Sanctum

by Matthew Powell

  That was when the first problem hit him. Joshua’s armor was good, but it didn’t cover nearly enough to hide his race. If he wanted to hide his identity, the gambeson and other armor pieces would need a serious upgrade. Upgrading the armor pieces…meant more meditation.

  With a Pestilence generation of 50 per second, it would take nearly three hours to upgrade all his armor again. An extra half an hour on top of that to upgrade the dagger into a sword, something that he desperately needed to do if he wanted to keep fighting monsters up close and personal.

  Joshua sat down and got to work, pumping the Pestilence into the pieces of armor first. He didn’t really need to meditate, just pump the Pestilence into the armor and let the ideas he had shape the way it formed. For this change, he wanted to completely do away with the cloth and leather-like substances that made up the armor and replace it entirely with metal.

  The materials responded as the Pestilence flowed into it, slowly becoming denser and shifting into metal armor. The armguards were first, changing into thin steel gauntlets and that reached up to his elbow, with a vambrace to cover the rest of his forearm. It took two upgrades for them to become fully armored, as Joshua had predicted based on their previous weak state.

  Pestilence Gauntlets/Vambrace x2

  Soul-Bound Armor

  Mitigation Potential: 200

  Pestilence Towards Next Upgrade: 0/2000

  The new gauntlets were a significant upgrade over the previous ones, and they were just the beginning. Up next were the leg guards. The changes to these were more unique, fusing into a single pair of thin plate chausses with chainmail holding it together.

  Pestilence Chausses

  Soul-Bound Armor

  Mitigation Potential: 400

  Pestilence Towards Next Upgrade: 0/2000

  A wide smile appeared on Joshua’s face when he saw the chausses. Fusing into a single piece of armor was one of the best possible outcomes of this upgrade. It caused the mitigation potential to skyrocket, making it significantly stronger than either piece had been individually. It also meant that he would only have to upgrade a single piece in the future!

  Third was the gambeson. The thick cloth armor had served Joshua well, and it would serve him even better once upgraded. As the Pestilence poured into the gambeson, the thin metal plates that reinforced it began to grow. They consumed the cloth around them, fusing together when they reached each other until they formed a real piece of armor.

  Pestilence Cuirass

  Soul-Bound Armor

  Mitigation Potential: 400

  Pestilence Towards Next upgrade: 0/2000

  It didn’t cover as much as the gambeson had, but the cuirass was much sturdier. All that remained for the armor was his helmet, and this was where Joshua needed to start putting effort into the process. The helmet couldn’t just grow sturdier, it needed to expand and cover his face, so he could enter the town unrecognized.

  The first upgrade was enough to lengthen the helmet some, but too much skin still showed. The second upgrade proved just enough to form a closed helmet, albeit one stretched thin.

  Pestilence Helmet

  Soul-Bound Armor

  Mitigation Potential: 300

  Pestilence Towards Next Upgrade: 0/2000

  The mitigation potential was lower than it should have been, but that was a result of stretching the helmet’s material too thin. Hopefully, that problem would fix itself when the next time to upgrade came. Joshua equipped the helmet and was surprised to find it didn’t impede his vision in the slightest. Not only that, he could see in every direction.

  Synergy has been detected between multiple character aspects!

  A combination of race, class and equipped armor has created a special outcome!

  All armor pieces have fused together to create an armor set!

  Joshua could feel his Pestilence connecting to the armor on a deeper level. There was no pain, but he couldn’t move. The armor locked him in place, standing in the alcove. Thankfully this wasn’t happening in the middle of the dungeon.

  The armor pieces began to grow without his input, adding in the pieces that Joshua hadn’t known to put in. Chainmail began to form under the armor pieces, covering the exposed areas and granting extra protection. Several less important armor pieces such as boots and spaulders began to form. When the process was finished, Joshua looked like a discolored knight.

  New Set: Plague Plate has been formed!

  All previous armor pieces are now part of the set. They may be equipped individually but will not provide the set bonus. While the set is equipped, mitigation values are shared across all pieces determined by the highest value. As a Soul-Bound upgradeable set, any Pestilence used to upgrade the armor will be applied to the set as a whole. The set bonus is provided when the entire set is equipped, and new bonuses may appear as the set is upgraded.

  Plague Plate

  Soul-Bound Armor Set

  Mitigation Potential: 400

  Pestilence Towards Next Upgrade: 10,000

  Set Bonus: Pestilence Vision

  The Plague Plate is made from the very essence of its wielder. As such, the wielder can sense the environment through it.

  Joshua could feel a tear come to his eye when he saw all of the bonuses. Complete body coverage, universal damage mitigation, 360-degree vision…it was almost too much. He would almost call it overpowered if he hadn’t seen the kind of damage that a monster like the brute could do with a single good punch. It may seem too strong, but it just meant that he was finally reaching the exponential growth he was promised as a zombie.

  With his armor done, Joshua stood from his spot and prepared to leave the dungeon. It was probably going to be a long walk to wherever the nearby town was, so he should have plenty of time to upgrade it on the way. With his business here finished and nothing left to do, Joshua walked out the front door and into the open parking lot of the supercenter.

  The road was on the other end of the parking lot, so he started crossing it. It wasn’t until he was halfway there that he realized something was wrong. Panic struck as he realized that, in his joy at the new armor, he had forgotten about the Drudge Bear.

  Joshua ducked behind a nearby car and surveyed the parking lot. Other than a bunch of empty cars and some zombies lying between them, respawned from when he cleaned them out, there was no bear in sight. It may have wandered off somewhere, but Joshua didn’t trust his luck that far. The zombies weren’t worth even creating a flying eye to kill anymore, so he slowly crouch-walked his way towards the road.

  It wasn’t exactly the quietest stealth. The Plague Plate clanked loudly with every misstep. It would have been funny if every clank and scrape didn’t send a spike of fear through him. Despite his fears, Joshua made it to the road without incident, the Drudge Bear still nowhere in sight.

  Still unwilling to trust his luck, Joshua kept his guard up until the supercenter disappeared around a corner. He had wandered into a residential neighborhood and was surrounded by small and cozy-looking houses and trees on all sides. Three Plague Eyes scattered throughout the area, checking the homes for enemies and loot. The eyes cleared out the houses as he made his way down the street.

  There wasn’t any sign of the bear, or even of its passing, causing Joshua to finally let his guard down. The few zombies that were in the small homes were quickly cleaned out by the flying eyes. There wasn’t anything more dangerous than a Defaced sitting alone in a corner, and that was quickly dispatched by one of the Plague Eyes.

  The time that Joshua had spent inside of the Zombie Mall may have been terrifying and dangerous, but it had paid off several times over. He was severely overleveled compared to the regular enemies that wandered around. He was tempted to head back towards the dungeon to try and grind out some more levels but decided against it. He needed to find an area with enemies more appropriate to his new strength.

  Joshua kept walking along the main road until the road abruptly ended. Like a line drawn in the ground, the ho
uses stopped. Looking in either direction, it didn’t just look like a line – it was. Trees stopped growing along the line, not a single root passing over it. Houses that sat on the line were cut in half without so much as a piece of furniture sticking out. Not even the grass grew. There was just bare soil for as far as he could see. The reason why became quickly apparent after stepping over.

  Irradiated Zone Entered!

  Everything in the area will take 5 damage per minute.

  Joshua had almost forgotten that the apocalypse on Sanctum had been caused by a nuclear war. There must be a blast zone nearby, where one of the bombs had dropped. Rather than working as it did in real life, the radiation in the game world simply caused a damage over time effect. Everything over the line had slowly been broken down over time.

  Pestilence Sacrifice gave Joshua enough regeneration to survive the effect, but he decided against entering the zone for the moment. If previous games were any indication, it was likely that the most powerful enemies would be located close to the center of a blast zone, and Joshua wasn’t sure if he was prepared to fight them just yet. Instead, he started following the line. If there was a populated town somewhere nearby, it made sense for it to be placed along the danger zone.

  Why did it make sense? Why would anyone build a settlement near such an obvious danger? Because ultimately Macrocosm was still a game. A massive danger zone like this would need somewhere nearby for players to rest and use as a respawn point. The monsters inside, if Joshua’s hunch was correct, likely represented the best source of loot anywhere nearby, but also the greatest challenge. Farming an area so dangerous demanded somewhere nearby be safe enough to respawn in.

  He was proven right a few minutes later. As he walked along the line, one of the flying eyes spotted something. A small town, just a few dozen buildings in the middle of hundreds of other, right along the blast zone line. It would have looked like just another row of houses if there wasn’t a wall surrounding it. Not a stone wall or fence representative of gated communities, but a wall made of scavenged wood and scrap metal, with dozens of people wandering around inside.

  Joshua quickly made his way towards the settlement. One of the Plague Eyes stayed high above, scouting the area, while the other two continued clearing the area of zombies. The small fry was barely worth killing, but at least this way he was still making progress while traveling. Once he had gotten close, Joshua realized just how unarmed he appeared to be. The dagger and pistol were at his side, but he wanted something more intimidating before the regular people spotted him.

  Joshua started to pour all of his Pestilence generation into a new weapon, hopefully the last he would need to make for a long while. He wanted a longsword, a weapon appropriately matching his class aesthetics that would also be extremely effective against the zombies. The weapon started forming quickly, almost too quickly. Joshua realized that he was forming an un-upgraded sword, just as he had when he first made the Pestilence Dagger, and that simply wasn’t good enough. He willed the creation process to slow down, condensing the metal and hopefully skipping the first few upgrades. It took nearly an hour of sitting, almost within sight of the town gates, before the sword was finished.

  Pestilence Longsword

  Soul-Bound Weapon

  Damage Potential: 500 Blunt/1500 Sharp/500 Infection

  Pestilence Towards Next Upgrade: 0/2000

  The sword came out an upgrade ahead of his dagger and two ahead of his pistol, making it significantly stronger than either of them. It even had its own infection damage, separate from his Virulence Aura. Despite its apparent power, the sword itself looked fairly normal. It was a medieval longsword, a little under 50 inches long with a cross guard, all made of the same rust-colored material that made up his armor. It was heavy in Joshua’s hands, but much like the plate armor, but the Wight guard class bonus meant that the weight was perfectly balanced for current strength. Much like with his dagger and gun, the Plague Plate formed a sword sheath slung across hip just over the daggers. Joshua sheathed his new sword and continued his way towards the town of grace.

  Joshua had nearly made it all the way up to the scrap metal gate before the guards spotted him. The wall was nearly 10-feet tall and well made. It wouldn’t hold up to a full-fledged zombie horde, but it would be more than enough to keep out any stragglers. The one guard on duty sat in a makeshift tower just high enough to see over the wall, and judging by his reaction, had probably been daydreaming when Joshua approached.

  “Stop! Stop right there.” The guard leveled an assault rifle at the approaching armor-clad man. “Who are you and why are you here?”

  Joshua was surprised to see the guard had an actual assault rifle. He had expected most of the survivors to be equipped with daggers and swords as makeshift as their walls, but apparently, their weaponry was a cut above. The guard was a surprisingly high level as well, though that made sense given that he needed to be strong enough to keep the zombies at bay.

  Town Guard

  Tier: 2

  Level: 7

  HP: 3000/3000

  “I’m just traveling,” Joshua called out to the guard, raising his hands to show he wasn’t holding a weapon. The dagger and gun sat at his waist, hooked in a convenient holster and sheath that had formed with the new set armor. “I saw your walls in the distance and hoped to find a place to rest. It’s hard finding somewhere safe to sleep with all the zombies.”

  “Stay right where you are for now, I need to go get the chief.”

  The chief? Joshua had figured he would wind up speaking to someone in a leadership position, but chief sounded like such an outdated term. It took him a moment to remember that Sanctum was like earth nearly 200 years ago. Chief was a much more common term back then, being used to describe things like heads of state and military ranks.

  Joshua, not liking being left alone, began to experiment a little. He formed a small Plague Eye and messed around with its structure a little bit, trying to create something capable of hearing noises. The eyes biggest weakness so far had been their inability to hear sounds, leaving him reliant on his own ears.

  It only took a little tinkering around with the formation process to create a Plague Eye with small holes on the side. The holes served the purpose of inefficient ears. They couldn’t hear very well and needed to be close to work properly, but they could hear things. Joshua created one as small as possible and sent it over the wall, determined to eavesdrop on whoever was inside.

  The new flying eye, even smaller than a real human eye, made it over the wall with no issues. It was small enough that it could easily be mistaken for a large insect, or even a mouse if it flew low and fast enough. Joshua quickly located the guard that had left, and he wasn’t alone.

  Accompanying him was another two guards, all three of them dressed in military fatigues. Accompanying them was what looked like a grandmother, hunched over looking harmless while wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants. Her status screen told the exact opposite story.

  Nillene, Chief of Grace

  Tier: 3

  Level: 12

  HP: 14,000/14,000

  The old lady was a monster in her own right. Once more, Joshua was reminded of just how weak he still was compared to an average starting human, despite his rapid growth. Nillene was the same tier, being only a few levels higher, but had nearly ten times his HP. Joshua had fully expected to be much stronger than the regular humans, but instead found a kindly old grandmother that could break him like a twig.

  The old ladies’ eyes twitched towards the flying eye, and Joshua immediately dispersed it into a cloud of Pestilence. Nillene was dangerous, too dangerous to risk exposing himself so soon. Better safe than sorry. The front gate swung open a minute later. Joshua saw Nillene waiting for him on the other side, still flanked by her three bodyguards. The old woman’s eyes hardened for a moment when she saw him, but the sweet smile quickly returned to her face as she waved him forward.

  Joshua stepped up to the open gate, prepared to run if th
ings went wrong. Noticing his hesitation, Nillene began to speak.

  “It's okay now, no need to be scared. I know the guards can be a little intimidating, but they aren’t going to bite. We have food and shelter for any who need it.”

  “Oh good, I was getting a little worried there. Haven’t seen that many guns in a while.”

  Joshua still wasn’t comfortable with all the guards, one of whom looked particularly trigger happy, but he stepped forward and entered the town nonetheless. The inside of the walled area, which he just now realized was the town of Grace, was surprisingly not depressing. He had expected people depressed by the surrounding apocalypse and giant barren wasteland right next to the town, but if anything, the people here were more upbeat than back in the real world.

  He was attracting a few stares, probably because he was wearing a suit of knight’s armor in the middle of a post-apocalyptic town, but travelers seemed common enough that no one really questioned it. Joshua could even spot a few other players roaming around, all human.

  “Come on now,” Nillene said while her guards dispersed. They were most likely just here for show anyways since anything that could kill Nillene wasn’t something they could help with in the first place. “I’ll give you a quick tour of the place, show you everything you’ll need to know for your stay here.”