Apocalypse online 2, p.18
APOCALYPSE ONLINE 2, page 18
Heather frowned but nodded.
Jake was worried he was too harsh with her, but between all the monsters around them and his lightening ammo load, he didn’t want to risk anything.
They arrived at the next clutch of eggs. This time Jake didn’t have to say anything; they formed up into a circle around Kurtis and protected him. Knowing exactly where his fire bombs were now, Kurtis only took seconds to fish out a pair.
“I’m out,” Jason called out. He let his rifle fall on its sling and pulled a fire axe from the side of his pack. He hacked away at any breeders daring to get too close to them.
“Do you want my ammo?” Jake offered. He had his own axe to wield, not to mention a pistol to keep at a distance.
Jason hacked off a breeder’s arm in a failed swing, but was quick to turn the weapon around and buried it halfway through the shrieking alien’s torso before kicking it free. “Don’t worry about it. I’m a fighter, remember? I’m not supposed to shoot things.”
Jake couldn’t argue with that logic. As he recalled from reading through the classes, each one excelled at its own specific role. Rangers like Cory and Kurtis were great at shooting. They also leveled up the associated skills faster, not to mention they earned more stat points to make better use of them every time they leveled. Fighters like Jason were good at taking a beating and dishing it out in any form of combat that involved getting up close and personal. So Jason was honestly better off hacking away at the enemy with his fire axe.
And boy did he ever.
Each swing of his axe did a better job than their rifles of cracking through the breeders’ hardened carapaces and cutting deep into the fleshy, gooey core underneath. The problem was Jason wasn’t particularly good at dodging out of the way. He often took unnecessary hits just to ensure he struck the killing blow as fast as possible. If there was a berserker class, Jason would probably go for it from the way he was fighting.
Kurtis tossed his fire bomb into the clutch of large eggs. The first one erupted in flames and spread to a couple of the neighboring eggs, but the spread stopped there.
“Damn it all,” Kurtis growled. “These eggs aren’t clustered up tight enough for the fire to do its thing.”
Jake tried to come up with a solution that preserved their resources, but Cory was already pumping rounds into the different eggs. They all sprang leaks of viscous fluids, like he’d just shot tankers full of gooey water. Gooey water that ignited as soon as it came into contact with the initial flames.
“Problem solved, Kurtis,” he announced proudly. “Ya see, sometimes the solution is to shoot first and ask questions later.”
Except for that one time you pissed off an entire alien hive, Jake wanted to say, but he kept the comment to himself. They didn’t need anything distracting them from the fight at hand.
Speaking of which, Jake couldn’t be happier the cavern was so tall. With all the smoke spreading from the two blazes they had started, they would have been choking to death on smoke by now. Thick as it was on the cavernous ceiling, it didn’t seem to stop the breeders running toward them and dropping down from above. For all Jake knew these things could survive in space without any kind of suits, or maybe they just didn’t mind the smoke.
Either way, the group moved to the next clutch of colorful eggs.
Kurtis was much faster on the draw this time, already holding his third fire bomb in hand. He lit it and sent it sailing through the air.
One of the breeders dropped from above and intercepted it mid-flight. The spiderlike creature let out a sickening shriek as the flames engulfed it and its brethren on the floor, but they were nowhere near the clutch of eggs to fry them.
“Friggin’ bugs got smart,” Kurtis growled, swinging his rifle forward to open up on the aliens. “What the hell do we do now?”
“Throw another fire bomb,” Cory suggested. “What the hell else are we supposed to do in this mess?”
Part of Jake wanted to agree, but they still had to roast the huge egg, not to mention cover their escape. Even if there were still some watchers outside searching for them, Jake would rather fight them while they ran for the truck than deal with a swarm of bugs chasing them out of their bug hole.
Have you considered shooting those eggs? Hazel offered. Those eggs in particular are of the elemental variety, and when they are disrupted things tend to get a little…messy. Especially when they interact with one another. Elemental synergies are a particularly destructive force when wielded correctly.
Jake had no idea what she was getting at, but if Brad or Sam were there, they could have made sense of all this for him. They were gamers, after all, unlike anyone around him at the moment. But as the aliens kept coming, Jake didn’t have time for questions. He swept his rifle across the colorful eggs, emptying his magazine into them.
Spurts of glowing, hot magma-like liquid erupted from the red-orange eggs, while the purple and blue one erupted into arcs of electricity. The lighter blue eggs erupted in a thick misty fog that chilled the air around them, while the green one erupted in...vines?
Before he could make heads or tails out of what was going on, the magma ignited the vines and turned the ice into water and steam. As the lightning slammed into the water, the current spread everywhere, bursting eggs and breeders alike.
The sight would have been beautiful if the chaotic mess wasn’t coming right for them.
“Holy crap, let’s get the hell out of here,” Jake shouted. Though rather than running for the exit, he led his people deeper into the cavern, going right for their last big target.
The others followed. They’d committed to this so far, and Jake didn’t imagine they wanted to leave the job half done. Either that or the elemental mess they’d left in their wake was doing a great job of obstructing both their path back to the exit and keeping the breeders behind them at bay.
“Almost done. One more egg and we get the hell out of here,” Cory cheered. “This is going better than I thought it would.”
“Why the hell would you say that, Cory?” Kurtis said. “You know nothing good ever comes from pointing out that things are going well.”
Cory laughed. “Like this mess could possibly get any worse.”
Jake wanted to argue about all the different ways it could get worse, but he didn’t want to waste any breath. He’d need all of it to run back out of the cave with his party, and they were almost at the big egg.
Kurtis was already digging through his pack for the fourth fire bomb when things got worse. So much worse.
From the darkness of the cavern a huge, bladed leg stomped between them and the egg. It towered over the house-sized egg.
“Holy shit, what the hell is that?” Cory asked with horror thick in his throat.
Jake, along with every member of their party, swung their lights up to follow the leg. It was another breeder. A massive one with a huge, fleshy protrusion coming out of its back that looked like a bulbous sac. Its head was armored as well, vaguely resembling a crest or a crown.
Staring at the beast long enough revealed its name.
“B-b-breeder queen,” Jake couldn’t help stammering. The size alone of the thing was terrifying.
Opening its huge, mandibled mouth that resembled the blades of an industrial logging vehicle, it roared its fury at the pesky humans torching its hive.
“You know what, fuck this,” Kurtis said. “I’m taking a page from your book, Cory.” Without another word, the man ignited his last fire bomb and hurled it with all his might at the enormous, pulsating egg.
The queen tried to slam one of her legs in the way, but the fire bomb was simply too small for her to accurately track. Her bladed leg carved into the ground in front of them as the fire bomb sailed just past it. The sound of shattering glass and a hot orange glow told everyone, human and monster alike, the deed was done.
The house-sized egg the queen was protecting was quickly engulfed in flames. The queen shrieked and used its clawed feet to tear at the cavern floor, trying desperately to put out the flames, but it was already too late. The egg ruptured, spilling out a torrent of viscous fluid that ignited shortly thereafter.
“Can we run the hell away now?” Cory asked.
“Yes,” the entire party replied in unison.
They turned and bolted back through the incoming horde of breeders. The elemental mess had begun to clear into patches of electrified water, steam, burning lava, and slippery ice. They scrambled through the mess as breeders slipped and slid to their deaths. One of the monsters screamed as it crashed into a pool of magma, its dark-grey carapace glowing orange as it melted away. Another leapt at them through a cloud of electrified steam. It crashed through on the other side, spasming and writhing on the floor before its smoking body stopped.
Jake and his party made it through without issue. It was a good thing, too, because the ground behind them was shaking fast and harder with every passing moment.
The queen was right on their tail.
Jake tried to shoot at it, but his gun clicked empty. He reached for another magazine but he found it didn’t have any bullets in it. None of his magazines did. He dropped the rifle onto its sling and reached for his pistol.
It was no use.
The queen shrieked again before spewing out a jet of red-orange goo across the cavern. It reeked of industrial-strength acid and rotting corpses.
Of course, the stench was the least of their concerns, as the queen’s spray drenched the path ahead of them along with any breeders unfortunate enough to get caught in it. The monsters didn’t even shriek. They had no time to. Their quivering bodies spasmed and tried to crawl free, but they were crumbling and dissolving right before their very eyes.
“Don’t let that stuff touch you,” Jake shouted to the rest of his party.
“Gee, ya think?” Cory said. “What was your first clue, professor? The god-awful stench or the melting bugs that’ve been eating bullets on this little ‘five-minute’ adventure?”
Cory’s words stung. Jake shouldn’t have said this would be a five-minute job. It implied far too heavily that it would be a simple thing. Nothing about this mess had been simple. They’d stacked breeder bodies high and torched some high-value targets, sure. But now they were low on ammo, low on mana, and not only did they still have breeders coming at them from every which way, they had the damn queen coming after them, too.
“This way,” Kurtis shouted as he led the way through a drying patch of acid. The big man hopscotched his way across the patches of acid.
The others followed suit. Jake was the last across, only to be tackled at the last second by a breeder. The others hadn’t seen him or heard him in the chaos around them. Jake growled out as the breeder’s clawed legs tore through his shoulders. He fought for control of one of its stabbing limbs so he could get his pistol into position: right in the soft, tender flesh between its carapace. Jake pulled the trigger again and again, ripping holes through the breeder until he could throw it free.
Heather ran back for him with Jason at her side. “Get up, Jake. We gotta go.” The pair pulled him up to his feet.
Jake didn’t need to be told twice. He started running, ignoring the damage notifications on his HUD. Instead, he pumped his aether into his wounds as they ran. He managed to stop the bleeding and lessen the pain as the wounds healed slowly.
Looking over his shoulder, the queen was back after them. “How long do you think before that thing’s spitting acid at us again?”
Heather shook her head. “No idea. But I don’t want to stick around long enough to find out.”
Jake couldn’t argue there.
They soon caught up to Cory and Kurtis, shooting their way through the swarm. They weren’t even bothering to go for kill shots anymore. As long as they hit just the right spot they could send the breeders scrambling away, even knocking over the others. It wasn’t a permanent solution to their problems by any means, but it was easier than landing kill shots and took less ammo than carving a hole through their carapace.
“Exit’s right ahead of us,” Cory shouted. “Almost there.”
The cavern around them shuddered as the queen shrieked her fury.
The breeders seemed to go into a frenzy at her cry. They stopped trying to scurry around to get a kill on them and simply charged at them at full speed.
Jake took up Cory and Kurtis’s strategy of going for disabling shots. It worked to send the monsters stumbling over one another. The ones that got too close were quick to meet Jason’s axe.
The narrow cavern exit was coming up fast. They were almost there.
A breeder got through all their guns and Jason’s axe. Jake clipped it with his fist, but it was a glancing blow. The breeder sailed right past them to slam into Heather, shredding through her side with its claws. It pulled back its blades to start ripping her into ribbons, but the stupid monster held still long enough for Jake to put a round through its head.
Jake rushed to her side and pulled her up to her feet. He didn’t need to ask how she was; he could see she wasn’t going to walk this off. He asked anyway. “How’re you holding up, Heather?” Without another word he pulled her onto his back and kept moving forward.
She wrapped an arm around his shoulders, sucking in sharp breaths through her teeth. A warm white glow came from behind Jake as he saw her mana deplete to zero. “Hurt bad,” she hissed out. “Stopped the bleeding bu… fading.” Heather went slack on his back.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it. This is not the time for this,” Cory shouted. “We gotta get her out of here quick.”
The exit was right there; they only had to reach it.
The queen drew her body back, pulling in a long breath.
Jake didn’t like what he was seeing, and he wasn’t going to stick around to find out. “Run!”
They party ran for their lives, heading for the cramped exit. Kurtis and Jason were the first ones through. Cory hung back to cover Jake as he squeezed through with Heather on his back.
“Come on, come on. Hurry it up, Jake.” Cory pushed him along while firing at the swarm of breeders approaching from behind.
Jake looked past him at the queen, and she suddenly lunged forward. Another red-orange stream of bile spewed from her mouth, carving a swath through the coming onslaught of breeders and heading right for the narrow exit they were crawling through.
“Clear the opening,” Jake shouted as he wriggled through faster and faster.
Before Cory and Jason could ask why, Cory cried, “Acid!”
Jason and Kurtis moved as fast as they could and put a rock between them and the gap.
Jake barely managed to clear the passage and ran for the others. Alien shrieks followed him. He looked over his shoulder in time to watch a breeder land a sharp cut on Cory’s back.
“Cory, no,” he shouted.
Cory elbowed the bug away. “Get the hell out of here,” he screamed back as another breeder sliced into him. Cory managed to break out of the narrow gap, but he stopped.
The sound of viscous acid slapping against stone and sizzling air spilled into their cavern. The queen’s acid spray had reached them.
“Go!” Cory screamed again, and braced against the gap.
You aren’t going to leave him, are you? Hazel asked.
No, I’m not! Jake sprinted for his friend.
Someone needs to block the entrance. I calculate he has a zero percent chance of surviving, Hazel warned in an unusually mechanical way.
And me?
I’ve been looking more into the cultivation. I wasn’t going to say anything before because a battlefield isn’t the best place to test theories…
Spit it out!
Remember those mana balls you attempted making before? If you spread your mana around you instead of over your hand, you should be able to make a shield that will stop the acid.
Jake did the math. If he did nothing, Cory died. If he failed, he died, and possibly the others as well. “Well, shit. Let’s try this out.” Jake focused on pushing mana out of his body. He imagined it as a thick layer of paint covering his entire body.
That should do it.
Cory glared at Jake. “What are you doing, you idi—”
Jake grabbed Cory and threw him toward the entrance of the cave. The queen roared her fury. She had to be gearing up to spray them again.
Jake kicked away the bugs trying to take a swing at him and Cory. He blocked the entrance with his body the same way that Cory had intended. He closed his eyes and waited for the pain.
A powerful spray of the acidic fluid hit his chest. The fluid dripped off of him like the mana was a Teflon coating. It worked!
You have successfully created a new spell: Mana Shield. 5 mana used per second.
Jake looked at his mana pool. He’d only have a few more seconds of the shield before it ran out and he was up shit creek. He only hoped the others had enough time to escape.
The queen shoved her head through the small opening, squeezing her way right toward Jake. The damn thing was like a cockroach, able to squeeze into spaces its size should not allow. Jake wasn’t going to have time to get out of the way.
Shots rattled off from behind Jake.
“Get moving, you dumb shit,” Kurtis growled as the team fired shots at the queen alien’s eyes.
Jake froze for a second. If he moved, the alien could follow them. But then he saw how successful Kurtis and the others had been. They’d shot the damn aliens’ eyes out. The queen was thrashing around wildly, carving out the sides of the cave with her powerful claws.
Running through the opening, Jake narrowly avoided being crushed by one of the claws as it struck the roof of the cave above him. He dove out of the cave just as the entrance caved in. The queen had buried the entrance with her wild swings.
Jake sat there for a moment, stunned by the fortunate turn of events.
Behind him, he heard a thunk.
“What the hell, Kurtis?” Cory said. “Why’d you hit me?”
