Sponsored Apocalypse, ch 27

Luckily, it didn’t take too long to find some monsters.  More goblins again, probably for the best.  At this point, the two goblins I’d found–hacking apart a family dog they’d killed–were not too much of a danger to me.  Even if I let them attack me, I wasn’t sure they’d actually be able to hurt me much.  For test fodder, they were perfect.

They didn’t notice Bacon and I as we crept up on them.  For small, relatively weak monsters, goblins definitely seemed to have a knack for being sort of oblivious, at least in my experience so far.

I’d take every advantage I could get.  Especially against these little bastards.  I was really tired of goblins.  They didn’t even give all that much experience anymore.  But every one I killed was one less to go after regular people, kids, or in this case, a family dog.

After reaching out through my developing bond with Bacon, I did my best to convey an idea.  “Kill.”  Bacon got the message.  The hound surged forward like the four-legged, supernatural death-given-form he was.  Both goblins were destroyed in seconds, ripped apart.  It was gruesome.  I loved it.

“Serves those little assholes right.”

I focused on my XP bar and nodded.  It’d barely moved.  Unless Bacon had killed something worth tons of XP before, which I doubted, the system penalized me for having him near me and having done all the work.  I’d gotten much less XP for these kills than when he’d been far away.  Even though he was a part of me, he was still being counted as a party member.

If I fought alone,  I wouldn’t be totally alone, though.  If I needed to, I could call him out to help, possibly at the risk of less XP.  That was the presumed tradeoff, and it made sense.  But now I had this…loophole I’d just discovered.

If this experiment had had different results, I would have formed a different plan going forward.  Like, if I’d still gotten as much experience as when he was far away from me, I would be planning to take Bacon into battle.  That was likely how he was meant to be used as a familiar.  

If we were always together, we’d theoretically kill twice as fast, and he could even lead me to enemies faster.    But this was even better.  The mess outside while I’d been sleeping proved he didn’t need my help, at least not to kill goblins or weaker monsters.  And he could run far, far faster than me.  I wasn’t even sure if he could die, but if he could, anything too scary wouldn’t even be able to catch him.

Meanwhile, I could strategize to bring down bigger creatures or bigger groups.

It was time to cheese the system again.

“Hey buddy.”  I crouched down in front of Bacon.  The memory of my first reaction to him, the dread, the fear, it was all already fading.  With my soul connected to him, he felt…familiar.  Like we’d grown up together.  Even though I hadn’t known the hound for very long, he felt like family.  He felt like an extension of me…because he was.  “I need you to do something for me.”

My dark familiar paid close attention as I spoke.  I still wasn’t sure how much he understood, and I was pretty sure he didn’t know English, per se, he could probably just interpret my will through our connection.  Either way, I repeated myself a few times and tried to say what I wanted in a few different ways.  He seemed to understand, though.

The oblivion hound took off running.  He was on a mission of murder.

Now so was I.

***

Being on my own again felt surprisingly lonely.  However, it was comforting to know that I could summon Bacon basically whenever I wanted.  Sleeping wouldn’t be a problem, either.  My original plan had been to dig holes to hide in with my shovel.  That likely wouldn’t be necessary anymore…but I wasn’t going to bet on anything.

The situation was changing.

I’d been moving as stealthily as I could, which turned out to be wise.  Even after discovering how tough my body was now, I didn’t want to get too cocky.  The Challenge Portal had drilled home how dangerous this new reality was, underlining what the cyclops had proven in the first few minutes of this horrible new world.

New monsters had shown up.  At least new to me.  Maybe they’d already been somewhere else before, but now there were some kind of freaky fish-men…things.  I’d spotted some of them in the distance.  They stood almost as tall as a human but were hunched over strangely.  When I used [Bone Truth Eyes], I saw that they were called, “lesser water kobolds.”

They definitely looked more dangerous than goblins.  For one thing, they were much more organized.  I watched a group of them moving boxes from a boat on the river.  They also seemed better equipped, with weapons that fit their builds, and some even wore some sort of armor.

The group I was watching consisted of about ten of them.  I wasn’t sure how tough they were just yet.  One of them had a little skull symbol next to its species name when I used [Bone Truth Eyes], a sign that it was either higher level than me or super dangerous for me.  Maybe both.  The monster with the skull was an officer or leader of some kind.  Its armor, clothing, and weapons were finer.  It also stood a bit taller and seemed to be giving the others orders.

I crept a little closer.  All of them looked a bit different than I’d thought at first.  They still definitely had a fishy feel about them, but they also looked vaguely reptilian.  They were moving stuff from the boat up a stream.  I kept my distance, using my binoculars to keep tabs on them.

My bile rose when I saw that some of them were carrying people parts.  Maybe food, I thought.  Others had chests, though.  Even others carried plastic totes but I couldn’t see what was in them.

When they met up with another dozen, complete with another dangerous leader, I was glad I’d held off on attacking.  I followed at a distance long enough to see where they were going.  It turned out to be a grated tunnel similar to the one Aldina had used for an entrance to her bunker.  Now that I was looking for it, I could spot the shovels that some of these monsters carried.

They were building a base, one not far from the water.

There were way too many of them to even think about attacking now.  I was half tempted to try chucking a max yield [Angry Arrows] hammer in the tunnel and then running like hell, but that would be a super stupid idea.  Even getting close enough to throw the hammer would be dangerous as hell.  For now, I made a mental note of where the water kobolds were and decided to move on.

Heading into town was surprising.  Even once I’d hit the main road, the one Aldina and I had fled down before, I’d been half-expecting to see nothing but monsters or maybe a few people furtively trying to escape.  Instead, I saw a surprising number of vehicles.

With growing amazement, I walked on the side of the road, observing and trying to understand what I was seeing.  Trucks with people in the back moved slowly down the road, many of them with searchlights or people using high powered flashlights.  Lanterns had been set down at fairly regular intervals to provide more light.  Groups of people walked down the middle of the street between the vehicles, but not many.

I waited until I could approach a group.  As usual, my [First to Five Eyes] were making my vision much better than it would have been before the world went sideways.

The group ended up being four men in their mid to late 20’s, somewhere around my age.  I didn’t know them.  The one in front was wearing football pads over chainmail.  He was holding a beat up baseball bat and had an equally scarred garbage can lit in his other hand–an old style metal one.  Under his makeshift armor he wore old surplus military fatigues, BDUs.

One of the men behind him was dressed in honest-to-God, medieval-style metal armor.  He had a longsword belted at his waist and was holding a halberd.  The way he held and carried his weapons showed he was proficient with them–probably a HEMA or SCA hobbyist.  He had an anachronistic looking pistol in a holster on his weapon belt.

The third member of the group had a compound bow and three quivers of arrows–two on his back, and one on his hip.  He also had a machete on his other hip.

In the rear of the group, the last member was a chubby guy who looked the most modern, but also the most out of place.  Like the first man, he was wearing fatigues, but he also had a pump shotgun, a pistol on each leg, some modern-looking body armor, and enough criss crossed shotgun bandoliers to make Rambo blush.

“Hey buddy, what you doing alone?”  The lead man spoke as soon as it was obvious I was approaching them.

“You got a death wish?”  The man with the crossbow frowned.  “Actually, what’s with all the pans and stuff?”

“Is he a civilian?” The chubby gun moved forward from where he’d been at the rear.

“Hey, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on right now,” I said.

The four of them laughed.  “Yeah, you and everyone else.  The world is kinda fucked up,  you know, more than before.”

“No,” I said and shook my head.  “That’s not what I mean.  Why are there so many trucks on the road here?  What are you guys doing out?”

The guy with the bow elbowed the medieval guy and whispered, “Hey.  Look at his clothes.  He has blood all over him.”

All four of them grew noticeably more wary.  I frowned.  “How the hell would I be out in the middle of nowhere by myself and not have dirty clothes?  Even if I’d just been running away since everything kicked off.”  Now that I was talking about it, I realized my clothes were absolutely nasty, but I let my flash of irritation carry me past the potential embarrassment.  “And I’ve been killing monsters.”

“By yourself!?”

“Yup.”

They all gave me a skeptical look.  “What level are you?”

I was briefly distracted by another level up notification.  Since I’d sent Bacon off on his seek and destroy mission, I’d gotten four more messages.  At the moment, I was level 30.  I’d had absolutely explosive growth and I’d been off-world, living in time streams different than this one.

With a flat expression, I said, “High enough.  Enough to have been killing monsters solo.  I really don’t wanna measure dicks.  Will you guys answer some questions or should I just go?”

Part of me was surprised I was cutting this hard to the chase.  A couple weeks ago I never would have been this…rough.  I really had changed.

The man in football shoulder pads glanced at the man in armor.  “Steve you have Bone Truth Eyes.  Use it.”

“What’s the point?  He’s not an enemy and even if he is, it’ll just say human.”

I was paying close attention to that line.  It occurred to me that these guys probably had a lot of good information if they’d just stop being idiots.   We could even trade.  I said, “I just wanted to talk.  What the hell, guys?”

The leader shouldered his baseball bat and said, “Homeless-looking guy with the pans and weird shit hung all over your body, I declare you an enemy!”  Then he made a miming, shooing gesture back at me.  I was confused until he took a swing at me with his baseball bat and I jiumped back.  “What the hell!?”  The swing had obviously not been a serious one, but I was still half tempted to beat some sense into these guys.  At no point had I actually felt in danger.  The guy with the shotgun was maybe a little concerning but I was pretty fast these days.  And I’d come to have a chat with sane people, not throw down with other humans in the middle of the road!

“Use Bone Truth Eyes now, Steve.”

The man in armor nodded and I suddenly felt a chill, like standing right under an AC duct.  Then the man in armor, Steve, turned robotically back to the leader.  “Uh, Nate.  I think this guy is telling the truth.”

“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t say, “human.”  It says, “Human Champion,” and there are two skulls next to it.

“Oh.”