Sponsored Apocalypse 2: A LitRPG Adventure, page 13
Congratulations on clearing a small-sized local settlement!: For your contribution, the system is awarding you five advancement points.
“What the…” I said.
I jogged around the building, glad to see that no telltale signs of my gas seemed to have really leaked out of it. Around back, Tom was standing behind a few monster bodies on the ground. It looked like he hadn’t had to do much, either, because I didn’t see many axe wounds in the corpses. Like the monsters I’d faced down, they’d all succumbed to the poison that I’d infected them with.
“Now that is some nasty stuff,” said Tom. “The poison. I only got a tiny, tiny bit of it, and it was still…not good. If you ever use that again, I think I’m going to stand even farther away.”
“Probably not a bad idea,” I said, “although I’m beginning to guess that there’s an element of will involved.”
“Will?” asked Tom.
“Yeah, like, I think that the poison changes to kill whatever I’m thinking about killing, if that makes sense.”
“Crazy,” he said.
“Yeah, so speaking of crazy,” I coughed and said, “I just got a reward window for clearing a small-sized town. Did you?”
Tom sighed, chopped both axes into the ground to free his hands, and then crossed his arms. “Well, if you got that, it means we did a good job and there aren’t any other monsters around, so we can relax. But to answer your question, no, I did not get one. But I have before. The very first small town I cleared, I got it, and I was hoping to get one here, but I guess no dice.”
“Oh, I see,” I said.
Tom nodded. “It looks like the system gives you one for each accomplishment you do, but you can’t double dip. That makes sense because maybe people could try scamming the system by clearing out monsters, then chasing monsters into the place they cleared just to clear it out again.”
“Yeah, if you only get it once, there’s no incentive to try cheesing the system.”
“Exactly,” said Tom. “And how many points did you get?”
“Five.”
“I got six before, but I was by myself and there weren’t as many monsters. But five points is still a lot. That’s like two stat points for an average person. Probably some sort of complex math going into all of it we don’t know about.”
“Uh huh.” I nodded absently. “It said ‘small town,’ though. So maybe the different-sized towns or cities will all give a reward.”
“That’s a good guess, I think,” said Tom. “It’s kind of what I’m working with, too. But before this, I didn’t know that you couldn’t get ‘small town’ twice. I was really hoping to get a second points award for clearing this town with this job.”
“Have you told Mr. Gray or any of the others about this stuff?” I asked.
“Of course I did.” Tom frowned. “What kind of person do you think I am? I wouldn’t hold out that kind of information.”
I suddenly felt a pang of conscience for not telling Tom I had a healing ability, but I still kept my mouth shut and just listened.
Tom continued, “Everybody, the people at the farm who need to know about it, know. In fact, some of the young people there are starting to call themselves lore keepers or something. And they’re tabulating everything that we know about the system so far. People in other places are doing something like it, too.
“So they know, but the problem is that not many people can go into a town like this and survive, much less single-handedly or even as a duo and kick the shit out of so many monsters.”
“That is probably true,” I conceded.
Tom laughed. “You know what those lore-keeper types are starting to call me and some of the other folks around like you? I heard they’re calling us the ‘Four Heavenly Kings.’ Can you believe that? It sounds like some anime stuff.”
“The Four Heavenly Kings,” I repeated. “Goofy. So who are the four?”
“Well, there’s you, then there’s Samuel. And I heard about a woman that people see around town using ice magic. They’re calling her the Frost Queen.”
“Frost Queen’s kind of a good name for her,” I said.
“You know her?”
“We’ve bumped into each other.”
“Is she really that powerful?” asked Tom.
“Oh yeah. Definitely. She could probably give us both a run for our money, if not more. Scary lady.”
“Really?” Tom bit one side of his lip as he processed that. He looked up and said, “Oh, there’s another thing, too. I guess a night or two ago, some of the patrols found tons of massacred goblin bodies. So there could be a fifth ‘King’ out there. But I don’t think all that carnage was done by a person. The rumors I’ve heard was it some sort of nightmare creature. So maybe the monsters are fighting each other or something. All I know is I hope I never bump into whatever the hell killed that many goblins.”
I nodded in agreement and once again kept my mouth shut. Word would probably eventually get out about Bacon, since I’d already brought him out in front of people, but I didn’t want everybody to know about him yet. Bacon truly was my greatest trump card. Not only that, I had a hunch that if people trying to save the area knew that I could summon my deadly hound to go kill scores of monsters without anybody else even being there, they would ask me to do so. But I wasn’t willing to until I knew that Bacon could come back if he was killed, or that it wouldn’t be too dangerous for him, or that I wasn’t going to need him right away afterward. There were just too many downsides to using Bacon as a weapon unwisely.
And the clock was still ticking on killing the giant.
The two of us lapsed into silence, just looking around the area at all the strewn monster bodies.
“There really were a lot this time, weren’t there?” said Tom.
“Yeah,” I said and shrugged. “You still level up?”
“Yep.” Tom nodded slowly. He checked his body, wincing at all the dozens little wounds from being stabbed and shot with arrows. He said conversationally, “You know, I’m really grateful for this amount of natural armor that I have right now, but I know that my luck isn’t going to last.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, it’s like…we came in here and none of these things could hurt me all at once enough to kill me, not just like that, but if they held me down, there are other ways they could kill me. I can still suffocate. I can burn. And I’m sure if they stabbed me enough or hurt me enough all in one go, that would be enough, too. But I’ve seen enough of how this world works now to know that every ability seems to have a hard counter. One of these days, I’m going to run up against one of my hard counters. That’s one of the reasons why I called in backup.”
He searched my eyes as if asking me to understand where he was coming from. I thought I did. Realistically, either one of us probably could have handled the bugbears and goblins in this town by ourselves, but Tom would have had an easier time of it by far. He didn’t have quite the same offensive capabilities that I did, but he could take a hell of a beating. And he wasn’t even wearing any worn armor yet! If Tom were wearing proper protection like a knight, he’d be like a real tank.
Thinking about armor made me wish I had some until I remembered how much I was already carrying around on me. Maybe armor just was never going to be in the cards for me.
“Oh, that’s right,” said Tom. He raised a finger and walked away to retrieve the bag he’d left behind at the gas station. “Let me call this in. I’ll tell the farm that this town’s been cleared.”
I followed him back to where we’d made our half-baked plans.
As Tom took out his walkie-talkie and began a conversation with somebody working back at the farm, I reflected on how neither one of us had mentioned nor examined the handful of human bodies we’d found. By this point, both of us had probably seen enough horrible things. We didn’t need to add to the collection of memories.
Once he was done with his conversation on the walkie-talkie, Tom glanced up and said, “Folks at the farm said you can come back and chat. I guess they want to talk to you about some giant you’re chasing or something.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
“How are you going to get back?” asked Tom.
“I have a four-wheeler parked a little bit away.”
The man’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? Mind if I catch a ride? It’d save me a trip. I wasn’t sure what I was getting into before, so I walked, well, ran here. A while back, the truck I was driving hit a trap made by monsters and popped the tires. And I haven’t had a chance to get a new vehicle since.” He shook his head. “I never even thought about using a motorcycle or a quad. Wild.”
I gave the man a strange look since that seemed like a pretty obvious option to me, especially for somebody who was already so durable. A lot of people probably wouldn’t like to be on a motorcycle at night with monsters around due to the perceived exposure. But that would be less of a problem for Tom.
“All right, well, you can come with me. The quad will take us both.”
Tom followed me back to the four-wheeler, and I began driving him back to the farm. I definitely got the impression that he’d rather be driving, but he kept his silence as we rode into the night.
NINETEEN
Before actually reaching the farm, while the glow of the lights was still visible through the trees, I suddenly saw a bolt of fire. Then two bolts of fire, then three, shooting up into the sky. Something screamed and plummeted. I slowed the quad down.
“Oh, that’s wild. I thought all the flyers were gone now,” said Tom.
I gaped. “What just happened?”
When I came to a stop, Tom frowned. He seemed irritated that I was prolonging the ride when the farm was so close, but he sighed and explained, “Some of the guard towers around the farm have spotters and long-range fighters. They have skills for it. Someone figured out the day after the first attack that putting about seven or eight points into a specialized spotting ability lets someone find monsters more easily and also show somebody else through touch. So if a spotter sees a monster in the air or on the ground, they just need to touch the arm or shoulder of a fighter to show them and let them kill it. Then both people get XP.
“Everybody got the idea after Mr. Gray’s natural ability was so useful that first night. So people who don’t actually want to kill but still want to fight can pick up support skills like this and also still get XP from the monster kills.”
“Really?” The explanation was fascinating and also helped explain why, in the back of some of the trucks I’d seen on the road before, there had been people without any obvious weapons sitting next to somebody else, both people still looking extra alert.
I started driving the quad again, and behind me, Tom leaned closer. He said, “Fighters of any kind are respected more, and if the farm is ever too full, fighters and support are the least likely to be kicked out. So a lot of the support staff are moms who are protecting their kids, too.”
My face screwed up as I digested that. Well, that’s kind of messed up, I thought, and said so softly out loud.
Surprisingly, Tom could hear me because he responded, “It’s definitely not very selfless of everybody, but it probably does make a lot of sense. And supplies are already scarce. A lot of the people running the show right now are compassionate people, and it will probably slay them to get rid of some of the dead weight eventually, but I can’t imagine that taking in an unlimited number of refugees is an option, much less any kind of sustainable.”
I nodded absently, especially since in our situation, we were in the middle of nowhere, out in the woods. Folks had to be telling plenty of others about the farm and where to find it. I suddenly thought about all the lights and the noise of the farm that nobody seemed to be trying to hide, and I was struck all over again by how the defenders had basically taken the exact opposite approach that Aldina had. They’d turned this entire area into a giant bug lantern meant to zap monsters that got too close.
“This whole setup might backfire like hell on everybody if something like the giant shows up.” I frowned.
“That’s true. And it’s one of the many reasons why eventually we have to take the town back.”
I slowed as I pulled into the parking area of the farm. Now that it was nighttime, there were actually more vehicles here than I’d seen before, along with more activity. Now I had a better idea of how the farm leadership was trying to get XP for a large number of people so they could defend themselves. I wasn’t sure if that approach was better than hyper-focusing on a few strong people for actually taking the town back, but for protecting everybody, having only a few strong defenders would be disastrous.
Actually, given the “Four Heavenly Kings,” maybe the folks in charge around here were kind of trying to take both approaches at once. But I wondered if that could work.
Tom got off the quad as I was thinking. Quietly, I said, “When I go attack the giant, I’m going to need help.”
“Well, if you go, we should try to get all four Heavenly Kings in on it. The giant has to die if we have any hope of taking the town, much less clearing the area.”
“Are you willing to go?”
Tom spat, and one hand strayed to his axe on his hip while he thought. “I think I will,” he said. “Probably no higher concentration of XP around here. And I have a feeling that if we take back the town, we’ll get a similar reward to clearing a little town like we did earlier. Maybe ‘medium-sized settlement’ instead of small or something.”
I nodded. “My thoughts exactly. And we’ll have support, I would imagine.”
He frowned. “Are you sure about that? I mean, I agree with you that others might try to tag along or send other people, but if it’s up to you, would you bring anyone else? Or would you just take the four Kings? I mean, if you can convince the other two?”
That was a good question. I looked off to the side, thinking for a second, and said, “Probably not. Actually, I’m not sure. I haven’t been back to town since everything started. Now I hear it’s bad. For sure, I think that the four of us, if I can get everybody, will be the spearhead. And anybody else who wants to go, well, I’m not going to turn down volunteers. But I won’t encourage them, either.”
With a grim tone of voice, Tom said, “A lot of people are probably going to die.”
With an equally dark tone, I responded, “I don’t think anything we do or don’t do can prevent that at this point. It’s probably best to be thinking about the future. Others need XP, too, and just four people might not be enough. In fact, if we can’t win back the town right after all the monsters are starting to move in, what happens in another month when this place is completely overrun and there are even fewer of us? What happens when the monsters keep getting stronger?”
“What makes you think the monsters are going to keep getting stronger?”
“Logic,” I said. “That, and the system keeps hinting at it.”
“Can’t deny that,” said Tom heavily. He sighed. “Tell you what, I’ll go talk to Mr. Gray. I’ll tell him everything that went down. Just hang loose for a little bit, unless you really want to be there with me.”
“Why do you want to go alone?” I asked.
“Well, it’s not for Mr. Gray’s benefit,” said Tom. “And it’s not really about you, not personally. It’s just that a lot of people… I trust you now after the fight we just went through, but since I was connected to the fire department, I kind of know a lot of these people pretty well, and a lot of them don’t know you. It’s the area.”
“Small-town politics then, huh?” I said.
“Well, yeah, what’s left of them. I have a feeling it won’t matter much pretty soon. But for now, it might actually help if I’m the only one who goes to report, at least until everyone recognizes you and knows you’re a King.”
I studied the man, then nodded. The situation seemed weird to me, but I could still remember the rude truck driver before I’d come to the farm and how he’d changed his attitude after finding out he’d heard of me. Also, I hadn’t known Tom long, but I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of the man now. I definitely got the feeling that Tom could be hard to live with for some people. In fact, it wouldn’t shock me if he wasn’t already divorced once or twice. But I also sensed there wasn’t anything really false about the man. I didn’t usually like many people upon first meeting, so when I did, I trusted my instincts. Tom was some sort of hillbilly firefighter homeless superhero-looking guy, but I’d decided at some point that I liked him.
“Do me a favor and also tell them that I need to meet up with this third Heavenly King. I already forgot his name,” I said with a shrug.
“It’s Samuel. Samuel Taylor.”
“What did he do before, you know, everything?”
“He worked in HVAC. In fact, he worked on my house before when my AC went out. He was a librarian before that. Smart guy.”
“Cool. Okay, well, when you talk to Mr. Gray, tell him I’m going to take a break in the same room I was sleeping in before or nearby.”
“Got it.” And with that, the two of us split up. I headed directly for the little room I’d been sleeping in before, and I was pleased to see it was still unoccupied. I entered, shut the door, and wasn’t bothered by the darkness even slightly. Opening up my system screens, I could still read them just fine. And this was what I wanted: some peace and quiet.
This was also why I hadn’t put much effort into fighting small-town politics. My life was not a cheesy made-for-TV movie, it wasn’t my job to challenge cliques I didn’t care about, and I had system screens to browse.
I’d leveled up quite a bit, basically proving my theory that hands-on combat earned me much more XP than using external factors to eliminate monsters. I briefly wondered how much more XP I would have gotten from the chimeras if I had killed them all by hand, but I dismissed the thought. If I had tried killing them hand-on, it was possible, probable, I wouldn’t be around anymore. Like, I was tough, but nowhere near as tough as Tom was yet.
