Rise of the Night Stalkers

by Kurtis Eckstein

  She uncontrollably writhed around for what seemed like an infinitely long minute, her body continuing to warp, until she was left with legs that were no more than two inches thick at the widest point.

  All the while, she shrieked in agony.

  DANGER!

  Systemic shutdown imminent!

  Psychological collapse imminent!

  Unexpectedly, she raised her head with one last throat-rupturing scream, before her eyes rolled into the back of her skull and her head slammed into the pavement.

  Emergency regeneration complete.

  Systemic cascade declining…

  Systemic shock diminishing…

  Bio-system stabilizing…

  Biochemical signatures returning to normal values…

  Complete.

  System stabilized.

  Sub-handler 001 update.

  Physical Condition: Stable, Emaciated, Ailment [Unknown]

  Psychological Condition: Unconscious, Traumatized

  Error.

  Body Augmentations Unstable.

  Wings nonfunctional.

  Tail nonfunctional.

  Legs nonfunctional.

  Ailment Update: ‘Paralysis’ detected

  I couldn’t even take a moment to feel relieved that Harper was alive, because the torment was escalating in my own body, using up my last 2 resources for prioritized regeneration. I gritted my teeth as a sharp pain began increasing in my maimed right arm, a fleshy bone beginning to emerge from my elbow, much like what had happened to her, except at a torturous snail’s pace.

  I knew it wasn’t even close to as bad as whatever she had just experienced though, so I did my best to set my resolve and bear the pain, focusing on her instead.

  She was alive now, but still in horrible shape. Her legs looked like someone had tried drawing a person, but then just gave up halfway and drew a stick-figure bottom half instead. Of course, her resources were completely depleted, so I’d have to get food in her soon, so she could hopefully regenerate back to normal.

  The problem was, I honestly didn’t know if she could return back to normal so easily. I wasn’t sure what the limitations of our regeneration were, or if she would be able to function after experiencing something so traumatic.

  Suddenly, I clamped my jaw shut again as an unexpected wave of pain ran throughout my body, my cracked skin sucking inward like I was imploding back in on myself, sealing the numerous wounds.

  Along with it, a message popped up.

  Alert!

  BERSERK-UNLOCKED Skill: Locked

  Quest ‘Boss Battle’ has been completed.

  Quest Details: Defeat the enemy.

  Result: 100% Completion

  Reward: Dimensional Core

  Incomplete Reward Conditions: Excavate reward.

  Shit.

  Screw the reward! We were lucky to even be alive! Harper literally died, almost permanently, and I barely made it as well!

  So, screw your shitty rewards!

  Suddenly a sphere popped up in my vision, causing me to whip my head around in shock, concerned the behemoth might still be alive, or that some other enemy had appeared. We couldn’t handle another fight right now. We were both completely empty of resources.

  But when nothing happened – and when the sphere didn’t move – I began to suspect it was a beacon for the reward I was supposed to excavate.

  Dammit.

  What in the hell was a dimensional core anyway?

  And was all this really worth it?

  I looked down at my emaciated right hand, watching as five sets of bones began growing from my fingerless palm, finding the pain easier to bear now that the majority of the torture in my body had ceased.

  Sighing, I realized I couldn’t afford to leave without the reward, especially when I didn’t even know what it did. Because we couldn’t afford to keep getting these quests and barely making it out alive. And, if this was anything like a videogame, then whatever this reward was, it would probably be necessary to move forward. Without it, we might very well die next time, as if it hadn’t already been a close call with this fight.

  Dammit.

  Taking a deep breath, I readjusted myself around Harper and then bent forward around her waist, while carefully using my one good arm to fold her body onto my shoulders. I then shifted my weight so that she would roll onto the arms of my wings, allowing me to carry her limp form while still having access to my one good arm – I could barely move my right hand on the newly regenerated one.

  Carefully, I began walking towards the corpse of the behemoth, which was currently hidden by a few still standing buildings, only to pause momentarily to readjust Harper’s body when I felt like she was slipping.

  Satisfied that she was locked in place now, I picked up the pace to a quick walk, scanning the skies when I heard the several dozen helicopters nearby.

  The last thing I needed was for them to bother us while we were in this defenseless condition, so I had the system target them as enemies, to allow me to keep track of their floating spheres. I wanted to hide if they came too close, having no desire for them to figure out our location.

  Hopefully they thought we were both dead or something, so they wouldn’t go looking for us. But then again, it was possible they might search for us because we were dead, and they wanted their scientists to run tests on our corpses, or some shit.

  Stupid annoying humans.

  As I got closer, a few of the helicopters began to circle the scene, which meant I had to hide occasionally before proceeding onward – something that became nearly impossible once I reached all the leveled buildings. In the end, I finally just made a dash for it, reaching back to grab a fistful of Harper’s white hair to make sure she didn’t fall, while doing my best to pull my wings in close to pin her against my shoulders.

  When I reached the top of the decapitated corpse, I finally registered that ‘excavate’ meant ‘climb into the monster’s body,’ considering the sphere for the reward appeared to be somewhere within.

  Dammit!

  No way in hell did I want to do this shit!

  But, it was better than dying next time…

  Shit.

  Gently setting Harper down next to some rubble, I looked at the black gore as tall and wide as a building, before climbing into the partially collapsed opening of the ruptured neck. I was fairly certain this was the same opening for eating, and that I was making my way to the behemoth’s stomach. Which was bothersome to think that I might have been forced to climb into the monster’s mouth if it hadn’t of lost its head, due to me defeating it in a different way.

  And sure enough, after walking for what felt like forever, I entered a massive sagging cavern with what appeared to be the remains of a plane half-sunk in a massive puddle of midnight fluid. Assuming it must be acidic, considering where I was, I looked for a way to move towards the sphere, which was actually further in the stomach, submerged in the black fluid.

  Ah, shit, screw it!

  I reached my maimed hand down into the fluid, figuring if I was going to sacrifice something to test out how acidic it was, then my already desiccated hand would be the best choice. However, much to my surprise, while it stung a little, my hand also wasn’t melting away in an instant.

  Deciding to just get it over with, I stepped into the fluid and began making my way toward the submerged reward, the stinging rapidly getting worse but still bearable.

  Once I was over the spherical hallucination, I reached down with my good hand and grabbed aimlessly at whatever I could. Much to my shock, what I snagged felt like a ribcage.

  Hoisting it into sight, sure enough, it was a fleshy Night Stalker torso, with some of the bones showing on the ribs, while the interior was still full of the intact heart and lungs.

  Having no idea what I was actually looking for, but confident it was in this gore, I quickly made my way back to dry land – so to speak – and then began ripping out the organs in search of my prize.

  What I found w
as a black jagged crystal shard as large as my hand.

  And I had large hands by human standards.

  The color made it almost unrecognizable from everything else, with the hardness, texture, and floating white sphere over it being the only indications that it wasn’t a normal part of a Night Stalker body.

  As I examined it, a white message popped up in my vision.

  Reward Obtained: Dimensional Core [Consumable]

  The hell?!

  Consumable?!

  How in the hell was I supposed to eat this thing?! Shit, it was almost as big as my head! And okay, yeah maybe that was exaggerating a little, but there was no way in hell I could swallow this thing whole!

  When nothing else appeared, I groaned in annoyance, deciding to just see if I could take a bite out of it or break my teeth trying.

  However, much to my shock, it actually broke, like eating rock candy.

  It was tasteless, but definitely edible like it suggested.

  Another message popped up in my vision then.

  Determining available resources…

  Distributable Resources: 0

  Detecting absorption process initiation…

  Estimating subsequent resource availability…

  Estimated Resources Processing: 12

  Estimated availability in 00:27:47:529

  Whoa, whoa, whoa!

  An estimated 12 resources from a single bite?! And it wasn’t even that big of a bite! Shit, this was like the isopod on steroids!

  The gears in my mind began running overtime as I examined the size of the black crystal, realizing that there were probably only about 500 resources total in the thing, based on its size, which meant it wasn’t as an amazing find as I originally thought. Especially not when we still probably had a couple thousand points waiting for us back in the bell tower from those smaller isopods, simply due to the sheer number we had.

  Still, with us being unable to fly, our home might as well be a universe away – which meant, right now this black crystal was exactly what we needed to get ourselves back to perfect health.

  I also thought about satiating my curiosity by taking a bite of the hell-rex too, but what would be the point? Sure, I’d know if it gave me a higher number of resource points, but we couldn’t stick around to consume a sufficient amount of meat to even matter.

  No doubt the military would occupy this area for the unseeable future, and right now I had what we needed to recover so we could get back to our isopods.

  Meaning, one option was extremely high risk to garner unwanted attention, while the other option involved virtually no risk at all. And at the end of the day, keeping Harper safe was my sole priority right now.

  With renewed determination, I made the long trek back down the behemoth’s partially collapsed esophagus, the midnight shard in hand. It was interesting to consider that the reward hadn’t come from the draconic Night Stalker itself, but had instead been from something it had eaten.

  It made me wonder more about this system, and how it knew everything it did. Furthermore, the idea that the system classified this dimensional core, which had been in a humanoid Night Stalker eaten by the draconic Night Stalker, as a reward was just…strange…

  Like, defeat the monster that ate another monster, and you can get the prize from the digesting monster…

  Did that mean there would have been no reward for defeating the behemoth if it hadn’t previously eaten the creature with this shard? Or was it possible the system would have designated a different, possibly lesser, reward?

  I honestly wasn’t sure, but the idea of it all was unnerving.

  Once I got back to Harper, I collected her on my back again, and made sure no helicopters were in sight before making a dash for cover amongst the still standing buildings. Then, I continued on walking for at least another thirty minutes, wanting to put some distance between us and the monstrous corpse before finding a place to settle for the time being.

  I really wanted to find something that was underground, but when Harper began to stir, I ultimately settled with a restroom inside what had once been a coffee shop. The overall smaller space was what made it appealing, allowing me to barricade the doors to the outside, before hiding out behind an additional locked door, since the restrooms were designed to be used by one person at a time.

  I then occupied myself with eating some more of the black crystal while Harper remained unconscious in my lap, her head against my chest, her bony legs hanging over my thigh.

  The sight of those thin appendages were super unnerving, causing me to hope she would wake up soon so I could feed her some of the crystal as well. Granted, I suspected she might be in pain when she came to, but the sooner she could heal, the better.

  My own right hand was already beginning to look a lot better now that I had over 10 resources digested after the thirty-minute walk, with almost all of them dedicated toward regeneration. And, while the recovery process wasn’t as fast as it had been with her, after I bit her neck, I still felt like my regeneration appeared to be faster than it had been previously.

  Granted, I had never lost a limb before, so it wasn’t a perfect comparison.

  But now that I was almost back to normal, I just had to patiently wait for Harper to rouse.

  I just hoped that her ‘traumatized’ condition wouldn’t be as bad as I feared.

  Chapter 25: Reward

  I knew Harper was awake the second she came to, even without having access to her mind, because she immediately began whimpering. I could tell from her thoughts that she was still in a delirious state, not being fully conscious, so I attempted to get some food in her immediately.

  Unfortunately, the task of biting and chewing was too much for her, so I chewed up a tiny amount of the midnight shard into a mush and then spat it into my hand, before gently trying to push some of it in between her lips.

  It took some direction, including telling her both verbally and telepathically to swallow, but she managed it. I then repeated that same process two more times, before she stopped responding again after getting her third pre-chewed mush down the hatch.

  That small amount should have been enough though.

  This dimensional core was packed with so many resources that even those small bites I had chewed for her had roughly 3 resources apiece. However, unlike the total of 7 resources I had used to regenerate, she ended up using up all 9 once they were ‘absorbed,’ seeming like she still needed more. I couldn’t force any more in her though, while she was unconscious.

  But the terminology was something odd I noticed while checking her status. I was fairly certain that the system had always displayed ‘digestion’ as being initiated whenever we ate the isopod, but now it was saying absorption.

  Was there a reason behind it?

  As far as I could tell, it was taking just as long as digestion, so it made me wonder if the word had just been switched out, much like what had happened with ‘yield’ changing to ‘obedience,’ or ‘task’ changing to ‘quest.’

  Not that it was overly important. I just found my thoughts wandering while I waited for Harper to regenerate.

  Her legs were growing thicker by the minute and by the time an hour had passed, I was fairly certain they were almost back to normal size.

  Without putting much thought into it, I squeezed one of her thighs as if to test the health of the tissue, discovering that the skin was thin like she was wearing a diver’s suit again, despite the fact I had upgraded her armor. I supposed that meant she still had some recovering to do there, even though her legs looked mostly normal now.

  In contrast, her wings still seemed to be in poor condition, and she was pretty much out of resources.

  I finally attempted to wake her up again, prompting her face to scrunch up with another whimper.

  “You’re okay,” I whispered gently, before taking another bite of the crystal and chewing it up. I then pushed it out into my hand and held it to her gray lips. “Here, eat this.”

  She final
ly peeked at me through her eyelashes, before opening her mouth to let me push it in.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said in her thoughts as she swallowed it without even bothering to try to chew it herself.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I said simply in my mind, already chewing more. ‘And…I’m sorry,’ I added as I spat into my hand and held it up to her lips again.

  ‘For what?’ she asked while accepting it and swallowing.

  ‘You know what,’ I replied simply.

  And she did know, as far as I could tell. I was sorry that she got hurt. Sorry that she died. And sorry that I caused her so much pain in order to bring her back.

  I was sorry that any of it happened in the first place.

  ‘I’ll get stronger,’ she promised, as if her current strength level was to blame.

  I sighed and pulled her more tightly against my chest. ‘We’ll both get stronger,’ I corrected her. ‘Together.’

  ‘Together,’ she agreed, wincing as her wings began to pop.

  Now that she was almost fully recovered, I decided to begin filling up on resources, alternating between eating some for myself, and chewing some for her. Oddly enough, it seemed that as I ate, I never reached a point when I felt full.

  At first, I was just sort of on autopilot, repeatedly swallowing one bite and then giving the next to Harper. However, by the time we had eaten almost three-fourths of the shard and I still didn’t feel full, I finally checked my biometrics.