by Arthur Stone
Four of them entered the tunnel in lockstep. They were very similar to the flock that had signaled the doom of the truck’s previous crew. Three higher-level rafflers, almost tramplers, led by one stronger beast with scaly armor and spikes, its head physiologically transformed into a machine for tearing and devouring rather than perceiving and thinking. Cheater wasn’t sure what kind of monster the leader was. It looked like an elite, but it was too small. A manmincer, maybe? Something like that.
He had to go for the machine gun.
Rafflers, even advanced ones, could be eliminated by other means. They wouldn’t stay in formation, though, they would rush down the tunnel in one furious burst, snapping or jumping over his tripwires and crashing right through the bodies of their expired comrades.
He needed the big gun, conservation of ammunition be damned.
First, Cheater took out the rafflers. Their armor was nearly non-existent, even among the highest-level ones—rafflers were only dangerous because of their fearsome strength and claws. Three miserly volleys were enough for them, and he was on to the elite. At this distance and with a target this big, even the most inexperienced shooter would hit, so Cheater could use his Accuracy to hit its weak spots.
Two short volleys demolished the creature’s eyes but failed to kill it. Thankfully, it was disoriented by the blindness and the impacts to its head, so it failed to avoid the next cable. Head over heels the ghoul went, as more armor-piercing rounds pummeled its body. Cheater tried to hit the back of its head, but he wasn’t sure he succeeded. The monster came to rest on its back.
He might have approached it and used his pistol on its apex Achilles’ heel, but a crowd of weaker infecteds had appeared. Mobs of runners of all levels. Most of his tripwires had been broken by now, clearing the way for them.
“The hell are you all coming from!” Cheater protested, wielding the automatic.
He still had half of the magazine left when he feverishly switched back to the big gun. Some cunning rafflers had hidden behind their younger co-walkers, apparently planning to get close enough to reach the human in a single rush.
Sadly, Cheater had to spend a large number of priceless ammunition on them, as many of his rounds were fatally intercepted by the plebeians. The rest of the belt went towards fending off a colossus. No, it still wasn’t the size of an elite, but its particular branch of necroevolution had provided it with abnormal speed and jump distance. The monster skipped around like a soccer ball, bouncing off walls and even the ceiling. Its sporadic trajectory might have foiled even the best human shooter.
But not a superhuman shooter. It took a full six bursts, but he managed to stop the bouncer in time.
With his beak, he finished off a few runners who had reached the truck, then hurriedly tossed the empty belt’s box aside, dragged a new one to its place, and fed the new belt into the gun. Only two young runners remained in the tunnel, both a good distance away. More unpleasant opponents could arrive at any time. They might alright be waiting, surveying the scene. If two beasts like those nimble bouncers rushed in at once, only the machine gun with its mighty caliber and high rate of fire could possibly save him.
And that was far from a guarantee.
A nightmarish silhouette melted out of the darkness at the entrance to the abandoned tunnel. It was sizable. Small for an elite, but still needing to duck its head in places. “Small” was relative, of course. Few would consider a ton-heavy creature encased in armor and vulnerable only to guns much heavier than the one he had “small.”
He fired one volley, then another. Right in the face, round after round. The creature reduced its pace and began to bob its head, adapting to the human’s strategy. None of the bullets pierced its armor, but cracks were starting to show. Their size and number increased. Chips of plating began to fly off. Soon the gunner would break through and start hitting the vulnerable innards of the beast’s skull.
The bobbing made that more difficult. Cheater switched to the knees. Running elite knees were a tough target—for most players. But the limbs were the least protected part of infecteds, and this elite was no exception. Just as it reached the middle of the tunnel, it became an organic garbage compactor as it slammed into the ground. It jumped back up, then fell again as it took another volley to its face. Rolling sideways to the wall, it rose again. There it is. From this angle Cheater could hit the back of the beast’s head. One bullet punched under the armored hood hiding the sporesac, and a cloud of black webbing spat out the other side.
Clutching his beak once again, Cheater eviscerated the cranial cavities of a couple of runners who had reached the pickup. He cursed as new monsters appeared at the end of the tunnel.
He knew the end of this day. Sooner or later, a monster too strong would come for him, or he would run out of ammunition. Either eventuality would send him to respawn. At least he would read a long list of achievements and rewards during the blackness.
Still, why the hell did I come here? Oh right, I’m still a moron.
Cheater had been in a situation like this before. In that village convenience store, ghouls of all levels from low to medium had rushed in one after another through all windows and doors. That had been a village. There, he had eliminated every ghoul who had heard the noise and located its source, and then he had calmly claimed his rewards.
This was a city. He was underground, but the whole block could hear the battle, at least. A full city block. Some of this world’s creatures were strong enough to withstand a week of heavy machinegun fire.
Or even tank fire.
* * *
The beak jerked so smoothly out of all sorts of deep wounds, until it didn’t. Cheater pulled the handle, but it was stuck. The dead runner fell to the ground and pulled the weapon down with it. He bent over to try to pull it out, but a raffler who had been playing dead after being shot at close range swung its paw clumsily at the man—slashing his upper thigh with its claws.
Blood gushed out from the holes in the ruined fabric. Crying out in equal pain and shock, Cheater let go of the beak, drew his pistol, and fired twice into the nasty hole the machine gun had left in the raffler’s cheekbone, before shooting at yet another incoming runner.
The machine gun and his automatic rifle both needed to be reloaded, but he hadn’t had the time.
The pistol took four of them out, and a knife slew the fifth. Cheater ignored the wound and moved to grab the box with the final belt of ammunition when he heard a grumbling so threatening the blood froze in his veins and seemed to stop flowing from the fresh wound. His legs pleaded with him to run far, far away.
Without so much as a glance, he grabbed the grenade launcher. He had no time for the machine gun, and it was unlikely to help him anyway. Not just because its caliber was too small. He had used it sparingly, but it was still very hot after over an hour of intermittent use. He suspected the barrel would fail at any moment, probably the most crucial one, and he doubted there was enough time to swap in the spare. Best to move to a new weapon.
He hastily assembled the tubes of the grenade launcher, mounted it on his shoulder, and turned towards his enemy as he stood. His hearing had not tricked him. It was clearly an elite. The multi-ton creature charged head-on with no intentions of ducking or weaving. Cheater’s final cables gave way before it as if they were old cobwebs. Despite is bulk, the beast moved with stunning grace and velocity. Runners and rafflers alike had no time to move out of the way and were tossed aside with such force the tunnel echoed with the crunching of their skulls and skeletons.
Cheater took his shot. The molten exhaust from the launcher rebounded off the back of the tunnel and hit him in the back, nearly pushing him into the wave of infecteds. Yet he remained standing as he grabbed the final box and fed the ammo belt to the machine gun with record speed.
Somehow he pieced together the world through the streams of blood covering his eyes, and he took sparing but deadly shots at runners and rafflers. The king of the horde had taken the self-propelled charge
to the base of its neck and lay motionless in the center of the tunnel.
But the space held at least fifty other infecteds. Cheater had not seen a crowd so large here until now.
Once half of the belt was gone, he had earned himself a breather. The truck stood its ground, refusing to go under the avalanche of grumbling ghouls. He loaded the last magazine in the automatic rifle and began to pick off the smartest and fastest of those that remained, the ones in the lead. Still he had the presence of mind to keep count of his remaining ammunition—until the elite began to move. It rose to its feet, unsteadily.
“Just die already!” Cheater screamed, returning to the machine gun as he activated Smile of Fortune. It was his only ability, and its cooldown was long.
Hopefully it would help the bullets land where they needed to.
One volley into the hole left by the grenade. And another. And another. Evil joy filled him as sparks and bigger chips of armor flew off of the creature.
Cheater had gone from marksman to drill operator. His drill was a big gun, and his drill bit was made of armor-piercing bullets.
The monster, already off its balance, began to wobble. By the final volley, it had collapsed and started convulsing.
Cheater knew what that meant.
It was time.
He cleared out the closing rafflers with the rest of the belt, save one which he needed to resort to the rifle for. That was the end of the ammunition for both weapons.
It was the end of the chapter, either way. There were hardly any beasts left, but no bullets left, either. And once he killed these, there would be more. And more. He wouldn’t have any time to bind his wounds or refill the rifle magazines, and there was not a single round left for his primary weapon.
He had even lost his beak. It lay somewhere below, under the dozens of corpses piled up against the pickup.
One last raffler scurried up the mound and grinned, raising it paw to strike. But Cheater shot into its open mouth with his pistol a few times, downing it, all while drawing his ax to take out one, two, three runners. The fourth runner took the man’s ax with him when she fell. Cheater’s last pistol bullet struck a fifth but didn’t kill him, so the man jumped down to kick the ghoul over and hammered a knife into his eye.
Yet another crippled ghoul clutched at his leg with its arm and then its teeth, grumbling in satisfaction as it bit just below the knee. The player howled in agony as he slammed his fist into the attacker’s sporesac. The ghoul tore at Cheater’s cheek with its massive nails and even bit his nose with its teeth, but a knife to the temple ended it.
Twisting around in desperation, Cheater seized the lost ax and yanked it from the body of its unwitting thief, then slew another beast looming above him. He pushed his way out, struggling to avoid become a part of the mound of meat himself, and readied himself to fight the next threat.
He saw none.
There were still infecteds in the tunnel, sure. Sadly stumbling about in the bright searchlight. But they couldn’t run, only take short leaps, at best. Level zero and one globs of biomass, with neither stat points nor spores to be gained by killing them.
By all appearances, he had won. Not won the day, of course, but won this wave. He had nothing left to fight with, and so he would make the best of it.
Cheater limped and tripped up the mound of bodies and into the back of the truck, drew a bandage from the first-aid kit inside, and bound his raffler-ripped, runner-rent leg. Blood was life, and he needed to keep his for a while longer.
He reloaded rounds into rifle magazines at all speed, stopping only to take out the low-level ghouls with ax blows. They were so uncoordinated, in fact, that they could not overcome the corpses on their own two feet and had to resort to crawling. Cheater thanked them for not making him stand to deal with them.
There. All seven magazines ready to go. But... something doesn’t feel right.
There weren’t any more ghouls. He had finished off the last one back during the fourth refill, splitting his skull so violently that beast brains had splashed in his face.
Not that that was unusual.
The flow of infecteds into the tunnel had been replaced with the flow of water. It spilled into the area, covering some of the garbage and turning the huge numbers of bodies into islands, when the bodies didn’t float.
Where was all the water coming from? A serious rainstorm must have started. The noises he was hearing were thunder.
It was no quick squall. More like a monsoon.
Why would the tunnel be flooding? Every modern city had drains and other systems to ensure that underpasses and tunnels never flooded. Weather could overcome anything, though.
Had there been some unknown disaster? An earthquake? Some mighty sewer blockage? Perhaps they had used a water pump, and it had stopped with the lack of power.
So why had the ghouls stopped? Cheater couldn’t have possibly eliminated the entire local population.
Come on! Quit hiding! Seven full magazines. That’s two hundred and ten more potential kills, you bastards.
Where the hell are you? Come get some!
An unimaginable stench filled his nostrils. It was the stench of bullet-torn intestines, of course, but the smells of a running truck and overused machine gun in an enclosed space. Overpowered, Cheater found the world swimming before his eyes. He tried to lean on the machine gun but lost his balance and tipped backwards. The swirling mud of his vision congealed into utter blackness.
Chapter 8
Life Six: Cannibal Alarm Clocks vs. the Nudist
Negative effect received: unconsciousness. Current location: Cluster 364-59-147. Region: Interfluvial Steppe. Current revives remaining: 94 lives (initial value minus 5). Active quests: Survive, Search, Learn Secret, Help, Ask Correct Question, Find the Player Kitty. Current status: returning to game. You will remain stunned for seventy-nine seconds, though this time may change based on your game circumstances. Hint: avoid unconsciousness. When you are in an unfriendly environment, keep your meters at good levels and avoid serious blood loss. These can lead to undesirable consequences.
Awakening from a faint caused by blood loss is a terrible feeling. Add to that the joyous rumbling and disgusting stench of a ghoul biting into your cheekbone and shaking vigorously in an attempt to tear your flesh off, and you might wish you’d never woken up at all. Indescribable pain forced Cheater to yell and writhe, trying with all his might to push the beast away.
But this only aggravated the situation. The infected had no plans of letting go, so Cheater’s push was basically tearing his own cheek off of his face.
Thankfully, the surge in pain brought him back to his senses. He seized the ghoul and pulled it closer, grabbed the back of its head, and squeezed its sporesac with his bare hands. It collapsed. This one had been quite weak. Level zero, even. Yet it might have very well finished him off, had it possessed the brains to go for his throat instead of his cheek.
Agony reclaimed the center of his attention as he rose on his elbow, breathing heavily and looking around. The tunnel was empty, with no walkers in sight, but the water level had risen significantly. I must have been out for a few minutes, at least. I guess I should thank Cheekbiter for waking me. It was a sad and happy realization at once, but his reflection was interrupted at last by a message.
Alert: Personal victory! 458 infecteds were destroyed, including 9 dangerous infecteds and 1 supremely dangerous infected. For details on the stats of the destroyed infecteds, please see your personal log. Note: This detailed log includes a list of the defeated infecteds’ levels, your chances of getting trophies from them, and your experience points gained. The volume of this information exceeds the limit for standard victory messages.
Congratulations on an excellent battle. You defeated an army of opponents, many of which had a higher level than yours. A rare triumph! You have received 150 distributable base stat progress points. You have received 100 distributable bonus stat progress points. Your personal inventory cell has grown by one
item, with a new weight limit of 48 grams. Your personal cache limit has increased by 260 grams. You have also activated a special cell in your personal cache. You can place any number of unbound items (with the exception of prizes from slain monsters) in this cell with a total weight of 170 grams or less. Defeat armies of monsters to get more valuable rewards!
+97 progress points to Strength. +85 progress points to Agility. +26 progress points to Speed. +184 progress points to Endurance. +157 progress points to Willpower. +39 progress points to Perception. +8 progress points to Stealth. +92 progress points to Reaction. +1927 progress points to Accuracy. +215 progress points to Luck. +1127 Humanity points.
Level up! Current level: 11.
There is was at last, the System’s victory message.
The battle was over.
* * *
Cheater couldn’t believe it, of course. He had been willing to give up his life for a glorious number of kills, but now he wasn’t sure how to take his survival.
The total was impressive. All that despite the fact that the System did not greatly approve of monsters being slain with large-caliber weapons mounted on armored vehicles. It loved face-to-face, close-range fights without tricks. That was the best way to get progress points. Shooting infecteds from the safety of a tank was the worst way.
Even shooting a long-range cannon at infecteds without the protection of an armored vehicle would incur heavy penalties. He’d heard some players say that you’d be lucky to get a tenth of the experience you might expect in a situation like that. The System liked to have its fun. But in his experience, it wasn’t that malicious. Perhaps Cheater’s Luck had helped. Or some other reason for the favor he often found. The System had turned a blind eye to the fact that he had scored most of the kills from a decent range. Its generosity had only applied to his Accuracy and to a lesser extent his Luck, of course. But that was better than nothing.
