by Arthur Stone
It was the nostrils that trembled the most eagerly, sensing something that the other faculties did not. Blood. Freshly spilled blood. Of the most delicious prey. This desire was something no infected could fully express. Nothing about this hunt caused them to pause and consider. Their desire operated like a reflex.
The scent of a player caused them to forget everything else. Find and kill. Now.
No other thought could distract them.
The glimmering white vehicle in the distance, to which the infected had been walking, was immediately forgotten. Sniffing loudly now, the raffler hurried along the road and then down a shallow embankment on its shoulder before rushing through a wheat field. Scent was no longer required, for now sight was enough. The path was trodden, so the beast knew to run along it.
But without its powerful reflex, it might have reflected on how much the path was trampled. One man could not beat a path down so much. Even a dozen would have a rough time.
But the raffler was beyond any semblance of thought. It ran at maximum speed, inhaling greedily through its nose as it did. Walking along the road had been the right choice, for it was there that it could more often encounter that most precious smell in the world. The player that had passed must be hurt; otherwise he would not be bleeding.
Now the only thing that mattered was getting to the prey first. That smell. So strong. Maddeningly strong. Its victim was not just bleeding but had urinated frequently, nearly every dozen steps it had taken, and the infected’s nose detected that, as well.
Far ahead, and slightly to the left, a single human form appeared, its hands spread ridiculously wide. The raffler’s gaze passed over it. This was no dumb bird, to be deceived by a cheap scarecrow. All of that would change if the form were to move, though. Infecteds invariably responded to movement.
The path began to take a smooth turn, and a few minutes later the beast was moving parallel to the road it had formerly journeyed upon, rather than perpendicular to it. Why a player would irrationally turn here instead of continuing straight, the infected did not know, and did not want to know. All critical thinking functions had been drowned out by its thirst for brutality.
Find.
Kill.
Tear.
What was up ahead? An island of greenery among the fields of gold. It saw some kind of buildings. But they did not look like houses or apartments, so they would be of little interest. Normally. This time, though, they were at the end of a path trodden down in the wheat field.
Rushing past all kinds of agricultural equipment, the raffler broken into a yard of crushed stone filled with all kinds of sheds and shacks and tanks of fuel and oil. It ignored the smells of death coming from a well in the center of the area and rushed towards the source of the smell that was more alive.
The aroma came from a boring old barn with thick walls. In one of those walls, there was a sturdy door. And on that door...
There was a huge deposit of the most divine fragrance in the whole world.
The raffler greedily pressed its nose against the scarlet print of a human hand and sucked in as much air as it could. But that moment, a twang sounded out behind it, and sharp steel fatally pierced its sporesac, skull, and brain.
It fell silently, convulsing its legs as its eyes closed forever.
Alert: Personal victory: dangerous infected destroyed. Level 18. Chance of valuable loot: 100%. +2 progress points to Strength. +12 progress points to Agility. +42 progress points to Speed. +9 progress points to Endurance. +4 progress points to Perception. +13 progress points to Stealth. +17 progress points to Accuracy. +1 progress points to Luck. +20 Humanity points.
Cheater rose and walked to the opposite loft window to study the immense wheat field for a minute. Only the scarecrow at the far edge could be seen, so he raised his binoculars to examine the stretch along the road and forest. The highway seemed deserted, but ghouls loved to roam it, so there was no telling how soon more might show up.
Perhaps a powerful creature would be among them. Infecteds never got stuffy noses, so whatever came, it would notice the bloody mark. He had made two trails on the road for redundancy, since the smell could vanish quickly when the pavement was heated. Both would lead the ghoul to the path, which had been trodden down not by humans but by those infecteds which had gone before it. The path ran for over a mile. No matter how quickly the monster moved, sniffing out and traveling the path would take time.
Meanwhile, Cheater had a cleanup procedure that wouldn’t take long.
He opened the hatch leading below and descended a ladder into a gloomily dark room filled with bales of hay. Moving his hatchet to the ready, he stepped through the half-open gate. A knife was more convenient for opening a sporesac, but experience had shown him that his arrow would not then be easy to retrieve. Chopping up the beast’s skull was the quickest way. He placed a piece of plastic under the raffler’s torso and head and winced as its smell grew worse with each chop.
The place already smelled of death, and there was no need to add to that smell, hence the plastic.
All the beast had was two spores and a little webbing. Sad. The previous raffler had given him a yellow pea. That had been a stroke of luck, though, for even the most developed rafflers had only a ten percent chance of carrying peas, and this one was not very highly developed. So the loot was fair. No complaining at the System today.
Cheater grabbed the carcass under the arm with a steel hook and dragged it to the well. Hesitating for only a moment on the ramp up to its edge, he sent the carcass down to join its predecessors. The soiled plastic and the giblets it contained followed, and then at last the wads of toilet paper he had used to wipe his arrow.
Ready. Time for little work with a broom he had moistened with a pungent-smelling solution of simple perfumes, vinegar, vegetable oil, spices, and herbs he had purchased at the NPC village. It was a simple but effective way to mask his human smell. Of course, wiping the soles of his shoes with this stuff did not guarantee he would remain hidden. He had to go all out with his camouflage in order to avoid heading straight to respawn when a creature with a better sense of smell turned up.
That was why the dozens of paths in the yard, most of the vehicles, and all of the gates and doors had been moistened with the deceptive solution. Even a smart infected would get lost in the maze of smells, unable to deduce which direction their prey had fled.
This wasn’t the best hunt Cheater had known, but he was getting a steady flow of experience and loot without too much risk. He had created the fragrant trail in a way that ensured it would take the beasts a long time to reach the place of their demise. The view from the attic was excellent, and the wheat was only tall enough for rabbits to hide in. All he had to do was keep his eye on that one direction. As infecteds approached, he could casually evaluate their strength and see whether or not he could safely take them out.
So far everything had been manageable. More than a dozen beasts had gone into the well. Some had been so heavy that Cheater had needed to fire up a generator and use a winch to drag them. Even though Cheater’s Strength and level had now both reached 14, that was hardly enough to deal with a quarter-ton overgrown trampler.
That was the first creature that had come, moments after Cheater had made his trail.
The blood was Cheater’s own. Creatures were most attracted to fresh blood. Some would ignore stored blood, and even for those that didn’t, he would have to repaint the ground with it more often. The brochure Cheater had read about ways to attract the beasts had mentioned that. He had obtained the pamphlet at the NPC settlement. After a few modifications, and thanks to the fortunate layout of the land, he had the perfect setup here.
The path had required a large amount of blood, but even that worked out in his favor: another brochure had told him that when he won a battle after significant blood loss, some of the experience would go to Endurance even if he did not take the slightest amount of harm in the battle itself. So dealing with the tight bandage on his forearm and the
increased risk of detection was worth it.
Cheater returned to the attic, pulled the ladder up behind him, and closed the hatch. Moving to the window facing the field, he sat on a bag packed tightly with hay and turned his gaze towards the road again. Not he just had to wait for the path to bring his next parcel of spores and experience.
They had come more densely in the morning than they were this afternoon. Were they walking by less often?
No, it’s probably something else.
Cheater raised his binoculars and noticed the same thing he had seen a few times in the last hour and a half. A pair of ghouls still weak enough to have clothes walked the road, sometimes hidden behind trees, sometimes not. They had already passed both lures, which meant the smell was no longer strong enough to attract them.
So that explained the lack of younger ghouls. Their scent was less developed, so now they were missing him entirely. Rafflers noticed, but they were much less common, so Cheater’s path was becoming less popular. Soon, even they would cease to turn from the highway.
This farm complex would become quite boring.
But maybe that was for the best. Cheater would finally get a good night’s sleep, rise just before dawn, and cut his forearm once more to paint the path with fresh blood.
He bit into a thick ham and cheese sandwich and winced. The bread had gone pretty stale, and so the experience was unlike to help his Pleasure meter much. Players had to keep an eye on what they ate, maybe sure delicious things came across their plate more often than not. Eating was best done in a calm place, too, not while on the run, fearing death from every which way.
Gulping down some lifejuice and hastily spinning the canteen’s cap closed, he drew his binoculars again.
His suspicions were confirmed: In the distance, a ghoul was trotting down into the field. It had no rags, and though its feet could not be seen through the low wall of wheat, he suspected it had no shoes, either.
Yet another raffler pursuing a delicious snack. It sniffed around greedily to keep itself on the trail.
Cheater grinned with pleasure and twirled the same arrow between his fingers. It was his lucky arrow, and it had lasted all day. Several dozen victims it had downed, flying directly into the back of their heads, punching through their sporesac, and pushing further into their brains. Only the trampler’s skull had resisted the arrow, but still the sporesac hit had been fatal, and Cheater had managed to retrieve the arrow without needing his ax.
Perhaps it really was a lucky arrow. So many wins, and still it was undamaged.
This ghouls moved quickly, with nearly complete confidence. Rafflers were agile, but not that much faster than runners, who a player could escape if his Speed was pumped to 10 or so. Assuming a multiplier of around 1 and a lack of fatigue, of course.
Still chewing on the sandwich, Cheater picked up the rusty dumbbell the workers here had once used for a counterweight in some unknown mechanical application. He began to lift and un-lift it, working his biceps. Lifting weights could boost his Strength multiplier. It would not increase his Strength stat, nor his level, but it would increase his chances against the various fickle threats of the Continent.
The raffler would arrive in five or six minutes. Why waste the time just contemplating the approaching foe? Now that he knew about multipliers, he had to take advantage of every opportunity to improve them.
Though there was definitely room for some contemplation at the same time. No enemy should be underestimated. This beast’s level was greater than Cheater’s and it could tear the roof off a car with a sweep of its paw. Never mind what it could do to a human skull. It was best to meet this foe fresh, without tired muscles.
And as an archer, he had a particular need for his arms to be ready to go.
He put the weight down. That moment, a loud sound from the window opposite—the one he shot at the ghouls from—turned his already-cold bloodstream into ice. It was unlike anything he had heard before. It sounded like a car had crashed into one of the barn walls.
But where could the car have come from? Besides, there had been no engine sound.
Cheater rose from his bag and sneaked over to the window. The closer he got, the more his heart sank. Cracks of wood and rattles of iron continued to sound in the air. He had no idea what the source could be. It certainly wasn’t a car.
Once he reached the window, he did not look out of it. As he was preparing this location for his stat-pumping session, he foresaw the potential arrival of a beast of such power that showing himself in the window would mean instant death. So he took care to reduce his chances of being seen to approximately zero. It was nothing fancy—just screwdriver holes driven into the walls. Each provided little visibility, but in conjunction they could be used to view the whole yard.
The third hole revealed the source of the bad noise. Cheater’s heart leaped forward, and he nearly cried for his mother. But the next instant, he got a grip on his nerves and realized the situation was not quite hopeless.
The source of the loud noises had obviously been an infected. Coming from some other, unknown direction, it had picked up the alluring smell, and its first move had been to kick down the door marked with the bloody handprint. It failed to find anything inside besides the traces of Cheater washing his hands earlier.
The beast cared nothing for bloodstained rags. It looked into the well after that, demolished the ramp and well wall, and then ignored the infected corpses inside and began to indiscriminately destroy everything it encountered, with a preference for buildings and other objects where people might be hiding. Something seemed to agitate it. Why else would it tear the front bumper off the truck and hurl it into the field? This monster was clearly not itself.
Cheater had pinned down its tier. Thankfully, it was not an elite—but it was no trampler, either. It was something in-between. Highly developer, with an animal gait, but not yet over the tonnage of a level 62 or above. Cheater had not yet mastered the classification of all of the higher-level creatures. Even veteran players often confused them. There were no clear external signs, and inspect mode rarely helped, since his Perception was not high enough to read anything useful about a threat this powerful.
A raffler still had some human traits, and an elite held none at all. This one was in the middle. But it was powerful, so he wasn’t sure he could take it.
Not that he had a choice. Unless the beast calmed down, it would be in this building soon. Once inside, it would do whatever it wanted. Perhaps it would check the loft first. There wasn’t space up here for it, but that didn’t matter. One good jump would split the ceiling in several places, and then it would see or smell its prey’s hiding place. Shooting a beast like this with a bow and doing any damage was unrealistic. This was the stage where the defenses of the sporesac were beginning to harden. The sac was only truly vulnerable from below, underneath a concave shell made of the strongest armor biology had to offer. And he couldn’t imagine many situations where the creature would kindly enter a play-bow position with its back to him long enough for him to get to its sac. Kitty had managed to kill an elite that way. Well, almost. She had still needed to use her sword’s magical ability to punch through the armor rather than try to go around it.
Cheater didn’t have a magic sword. His expensive arrows wouldn’t work here, either. If he were religious, he might start praying, but he had a better idea.
He hadn’t been quite naked when he arrived at the NPC settlement. He had been cuffed, yes, but carrying some things he had looted from those bikers he had killed. The automatic rifle had disappeared, since it was a bound item with useful properties, but the rest stayed with him: a light machine gun, two good pistols, a crossbow, some ammunition, grenades, spores, and a couple of yellow peas. The ammunition wouldn’t go for much, but it would help replace what he had lost in Pyramid.
Cheater had sold everything he could to the stores to scrape together enough for the cheapest weapon that could possibly help in a situation like this. The optimal choice, o
f course, was a large-caliber sniper rifle complemented by a pair of one-use anti-tank grenade launchers. But his budget had not allowed for that.
So he had brought an unwieldy, half-rusted alternative instead. It was an anti-tank rifle from the World War II period. Perhaps this very gun had been used to take out a couple of armored vehicles back then. He only had eight rounds of ammunition with him. There was no point in getting any more for a weapon of last resort. But what he did have was the most expensive ammo available, with heavy tungsten carbide cores. Of everything he had found in the stores of the NPC village, these had the greatest penetration.
Now he was glad to have them. This personal howitzer was likely his only salvation here.
He watched the creature through the screw holes, waiting for it to start demolishing the walls of the shed it had just destroyed the door of, as it had done with several sheds before. The monster showed its back, where its armor was weaker.
Now may be the best time I get. He picked up the rifle.
What?
A second beast emerged from the nearly-destroyed structure. It was huge, with unnatural elbows and strategically placed thorns along its fitted armor plating.
An elite, the terribly perfected king of the Continent.
Cheater had been trying hard to stay hidden. Now, he tried to convince himself that he wasn’t even there. But he was not yet as scared as he could be.
For his mind had not yet considered the idea that this may be a pack of highly developed creatures. Packs were a player’s worst nightmare.
But the elite quickly showed that it was here for its own ends. It had no intention of forming a monster mash. One swift leap at its bewildered cousin, and one sweep of its paw turned the younger monster into an explosion of blood. The elite jumped on its prey, setting its arsenal of claws, teeth, and spikes upon it. Cheater had no doubt that the cracking of armor and bones was audible from a mile away. But this kind of sound did not attract unwanted ghouls. The raffler he had seen from the attic had likely pulled a full 180 and was currently exiting the area at maximum speed.
