WilburWoods
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Chapter 68 - Stress-test
🕑 Added 2023-10-22 21:14:14 +0000 UTCLogan dashed through the swamp with speed he had never experienced before. He must have been leaping ten feet per step, sending swamp water in the air in arcs behind him. He stepped on myriad a creature hostile and not, but it wasn’t a time to be discerning.
That idiot father must have still been using Numa.
Logan saw the attack from a long distance away. Trees were felled, a score of dead bodies thrown around like dolls of a petulant child, scattered and ragdolled, with vacant eyes. What used to be the camp led by Malcolm Specter was now chaos and destruction.
Logan grimaced as he took a clear look at the instigator.
Tall it was, taller and larger than any living being Logan had ever seen aside Levemoth. Thirty feet in height. It had a long snouted maw of a crocodile with equally wanton teeth, only larger. Seven or eight black beady eyes covered its head, each dotted with white pupils which swished around monstrously.
It was covered in black and blue hard scales which gave off an oily gleam. Two long arms hung to the ground, swatting at an agent throwing a spear at its giant claws. It was like watching a chihuahua barking at an elephant, except horrific. The agent screamed before it was cut into shreds by the sharp black claws.
Logan hid behind a tree and tried to steady his breath. He wasn’t spent from the run, he was scared shitless.
“W-we have three options,” Logan whispered to himself and Tumor frantically. “Get the Faelves and Frey, go to the camp by the pond and move the hell away from this beast. Hundred miles away.”
[Reasonable. Faelves will be unwilling to move and this thing might follow us. We do not know its properties well.]
“It looks slow,” Logan said, more collected this time. “The second option is to lure it somewhere. Third would be the dumbest.”
[Fight it? Certainly a terrible idea. I will not give you the odds of survival, but they are low. There are still several survivors. It is unfortunate that none of them know the way to the Faelves. You could tell them to get Freya and your new friends and have them start evacuating the camp by the pond.]
“We have to lure it away. My dad might be—”
Dead or alive, who knew. Responsible for at least a dozen deaths? Certainly. Logan still had to know.
With a mental prompt, Logan told Tumor to drop all the 36 bullets they had just made on the grassy ground behind the tree Logan was hiding. “We need to make adjustments. How fast can you make a quarter pound bullet fly?”
[It is a small kinetic missile at that weight.]
“We’re on a timer, Tumor.”
[Running simulations…]
[...]
[There is a solution… But it will leave you intermittently vulnerable.]
“Run it with me. If it’s good enough, we do it and move.”
*
When the first Black Missile kicked Logan’s shoulder back, he was sure it wouldn’t break without the Armor, it would rip off. He had stacked the kinetic missiles with all the enchantments he could think of.
And with that added to Tumor’s idea of lobbing the missile… Well the giant crocodile lizard wasn’t happy. It turned to Logan’s general direction and let out a gust-erupting roar.
Logan threw his arm back again. The viscous Armor peeled from his arm and formed into an atlatl, in which the Black Missile was nested. When Logan launched it, the Armor stretched, storing potential energy. When the Black Missile released, a propulsion [Enchantment] exploded it forwards, while Tumor possessed it with his [Machine Soul] ability and gave it a winning trajectory.
[Skill Level Up!]
[Power Armor Fighter level 2]
It struck the giant creature in the shoulder, making it stumble backwards. The earth tremored under its feet.
By now the monster had noticed Logan beneath the treeline and the first missile was already returning to Logan’s arm, where it assimilated into the Armor, for Tumor to control and replenish the propulsion enchantment from the Armor’s Numa reserve.
The creature roared again and lumbered towards Logan, swinging the low hanging claws and cutting down trees.
Logan wasted no time, and sprinted towards the river, further north
Away from the Faelves and Frey. Away from the settlement by the pond.
Logan fired another missile. It struck true and the great beast stumbled again. Tumor had guided the Black Missile in the creature’s thick neck, where the scales seemed softer. Black thick blood oozed from the wound, but the creature seemed to be only getting faster. Within a few deft steps, it was upon Logan and attacked him with its slicing claws.
Logan ducked instinctively and could feel the air current swish over his head as the shadow of a giant claw swiped over him. Logan immediately bolted up and felt the Armor recede and thin from his upper body, as Tumor pressed it into his lower body to prepare for a power-sprint.
[Skill Level Up!]
[Power Armor Fighter level 3]
Like this Logan ran, dodged, shot a Black Missile and lured the creature further. They must have been at it for three miles, which Tumor confirmed. Logan was starting to grow out of breath, even with the amazing prowess provided by the Armor. Another Black Missile returned and when it got sucked into the Armor, it made Logan stumble backwards. His breath was wheezing.
[Skill Level Up!]
[Power Armor Fighter level 4]
The great crocodile monster capitalized on that immediately. It was slowing down too, but as any predator, it had a nose for weakness, and it had Logan’s tired scent.
From its great maw it vomited out a stream of black sludge which started morphing and shifting on the ground. After it was done, the strong dark blue of its scales seemed to be haler. The black ooze turned into two smaller, yet still gargantuan crocodile monsters, with a myriad of eyes and salivating snouts full of teeth. Immediately they ran towards Logan.
These creatures were fast and they knew where Logan was. Quickly he glanced at the larger creature. It stumbled in fatigue. It had been greatly weakened by this abomination of birth it had given. But it was still on its feet, still looking for Logan with its keen eyes.
Logan pushed himself into another power-sprint. He sent a mental note to Tumor to really push the Armor. With every step (or leap more like) he left a hole in the ground in his wake, tossing the earth in the air. It did not blind the two monsters, nor did it slow them down. With their clawed long arms on the ground, they ran towards Logan like hunting cats. Within seconds they would pounce.
Logan had gone through a spectrum of emotions in the last ten minutes. Fear, fatigue, adrenaline, excitement, pain and the endurance of it. Now his mind filled with a grim determination. With a rictus grimace he braced himself.
If I run I die. So I will fight.
