Apocalypse: Generic System

by Macronomicon

  “Oh yeah. Huh.”

  “Let’s have a debrief, then go back to the camp and turn in for the night.” Jeb said.

  They spent the next half an hour resting and discussing possible solutions to the dungeon. One was to station zombies with Mystic Triggers on them beside all of the lava pits and have them walk in circles around them until a tentacle dragged them in. When a large beak got within a certain distance of the trigger, it would explode violently.

  For the swarm, Jeb figured he could make some custom triggers that would throw up a shark-cage over the entire group and give them time to take out the attackers. Ron’s tactic with the exploding zombies worked great for the caterpillars and golems.

  All that was left were the spear-throwers.

  “They looked like humanoid insects,” Jess said. “They were maybe six and half feet tall, with a coppery, shiny carapace.

  Jeb had seen the occasional shine of reflected light, but it hadn’t been bright enough to identify them.

  “I can make some bouncing betties out of pebbles and key them to six foot humanoid insects,” Jeb said. “If they’re as smart as we think they are, then seeding the main area with a couple hundred explosive pebbles should put the fear of god in ‘em, and make them think twice about moving through the main cavern.”

  “That sounds like it’ll work. But we need to be sure they won’t go off near us if we get attacked.” Brett said. “I’m not interested in getting cut in half.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Jeb said, nodding. That would require an if/and trigger, but the triggers were very smart, so he was fairly sure it could be done.

  Amanda finally got to him, sending ice cold healing through his scalp as it knitted itself together.

  Jeb sighed in relief as the constant sting let off.

  “Let’s head back to camp,” Jeb said, patting the dried blood in his hair. “Let’s clean up and prep for another run.”

  “Why are we going into the dungeon again?” Amanda asked. “Brett almost died.”

  “Because it’s there?” Ron said with a shrug.

  “Because it has something we need to get out of here,” Jeb clarified the mission statement for everyone. “This whole place has been laid out like a sadistic death game. Bosses and dungeons have been dropping items we need to survive, and at the same time the Safe Zones went down, this dungeon just happens to show up? It can’t be a coincidence.

  “And if we do it right, today’s trip will have been the most dangerous one. We’re gonna recover for a day, then systematically empty out that cave system. There’s a good chance it’ll have something we need.”

  Amanda frowned but she nodded. The alternative was forming a little family and living the rest of their lives on the side of mount doom.

  It was an option. They had food, water and shelter.

  It just wasn’t an option any of them wanted to take, yet.

  ***Later***

  Jeb clomped back to the campsite, and immediately noticed something was wrong. Casey was sitting by the fire, nursing her baby under a blanket, humming to her as she did.

  That wasn’t what was wrong. There were scuff marks in the dirt; size ten boots. There was a pile of extra scarabs shells on the ground and the ‘lobster tank’ was far emptier than it had been when they’d left.

  “Anything happen while we were gone?” Jeb asked.

  “Nope,” Casey answered with a smile. “We’ve been fine all day.”

  Jeb saw motion out of the corner of his eyes, and glanced over to see the mannequin motioning for his attention. It held up three fingers, made walking motions toward the pot of food, then shook its fist, pointing to the northeast.

  Three men came, ate some food and we scared them off? Jeb thought. He glanced back to Casey and sighed.

  She probably had the teenage mindset where she had to handle all her problems by herself in order to be ‘an adult’. Sadly this mindset Included not telling them about possible threats, because the adults might step in and treat her like a child.

  “Casey, if something important happens, you’d let us know about it, right? It would be the ‘adult’ thing to do.” Jeb said, sitting down beside the pot and spearing some meat with the nearby fork.

  Casey gave him a deer-in-headlights look, her gaze flickering to Jess, who was already tracking the direction of the footprints toward the northeast.

  “Some guys dropped by, I gave them some food and then sent them that way. They used to be on Eddie’s crew, but they were very well behaved after Mike talked to them.”

  Mike kicked his heels on Casey’s shoulder, nodding.

  At the mention of Eddie’s crew, Jess’s lips peeled back from her teeth in a snarl. It was only a moment, but Jeb caught it.

  “Don’t kill them, please,” Jeb said.

  “You got a reason I shouldn’t?” Jess demanded.

  He glanced over at their healer, whose eyes were widening, then back to Jess.

  The assassin got his meaning. “Alright. I’m not gonna kill them,” She said. “but if they attack us, I’m putting them down.”

  “You can’t –“

  “Amanda,” Brett said, putting a gentle hand on his wife’s shoulder. “If someone tries to hurt us, and we give them a slap on the wrist and send them on their way, there’s a good chance they’ll try again, forearmed with knowledge from the first fight, and the belief we’ll go easy on them if we win again. That kind of thinking could get some, or all of us, killed.”

  “Can’t we just take their weapons and send them away?”

  “That’s basically killing them, except we feel better about it.” Brett said with a shrug.

  “I don’t think it’ll come to that,” Jeb said. “We outnumber them and they know me and Jess beat Eddie. They don’t want to die. They’re a lot more likely to ask to join us or just avoid us outright.”

  Jessica didn’t seem to like the sound of that, but she didn’t say anything.

  “What if Eddie comes back?” Amanda asked.

  “Then he’ll die.” Jeb said with a shrug. “We can’t afford to take it easy on someone who comes back for more. Like Brett said, that will get some of us killed.”

  “In any case, I’m gonna need to work on the traps for the next dungeon run, I’ll start with the bouncing betties. I’ll put a few of them up around the camp in case they decide to sneak back in the middle of the night.”

  “I’ll be shoring up Myst. Need to rebuild my store for more zombos.” Ron said.

  “I spent a lot too,” Amanda nodded.

  “I’ll fix our gear and work on making my Core,” Brett said.

  “I’ll confirm the three stooge’s location and…not kill them.” Jessica said.

  Once the plan for the night was decided, they settled down for dinner in the fading light of the sun. For the nightly story, Jeb paraphrased the plot of Fight Club as best he could, with help from Brett and Ron.

  Brett played Tyler Durden, because of his model body, while Ron played the narrator, and Jeb shifted between roles, trying to keep the story flowing as smoothly as possible.

  By the end of the night it had devolved into pure silliness, but the girls seemed to love every second of it. The comradery and the sound of women laughing did a lot to ease Jeb’s mind. Even Jess broke a smile a couple times.

  After dinner, they broke off to their respective tasks. Brett retired into the cave to snooze and try to form his core. Ron sat cross-legged in front of the fire beside Amanda, while Jess stalked off into the darkness.

  Jeb, in the meantime, tried to figure out his ‘bouncing betty’ design.

  The first step was to ensure he could make a safety mechanism. The if/and statement.

  If I am holding this rock, and no other person is within twenty feet, the rock will pop up.

  Mystic trigger

  Jeb held the rock in his hand then took a few paces away from the fire. The moment he was twenty feet away from the closest person, the rock popped up out of his hand.


  Success. Now the hard part.

  Jeb’s spell didn’t inherently know what direction was up or down when it fired. That meant he had to make something that could orient itself. At first he’d thought of a bobber, but that was too complicated. Eventually he stumbled on the idea of a bop bag.

  Like one of those clown punching bags that kids punch that always right themselves.

  All he had to do was make a sphere and hollow out one side of it, the sphere would always orient itself with the heavier side down.

  Of course it wouldn’t have worked for his ejector seats, because they were being carried by a person, but for making bouncing bettys? Hell yeah, it worked.

  In his furnace, Jeb took a large rock and melted it, then squished it down and stamped out sixteen hundred identical thumb-sized spheres. Once that was done, he formed sixteen hundred needles connected to a press and injected a little bubble of air into the top of each of the glassy pebbles with some help from Casey’s mannequin.

  Once that was done, Jeb just had to wait for the glass to slowly cool inside the furnace, to limit the amount of fracturing.

  Somewhere during that time, Amanda slipped away from the rest of the group, and a few minutes later, they started hearing the sounds of passionate lovemaking coming from the cave.

  It started quiet, barely noticeable at first, but eventually the grunting, slapping and moaning were pretty much the only thing the three of them could hear as they sat around the fire.

  Jeb ignored it, too focused on mass producing his bouncing betties. If he let them experience temperature shock, he might even lose the whole batch.

  Ron listened to the increasingly loud noises coming from the cave, staring at the entrance for a good ten minutes before he stood.

  “…I gotta go take care of something,” Ron said, walking off into the darkness with his Death Knight as backup.

  Casey scrunched up her nose. “Why are they doing that?” she whispered to Jeb.

  “Brett almost died.” Jeb whispered back with a shrug. “Almost dying makes people horny.”

  Casey blinked at him disbelievingly.

  “I didn’t write the rules for human biology,” Jeb whispered.

  After another couple minutes, the sounds came to a climax, and Brett walked out of the cave with a shirt wrapped around his waist. He stooped over to grab a water bottle and drank nearly the entire thing before heaving a huge sigh.

  “Goddamn, that hits the spot.” He glanced at Jeb and thumbed over his shoulder. “You wanna finish her off?”

  “I’ll take a rain check.” Jeb replied.

  Brett frowned. “Why?”

  “As long as I’m the leader of the group, I can’t afford to.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Some day, something I tell you to do might get you hurt. I can’t afford Amanda to even have the shadow of a doubt that it could be because I caught feelings.”

  Jeb shook his head.

  “It’s too dangerous for any of us to have a falling out right now…but as soon as we’re out of the Tutorial and someplace safe, I will absolutely wreck your wife.”

  Brett chuckled. “Alright, rain check.” He took another swig of water and walked back into the cave.

  The noises resumed.

  Casey stared at Jeb like she’d just seen some eldritch horror that had permanently scarred her mind.

  “What, should I have said never?” Jeb asked. “Amanda’s smoking hot.”

  “But they’re…how…” Casey finally gave up, shaking her head. “I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t have to. Most people can’t separate sex and love until they’re well into their thirties,” Jeb said, turning back to his project. “Sometimes never.”

  The decision not to get laid rankled, but it was the right one to sidestep unnecessary drama.

  I might take a page from Ron’s book and work out my issues outside the camp.

  A while later, Jeb took the first of his bouncing betties out of the furnace and tossed it onto the ground. The spherical glassy stone bounced and rolled for a moment, then stopped with the bubble facing up. Jeb repeated this test with a handful of about a dozen of them, and was pleased to note that they landed bubble up nearly every time, and even when they weren’t bubble up, they were still bubble-mostly-up.

  Perfect.

  Then Jeb went about putting a Mystic Trigger on each and every one of the little marbles, creating an If/and statement.

  Mystic Trigger

  If there is a weapon-wielding creature within two feet of the marble and none of Jeb’s group* is within fifty-two feet, whirling fifty-foot blades will appear three feet above, turning everything inside their range into mulch.

  Jeb’s group* includes Jeb, Jessica, Ron, Brett, Amanda, Casey, Casey the third...and Smartass.

  There were a few issues, such as the marble having a distinctive shape and not being hidden underground.

  The enemy would most likely figure out a way to deal with them after the first handful of encounters.

  But until then, they would give Jeb’s group a huge tactical advantage. And they only needed to win once.

  Jeb kept weaving Mystic triggers, moving the marbles from the unfinished bag to the finished bag as he went. By the time he was too tired to continue, he’d finished a good three hundred of them.

  Before he went to bed, he tossed a couple handfuls into the barren slopes surrounding the camp.

  Just in case Eddie’s goons really are that stupid.

  ***The entrance to the dungeon***

  A copper-covered claw scratched stone, taking an uncertain first step into the moonlight as the creatures entered the outside world for the first time in their history.

  The copper-carapaced hunters crouched low as they tested the air, following the strange scent of the pale, soft creatures.

  The lead hunter hesitated for just an instant before it padded silently out onto the mountainside. Behind him, dozens, hundreds more coppery hunters spilled out of the dungeon into the starry night, silent as the grave .

  It was finally dark enough to see.

  Chapter 19: When in doubt, sucker punch

  Tom, Dick and Harry sat around their meager campfire staring at the flames.

  “I would give my left nut for a big mac right now,” Harry said.

  “I would give your left nut too.” Dick said, nodding before Harry punched him in the shoulder.

  “We need to ask them if we can join,” Tom said, staring into the fire.

  “What? Team up with those assholes? You want a maid outfit so you can take care of the baby while the rest of them go get more levels?” Dick said, scoffing at him. “All we have to do is get more levels, get stronger than them, and take what we want. That Casey chick’s pretty hot without the baby bump. I could get some milk straight from the tap, if you know what I mean.”

  Harry chuckled appreciatively and Tom once again considered abandoning the two and heading out on his own.

  ‘Getting stronger’ was definitely possible. Killing creatures led to levels, which led to more power. But even with that in mind, those people were surely doing the same thing, and there were obviously more of them. Tom had made out five places to sit around the campfire.

  If even the teen girl could send them packing, what hope did they have against all of them? And what if they had the monster who killed Eddie? Eddie had been practically fucking untouchable. Why on earth did these idiots think the chances of that guy still being alive were negligible?

  He hadn’t seen Jessica’s corpse at the old safe-zone, either. She must’ve gotten away, and she’d killed four of them, severely wounded and weaponless.

  Tom had no idea where they were getting this confidence from.

  Idiot confidence, perhaps.

  Fuck, I never should’ve joined Eddie’s crew. As far as Tom could tell, if he wanted to survive, now was the time to swallow his pride and start kissing feet and keep kissing them until they shined.

  Yeah. That’s wh
at I’ll do. Tomorrow, I’ll ditch these guys, toss my weapons aside and go over to their camp with my hands up. Throw myself on their mercy.

  Crunch!

  Crunch?

  There was a tickle in Tom’s throat, and he coughed a bit, a chunk of something working its way up his trachea.

  I smell blood. That’s weird.

  He felt a rapidly growing itch in his solar plexus, and glanced down to see a bronze spear jutting out of his chest, buried partway into the ground in front of him.

  Bronze? Like that Troy movie? Tom thought, confused as his muscles grew weak, slumping him over on his side. He felt something filling his throat and he tried to cough again, sending a spray of blood out of his mouth into the dust in front of him.

  He could hear noises, and shouting, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  Tom’s brain experienced a sudden, horrifying realization as the world around him began to dim.

  Oh god, I think I’m….

  ***The Mannequin***

  The mannequin didn’t have a name, but that was fine. He didn’t particularly want or need one. He’d been custom built and awakened for one singular task. That was to keep Casey and by extension her daughter, as safe as possible.

  Names didn’t particularly help with that goal. Everything he did was viewed through the lens of ‘how beneficial is this to Casey’s survival?’.

  He didn’t need to eat or sleep. He saw just fine somehow, despite not having eyes like the humans. He’d never really stopped to consider how he knew what all these things were, or what they meant. He just knew them.

  An adult level intellect and memories, imprinted wholesale on a block of wood. The How didn’t really matter, and the Why was already baked in. The mannequin was too busy to suffer from existential crises. It had Ikigai. Fucktons of Ikigai.

  Right now, that meant creeping around the perimeter with his brother…or sister? Didn’t matter. They were maintaining low profiles on opposite sides of the camp, moving slug-slow, keeping watch on the darkness for anything out of the ordinary.

  He would have made a ghillie suit if there had been any shrubs, but the bare mountain left them completely exposed, so unfortunately whatever they saw would see them back. Their best camouflage was to act like lifeless pieces of wood.