Broken Interface - Kernal: Post Apocalyptic Zombie LITrpg Progression Fantasy, page 48
The cacophony got closer, but clear screams of pain were mixed in with what he was hearing. Two ferals burst through the doorway.
Twang! Twang! Twang!
One went down with half of its head gone and another arrow through its neck. The other stumbled backwards like it had been hit with a mace and promptly stepped on a pressure plate trap.
Crack.
Its leg got severed just below the knee.
Twang! Twang!
An arrow sprouted in its heart and another in its eyes. It fell like its companion. An image of the stairwell reached him. Broken, shattered bodies filled them. Sounds of pain continued to float upwards, but nothing emerged.
Priscilla swept down the stairwell. There were at least five still alive. They were all so mangled he could not imagine them surviving, but given how healing worked in this new world, even a single beat of life might be enough for them to revitalize. As the mouse sped downwards, he attempted to count the dead, but she was too quick. The answer was a lot.
More had rushed the stairs than he had expected, but the traps had performed incredibly, dicing, crushing, and killing. The real question was how many were still alive and uninjured. Only a few, Daniel was sure; but a single elite could be problematic.
Priscilla had reached level twenty-one and was searching. While she looked, Daniel sealed off the stairwell and let his magic deactivate all the traps now that they no longer needed to be used. At a minimum, he needed to go down and execute the survivors before the Alpha magic pieced them back together and turned them back into a threat. He did not want to step on a live trap accidentally.
They were safe.
Priscilla sent him a view of two elites that had not charged the stairs. Only two! Using Zach as bait had clearly riled them up far better than he predicted. Daniel’s heart thumped. Please let the boy be okay, he prayed internally, remembering the blood. It was supposed to have been risk-free, but the system had not worked as they had expected, and maybe Jayden was right. Maybe using them as bait was a step too far.
“What is happening?” Ivey asked
“Zach got hurt. Otherwise, success,” he answered simply. From the stairwell, they could hear pained agony. “But we still need to put a couple of them down.” His mind rushed back down the conduit, checking that everything was deactivated. They were, but traps could malfunction.
“Two elites alive and uninjured on level twenty-one. I have sealed them off. Multiple elites injured in the stairwell. I’m going first. Everyone else, watch your step,” he ordered and then, following his own advice, he stalked through the traps, careful to avoid stepping on them.
They were incredibly obvious, as he had given up on trying to camouflage them. Observing the zombies told him that most of them no longer had the mental capacity to understand what a trap was. Some would, but those noticed the hidden traps as well. Put those suppositions together with malfunctioning traps and hiding them was just not worthwhile. The smart ones would get through anyway, and they had, and then the archers had blown them to bits. Having that extra firepower made these fights safer.
Daniel reached the stairwell, and with a Tamara-created light globe attached, he looked down it. It was gross. It was like a crazed artist had scattered red paint and maimed mannequins throughout. It smelt of the tang of copper, faeces, a disgusting animal musk, and death. Behind him, Ivey gagged.
Two steps below, a zombie groaned. It had triggered multiple traps. Spikes of wood protruded from it, and its thigh had been cut open to the bone with a bear trap that had closed over its shoulder, but it had lived. Tough and strong. Given their intended tactics, Priscilla had not mapped out all the opposing abilities and features. Whatever this thing possessed had kept it alive through injuries that should have comfortably finished it.
Blood Drinker swelled in excitement. Daniel could see the swing that the club wanted him to execute. Double-handed, right down onto its upturned nose with an infusion of Strength. It was a guided course without compulsion. Daniel matched the movements it was showing, triggering Strength halfway through the strike and feeling his muscles change ever so slightly. The weapon distorted.
Clunk.
It sank right into the skull, and then Daniel left it there. He could feel it drawing in the blood and using it to get stronger. While it drank, he leant down and used a scrap of wood from one of the pressure traps to crack open the thing’s chest and grab the core. While he did not necessarily seek other skills, if it imbued healing, then he wanted it.
One mutated feral, two mutated ferals, Daniel counted in his head. Three. . . . The club had drunk enough, so he pulled it out. The wood looked shiny and new, with not a single bit of organic matter on it. He wished he could do that with his clothes.
Stepping down, the squelch of blood. There was no way of avoiding it. The stuff was everywhere.
Splat.
Whatever he had stepped on was spongy. Some type of dislodged organ, but he really did not want to think about it. He was definitely going to need to find water to give himself a decent scrubbing.
“Watch your step,” he warned once more. “It’s slippery.” When he talked, he could taste the air, swallowing to dislodge the taste, but it did nothing. A flood of saliva only seemed to concentrate all that unpleasantness.
The next creature was clearly dying, split almost in two. Daniel smacked its already-shattered skull and left the club there for a moment.
There was a throb of thanks.
He kept moving, executing another five, with two of them requiring a Strength boost. Daniel did not argue, cooperating with the club’s request, and it did the job. Each one took only a single swing, and that brief flash of Strength did not deplete his resources.
Finally, he reached the door to the twenty-first. When he looked back, only Tamara was behind him, everyone else having decided not to brave the mess. Her light globe provided him the visibility to let him navigate safely. A hand was over her mouth and nose. He wished he had been able to do the same.
Daniel placed his palm against the door and focused on reinforcing it, then finished with a ward on it that would warn him if the door was damaged. Priscilla independently offered to keep a watch and give him extra warning if it looked like they were coming. His reinforcement had the wood growing into the walls, roots making their way through the hollow bricks that the walls were constructed from. After that, with an eye on mana, limited but carefully placed spikes popped out on the other side. Nothing was getting through the door.
Part of him thought they should finish it straight away and save the trapped people, but they would be fine. After all, there were only two zombies left, and Daniel was sure they could beat them down, risk-free, if the ferals were stupid enough to attack them.
He turned to face Tamara. “I need to check on Zach,” he told her while his chest thundered.
Nightmare scenarios flashed in his mind. Tamara nodded, and they hurried back up the stairs, away from the slaughterhouse.
Chapter 72
When he opened the wooden barrier to get to level twenty-five, he was greeted by all four of the kids and Trudy holding her baby right outside.
Zach appeared happy. In fact, he was bounding from foot to foot in excitement. There was a new rip on his shoulder with clear signs of blood on it. “Did we get them?” He was doing shadow boxing.
Daniel laughed. “Yep, we got them. Over twenty. Only two more to go.” He leant down and hugged the boy. “You were very brave,” he whispered into his hair. Then he looked up. Trudy was looking hard at him. “How bad was it?”
“It was just a scratch,” Trudy said.
“I had hoped—”
“Yet he got injured,” Trudy interrupted him with an abrupt wave of her hand. “And you had Carly in our room waiting as back up, and you have come straight up to check on him.”
“I . . .” he stopped speaking, realising that she was not angry like he had been expecting. He had expected her to become a fearsome mother hen and come crashing down to protect her children.
“You’re a good man, but remember you made a promise.”
“I did.”
“You did,” she agreed, and she leant forward more. “And you need to play politics better.”
“What?”
“You can’t be that naïve,” Trudy said. “We’re not getting out of here unless you do. There are too many self-important a-holes up here. This is an expensive hotel, and entitled idiots are in surplus.”
“What are you saying?”
“Take charge. Do everything you can to get us out. If those fools get in your way, then deal with them. The rest of us will support you.”
“I thought you were going to be furious.”
Trudy hesitated for a moment. “We would be dead without you,” she admitted finally. “All of us. There was no way we would’ve killed the ferals, let alone started clearing the floors, if you hadn’t done it. There is a reason no other floor made any progress. Plus, I’ve spent a lot of time looking out the window. We need to get stronger. The stuff out there.” She stopped talking.
“Thank you,” he said cautiously.
“Daniel.” She was serious. “Take charge. Not your girlfriend. You.”
“She’s not.”
“Even more reason for you to take control. Getting out of this building is only half the battle. You mustn’t let Beau and Jayden undermine you. Here, within the walls, there is a modicum of safety. Nothing is hunting us.” Another hesitation. “Hopefully.”
She looked up and then down, worry clear on her face. Once you had seen ferals, it was easy to imagine that something more dire might exist elsewhere. She shook herself.
“Look at me, letting my imagination run riot.” The excuse fell flat. “We might be safe here,” she continued more seriously, “but once we leave this place?” She shivered. “Out there, in the wider world . . . that equation changes. There are monsters, which will hunt us. We can’t afford loose cannons out there. One person’s stupidity could bring one of the . . .” She stopped talking and he could see horror etched across her features.
“What do you mean?”
“They want to be in control, and if they succeed, we’re all doomed.” The baby started crying. “Can we go to the kitchen? She likes the breeze.”
Daniel went to follow, figuring that Trudy had more advice to give. After her husband and now Zach getting hurt, he had been expecting her to be against him, but apparently it was the opposite.
“Hey, you!”
The rude yell came from behind him. Trudy’s words echoed in Daniel’s head. He needed to take a firmer leadership position.
He turned, and Beau, flanked by two other men, stalked towards him. His companions were two of the men who had followed Beau earlier. Daniel’s eyes skipped over them. Non-combatants. He wondered what their classes were.
“Yeah, you.” The man had been drinking. Daniel could smell the beer on him from here. “You need to stop lording over us.”
Daniel’s preferred way of dealing with drunks was to diffuse the situation, but if he could not do that, he would not back down.
“Open the stairways. I know you have cleared other floors. This floor is too restrictive, and the lack of doors is infuriating.”
“No.”
“You’re not in charge, mate.” Beau’s finger poked him in his chest. Daniel barely stopped himself from reacting and snapping it off. “If you don’t open them, we’re going to have issues.”
“No!”
Beau’s two companions moved up to loom on either side of him.
“I wasn’t asking,” Beau said.
“No, you were ordering.” Daniel’s instincts were screaming at him to hit first, but he held back.
“True, right. So, open it up.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Then you can come with us and make it not dangerous.”
“Daniel, are you planning on clearing more floors?” Trudy asked from behind him, trying to help.
“Pathetic, always hiding behind skirts.”
The men next to Beau giggled at that.
“You guys have been drinking.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“New rule.” Daniel said it loud enough so the crowd Priscilla had shown at his back could hear. “Alcohol is reserved to those who contribute to society.”
“What, and you’re the judge of that?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want to do this, mate.”
“But I’m going to do it,” he told them.
“You’re not in charge.”
Priscilla was there. That gave him options. Can you show me if he swings? he thought.
Strong feelings of yes swamped him.
“I want all the alcohol brought to my room,” Daniel yelled out and then spun on his heels, dismissing the drunk men as irrelevant by his motions.
His vision froze as Priscilla did her thing. It was not Beau attacking him, but the guy on the left, and it was just a push.
Speed.
Stepping sideways, Daniel rotated his body. Hands up, grabbing the idiot.
Strength.
Daniel threw him forward, then realised that Carly, of all people, was in the spot where he was about to toss the man. He redirected and held slightly longer to effectively body-slam the man into the floor. It would hurt him more, but he would not hurt an innocent bystander, especially one of his team.
Thump.
The noise did not sound pleasant. There were broken bones involved.
Time froze again. Dark magic was forming in Beau’s hands.
Speed.
Daniel let his club flash out while asking it not to poison.
There was a crack as his club hit the hand, and the magic bolt shot up into the roof. Sharp spikes on every inch of the weapon instantly opened long grazes.
There was a groan on the floor. The third man was backing away in alarm.
“Try that again and there will be consequences.” Once more, Daniel turned his back and walked away. “Bring all the alcohol to my room. I’m not letting you bludgers drink it anymore.” Then he froze and looked straight at Beau, his heart thundering. That prick had tried to hit him with magic. “Pushing is fine. But if you attack me with magic again, I’ll lock you on a zombie floor and leave you there. Once you have cleared it of enemies, you’ll have as many rooms as you want and all the alcohol you can find. Hell, if you want to, I can let you out in level twenty-three right now.”
The man shook his head quickly.
Typical, Daniel thought, not that there was a chance in hell that Beau could clear a floor. He might beat one zombie and maybe two, but after that, his magic would be depleted, and he would be helpless. As Daniel walked past Trudy, she patted him on the back, as did Alisha. Maybe they needed someone to take charge, or possibly they were just glad Beau had been put back into his place.
Chapter 73
Now that he knew Zach was safe, he turned his mind toward killing the final two zombies on floor twenty-one. Priscilla, by this point, had fully categorised them. One was an Ice zombie with a touch of enhanced Speed, and the second a typical hulk. Thick skin and immense strength. Daniel reacted slightly when the mouse supplied those details. Earth Armour and Speed were the zombies he had learnt to fear.
When he returned downstairs, he found Hua Chua sitting in the stairwell of level twenty-four with sweat glistening on her forehead, and she was puffing heavily.
“What happened?” he asked.
She looked up. “I clean, lots of magic. Very tiring.”
Daniel looked down into the partial darkness and was surprised to see that a lot of the mess was gone. More importantly, the smell had vanished, replaced with fresh clean air. “The bodies?”
“We took care of that,” Ivey said from behind him. He turned to look at his fighters. “We threw them out the window after scavenging anything useful.” She caught his expression and rescinded the sarcasm. “It is all in room forty-three.” She pointed. “It was hard to label cores because of the state of the bodies, but we did our best.”
“Later,” Daniel declared. “There are two more zombies to take care of, a hulk and an ice mage. I’m going to draw them into the stairwell.” Daniel went into the freshly smelling space and immediately saw the dried bloodstains. While Hua Chu had gotten rid of the mess, she had obviously baked in the worst of the stains rather than extract them altogether. Not that he cared. There were no slippery body parts to trip over and, just as importantly, there was no smell. The walls now having an interesting-looking paint job did not bother him in the least.
Thirty percent of his traps were still intact, and he repositioned them to create a new kill zone. His plan was to stand on the landing on floor twenty-two and meet them. It was unlikely they could scramble up two flights of steps, but even if they did, he was confident that his abilities and his club could take care of them, anyway.
Priscilla, bring them, he thought while using his magic to open the door. He was not helpless. Restraint vines criss-crossed the space in front of him, which would slow the zombies if they reached that far; and Ingrid, Ivey, and Tamara were on the steps leading up, ready and able to supply support.
Through his eyes, he saw Priscilla trying to bait the zombies. “Help,” he yelled, but if they heard, they did not noticeably react.
Bite them.
Distaste washed up from the mouse, but he saw her go for the ice zombie, biting it on the soft skin between its toes. It blurred forward, but Priscilla was moving faster. The zombie chased her out the door.
“Help,” he hollered again.
“ARRRGGG.” A blood curling scream was unleashed from right behind him. Daniel turned, bringing his club up defensively, only to see Ivey smiling. Priscilla showed him both zombies running towards them.
“Again,” he ordered.
“ARRRGGG.”
They paused at the base of the door, refusing to come up.
“Again,” he whispered.
