PenguinKills
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Chapter 150 - Lunch?
🕑 Added 2024-10-07 20:16:58 +0000 UTCHendricks
The mana in the air was so thick he could almost taste it. It clogged his throat and there was a suffocating weight he had to fight through just to move. The area had turned into one of the highest concentrations of mana and they had returned right in the middle of it.
Ever since they had been returned, fighting for their lives had taken up every second of every day. Even months after, they were still clawing and struggling to eke out a place to live. It felt like fate was playing tricks on them as they barely had a chance to rest. Monsters seemed endless and multiplied faster than they could cut them down.
There were some they even couldn't cut down and retreat was the only option.
If this was a joke, Hendricks wasn't laughing. Transporting them into a tutorial to get them used to the new world for a nice few months, and then throw them into the deep end in an area with mana so thick it hurt to breathe.
"Gonzalez! How much longer 'till impact'?!" He screamed over the sound of battle. The wrappings on his mace were running low and he only had a few left. Same for his shield.
The walking horrors ambled this way and that, their grotesque limbs swaying as they walked, whipping out at the nearest person when they stepped in range. Their grey skin was slick with some kind of liquid that made it look even worse as it shimmered in the dull gloom of the area.
Even the sun had to fight for control here and even the celestial body was struggling against the environment, let alone humanity.
If that wasn't enough, the liquid covering their form was highly corrosive. It could eat through metal, leather, and bone in seconds. No matter what their weapons were made from, they would quickly deteriorate after the first few strikes. His sword found itself quickly melted to goop during his first fight with them.
He had learned from that first day and now his group hefted maces and clubs wrapped in various cloth and leather.
The wrappings would both soak up the liquid and peel off before the weapon started eroding. Keeping the weapons intact while also removing what little of the coating they could.
"Impact! Impact! Impact!" Gonzalez screamed from behind him.
Shit, so much for a warning.
His group turned and sprinted away from the monsters before diving behind the premade berm as fast as they could. As he leaped over the lip of the protrusion, he could already see the blindingly bright flares descending on his position through the perpetual fog.
The Flares ate at the heavy cloud almost as much as the liquid at their weapons. The Flare's path carved a channel through it as the intense heat removed any and all moisture from the air.
"Get Down! NOW!" He screamed, pushing his team over the edge without care for being gentle. He did not want to be there when those things landed and they were coming in hot, rough handling was the least of their worries if they were exposed when impact arrived. He had seen what they did to the horrors and he did not want to experience that first hand.
A flash of white heralded their impact and a wall of force washed over his prone form, barely broken by the lip he was hiding behind. Their team didn't get much time to lay down before the force rammed into them, pushing them harder into the earth.
If it wasn't one thing, it was another.
The horrors always came at the worst times and always when they were least expected. Even if he had Halsey scout the entire area, they would still pop up out of nowhere. Seemingly stepping out of the fog itself.
The team waited for the debris to finish settling before poking out from their hole. Heads popped up like prairie dogs to take in the scene left behind by the Flares.
It wasn't the first time his team had witnessed the Flares in action but it still left them all speechless for a while after impact.
Trees crumbled to dust after the flash conflagration, wind carrying the grainy dust away like black snow in the air. Where the monsters once stood was ground zero for the impact, the soil a glossy black from being glassed.
Lone trees stood in a line, blackened and charred, but standing in various spots from the impact. The searing heat diverted by where the horrors stood, the bodies of the monsters shielding them from the worst of it.
"Report!" He called out.
"All Good!" Jackson sounded off first.
"All Good!" Gonzalez next.
"Out of mana but good!" Halsey came next.
"Wounded but functional!" Larks broke in.
"I'm fine!" Grant's unfamiliar voice broke his rhythm and threw him off for a second.
His face twitched at the incorrect response but he schooled his expression before acting on it. Grant wasn't military and he couldn't treat him as such.
Hendricks was lucky to have some of his team with him, even if they had to add a few to it that weren't trained like they had been. They couldn't be picky when they were all fighting for their lives.
"Alright, let's get a move on. We can't stay here and I want us gone before the harvesters come." Hendricks ordered.
He had a unique hatred for those creatures but an even greater fear of them. They consumed anything and everything with enough mana and the site they were occupying just became a veritable feast to them.
Fire mana saturated the area, mixing and intertwining with the already dense ambient mana in the air. The combination might as well be a giant blinking dinner sign to the creatures further inside the forest.
While Hendricks reveled in his new abilities now that the System had come, just as he gained powers, so had others.
The Artillery team had the highest firepower of anybody he had met, from both the tutorial and after. The power they could unleash was stronger than the shells they launched from before.
Rearranging of team members had to be done after returning, but they meshed together well and were able to call down extreme firepower. Not every affinity worked well with such an attack but the HE Artillery team was some of the best at it.
Every member of the team had either Fire, Flame, Heat, or kinetic affinity they packed into the Flares they shot out.
Combat Engineers constantly worked to improve upon it further and grand formations were constantly getting updated and reworked for better power transmission.
Even though they made new breakthroughs every day, the number of monsters only seemed to climb. They were fighting a losing battle and with every death, they grew weaker.
Hendricks had the same thought as many had in camp. They were in the foothills of Virginia before the System changed everything and he couldn't help but think other places had to be worse.
If it's this bad here, how bad is the rest of the world?
~~
Chris
The longer I stayed in the city the more I couldn't shake the feeling it gave off. The arrangement of buildings felt similar and the way everything was partitioned out felt like I had been here before.
It was beginning to mess with my head when I knew a fork in the road would be there before I came upon it.
After that, it became clear what I was feeling.
Tracy's camp was laid out in the exact same manner. The layout of the roads, the placement of certain buildings were, the residential side of the camp. Everything was the same.
It seemed Austin had already come to the same conclusion as I turned to see him staring at me, waiting for me to connect the dots.
"Finally! I realized it almost as soon as we entered. What took you so long?!" He said while thumping me on the shoulder.
I had to admit, it took me longer than I would have liked. This should have been something I caught as I entered but it had taken walking through the town for nearly 10 minutes before I got it.
"Hey, I spent a lot less time there than you did! I wasn't as familiar with it." I defended myself.
That was my excuse and I was sticking to it. Austin continued to give me shit over it taking so long but it was all good-natured.
The realization led to further thoughts I wasn't sure how to deal with. Finding Tracy wasn't anywhere near anticipated and I didn't know how to deal with the knowledge that she was here.
We hadn't exactly parted on the best terms. While it wasn't the worst, I wasn't sure how our reunion would go.
She had said she was from Western Indiana, why the hell was she in Indianapolis?!
If I had known that, I might not have made us stop here. It wasn't th-
"Christopher," A feminine voice sounded from behind me. A familiar feminine voice. The last voice I had heard before the tutorial ended.
I jumped at the sudden appearance and turned to find who I expected. She looked better now than when I had last seen her. Some of the tension was gone and she didn't seem as strung up. The bags under her eyes were gone along with the slouch in her back.
Other than that, she looked the same. She wore the same dull brown leather armor. She styled her hair in the same high ponytail, only coming down further because of the months of growth.
Her face looked at me with curiosity instead of the pensiveness I had expected. While I didn't hold anything against her, she might have hard feelings about the way I ended things.
It would seem she didn't from her expression.
"Ah, Tracy, I didn't expect to see you here," I said sheepishly. Like I was caught with my hand in the cookie jar.
People talked during the tutorial and you learned things about them over time. Where you were from, what you did, and things like that were commonly talked about between people inside the camps.
Through that, we learned that our tutorial had a wide reach of different places we were taken from. Gabriel described his tutorial as people who were in the area when the integrations started, which differed from what we experienced.
We had people from all over the US and some were even from Canada. It was only one group from Canada and the only reason they got pulled in was because they were in the US when the tutorial started.
They didn't make it long.
While most ended up dying, I didn't expect to see the people who made it out again. We were all from different parts of the country and it was rare to run into them again.
Or that was how it seemed because here Tracy stood.
"Nor did I you. Why are you here? I thought you were going to start a city." She asked bluntly with her arms crossed in front of her.
At this point, the initial shock of seeing her again wore off and I noticed the people around her. All of them were new faces and they wore decent-looking gear, instead of the rag-tag compilation that most walked around in.
[Identify] gave me nothing on their levels but they looked a step above the rest. That skill was bordering on becoming my most infuriating one as it continued to let me down. [Sweeping Slash] still held that title but [Identify] was coming close if it kept failing to actually work.
Seeing the posse she had behind her didn't surprise me. She had always been one to surround herself with others for protection. While I mostly fought alone, she was my opposite.
I had yet to see her actually fight, now that I thought about it. Her class was all about setting traps before the fight even began. Not that I spent a lot of time at her camp, but I didn't remember anyone telling stories of her fighting either.
Without TVs or other entertainment, stories were the main go-to time passer. Tales of a fight you had or a battle you witnessed were traded around between everyone.
There were some outlandishly obvious tall tales, but most were rooted in reality enough to understand the underlying story. Austin was the main storyteller I knew but others would jump into one when the time was right.
After moving to Tracy's camp, the stories mixed and we heard of theirs while they heard of ours. Of the ones I could remember, not one was about her fighting on the front lines.
They were always of her using a consumable or treasure, or of a trap she had planted.
I shook the stray thought from my head to respond to her question.
"We are just traveling through and thought to stop at the town we came across for supplies. I didn't know you would be here." I replied honestly.
She nodded at my response, "On your way North, I presume?"
I nodded in response. It wasn't a secret where we were going and it wouldn't be hard to figure out. Any in our caravan could answer that question and I had no intentions to hide my city. It would be a hard thing to do and defeat the purpose of what I was trying to do.
Guessing where I wished to build my city wasn't hard when she knew my affinity.
I hesitated to say any more, though. I was conflicted on how to proceed from where we were. Part of me wouldn't have been surprised if she asked us to leave.
"Well, why don't you come and have lunch with me? We can talk of your travels and I can tell you of mine." Those were not words I had expected.
She didn't wait for my answer before turning and walking toward the stone construction at the center of camp.
My mind whirled with the reason she could possibly have to offer that, but it came up with nothing. I was at a loss for her reasoning and I couldn't help but be on the back foot since the beginning.
I couldn't get over how she found me. I was only one of the many people walking around the camp.
Comments
Demonlord
Thanks for the nice chapter 😊
Thomas Issa
I can see Rachel taking over the blaster squad And combat engineers which I assume is a profession for designing group cast spells, fortifications, and maybe some artificing would be extremely useful professions
James Faulkner
Tftc! Looks like maybe Hendricks will join up with Chris?
PWeygandt
Hendricks sounds interesting. I am really interested to know what his role in the story will be. I know you can only make a chapter so long but they always end too soon!
