BxR - Chapter 3: Loot and Looters

“It really is like a video game,” Dante said, fingers rubbing his chin. He was currently looking at his status screen. Of course, the trigger word to make it appear was “status.”

Classic.

[Name: Dante Pearce]
Class: Boss Rusher
Level: 2 (EXP: 0/150)
Strength: 5
Dexterity: 4
Endurance: 4
Intelligence: 4
Will: 5
-
You have 2 attribute points and 1 skill point remaining.

“Can’t tell if my stats are good or not,” Dante muttered.

He would hope he was at least average in all of his stats. His strength was one point higher than the others, which wasn’t too surprising. Dante did visit the gym with Andrew at least once a week. He’d promise to go a bit more but… well, he didn’t care all that much. He only went because Andrew did.

Doesn’t help that there’s no explanation for any of shit, he thought.

Strength was self-explanatory. His will stat was also five, like his strength, but without knowing what will did, it was kind of a moot point.

Next to his attributes was a blinking plus icon. Dante tapped on the screen in front of him. Surprisingly, it could register his inputs.

He dumped both into strength. Probably the safest choice. When in doubt, hit harder.

His muscles tightened—briefly. Not a cramp, not pain. Just a sensation, like something tensing beneath the skin, then letting go. He flexed his fingers. Nothing felt dramatically different.

Guess I’m stronger now, he thought, though it felt more like a guess than a truth.

After allocating his points, the room began to rumble ever so slightly.

Like CGI from a movie, or nanobots from the future, a small stout pillar formed within the center of the room. This was probably the loot obelisk the screen had mentioned. Within it, held three indented slots, all with circular capsules floating above them.

Dante approached the obelisk. His system screen opened, and he immediately noticed the rare item that the achievement had granted him.

[Weapon: Horse-Sized Duck Leg]
Rarity: Rare
Type: Club
Scaling: Strength B-
Description: The drumstick of an apex predator, hardened by malice and poultry-based nightmares. Somehow still faintly warm.
Effect: When used near an active source of fire, impacts will create small patches of fire. Fire patches last 3 seconds and deal minor burn damage.

“Well, I’d be dumb to not take a weapon,” he muttered. “But this… this is just distasteful.”

Before he chose, he turned to look at the other items, just in case.

[Item: Sharp Duck Feather]
Rarity: Uncommon
Type: Consumable
Description: A feather that is slightly sharp. Plucked straight from the Duck of Doom.
Effect: Can be consumed to empower up to three projectiles per day, increasing their sharpness.
-
[Item: Duck-Tooth Necklace]
Rarity: Common
Type: Necklace
Description: A single jagged tooth from the Duck of Doom’s unnatural beak.
Effect: Gain 2% increased experience gain against enemies higher level than you.

“Yeah,” he muttered, walking to the capsule. “Giant duck leg it is.”

He grabbed the small orb. Nothing happened when he did, so he gave it a small squeeze. That’s when the thing began to shine.

In its place, something materialized. It didn’t descend or float in. It formed—solid and sudden—right in front of him.

Dante reached out, hands catching it instinctively before it could crash to the ground.

“Shit—whoa!”

The weight hit him all at once.

It nearly pulled him forward. His knees bent, spine adjusting to keep from toppling outright. He grunted, muscles tightening as he shifted to steady himself.

“Fucking Christ,” he breathed, lowering it to the ground as carefully as he could. “This thing is heavy.”

It looked exactly like what the system claimed it was—a duck leg.

Not a drumstick. Not something you’d serve at a state fair. A leg. As long as a horse’s. Broad at the top, narrowing to a sharp, talon-like end, hardened and dense. He should’ve expected that much, but seeing it in front of him was different than reading a label.

He let it rest on the stone, arms aching.

Then the realization landed.

His strength. Or lack of it.

Even with the two extra points he’d just dumped into his stat sheet, he was struggling. The math clicked into place a beat later, and his face twisted.

“Seriously?” he said aloud. “I’m gonna be this weak most of the time?”

His class—the so-called Boss Rusher.

It made him stronger near bosses. Doubled everything. But outside of that, it cut his stats in half. A specialist. Built for bossing. Useless for everything else.

Flopping fish, he thought. That’s what it felt like. Swam fast in water, flopped uselessly when on land.

One more item remained.

“Alright,” he muttered, stepping forward. “Guess I’ll take this too.”

Another capsule disappeared. A moment later, something small and bright drifted into his open hand. He had chosen the feather, just in case he found a gun somewhere. Luckily, it wasn’t that sharp, not to the point he’d have to worry.

The experience charm would be good long term, but considering that he had almost died, anything to increase his chances of living, was vastly more valuable.

A swirling portal opened in front of him. It was wide enough for him to walk through, but he couldn’t see through to the other side.

System Message:
Tutorial dungeon has been completed.
Please step through the portal.

“Tutorial’s over, huh?” he said aloud. His voice felt small in the quiet, but he projected it anyway—just in case someone was watching. Maybe a bored admin. Some game master with front-row seats to his confusion.

“Log out! Disconnect! Main Menu! Xbox off!”

Nothing. Not even a flicker from the interface.

He clicked his tongue. “Worth a shot.”

With a sigh, he gripped the oversized duck leg and dragged it forward, its weight scraping softly across the floor. He stepped through the portal without hesitation.

The shift was immediate.

One second he was inside stone walls, the boss room behind him. The next, gravity vanished—ripped out from beneath his ribs like a snapped elevator cable. His breath hitched.

Then his foot slammed into pavement.

He staggered. The duck leg nearly pulled him forward, but he caught himself, legs wobbling before planting firm. His eyes blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to the light.

It wasn’t bright. Just… off. Clouded. Like sunlight diffused through dirty glass.

He stood in the center of a street he recognized.

Cracked asphalt stretched ahead, lines split with weeds that had long since stopped asking for permission. Traffic lights blinked on broken cycles. One dangled half-shattered, swaying slightly in the breeze.

Cars were scattered like bones. Some intact, others caved in or tipped sideways. One rested on its side against a bent utility pole, its windshield caved and frame rusting along the edges.

The whole place looked familiar. But it felt abandoned. The entire world looked like it had skipped a few years of maintenance. Some very long years.

Dante looked around.

He knew this street; it was Saint Olivers. It was maybe 10 or 12 blocks from his apartment.

Dante reached for his phone for the first time. He had been so panicked back in the cave, he’d forgotten to check.

It turned on. Still had 23% battery, but… there was no signal. The network had completely failed.

“Of course,” he muttered, locking the screen.

With the state of how the world looked, he’d be surprised if electricity still worked.

A sound broke the silence. It was the sound of glass shattering.

He turned toward the noise—just across the intersection. A figure in a hoodie was smashing the front window of a small electronics shop. Inside, two others were already inside, tossing headphones and battery packs into a duffel bag.

One of them looked like a high schooler.

Looters. Actual, real-life looters.

For a second, Dante just stared, duck leg resting against his shoulder like the world’s most cursed baseball bat. It was still straining on his body, but he could manage. Better a way to carry it than lugging it across the uneven ground.

The kid with the duffel caught sight of him. He froze. Eyes darted from the weapon to Dante’s clothes—bloodstained and torn. It was like staring at a butcher from a slaughterhouse. The duck leg was just a bonus.

The looter turned and ran. The others followed without a word.

“What the hell happened here,” Dante said under his breath.

He sighed and looked up the road. Somewhere up there was his apartment. Going somewhere familiar seemed like a good idea. And so he began walking, sticking close to the sidewalk. He kept his head on a swivel, taking in everything around him.

The world had gone quiet. No cars. No planes. No hum of distant traffic. Just the low rustle of wind and the occasional creak of metal from somewhere above—old signs swaying on weakened hinges.

“A real-life zombie apocalypse,” Dante whispered.

And then that’s when he saw them.

Small shapes up ahead, three or four, hard to tell—lurking near a gas station parking lot. Humanoid, but hunched. Their skin was mottled green, and they moved in twitchy bursts, sniffing the air and poking at a downed corpse with crude sticks. No… they were clubs. They were holding makeshift weapons: gnarled branches, bits of pipe, splinters wrapped in wire.

“Well, at least it ain’t zombies…” he muttered to himself, voice low.

Classic fantasy goblins. Much uglier in person than he imagined.

Dante quickly crouched behind a wrecked sedan, peeking just above the hood. The creatures hadn’t noticed him yet. They were too busy bickering over a bag of trail mix they’d pulled from someone’s backpack.

He exhaled slowly. "What the hell is going on?"

Quietly, he backed off and crossed to the other side of the street, keeping to the shadows of a ruined building. It wasn’t graceful, but it worked. The creatures didn’t follow. One even threw a rock at another, and Dante wasn’t sure if it was a fight or a joke. Either way, he wasn’t sticking around to find out.

He kept moving.

His legs were starting to burn. Those rabbits had done a number to him; there were so many small scratches and cuts on his leg and arm that the air was stinging him. The duck leg wasn’t getting any lighter, either. The awkward angle it was held at was also bruising his shoulder.

Past an overturned bus. Past a fire hydrant that had burst and dried into a cracked crater. The deeper he went, the more surreal it felt. His city—his neighborhood—had been dragged through some twisted fantasy filter. Post-apocalyptic remodeling with a budget too high and a timeline too short.

Just a few more blocks. Five, maybe, but it was hard to tell. Things just… didn’t feel right. The streets were in their right places, but… they felt wrong. Things had been shifted around. Some buildings, though decayed, broken, and crumbled—he just didn’t recognize them.

Dante stopped.

A pair of goblins. They stood in the middle of the intersection up ahead. One was holding a broken stop sign. The other gripped a jagged stick, tapping it lightly against a fallen traffic cone.

Not the brightest things, are they? He thought.

They hadn’t seen him yet.

Unfortunately, there was no other way around. One side of the road was covered in rubble from a collapsed building. The other was jammed with crashed cars too tightly packed to squeeze through. He’d have to mount and vault over a few just to get over, which was unlikely.

He’d have to get past those goblins. If he ran fast enough, he might get a quick swing off before they could retaliate.

And so, that’s what he aimed for.

Dante ran out, feet stomping on the debris-laden pavement. With the duck leg to his side, he held it reared back, about to swing forward at the one holding the stopsign.

They noticed him immediately. Both goblins turned with sharp screeches and charged.

Dante didn’t hesitate. He swung with everything he had—a full-body, muscle-torquing blow aimed right at the one with the stop-sign..

CRACK.

A direct hit.

The goblin staggered back a step... but that was it.

Dante’s eyes widened. “What?!”

The stop sign had held. It held a dent in it, but it had fully blocked the hit. The massive club he held barely did anything.

The second goblin was already on him.

A jagged stick cracked against Dante’s shoulder.

“Fuck!” He reeled back, stumbling a few steps away to gain distance.

The goblins didn’t let up. Saliva dripped from their mouths as they let out a low snarl. Their eyes were twitchy, and they seemed almost feral. They spread apart, circling out wide to flank him.

They were trying to box him in.

“This class is fucking useless!” Dante cursed.

It had to be the stat penalty. Outside of boss fights, the system had completely screwed him.

The turkey leg was a massive fucking club; it was larger than Dante’s own head and stood nearly 7 feet tall upright. The thing was easily fifty to sixty pounds. And yet... these little green freaks were blocking it?

Just as the goblins were about to charge at him from both sides, Dante heard a whizz of air. A blur from the side of his vision. He turned, just to see the stick-carrying goblin flop over, dead. Something was sticking out of its head.

“What?” Dante said, confused.

Off in the corner, he saw movement. Dante turned and spotted a figure in a red cloak. They had their hood up, so it was hard to make out who it was. The most important thing though, was that they wielded a bow.

With a nock of another arrow, they let it fly. Dante barely saw the trail it left, but followed it directly to the other goblin.

A bellowed cry came out from the green creature, as the arrow pierced and stuck inside its neck. It dropped the stopsign and grabbed onto the arrow, but it was too late. A moment later, that goblin too, fell and died.

"Holy shit," Dante said.

The last goblin crumpled, twitching once before falling still. A thin trail of blood leaked onto the pavement beneath its neck.

Dante stared for a second longer, then turned toward the cloaked figure. They were already moving away, like a ghost. Bow lowered. No words. Just a slow turn and retreat down a side street, moving behind a burnt-out sedan without so much as a glance his way.

“Hey!” Dante called out. “You want your arrows back?”

He held up a hand, gesturing vaguely toward the corpses. “Kind of figured they’re important. Ammo and all.”

But there was no answer. The figure didn’t even pause, and disappeared.

Dante sighed and turned back to the goblins. And then he noticed something.

The arrows were gone.

Clean holes in their flesh, but nothing sticking out. Not even broken shafts. They were gone, just like the figure.

Still gripping the duck leg, he exhaled slowly and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Guess that’s a no.”

Dante turned back to the black sedan where the archer had been.

"Hope he doesn't think I'm following him," he muttered with a sigh. "My house is kind of in the same direction."

He adjusted the duck leg across his shoulder again and kept walking—slower now, eyes scanning every alley and rooftop he passed. The street felt emptier than before. Like the last bit of danger had just slipped away into shadow, leaving only silence in its wake.

Still, he kept one hand near the grip of his weapon.

Just in case the next arrow wasn’t aimed at a goblin.