Sixth Realm
Page 31
Blood drinker—Consume blood from opponents to increase attacking power.
Socket Two:
Mana strength—Increase the power of mana spells/attacks.
Requirements:
Agility 41
Strength 51
==========
He kept the Tropic Thunder gloves, he had not put them to proper use yet and with the ability to change sockets he had just changed the second socket. With access to hundreds of Earth mana stones, restoring the power in his armor was easy so he had increased his offensive capabilities.
Erik checked the rifle in his hands.
==========
MK7 Semi-automatic Rifle (FAL)
==========
Damage:
Unknown
Weight:
4. 25 kg
Charge:
10,000/10,000
Durability:
100/100
Innate Effect:
Increase formation power by 12%
Socket One:
Punch Through—Penetration increased by 10%
Socket Two:
Supercharged—Increase bullet’s velocity by 12%
Range: Long range
Attachment: Under-barrel Grenade Launcher
Requires: 7.62 rounds
Requirements:
Agility 53
Strength 41
==========
The requirements didn’t change from the MK1 Marksmen rifle, the rifle used the same round as the marksman rifle so the forces that one had to deal with were the same. If there were a different round type then the requirements would increase or decrease.
This allowed them at the high-level Fifties and people who were from the lower realms use the weapon accurately.
Someone with lower stats could use the weapon, but the recoil might be too much for them to handle, losing accuracy, meaning that they couldn’t use the full power of the weapon
The formation masters had improved and updated the formations one only needed to pop them out and put in new ones.
Erik looked at the under-barrel grenade launcher.
==========
Under-barrel grenade launcher
==========
Damage:
Unknown
Weight:
1. 4 kg
Charge:
1,000/1,000
Durability:
100/100
Innate Effect:
Increase formation power by 5%
Socket One:
Supercharged—Increase projectile’s velocity by 7%
Range: Medium to Long-range
Requires: 40mm Grenade shell
Requirements:
Agility: 65
Strength: 42
==========
“Rugrat, do you know why the agility required for the grenade launchers is so high?” Erik asked.
“Well, grenades are larger, heavier rounds, an MK-19 is a destructive force of awesome but it coats the impact area in explosives, a machine gun creates a cone of fire that hits an area. The rifle’s barrels are dialed in so they have a tighter grouping, to be accurate it’s much easier than being right on target with a grenade launcher. The higher agility means you need a higher control over your body to reduce the sway so that when you’re shooting long distances your grenade hits where you want it to hit. Agility isn’t just about reacting to attackers and getting on target, it’s about accurately getting on target. Agility takes care of aiming, strength takes care of the recoil, the two work hand in hand to make you lethal as shit,” Rugrat said. “I think.”
Erik opened the grenade launcher, checked that the shell was in there and then pulled it back, checking that it was locked in place.
Grenade launchers were checked and Erik checked their stats as well.
==========
Grenade Launcher
==========
Damage:
Unknown
Weight:
5. 8 kg
Charge:
1,000/1,000
Durability:
100/100
Innate Effect:
Increase formation power by 10%
Socket One:
Enhanced shot—power of the round’s formation increased by 10%
Socket Two:
Supercharged—Increase bullet’s velocity by 12%
Range: Medium to Long-range
Requires: 40mm Grenade shell
Requirements:
Agility: 65
Strength: 42
==========
“You know one of the cool things with being this strong, instead of using standard grenade rounds, we went with the larger rounds that are used in Mark-nineteen’s,” Rugrat laughed to himself and shook his head.
“Mark-nineteens can reach out to like two kilometers away. While we can’t really get all that range, we can get close to it. The formation rounds are much more powerful than the Earth counterparts, we don’t need the complicated firing system, it just has a certain number of spins, arming the formation and then ‘boom’.”
“I was wondering why this thing kicked like a mule even with our higher strength,” Erik said.
The others in the Special team finished their checks.
“Good to go?” Storbon asked, looking at everyone. They all held up their hands giving the ‘okay’ signal.
He looked to Erik and Rugrat.
“Let’s go Orc hunting,” Erik said. “We’re in your hands, Sergeant.”
Storbon nodded. He quickly organized everyone, they put their weapons back in their storage rings and they headed out of the alley.
A short walk and they reached the gates. The area was busy with more people heading out into the unknown looking to find their riches.
The guards looked at the group but they didn’t say anything.
Once out of the city they quickly left the set roads, they moved into the forests and broken landscape, Lucinda’s beasts made sure that no one was around.
They pulled off their cloaks and took out their rifles, putting the slings around their necks.
George and Gilly expanded to their full size the Special team took their mounts out of storage they helped their beasts into their armor and mounted their dual repeaters on their back mounts.
George and Rugrat took off in a cloud of smoke, flying well above their heads, Lucinda’s flying beasts spread out to cover the area.
“Mount up!” Storbon ordered.
The group go onto their mounts, loading their heavy ballistas.
They rode their mounts through the dungeon’s forest.
“Watch out,you’ve got a group of roaming beasts to your right, circle around to the left and you’ll miss them,” Rugrat said through their comms, watching the situation.
They followed his guidance.
“Group up ahead, big creatures, won’t be able to evade them, grenade coming in.”
They kept riding, ahead of them a few hundred meters an explosion went off. Pained roars could be heard as the group on the ground, riding in an arrowhead formation kept scanning the forest around them.
Rugrat, using a silencer on his rifle couldn’t be heard, but his tracers pointed to where the remaining beasts were.
They reached the series of caves where there were creatures half the size of their panthers rushing out of, the area was covered in rot, there were mushrooms and fungus that grew over the surrounding area and some rare species that grew within the caves.
The beasts’ skin was mottled greens, yellows, and purples, looking like moving fungus, they had several tongues, four limbs, and a tail with spikes.
“Yuli, fire spell!”
The others opened fire with their repeaters, the bolts hit the creatures, they cried out in pain as their bodies released spores into the air and covered the ground in black blood.
The air was thick with spores.
A spell formation appeared in front of Gilly’s mouth as she fired out ice and earth spears. Erik’
s rifle cracked as he saw more of the fungal creatures surging out of the caves. They took several hits from the repeaters to fall. Erik was using standard rounds, while it took a few shots to the body to kill the annoying creatures, one hit to the head was enough.
Rugrat provided covering fire from above and scanned the area, checking to see if other creatures or people would come over at the sounds of fighting.
Yuli finished casting her spell. An orange spell formation appeared in the middle of the hazy area. The ground started to shake as the runes of the spell formation rotated and the circles moved within one another.
The caves started to light up and the ground shifted upward.
The ground exploded, sending rocks flying as magma poured out of the ground like a fresh spring, it fell on the fungal creatures.
Yuli’s spell was the spark, the fungus ignited in a blinding flash. The formations on the helmet could see through the darkest nights and the brightest days, even staring right at it, they could still see.
They held onto their mounts as the explosion uprooted trees and tossed boulders.
Magma rained down from above and rose up through the caves, beasts were fleeing in a panic, the magma chasing them out of their homes.
The group had stopped firing and they just kept riding, looking at the destruction left in their wake as the molten lava bubbled and spurted, burning away the last of the creatures.
“Looks like we won’t be getting that loot,” Tian Cui said.
“Be a bit warm,” Yao Meng said.
“How are we looking, Rugrat?” Storbon asked.
“Should be good, I don’t see anyone rushing over. Best to get a move on, we’re halfway to the camp. Do we want to go back and get the loot?”
“I’m not stripping down in the nude in a dungeon to go lava spelunking,” Erik muttered. “It’s probably destroyed by the lava anyway.”
“I’ll do it! I got that fire body now!” Rugrat nearly jumped off of George in excitement.
“NO!” Several voices said at once.
“You’re just jealous!” Rugrat huffed, with heavy sass.
Under Rugrat’s guidance, they only ran into a few more bands of creatures.
When they were a few kilometers away from the Orc Camp they had fled past to reach Kuldir, they grouped together at the base of a hill. Rugrat, Storbon, and Yao Meng went up the hill to check the terrain and the camp while the others checked their gear and get some water into them.
***
Rugrat crouched down as he moved slowly before lowering himself down to the ground between a tree and a boulder. Storbon moved to his right while Yao Meng was on the other side of the boulder.
The three of them used different spells as they scanned the area between them and the camp.
“Roving patrols, just like the people in Kuldir said there would be,” Storbon said.
“Spaced out and random, if we rush in they can alert one another,” Yao Meng said, they were using their comms systems to make it easier.
“We’ll need to lure them away. There’s no way of knowing if they have a way to communicate with other groups. We’ll have to test as we go, pull a group, hit them and be ready to run. If we get pinned down by multiple groups we’ll be screwed,” Rugrat said. “We thin out their patrols, see how they react, if they have a quick reaction force, communicate regularly and so on. If we can clear out the patrols then we can look at hitting the camp. I count seven patrols.”
“I have nine, there are others in the distance,” Storbon said.
“We can use a life detect spell on them,” Yao Meng said.
“There was a high-powered shaman in the camp, Orcs might be dumb but they are an intelligent species, they know how to coordinate, shamans are a bit smarter, don’t want to risk them detecting it,” Storbon said.
They checked their maps and put down where the different patrols were and watched their paths.
“Look, another patrol is coming out,” Rugrat said.
The gates of the camp opened. Several large furred beasts with their own tusks and scars moved on all fours, the Orcs using whips to move them as they pulled cages made from bones.
“Shit, there are people in those cages,” Rugrat said.
The bone carriages rolled forwards, pulled by the hogs, Orcs marched with them following a road that curled around the camp and headed off into the Orc’s territory.
“People did say that Orcs kidnapped people to use as offerings to their gods and as food. They think that consuming the flesh of strong opponents will make them stronger,” Storbon said.
“Shit,” Yao Meng said.
Rugrat agreed with him.
Orcs were little more than beasts, but seeing this systematic collection and processing of humans Rugrat’s blood chilled.
“We’ll wipe them off the damn map.”
They took their time watching the groups.
“If we use that ravine there, a couple of formations to stop any sound from coming out, and ambush them from the sides of the ravine, we should be able to take out one patrol without much trouble,” Storbon outlined his plan.
“How do we lure them?” Rugrat asked.
“Food? Raw meat should do it, if we kill some beasts and put them in there,” Yao Meng said.
“Why food?”
“They’re smelling the air all the time, I’ve seen some of them hunting down small beasts, each time they get a beast, there is a fight over the meat. So they’re meat-eaters, they have a strong sense of smell and they’re hungry, seeing that they’re fighting over scraps,” Yao Meng explained.
“Good observation,” Rugrat said. “Storbon?”
“You think you could kill a creature and bring it back here with George, bait the trap?”
“Only too easy,” Rugrat assured.
“Then I think we have a plan, let’s go tell the others, Meng, stay up here and keep watch, yell if something happens,” Storbon said.
“Got it, boss.”
The two others slid back from the treeline and then got up in a crouch and headed back down to the rest at the bottom of the hill who were fanned out, watching the forest.
They shared what they had seen and their plan moving forward.
They recalled Yao Meng, setting off to create their ambush point. Rugrat went off to find a bait beast.
He found a large beast with mean-looking tusks with George’s sense of smell.
Rugrat checked the silencer on his rifle, an attached piece of metal with a silence spell on it that silenced the round coming out and the weapon to a certain extent.
He powered up the formations and fired the rifle.
The round went through the beast’s eye and right into their brain. They were dead before they hit the ground.
Rugrat checked the area with his different sight spells.
Seeing nothing coming their way he ran over to the beast, it was larger than George. George grabbed it by the neck with a flap of his wings, got it off of the ground and headed toward the ravine. Rugrat followed on foot, covering George.
When they reached the ravine, the ambush was set. They had picked off a ravine that was sealed on one end. It was thin enough that only three humans could walk beside one another before it opened up into a bowl. Water dropped down from some unknown source and into an underground river.
The Special team had scaled the sides of the ravine, finding ledges and firing positions, or making them by using their strength and hitting the walls or using spells to alter the surroundings.
Yao Meng and Tian Cui were on heavy repeaters that they had positioned to watch the entrance. Lucinda was scouting. The others were laying down formations that would stop any signal or noise coming from the ambush.
They were just finishing off as Erik placed explosives along the walls as a last resort.
All of them had secondary firing positions prepared and escape routes.
“We’re all set, how are we looking Lucinda?” Storbon asked.
“Got a pat
rol three hundred meters away, if we splash some blood over the place they should pick it up,” Lucinda said.
“Get to your positions,” Storbon said.
George dropped the beast, it hit the ground before he became smaller.
Rugrat climbed up the ravine and to his shooting position that Erik had prepared for him.
Storbon checked everyone and then signaled to Erik.
Gilly let out a screech and then spears pierced through the beast, spraying plenty of blood over the area.
They all waited, hoping that the yell and the blood would draw the Orc patrol.
“Looks like they’re coming this way!” Lucinda said via their comms. Should be here in a few minutes.
The Orcs appeared a little later. They walked up through the skinny passage, they were scanning the area, looking for beasts, their weapons raised.