Traitor GIT: A LitRPG Adventure (Traclaon Armageddon Book 2), page 17
“Agreed.”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely.”
They ate the burritos, and then the skewers of native meat deemed human-compatible that Zhong was roasting. It had a citrus flavor to it.
“What are we eating?”
Zhong grinned. “We shot one of those yellow-patched cows. The scan came back green, and I really didn’t want a rehydrated meal.”
“I don’t know, rehydrated meals are pretty good,” Lucas disagreed, grabbing a second burrito off Zhong’s plate in response.
“Hey! Don’t steal my food!”
“You said you didn’t like it.”
“Give it back.”
Lucas deliberately took a bite of it. “What?”
Zhong threw his hands up in the air. “Barbarian.”
Delia passed another round of beers around, which quelled the bickering. When he had initially been planning on recruiting allies, he had expected everyone to be his age, but it just didn’t end up that way. He hadn’t one but two people in their forties. Yet common cause had brought them together, and the entire group had gelled better than he thought possible.
CHAPTER 19
After a brief rest, they packed up their tents and got going about an hour after dawn, having already lost a sizable chunk of daylight.
The mood had shifted now that they were on the hunt properly. There was money to be made with their exploring and a destination that they needed to reach at the right time.
Eric sat on top of the moving hovercraft with his gun ready to fire. He monitored the safety net. Animals were popping up in areas that had already been cleared. He frowned and considered the problem even as extra information flooded in. It was simple: if the animals hid at the wrong time, the front line of the net missed them.
A drone vanished. Alternative camera angles captured the squirrel-like native leaping at the drone as it swept past. The natives on the planet had never seen drones before, and what did animals like to do when they saw something they didn’t know?
Well, these liked to test whether drones were tasty.
The radio clicked on. “I’m shrinking the net,” Lucas said bluntly. “I’m losing too many drones.”
“Five hundred meters,” Fiona muttered. “Lucas, maybe push the leading drones higher to give extra frontal coverage.”
“On it,” Lucas immediately responded. “Or maybe not. They need to be at the tree line, because if they go higher, the predatory birds up there are going to get them. In the open, they won’t be able to dodge.”
Another drone died after being attacked by a different squirrel in an area that was supposed to be cleared.
Even with the tighter net, the coverage wasn’t perfect.
“Damn it,” Eric cursed. “Some natives are regulating their heat footprint.”
The radio crackled. “I’m pulling the drones in fully.”
“Ballsy,” Delia said.
“We’ve got voidest machine guns. We can handle natives that get too close.” There was a slight pause. “Oh, and the amazing Max Miller can definitely save us.”
There were a couple of sniggers at that.
“Got me there,” Eric drawled in his best impersonation of a cowboy. “Samesh and I get priority on kills.”
“Is this your stupid vampiric trait?” Zhong asked.
“Absorption, but practically yes.”
“And Samesh has one.”
“Yes,” Eric answered Zhong’s annoyed question. “We all have strengths and weaknesses. I’m sure Samesh would happily trade his one trait for some of yours.”
“I’ll see how wonderful it is first,” Samesh said.
Zhong snorted.
Fiona smiled. “Samesh, what does your skill do?”
“Hardly anything. I get a small amount of their cultivation base up to 0.2 percent of my levels. Yep, I need a minimum of five hundred kills to progress one level.”
“Every bit helps,” Eric agreed. “And as I told Fiona, under the right circumstances, each of us can get a level in a week.”
“Yours is like ten times better.”
“He’s Max,” Fiona objected. “What the hell are you complaining about? You know he’s superior.”
“Just because you’re shagging doesn’t mean you need to defend him,” Samesh responded with a laugh. “I feel positively insulted that I don’t live up to the mighty Max.”
“Children,” Zhong said.
“Grandpa,” Delia shot back to more laughter.
“Enough cheek from you youngsters.”
What was left of the sensory net, which was mainly radar, flagged a herd of animals.
“Big,” Eric muttered.
With a thought, the hovercraft came to a stop. He didn’t want to scare the herd unnecessarily and complicate the process.
He pulled up his modified AX5. It now had a proper set of optics attached courtesy of the printer last night. He had already confirmed the range of the scope, and the combination looked like an integrated whole. You couldn’t even see the joins of the scope to the base weapon.
“You really need that fancy stuff for this distance?” Zhong asked.
“I’m barely augmented.”
“But why?”
“I’m hoping to get good stuff on HC#004.”
“You could upgrade and then replace.”
“Most of the augments currently available have drawbacks. The aliens are selling their rejects to us. I don’t want my future to be compromised for a short-term boost of power.”
“What does that mean?” Lucas asked.
“Mostly, it’s permanent small space loss. Other ones keep you stuck on common advancement until you get a rare upgrade. Finally–” Eric waved his modified gun in the air. “This is good enough, so why would I need additional augmentation?”
He positioned the gun and looked through the scope.
“That’s not why.”
Eric pulled the weapon up in annoyance. “Fiona!”
She just flashed him an unapologetic smile. “He’s got a job after this expedition that needs him to be low-level.”
“Are you going to–”
“No, Zhong, I’m not going to tell you what the job is.”
“Spoilsport.” Fiona poked her tongue out.
“You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I was trying to say,” Zhong said loudly. “Are you going to take the shot, or am I going to die of boredom listening to your poor excuse of banter?”
“You zing him, pops,” Samesh said.
Zhong theatrically glared across at the other hovercraft and wagged his finger at them. “Watch your words. Kids these days.”
Eric tuned them out, knowing that between them, they could keep the inane chatter going longer than he thought possible. His target, an older bull, was magnified by twenty times within the scope. It was a strange animal. A herbivore that, instead of being designed to run, was armored to fight. This world’s natives mostly specialized in Blade, Jump, and soul Defense. The last meant that Cower would not work on them, but unlike HC#199, a bullet could finish them.
Eric wondered whether the animal in his sights was awakened and, if so, which of those abilities would be prominent. From that tail, he suspected the answer was the Blade and possibly both of the other two.
Click, click, click.
The head of the native exploded.
Eric waited a moment and felt the vampiric trait activate. He measured the flood of energy.
Then he frowned at what he was feeling. The cultivation he was absorbing was a tiny fraction of what it was supposed to be like.
He tilted his head to think about it.
Soul Scouting activated.
Name–Alien Armored Herbivore
Soul Stage–Awakened
Soul Disciplines (15): Armor (18), Soul Jump (0), Defense (21), Blade (25), Cower (0), Projection (0)
The results that they returned annoyed him. He had only gotten a tiny fraction of what he had expected. It should have given him about a third of the maximum, but he had only gotten one-thirtieth. It still meant two thousand kills would get him a full level, but it should have been only two hundred.
“What’s wrong?” Fiona asked.
“Not sure,” he told them all. “I want to check something.”
With Soul Scouting, he started checking all the nearby natives. One after another. Finally, his ability found a cat slowly moving toward the bull that had fallen.
Name–Alien Blade Cat
Soul Stage–Awakened
Soul Disciplines (14): Armor (0), Soul Jump (0), Defense (28), Blade (31), Cower (0), Projection (0)
It wasn’t exactly the same as the bull, but it was a glass cannon, everything in Blade and Defense. Its most important feature was that it was closer to him.
No defenses. No natural abilities to let them avoid the bullet.
Click.
The head exploded.
Energy flooded into him, and once more, it was less than he was expecting. Better than the bull but still only an eighth of what he was after.
He lowered the gun, his disappointment measured over his face. He should have noticed this flaw or feature in the trait when killing the Flower Kettles, but they had been closer than these natives. Not a feature, definitely a flaw.
“What?” Fiona asked again. “You look—”
“Sad,” Eric supplied. He scratched his head. He could still get experience, but nowhere near as much as he would have liked. “Cultivation gain decays with distance.”
They stood in silence as they absorbed that information.
“No, you’re not,” Zhong said abruptly.
“No, he’s not what?” Delia asked across the radio from the other hovercraft.
Eric only had eyes for Fiona. He could tell she had worked out his plan. She gave a tiny shrug that conveyed she didn’t agree but also that she wasn’t foolish enough to believe she had any choice.
“The idiot wants to go fight them face to face,” Zhong said.
“God no,” Lucas exclaimed.
Inside him, Guidance stirred. He should not have been afraid. He should have been used to it.
He was not. It loomed over him, a hundred-meter-high tsunami that was about to crash down on the beach he was walking along. He would be crushed, washed away, drowned. The sheer power captured in that wave, the unimaginable force of nature rolling in.
And it was looking at him.
Then it reached toward him.
Inside, he screamed.
CHAPTER 20
Guidance grabbed him with as much care as usual. Eric was picked up and launched back into his memories.
It was hot and sticky.
Unpleasant.
He scratched his balls and shifted uncomfortably. The voidest world was so backward. They believed in communing with nature or some such shit and hated automatic AI programs.
Had outlawed them.
Which was why he had a job. The heavy railgun was on its stand, and he was there to do the role that the AI should have been running. He was the second line of protection.
The whine of the turbines above him and the helicopters went higher.
“Damn it,” Eric cursed. “They’re back.”
The humid wing gusted, and he stood and got into the firing position.
Guo chuckled, but when he looked up, the pretty girl was focused on controlling her gun. After five days, he should have given up, but honestly, there was nothing better to do.
“Having fun, Guo?”
No answer. By this time, it wasn’t even a surprise. Expertly, he checked his weapon and, as per protocol, engaged it and swung the weapon well clear of the hunting party. He dropped his ear muffs down and upped the magnification until he found a piece of fruit.
Boom!
The sonic boom of the shot was loud even through his ear protection.
“Give a warning,” the pilot snapped via their radio.
Eric naturally ignored him. Because the helicopter was increasing in height, the shot had been required under their protocols. As was confirming that his shot was accurate.
He flipped back the magnification, then zoomed to the spot where the fruit was. Hundreds of years in sims meant he had an innate sense of direction, even under high zoom. Guns! God, he loved them. HC#199 had gotten as bad as it had because they hadn’t been useful there, and the company that had hired them had been incompetent pricks.
Months of practice let him slow his breathing and not succumb to a panic attack. Unlike the others, he had walked away with his life and needed to make the most of it.
He would never do something like that again, and also, none of this bloody open-air babysitting shit.
His sight zoomed in on the fruit he had hit. It was green and was now swaying wildly. Despite the force of the hit, the fruit hadn’t been torn off its stalk. It spun, revealing the neat circle his slug had drilled through it. Then it twisted further, and he confirmed the neat exit hole.
“Good.”
He pulled back and focused down on the hunting party. The prince, his consort, two brothers, and a friend. They all wore red, and they were whom he was protecting. The priority had even been specified: first the prince, then the brothers, then the consort, in that order. Around them were a perfect dozen bodyguards. Well, no longer a dozen; one of them had been eaten earlier or at least chomped in half. The creature attacking hadn’t been given a chance to digest its victim.
By mission requirements, he was on a wide zoom looking for any animals that might blindside everyone wearing red. He and the other twenty guns would only fire to protect them, and then only if they were in imminent danger. The prince wanted to slay the crocophants close and personal. The animals were like crocodiles from Earth, only significantly larger, and like crocs, they attacked exclusively from ambush positions.
He spotted a suspicious lump the party was heading toward. They seemed to have failed to spot it, and the crocophants were experts at digging holes to hide their mass.
Eric studied the VIPs. The prince pushed his brother. No weapons were drawn.
They clearly hadn’t seen it.
Boom!
His bullet slammed into the back of the beast. A flesh wound. It roared and exploded upward in pain.
The VIP party scattered. The friend was screaming and hadn’t even pulled out his weapons. The others were better.
The monster crashed down on Earth. Fully out of its ambush point, it had checked the spot on it that had been hurt, but there had been nothing attacking it, so its attention switched back to the prey it had been planning on eating.
A bodyguard ran forward and to the side, screaming and using one of those little air horns to draw its focus.
The crocophant surged toward him. Those enormous jaws snapping over the man. He was too far away to hear the chomp, but Eric imagined it was loud.
Then there were ten.
As he had observed, the bodyguards were happy to sacrifice themselves. He assumed that their families must be being paid a lot in the event of their accidental death to inspire that level of devotion. Or threatened, the small voice said, but Eric suppressed it. Even if it was true, it wasn’t his problem, and he would prefer to think they were using the carrot, not the stick. The monster had run past the VIPs and exposed its flanks to the bloodthirsty royalty.
The royals charged forward and chainsaw blades they wielded out and ready.
Eric’s gun tracked the spaces between the monsters and the VIP. Then they were close in, and his attention turned to the nearby back foot, the only part that could instantly kill someone.
It twitched.
Boom, boom.
Chu had fired as well, and based on the mangled mess of the previous deadly leg, most of the others had joined them. There was no time to think he was already focusing on the head. But it went for one of the bodyguards.
Missed as the man threw himself to the side.
The monster, with an agility that was ridiculous, snapped its jaws again.
Then there were nine.
Eric’s gun remained trained on the brain stem. Then one brother was on the monster’s head. The chain sword flashed forward, and the royal brother put his weight on it, and the weapon plunged deeper. These things had the human design flaw of a single key nerve going down its back. Everything apart from the creature’s eyes and jaw stopped moving.
The prince finished the helpless kill, systemically stabbing all six of the circulatory organs.
The VIPs celebrated a successful kill.
Eric let his gun track around the celebrating party. There were other smaller monsters that might seek to claim the corpse off of the humans. It was his job to diligently protect them.
Eric wiped the sweat off his face. There was no way he was going to sign up for another hunt, no matter what the pay. And it wasn’t just because it was so damn hot. Nine!
Eric was released from the memory.
What had Lucas just said? God, no? That’s right, he had been objecting to Eric getting up close to the natives.
“Voidest yes!” Eric said passionately.
“Boss, you can’t.” the expedition leader protested.
“Minion, I assure you I can.”
Zhong smirked next to him, appreciating the nickname.
“But…”
“I’m not going to do it stupidly.”
“Bullshit.” Fiona coughed over the word before sticking a tongue out at him.
“We can do it safely.”
“Boss, I’m not sure we’re looking at the same enemies, and you’re not augmented.”
“But everyone else is. I’m not opposed to you guys guarding me while I’m doing it.”
“Nope,” Lucas said while guiding his vessel closer so they could talk without the radio. He was shaking his head expressively. “Those things are too powerful. Even with us guarding us, we can’t guarantee your safety.”
“Don’t care.”
“Humanity will not lose the reborn on my watch,” Lucas said in a normal voice now that the two craft were parked next to each other. “There is nothing you can say to make me change my mind.”
Eric smiled at the opening Lucas had left. “Guidance told me to do it.”
