[NR] Undead Bug - Chapter 684

Fourth break undead don’t end up joining the fight until the fourth day after the town brings out their own. Though most of the strategists agreed, this wasn’t from a lack of ability. Rather, they were held back until a decent number of them could be fielded. After all, no use sending a single fourth break out when the enemy has many of them waiting.

And with the introduction of fourth break undead, everything changed. While you can get lower break undead with magical abilities, true mages don’t normally show until level 100 within the System. True undead simply cannot manipulate power in the way needed until they developed a core.

These fourth break undead aren’t breaking that rule, but only because they’re failed products with forced cores. Whoever corpsecrafted them had been hoping to make a sixth break undead and each failure had a chance to instead create these dead end undead. Able to use magic because of their cores, but unable to advance any further.

Whatever the case, with undead magic users the entire line up of the settlement was changed around. Even more than Siegfried had originally planned for. He had only been planning to pull those below the fourth break back to the top of the wall.

Instead of simply pulling back the weaker melee fighters, Siegfried had to also put the fourth break support and mages down with the melee fighters. They simply couldn’t afford the time delay those people being up top caused. There was no safe amount of time to be debuffed by a necromantic wasting effect.

Oh, but Jason was indeed allowed to stay down there. Siegfried had probably believed that he wouldn’t stick there long. Maybe even expected a quick death. That wasn’t what happened.

In fact, it seemed the System was even supporting him. Though in a roundabout fashion. Most others certainly noticed that many of the classic undead effects weren’t affecting him.

Muscles cursed with rigor mortis? Breath stolen? Blood slowed? All of those and more seemed to just roll off Jason like water off a duck’s back. What the others didn’t see was why.

See, it’s hard to do stuff to muscles, blood, and various internal organs when a person doesn’t have them. Of course, normally the System would push back against Jason’s internal void. Force him to bleed and suffer for the sake of “balance”.

However, it seems that against these particular invaders; the System turned a blind eye. Jason saw it as a sort of preview into what things would be like in the future. Also, as something to not trust in the least bit. This was a benefit outside of the strictures of the System’s own rules. He was at the System’s whims with this.

Jason didn’t worry about this too much, as he wasn’t going to be on the front line of this fight for long. The two nights pass quickly enough, though profitably. The extra three Strength and Toughness, as well as seven Agility almost made him want to stay.

He didn’t. Rather, he followed through with Helina’s plan and stayed back in the civilian bunker. So, of course, the third night is quiet. But he sticks it out and stays down there on the fourth night and then the fifth night.

Then something happens. It doesn’t exactly match what Helina predicted. However, the part about something sneaking into the civilian bunker proves accurate enough. It just isn’t some ghostly undead that shows up.

Rather, the undead managed to sneak some sort of subterranean undead. Though technically it might count as incorporeal, at least with how it infiltrated. The undead humanoid insect monster had some sort of earth escape or glide. An ability to pass through the ground as if it wasn’t there.

This, however, wasn’t complete incorporeality. As shown by the fact that Jason and the civilians got a warning of the monsters arrival in the form of loud scraping as it broke through the wooden floor. Convenient as it gave the regular people a chance to retreat to the edges of the bunker. They might have even tried to escape the building entirely if not for the warning that came a little earlier of an attack out there as well.

Jason positioned himself a little to the side of where the undead was coming up from underneath and he didn’t have to wait long. The reinforcement wood splintered, spraying out across the room. Then Jason stomped on the monster’s head.

This didn’t end the fight, even with his War Stomp going off perfectly. Which makes sense as the revealed undead was clearly quite tough. The exoskeleton being particularly well preserved, even to the point that some of the insides suffered for it. As shown by the fact that the monster’s follow up attack didn’t instantly take out Jason, despite it hitting.

Though Jason was thrown a distance away. Not far enough, though, to be a problem. The other people in the bunker had managed to get far enough away that the undead stayed focused on Jason.

It charged with giant scything claws stretched out. And it was quite fast. At least, compared to a civilian without training. Not that anyone in the town was truly untrained, but it would have been enough. For them.

The undead bug’s speed however wasn’t enough to match Jason. Despite likely being a break higher than him, Jason was faster and he viciously took advantage of this. Those nasty claws came down on him, only for the undead to miss as he slipped inward and to the side.

As he does that, Jason throws an elbow strike back into the joint of the undead’s large scything arm. Energy spikes out and scratches up the exoskeleton. It doesn’t pierce anything, the necrotic magic powering the bug does a better job of blocking his Energy than most other things he had experienced.

Jason hops past the undead and turns to face it. Though he notices the people around him are drawn back, scared. He doesn’t know how to calm them and it would probably be a lie. After all, Jason isn’t sure if he can actually beat this undead humanoid bug thing.

So instead, he turns to banter. “Tough one, aren’t you? Boy, not looking forward to when most monsters I face reinforce their entire body with power. Makes me wish I had a giant pair of those crab legs cracker things.” And he laughs.