Broken Interface - Kernal: Post Apocalyptic Zombie LITrpg Progression Fantasy, page 38
The zombie shrugged.
“But Ro means no?”
The hairy creature nodded and then sat down and patted the ground next to him. “I thought we were going to kill the spiders.”
“RUAC.” Another nod toward the crying boy.
The waterworks were not slowing. Daniel settled into the offered spot. “I did nothing wrong.”
“Raraf.”
“It was dangerous, and I had to make sure he understood he stuffed up.”
There was a suspicious silence. He looked at Dave and the zombie was busily looking elsewhere.
“You think I want too far.”
“Raraf.”
“I hardly said anything.” Daniel lapsed into silence, trying to figure out about what he had said that had set the boy off. The kid was being unreasonable, but then again, he was just a kid.
“You think I went too hard?”
Dave was watching him. “Raraf.”
“I said . . .” Daniel trailed off once more into silence, realising the pointlessness of the conversation. Unless he resorted to yes or no questions, he was getting nothing, and it was not like he could pick up on facial clues, given that Dave’s new face did not work that way.
“I don’t understand kids.”
“Raraf.”
Was that Dave agreeing that Daniel did not understand kids, or the zombie agreeing that kids were not understandable? After a moment’s thought, he let it go, as he was pretty sure Dave was going for the former.
Chapter 54
“How long?” he asked the man next to him. Zach was still crying. After a moment, he turned to look at the furry face.
“Ra . . .” Dave stopped himself, obviously realising that he could not express himself how he wanted. Then showed Daniel a whole lot of teeth. Daniel laughed, and Dave did likewise, holding up two fingers.
A couple of minutes, then.
They waited, and when Zach had calmed down, he leapt smoothly to his feet. “We don’t take any risks. I promised your mum, and she’s scary.”
Zach cracked a brave smile at that.
With club in hand and the kids not doing anything stupid, Daniel was ready to look inside.
He opened the door and looked inside.
Panic shot through him.
He was not scared of spiders, or at least he hadn’t been. These things were huge, with a torso as big as a human head and legs almost as long as his arms. They were all looking at him. A staggering number of eyes stared at him. Eight on each spider, and none of them blinked.
Unbidden, his muscles froze. Absently, he noted that the creatures were so closely packed they were almost standing on each other.
There was a flicker of movement, and something warm slapped into his face, partially covering his mouth. That energised him.
He was being attacked, and his paralysis had let them get the first blow in. He reeled backwards, intending to slam the door shut on the beasts, but even as he moved, more projectiles hit him. There was no time to think; all that mattered was stopping them from getting out. He threw himself against it to ensure it slammed closed.
Magic flowed out, completely sealing it.
The immediate problem solved, he tried to pull back but was held stuck to the wood. One eye could not open, and with the other he could see that he was covered in webbing. Then the webbing above him slipped down, covering his current working eye. He was blind.
Animal Sense.
There were no threats anywhere apart from the spiders; and they, having driven him off, did not seem to care anymore. They were not charging him like in his imagination, which involved hundreds of unblinking eyes. Yet he was stuck against the door, and the web seemed to be hardening.
“Help!”
He hadn’t needed to say anything. The others were already there, tugging on him and trying to peel him free.
“I can’t unstick it.”
“It’s got me.”
He could definitely feel Dave’s claws tangled in the webs that had hit his chest.
“Freeze.” All the surrounding sounds stopped, and he was no longer being jostled. “Who’s stuck?”
Confirmations from everyone one but . . . “Zach?”
“Yes.”
“Are you caught?”
“No.”
“Great. Can you run upstairs and get Tamara?” He heard sounds of running. “Zach,” he yelled. “Just Tamara!” And then, after a moment of thought, “Hua Chua might be useful as well. But don’t tell anyone else.”
He could feel Priscilla nearby, looking in disgust at the webs. Her disapproval of the entire species radiated through their soul bond.
A very detailed image of his predicament appeared. As he had inferred, Dave was stuck. One claw to his chest and the other on his shoulder. Gabby had tried to pull some of the webbing off his leg and had one arm trapped, while Janice was the worst off and looked like she had reached around him to remove a piece off him, but all that she had achieved was to pin her entire arm to him.
Amusement radiated through the bond.
He wondered to himself how many chip packets this would have cost to get out of this predicament if Zach had not been free.
Probably a lot.
Priscilla was nearby but was no longer sharing the snapshot of them encased in webs. However, between her presence and the occasional wave of Animal Sense, Daniel was confident that nothing dangerous threatened them. If something appeared, he knew she would try to help, but he was not sure how effective that would be. Then again, she had a knack for pissing off creatures larger than her, so if push came to shove, she might act as a potent distraction.
While waiting to be saved, he spent the time reassuring the girls, but there was probably no need, as they were not blind like him.
“Well, well.” Daniel could hear the amusement in Tamara’s tone. “How has hunting easy monsters gone?” There was a choking sound, which was clearly the suppression of laughter. “Chua, what do you think?”
“Sticky,” Hua Chua responded from right next to him.
Priscilla!
An image of a chip packet appeared, with the offer very clear. For another packet, I can provide eyes.
There were heaps of chip packets, but it was a matter of principle. He could get through this without vision. He could feel a strand on his cheek peeling away. Other random movements as people shifted and pulled, probably being guided by the new arrivals.
“That will work,” Tamara said, “but it will take ages.”
“Yes,” Hua Chua agreed. “I just need to get a feel for the substance, and I should be able to neutralise it.”
“Or I could use fire.” There was a long pause. “After we get the kids free, of course.”
Daniel felt himself tense at that. He could just imagine being consumed in the raging inferno, which would result if the threads were as flammable as they were in the movies.
“Joking,” Tamara whispered in his other ear. She was enjoying this all too much.
“So, what do you think?” They were not talking often, and he was feeling continual, powerful tugs on him as they tried to work the webs loose.
“I can clean it.”
“Oh, so no fire.” Tamara made it sound pouty.
“You can if you want.”
Suddenly he heard and felt fire crackling at his feet.
“No.” Daniel tried to launch himself backwards away from the heat, but with Dave stuck to him, it was less than successful, and he found them both falling hard.
“Now I’m trapped worse.”
What about the girls? A new type of panic filled him. Janice had been at his side. He better not have hurt her because of a silly prank.
“Was that necessary?” Hua Chua sounded more than a little annoyed.
“No, but it was funny,” Tamara said, sounding only a tiny bit sheepish.
“You could have killed me.”
“The threads are not flammable,” Janice, of all people, told him from far enough way that he knew she knew she was no longer attached. “I saw her check.”
“Spoilsport.”
“You might have hurt the kids,” he protested.
“Nah, Chua had already freed Gabby and Janice.”
Daniel shut up, and a short time later, he felt a tingling energy pass over him. “You can peel it off now,” Hua Chua told him, and he pulled the threads off his face. They came off easily, all of a sudden, because of what Hua had done.
Tamara was standing there, smirking as he and Dave untangled.
“I don’t want to hear anything else,” he told her.
She made a motion of zipping her mouth, locking it, and throwing away the key as little shudders of amusement still went through her.
“Are we going to kill them?” Janice asked.
“You bet.”
Daniel spent the next three minutes baiting out the web. Open the door, engage Speed, dodge while closing it. He only got webbed once, and Chua took about three seconds to disable the stickiness. The door got webbed shut more often, but he could alter the wood to dislodge the webs. Then, when they stopped firing, he sent the kids in.
Zach, of course, got a face full of web despite his precautions. There were tears, but Chua had him free in a short period of time, and then Zach unleashed on the two spiders. He might have been eight, and the spider bodies were as big as a grapefruit, but they still got mangled.
“I think we should see if the warrior can teach them,” Daniel said to Tamara and Dave as he fixed the wooden weapons. When he scanned the weapons, the cores were present, though the hulk’s core in Janice’s spear was clearly smaller, and he imagined the other ones were as well. In contrast, the cores he had put in his club had disappeared as his very much alive weapon had consumed them. It seemed everything in his life was gluttonous.
Walking back towards the stairs, he felt his stomach roll and seethe.
He knew what was happening. Immediately, he threw himself to the floor.
“Protect me,” he begged, as the pain radiated outwards.
Chapter 55
The pain kept expanding, just as he knew it would. Agony consumed him, and he thankfully blacked out.
He emerged still on the carpet in the hallway, but with a pillow under his head. The cores had done their work. Stirring, he felt like nothing was different, and till he got Ivey’s help, he could not fully confirm the changes. After that, he would still need to puzzle out the method of activating any new skill.
“Are you okay?”
Surprised, Daniel looked up at Tamara. She seemed to be the only one present. “The others have gone to get Ivey,” she explained. That meant that the blackout this time had been quick.
“I’m good,” he said, sitting up smoothly. It was like nothing had ever happened. “That was just my body processing the cores.”
“Dave figured that out.”
“You can understand him?”
She made some “sort of” gestures.
“Yeah, same.”
“But even if you don’t know the words, you could see how calm and unconcerned he was, and Janice could translate. You were fine, get Ivey, becoming Superman.”
“Is that what he said?”
“Basically,” she answered.
There were sounds of people coming down the stairs. Ivey, Dave, and Janice arrived together.
Ivey took one look at him, and the concern that he was sure he had briefly seen in her features faded away.
“That was quick. Dave said you were absorbing the cores, but I wanted to check.” Healing hit him, but as always, it did nothing. “There is still another twenty minutes till dinner. Do you want to check?” She waved at a nearby room, and he jumped to his feet.
A touch and the door swung open, and he waved forward. The room was safe. “We need privacy for this,” she called out before sitting down cross-legged on the bed, and she held out her hands. Smiling, Daniel mirrored her positioning and sat opposite her. Outside, he could see Tamara looking in the open door curiously. Then, with a little shrug, she shut it.
Ivey was grinning across from him.
“Ready.”
He initiated the connection, and once more there was a static spark between them. It was more like a magical bridge forming between minds rather than a fundamental link of the soul. Merely two days ago, it would have been unimaginable, and now it was barely worth mentioning.
The moment the linkage firmed up, there was a sharing of the emotions, a flood of surface thoughts and concerns. Nothing specific, just a high-level dump of her emotional view of him. A wave of desperate fragments of information and a surprising amount of apprehension directed internally at her interface.
There was a clear attraction to him, a wariness, a hint of fear, along with an undercurrent of annoyance. She was trying to get things done, and he was not helping with it. So many bits. She liked his eyes, his Strength, was repulsed by the hair on the back of his hands but found the fur from the event endearing. He was dependable, which Daniel was not sure about, a bit too resistant to advice, too flirty with others. Really?
There were lots to unpack, but it was all surface musing. What did she feel? He wanted to know the truth. What was her true opinion of him? What were her emotions? If the information was present in the overwhelming tidal wave, it was obscured by all the less-helpful, small nuggets of thought bubbles.
Useless, damaging, and obscure.
Theoretically, an emotional connection like this should promote the chance of love; but in practice, this one was applying a spotlight on things that should not be illuminated early in a relationship.
It was a negative, Daniel realised; not necessarily for them, but it would be for most people. It would reveal unevenness in the budding romance. If one side was crushing hard on the other, how much damage would this sharing do? With natural growth, those initial, unbalanced relationships could even out as both individuals grew to love each other, but if it was thrown into someone’s face this early? The less-obsessive person would probably run. At least, that is how he probably would have reacted if Ivey had been madly in love with him. That happiness and joy that Ivey often showed in response to his presence, while not fake, was not as genuine as he would have previously assumed. Normal? Yes, but it still stabbed at his ego to observe it firsthand.
“I don’t like the connection,” Daniel told her. “What it shares is not fair.”
“You think I’m pretty and smart.” She grinned up at him.
“You are!”
“You’re sweet.” Ivey was choosing to dwell on the positives, but they were still connected, so he knew that, and she knew he knew that other parts of his surface thoughts had wounded her. It was enough to do the head in.
The flood of information had faded, and it was not something he could summon back. “I truly like you,” he said carefully.
“It’s okay. I think we both know where we sit with each other.”
It was awkward. They had attraction, lots of connections, and experience together. In the real world, they might have dated, or they might have walked away with that dull ache in the chests and slotted the other person into the category of one of the “might-have-beens.” With better opportunities, they “might have been” the love of each other’s life, but he knew deep down that the “might” meant probably not.
What might have been—he savoured the words. That flush of a relationship . . . does she? Do I? Did that smile mean. . . ? Am I reading that signal right? A lot of that mystery was lost. They were regrettably more separate now than before, even though they sort of knew where they sat. On a cusp of a relationship, not everything was roses and chocolates, but it was close.
“It’s unfair.”
“I agree. But let’s not waste our time,” Ivey suggested, as practical as ever.
He immediately started the process to assess how his innate status had changed. The pain built up, and his head warmed. It was worse than the previous times, but now that he understood what was happening, he felt better about it. There was a lack of processing capacity that resulted in the warmth he could feel. They throttled the power back. They let it take its time to make sure it did not cross the threshold. Eventually, the discomfort faded.
“Good job,” she told him. “What have you gained?”
Force:
Utility - ?
Earth:
Special - ?
“I’ve two new abilities. Force with a utility skill and Earth with a Special skill.”
“Professor and the twins,” she summarised.
“Yep. One question mark each.”
Curiously, he checked the previous ability categories to see if anything had changed. The answer was yes and no. The same obtuse information and, of course, English wording of the skills that he already knew that he was using. The unknowns were still question marks.
Plant:
Power - Rapid Growth, ?
Utility - Wood Growth, Wood Strengthening, Cell Specialisation, Algorithmic instruction, ??
Special - Sapient Seed, Wood Sense, ??
Strength:
Power - Strength Boost, ?
Utility - ?
Special - Passive Strength Boost, ??
Speed:
Power - Speed boost, ?
Utility - ?
Special -
The skill listed was nothing new to him. The extra names being spelt out might have felt like success, but it was meaningless. Yep, algorithmic instruction sounded incredible, but he had already been using it. It was the same with cell specialisation; he had abused that ability time and time again.
The number of question marks annoyed him. They were items he still needed to uncover how to use, but until he had the epiphany, they served no real purpose apart from reminding him that more experiments were required.
Briefly, he thought about mentioning the details to Ivey, but he decided it was pointless.
“Nothing new. I can’t say I’m surprised, but at a guess, I’ve got earth armour and telekinesis. Just need to work out how to use them.”
“Attributes.”
He checked the screen she had suggested. “I’ve gone up one level. Vitality has improved by one. No other changes.”
Ivey frowned at that news, but the fact that he was still getting attributes was a positive, so the frown confused him.
