Even if I never came back for the cameras, having a visual on the aircraft could provide intel later.
Since I was supposed to be out hunting anyways, I left Mellon Hall and worked my way through the other campus buildings. Almost every building had some kind of monster infestation that I cleared with little trouble. I stuck to my beam pistols and melee weapons for the fighting since shooting projectiles meant that I would need to spend Credits to resupply, which cut into any profit gained from selling the monster loot.
The monsters I found on the defunct university campus ranged from additional nests of the acid-spitting mice to a mutated boa constrictor that hunted them. The giant snake might have been more of a problem if it hadn’t been already locked in combat with one of the mice nests.
Judging by the lumps that bulged throughout the middle of the snake, it had managed to swallow several of the rodents before I used my axe to hack through scales weakened by the mice’s acid attacks and sever the reptile’s spine. Finishing off the rest of the mice was trivial.
The rest of the monsters I faced were more mundane variations of common rodents, pets, and insects. Most of the creatures had levels that were at least double mine, but I found that I could quickly dispatch most foes by targeting vulnerabilities like joints, necks, and other areas with little protection. My high attributes of agility and perception allowed me to precisely aim my beam weapons at those points. When I switched to melee attacks with my knife and axe, those same attributes gave me the speed to exploit any weaknesses I discovered. That attack style synergized well with the slowing effects provided by Frostbolt at longer ranges and Hinder at close range.
When I did take hits, my Constitution gave me the hit points to be able to absorb those blows, provided I wasn’t careless enough to let myself get surrounded or swarmed. I stalked through the campus until the wee hours of the morning.
Finally, I decided to take a break from the killing so that I could be ready for a patrol with the police at dawn. I barricaded myself in a janitor’s closet on the ground floor of a campus administration building and curled up on some couch cushions I had taken from a lounge down the hall. Then I let myself fall asleep.
Chapter 24
The first light of dawn peeked over the eastern horizon and filtered down past the buildings of downtown Pittsburgh to where I sat on top of the Wolverine police cruiser parked outside of the municipal courthouse. The morning air was crisp and cool, just warm enough that the strip of grass alongside the parking lot glistened with dew instead of frost.
I yawned as I lounged, one leg dangling, on the roof of the vehicle while I waited for the officers to appear. I might not have been a stranger to late nights and early mornings, but I didn’t particularly enjoy them. Fortunately, it seemed I needed less sleep the higher my Constitution climbed, so I had woken up with plenty of time to spare. My pre-dawn stroll back to the parking lot from the university campus had been uneventful.
Heavy thoughts had occupied my mind as I returned to the prison. People would likely die today, if I succeeded in my plans to set the alien forces in the city at each other’s throats. Casualties would be caught in the crossfire.
I didn’t have anything against most of the officers. Like Pearce and Zoey, most seemed to be trying to survive in this crazy world and going along with the warden.
That woman was a different story. I was sure that she knew about the dark side of the Krym’parke. She had, quite literally it seemed, made a deal with the devils. She needed to be brought down, even if those who had signed on with her paid the price.
It was largely a selfish decision on my part. I could see no other way through the defenses of the prison in order to complete my Quest to find the missing children. Part of me still dared to hope the Thomas kids would survive to be rescued. Zeke’s offspring deserved the chance to flourish in this new world, and if I could make that happen, then I would.
I might not have a quest for that, but it meant more to me than the camaraderie of the officers I had fought beside yesterday.
The compound gates slid open not long after my arrival, and the trio of officers I had met the day before walked out together. They all carried their helmets instead of wearing them, so I could see by their facial expressions that none of them were particularly surprised to see me waiting. The tower guards on the wall must have warned them.
The three appeared more rested than they had the previous day, which I attributed to a decent night of sleep. Kevin stomped behind Pearce and Zoey. He still looked rather sullen though.
“Good morning, officers,” I called as the three approached.
“Good morning,” replied Pearce, while Zoey waved and Kevin continued to ignore me.
“What’s the plan for today?” I asked as I hopped down from the roof of the vehicle.
Zoey sighed. “The same thing we do every day.”
I looked at the officer and raised an eyebrow. “Try to take over the world?”
“What?”
The three all looked at me with confused expressions.
“Never mind,” I said with a shake of my head. “Old cartoon reference.”
The sergeant glared at me, narrowing his eyes.
“I don’t need any more snark on this team,” Pearce warned me with a glance at Kevin.
“Fine,” I said. “More monster killing then?”
Pearce nodded and climbed into the driver’s compartment of the Wolverine. The rest of us boarded after him, and Kevin clambered up into the turret housing. Pearce drove out of the parking lot and down First Avenue, almost retracing my steps when I left the previous evening. Instead of turning right though, which would have taken us into the heart of downtown, Pearce continued another block and turned left. He drove south, the wrong way onto the off-ramp from US-22, the Penn-Lincoln Parkway. The ramp sloped as it curved down to merge into US-22, which ran along the river. We were soon headed westbound in the eastbound traffic lane, the closest street to the river’s edge.
“There’s always something crawling out of the river,” Pearce explained. “So we try to get down here a few times a—”
Thunder from above interrupted Pearce as Kevin opened fire with the 240G.
Through the front viewscreen, I saw a cluster of large lizard creatures clumped up around something in the middle of the road ahead. The dark green reptiles had long V-shaped heads like a crocodile with protruding teeth visible all along the jaw. While the creatures also had lengthy bodies and a thick tail similar to a standard terrestrial crocodile, the six-clawed legs that were longer and more agile than normal made it clear that these were System-mutated creatures.
Tracers highlighted the line of fire from the turret overhead and stretched out to the cluster of lizards. Kevin raked the hail of bullets from the 240G through the cluster, but only a couple were knocked down by the barrage. The beasts were surprisingly agile, and they scattered in several directions. While a handful dived away over the railings that bordered the road to drop ten feet to the riverside below, the rest charged toward us. Pearce jerked the vehicle to a halt and into reverse, backing up to keep the range open between us and the approaching mass of lizards.
Explosions tossed a couple of the reptiles airborne when Kevin added the Mk 19 to the stream of fire he poured toward the advancing monsters, but there were too many of them, and they moved too fast for the young gunner to target them. With Kevin’s low level, the youth simply lacked the combination of Agility and Perception to track the creatures accurately, in sharp contrast to my relatively high attributes that had allowed me to remain deadly accurate with ranged weapons.
“They’re going to catch up,” I said, my voice low enough that only Pearce and Zoey could hear me over the roar of the weapons overhead.
“I can see that,” Pearce replied tersely.
The Wolverine shook as something slammed into it from the side, and I glanced over to see one of the lizard creatures just before it rammed a shoulder into the passenger door opposite from me a sec
ond time.
Daggermaw Racer (Level 29)
HP: 726/726
The vehicle rocked to the side from the blow, and Pearce cursed from the driver’s seat as he attempted to continue driving backward while struggling to maintain control. Another racer popped up over the guardrail next to the first lizard and joined its companion in battering against the side of the cruiser.
A moment later, the rear of the Wolverine bucked upward as we hit something behind us that thumped against the underside of the cruiser as we rolled over it at speed. The momentary loss of traction on that side, amplified by the lizards ramming into us, caused Pearce to lose control completely, and we bashed into the cement roadside barrier.
The impact turned the vehicle into a spin that twisted us three-fourths of the way around before we hit the barrier on the opposite side of the road and punched through the concrete. The front tires dropped as the bottom of the vehicle scraped over the rubble and brought us to a halt with the front of the vehicle over empty air a story above the river’s edge.
There was no time to celebrate the fact that we had managed to not flip the vehicle or end up in the river. Since we were no longer moving, the pack of lizards quickly surrounded us and swarmed the vehicle. Claws scraped the Wolverine, digging into the armor and filling the air with piercing screeches as the armor gradually peeled away. The frenzied monsters bit and snapped their large maws at any exposed edges, and the vehicle shook as the creatures battered it.
“They’re too close,” Kevin shouted from the turret. “I can’t aim low enough to hit anything without hitting us too.”
Pearce yanked on a control lever beside the driver’s seat, and I felt the vehicle heave beneath us as the sergeant tried to get the vehicle to pull itself back from the edge. Tires spun but failed to gain enough purchase to pull free.
“We’re stuck,” Pearce said.
“That armor isn’t going to hold,” Zoey said, worry filling her voice.
“Then we do this the hard way,” Pearce replied grimly.
The sergeant grabbed his helmet from where it had been sitting between the two officers in the front seats and pulled it over his head. Zoey sighed and put on her own helmet.
Pearce reached up to a button on the dash next to the steering column, then paused to look back at me. The sergeant cocked his head in a wordless question.
“Ready when you are.” I grinned as I pulled out my knife and axe. This would be a close quarters fight.
Pearce punched his finger onto the button, and hair stood up on the back of my neck as I felt a jolt pass through the vehicle beneath me. Outside the vehicle, electricity swept from the surface of the Wolverine in a jagged wave. Brilliant blue arcs of energy jumped from lizard to lizard, and the creatures shook, seized into place by the electric attack.
“The shock stun won’t last long, go now!” Pearce shouted as he jerked open his door and leapt toward the nearest lizard, baton extended and lighting up with energy as he swung.
The daggermaw against my door tumbled over as I pushed the door open and jumped out. I wasted no time in shoving my knife through the eye and into the brain of the prone lizard that I had just knocked over, activating Rend to create a damage over time effect even though I was pretty sure the wound was fatal, before moving on to the next monster.
I dropped three of the daggermaw lizards before they showed signs of shaking off the effects of the stun from the Wolverine. Slowly at first, but once the creatures started moving, it became much more challenging to land critical hits that would keep the monsters down.
Thick, scaly hides protected the daggermaws, but both of my melee weapons tore through their defenses to inflict grievous wounds with every attack as I darted through the mass of lizards and activated Rend to maximize my damage. Just as the beast in front of me steadied itself, I sprinted past and delivered a blow with my axe that hacked into the creature’s neck at the base of its skull. The weapon sliced through scale and muscle to splinter the vertebrae of the spine. Blood sprayed from the wound as I yanked the axe free, and the lizard crumpled as I planted my foot and turned to stab my knife into its side.
I kept moving, even as I landed a pair of blows on the daggermaw before I moved on to another target. The beast wasn’t dead, but it was down and suffering from a quad stack of bleeding debuffs from my Rend that would further weaken it. I needed to get clear of the scrum before the monsters completely recovered from the stun that had given us the opportunity to get clear of the vehicle.
While I slipped through the throng of lizards, Pearce and Zoey remained near the stuck cruiser. I had no attention to spare for the pair as the daggermaws snapped and clawed at me, so I judged their status from the sounds I could hear. The impact of Pearce’s heavy blows carried to where I fought even though he was on the far side of the Wolverine, and I heard the jolt of his baton discharging with each hit. From the sharp cracks of gunfire, Zoey had pulled her firearm to assist her partner.
I reached the outside of the scrum and worked around the edges of the mass of lizards. They may have been deadly and agile opponents, but so was I. My speed gave me just enough edge that I dodged the worst of their attacks, now that I had the room to maneuver.
Clawtips still slashed through my jumpsuit and sliced into my legs as I harried the fringes of the monster pack. Blood seeped from the cuts, and though none of the wounds were critical individually, the damage added up. My health dropped as blood trickled down my legs.
My stamina dipped lower as I unleashed Rend after Rend on the monsters. The creatures I attacked turned their attention from the Wolverine and circled around me. If they surrounded me completely, the lizards would tear me apart.
I dodged their attacks, slipping between the enclosing monsters, before I led the pursuing creatures off down the road and back in the direction from which they had first charged toward us.
Blasts from the earlier grenade launcher fire had left the street a pitted mess, and I danced sideways with half of my attention on my path through the rubble while the rest remained focused on avoiding attacks from the daggermaws that ran after me. Three of the six-legged creatures easily navigated through the cratered debris in pursuit.
Once a dozen paces separated the lizards that followed me from the rest of the monster pack, I pivoted and used the guardrail as a springboard to leap onto the daggermaw on the left. The creature threw its head back to snap at me as I landed on its spine, and I hooked my axe under the lizard’s long chin to hold it in place as I raked the blade of my knife across its throat. The daggermaw bucked beneath me as blood poured from the gaping wound, and I jumped free of the creature, careful to place the dying creature’s body between the two other monsters and me.
The pair of lizards clambered over the fallen daggermaw, consumed by their fervor to reach me and heedless of the lacerations their sharp claws left behind. Still unwilling to utilize my full skillset with the officers nearby, I circled quickly enough that one was briefly behind the other, then I darted forward.
I feinted toward the creature, and the monster snapped its jaws where I should have been but caught only empty air. I had pulled back at the last second, then I swung my axe onto the creature’s snout. The blade punched through the monster’s upper jaw completely and lodged in place. I lost my grip on the weapon when the lizard jerked away. The monster twisted away from me completely and writhed against the guardrail in an attempt to dislodge the stuck weapon.
That left me to face a single daggermaw with only a knife in my left hand. I tossed the knife to my main hand and summoned a beam pistol from my equipment storage into my open palm. I squeezed off a pair of shots, and the beast instinctively recoiled as the hastily aimed energy beams scored hits dangerously close to its eyes. In the creature’s moment of hesitation, I focused my aim at one of the eyes, and this time the shot punched into the orb with a sizzling pop. The daggermaw hissed and flinched to the side. I lunged into the exposed blind spot and stabbed my knife into the blackened hole that had cont
ained the beast’s eye. The long combat blade pierced the monster’s brain then slid out, coated in gore, as the beast fell twitching to the ground.
I stabbed it several more times before I finished off the other two wounded animals and retrieved my axe.
A shriek of terror cried out from the continued fight at the cruiser, and I looked back to where the others still battled the remaining monsters. Zoey stood on the hood of the vehicle and fired into a swarm of daggermaws that clustered on the ground beneath her. For a moment, the vista gave me a flashback to another officer firing down toward a monster swarm from the hood of his vehicle. Another panicked screech helped me shake off the mental image, and I realized that the cries echoed from the turret.
Blocked from Zoey’s support by the bulk of the turret itself, a pair of daggermaws ripped and clawed at the shield from the back of the vehicle. Even as far away as I stood, I saw that repeated attacks had weakened the armor. The gaps between the plates grew wider as the monsters tore their way inside.
Despite the fact that I thought Kevin was a little turd, I opened fire on the pair of monsters on top of the turret as I rushed back toward the fray. The energy beams burned into the lizards, but they ignored my attacks and continued to dig into the vehicle. One managed to get a clawed limb through a gap, and the screams from the turret turned from panic to pain.
A pair of lizards snapped at my heels as I vaulted over them and landed heavily on top of a third. The creature instinctively tried to heave me off, and I used the momentum to catapult myself the rest of the way onto the Wolverine.
Zoey fired behind me as I leapt, her shots raining down on the lizards I had just hurdled. The rounds snapped through the air right next to me, but I had no time to consider how close the officer had been to hitting me.
Fist Full of Credits: A New Apocalyptic LitRPG Series (System Apocalypse - Relentless Book 1) Page 33