilities: Mystic Trigger
2 Stat points remaining
Finger-gun clips: ‘ack’ X10 ☑ ‘pip’x10 ☑ ‘kip’ X10 ☑ ‘Alpha Strike’ ☠
Full auto: ‘Juggernaut’☑ ‘Mark of Cain’☑
Cane Auto: x4 BP ☑ HR ☑ BD ☑ OD ☑
Cane Manual: x2 ‘just getting started’☑ ‘alt blinks’☑
Shield: x4 ☑
Armor: head ☑ torso ☑ legs ☑ upper arms ☑ lower arms ☑
Projectile reflection x50 ☑
Safety Phrases: restraints ‘3W’ ☑ ‘Scarabs’ ☑ ‘Plitskin’ ☑ ‘no homo’ ☑ ‘Room full of Charlies’☠
Grenades ‘go boom’: ‘nut’ ☑ ‘rock’ ☑ ‘knife’ ☑ ‘authorize magical girl transformation’☠
Aerial Bomb: x10 ý
Chapter 11: Generic Villains
There was pandemonium in the camp as people snatched up weapons, leaping to their feet and preparing to defend themselves, but Jeb only had eyes for his bag and the douche with his hands in it.
Jeb cleared his throat.
“What did you do!?” Eddie shouted, dropping Jeb’s bag and pointing at him, deliberately raising his voice so everyone could hear. “This guy brought the monsters to the safe zone! How could you do that!?”
Nice red herring.
Jeb raised a brow, grabbed his pegleg and blew the dirt out of it before putting it back on his stump and climbing to his feet – foot –. A slowly growing knot of people were growing around him, following Eddy’s lead.
“What the hell?”
“Do you have any idea –“
“Ladies and gentlemen.” Jeb said, picking up his duffel and pulling The Penetrator out of it, along with its tattered spearhead cousin. “Let’s put a pin in this conversation until the buffet of free levels is gone, whaddya say?”
He imbued the two blades with Myst and sent them streaking up into the dense cloud of baddies swarming around the invisible dome. Jeb pulled up a seat next to a fire and grabbed someone’s uncooked monster-meat on a stick, warming his foot next to the rack lining the firepit while he watched the skies.
If it weren’t for the harsh screams of dying monsters and the shouting of the locals, it would have been a nice relaxing camp-slash-BBQ.
Eddie and others watched in awe as Jeb’s blades plunged through creature after creature around the top of the dome, creating a hail of dead bodies falling to the earth. Thankfully no one remaining was weak enough to be seriously injured by something big falling on them.
Except maybe him and Ron.
It didn’t take more than a couple seconds for the quicker-witted members of the community to see the obvious benefit of having a semi-permeable forcefield in their favor, as anybody with a bow, spear or particularly long sword began killing the monsters from the safety of the Safe Zone.
You have gained a level!
You are now level 33!
In about half an hour, the swarm of monsters was substantially reduced and limped back to the World Tortoise, their fury spent.
Littering the ground in and around the safe zone were thousands of bodies of monsters of every description. Ron was busily sorting through them, resurrecting the most powerful ones he could find that were in good condition.
A few of them could still fly, even.
“What the hell were you thinking!” Eddie said, grabbing Jeb’s shirt and hauling him out of his seat. “What if they had trapped us in here? What if they could’ve attacked through the wall!?”
“I was thinking,” Jeb said, prying the man’s fingers off his shirt. “That if you couldn’t beat those monsters with a Safe Zone protecting you, you definitely couldn’t beat them out in the open. It would be better to know that now than to rush into death.”
“Those were the monsters that defend the World Tortoise!” Jeb shouted, raising his voice and gathering even more attention. “It wasn’t all of them, either! I wanted you all to get a taste of what you’re up against!”
“Who here got a level from this?” Jeb asked. Hands started going up, and they didn’t stop.
“You put us in danger –“
“Everyone here is going to be in danger tomorrow. I single handedly gave every person here the opportunity to level and grow more powerful, while simultaneously weakening the turtle’s defenses, and got us a thousand meat-shields in the process,” Jeb said, motioning to Ron.
“What did you do in that time except dig through my bag looking for something to steal?”
The problem with soundly defeating stupid with words was that they had a tendency to take it poorly. Case in point.
Eddie punched him in the face.
The fist came faster than Jeb could react, smashing into his nose with the force of a goddamn truck.
The femtosecond the bones in Jeb’s nose began to crack, the ‘armor’ Mystic Trigger on his head activated, seizing everything in the vicinity of his head and flinging it away. In this case, Eddie’s fist, and by extension, Eddie.
Eddie flew backwards like an arrow, dragged through the air by his right arm, flopping like a fish on a hook until he violently impacted a large tree on the edge of the Safe Zone.
Jeb staggered backward, blinking tears out of his eyes. Getting punched in the nose makes your eyes water whether you’re tough or not. Ask a boxer.
“Don’t do that again.” Jeb said, wiping the blood off of his nose and re-upping the ‘armor’ trigg
er on his head. If he didn’t have it, Eddie would have punched him into death or unconsciousness, and won the argument by lack of opposition.
I can see why Ron didn’t want to stick around for the politics.
“Here,” Amanda said, jostling her way through the crowd and touching the bridge of his nose.
It felt icy cold for an instant, like he’d snorted a crushed up altoid, then it faded, along with the pain.
“That was pretty fucking cool.” Brett said, “Eddie likes to play king of the castle whenever Freeman isn’t watching, and he tries his damndest to make life miserable for anyone who stands up to him. A few have disappeared, and we don’t know if they just left, or…” The Soldier shrugged. “Most people are too afraid to do anything.”
“Everyone saw him going through your stuff, but he said you died and nobody was brave enough to argue…Sorry.” The healer said, her eyes down.
“Died!? I was gone for an hour.” Jeb rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
Jeb caught some six or seven guys giving him the stink eye as they sauntered away.
“Those Eddie’s constituents?”
“Yeah, they’re the ‘might makes right’ mentality fuckwads that crawl out of the goddamn woodwork whenever something terrible happens.” Brett said, shaking his head.
“And the only way to prove them wrong is by being stronger than them.” Jeb said with a sigh.
“Yeah, it’s a real fuckin’ catch-twenty-two.”
“You’re not really a Beggar, are you?” came a voice from Jeb’s left. David was approaching, hand resting on the pommel of his sword.
“Apologies, but the first people I met tried to rob me. Didn’t know if you meant to do the same.”
“No harm no foul,” David said, holding up a placating hand.
“As for my class…Telekinetic Combatant. I can move shit with my mind.” Jeb felt a little guilty for lying to the same guy twice, but he wanted to keep his cards close to the vest. If people knew he could design traps, they would figure out a way to circumvent them.
Besides, no one would be able to tell the difference between the two on casual examination. Not without bringing in another Telekinetic Combatant to compare with.
“Yeah, I saw that.” David said, shaking his head. “I guess I should’ve assumed anyone who was still alive was dangerous.”
“Probably a good call.”
“Hey, we’re putting some of the tastier monsters over a spit at our fireplace, we’d love to have you over,” David said, thumbing over his shoulder where his fifteen men and women were carving off hunks of meat and getting them ready to grill. “Your friend, ah, Jessica is welcome too, of course.”
“Gimme a minute to sort my stuff out and I’ll be right there.” Jeb said with a nod.
“Cool,” David patted him on the shoulder and left.
“What’s David’s group like?”
“They’re more moderate, and that appeals to more people, but their individual levels lag behind Eddie’s group. They’re only able to keep from getting absorbed because they have more numbers.” Amanda said.
“What about you two?” Jeb asked. “Which group do you put yourself in?”
“Independent contractors,” Bret said, crossing his arms. “Eddies goon’s tried to extort Amanda for sex, so she broke the guy’s arm.”
Jeb’s eyebrows rose.
“I’ve drank stat potions equivalent to someone who’s cleared sixteen areas.” The healer said with a shrug. “I don’t even have a class yet, but these boys know to think twice before they try anything.”
16x3 = 48 Stat points. Even split up and assigned randomly, that put her lowest stat likely in the twenties.
Jeb knew exactly how she’d gotten that many potions, but he couldn’t fault them for it: it was a damn good survival strategy.
Also, the information that she was a Myst user and her ability to heal wasn’t class-related was good to know.
“Damn,” Jeb said, shaking his head. “Well, if you two find yourselves looking for a group to join, I could use a hand.”
“No offence, but you just got here.” Amanda said apologetically.
That makes sense.
“None taken,” Jeb said. “Just wanted to put that out there.”
“Politics aside, hopefully by tomorrow this whole tutorial business will be behind us.” Brett said.
“Are you both taking part in the raid tomorrow?” Jeb asked.
The two of them nodded. “Almost everyone is.”
“Almost?”
“Casey is pregnant,” Amanda said, pointing to a woman with short black hair sitting by the fire with a bulging belly. “She says she chose the impossible difficulty tossing in her sleep, but who knows,” She shrugged.
Jeb could make out a faint scar on the young woman’s wrist.
Assisted suicide, perhaps? Some people might not have the guts to kill themselves outright, but enough to choose a course of action that would lead to their death. Jeb was familiar with self-destructive behavior.
“Anyone else?”
“A few. Mostly people with injuries I can’t heal.” Amanda looked at his foot apologetically. “I can’t grow back limbs.”
“Yet.” Jeb said. “You’ve only been able to use Myst for what, a week? And you don’t even have a class yet. I would not be surprised if you find a way to do just that.”
Amanda seemed to brighten a bit at that.
I gotta hold on to this person, Jeb thought to himself. Aside from the immediate benefit of having a healer, it would be nice to hold out hope for his foot.
Jeb said farewell to the two of them and headed for the fire where David’s group was, meeting many of the same people he’d seen standing behind the Quickblade the first time, rubbing elbows and chatting them up about their survival strategies, how they came to be here and so on.
He glanced up and spotted Eddie giving him a sour look every once in a while, but the black-haired man didn’t give him any further trouble.
After the meal was over, David pitched the idea of Jeb joining his group, and Jeb politely declined, leaving things on – hopefully – good terms with them before heading back to the outskirts of the camp, where his little firepit sat, empty and full of ash.
Jeb sat down and set his duffle bag next to him, body still warm from the meal and company.
Time to make those safety belts. He thought, mulling over his options. He wanted to make some kind of ejector seat for people he wanted to keep, but the logistics of that was mind-boggling. He considered trying to make a self-contained bauble with some kind of fluid and bobber inside so it could always tell which direction was up, but after it shot people into the sky, he couldn’t think of a way to get it to bring people back to the safe zone.
If the ejection seat primary has triggered and the myst packet is closer than any of the others to the safe zone, then it triggers, drawing them in that direction…
I Might be able to work with this, assuming it can tell the distance to the safe zone…or perhaps me? Yeah, this could work.
Jeb had zero experience with programming, but he imagined it might be a bit like this. At least for the simpler things.
He spent the rest of the night perfecting his ejector seats, only managing to make four before he had to lay down and sleep. Before bed he dropped his three new Stat points into Myst.
He barely felt the headache.
Jebediah Trapper
Mystic Trapsmith, Level 33
Body 16
Myst 61 +2
Nerve 21 +3
Abilities: Mystic Trigger
*** 14 hours remaining until Safe Zones expire ***
Jeb woke up refreshed, the smell of camp smoke bringing back boyhood memories.
I honestly thought someone was gonna try and kill me in my sleep.
Jeb grabbed his cane and pushed himself up, blinking the sand out of his eyes as he took in the bustle of activity. He hadn’t noticed last night, but those last three points that brought him u
p to sixty Myst had changed something. Everyone seemed to be radiating an…aura of some kind. It varied from person to person, but most of them looked nervous.
Men and women were strapping armor on, making sure their weapons were sharp, checking and re-checking their sheaths were fixed on straight.
It was the jitters before a battle.
Everyone’s getting ready for the big date. I just wanna survive it.
Jeb pulled out his list of ‘traps’, made sure they were all topped off, then went around affixing ‘ejector seats’ to his four MVPs.
Amanda, Brett, Ron, and Jessica.
Once that was done, it wasn’t long before they were underway, forming a loose line of people marching through the wilderness toward the meandering turtle. They were broken up into small knots of people, Freeman and his people at the front, followed by David and his people, with Eddie’s group trailing behind.
In the middle, ones and twos like Jeb and Jessica, Brett and Amanda, walked along by themselves. Flanking everyone on either side of the group were huge zombified beasts of every description, acting as a buffer. They would definitely help with finishing the plan safely.
The plan was this: Sneak onto the creature’s tail, the only thing that wasn’t stomping up and down like crazy, sneak into the shell, find the thing’s weak spot and murder it.
Simple, right?
Except, not at all, Jeb thought, squinting as he gazed up at the mountainous creature moving across the horizon. The forest on top of its shell showed no sign of the fire he’d inflicted on it the day before.
Jeb frowned, squinting as he scanned the very top center of the shell. There’s gotta be a little scorch mark at the middle where the lens fell, at least.
“Incomin!” Freeman shouted, and Jeb noticed the stream of monsters beginning to pour out of the shell.
They weren’t even close to the tortoise.
Damn, he thought, bringing up his blades up and sending them into the sky. All the zombies tightened up their lines to protect the humans as effectively as possible.
Then the fight was on.
The swarm of monsters crashed over the group like a storm, relentless and unceasing. They left a wake of bodies behind them as they pushed forward, fighting for every inch of ground.