Apocalypse game, p.19
Apocalypse Game, page 19
“So, you did it by yourself?”
“For the most part, a few of the old gods of death thought it was their duty to ferry souls, but they just got in my way most of the time.”
“The old gods?” I asked. “Who were they?”
“Beings like Callisto. Shardbearers who wielded enough fragments of creation to become gods. They were worshiped by humanity for millennia. Until the Culling.”
I’d forgotten I had coffee in my hands and dropped the cup. Splashes of coffee splattered across the counter.
“Shit.” I hastily wiped it up before returning my attention to Death. “The Culling?”
Death held her hand up. “Sorry, Kill. I can’t tell you about it. It’s forbidden. I really shouldn’t have said that much.
“I can tell you what happened after, though. I was able to get a bunch of new helpers,” she said, grinning.
“So, the old gods are your reapers now?” I asked.
Death laughed and leaned closer to me. “That’s a rather funny way to put it, but accurate. Once I had them working for me, I had a lot more free time on my hands, so I watched over humanity, sneaking glimpses into your lives at random. It was fun and kept me entertained for a few hundred years.”
“So, what do you do now?” I asked.
“Whatever I want,” she said with a smirk. “Perks of being an immortal.”
We talked for another few minutes about her life and things like that, but we never got close to the questions I really wanted answered, but I couldn’t deny that some part of me enjoyed talking to her, just having her nearby.
And I didn’t like that feeling.
Trust is a hard thing to come by these days, and you’re too much like Callisto. I don’t trust either of you.
She’s playing a game with me. And that alone tells me not to ever trust her. But I want to, and I don’t understand why.
It was just after six in the morning, and I was too in my head.
Death noticed, and sighed. “I know I’ve left you with far more questions than answers, but I promise that all will be revealed in time.” With that, she smiled and stood. “I have to go now, but I’ll try to visit you tonight. If you’re willing.”
She vanished, and I sighed.
I was too wound up to even think about sleep, so I settled on going for a run. I’d seen what looked like a makeshift gravel track in the distance as we’d walked outside yesterday, so I thought it would be an excellent place to get some exercise.
I slipped on my clothes, made another cup of coffee, and drank it on my way outside.
It was brisk out, the sun hadn’t yet banished the night's frost from the air, and my breath came in great clouds as I finished my steaming coffee and stretched, warming up for my run. The gravel crunched under my shoes as I set a modest pace and worked the sleep from my joints.
The track was probably two miles from start to finish, and by the time I’d lapped it twice, my heart pounded nice and fast. I stopped running and did three sets of pushups and sit-ups. Sweat poured off me by the time I was done.
That’s a good enough workout for now. But let’s be honest, I’ll probably get a better one today with whatever quest Reynolds has for us.
After I finished, I dried my face with my shirt and went to get clean. Several soldiers were up and about. I skirted around a few of them going about their day and headed to the showers.
What I hadn’t realized before is they were co-ed showers. I found quite a few naked men and women in the room with me as I grabbed a bag of toiletries and waited for an availability. I kept my eyes glued to the floor and didn’t realize Finn and Adeline had walked in until they sat down next to me on the bench.
“Morning,” Finn said and offered me his fist.
I bumped it as Adeline sat down next to me and yawned. “Morning, Kill.”
“You sleep well?”
“More or less,” he said with a chuckle.
“No details, please.”
They both laughed and grabbed their shower supplies while we waited for the queue to clear. Two showers opened simultaneously, so I took one, and Adeline took the one next to me.
I stripped out of my clothes and tried not to blush when Adeline whistled. “Need to get you some sun, Kill,” she said laughing.
Finn chuckled and smiled. ”Vampires aren’t in fashion right now.”
”Neither is skin cancer. Can’t cure that so easily now. And not all of us were born with a perfect skin tone, Finn.”
They both laughed.
I took a quick shower finally shaving off all the stubble. When I was done, Finn hopped in as soon as I got out. He was faster than I was by a wide margin, and he managed to get in and out before Adeline even finished.
As soon as we were all dressed, we headed down to the bunker to meet Captain Reynolds.
“Wonder what the quest is going to be?” Adeline asked as the elevator doors opened and we walked out, our footsteps lost in the drone of dozens of fingers typing away at computers.
Reynolds sat at his workstation with First Sergeant Wise next to him, going over reports. They glanced up when we approached.
“Morning. You three looking for work?” he asked while turning his eyes back to his screen.
I nodded. “What do you have for us?”
Reynolds shrugged and pulled a few sheets of paper from his desk and laid them out in front of us. Adeline and Finn peered over my shoulders at the paper.
“I’ve got several monster nests that need to be dealt with.” He pointed at each one. “Office buildings, brewery, schoolhouse, warehouse. Hell, even have a couple in Fairwind Estates if you want to go mansion hunting. Take your pick.”
The three of us looked them over, and I tried to keep the scowl off my face. They were all low-level quests, paying only a few hundred experience points and a handful of coins. We would have to do at least a dozen to get the money we needed. And each one would take at least half a day or more to complete since they were spread around the city.
So damn slow. Are these really our only options? It’s not like we don’t have the time, but we need to plan rather than just going about these at random.
I turned to the others. “What do you think?”
Adeline leaned over and picked up a few of the papers, tapping her chin. “Hmm.”
“What do you see?” I asked.
She picked up three of the pages and pushed the others aside, bunching them up on one side of Reynolds’s desk. Adeline rearranged them and set them down one at a time.
“Look here.” She pointed at the first. “At where they’re located. They almost make a loop around the city, leading straight back here. We can hit these three in order. It’d cut down on travel time, and we could probably hit them all in a couple of days. Save’s time and energy.”
As I glanced over the requests, I knew she was right. We could take them and earn a decent amount of experience and coin in the process.
I nodded and snatched up the quests. “Alright. We’ll take them.”
As soon as I spoke, several notifications appeared in front of me.
Extermination Quest: Stacking Boxes, Stacking Bodies!
Deal with the nest of Beasts located in Windigo Industries Fulfillment Center
Difficulty: Easy
Reward: 346 Exp
150 AC
Extermination Quest: We Didn’t Mean Literally Eat the Rich!
Deal with the nest of Beasts located in Fairwind Estates
Difficulty: Medium
Reward: 458 Exp
200 AC
Extermination Quest: School’s Out Forever!
Deal with the nest of Beasts in Grissom Elementary School
Difficulty: Easy
Reward: 312 Exp
100 AC
I accepted all of them and looked at the others. “Guess we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
“Looks like it,” Finn said. “I’m game.”
“We should head out as quick as we can. These quests are going to take some time, but if we’re fast, we might make it to Fairwind Estates before nightfall.”
Finn grinned. “I’ve never slept in a mansion before.”
Wise looked us over. “You should probably stop by the vendor next to the armory and pick up some ammo or some better weapons if you can afford them.”
“Not a bad idea,” Reynolds said.
I nodded. “Alright. Best get moving, then.”
Reynolds wished us luck and then turned back to his computer as we left.
Finn led us deeper into the concrete bunker, past steel-reinforced doors and many rooms lined with heavy metal racks and shelves, the contents all neatly labeled and in boxes. The three of us had to enter a room that was under guard. Two soldiers decked out in full gear, shotguns in hand, told us to halt when we approached.
“Captain Reynolds approved us. We’re just grabbing some ammo,” Finn said.
“Wait while we verify.”
One of the men pulled out a small handheld computer and began typing on it. In less than a minute, it chimed, and he nodded. “You’re cleared.”
“Thanks.”
As Finn led us to an anteroom to the side, I asked about the computers.
“Unfortunately, they don’t work for shit off base. Above ground, they’re really weak and spotty, and the range shrinks to a few miles. It’s not worth taking them with us.”
The room was small, only housing two things, a large steel door and a rectangular silver console about the size of a vending machine. It looked just like the vendor at the school but far larger.
I tapped the screen, and instead of lighting up, it popped up in front of my vision.
“Neat.”
Finn nodded. “It’s so more than one person can use it at once.”
I tuned him out and focused on the screen.
Supplies Vendor: Level 2
Available Shops
Ammo
Medical
Weapons
Armor
Alright, let’s go shopping.
I selected ammo first, and a vast list appeared. Every caliber of bullet humanity had ever manufactured jumped out at me. I didn’t bother looking through them. I just focused on more ammo for my M4.
5.56×45mm NATO x100: 10 Coins
I went ahead and bought two hundred more rounds.
Would you like to purchase the appropriate magazines to store your ammo for a small additional fee of 10 Coins?
I snorted.
Always an upcharge.
But I did need them, and it would save me the time of loading them myself. I hit yes, and the vendor whirred to life, depositing my first purchases from a concealed slot near the bottom. I pocketed the ammo and then went looking through the other shops.
From Medical, I bought a high-quality grade first aid kit that had a trauma kit that could stabilize near-fatal wounds, and it had ten charges.
It was fifty coins, but I thought the expense was well worth it.
I flipped through the guns and armor, but everything immediately jumped to several hundred coins, and I blanched at that. There was a lot that I wanted to buy, just from the names alone, but I had to save for the Humvee, and I couldn’t afford to spend my coins so frivolously.
Adeline and Finn were already geared up and ready to go by the time I was done looking. We set out, heading back up the elevator and out of the building.
The front gate opened without a word, and we now found ourselves out from under the protection of the base’s safe zone and on our own once again.
“We’ve got quite the itinerary today,” Finn said.
I chuckled. “Yeah. Busy day. Sights to see. Monsters to kill. Who wouldn’t be excited?”
After that, we set off into the city once more.
Chapter 14- Digressing and Side Questing
“Watch the corners!” Finn shouted.
Half a dozen Carnival Beasts converged on us from every angle of the warehouse. They hopped on towering pallets of plastic-wrapped brown packages that would never be delivered in their attempt to devour us whole.
One of them leapt at me. Its long ivory fangs angled for my throat.
I reached up and gripped it by the neck, its broad, angular face an inch from mine. The kaleidoscope of colors in its eyes threatened to tempt me over the edge into madness, but I quickly crushed its neck, my demonic claws spearing through its flesh and slowly ending its life.
As its eyes darkened, I tossed the carcass aside like it weighed ten pounds and drew my Glock on the remaining group that pressed toward Adeline.
“A little help here!” she shouted, firing her shotgun into the masses as she backed up. “Unless you want me to burn the fucking building down around us.”
“I got you,” Finn said.
A pulse of shadow roiled as he stepped forward, wearing what looked like medieval-style armor, but it was twisted and blackened with darkness. Shadows writhed and swirled off the metal as if swept up in a storm and curled off his armor as he strode toward them.
I couldn’t see his face behind the helmet of concentrated abyss covering it, but a gleaming ethereal light lit up purple in the shape of a demented smiley face, grinning from ear to ear.
“You like, Kill? Abyssal Armor kicks ass!” he said, his voice a grizzly bastardization.
Finn lowered his shoulder and charged into the fray, Carnival Beasts all around him. His suppressed rifle barked as he fired indiscriminately for a few seconds before he clicked empty. He grunted and shifted his grip, holding it like a baseball bat as he hit a home run on a Carnival Beast, nearly taking the monster's head off with a single well-placed swing. Bone cracked, and its head twisted at an unnatural angle before it crumpled to the floor.
Holy shit! That’s some strength he’s got!
I laughed. “Impressive!”
Finn smirked. The shadows covering his head lit up and mimicked his expression as he turned to me. “Talent, baby. I’m basically God’s gift to kicking ass.”
Cardboard crunched from my left, and I turned on instinct, already raising my pistol at the Carnival Beast that slunk around the maze of pallets beside me. I pressed the trigger as fast as I could, firing a quick three-round burst. It dropped, splashing its viscous blood over the concrete floor and pallets.
With it dead, I turned back to Finn and Adeline, who’d taken out the last of the monsters that had ganged up on them.
As the smoke from our guns faded and the last shell casing rattled against the floor, silence reigned in the warehouse as the sickly-sweet stench of death clung to the back of my throat.
I looked around, trying to find any of the creatures that we missed, but as the seconds ticked by, it was clear that we’d gotten them all.
A fact that was confirmed by the notification that appeared in front of me.
Combat Results!
7 Killed (Carnival Beasts): 434 Exp!
Experience Boost (12.5%): 54 Exp!
Total Gain: 488 Exp!
AC Earned: 70!
Level Up!
Quest: Stacking Boxes, Stacking Bodies Completed!
Deal with the nest of Beasts located in Windigo Industries Fulfillment Center
Difficulty: Easy
Reward: 346 Exp!
Experience Boost (12.5%): 43 Exp!
Total Gain: 389 Exp!
AC Earned: 150!
Not bad. Especially with my Charisma and Well-Rested buffs earning me so much extra experience points.
“Guess that answers that, I said and canceled Demon Form and pulled up my status.
Character Page
Name: Killian Dunn
Race: Human
Class: Demon Lord (King)
Health: 285/400 (440)
Mana: 350/500
Level: 8
Exp: 826/930
15 Stat Points Available!
Time to allocate my points!
With the boost I’d gotten from Death’s sigil, I didn’t need to worry about putting any points into Wisdom or Perception, which freed up some points to bring up some other areas.
Charisma is a must. With how beneficial it is, I’d be a fool not to put at least five points into it every level.
The experience boost would only grow and help me level up even faster.
That left me with ten to distribute.
In the end, I added five more to Strength and Agility. My health was good where it was…as long as I avoided getting hit, which was hopefully where the Agility came in.
When I was done, my stats were looking pretty decent.
Stat Page
Strength: 30
Constitution: 20
Perception: 20
Endurance: 0
Agility: 25
Wisdom: 30
Charisma: 20
I waved away the screens and turned to the others. “I got seven. How many did you kill?”
Finn smirked. “I bagged nine, Hermano!”
Adeline scowled, folding her arms. “Six.” She grumbled. “I’d have beaten the both of you.” She threw her hands up. “But, no. Adeline, you’ll burn the building down. We’ll suffocate,” she said in a whiny voice. “Bunch of babies.”
Finn and I looked at each other and then back at Adeline, who cracked a smile. Then the two of us lost it, laughing our asses off, surrounded by the dead, still leaking bodies of a bunch of monsters.
When we stopped laughing and stood, I wiped my brow and glanced at one of the high windows tacked to the rusted sheet metal building. The sun was still high overhead, just passing midday.
“Alright. One down.” I turned to Finn and Adeline. “You guys up to tackle Fairwind Estates?”
Adeline nodded, fire brimming in her eyes. “Hell yes!” She smirked. “You know that’s where Greg lived, right?”
I grinned. “Okay. Adeline, restrictions off. Go nuts with your fire.”
She laughed. “With pleasure.”
“Who’s Greg?” Finn asked, which caused us to keep up our laughter as we left the warehouse.
Wind tore at our clothes as we stepped onto the street. Dead leaves and debris caught and rolled down the road as we headed north toward the residential area. Abandoned cars, purses, and briefcases littered the asphalt as we walked, along with garbage of every variety.
“How quickly the city can go to hell when no one’s working on upkeep,” Finn said.
