Excise: A Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG (Ether Collapse Book 2)

by Ryan DeBruyn

  As for windows in the buildings, Rocky had first believed that they were all windowless. He had been standing in the Mess Hall and examining one of the many areas that seemed to be intended for a window because the interior creamy wood was cut out perfectly in places with windowsills. However, these cut outs only led to the backs of dark black Dragon scales with its red foreign grout. He had been mentally adding in buying glass windows and some sort of high-powered cutting tool from the shop to his shopping list when he had reached out to touch the interior side of the Dragon scale.

  A small menu had popped up on the interior of the dark scales. Since notifications were something he was used to every day, he had stepped back, thinking to read the newest message. To his surprise, the menu stayed glued to the interior surface of the window, so he stepped back in and read the options. It seemed like if the building had power, it would give options for the windows. You could adjust the opaqueness of the scales, allowing in zero to one hundred percent of light from outside. You could also set the windows up on timers, which were something amazing to see because they all came with a clock that needed to be set to the current time and day. In essence, you could have the windows close themselves for your bedtime and be an alarm for when you wanted to wake up.

  Finally! This means I can probably figure out what time and day it is, but I don’t want to have to walk around and find a window to know.

  It also gave him a reminder of what every single day of the week used to be called.

  Voskresenie (Sunday)

  Mōnandæg (Monday)

  Mars (Tuesday)

  Woden (Wednesday)

  Thorsday (Thursday)

  Venus (Friday)

  Saturnday (Saturday)

  He turned to Sela. “How did you guys use to tell the day and time? I have meant to ask you this forever!”

  Sela nodded to herself. “Well, the day and time are set in the Town Hall of a Territory. Then as long as that Territory allows you access, you can look up its day and time in your interface.”

  Rocky instantly saw a problem with that logic, “Doesn’t that mean that you could set the day and time to whatever you want and from one Territory to the next, it could be different days entirely, simultaneously?”

  She shook her head “Yes, that is something that can be done, but most people choose to use the Atlantian Net to automatically set their time and day based on their current geographical location. A long time ago, before Atlantis existed, a place called Asgard came up with a theory for time and time zones based off of Odin’s travel through the sky.” She pointed to the sun, and Rocky chuckled to himself, putting up a hand.

  This sounded very similar to Greenwich standard time, so he interrupted her, “That’s good enough for that particular lesson. Most people will be familiar with the idea because we used a place called Greenwich, England and nearly an identical premise.” He paused and added, “And most people call ‘Odin’ the Sun.”

  Sela just shrugged, not truly caring what people called Odin. Rocky made it a priority to power the Town Hall so he could begin setting up schedules for himself and perhaps others within the Territory. They had also examined the Town Hall and barracks. The Town Hall was a four-story building that seemed to be a massive audience chamber on the first floor. Rocky considered it to be something like a court of law with pews and a raised platform at the front where someone would listen to issues. The next floor had three smaller rooms that were identical to the first but more private and personal. On the third floor, there was a ton of rooms that Rocky couldn’t tell the use for because they were empty of furniture. Finally, on the final floor, two massive suite apartments were only clear to him because of the obviously roughed in washrooms and kitchens.

  The barracks was quite literally just a four-story building with a massive washroom roughed in on each floor and then large open rooms that Sela informed Rocky would normally have cots. The interesting part of the barracks was that each room had access to an outside door with stairs to the ground to expedite mobilization in cases of attacks. They had placed the barracks’ foundation closest to the entrance to the Grotto specifically because of this fact when planning, but he was still surprised by the ingenuity of the creation. In truth, they wouldn’t need anything more than a tiny portion of the first floor right now, but in time, they might use more.

  Rocky looked back over his notification, truly disappointed that he hadn’t gained a level in his Leadership class. He was extremely unsure how he was supposed to be gaining Etherience for his Leadership class because not a single completed building had increased it.

  They had increased the Territory level, though.

  Congratulations!

  You have reached all the criteria to increase your settlement level. Current level three, Quaint Village.

  To reach level four, build a Mess Hall and increase the population to two hundred and fifty.

  Level 4 – Community Quaint Village

  —

  Congratulations!

  You have reached all the criteria to increase your settlement level. Current level four, Community Quaint Village.

  To reach level five, build a Crafters’ Hall and increase the population to five hundred.

  Level 5 – Restocking Community Village

  He had lots of new building blueprints that came with the new Territory levels, and he had four skill points to assign as well. Together, he and Sela had looked through the interface to discover how to begin accumulating Leadership Etherience, but unfortunately, that tidbit of information was either well hidden or didn’t exist. They would have to discover it in time, it seemed. He didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone in the shop either, except for maybe Garnell.

  Sela explained her assumption that there would be quests or decisions that, when made or finished, may award Etherience. Rocky had theorized that the Etherience would be awarded as things occurred in the Territory. In short, neither of them knew, but they were going to try a great many things to earn additional leadership skill points.

  This also brought them back to the Territorial management page. Now that the Town Hall was constructed, he could see a great many options available there. The one that interested him was how the Territory itself gained Ether in its pool. From initial readings he found, this pool could be used to grant short-term boons in spells, build buildings, expand borders, and many other things that weren’t as clear.

  He smiled and then read down to the bottom of the screen to find how they were collected. He discovered that for every one hundred people, the Territory would gain one point of Ether per day in the pool. Doing some quick math brought him to one hundred and twenty-five days to change one of the buildings from dorms to apartments. They were definitely going to need to grow the population because the spells were ten times as expensive, starting at fifty thousand Ether.

  As for the current skill points from his Leadership class, he placed it in Production. His reasoning was simple when combined with their decision to place the Territory skill points all into Resource Boost. These two, in conjunction, would help the Grotto grow and provide for people as they began rescuing them. Those two skills also had the most overlap of domains for a greater number of people, and so Rocky had made the decision.

  Now Amber, Smith, Sela, Zippo, Azoth, and Rocky were walking towards the boundary of the Territory, preparing to invade the Dungeon and minions of Apep. The other three members of the A-Team were staying behind. Mr. Pips because he was claustrophobic. Bart to continue to help train and organize the still relatively new populace, and Derik because of his ‘exile’.

  Rocky seriously considered having Derik accompany the group. After the man had come to the aid of the military and saved the day, they had quietly gone back into exile, which had surprised Rocky a great deal. He thought Derik would have tried to hold it over them and bargain with it. Instead, the four exiles had traveled back with the military and Derik’s group, other than checking on loved ones when they returned, left on their own again t
o fulfill the exile.

  The four returning citizens were actually an excellent help as well and were going to help update hunting maps, guard, and train the other citizens. They were higher leveled then the A-Team even, due to surviving out on their own so long. They had refused to join the mission, though, as they had only just been reunited with families.

  The army itself had already left with Bathilda and had begun forming a large perimeter around Chalk River. Bathilda had been out of the Territory, cleansing the land for the entirety of the day again, and when she had returned, she had proclaimed it to finally be corruption free but extremely desolate. Reaching the edge of the trees, Rocky felt his mouth fall open at what almost looked like a sooty dessert.

  A brief pause followed where everyone in the group looked around in shock except for Azoth, who had probably already seen this particular view on his hunting flights. Rocky was more stunned by the sheer scope of the area that had clearly been set ablaze. As far as he could see, the land was a smoking carbon mess. To him, it truly looked like an apocalypse… but he had read that forest and prairie fires were a good thing for the ecosystem in a long-term view. So, he had hope this would come back flourishing in the future, especially with the system’s aid.

  Amber tried to lighten the mood. “Well, talk about an oasis, huh?” she joked while looking back into the lush forest of the Territory.

  Amber’s voice broke the group from their momentary shock, and they all took their first steps on to the dark earth. To Rocky’s keen ears, it sounded like he was crushing plastic under his boots; each step let out a whine as the carbon atoms ground together. The ground he trod on was a sobering reminder for him.

  I avoided this quest originally to go to Ottawa, and now, everything for miles is dead.

  Not that he would have particularly done anything differently; ‘there was only one of him’ as people used to be fond of saying. Glancing back, he understood Amber’s sense of humor when he could see the lush, humongous trees dominating his vision surrounded on all sides by blackened earth. It sure was a good hyperbole for humans currently.

  The group passed by two military guards who stood to attention and saluted them until they walked past. In the distance on both sides of this original group, separated by five hundred meters, were another two pairs of military guards. For this trip, the group had chosen to use different channels on the radios. First off, if the fight was above ground and the radios still reached each other, Rocky’s group was going to be engaged in fighting and possibly using their communication devices frequently. This would mean that the military and Bathilda may be drowned out or cut off. The multiple channels had been decided after the last attack when Rocky had constantly been interrupting transmissions to update Sela.

  Probably because of my bad radio etiquette. Joe was probably the only one willing to put up with it. I promise I will do better, man.

  Once the group passed the guards, they began to sprint towards Chalk River. It would take them some time to reach the Dungeon entrances that the Necromancers had utilized in their previous distraction. On the way, Rocky considered the group's current composition.

  Smith was an excellent option for creating minions that could tank a vast majority of the damage, and if they died, they could be summoned again. Amber, the only other member of the A-Team still alive and accompanying them, was a close-range melee class who had skills that increased her speed, targeting, and critical hits. According to Sela and Smith, who had fought with the Fencer, she was quite good against living targets that had weak points, but they were all a little unsure how that would function against the undead. Sela was currently in her human form and was going to use her daggers, earth sense, and vines to try to support the team with a bit of range. Zippo was again the heavy hitter for splash damage and would be an absolute necessity since he was on corpse burning duty. Everyone carried a torch and a flashlight; the torch was a low budget firestarter, primarily meant as a backup if Zippo ran out of Ether but could also act as a source of light if the flashlights were all broken.

  Of course, there was still himself and his pet, but Azoth was going to have to remain above ground again. It was unfortunate because he had been such a huge help during their first trip to and back from Ottawa. Now it seemed like almost every fight they undertook was below ground. As for his class and how it fit with the current group, Rocky felt like he was a bit more like Sela in that he was utility. He was the only one with a healing skill, but he could also do some massive damage from range or from the front.

  They reached the entrances and decided entirely at random to enter the closest one they had arrived at, which turned out to be the eighth from the left. Azoth left the group in a huff and had every member picking chafe out of their eyes for a few moments after he took off suddenly with no warning in a bit of a childish temper tantrum.

  Shaking his head at Azoth’s antics, Rocky waited for everyone to get their vision back as he stared down into the dark tunnel of the enemy Dungeon.

  Looking down into the dark depths of what Rocky could only imagine was going to be similar to his most recent experience in Algonquin Valley, he shuddered. Surreptitiously, he glanced around, looking at each member of his party again. Every time he made a commitment to keep people alive, it seemed to backfire. First with the children he had saved, then the survivors he led from Ottawa, and finally with Joe. A part of him wanted to go the rest of the way alone to avoid any more needless death, but he knew that they needed every single person present if they were to have a chance. His goal was to mitigate those risks as best he could.

  I would have taken more if anyone was strong enough and willing. I wonder if I can buy something to cure Mr. Pips. The Dungeons were going to open tomorrow as well which might have been helpful for power leveling.

  Sela had informed him that Dungeons can take days or weeks to clear when he had voiced his thoughts of waiting and running through the Dungeons for a few days. No point letting his enemies regain strength.

  Clearing his throat to clear the moment of emotion and the threatening lump in his throat, he turned to face front and took a single step across the threshold. Out of the corner of his eye, he felt something move, and his natural reaction was to blink. A sharp force ripped him backward from behind, and by the time he opened his eyes from a single blink, he was on his rear end in the black soot that surrounded the charred stone of the cave.

  Sela was standing over him with a hand out. “I think it’s probably best that I lead the way, Rockland. That bone scythe trap nearly cut you in half.” She gestured past herself back to the mouth of the cave where Rocky could see two clear slits in the wall. Everyone around him was white in the face and looked extremely uncomfortable with what had just happened. Rocky gulped as he took her hand, and she helped him up. Sela smiled. “I didn’t expect a trap right at the entrance. I am very glad I was right behind you.”

  Then she walked forward and examined the floor and the walls of this entrance. A few heartbeats later, a forty-pound stone fell from the roof of the cave and landed on the place Rocky had stepped. Two massive bone scythes shot from the walls with such speed that they just looked like a white blur. Sela reached out a hand and touched the stone, pressing it down, but with the mechanism not reset, the blades didn’t trigger again. She stood up and turned back. “I have some experience with this sort of Dungeon, and I need you all to know it is slow going.” Looking each member of the team in the eyes, she enunciated every syllable in what came next, “Do not charge any enemies that appear. If they are range, we do our best to destroy them from range. If they are melee, we are going to have to let them close with us. We fight only in areas that have been cleared already, we mark all traps that can’t be disarmed, and we disarm all traps that can.”

  She paused as everyone took a moment to process her information. Jason and Smith seemed to grow calm at the pronouncement. Amber, on the other hand, went pale, and he could see a small shake in her hand. He guessed the thought of dying by a trap un
derground was her idea of a nightmare. For Rocky, he was glad that they had Sela who had clear experience with something along these lines. However, he could also feel a cold pit in his stomach; it felt like doom, like this was starting out on a very bad foot. He could just feel something was going to go wrong.

  Sela kicked off her leather boots and placed them in his bag of holding, to everyone’s raised eyebrows. She then walked forward into the cave with confidence. The rest of the group looked at each other, and Rocky realized they were waiting on him, so he stepped in after her. Sela was moving slowly, taking each step with deliberate care and her head on a swivel. Rocky tried to mimic her, and he activated his Dark Cloak to help with the low light. Sela stopped. She called back over her shoulder, “Going to need some light, Zippo!”

  Apologizing profusely, Zippo pushed past everyone, including Rocky, before casting a Fireball and having it hover above his head. Rocky walked up beside him to ensure his safety and instantly felt the waves of warmth coming from the miniaturized red sun. The heat was uncomfortable, and he felt bubbles of sweat surface on his skin, but Zippo didn’t seem affected by the conflagration.

  Rocky, who had been about to tell the young man to stay close, felt the words catch in his throat. The boy wasn’t weak anymore, and just being within ten feet of a stable, small Fireball of his, Rocky could barely stand it. Looking to Sela leading the way alone, he forced himself to remain closer to Zippo.

  It’s just like a sauna, no need to panic. Wait, can I get a sunburn from that thing? Is that why Zippo is so red?

  His thoughts were cut off as Sela bent down and put a hand on the floor. Rocky watched as five bone spears came out of the walls on both sides, puncturing the air in front of her outstretched hand. She held her hand on the mechanism and glanced back, “Rocky, could you please cut the bones spears so they no longer come out of the wall.”