Arimai
Curmudgeon
Nemesis has a remote control module in the computer inside its chest.
Best of Intentions (Resident Evil) (DnD Gamer SI)
- Thread starter Ideas-Guy
- Start date
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
Maybe he meant "rentor," as opposed to "rentee"?
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
While those do appear to be valid English, I have never heard anyone actually speak that way IRL.
That's the sort of language you might *maybe* see in a contract document. It's certainly not something you use colloquially in the US of A.
How Far We've Come
- Location
- USA
Despite it all, I did manage to snag a long rest. Cure Wounds did nothing to deal with my mental exhaustion, and after the day that we just had, I was utterly spent. I actually felt a bit bad about it when I realized I more or less passed all responsibility over to Jill and the others just so I could catch some z's. You would think that with everything I had to worry about, I would have some trouble sleeping. But no, that was not the case. I slept like a baby and woke up feeling refreshed as the apocalypse began.
My back popped a good dozen times because of the shitty cot that I had fallen asleep in. But, the action also brought my attention to the fact that my sleeve was completely encrusted with blood. Same for my stomach. I felt absolutely disgusting and I don't think I've ever regretted not taking prestidigitation more than I did upon waking up.
Cracking my neck, I looked around to see that I was in the mall above central station. It was a large building filled with dozens of stores that lined the walls. It was hands down the biggest mall in Raccoon City, and it was in prime real estate almost smack dab in the middle of town. There was a lot of noise happening, I quickly noticed, rubbing gunk out of my eyes. There were a lot of people here. And when I said a lot, I meant a lot of people. The central area of the mall was filled with long rows of cots that were set up for people to sleep in. Some people even put up some curtains to give the illusion of privacy.
Groping around, I found my glasses on the floor next to the battered remnants of Dakka. I would resurrect her soon enough. Preferably with better materials than the aluminum I found and used in a pinch last time.
"Well, everyone's not on fire. They can wait for me to get a shower," I decided, standing up and popping my back a few more times. My poor spine. I glanced around to see that a shower wasn't in the cards yet, leading me to head to the front door.
The metal grates were down on all but one of the doors. Which luckily had an airlock between them. Those doors, in turn, were guarded by a couple of twitchy looking cops. "Sir, we can send out a rescue team if you have any relatives in the city. But, please, stay inside during the ongoing emergency.
"Thanks, but I'm just going to get a shower," I said, waving him off. And pushing through the first set of doors.
"Sir! The city is in a state of emergency! I'm afraid that I must insist that you stay inside where it's safe!" The cop continued to protest, but it was the guard on the inside of the double doors that recognized me.
"You're that crazy guy!" He blurted as soon as he saw me. I was famous? Cool.
"Not crazy, but very filthy at the moment. I'll be fine," I said, but I saw that wasn't convincing anyone. "Look, I knew about this shit show way before any of you did. Despite me screaming at the top of my lungs about it. So, who do you think is more prepared for that mess out there?" I asked them, cocking an eyebrow. It was a trick question. The answer was them. It was totally them. They were physically fit and stuff. The most impressive muscle on me was my brain, and that was a zombie's favorite snack.
But the fools fell into the trap. "Er, right. If you're sure, but, er, I think that Captain would like a word with you?" The fettering cop remarked, and to that, I waved him off.
"I'll be across the street if it's so important," I said, stepping out of the mall. There was a barricade set up around the entrance to the mall, and the shutters were pulled down but there was a message spray painted on them. Safety Here. There were a few people that were hidden outside, who looked at me cautiously as I ventured out into the city.
It almost looked normal, I thought, heading to my house up the road. There were people driving on the streets, but their cars were stuffed full of supplies. They were laying on the horns when they found themselves in bumper-to-bumper traffic. There was little to no foot traffic on the streets, leaving me to having a sidewalk all to myself. However, looking at the windows, I saw a lot of eyes that were peering out.
If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend that the city was still the same. Well, I could have until I passed by a car that was left with the engine running and blood smeared across the busted in windows. The radio playing an emergency message, "This is not a drill. Please stay indoors until you are evacuated to a security point. The police and military will be doing door to door checks to escort you there. Please, do not open your door under any other circumstances-" I didn't see a dead body near the car, even if it was enough blood to kill a man.
My eyes narrowed when I saw the car in my parking spot, or, more specifically, the massive middle finger. What an absolute dick. I had better-
"Oh," I muttered, seeing my neighbor in the driver's seat of the car. He was scratching at the window, his white shirt covered in blood from a bite wound on his shoulder. That was… "Kind of a downer," I decided, approaching the car. There was a fire poker near the door. I don't even think these buildings had chimneys. What a pretentious douchebag. Coming to a stop, I picked the fire poker up and glanced at my neighbor. He looked like he was trying to get away in his pajamas but got bit.
I was tempted to call this karma for stealing my parking spot, but that seemed a bit much. "You were a dick, but you didn't deserve this," I told him, raising my gun and pulling the trigger. His head snapped back, and time went still.
Level five. I was burning through the levels, and after last night, I could feel how under-leveled I was to deal with stuff like Nemesis. I threw absolutely everything I had at him and he just ate it and asked for more. It was nothing short of dumb luck that we were still alive right now. If I hadn't uninfused the bag of holding, if I didn't infused the Spellwrought tattoo… everyone in that car would be dead right now.
My selection this time was easy enough. I gained access to second-level spells, and gained two second-level spell slots -- meaning more heals and summoning Dakka. I gained the Scorching Ray and Shatter spells upon reaching level 5, but I also took the time to swap out Grease for Spiderweb. They were both area control spells, and while Spiderweb needed actual spiderwebs as a spell component, the webs themselves could be used to create fires. Something very useful when I had a flamethrower.
However, the main feature that I was looking forward to was Arcane Firearm. But, first, a shower.
Heading into my apartment, I saw that everything was still there. So, I hadn't been ransacked and everything wasn't where it actually needed to be. Putting that off for the moment, I peeled off my sweater and pants, stepping into the shower and… "That's the stuff," I decided, feeling a blast of hot water wash over me. The water turned murky and I ended up having to use my nails to scrape off the dried blood. In doing so, I saw that I hadn't emerged from the night without a few reminders.
On my shoulder, around my collar bone, was a scar from where I got shot. On my side, just under my ribs, was another from where I got tentacled. There was even a pale line on my arm from where it broke. They weren't glaring, but it was a very stark reminder that Cure Wounds was not a Greater Restoration. There were injuries that I might not be able to shake off.
Feeling refreshed, I stepped out the shower and went about getting dressed. Decided on another turtle neck since the extra fabric could, in theory, protect my neck. With my hair still drying, I went into my bedroom and grabbed the notebook that I had tapped underneath the dresser.
"Finally," I muttered, looking at some designs that I had sketched out. They weren't very good. I didn't have proficiency in art. However, it was pretty clear what it was -- a gun. My Arcane Gun. One that I would need to build from scratch. I could see in my head what the final product would look like, but I also knew that it would be some time before I got to see that final product. I would need time, revisions, tests, and as my abilities increased, I could look to improving the models.
Being an Artificer was one part magic bullshit and one part physics, I decided, taking a set at my cluttered kitchen table. I had the pieces that would be my arcane gun laid out, and it was simply a matter of assembling them. Which was pretty easy all things considered. The easiest way to describe being an Artificer was using magic to bend the rules of physics. What I was creating shouldn't work, yet it would simply because the hard unyielding rules of reality were bent or outright ignored.
To that end, everything that I created half worked because I wanted it to and half because I knew what I was doing. And, to be completely honest, that was actually a huge issue for me. Assuming that I hit level 20 as an Artificer, that left me with six attunement slots and six infusions. In theory, that math checked out. Made total sense. However, there were a lot of extremely good magical items that I could create.
The core aspect of an Artificer is the creation of magic items beyond infusions.
One bag of holding? How about a hundred bags of holding? A ring of Protection? How about one for each finger ontop of a Cloak of Protection? A Belt of Hill Giant's Strength? Barrier Tattoo. Ring of Regeneration. Spell Gem. There were a lot of items I coveted, but I was stuck at six attunement slots. Even if I only could use six at a time, I should spread the love around. Give some items to Jill and Chris.
I could make the items. I could always make the items, but there was a world of difference between a level 1 Artificer and a level 5 Artificer, much less a level 20.
"The roadblock has been removed," I muttered to myself, sliding in the trigger and feeling it click in place. The roadblock was that I hadn't unlocked the class features yet, but now I have. If this were a campaign, I could do something like spend a month of time and roll high enough arcana checks to figure out how to create a permanent version. Then roll some checks to see how the creation progress went to actually create it.
I had proficiency in Arcane, so, in theory, I could, maybe, possibly, start figuring out how this stuff worked. Likewise, I wasn't bound by the hard rules of DnD. Probably. So, in theory, there was nothing stopping me from figuring out… say… how to disperse the T-virus vaccine with Dakka in heal-bot mode. Or up her damage by getting my hands on the blueprints of that railgun down in the Hive to scale them down.
Those things were for game balance. And I had absolutely no intention playing fair.
The only issue for all of it was the fact that it all would take time. Time to figure things out. Time to build it. Time to get the ball rolling. And, quite frankly, time felt like it was the one thing that I didn't have.
"Still, glad I got this done," I said, holding up my Arcane Firearm. It had a little weight to it -- but, that was mostly because of the steel blocks it was made of. Each one was inscribed with a rune, marking it with a spell that would shift into the 'barrel' of the gun to shoot out of.
Then I smiled to myself, "Thank you, Control. I'm just gonna shamelessly steal your intellectual property," I muttered. I stole the design for the Service Weapon after all. I tested the weight and took aim down the sights. With a thought, the blocks shifted as the cantrip Fire Bolt was selected. They rearranged themselves again when I aimed Shatter, then again when I chose Caustic Brew, and then back to Fire Bolt. Any spell -- any Artificer spell, rather -- would be stronger coming out of this gun.
Getting up, I grabbed the holster that I got for the occasion and slid my gun in, leaving it just under my arm at my ribs. Then I brought my attention to Dakka. Or, rather, the materials that I was hoping would become Dakka.
I could make an Eldritch Cannon out of anything. I could make it out of sticks and stones as easily as I could make it out of adamantine or something. All I had to do was will it into existence and Dakka would assemble herself with the materials that were available. That's because Dakka was more of an Infusion than a magic item -- I could just slap a magical blueprint onto something, and bingo presto: Dakka. But, I was hoping to… mitigate that a bit by lugging around a dedicated body. With it, I could see how Dakka reacted with better materials or if the modifications I made would work.
It stood to reason that it was possible. Afterall, Dakka getting locked at the same hp when she was made out of wood as she was when she was made of steel didn't really track. That, I figured, was a game balancing factor. So, with stronger materials, I could give her more hp. Upgrade the weapon and she could hit harder. Perhaps, I could even extend the lifespan of Dakka beyond a single hour.
The equipment was steel blocks, just like I made my gun out of. It was basically some stuff I got from a hardware store because I lacked the means to actually forge Dakka's body. All together, it was about ten pounds worth of metal, so fairly light all things considered. Grabbing it, I attached it to the holster around my shoulders on my back, finding that it fit somewhat uncomfortably between my shoulder blades. All that was left was grabbing some stick-on tattoos to shove in my pocket for emergencies.
Feeling a lot better, I stepped outside to see that the earlier gunshot had attracted some attention. A zombie stumbled around the car, as if looking for the source. I saw a half dozen more coming up the road directly in front of me, and three more coming from the left. They were coming out in force now. Taking out my gun, I leveled it at the first zombie and pulled the trigger, sending out a blast of Fire Bolt that punched the zombie in the chest. The flames began to spark up, consuming the corpse's hair and clothing until it was completely engulfed in flame.
The stench of burnt hair filled my nostrils as I crinkled my nose in disgust. However, even as the corpse shambled forward, raising its hands to lunge for me, its skin blackened and thick greasy black smoke came off of it when the fire really got going. It reached the small fence, still going for me as it burned. Tumbling over it, it collapsed to the ground and didn't get up again.
"Ten seconds," I muttered to myself, having counted it out. Fire Bolt was a cantrip, meaning that I could cast it endlessly. So, in theory, I had unlimited ammo. The issue being was the cantrips didn't seem to hit as hard as a bullet, and I could only fire every six seconds. A six second delay could very well be the difference between life and death in a pinch. Holstering my gun, I took out my notebook and made a small note of that. Stepping past the still burning body, I resisted the urge to start burning through my spell slots to see what my other spells would do.
I would have time for experimentation after Nemesis and Mr. X were dealt with. When things… settled, for lack of a better word.
Taking aim with my gun, I fired a handful of other firebolts at the incoming zombies. The gun didn't have much in the way of recoil, but there was some as a small pebble like blast of fire erupted from the barrel, expanding in size and leaving behind a trail of smoke before impacting the zombies.
Headshots killed them a lot faster. Near instantly like a bullet to the head. I'm not sure if damage rolls were a thing for me, but it was representative. With an Arcane Firearm, any spell that came from my Artificer class -- including cantrips -- received 1d8 additional damage. As a Level 5, my cantrips were upgraded so Firebolt now did 2d10 damage. That translated into some potent flames and with a headshot, the brain was flash burned. Hitting the body flash burned the flesh and ignited the corpses, as I saw before, and they burned hot enough to cook the brain in the skull in a few seconds.
Deciding to clear the street, as I took aim at the final shambling corpses, the kill was stolen from me as a loud pop filled the air. Glancing over at the source, I saw that it was Jill, who was carrying an assault rifle. She was joined by Chris, and some other guy that I didn't know. He seemed to be in his late thirties to early forties, brown hair cut military style and clean shaven.
All three of them were wearing some kind of flack vest. Chris was wearing some on his arms in addition to a vest, while Jill had a simple vest and I noticed that she had a black hat on that said RCPD. She looked good in it. Ah, well, in any case, it was good to see that the two of them hadn't been reduced to paste while I was taking a nap.
"Kill thief," I accused Jill as they approached, looking them over. They weren't dressed like cops, but they wore the logo on several places, like on a jacket or hat.
"What are you doing out here, Rude? And what is that thing?" Jill asked, lowering her rifle as she glanced at the burnt bodies that still smoked. I gave my arcane gun a little wave, making her eyes narrow into slits when she saw how odd it appeared.
"Picking up some things. Seems like everything went straight to hell the moment I closed my eyes," I remarked, holstering my gun. "I hate to ask, but the big guy -- he make another appearance?"
To that, Chris shook his head, "No. You were right, though -- we didn't kill him. We checked the body, but it was gone. No sign of where it went, so Jill and I have been patrolling outside of the safety points to make sure we don't drag trouble their way." Chris explained, and that was a relief and about the expected reaction I thought they would have. It was better this way, as harsh as it might sound. Nemesis would absolutely be coming for Jill and Chris, no matter where they were. Them being isolated put them in more danger, but it also meant that there was less chance of collateral damage when it did come for them.
I nodded, having expected that much before the third man stepped forward, offering a hand. "I'm Deputy Chief Raymond Dogulas. It's good to finally meet you, Rude. You saved a lot of lives -- between the posters, papers, and securing the entrances… I'm speaking on behalf of the city when I say we'd be much worse off if you didn't do what you did," he told me earnestly as he shook my hand.
That was a little embarrassing. "Yeah, well… don't tell anyone. I have a reputation to maintain," I told him, feeling a little uncomfortable with the genuine respect he seemed to have. It was far easier when people looked at me like I was an asshole because I usually was acting like one. "If you're the big cheese, then what are you doing out here?"
"Big cheese?" Chris questioned.
"For you, actually. I'm told you have access to… nanomachines? That they could help protect people, even heal them. We've managed to secure central station, but most of the city is left unprotected. I… I don't even know how bad the situation is. I have my men putting up barricades and organizing evacuations to safety points like the police HQ, but it's not enough," Raymond began, and I knew this was coming. I knew from the very start.
I let out a small sigh, "I wish I could help you out with that, but I can't. I have hard limits that I'm trying to break -- the long and short of it is that I can only control one machine at a time at the moment, and they're directly linked to me. If I could hand over a drone army, I would, but I have no idea if it's possible. Same for the bag and the tattoos -- I can create two of them, but they're maintained by me."
I really wish that I was in a position to start slinging out drone armies and have magical items out the ass. I really wish I could hand out spellwrought tattoos like they were candy on top of rings of regeneration or invisibility cloaks. I really, really, really did. Wishing had nothing to do with it, though -- I couldn't. Maybe, sometime in the future, that wouldn't be true. In the here and now, despite how badly we needed it… it was very true.
Those things took a lot more time than we had available to us.
The answer visibly deflated Raymond, though he didn't seem particularly surprised by the answer. However, it was Jill that spoke up, "And how exactly do you have these nanomachines?" She asked, her tone suspicious as she leveled a look at me that screamed 'no bullshit, please.' The please may or may not be a figment of my imagination.
I had an answer for that too. "Oh, I was a lab rat for Umbrella," I answered, offering a small shrug of my shoulders and Jill went still. "At least I think I was. I'm not really sure, to be honest. I think I might have been an official experiment that got shut down, then I got continued anyway by some guy in his basement." It was all bullshit, but it was plausible bullshit. Umbrella was into some weird stuff, so nanomachines that were… I don't know, biological dependent sounded like something they would get into.
It worked as a backstory to explain all the shenanigans that I would be getting into. I didn't particularly like lying. Especially about something like this. But, in this, it was the smart move. Honesty would just open up too many cans of worms -- my origins, my power, and… it wasn't particularly believable when it came right down to it. The isekai genre wouldn't even exist for another ten to fifteen years.
Worse still, everything I said, I knew, would eventually funnel to Umbrella. They might not have bothered with me back when I was screaming until I was blue in the face and slapping posters and pamphlets on every available surface but they were going to take notice of me now. They were going to investigate. They were going to retrace my steps. They were going to ask the who, the where, the how, and the why.
So, all the better to send them chasing after their own tail while keeping some aces up my sleeve.
"Then that got shut down when Umbrella realized that they were embezzling money, they got scrubbed and tried to scrub me, only to botch the job. Got out, found my way to Raccoon City, and… yeah. Here we are, standing in the middle of a road during a zombie apocalypse," I continued and I could read Jill's expression too easily. "I don't keep it hidden because I'm ashamed of it, or anything. Pity is annoying and I can't be bothered with it, so don't. I don't pity myself, so you don't have any reason to."
That got her to close her eyes for a moment before nodding, "Well, it explains why you're such an asshole." She decided, taking a breath and the pity was gone. Good.
"Well, so long as you're using it at their expense, I can't complain," Chris decided, offering a small nod in my direction. "That how you knew about Bard?"
"No. I'm just very distrustful of authority figures. And any time I see anything remotely suspicious, I just assume Umbrella. I'm usually right. Plus, he's a renowned virologist in Raccoon City, which is practically Umbrella's home turf, so I just figured that he and any other notable figure works for them," I told him, making Chris blink. "Like how the Mayor and police chief are probably in their pocket."
Raymond looked at Jill and Chris, both of whom seemed like they were trying really hard to argue the logic, but couldn't because they suspected I was right. Glancing at me, he said, "I… it's tough to believe, but I think you've more than earned the benefit of the doubt."
That was convenient. "Alright, so, are you three doing anything right now?" I asked, looking at the three of them. From the brief glance that I got after waking up from my nap, I saw that the actual organization of the safe haven was largely out of my hands. Which was a very good thing for me, as far as I was concerned. It meant that I wouldn't be involved in the nitty-gritty details that would take my attention away from more important tasks -- like killing zombies, or figuring out how to mass produce the vaccine. Or killing Nemesis.
Raymond gave me a hesitant look, "I have to continue organizing the safe havens. I only came out here to see if the technology that you use is mass-producible." So he was heading back then? Perfect.
"I stole a computer," I said, reaching into my bag of holding and the gallon bag opened up to let me pull the tower case out. With a light toss, I gave it to Raymond. "I have no idea how to hack things, so you're going to want to get someone on that. I'm guessing there are probably some Umbrella secrets located on the harddrive." I told him before jabbing a thumb over my shoulder at the apartment. "And there's a bunch of supplies that I was gathering in there -- a lot of bottled water and canned food."
Raymond seemed pretty caught up on the whole 'stolen computer pulled out of a too-small bag' thing, but he showed that he had his priorities in order when I said food and water. Raymond seemed to have his head screwed on straight, for better or worse. I was a little worried about how things would shake out, and while it did seem too early to say that I could trust him with everyone's safety, he was making generally a good first impression.
"Probably?" He questioned, his eyebrows raising to his hairline.
"It was hidden behind a sci-fi door. And at the general hospital, there was a secret room general staff weren't allowed behind. Meaning Umbrella is involved," I stated with certainty. Both Chris and Jill looked like they wanted to argue the point on principle again, but they realized that I was right. "Also, if Irons starts acting suspicious, you should shoot him."
"Er-"
"Or don't. I'll do it at some point. Anyway," I continued on, looking at Chris and Jill, "Since you both have a fuck off big monster hunting you, we need to set up a safe house for you. Before we do that, though, now that the city is past the point of no return… we need to start luring out zombies and killing them en masse. Draw them into locations that have already been evacuated then kill them all."
That caught their attention more than the casual mention of murder. Or killing, since murder kind of implied that he didn't have it coming.
It was Jill that spoke up. "What do you have in mind?" She asked, her tone faintly wary when she saw my smile.
Power leveling, here I come.
My back popped a good dozen times because of the shitty cot that I had fallen asleep in. But, the action also brought my attention to the fact that my sleeve was completely encrusted with blood. Same for my stomach. I felt absolutely disgusting and I don't think I've ever regretted not taking prestidigitation more than I did upon waking up.
Cracking my neck, I looked around to see that I was in the mall above central station. It was a large building filled with dozens of stores that lined the walls. It was hands down the biggest mall in Raccoon City, and it was in prime real estate almost smack dab in the middle of town. There was a lot of noise happening, I quickly noticed, rubbing gunk out of my eyes. There were a lot of people here. And when I said a lot, I meant a lot of people. The central area of the mall was filled with long rows of cots that were set up for people to sleep in. Some people even put up some curtains to give the illusion of privacy.
Groping around, I found my glasses on the floor next to the battered remnants of Dakka. I would resurrect her soon enough. Preferably with better materials than the aluminum I found and used in a pinch last time.
"Well, everyone's not on fire. They can wait for me to get a shower," I decided, standing up and popping my back a few more times. My poor spine. I glanced around to see that a shower wasn't in the cards yet, leading me to head to the front door.
The metal grates were down on all but one of the doors. Which luckily had an airlock between them. Those doors, in turn, were guarded by a couple of twitchy looking cops. "Sir, we can send out a rescue team if you have any relatives in the city. But, please, stay inside during the ongoing emergency.
"Thanks, but I'm just going to get a shower," I said, waving him off. And pushing through the first set of doors.
"Sir! The city is in a state of emergency! I'm afraid that I must insist that you stay inside where it's safe!" The cop continued to protest, but it was the guard on the inside of the double doors that recognized me.
"You're that crazy guy!" He blurted as soon as he saw me. I was famous? Cool.
"Not crazy, but very filthy at the moment. I'll be fine," I said, but I saw that wasn't convincing anyone. "Look, I knew about this shit show way before any of you did. Despite me screaming at the top of my lungs about it. So, who do you think is more prepared for that mess out there?" I asked them, cocking an eyebrow. It was a trick question. The answer was them. It was totally them. They were physically fit and stuff. The most impressive muscle on me was my brain, and that was a zombie's favorite snack.
But the fools fell into the trap. "Er, right. If you're sure, but, er, I think that Captain would like a word with you?" The fettering cop remarked, and to that, I waved him off.
"I'll be across the street if it's so important," I said, stepping out of the mall. There was a barricade set up around the entrance to the mall, and the shutters were pulled down but there was a message spray painted on them. Safety Here. There were a few people that were hidden outside, who looked at me cautiously as I ventured out into the city.
It almost looked normal, I thought, heading to my house up the road. There were people driving on the streets, but their cars were stuffed full of supplies. They were laying on the horns when they found themselves in bumper-to-bumper traffic. There was little to no foot traffic on the streets, leaving me to having a sidewalk all to myself. However, looking at the windows, I saw a lot of eyes that were peering out.
If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend that the city was still the same. Well, I could have until I passed by a car that was left with the engine running and blood smeared across the busted in windows. The radio playing an emergency message, "This is not a drill. Please stay indoors until you are evacuated to a security point. The police and military will be doing door to door checks to escort you there. Please, do not open your door under any other circumstances-" I didn't see a dead body near the car, even if it was enough blood to kill a man.
My eyes narrowed when I saw the car in my parking spot, or, more specifically, the massive middle finger. What an absolute dick. I had better-
"Oh," I muttered, seeing my neighbor in the driver's seat of the car. He was scratching at the window, his white shirt covered in blood from a bite wound on his shoulder. That was… "Kind of a downer," I decided, approaching the car. There was a fire poker near the door. I don't even think these buildings had chimneys. What a pretentious douchebag. Coming to a stop, I picked the fire poker up and glanced at my neighbor. He looked like he was trying to get away in his pajamas but got bit.
I was tempted to call this karma for stealing my parking spot, but that seemed a bit much. "You were a dick, but you didn't deserve this," I told him, raising my gun and pulling the trigger. His head snapped back, and time went still.
Level five. I was burning through the levels, and after last night, I could feel how under-leveled I was to deal with stuff like Nemesis. I threw absolutely everything I had at him and he just ate it and asked for more. It was nothing short of dumb luck that we were still alive right now. If I hadn't uninfused the bag of holding, if I didn't infused the Spellwrought tattoo… everyone in that car would be dead right now.
My selection this time was easy enough. I gained access to second-level spells, and gained two second-level spell slots -- meaning more heals and summoning Dakka. I gained the Scorching Ray and Shatter spells upon reaching level 5, but I also took the time to swap out Grease for Spiderweb. They were both area control spells, and while Spiderweb needed actual spiderwebs as a spell component, the webs themselves could be used to create fires. Something very useful when I had a flamethrower.
However, the main feature that I was looking forward to was Arcane Firearm. But, first, a shower.
Heading into my apartment, I saw that everything was still there. So, I hadn't been ransacked and everything wasn't where it actually needed to be. Putting that off for the moment, I peeled off my sweater and pants, stepping into the shower and… "That's the stuff," I decided, feeling a blast of hot water wash over me. The water turned murky and I ended up having to use my nails to scrape off the dried blood. In doing so, I saw that I hadn't emerged from the night without a few reminders.
On my shoulder, around my collar bone, was a scar from where I got shot. On my side, just under my ribs, was another from where I got tentacled. There was even a pale line on my arm from where it broke. They weren't glaring, but it was a very stark reminder that Cure Wounds was not a Greater Restoration. There were injuries that I might not be able to shake off.
Feeling refreshed, I stepped out the shower and went about getting dressed. Decided on another turtle neck since the extra fabric could, in theory, protect my neck. With my hair still drying, I went into my bedroom and grabbed the notebook that I had tapped underneath the dresser.
"Finally," I muttered, looking at some designs that I had sketched out. They weren't very good. I didn't have proficiency in art. However, it was pretty clear what it was -- a gun. My Arcane Gun. One that I would need to build from scratch. I could see in my head what the final product would look like, but I also knew that it would be some time before I got to see that final product. I would need time, revisions, tests, and as my abilities increased, I could look to improving the models.
Being an Artificer was one part magic bullshit and one part physics, I decided, taking a set at my cluttered kitchen table. I had the pieces that would be my arcane gun laid out, and it was simply a matter of assembling them. Which was pretty easy all things considered. The easiest way to describe being an Artificer was using magic to bend the rules of physics. What I was creating shouldn't work, yet it would simply because the hard unyielding rules of reality were bent or outright ignored.
To that end, everything that I created half worked because I wanted it to and half because I knew what I was doing. And, to be completely honest, that was actually a huge issue for me. Assuming that I hit level 20 as an Artificer, that left me with six attunement slots and six infusions. In theory, that math checked out. Made total sense. However, there were a lot of extremely good magical items that I could create.
The core aspect of an Artificer is the creation of magic items beyond infusions.
One bag of holding? How about a hundred bags of holding? A ring of Protection? How about one for each finger ontop of a Cloak of Protection? A Belt of Hill Giant's Strength? Barrier Tattoo. Ring of Regeneration. Spell Gem. There were a lot of items I coveted, but I was stuck at six attunement slots. Even if I only could use six at a time, I should spread the love around. Give some items to Jill and Chris.
I could make the items. I could always make the items, but there was a world of difference between a level 1 Artificer and a level 5 Artificer, much less a level 20.
"The roadblock has been removed," I muttered to myself, sliding in the trigger and feeling it click in place. The roadblock was that I hadn't unlocked the class features yet, but now I have. If this were a campaign, I could do something like spend a month of time and roll high enough arcana checks to figure out how to create a permanent version. Then roll some checks to see how the creation progress went to actually create it.
I had proficiency in Arcane, so, in theory, I could, maybe, possibly, start figuring out how this stuff worked. Likewise, I wasn't bound by the hard rules of DnD. Probably. So, in theory, there was nothing stopping me from figuring out… say… how to disperse the T-virus vaccine with Dakka in heal-bot mode. Or up her damage by getting my hands on the blueprints of that railgun down in the Hive to scale them down.
Those things were for game balance. And I had absolutely no intention playing fair.
The only issue for all of it was the fact that it all would take time. Time to figure things out. Time to build it. Time to get the ball rolling. And, quite frankly, time felt like it was the one thing that I didn't have.
"Still, glad I got this done," I said, holding up my Arcane Firearm. It had a little weight to it -- but, that was mostly because of the steel blocks it was made of. Each one was inscribed with a rune, marking it with a spell that would shift into the 'barrel' of the gun to shoot out of.
Then I smiled to myself, "Thank you, Control. I'm just gonna shamelessly steal your intellectual property," I muttered. I stole the design for the Service Weapon after all. I tested the weight and took aim down the sights. With a thought, the blocks shifted as the cantrip Fire Bolt was selected. They rearranged themselves again when I aimed Shatter, then again when I chose Caustic Brew, and then back to Fire Bolt. Any spell -- any Artificer spell, rather -- would be stronger coming out of this gun.
Getting up, I grabbed the holster that I got for the occasion and slid my gun in, leaving it just under my arm at my ribs. Then I brought my attention to Dakka. Or, rather, the materials that I was hoping would become Dakka.
I could make an Eldritch Cannon out of anything. I could make it out of sticks and stones as easily as I could make it out of adamantine or something. All I had to do was will it into existence and Dakka would assemble herself with the materials that were available. That's because Dakka was more of an Infusion than a magic item -- I could just slap a magical blueprint onto something, and bingo presto: Dakka. But, I was hoping to… mitigate that a bit by lugging around a dedicated body. With it, I could see how Dakka reacted with better materials or if the modifications I made would work.
It stood to reason that it was possible. Afterall, Dakka getting locked at the same hp when she was made out of wood as she was when she was made of steel didn't really track. That, I figured, was a game balancing factor. So, with stronger materials, I could give her more hp. Upgrade the weapon and she could hit harder. Perhaps, I could even extend the lifespan of Dakka beyond a single hour.
The equipment was steel blocks, just like I made my gun out of. It was basically some stuff I got from a hardware store because I lacked the means to actually forge Dakka's body. All together, it was about ten pounds worth of metal, so fairly light all things considered. Grabbing it, I attached it to the holster around my shoulders on my back, finding that it fit somewhat uncomfortably between my shoulder blades. All that was left was grabbing some stick-on tattoos to shove in my pocket for emergencies.
Feeling a lot better, I stepped outside to see that the earlier gunshot had attracted some attention. A zombie stumbled around the car, as if looking for the source. I saw a half dozen more coming up the road directly in front of me, and three more coming from the left. They were coming out in force now. Taking out my gun, I leveled it at the first zombie and pulled the trigger, sending out a blast of Fire Bolt that punched the zombie in the chest. The flames began to spark up, consuming the corpse's hair and clothing until it was completely engulfed in flame.
The stench of burnt hair filled my nostrils as I crinkled my nose in disgust. However, even as the corpse shambled forward, raising its hands to lunge for me, its skin blackened and thick greasy black smoke came off of it when the fire really got going. It reached the small fence, still going for me as it burned. Tumbling over it, it collapsed to the ground and didn't get up again.
"Ten seconds," I muttered to myself, having counted it out. Fire Bolt was a cantrip, meaning that I could cast it endlessly. So, in theory, I had unlimited ammo. The issue being was the cantrips didn't seem to hit as hard as a bullet, and I could only fire every six seconds. A six second delay could very well be the difference between life and death in a pinch. Holstering my gun, I took out my notebook and made a small note of that. Stepping past the still burning body, I resisted the urge to start burning through my spell slots to see what my other spells would do.
I would have time for experimentation after Nemesis and Mr. X were dealt with. When things… settled, for lack of a better word.
Taking aim with my gun, I fired a handful of other firebolts at the incoming zombies. The gun didn't have much in the way of recoil, but there was some as a small pebble like blast of fire erupted from the barrel, expanding in size and leaving behind a trail of smoke before impacting the zombies.
Headshots killed them a lot faster. Near instantly like a bullet to the head. I'm not sure if damage rolls were a thing for me, but it was representative. With an Arcane Firearm, any spell that came from my Artificer class -- including cantrips -- received 1d8 additional damage. As a Level 5, my cantrips were upgraded so Firebolt now did 2d10 damage. That translated into some potent flames and with a headshot, the brain was flash burned. Hitting the body flash burned the flesh and ignited the corpses, as I saw before, and they burned hot enough to cook the brain in the skull in a few seconds.
Deciding to clear the street, as I took aim at the final shambling corpses, the kill was stolen from me as a loud pop filled the air. Glancing over at the source, I saw that it was Jill, who was carrying an assault rifle. She was joined by Chris, and some other guy that I didn't know. He seemed to be in his late thirties to early forties, brown hair cut military style and clean shaven.
All three of them were wearing some kind of flack vest. Chris was wearing some on his arms in addition to a vest, while Jill had a simple vest and I noticed that she had a black hat on that said RCPD. She looked good in it. Ah, well, in any case, it was good to see that the two of them hadn't been reduced to paste while I was taking a nap.
"Kill thief," I accused Jill as they approached, looking them over. They weren't dressed like cops, but they wore the logo on several places, like on a jacket or hat.
"What are you doing out here, Rude? And what is that thing?" Jill asked, lowering her rifle as she glanced at the burnt bodies that still smoked. I gave my arcane gun a little wave, making her eyes narrow into slits when she saw how odd it appeared.
"Picking up some things. Seems like everything went straight to hell the moment I closed my eyes," I remarked, holstering my gun. "I hate to ask, but the big guy -- he make another appearance?"
To that, Chris shook his head, "No. You were right, though -- we didn't kill him. We checked the body, but it was gone. No sign of where it went, so Jill and I have been patrolling outside of the safety points to make sure we don't drag trouble their way." Chris explained, and that was a relief and about the expected reaction I thought they would have. It was better this way, as harsh as it might sound. Nemesis would absolutely be coming for Jill and Chris, no matter where they were. Them being isolated put them in more danger, but it also meant that there was less chance of collateral damage when it did come for them.
I nodded, having expected that much before the third man stepped forward, offering a hand. "I'm Deputy Chief Raymond Dogulas. It's good to finally meet you, Rude. You saved a lot of lives -- between the posters, papers, and securing the entrances… I'm speaking on behalf of the city when I say we'd be much worse off if you didn't do what you did," he told me earnestly as he shook my hand.
That was a little embarrassing. "Yeah, well… don't tell anyone. I have a reputation to maintain," I told him, feeling a little uncomfortable with the genuine respect he seemed to have. It was far easier when people looked at me like I was an asshole because I usually was acting like one. "If you're the big cheese, then what are you doing out here?"
"Big cheese?" Chris questioned.
"For you, actually. I'm told you have access to… nanomachines? That they could help protect people, even heal them. We've managed to secure central station, but most of the city is left unprotected. I… I don't even know how bad the situation is. I have my men putting up barricades and organizing evacuations to safety points like the police HQ, but it's not enough," Raymond began, and I knew this was coming. I knew from the very start.
I let out a small sigh, "I wish I could help you out with that, but I can't. I have hard limits that I'm trying to break -- the long and short of it is that I can only control one machine at a time at the moment, and they're directly linked to me. If I could hand over a drone army, I would, but I have no idea if it's possible. Same for the bag and the tattoos -- I can create two of them, but they're maintained by me."
I really wish that I was in a position to start slinging out drone armies and have magical items out the ass. I really wish I could hand out spellwrought tattoos like they were candy on top of rings of regeneration or invisibility cloaks. I really, really, really did. Wishing had nothing to do with it, though -- I couldn't. Maybe, sometime in the future, that wouldn't be true. In the here and now, despite how badly we needed it… it was very true.
Those things took a lot more time than we had available to us.
The answer visibly deflated Raymond, though he didn't seem particularly surprised by the answer. However, it was Jill that spoke up, "And how exactly do you have these nanomachines?" She asked, her tone suspicious as she leveled a look at me that screamed 'no bullshit, please.' The please may or may not be a figment of my imagination.
I had an answer for that too. "Oh, I was a lab rat for Umbrella," I answered, offering a small shrug of my shoulders and Jill went still. "At least I think I was. I'm not really sure, to be honest. I think I might have been an official experiment that got shut down, then I got continued anyway by some guy in his basement." It was all bullshit, but it was plausible bullshit. Umbrella was into some weird stuff, so nanomachines that were… I don't know, biological dependent sounded like something they would get into.
It worked as a backstory to explain all the shenanigans that I would be getting into. I didn't particularly like lying. Especially about something like this. But, in this, it was the smart move. Honesty would just open up too many cans of worms -- my origins, my power, and… it wasn't particularly believable when it came right down to it. The isekai genre wouldn't even exist for another ten to fifteen years.
Worse still, everything I said, I knew, would eventually funnel to Umbrella. They might not have bothered with me back when I was screaming until I was blue in the face and slapping posters and pamphlets on every available surface but they were going to take notice of me now. They were going to investigate. They were going to retrace my steps. They were going to ask the who, the where, the how, and the why.
So, all the better to send them chasing after their own tail while keeping some aces up my sleeve.
"Then that got shut down when Umbrella realized that they were embezzling money, they got scrubbed and tried to scrub me, only to botch the job. Got out, found my way to Raccoon City, and… yeah. Here we are, standing in the middle of a road during a zombie apocalypse," I continued and I could read Jill's expression too easily. "I don't keep it hidden because I'm ashamed of it, or anything. Pity is annoying and I can't be bothered with it, so don't. I don't pity myself, so you don't have any reason to."
That got her to close her eyes for a moment before nodding, "Well, it explains why you're such an asshole." She decided, taking a breath and the pity was gone. Good.
"Well, so long as you're using it at their expense, I can't complain," Chris decided, offering a small nod in my direction. "That how you knew about Bard?"
"No. I'm just very distrustful of authority figures. And any time I see anything remotely suspicious, I just assume Umbrella. I'm usually right. Plus, he's a renowned virologist in Raccoon City, which is practically Umbrella's home turf, so I just figured that he and any other notable figure works for them," I told him, making Chris blink. "Like how the Mayor and police chief are probably in their pocket."
Raymond looked at Jill and Chris, both of whom seemed like they were trying really hard to argue the logic, but couldn't because they suspected I was right. Glancing at me, he said, "I… it's tough to believe, but I think you've more than earned the benefit of the doubt."
That was convenient. "Alright, so, are you three doing anything right now?" I asked, looking at the three of them. From the brief glance that I got after waking up from my nap, I saw that the actual organization of the safe haven was largely out of my hands. Which was a very good thing for me, as far as I was concerned. It meant that I wouldn't be involved in the nitty-gritty details that would take my attention away from more important tasks -- like killing zombies, or figuring out how to mass produce the vaccine. Or killing Nemesis.
Raymond gave me a hesitant look, "I have to continue organizing the safe havens. I only came out here to see if the technology that you use is mass-producible." So he was heading back then? Perfect.
"I stole a computer," I said, reaching into my bag of holding and the gallon bag opened up to let me pull the tower case out. With a light toss, I gave it to Raymond. "I have no idea how to hack things, so you're going to want to get someone on that. I'm guessing there are probably some Umbrella secrets located on the harddrive." I told him before jabbing a thumb over my shoulder at the apartment. "And there's a bunch of supplies that I was gathering in there -- a lot of bottled water and canned food."
Raymond seemed pretty caught up on the whole 'stolen computer pulled out of a too-small bag' thing, but he showed that he had his priorities in order when I said food and water. Raymond seemed to have his head screwed on straight, for better or worse. I was a little worried about how things would shake out, and while it did seem too early to say that I could trust him with everyone's safety, he was making generally a good first impression.
"Probably?" He questioned, his eyebrows raising to his hairline.
"It was hidden behind a sci-fi door. And at the general hospital, there was a secret room general staff weren't allowed behind. Meaning Umbrella is involved," I stated with certainty. Both Chris and Jill looked like they wanted to argue the point on principle again, but they realized that I was right. "Also, if Irons starts acting suspicious, you should shoot him."
"Er-"
"Or don't. I'll do it at some point. Anyway," I continued on, looking at Chris and Jill, "Since you both have a fuck off big monster hunting you, we need to set up a safe house for you. Before we do that, though, now that the city is past the point of no return… we need to start luring out zombies and killing them en masse. Draw them into locations that have already been evacuated then kill them all."
That caught their attention more than the casual mention of murder. Or killing, since murder kind of implied that he didn't have it coming.
It was Jill that spoke up. "What do you have in mind?" She asked, her tone faintly wary when she saw my smile.
Power leveling, here I come.
- Location
- England
"How do you do all this crap anyway?"
"It's
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
Is he related to Legolas?
HonzaShanzaki
Lurker
Thank you for the chapter
Falling Leaves
- Location
- USA
To summarize the situation in Raccoon City -- shit was fucked. Shit was fucked bad. It was honestly shocking how the city could go from a little messed up to an unmitigated, ass-blasting shit show over the course of eight hours or so. The police, led by Raymond, had managed to evacuate a large swath around central station, but everything beyond the immediate block?
Pure, uncontrolled, absolute chaos. Yet, at the very same time, there were people going about their day. They walked along the street, completely oblivious to everything that was happening.
It wasn't the age of information. Not really. Not yet. People weren't walking around with a computer in their pockets that tapped into the internet for news to be delivered to them instantly and constantly like people would be in the early two thousands. Meaning that if they didn't listen to the radio or watch the TV, they would have absolutely no idea what they were walking into. And I saw no greater evidence of that fact when we saw onlookers trying to call 911 when they saw looting or someone being attacked.
In a perfect world, everyone would have heard the emergency broadcast, and they would stay indoors. Everyone. However, we didn't live in a perfect world -- as evident of the ongoing apocalypse -- and while the people that just didn't get the message were a problem, a far greater one was the looters. People love a state of emergency. With all the cops dealing with something, it just made it the perfect opportunity to steal that 28 inch tube TV that you had been eying. Or a PS1.
The looters were like gas on a fire, making something that could, in theory, with some finesse and a dash of competence, be salvaged into something that could only be described as an absolute disaster. It was a mess. I would need to flip through a thesaurus to find some better words to describe it because all the ones that I knew fell dreadfully short. There were sporadic groups of police trying to seal up back alleys, or making attempts to evacuate people that had no idea what they were doing. Some were even arresting looters, completely oblivious to what they should be doing.
"You, you, you!" Jill shouted, grabbing hold of the police officers who had a half dozen men laying on the ground with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Gunshots rang out in the air, but they were a distant thing. What was far closer were screams of people panicking. Chris and I took up positions, looking down at the source to see undead chasing a handful of people. There were dozens and dozens of undead in the streets, coming out in force as they spilled out after tipping over a fence. "Guns up, aim for the head but if you can't, then hit the legs or center mass," Jill shouted at the three stunned cops.
I started firing, Fire Bolt slamming into the zombies as I pulled the trigger. They went up, their flesh flash burning while their clothing ignited. The people running panicked, tucking down and I saw one turn around to flee back towards the zombies, thinking we were shooting at him. I frowned when I saw him get bit, falling to the zombies that tore into him while the rest surged forward.
The men that were being arrested saw their chance and booked it, making two of the cops turn their attention back to them. They ended up giving chase, and it was when they diverted into an alley and screaming began, I knew that more dead were coming our way.
"We can't evacuate anyone like this!" I shouted out over the sounds of gunfire. Chris was scoring headshot after headshot, dropping as many as he could as fast as he could. A slight design flaw, I decided, pulling the trigger again. I needed to look into figuring out how to shoot a projectile from my gun. The cantrip wasn't cutting it with a small horde, even if it did have unlimited ammo. And, given that we had a very long day ahead of us while Nemesis was on the prowl, burning spell slots seemed counterintuitive.
"We know!" Jill snapped at me, dropping to a knee and firing at the zombies that stumbled out of the back alley.
There was no organization. No one really knew what they were supposed to be doing and it became an absolute mess. And those that did have a general idea were completely overrun by panicked people. I always had to suspend my disbelief when it came to stuff like the Walking Dead -- if there were fast zombies, then yeah, sure, I could understand. But slow ones? How could the military possibly lose?
The answer was people. People were stupid. Everyone liked to imagine that they would be the cool calm collected badass in an emergency but the fact of the matter was that the moment their safety was threatened, most people panicked like a chicken with its head cut off. And that really threw a massive wrench in my plans to start power leveling.
"Rude, you need to break out that drone!" Chris exclaimed, popping in a new magazine. More undead were being attacked to the clusterfuck of noise.
"We need to fall back," Jill decided, grabbing Chris by his tac-vest to lead us away from the undead that were pouring through the back alley. Slowly, we fell back to the middle of the street and I crushed the impulse to do exactly what Chris suggested. I only had the drone for an hour, and I would need to burn a spell slot to bring it back. I had six, meaning that I had Dakka for a total of seven hours. I had to use her sparingly and where it would matter the most.
Instead, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out an infusion. "Cover your ears," I shot back, lobbing it at the dead where they were starting to converge. For a moment, the paperclip was silent. Then, Dr. Bard's voice rang out as high as I could crank the volume.
"GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU LUNATIC!"
Just as I hoped, the dead were drawn to it as I looped the sound. It muffled the sounds of gunfire, though not enough that some dead didn't draw attention to us. Wincing through the sound, we fired up on the dead, dropping bodies. Pure dumb luck ended up working out for me because they were so tightly compressed that when I ignited one, the fire spread. And, to be honest, it was a really good thing that I didn't have the fireball spell. I doubt I could have resisted using it.
When that pocket of undead were cleared out, the condition for the infusion wasn't met any longer and it fell silent. "We- where did the other cop go?" I asked, looking back and not seeing him anywhere.
"What was that thing?" Chris asked, trying to get rid of the ringing in his ears.
"A recorder in a paperclip," I answered, not seeing so much as a hair of the third cop. Did he seriously run away? Protect and serve my ass. "And, one second…" I said, reaching into my pocket to pull out a stone. Pressing it to my lips, I whispered what I wanted it to say and threw it forward.
"IF YOU WANT TO LIVE THEN FOLLOW US," the stone shouted in my voice. The six-second timer was a bit limiting, but it was enough to get the message across.
My power really liked the six second rule of combat. I don't think it was insurmountable, but I was finding that where it could, it drifted to the established six second rule of a round of combat. Probably because this whole encounter could be considered combat.
"That's convenient," Jill remarked, waving over a handful of shell-shocked survivors that seemed to have absolutely no idea what was going on. I took a quick look at them to see that they all seemed fine, but panicked when they saw more undead shambling our way. "Stick close to us. We're going to take you someplace safe," Jill promised while I reached into my backpack.
I had been saving it since I could only use it once a day, but if we were going to send back survivors, then we needed to know if they were infected or not. I refused to fall for the 'random asshole hides infection that causes the safe haven to collapse from within' trope. Which is why chose Detect Poison and Disease when I chose my Fey-Touched feat.
Producing a single yew leaf, I held it aloft before then, "Hippty skippity doo," I intoned like the words were somehow sacred instead of pure gibberish.
"What-" Jill began, cutting herself off when she saw my eyes glowing.
"You're coming down with a cold, so you're going to want to take some medicine for that. And you -- it's eight in the morning, it's too early to be drinking. Unless you spent all night drinking, then it's perfectly okay," I told the small group of people that were looking at me with more confusion than fear now. The one I was speaking to looked shocked for a moment, then shot his wife a nervous look -- and I was betting she was his wife based on the look that she was giving him. Someone had a drinking problem~!
Chris looked at me, "Nanomachines?" He ventured and I smiled.
"Nanomachines. They're not infected," I confirmed. That got a small breath of relief from Chris, only it was lost when the infusion was triggered by more undead nearing it.
So began our attempts to organize the block in an evacuation. The good news was that the screaming managed to get a lot of people's attention. Naturally, when they saw people gathering up, they would follow the leader because people were sheep. They ventured out of their homes onto the road, either joining us outright or getting scared and running back inside.
Naturally, the roaring and the sounds of people were drawing the attention of the dead too. Despite my reluctance, I was forced to utilize Dakka just to keep up with the dead that seemed to pour out of every nook and cranny. The people that we were escorting back to the station were of absolutely no help, doing nothing but screaming, crying, and shitting themselves at the sign of every shambling corpse.
More than once, they ran. Straight up fled. Away from the people that were trying to save their lives. And, worse, more often than not, they took a few others with them because when people saw people running, they felt the need to run too. We were forced to watch them go because if we chased after then a massive hole got opened up in our defenses. We escorted a hundred-odd people back to the central station, and a walk that should have taken five minutes took closer to thirty.
It was everything we could do. I knew that. I wore that on my chin, but it made it extremely clear that the rest of the city was absolutely screwed. We fought like hell to save a hundred people and probably twice that many were dying and going to raise back up. It was very different seeing it in person than knowing it in theory -- it was like we could physically feel Raccoon City falling into chaos. We were fighting, clawing, grasping for whatever we could but it would only be a small fraction of a much larger whole.
I saw it on both Jill and Chris' faces when we finally did make it back to central station. Jill and Chris loaded up on ammo, their expressions grim. This was their city. They were police officers and, more than that, they were fundamentally good people. In a much better world, in a much kinder world, their efforts would be rewarded. Everyone would be saved and we could all fuck off right into the sunset.
"Here, have some trail mix," I said, offering a bag of it to Jill, who looked surprised by the sudden offer. "People talk crap about stress eating, but it's only a problem if you sit on your butt all day. So, have some -- or you'll end up with headaches later," I advised.
"Oh, thanks- wait, did you take out all of the raisins?" Chris said, helping himself before inspect the handful that he snagged.
"Of course I did. Someone told me raisins are basically just the grape equivalent of old people and I've never been able to get the image out of my head," I told him, making Chris grimace.
His nose scrunched up, "Why would you do that to me?" He asked, and good. The image was in his head now. Maybe, hopefully soon, it would spread so people would stop putting raisins in cereal. Raisin brand crunch? Delicious. Know what would make it even better? Take out the raisins entirely.
"Because misery loves company," I told him unrepentantly. "Come on. I have about five minutes left being able to detect the disease," I said, tossing the rest of the trail-mix to Jill. She caught it, but she didn't look happy about it. She was focused, but her lack of engagement seemed more sullen to me. Angry, even. Not at me -- I think -- but at the entire situation and our lack of control. She had been very brief with details about the memories this was dredging up, but I got the impression this was ripping open some barely healed wounds.
I wish a Cure Wounds could heal some mental damage, but no such luck. And, I hated to say it, but… she would have to deal with it for now. There wasn't any time for any of us to deal with our shit. In the days that followed, when we saved everyone that we could save, then we could take a moment to breathe and deal with deep seeded traumas.
"How does that thing work?" Jill questioned, her voice tense as we quickly ran through the streets. "Why does it only work for thirty minutes?"
"Serious eye damage," I answered, tapping my glasses as we ran. The sounds of gunshots caught our attention and Chris led the way to finding the source. "Once a day for thirty minutes, and I can only do it for thirty minutes instead of chunks of time," I elaborated. I was putting some serious consideration putting some levels into the Wizard class. It would grant me access to some better spells, but I'm not entirely sure it was a good idea.
Wizards needed to learn magic spells by copying them into their grimoire. Magic wasn't real in this world. Meaning, like my future magic items, I would have to puzzle them out from scratch. And that… they would spread me rather thin in a time when time was the most valuable thing that I had, regardless of how useful it might be.
"It's useful while we have it, but don't rely on it. Gotcha," Jill heard what I was saying as we rounded a corner. I wasn't at all surprised to see undead shambling down the roads anymore -- even in the immediate perimeter of central station, you could easily find a handful. What I didn't expect was to see a good thirty of them swarming around what looked to be an coffee shop. They were battering at the glass windows and door, the screaming coming from within told us that some people got chased inside.
Surprisingly, there were a handful of corpses leading up to the door. Three of them, and we heard about five shots in total.
The three of us immediately opened fire on the small horde of undead, dropping the corpses. Jill and Chris were essentially a walking wall of gunfire with damn near aimbot levels of accuracy. It was actually stunning to watch. I'm guessing that they got a lot of practice in. Me, on the other hand, I went with fire and ignited a good dozen zombies, dousing them with what amounted to napalm. It took a few seconds for them to cook through, but soon enough they were collapsing in heaps.
Leaving us to enter the coffee shop- "Ted?" I blurted, recognizing the Walmart greeter that I met just before the city went to hell. He poked his head up from behind the counter, a gun in his hand.
"You're- You're Rude!" Ted returned with evident relief, standing up to his full height. That seemed to encourage the others. I saw a pistol in Ted's hands, but he didn't seem that comfortable with it, even if he was showing proper trigger discipline. "You were right! About everything! I-I should have listened to you back then, but- you're pamphlets and cards saved our asses. I went for the head, just like you said!" So, the pamphlets weren't a waste of money after all?
I was glad for it. I was happy that Ted listened and had made it. He acted decisively and calmly under pressure, and he was damn close to the finish line. He even managed to bring a dozen people with him -- some of which I even recognized as people that pulled a runner from us. It was real leadership material. Walmart absolutely wasted him.
There was just one issue.
My gaze slid to a middle aged man who sat in the floor, leaning against the wall as sweat dripped down his face. It could just be the adrenaline -- that stuff messed you up after it left your system. I might have believed it if it wasn't for the fact that he was registering as infected with a disease. The T-Virus.
"I'm glad you made it this far, Ted." I waved him off, my eyes on the man. I didn't see any visual signs of injuries. He was wearing expensive shorts, loafers with high top socks, and a bowling shirt. He didn't seem like he was bit, but they could be hidden. "Have you checked everyone for bites?" I asked Ted while everyone else in the room seemed to be looking at me with awe. I see Ted was acting like my hypeman.
To that, Ted nodded. "None of us are bitten or scratched. I made sure of it, Mr. Rude." He sounded absolutely certain of it.
"Just call me Rude," I muttered, my gaze going to Jill, who caught it before I glanced back at the guy. "Are you absolutely sure that none of you have been bitten?" I was trying to play it cool, but I saw some suspicion.
"Of course! But, erm, if you want to check-" Ted started getting freaky and immediately started taking his shirt off. It was Chris that stopped him.
"A quick frisk should be fine," Chris said, and it made sense. Pain was the body's warning system, and it was a lot harder to shrug that stuff off than people realized. A flinch would give away a bite wound, as would a bandage or a damp spot on the clothing. Ted eagerly proved that he wasn't bitten and I frisked him down. It was Jill that frisked the infected guy -- I watched his face carefully. He didn't flinch. Jill met my gaze when she was done and shook her head.
What the hell? The guy was infected. He looked physically ill. And so far, Detect Poison and Disease hasn't led me astray. If he wasn't bitten, then how in the hell did he get infected?
"Can we go to central station now? Please? I… I don't want to be out here anymore," Ted requested, his voice a bit weak when he saw more zombies drawn in by the noise we created.
There was no way I could in good conscience send this guy to the one established safe zone we had. It was just too much of a risk. Even if we did something like sticking a post-it note to his forehead about sticking him in a quarantine until his symptoms made it clear what was wrong with him. That was just kicking the issue down the road so some other poor sap would do what I was considering.
I had regrets. One of them was the police officer who tried to arrest me and got bit. I didn't regret killing him, per se, but I regretted that I hadn't been able to save him. If I had nutted up before the very last minute, maybe I could have reached high enough of a level that I didn't have to kill him. Or, if I had been more proactive, maybe I could have already had the vaccine and I could have given it to him.
This situation was different.
I had Lesser Restoration. I could save his life.
The smart thing to do, I knew, was to let him die. He was some old man that I didn't know and I genuinely doubt that he would be able to help much with the ongoing apocalypse. I only had so many spell slots. There were only so many people that I could save. Cold logic dictated that I should reserve them for emergencies because I knew emergencies were coming. Reserve them because Jill could get infected. Chris. Myself. All of whom were far more important than some random old guy whose name I didn't even know.
Yet, all the same, my Arcane Weapon shifted to Lesser Restoration and I aimed it at the guy.
"Wait, no-!" He exclaimed, throwing up his hands before I shot him with Lesser Restoration.
It was objectively speaking the worst possible move I could have made, I acknowledged fully. But I was a selfish person.
I didn't want to be the kind of person who could let someone die just because it was inconvenient to save them.
"That was a little booster shot. You were under the weather," I said as the old man sputtered, pissed off to hell and back that I saved his life. The effect was pretty immediate -- he looked like warmed over death, now he just looked like he had one foot in the grave. More importantly, I didn't sense the T-Virus in him anymore. "But we need to stick you in a quarantine, just to be safe." Just in case the T-Virus was wonky when it came to interacting with magic. I didn't think it would be the case, but it was better safe than sorry.
The old man glowered at me, "It's allergies. I'm fine," he protested, looking like he was about ready to take a swing.
"We have a lot of people sharing a cramped space and we already have an epidemic going on if you hadn't noticed," I was trying to be polite about it.
The dickhead glowered at me, "I'm not sick!"
"You're about to be unconscious, you mouth breathing moron-" I started to reply, but Jill smoothly interjected.
"You're going in quarantine or you're staying here," she decided in a no nonsense tone. That brought him up short. Ohh~! Fucking get him, Jill! Show him who's the boss! He looked like the kind of guy that was vaguely sexist, but in the 'product of his time' kind of way. "Is that understood?"
He worked his jaw but offered a curt nod. He shot a look at me and I flipped him off.
The next mission became escorting the group back to the central station, who welcomed them with open arms. Ted proved a little clingy, though.
He swept me up in a hug and crushed me to his chest, "You saved my life. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're a saint!" There was a sob in his throat that I didn't at all know how to deal with, so I awkwardly patted his back.
"It's fine. You, ah, paid it forward. Just stay safe, alright?" I offered, thinking Ted was a decent dude. He sniffed, wiping off his eyes and waved me goodbye as he headed into the station. As soon as they were gone, I said, "That old guy was infected with the T-Virus. I'm certain about it. That booster shot probably saved him, but that doesn't explain how he got infected in the first place."
"He didn't have any bites," Jill replied, not arguing, but pointing it out. I… felt a little odd that she wasn't mentioning the whole booster shot thing. I was expecting to get grilled about that.
"T-Virus doesn't just infect through bites. He could have slept with someone that was infected," Chris pointed out and I tried not to show my surprise at how easily they took me for it at my word. I didn't have any solid proof that he was infected.
Jill frowned, "Having a chunk bitten out of you would kill the mood." Also true, I imagined.
I pursed my lips in thought, my mind racing… "How did half a stadium full of people suddenly get infected?" I questioned, catching both of their attention. Everything was such a chaotic mess that I never stopped to think about it. I figured one zombie got in, bit someone, then the entire thing spiraled out of control. But that didn't make any sense -- it wasn't physically possible, even. Not on such a short time frame. Hundreds of people would have had to die, then get reanimated before chowing down on the fleeing people.
It only made sense if hundreds of people were already infected when they went to the game. Would people go if they got bitten? Maybe? Or maybe they just felt a little under the weather, but not enough to not go to the stadium? Where they turned and kicked off this entire mess… the latter was more plausible, but it ran into the same issue.
How did they get infected in the first place?
"You think it's airborne?" Chris ventured but Jill was frowning deeply, an expression of dawning horror finding its way onto her face. I think she had our answer.
"There were undead in the sewers before this," she breathed, looking at me like that was supposed to mean anything. "Rude. The water treatment plant for the city is connected to the sewers."
Oh.
Ohh…
Oh.
Fuck me.
That was so not good. That wasn't good at all.
"We have to do something about that. It's more important than just evacuations -- Chris, what water do you think these people are going to drink?" I asked Chris when he went to interject. The people trying to flee were in more immediate danger. Hands down. However, all it took was one person getting infected and hiding their symptoms. Then it would be too late. Everyone in the safe zone would be in danger.
"It's too late to save the water. Who knows what's floating in it now, and I wouldn't trust any Aquatab to kill the T-Virus," Jill seemed to agree. There was no point in saving people if they were being brought to danger.
"We have to split up," Chris decided, looking between us. That seemed like a bad call.
"Have you never seen an episode of Scooby Doo? That's a terrible idea. Especially when there's a giant monster out to kill you two," I reminded.
"That's exactly why we need to split up. There's one other member of STARS in the city -- Brad. I'll link up with him, if I can, and draw that creature away from you while you're saving the water supply. I'll spread word about the tainted water and delayed symptoms. I'm leaving the dirty work for you two," he said, throwing a charming grin our way.
I didn't like that plan. I didn't like that plan at all. I threw everything I had at Nemesis, and it got up and fucked off to adapt to everything I had thrown at it. It was meaner and tougher and I did not like the idea of Chris facing it solo. However, Jill rapped a fist against his, seeing the value in the plan.
Damn it.
"I want it on record that I told you this was a bad idea," I decided, accepting it for what it was. Do as much as I could but recognize that I couldn't do everything -- that was how I got through this. I wasn't a messiah who could save everyone and make it all sunshine and rainbows. As much as I didn't like it, Chris wasn't wrong about our priorities and I had to have a little faith that he could take care of himself.
In response, he flashed me a smirk and thumped me on the shoulder. "Don't worry. There's an even shot that it comes after you, you know." Oh, I didn't even think about that. Suddenly, I felt a lot more nervous about this venture.
"I… should probably go get my suit from the apartment-" I began, thinking that it would offer at least a little protection.
"Bad idea. That thing will slow you down, overheat you, and give you a false sense of protection," Jill immediately vetoed the idea.
My face pinched, "I worked really hard on that, you know." To that, Jill gave me a huff and a small smile before grabbing me by the sweater. I met Chris' gaze and returned the nod that he sent my way. He was a super cop. He could probably take care of himself better than I could. Actually, there was no probably about it.
So, I needed to have a little faith that things would work out.
After all, it wasn't like everything could go wrong, could it?
...
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Pure, uncontrolled, absolute chaos. Yet, at the very same time, there were people going about their day. They walked along the street, completely oblivious to everything that was happening.
It wasn't the age of information. Not really. Not yet. People weren't walking around with a computer in their pockets that tapped into the internet for news to be delivered to them instantly and constantly like people would be in the early two thousands. Meaning that if they didn't listen to the radio or watch the TV, they would have absolutely no idea what they were walking into. And I saw no greater evidence of that fact when we saw onlookers trying to call 911 when they saw looting or someone being attacked.
In a perfect world, everyone would have heard the emergency broadcast, and they would stay indoors. Everyone. However, we didn't live in a perfect world -- as evident of the ongoing apocalypse -- and while the people that just didn't get the message were a problem, a far greater one was the looters. People love a state of emergency. With all the cops dealing with something, it just made it the perfect opportunity to steal that 28 inch tube TV that you had been eying. Or a PS1.
The looters were like gas on a fire, making something that could, in theory, with some finesse and a dash of competence, be salvaged into something that could only be described as an absolute disaster. It was a mess. I would need to flip through a thesaurus to find some better words to describe it because all the ones that I knew fell dreadfully short. There were sporadic groups of police trying to seal up back alleys, or making attempts to evacuate people that had no idea what they were doing. Some were even arresting looters, completely oblivious to what they should be doing.
"You, you, you!" Jill shouted, grabbing hold of the police officers who had a half dozen men laying on the ground with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Gunshots rang out in the air, but they were a distant thing. What was far closer were screams of people panicking. Chris and I took up positions, looking down at the source to see undead chasing a handful of people. There were dozens and dozens of undead in the streets, coming out in force as they spilled out after tipping over a fence. "Guns up, aim for the head but if you can't, then hit the legs or center mass," Jill shouted at the three stunned cops.
I started firing, Fire Bolt slamming into the zombies as I pulled the trigger. They went up, their flesh flash burning while their clothing ignited. The people running panicked, tucking down and I saw one turn around to flee back towards the zombies, thinking we were shooting at him. I frowned when I saw him get bit, falling to the zombies that tore into him while the rest surged forward.
The men that were being arrested saw their chance and booked it, making two of the cops turn their attention back to them. They ended up giving chase, and it was when they diverted into an alley and screaming began, I knew that more dead were coming our way.
"We can't evacuate anyone like this!" I shouted out over the sounds of gunfire. Chris was scoring headshot after headshot, dropping as many as he could as fast as he could. A slight design flaw, I decided, pulling the trigger again. I needed to look into figuring out how to shoot a projectile from my gun. The cantrip wasn't cutting it with a small horde, even if it did have unlimited ammo. And, given that we had a very long day ahead of us while Nemesis was on the prowl, burning spell slots seemed counterintuitive.
"We know!" Jill snapped at me, dropping to a knee and firing at the zombies that stumbled out of the back alley.
There was no organization. No one really knew what they were supposed to be doing and it became an absolute mess. And those that did have a general idea were completely overrun by panicked people. I always had to suspend my disbelief when it came to stuff like the Walking Dead -- if there were fast zombies, then yeah, sure, I could understand. But slow ones? How could the military possibly lose?
The answer was people. People were stupid. Everyone liked to imagine that they would be the cool calm collected badass in an emergency but the fact of the matter was that the moment their safety was threatened, most people panicked like a chicken with its head cut off. And that really threw a massive wrench in my plans to start power leveling.
"Rude, you need to break out that drone!" Chris exclaimed, popping in a new magazine. More undead were being attacked to the clusterfuck of noise.
"We need to fall back," Jill decided, grabbing Chris by his tac-vest to lead us away from the undead that were pouring through the back alley. Slowly, we fell back to the middle of the street and I crushed the impulse to do exactly what Chris suggested. I only had the drone for an hour, and I would need to burn a spell slot to bring it back. I had six, meaning that I had Dakka for a total of seven hours. I had to use her sparingly and where it would matter the most.
Instead, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out an infusion. "Cover your ears," I shot back, lobbing it at the dead where they were starting to converge. For a moment, the paperclip was silent. Then, Dr. Bard's voice rang out as high as I could crank the volume.
"GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU LUNATIC!"
Just as I hoped, the dead were drawn to it as I looped the sound. It muffled the sounds of gunfire, though not enough that some dead didn't draw attention to us. Wincing through the sound, we fired up on the dead, dropping bodies. Pure dumb luck ended up working out for me because they were so tightly compressed that when I ignited one, the fire spread. And, to be honest, it was a really good thing that I didn't have the fireball spell. I doubt I could have resisted using it.
When that pocket of undead were cleared out, the condition for the infusion wasn't met any longer and it fell silent. "We- where did the other cop go?" I asked, looking back and not seeing him anywhere.
"What was that thing?" Chris asked, trying to get rid of the ringing in his ears.
"A recorder in a paperclip," I answered, not seeing so much as a hair of the third cop. Did he seriously run away? Protect and serve my ass. "And, one second…" I said, reaching into my pocket to pull out a stone. Pressing it to my lips, I whispered what I wanted it to say and threw it forward.
"IF YOU WANT TO LIVE THEN FOLLOW US," the stone shouted in my voice. The six-second timer was a bit limiting, but it was enough to get the message across.
My power really liked the six second rule of combat. I don't think it was insurmountable, but I was finding that where it could, it drifted to the established six second rule of a round of combat. Probably because this whole encounter could be considered combat.
"That's convenient," Jill remarked, waving over a handful of shell-shocked survivors that seemed to have absolutely no idea what was going on. I took a quick look at them to see that they all seemed fine, but panicked when they saw more undead shambling our way. "Stick close to us. We're going to take you someplace safe," Jill promised while I reached into my backpack.
I had been saving it since I could only use it once a day, but if we were going to send back survivors, then we needed to know if they were infected or not. I refused to fall for the 'random asshole hides infection that causes the safe haven to collapse from within' trope. Which is why chose Detect Poison and Disease when I chose my Fey-Touched feat.
Producing a single yew leaf, I held it aloft before then, "Hippty skippity doo," I intoned like the words were somehow sacred instead of pure gibberish.
"What-" Jill began, cutting herself off when she saw my eyes glowing.
"You're coming down with a cold, so you're going to want to take some medicine for that. And you -- it's eight in the morning, it's too early to be drinking. Unless you spent all night drinking, then it's perfectly okay," I told the small group of people that were looking at me with more confusion than fear now. The one I was speaking to looked shocked for a moment, then shot his wife a nervous look -- and I was betting she was his wife based on the look that she was giving him. Someone had a drinking problem~!
Chris looked at me, "Nanomachines?" He ventured and I smiled.
"Nanomachines. They're not infected," I confirmed. That got a small breath of relief from Chris, only it was lost when the infusion was triggered by more undead nearing it.
So began our attempts to organize the block in an evacuation. The good news was that the screaming managed to get a lot of people's attention. Naturally, when they saw people gathering up, they would follow the leader because people were sheep. They ventured out of their homes onto the road, either joining us outright or getting scared and running back inside.
Naturally, the roaring and the sounds of people were drawing the attention of the dead too. Despite my reluctance, I was forced to utilize Dakka just to keep up with the dead that seemed to pour out of every nook and cranny. The people that we were escorting back to the station were of absolutely no help, doing nothing but screaming, crying, and shitting themselves at the sign of every shambling corpse.
More than once, they ran. Straight up fled. Away from the people that were trying to save their lives. And, worse, more often than not, they took a few others with them because when people saw people running, they felt the need to run too. We were forced to watch them go because if we chased after then a massive hole got opened up in our defenses. We escorted a hundred-odd people back to the central station, and a walk that should have taken five minutes took closer to thirty.
It was everything we could do. I knew that. I wore that on my chin, but it made it extremely clear that the rest of the city was absolutely screwed. We fought like hell to save a hundred people and probably twice that many were dying and going to raise back up. It was very different seeing it in person than knowing it in theory -- it was like we could physically feel Raccoon City falling into chaos. We were fighting, clawing, grasping for whatever we could but it would only be a small fraction of a much larger whole.
I saw it on both Jill and Chris' faces when we finally did make it back to central station. Jill and Chris loaded up on ammo, their expressions grim. This was their city. They were police officers and, more than that, they were fundamentally good people. In a much better world, in a much kinder world, their efforts would be rewarded. Everyone would be saved and we could all fuck off right into the sunset.
"Here, have some trail mix," I said, offering a bag of it to Jill, who looked surprised by the sudden offer. "People talk crap about stress eating, but it's only a problem if you sit on your butt all day. So, have some -- or you'll end up with headaches later," I advised.
"Oh, thanks- wait, did you take out all of the raisins?" Chris said, helping himself before inspect the handful that he snagged.
"Of course I did. Someone told me raisins are basically just the grape equivalent of old people and I've never been able to get the image out of my head," I told him, making Chris grimace.
His nose scrunched up, "Why would you do that to me?" He asked, and good. The image was in his head now. Maybe, hopefully soon, it would spread so people would stop putting raisins in cereal. Raisin brand crunch? Delicious. Know what would make it even better? Take out the raisins entirely.
"Because misery loves company," I told him unrepentantly. "Come on. I have about five minutes left being able to detect the disease," I said, tossing the rest of the trail-mix to Jill. She caught it, but she didn't look happy about it. She was focused, but her lack of engagement seemed more sullen to me. Angry, even. Not at me -- I think -- but at the entire situation and our lack of control. She had been very brief with details about the memories this was dredging up, but I got the impression this was ripping open some barely healed wounds.
I wish a Cure Wounds could heal some mental damage, but no such luck. And, I hated to say it, but… she would have to deal with it for now. There wasn't any time for any of us to deal with our shit. In the days that followed, when we saved everyone that we could save, then we could take a moment to breathe and deal with deep seeded traumas.
"How does that thing work?" Jill questioned, her voice tense as we quickly ran through the streets. "Why does it only work for thirty minutes?"
"Serious eye damage," I answered, tapping my glasses as we ran. The sounds of gunshots caught our attention and Chris led the way to finding the source. "Once a day for thirty minutes, and I can only do it for thirty minutes instead of chunks of time," I elaborated. I was putting some serious consideration putting some levels into the Wizard class. It would grant me access to some better spells, but I'm not entirely sure it was a good idea.
Wizards needed to learn magic spells by copying them into their grimoire. Magic wasn't real in this world. Meaning, like my future magic items, I would have to puzzle them out from scratch. And that… they would spread me rather thin in a time when time was the most valuable thing that I had, regardless of how useful it might be.
"It's useful while we have it, but don't rely on it. Gotcha," Jill heard what I was saying as we rounded a corner. I wasn't at all surprised to see undead shambling down the roads anymore -- even in the immediate perimeter of central station, you could easily find a handful. What I didn't expect was to see a good thirty of them swarming around what looked to be an coffee shop. They were battering at the glass windows and door, the screaming coming from within told us that some people got chased inside.
Surprisingly, there were a handful of corpses leading up to the door. Three of them, and we heard about five shots in total.
The three of us immediately opened fire on the small horde of undead, dropping the corpses. Jill and Chris were essentially a walking wall of gunfire with damn near aimbot levels of accuracy. It was actually stunning to watch. I'm guessing that they got a lot of practice in. Me, on the other hand, I went with fire and ignited a good dozen zombies, dousing them with what amounted to napalm. It took a few seconds for them to cook through, but soon enough they were collapsing in heaps.
Leaving us to enter the coffee shop- "Ted?" I blurted, recognizing the Walmart greeter that I met just before the city went to hell. He poked his head up from behind the counter, a gun in his hand.
"You're- You're Rude!" Ted returned with evident relief, standing up to his full height. That seemed to encourage the others. I saw a pistol in Ted's hands, but he didn't seem that comfortable with it, even if he was showing proper trigger discipline. "You were right! About everything! I-I should have listened to you back then, but- you're pamphlets and cards saved our asses. I went for the head, just like you said!" So, the pamphlets weren't a waste of money after all?
I was glad for it. I was happy that Ted listened and had made it. He acted decisively and calmly under pressure, and he was damn close to the finish line. He even managed to bring a dozen people with him -- some of which I even recognized as people that pulled a runner from us. It was real leadership material. Walmart absolutely wasted him.
There was just one issue.
My gaze slid to a middle aged man who sat in the floor, leaning against the wall as sweat dripped down his face. It could just be the adrenaline -- that stuff messed you up after it left your system. I might have believed it if it wasn't for the fact that he was registering as infected with a disease. The T-Virus.
"I'm glad you made it this far, Ted." I waved him off, my eyes on the man. I didn't see any visual signs of injuries. He was wearing expensive shorts, loafers with high top socks, and a bowling shirt. He didn't seem like he was bit, but they could be hidden. "Have you checked everyone for bites?" I asked Ted while everyone else in the room seemed to be looking at me with awe. I see Ted was acting like my hypeman.
To that, Ted nodded. "None of us are bitten or scratched. I made sure of it, Mr. Rude." He sounded absolutely certain of it.
"Just call me Rude," I muttered, my gaze going to Jill, who caught it before I glanced back at the guy. "Are you absolutely sure that none of you have been bitten?" I was trying to play it cool, but I saw some suspicion.
"Of course! But, erm, if you want to check-" Ted started getting freaky and immediately started taking his shirt off. It was Chris that stopped him.
"A quick frisk should be fine," Chris said, and it made sense. Pain was the body's warning system, and it was a lot harder to shrug that stuff off than people realized. A flinch would give away a bite wound, as would a bandage or a damp spot on the clothing. Ted eagerly proved that he wasn't bitten and I frisked him down. It was Jill that frisked the infected guy -- I watched his face carefully. He didn't flinch. Jill met my gaze when she was done and shook her head.
What the hell? The guy was infected. He looked physically ill. And so far, Detect Poison and Disease hasn't led me astray. If he wasn't bitten, then how in the hell did he get infected?
"Can we go to central station now? Please? I… I don't want to be out here anymore," Ted requested, his voice a bit weak when he saw more zombies drawn in by the noise we created.
There was no way I could in good conscience send this guy to the one established safe zone we had. It was just too much of a risk. Even if we did something like sticking a post-it note to his forehead about sticking him in a quarantine until his symptoms made it clear what was wrong with him. That was just kicking the issue down the road so some other poor sap would do what I was considering.
I had regrets. One of them was the police officer who tried to arrest me and got bit. I didn't regret killing him, per se, but I regretted that I hadn't been able to save him. If I had nutted up before the very last minute, maybe I could have reached high enough of a level that I didn't have to kill him. Or, if I had been more proactive, maybe I could have already had the vaccine and I could have given it to him.
This situation was different.
I had Lesser Restoration. I could save his life.
The smart thing to do, I knew, was to let him die. He was some old man that I didn't know and I genuinely doubt that he would be able to help much with the ongoing apocalypse. I only had so many spell slots. There were only so many people that I could save. Cold logic dictated that I should reserve them for emergencies because I knew emergencies were coming. Reserve them because Jill could get infected. Chris. Myself. All of whom were far more important than some random old guy whose name I didn't even know.
Yet, all the same, my Arcane Weapon shifted to Lesser Restoration and I aimed it at the guy.
"Wait, no-!" He exclaimed, throwing up his hands before I shot him with Lesser Restoration.
It was objectively speaking the worst possible move I could have made, I acknowledged fully. But I was a selfish person.
I didn't want to be the kind of person who could let someone die just because it was inconvenient to save them.
"That was a little booster shot. You were under the weather," I said as the old man sputtered, pissed off to hell and back that I saved his life. The effect was pretty immediate -- he looked like warmed over death, now he just looked like he had one foot in the grave. More importantly, I didn't sense the T-Virus in him anymore. "But we need to stick you in a quarantine, just to be safe." Just in case the T-Virus was wonky when it came to interacting with magic. I didn't think it would be the case, but it was better safe than sorry.
The old man glowered at me, "It's allergies. I'm fine," he protested, looking like he was about ready to take a swing.
"We have a lot of people sharing a cramped space and we already have an epidemic going on if you hadn't noticed," I was trying to be polite about it.
The dickhead glowered at me, "I'm not sick!"
"You're about to be unconscious, you mouth breathing moron-" I started to reply, but Jill smoothly interjected.
"You're going in quarantine or you're staying here," she decided in a no nonsense tone. That brought him up short. Ohh~! Fucking get him, Jill! Show him who's the boss! He looked like the kind of guy that was vaguely sexist, but in the 'product of his time' kind of way. "Is that understood?"
He worked his jaw but offered a curt nod. He shot a look at me and I flipped him off.
The next mission became escorting the group back to the central station, who welcomed them with open arms. Ted proved a little clingy, though.
He swept me up in a hug and crushed me to his chest, "You saved my life. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're a saint!" There was a sob in his throat that I didn't at all know how to deal with, so I awkwardly patted his back.
"It's fine. You, ah, paid it forward. Just stay safe, alright?" I offered, thinking Ted was a decent dude. He sniffed, wiping off his eyes and waved me goodbye as he headed into the station. As soon as they were gone, I said, "That old guy was infected with the T-Virus. I'm certain about it. That booster shot probably saved him, but that doesn't explain how he got infected in the first place."
"He didn't have any bites," Jill replied, not arguing, but pointing it out. I… felt a little odd that she wasn't mentioning the whole booster shot thing. I was expecting to get grilled about that.
"T-Virus doesn't just infect through bites. He could have slept with someone that was infected," Chris pointed out and I tried not to show my surprise at how easily they took me for it at my word. I didn't have any solid proof that he was infected.
Jill frowned, "Having a chunk bitten out of you would kill the mood." Also true, I imagined.
I pursed my lips in thought, my mind racing… "How did half a stadium full of people suddenly get infected?" I questioned, catching both of their attention. Everything was such a chaotic mess that I never stopped to think about it. I figured one zombie got in, bit someone, then the entire thing spiraled out of control. But that didn't make any sense -- it wasn't physically possible, even. Not on such a short time frame. Hundreds of people would have had to die, then get reanimated before chowing down on the fleeing people.
It only made sense if hundreds of people were already infected when they went to the game. Would people go if they got bitten? Maybe? Or maybe they just felt a little under the weather, but not enough to not go to the stadium? Where they turned and kicked off this entire mess… the latter was more plausible, but it ran into the same issue.
How did they get infected in the first place?
"You think it's airborne?" Chris ventured but Jill was frowning deeply, an expression of dawning horror finding its way onto her face. I think she had our answer.
"There were undead in the sewers before this," she breathed, looking at me like that was supposed to mean anything. "Rude. The water treatment plant for the city is connected to the sewers."
Oh.
Ohh…
Oh.
Fuck me.
That was so not good. That wasn't good at all.
"We have to do something about that. It's more important than just evacuations -- Chris, what water do you think these people are going to drink?" I asked Chris when he went to interject. The people trying to flee were in more immediate danger. Hands down. However, all it took was one person getting infected and hiding their symptoms. Then it would be too late. Everyone in the safe zone would be in danger.
"It's too late to save the water. Who knows what's floating in it now, and I wouldn't trust any Aquatab to kill the T-Virus," Jill seemed to agree. There was no point in saving people if they were being brought to danger.
"We have to split up," Chris decided, looking between us. That seemed like a bad call.
"Have you never seen an episode of Scooby Doo? That's a terrible idea. Especially when there's a giant monster out to kill you two," I reminded.
"That's exactly why we need to split up. There's one other member of STARS in the city -- Brad. I'll link up with him, if I can, and draw that creature away from you while you're saving the water supply. I'll spread word about the tainted water and delayed symptoms. I'm leaving the dirty work for you two," he said, throwing a charming grin our way.
I didn't like that plan. I didn't like that plan at all. I threw everything I had at Nemesis, and it got up and fucked off to adapt to everything I had thrown at it. It was meaner and tougher and I did not like the idea of Chris facing it solo. However, Jill rapped a fist against his, seeing the value in the plan.
Damn it.
"I want it on record that I told you this was a bad idea," I decided, accepting it for what it was. Do as much as I could but recognize that I couldn't do everything -- that was how I got through this. I wasn't a messiah who could save everyone and make it all sunshine and rainbows. As much as I didn't like it, Chris wasn't wrong about our priorities and I had to have a little faith that he could take care of himself.
In response, he flashed me a smirk and thumped me on the shoulder. "Don't worry. There's an even shot that it comes after you, you know." Oh, I didn't even think about that. Suddenly, I felt a lot more nervous about this venture.
"I… should probably go get my suit from the apartment-" I began, thinking that it would offer at least a little protection.
"Bad idea. That thing will slow you down, overheat you, and give you a false sense of protection," Jill immediately vetoed the idea.
My face pinched, "I worked really hard on that, you know." To that, Jill gave me a huff and a small smile before grabbing me by the sweater. I met Chris' gaze and returned the nod that he sent my way. He was a super cop. He could probably take care of himself better than I could. Actually, there was no probably about it.
So, I needed to have a little faith that things would work out.
After all, it wasn't like everything could go wrong, could it?
...
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When you tempt Murphy, there is only 1 thing the universe will do in response. Rude should not have said that.
Now why why would you say that?
You just taunted Murphy oh dear.
Daimah
Lurking lurker that lurks
- Location
- home
Oh man, Dr. Birkin is down in the sewers, isn't he?
I just found this story, and I love it. Can't wait for more!
The Moss
- Location
- USA
"I'm not wading through filthy toilet water without some protection," I argued as I suited up back at my apartment. There was a lot of nasty stuff down in the sewers on a normal day, much less the crap that Umbrella had been throwing in it. I knew of at least one genetic abomination that was currently swimming through the refuse and knowing my luck, it wouldn't just be the one.
"You're going to get yourself killed if you can't run away," Jill argued through the door while inspecting the alpha version of my protective suit. It wasn't great -- rubber insulated overalls with kevlar over the legs and a leather jacket that was reinforced with duct tape. Covering my head was a motorcycle helmet with a flashlight attached, with a visor to protect my face. "The biggest advantage we have is our mobility."
"Against shamblers, sure," I replied, putting on the overalls and jacket before further reinforcing them with kevlar. I understood the argument, I did, and I knew that the suit would be a pain to run in and probably wouldn't do much if I was caught by something big, but that could be mitigated with an easy removal. And I was far more worried about all the small nasties we would find in the sewers than the big ones. Plus between the two of us and Dakka, I didn't see us doing a lot of running away. "But that's not all that we're dealing with, you know? Umbrella is going to do what they do best and make a bad situation worse."
There was a small pause on the other side of the door. "You… might have a point there. Are you worried about the virus mutating?"
"That's what it does best, and those mouth breathing morons in Umbrella's science division are going to be patting themselves on the back for 'taking advantage of a bad situation' to gather data for their next pet monster," I said, opening the door to find Jill looking at my still depressingly incomplete to-do list. There were minor things that could be managed, but the window was rapidly closing for other things, like evacuating retirement homes. Jill glanced over at me just in time to catch some kevlar padding for her arms and legs.
"You look ridiculous," Jill noted, inspecting me before looking down at the kevlar.
"Better than looking good as a corpse," I replied and Jill inclined her head, giving me the point while she strapped the protection on with practiced ease. Meanwhile, I cracked open one of the crates that were stacked up in my apartment that was helpfully labeled 'sewer adventures.' Inside of it were maps of the sewers, as up to date as I could find as of a year ago.
Given there were no super secret massive underground bases on them I doubted their validity a bit, but they were good enough for public use.
There was also a list of recommended equipment for urban spelunking. Reading it over, I gave myself a pat on the back for my foresight, and cracked open my arsenal of weapons. I had to love red states for their 'bigger is better' approach to gun laws. Even Jill seemed impressed when I started taking out barrel drums for shotguns and laying them on the table.
I passed her a stack of drum magazines, "These are loaded with custom rounds -- Dragonsbreath, slugs, and explosive. These here are your run of the mill buckshot," I said, sliding an equally large stack of normal ammo while she inspected the automatic shotgun. "It's going to be close quarters in an enclosed space."
"That's not why I'm giving you this look- wait, is that a grenade launcher?" Jill blurted, glancing over my shoulder into my gun cabinet. I did the same to see the grenade launcher leaning against an AK-47 before looking back at Jill to see that she was giving me a dull look. "Where did you even get one of those?"
I stole it from the military. It was shocking what they would just leave around. "Don't worry about it," I said, but now that she brought it up… yeah, grenade launcher. Perfect. Grabbing it, I began to fill the cylinder chamber with some stolen explosive rounds.
Jill was shaking her head, torn between amusement and exasperation. "You only say that about stuff I should be worried about," she pointed out before taking the grenade launcher from me. "Have you ever operated one of these before?"
It didn't seem wise to admit that before I found myself here, I hadn't even used a gun before. If it wasn't for the local gun range… "Fair point. Dakka will take point, then me, then you in case we have to blow something up," I decided, loading up some buckshot into the shotgun while the rest of the ammo vanished into my Bag of Holding. Between it, and my Arcane Weapon, I was feeling pretty solid.
I'd have to burn through a spell slot to bring back Dakka, but I could accept that. With some luck, maybe I could polish off level six. It was a decent level -- it gave me another spell slot, but more importantly, it gave me access to more infusions. The most important of them all being the spell refueling ring that would give me a spell slot back once a day.
It was, however, another stark reminder of my class. Time was my biggest bottleneck. If I just had a couple more days, I could have been so much better prepared. If I had spent more time leveling beforehand…
No. There was no point in dwelling on what could have been. I needed to focus on how things were and what I could do now to make sure they went my way.
"Sounds like a plan. With how things are up top, and with that thing chasing me, it'd be best to head through the sewers," Jill decided, already locked and loaded. There was a pistol strapped to her thigh, my grenade launcher hanging off her shoulder, and a shotgun in her hands. Between her and Dakka, I really didn't see the need to do much running in the near future.
She looked at me, and I supposed that between the two of us I was the expert on exploring sewers, so I hastily shoved in the tools that were left in the crate -- chain cutters, bolt cutters, battery packs, and a couple of emergency flashlights. Heading outside, I popped open the manhole while Jill stood guard, checked to make sure there were no surprises waiting for us, turned on my headlamp and started climbing down.
It felt weird being back in the sewers. It hadn't been that long since I was first down here killing zombies to grind out my first level. Here I was again, back at it. You'd think I'd be braver, but I had to say, the long dark shadows didn't help my nerves when I knew there were going to be more zombies down here than ever. Jill made her way down behind me after replacing the manhole while I rolled my shoulders, getting Dakka comfortable and ready to use.
"Okay, maybe the headlight wasn't a bad idea," Jill remarked and I just grinned before reaching into my Bag of Holding to pass her one. She rolled her eyes as she chuckled, replacing the hat she wore with a much more functional, if less appealing, hard hat. "You know where you're going?"
"More or less," I said, taking point as we began making our way through the sewers. I immediately regretted not bringing some nose plugs, because the stench was awful. "Smells a lot worse than when I was last here," I said, my shotgun braced against my shoulder as I peeked around a corner to see… Daniel. The very first zombie that I had killed. It looked like the rats had gotten to him, because he was mostly scraps of flesh clinging to bone now.
"Thousands of corpses would do that," Jill replied. There was a small beat of silence as we walked near soundlessly. I could hear the sounds of splashing echoing down the tunnels. And groaning. I kept a keen ear out, trying to locate them, but it was next to impossible with how the sound was bouncing off the grimy concrete. I tried to take comfort in that -- I wasn't entirely sure how stuff like perception checks or passive perception worked with me, but I'm guessing that if I couldn't tell where a sound was coming from, odds were a half rotten corpse couldn't either. "How many?"
"What?" I asked, making my way up to where I had hit level two.
"How many people do you think have died already?" Jill questioned and I could hear the frown in her voice.
It wasn't a question that I liked thinking about, but I'm pretty sure I had a solid estimate. "I'd say ten thousand. Maybe twenty. Not that bad, all things considered," I ventured. It was still a lot of dead people, and a lot of reanimated corpses, but Raccoon City had a population of around a hundred thousand. "It'll be more with the riots and general chaos, but… thanks to Raymond and Marvin we might have enough of the police force to actually put a lid on the destruction. The military will be less likely to pull out and so long as we keep things contained, we can avoid getting nuked."
I heard Jill stumble behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that she wore an open grimace but she didn't seem surprised. "They would do that, wouldn't they?"
"It'd be a real convenient way for Umbrella to get rid of any evidence…" I said, trailing off as I turned the corner to where I had leveled up. "Speakin' of getting rid of evidence -- I killed a half dozen zombies here like a day ago. Where are they?" I asked, barely seeing a trace of them. There was a stain from my Grease spell, and some of the other stains looked like they could be blood. But the actual bodies were all gone.
My lips thinned as I started to look around for those drainage things that were on the walls in the game. There weren't any, but I was seeing some damage to the concrete. Something big and heavy had come this way. I'm not entirely sure what they were called in the game, but those white tadpole looking things were at the top of my suspect list.
"I'm guessing we'll find out soon enough," Jill remarked, changing out her ammo type from buckshot to explosive. "Do you really think we'll be able to save seventy thousand people?" She as the barrel magazine clicked home. "I was on the streets last night. It's just… dead people, everywhere I looked."
The admission was quiet, as was the fear in her voice.
I wished I had something to say that would convince her that everything was going to be just fine, but the truth of the matter was that I was as much in the dark as she was. But it felt wrong to say so.
"It all depends on how this next part goes. I never managed to make any solid plans for this part -- the churn. Everything is a mess, a bunch of pieces are in the air, and the outcome depends on how a lot of them fall." The biggest wild card was Umbrella. They had ways of making the situation a great deal worse than it already was.
It also depended on what the General recommended to the President, Kirk Talon. If they had hope that this could be contained, then they'd send in the marines en-masse. They'd retake the city. It wouldn't be bloodless, but it was doable. However, what weighed the scales in our favor was the number of civilians that were still alive and fighting back.
I wouldn't blame the President if he nuked Raccoon City when it's population was ninety-nine thousand shambling corpses and a couple hundred civilians, all spread out through the city… I didn't like it. It didn't sit well with me. I didn't think I would have what it took to make the call myself, but I could understand why the President would push the big red button if things got that bad.
"So, why aren't we evacuating?" Jill questioned as we pressed on. "Why act like we're in this for the long haul?" I wasn't really sure where the interrogation was coming from, but it was a fair question.
My lips thinned and not for the first time, I wish I knew more about the Resident Evil series. I had watched all the movies, but some of them… it had been years since I did. "I'm worried about what happens when you drop the sun on a virus that's whole shtick is adaptation," I admitted. My knowledge of Resident Evil got spotty after Raccoon City, but what I did know was that the world ended. Things got pretty weird in the movies with Alice developing psionic powers, but this was the same setting that had super mutant undead people.
From the sound of it, I just gave Jill a new fear. "It could adapt?"
"Or worse. It could spread," I replied, my tone grim. The details on exactly how were spotty -- I wasn't even sure if it was ever directly stated. I just knew that they dropped a nuke, and then the world started dying. I had no intention of living in a Mad Max nightmare, so if I wanted to save the world, I had to contain the virus here. "There's this stuff called Cesium 137 that only appeared after the first nuclear bomb dropped. Doesn't really do anything for the most part, and it's a way to test to see if stuff like old wine really is old wine because it spread all over the place, but it won't be present in anything vacuum sealed. My worry is that the same thing will happen with the T-Virus."
There was a beat of silence, before I heard a whispered, "Fuck."
"When the military pulls their heads out of their asses, we can start evacuating the civilians. The metro connects up to Louisville, and it's a three hour round trip. Sick people, old people, kids, and the people who just aren't cut out for this," I continued. Keen Mind made itself known as I could perfectly recall the map of the sewers with no difficulty at all. Hell, I could recall the map of the sewers that Jill had wandered through in the game and compare the locations to the complete map to discover that it was halfway across the city.
Hopefully that meant we had an unbothered trek to one of the three water treatment plants of Raccoon City. All of which were pretty small, which was why there were three of them.
"The military sees that the evac isn't a shit show, that we have clear safe points and exclusion zones… no nuke, and the world is saved," I finished. There were a couple of things I could do to sweeten the pot. One of which was probably right under my feet -- the Nest.
"Provided Umbrella doesn't mess anything up," Jill added and I chuckled without any humor.
"Yeah. Provided that they don't mess anything up," I agreed. A tall order, considering that making messes is what Umbrella did best.
With that, the conversation lapsed as Jill mulled over everything I just said. I hadn't exactly kept the stakes hidden from her, but I could understand it all feeling a great deal more real now. I went through the same thing when I first arrived in this world not that long ago. With my half remembered memories it had already seemed like a herculean task, but with Keen Mind, I now knew exactly how fucked we were.
I knew more about Resident Evil than I thought I did. The lore that I had skipped through or didn't really read was suddenly remembered with perfect clarity. I still didn't know for certain how exactly the outbreak started, but I knew some of the names involved. Up to and including US Senators. My memories of the movies were still pretty spotty, as they were well beyond the one month limit to my memory.
There were also mentions of things -- links that I didn't click on when I was looking something up on a wiki. But that was an issue for another time.
Slowly, as we closed in on the first water treatment plant, the air in the sewer got worse. The stench was already rancid to the point that it burned my nose, but it slowly started to smell more like putrid rot and I nearly gagged. I had to borrow an old humming trick to stop myself, and it was just a warning of what was to come.
Turning a corner, I recoiled at the sight of one of the cisterns where water was held until it could be treated. The water was black, almost like sludge, but more alarming was what was emerging from the water. I wasn't even sure how to describe it -- it looked like piles of rotten meat that had congealed into a singular mass. There were pieces of corpses sticking out of the interconnected web of flesh piles that seemed to be slowly growing over the concrete walls.
I had no idea what this was, I realized, and it was like getting dunked into ice cold water. My heart seized in my chest, lurching against my ribs to the point it was painful. There wasn't anything like this in RE3 or the movies.
"Walkway is blocked," Jill noted, sounding far more calm about this than I felt. She pointed her flashlight at the large fleshmass that had engulfed the walkway that would have let us walk above the disgusting filth.
I licked my lips and swallowed my nerves, "The overalls aren't so stupid now, are they?"
"No one likes a sore winner, Rude," Jill sighed, knowing what we had to do. It was absolutely vile, but we had to walk through the rotwater.
Taking a breath, I hopped down in it, and sank up to my waist. My clothing under the overalls remained dry, but I would probably burn them after this just to be sure. Shoulder my shotgun, I walked forward while Jill followed me and I heard her swallow a gag as she did so. I ignored it in favor of watching my surroundings, inspecting the rot piles, seeing the veins of flesh that seemed to connect them.
It was then that I realized what it was.
"This is a nest," I whispered and, as if to agree with me, the inhabitants woke up to find an intruder in their home.
A creature- a monster ripped itself from the flesh pile with an awful shlucking sound that was accompanied by the sound of meat tearing. The filthy water splashed as the monster opened a single massive eye that seemed to glow in the low light. The rest of it was an amalgamation of flesh -- it wasn't quite humanoid, but it was made out of their parts. It almost looked like a crab made out of rotting meat, I thought, black slime water splashing over my visor as it raised an oversized claw with bone protrusions.
My shotgun bucked against my shoulder, the explosive ammo in the chamber striking the massive eye right in the pupil. The creature roared, recoiling from the injury before a half second later, the explosive embedded in the shot exploded. Meat and stale blood rained down on us as the monster collapsed in a heap, breaking apart now that whatever was holding it together was dead.
"Aim for the eye!" I shouted as the nest woke up around us, Jill whipping around as a creature ripped itself free behind us. I fired another shot at another monster, seeing three of them wake up in front of us. It was tempting to summon Dakka, but the situation wasn't completely out of hand.
Yet.
Clenching my jaw, I trusted Jill to have my back and fired at the nearest creature. It seemed to understand that it's eye was a weak point so it angled it away from me. That was fine. I had hand-crafted the explosive ammo to deal with Nemesis, and as freaky as these things were, they weren't Nemesis tough. A claw exploded off the monster, exposing its torso and another three shells into it blew it apart without even needing to hit the eye. The second monster hissed at me, a warbled hellish sound.
I stepped forward to meet it. A shotgun blast took off its oversized claw, and as it recoiled, a second shot destroyed its eye.
The third corpse crab, however, was already bearing down on me. Making a snap decision, I braced to take the hit. The massive claw raced down towards me and it seemed to get a lot bigger the closer it got. I could see the shattered bones that protruded from the club of rotten sinew -- broken ribs and femurs. However, Shield blocked the attack, acting as a physical barrier, and the Spellwrought tattoo on the inside of my wrist vanished.
With the monster exposed, I fired a shot at its eye and the second that it exploded, I felt myself cross the threshold to Level 6. The monsters had to be worth a decent amount of exp, I reasoned as I made my choices as fast as I could, knowing that we weren't out of the woods yet.
There wasn't much to choose from beyond the Infusions and a new spell slot opening up. Most of my choices were already made, but I quickly made a snap decision to trade out Mending for Prestidigitation. If only because of the smell.
My second choice was for the new Infusions. The Spell-Refueling Ring was a must have. My second choice was more situational. I only had so many attunement slots, and I could only have so many active Infusions at a time. I was a bit lucky, though -- I could switch out my learned Infusions when I leveled up, much like I did spells. So, it wasn't a permanent decision.
My second Infusion was Alchemy Jug. A jug that could produce a limited amount of any substance poured into it.
Like, for example, the T-Virus vaccine.
My final choice was a spell. I already had Lesser Restoration, and I wouldn't get Revivify until I got access to 3rd Level spells. For now, for the sake of utility, I chose Enlarge/Reduce. Being able to adjust my size in a pinch sounded lovely.
With my choices made, time resumed and I slammed back into my body. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Jill finishing off the last crab. The very next thing I did was use Prestidigitation, silently lamenting that I hadn't chosen the spell until now. The stench instantly vanished and I found that I could breathe again. Jill noticed it too, glancing back at me with suspicion in her eyes.
"Nanomachines?" She asked with a sigh and I cracked a smile despite the situation.
"Nanomachines," I agreed. "We need to check out the water treatment area. I don't like the fact that these things were so close," I said, pushing through the breaking down corpses with a shiver. I didn't like these things at all. I thought I had a decent enough handle at what this city could throw at me -- zombie dogs? Okay. Zombies? Sure. Giant lizard things? Got it. Spider things? Ew, but I can squish 'em. Massive tadpoles? I can handle it. Nemesis? I'd prefer not to, but I already had a plan.
These crab monsters? I had no clue what they were, why they were here or how they got here.
I especially didn't like the look of that eye.
Reaching the other side of the reservoir, I helped Jill up, who let out a groan of disgust when she saw that the disgusting water was clinging to her. Deciding to help her out, I cast Prestidigitation again and a grunt of surprise escaped her as the water ran off her body and pooled at her feet, leaving her clean and dry. "That's convenient," she remarked. "Thanks."
"What I'm here for," I said, starting the trek over to where the water treatment plant was. Since we were heading to it through the water tunnels the path was a lot straighter, so it was only a short few minutes of walking before I discovered my fears were well founded.
The water treatment plant was filled with… gunk. There weren't piles of rotting meat or anything, but the water was absolutely filthy, complete with dead rats floating in it. Climbing up via an emergency ladder, I leaned on the railing to get a better look… and it was pretty bad. "The other two can't be much better," I realized, my stomach clenching. "Oh. Crap. I showered with this water. I brushed my teeth. Ugh, I think I'm going to puke…!"
Jill's lips curled into a frown, "Something has been living in it. Look," She urged, bringing me to one of the flood gates and I saw that she was right. Something had bent the metal bars until they had all but pressed into the ceiling. Something big had crawled through that gate, and I was coming up with nothing that could fit the bill. Only Nemesis could, and he only got that big towards the end.
"Scary, but we have to do something about the water," I said, my grip tightening around the railing. If something was living down here in what had to be a couple tons of filthy runoff water, then that could explain how the T-Virus got into the water system. It would also explain how it was so… hit and miss. If it was just traces of the virus, with each water treatment plant connected to a third of the city, then it explained how some people got infected and others didn't. There were probably other factors, of course -- distance, the size of the boiler, whether someone drank straight from the tap, if they used hot or cold water, and so on.
"That's a given. What, though?" Jill prompted and I looked over at the monitoring room that overlooked the pool. She followed my gaze, and we both headed up and soon found an old school computer system that had a readout on the water's condition in various parts of the sewer. Unsurprisingly, it was all in the red.
Taking a seat in a chair, I used the keyboard that was built into the desk to start going through screens. The setup was from the early eighties, back when computers were still the size of a room. Raccoon City got the bleeding edge of the time, so it was only down to the size of a dresser. And, what I found made my eyes narrow.
"There's a purge function," I observed with a frown in my voice. That, I was fairly certain, wasn't normal. "It'll clear out the water and cycle it."
"Would that be enough?" Jill asked and I shook my head.
"No -- normally, the reservoirs on standby would be used to flush this crap out, but with how filthy the water is… best case, what's in the pipes is cleaner." I said, a plan forming and I started to fly through the menus. To my relief, all three treatment plants were on the same system and could talk to each other. "I'm going to shut the other two treatment plants down and run a bypass. That should give us enough clean water to get rid of this crap, and I'll concentrate it along the rail network."
Water pipelines tended to follow the metro network in big cities because it was convenient. They were already digging big tunnels underground, after all.
"That's not going to stop it from getting reinfected," Jill pointed out, and she was right about that.
"I'll need to create a filter," I reasoned. "Something to protect this treatment plant, something to clean whatever water does get into the pipes on the chance of lingering infection… and probably another filter back at Central Station." We had water bottles, so we could survive for a little bit, but water was too valuable a resource. Seventy thousand people would go through our reserves in a flash. "Of course, people are going to bitch about it."
"I'd rather them complain than be dead," Jill decided. "How long will this take?"
"To build the filter? An hour, maybe. Issue is that when we purge the system, it's going to get loud. And I'm worried about whatever is living here getting pissed off at us for wrecking his home," I said and, to that, Jill grimaced.
"So, things will get loud. I can handle the loud if you can handle this," Jill said and I got up, heading to the supply closet and opening it. Inside were a lot of chemicals -- industrial amounts. It wasn't everything that I wanted, but it was enough that I could make do.
"Should be," I replied before I started grabbing things. Reaching into my Bag of Holding, I pulled out my Alchemist Tool. Or, in this case, a chemistry set.
It was there that I was reminded again that time was the greatest weakness to my class. Infusions were short cuts. A design that was built on a single cornerstone -- my magic. If I removed the Infusion, then the magic left the item. A real magic item, however, was self sustaining. For that reason, it was independent of my Infusions.
The issue there, however, was time. Magic items needed time to make. Sometimes days of uninterrupted labor. Sometimes it required special materials, of which I was shit out of luck for some. I very much doubted that I was going to find any hill giants to create a Belt of Hill Giant Strength with. Though, I could probably substitute some materials. Maybe.
I could create an Alchemy Jug pretty easily. I would need to shape the clay, inscribe it, wait for it to dry, glaze it with a special magical compound, fire it, and that was it. But, again, that took time. Instead, I was forced to turn the canister with the vaccine into an Alchemy Jug. It could produce up to a gallon a day.
Well in excess of what I needed. I barely needed more than six ounces.
Infusions were instant. Only limited by the number of them I could sustain at a time. At Level 6, I got three of them. So, Bag of Holding, Spellwrought, and Spell-Refueling Ring once I was done with the Jug.
"Hey, Rude?" Jill spoke up, watching me as I got everything ready to make the filter. I would just need to replace them with whatever they had in the pipes now.
"Hm?" I hummed, watching as the chemicals boiled over a flask, straining in to a tube, and then a pale pink fiber began to curl into itself in the framework for an industrial grade water filter.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but… are you… actually smart?" Jill questioned and I paused, looking away from my work to see her watching me.
"...How exactly am I supposed to take that?" I asked flatly, cocking an eyebrow.
"Half the time you run around the place screaming, so you can't blame me for being surprised," she shot back at me, somewhat apologetically. To that, I just huffed and rolled my eyes. "It's weird seeing you do… science. You even look like you know what you're doing," she admitted.
Fair enough, I suppose. "I didn't go to school for it, if that's what you're asking. I'm self-taught, but I could be blind, drunk, and recovering from a lobotomy and I'd still out-do those hacks in Umbrella."
My intelligence was weird. I didn't feel any smarter as my Int stat went up. I didn't suddenly become Lex Luthor or anything, who could play 8D chess and plan a hundred thousand steps ahead with a million contingencies and a million contingencies for each of those contingencies. I did find that I understood things easier though. Learning was simpler. As was applying what I learned.
I'm not sure if there were some skill checks that I was passing, or if I was just generally less stupid than I was at the start. In general, though, it was me applying what I knew and utilizing my tool proficiency. The result, after about forty minutes, was a magic filter that could purify any traces of the T-Virus that passed through it. The mesh was pinkish from the vaccine that was mixed in.
Making it was only so easy because I had access to the vaccine. It was doing most of the leg work. The rest was just making the filter itself.
"Well, you'll have to get used to it. Once everything is less of a chaotic cluster fuck, I'm going to take a step back and really start cranking out what we need," I swore. That was the reason why I chose Artificer over something like Wizard.
Jill chuckled, "Let's see you put your money where your mouth is before you start bragging," She said and I did exactly that.
Initiating the purge on the treatment plant, I heard an alarm going off shortly before the water began to move. It was utterly disgusting, especially when it got to the bottom and I saw the zombies that had fallen in and sunk to the bottom. All of the waste water was pumped out into the reservoirs, which probably pumped that filth into the overflow chambers. Once the water was empty, I headed down to replace the filter while Jill was on overwatch.
I secured the filters to the intake and the outage pipes, meaning that the water coming and going from the treatment plant was double tested for the T-Virus.
It was as I was securing them that I heard it. A low, deep, rhythmic rumbling. Instantly, my gaze snapped to the busted in gate, but that was the wrong place to look I learned when Jill called out to me.
"Rude! We have company!" Jill shouted a split second before I heard her shotgun go off. In haste, I scrambled up the ladder to help her out and it was then that I saw what she meant.
Striding through the door, built like a brick shit house at seven feet tall, was a gray skinned man wearing a black trench coat and a fedora. No- not a man. A corpse. A zombie.
One whose milky white eyes zeroed in on me as it began to march with a terrible purpose.
...
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"You're going to get yourself killed if you can't run away," Jill argued through the door while inspecting the alpha version of my protective suit. It wasn't great -- rubber insulated overalls with kevlar over the legs and a leather jacket that was reinforced with duct tape. Covering my head was a motorcycle helmet with a flashlight attached, with a visor to protect my face. "The biggest advantage we have is our mobility."
"Against shamblers, sure," I replied, putting on the overalls and jacket before further reinforcing them with kevlar. I understood the argument, I did, and I knew that the suit would be a pain to run in and probably wouldn't do much if I was caught by something big, but that could be mitigated with an easy removal. And I was far more worried about all the small nasties we would find in the sewers than the big ones. Plus between the two of us and Dakka, I didn't see us doing a lot of running away. "But that's not all that we're dealing with, you know? Umbrella is going to do what they do best and make a bad situation worse."
There was a small pause on the other side of the door. "You… might have a point there. Are you worried about the virus mutating?"
"That's what it does best, and those mouth breathing morons in Umbrella's science division are going to be patting themselves on the back for 'taking advantage of a bad situation' to gather data for their next pet monster," I said, opening the door to find Jill looking at my still depressingly incomplete to-do list. There were minor things that could be managed, but the window was rapidly closing for other things, like evacuating retirement homes. Jill glanced over at me just in time to catch some kevlar padding for her arms and legs.
"You look ridiculous," Jill noted, inspecting me before looking down at the kevlar.
"Better than looking good as a corpse," I replied and Jill inclined her head, giving me the point while she strapped the protection on with practiced ease. Meanwhile, I cracked open one of the crates that were stacked up in my apartment that was helpfully labeled 'sewer adventures.' Inside of it were maps of the sewers, as up to date as I could find as of a year ago.
Given there were no super secret massive underground bases on them I doubted their validity a bit, but they were good enough for public use.
There was also a list of recommended equipment for urban spelunking. Reading it over, I gave myself a pat on the back for my foresight, and cracked open my arsenal of weapons. I had to love red states for their 'bigger is better' approach to gun laws. Even Jill seemed impressed when I started taking out barrel drums for shotguns and laying them on the table.
I passed her a stack of drum magazines, "These are loaded with custom rounds -- Dragonsbreath, slugs, and explosive. These here are your run of the mill buckshot," I said, sliding an equally large stack of normal ammo while she inspected the automatic shotgun. "It's going to be close quarters in an enclosed space."
"That's not why I'm giving you this look- wait, is that a grenade launcher?" Jill blurted, glancing over my shoulder into my gun cabinet. I did the same to see the grenade launcher leaning against an AK-47 before looking back at Jill to see that she was giving me a dull look. "Where did you even get one of those?"
I stole it from the military. It was shocking what they would just leave around. "Don't worry about it," I said, but now that she brought it up… yeah, grenade launcher. Perfect. Grabbing it, I began to fill the cylinder chamber with some stolen explosive rounds.
Jill was shaking her head, torn between amusement and exasperation. "You only say that about stuff I should be worried about," she pointed out before taking the grenade launcher from me. "Have you ever operated one of these before?"
It didn't seem wise to admit that before I found myself here, I hadn't even used a gun before. If it wasn't for the local gun range… "Fair point. Dakka will take point, then me, then you in case we have to blow something up," I decided, loading up some buckshot into the shotgun while the rest of the ammo vanished into my Bag of Holding. Between it, and my Arcane Weapon, I was feeling pretty solid.
I'd have to burn through a spell slot to bring back Dakka, but I could accept that. With some luck, maybe I could polish off level six. It was a decent level -- it gave me another spell slot, but more importantly, it gave me access to more infusions. The most important of them all being the spell refueling ring that would give me a spell slot back once a day.
It was, however, another stark reminder of my class. Time was my biggest bottleneck. If I just had a couple more days, I could have been so much better prepared. If I had spent more time leveling beforehand…
No. There was no point in dwelling on what could have been. I needed to focus on how things were and what I could do now to make sure they went my way.
"Sounds like a plan. With how things are up top, and with that thing chasing me, it'd be best to head through the sewers," Jill decided, already locked and loaded. There was a pistol strapped to her thigh, my grenade launcher hanging off her shoulder, and a shotgun in her hands. Between her and Dakka, I really didn't see the need to do much running in the near future.
She looked at me, and I supposed that between the two of us I was the expert on exploring sewers, so I hastily shoved in the tools that were left in the crate -- chain cutters, bolt cutters, battery packs, and a couple of emergency flashlights. Heading outside, I popped open the manhole while Jill stood guard, checked to make sure there were no surprises waiting for us, turned on my headlamp and started climbing down.
It felt weird being back in the sewers. It hadn't been that long since I was first down here killing zombies to grind out my first level. Here I was again, back at it. You'd think I'd be braver, but I had to say, the long dark shadows didn't help my nerves when I knew there were going to be more zombies down here than ever. Jill made her way down behind me after replacing the manhole while I rolled my shoulders, getting Dakka comfortable and ready to use.
"Okay, maybe the headlight wasn't a bad idea," Jill remarked and I just grinned before reaching into my Bag of Holding to pass her one. She rolled her eyes as she chuckled, replacing the hat she wore with a much more functional, if less appealing, hard hat. "You know where you're going?"
"More or less," I said, taking point as we began making our way through the sewers. I immediately regretted not bringing some nose plugs, because the stench was awful. "Smells a lot worse than when I was last here," I said, my shotgun braced against my shoulder as I peeked around a corner to see… Daniel. The very first zombie that I had killed. It looked like the rats had gotten to him, because he was mostly scraps of flesh clinging to bone now.
"Thousands of corpses would do that," Jill replied. There was a small beat of silence as we walked near soundlessly. I could hear the sounds of splashing echoing down the tunnels. And groaning. I kept a keen ear out, trying to locate them, but it was next to impossible with how the sound was bouncing off the grimy concrete. I tried to take comfort in that -- I wasn't entirely sure how stuff like perception checks or passive perception worked with me, but I'm guessing that if I couldn't tell where a sound was coming from, odds were a half rotten corpse couldn't either. "How many?"
"What?" I asked, making my way up to where I had hit level two.
"How many people do you think have died already?" Jill questioned and I could hear the frown in her voice.
It wasn't a question that I liked thinking about, but I'm pretty sure I had a solid estimate. "I'd say ten thousand. Maybe twenty. Not that bad, all things considered," I ventured. It was still a lot of dead people, and a lot of reanimated corpses, but Raccoon City had a population of around a hundred thousand. "It'll be more with the riots and general chaos, but… thanks to Raymond and Marvin we might have enough of the police force to actually put a lid on the destruction. The military will be less likely to pull out and so long as we keep things contained, we can avoid getting nuked."
I heard Jill stumble behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that she wore an open grimace but she didn't seem surprised. "They would do that, wouldn't they?"
"It'd be a real convenient way for Umbrella to get rid of any evidence…" I said, trailing off as I turned the corner to where I had leveled up. "Speakin' of getting rid of evidence -- I killed a half dozen zombies here like a day ago. Where are they?" I asked, barely seeing a trace of them. There was a stain from my Grease spell, and some of the other stains looked like they could be blood. But the actual bodies were all gone.
My lips thinned as I started to look around for those drainage things that were on the walls in the game. There weren't any, but I was seeing some damage to the concrete. Something big and heavy had come this way. I'm not entirely sure what they were called in the game, but those white tadpole looking things were at the top of my suspect list.
"I'm guessing we'll find out soon enough," Jill remarked, changing out her ammo type from buckshot to explosive. "Do you really think we'll be able to save seventy thousand people?" She as the barrel magazine clicked home. "I was on the streets last night. It's just… dead people, everywhere I looked."
The admission was quiet, as was the fear in her voice.
I wished I had something to say that would convince her that everything was going to be just fine, but the truth of the matter was that I was as much in the dark as she was. But it felt wrong to say so.
"It all depends on how this next part goes. I never managed to make any solid plans for this part -- the churn. Everything is a mess, a bunch of pieces are in the air, and the outcome depends on how a lot of them fall." The biggest wild card was Umbrella. They had ways of making the situation a great deal worse than it already was.
It also depended on what the General recommended to the President, Kirk Talon. If they had hope that this could be contained, then they'd send in the marines en-masse. They'd retake the city. It wouldn't be bloodless, but it was doable. However, what weighed the scales in our favor was the number of civilians that were still alive and fighting back.
I wouldn't blame the President if he nuked Raccoon City when it's population was ninety-nine thousand shambling corpses and a couple hundred civilians, all spread out through the city… I didn't like it. It didn't sit well with me. I didn't think I would have what it took to make the call myself, but I could understand why the President would push the big red button if things got that bad.
"So, why aren't we evacuating?" Jill questioned as we pressed on. "Why act like we're in this for the long haul?" I wasn't really sure where the interrogation was coming from, but it was a fair question.
My lips thinned and not for the first time, I wish I knew more about the Resident Evil series. I had watched all the movies, but some of them… it had been years since I did. "I'm worried about what happens when you drop the sun on a virus that's whole shtick is adaptation," I admitted. My knowledge of Resident Evil got spotty after Raccoon City, but what I did know was that the world ended. Things got pretty weird in the movies with Alice developing psionic powers, but this was the same setting that had super mutant undead people.
From the sound of it, I just gave Jill a new fear. "It could adapt?"
"Or worse. It could spread," I replied, my tone grim. The details on exactly how were spotty -- I wasn't even sure if it was ever directly stated. I just knew that they dropped a nuke, and then the world started dying. I had no intention of living in a Mad Max nightmare, so if I wanted to save the world, I had to contain the virus here. "There's this stuff called Cesium 137 that only appeared after the first nuclear bomb dropped. Doesn't really do anything for the most part, and it's a way to test to see if stuff like old wine really is old wine because it spread all over the place, but it won't be present in anything vacuum sealed. My worry is that the same thing will happen with the T-Virus."
There was a beat of silence, before I heard a whispered, "Fuck."
"When the military pulls their heads out of their asses, we can start evacuating the civilians. The metro connects up to Louisville, and it's a three hour round trip. Sick people, old people, kids, and the people who just aren't cut out for this," I continued. Keen Mind made itself known as I could perfectly recall the map of the sewers with no difficulty at all. Hell, I could recall the map of the sewers that Jill had wandered through in the game and compare the locations to the complete map to discover that it was halfway across the city.
Hopefully that meant we had an unbothered trek to one of the three water treatment plants of Raccoon City. All of which were pretty small, which was why there were three of them.
"The military sees that the evac isn't a shit show, that we have clear safe points and exclusion zones… no nuke, and the world is saved," I finished. There were a couple of things I could do to sweeten the pot. One of which was probably right under my feet -- the Nest.
"Provided Umbrella doesn't mess anything up," Jill added and I chuckled without any humor.
"Yeah. Provided that they don't mess anything up," I agreed. A tall order, considering that making messes is what Umbrella did best.
With that, the conversation lapsed as Jill mulled over everything I just said. I hadn't exactly kept the stakes hidden from her, but I could understand it all feeling a great deal more real now. I went through the same thing when I first arrived in this world not that long ago. With my half remembered memories it had already seemed like a herculean task, but with Keen Mind, I now knew exactly how fucked we were.
I knew more about Resident Evil than I thought I did. The lore that I had skipped through or didn't really read was suddenly remembered with perfect clarity. I still didn't know for certain how exactly the outbreak started, but I knew some of the names involved. Up to and including US Senators. My memories of the movies were still pretty spotty, as they were well beyond the one month limit to my memory.
There were also mentions of things -- links that I didn't click on when I was looking something up on a wiki. But that was an issue for another time.
Slowly, as we closed in on the first water treatment plant, the air in the sewer got worse. The stench was already rancid to the point that it burned my nose, but it slowly started to smell more like putrid rot and I nearly gagged. I had to borrow an old humming trick to stop myself, and it was just a warning of what was to come.
Turning a corner, I recoiled at the sight of one of the cisterns where water was held until it could be treated. The water was black, almost like sludge, but more alarming was what was emerging from the water. I wasn't even sure how to describe it -- it looked like piles of rotten meat that had congealed into a singular mass. There were pieces of corpses sticking out of the interconnected web of flesh piles that seemed to be slowly growing over the concrete walls.
I had no idea what this was, I realized, and it was like getting dunked into ice cold water. My heart seized in my chest, lurching against my ribs to the point it was painful. There wasn't anything like this in RE3 or the movies.
"Walkway is blocked," Jill noted, sounding far more calm about this than I felt. She pointed her flashlight at the large fleshmass that had engulfed the walkway that would have let us walk above the disgusting filth.
I licked my lips and swallowed my nerves, "The overalls aren't so stupid now, are they?"
"No one likes a sore winner, Rude," Jill sighed, knowing what we had to do. It was absolutely vile, but we had to walk through the rotwater.
Taking a breath, I hopped down in it, and sank up to my waist. My clothing under the overalls remained dry, but I would probably burn them after this just to be sure. Shoulder my shotgun, I walked forward while Jill followed me and I heard her swallow a gag as she did so. I ignored it in favor of watching my surroundings, inspecting the rot piles, seeing the veins of flesh that seemed to connect them.
It was then that I realized what it was.
"This is a nest," I whispered and, as if to agree with me, the inhabitants woke up to find an intruder in their home.
A creature- a monster ripped itself from the flesh pile with an awful shlucking sound that was accompanied by the sound of meat tearing. The filthy water splashed as the monster opened a single massive eye that seemed to glow in the low light. The rest of it was an amalgamation of flesh -- it wasn't quite humanoid, but it was made out of their parts. It almost looked like a crab made out of rotting meat, I thought, black slime water splashing over my visor as it raised an oversized claw with bone protrusions.
My shotgun bucked against my shoulder, the explosive ammo in the chamber striking the massive eye right in the pupil. The creature roared, recoiling from the injury before a half second later, the explosive embedded in the shot exploded. Meat and stale blood rained down on us as the monster collapsed in a heap, breaking apart now that whatever was holding it together was dead.
"Aim for the eye!" I shouted as the nest woke up around us, Jill whipping around as a creature ripped itself free behind us. I fired another shot at another monster, seeing three of them wake up in front of us. It was tempting to summon Dakka, but the situation wasn't completely out of hand.
Yet.
Clenching my jaw, I trusted Jill to have my back and fired at the nearest creature. It seemed to understand that it's eye was a weak point so it angled it away from me. That was fine. I had hand-crafted the explosive ammo to deal with Nemesis, and as freaky as these things were, they weren't Nemesis tough. A claw exploded off the monster, exposing its torso and another three shells into it blew it apart without even needing to hit the eye. The second monster hissed at me, a warbled hellish sound.
I stepped forward to meet it. A shotgun blast took off its oversized claw, and as it recoiled, a second shot destroyed its eye.
The third corpse crab, however, was already bearing down on me. Making a snap decision, I braced to take the hit. The massive claw raced down towards me and it seemed to get a lot bigger the closer it got. I could see the shattered bones that protruded from the club of rotten sinew -- broken ribs and femurs. However, Shield blocked the attack, acting as a physical barrier, and the Spellwrought tattoo on the inside of my wrist vanished.
With the monster exposed, I fired a shot at its eye and the second that it exploded, I felt myself cross the threshold to Level 6. The monsters had to be worth a decent amount of exp, I reasoned as I made my choices as fast as I could, knowing that we weren't out of the woods yet.
There wasn't much to choose from beyond the Infusions and a new spell slot opening up. Most of my choices were already made, but I quickly made a snap decision to trade out Mending for Prestidigitation. If only because of the smell.
My second choice was for the new Infusions. The Spell-Refueling Ring was a must have. My second choice was more situational. I only had so many attunement slots, and I could only have so many active Infusions at a time. I was a bit lucky, though -- I could switch out my learned Infusions when I leveled up, much like I did spells. So, it wasn't a permanent decision.
My second Infusion was Alchemy Jug. A jug that could produce a limited amount of any substance poured into it.
Like, for example, the T-Virus vaccine.
My final choice was a spell. I already had Lesser Restoration, and I wouldn't get Revivify until I got access to 3rd Level spells. For now, for the sake of utility, I chose Enlarge/Reduce. Being able to adjust my size in a pinch sounded lovely.
With my choices made, time resumed and I slammed back into my body. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Jill finishing off the last crab. The very next thing I did was use Prestidigitation, silently lamenting that I hadn't chosen the spell until now. The stench instantly vanished and I found that I could breathe again. Jill noticed it too, glancing back at me with suspicion in her eyes.
"Nanomachines?" She asked with a sigh and I cracked a smile despite the situation.
"Nanomachines," I agreed. "We need to check out the water treatment area. I don't like the fact that these things were so close," I said, pushing through the breaking down corpses with a shiver. I didn't like these things at all. I thought I had a decent enough handle at what this city could throw at me -- zombie dogs? Okay. Zombies? Sure. Giant lizard things? Got it. Spider things? Ew, but I can squish 'em. Massive tadpoles? I can handle it. Nemesis? I'd prefer not to, but I already had a plan.
These crab monsters? I had no clue what they were, why they were here or how they got here.
I especially didn't like the look of that eye.
Reaching the other side of the reservoir, I helped Jill up, who let out a groan of disgust when she saw that the disgusting water was clinging to her. Deciding to help her out, I cast Prestidigitation again and a grunt of surprise escaped her as the water ran off her body and pooled at her feet, leaving her clean and dry. "That's convenient," she remarked. "Thanks."
"What I'm here for," I said, starting the trek over to where the water treatment plant was. Since we were heading to it through the water tunnels the path was a lot straighter, so it was only a short few minutes of walking before I discovered my fears were well founded.
The water treatment plant was filled with… gunk. There weren't piles of rotting meat or anything, but the water was absolutely filthy, complete with dead rats floating in it. Climbing up via an emergency ladder, I leaned on the railing to get a better look… and it was pretty bad. "The other two can't be much better," I realized, my stomach clenching. "Oh. Crap. I showered with this water. I brushed my teeth. Ugh, I think I'm going to puke…!"
Jill's lips curled into a frown, "Something has been living in it. Look," She urged, bringing me to one of the flood gates and I saw that she was right. Something had bent the metal bars until they had all but pressed into the ceiling. Something big had crawled through that gate, and I was coming up with nothing that could fit the bill. Only Nemesis could, and he only got that big towards the end.
"Scary, but we have to do something about the water," I said, my grip tightening around the railing. If something was living down here in what had to be a couple tons of filthy runoff water, then that could explain how the T-Virus got into the water system. It would also explain how it was so… hit and miss. If it was just traces of the virus, with each water treatment plant connected to a third of the city, then it explained how some people got infected and others didn't. There were probably other factors, of course -- distance, the size of the boiler, whether someone drank straight from the tap, if they used hot or cold water, and so on.
"That's a given. What, though?" Jill prompted and I looked over at the monitoring room that overlooked the pool. She followed my gaze, and we both headed up and soon found an old school computer system that had a readout on the water's condition in various parts of the sewer. Unsurprisingly, it was all in the red.
Taking a seat in a chair, I used the keyboard that was built into the desk to start going through screens. The setup was from the early eighties, back when computers were still the size of a room. Raccoon City got the bleeding edge of the time, so it was only down to the size of a dresser. And, what I found made my eyes narrow.
"There's a purge function," I observed with a frown in my voice. That, I was fairly certain, wasn't normal. "It'll clear out the water and cycle it."
"Would that be enough?" Jill asked and I shook my head.
"No -- normally, the reservoirs on standby would be used to flush this crap out, but with how filthy the water is… best case, what's in the pipes is cleaner." I said, a plan forming and I started to fly through the menus. To my relief, all three treatment plants were on the same system and could talk to each other. "I'm going to shut the other two treatment plants down and run a bypass. That should give us enough clean water to get rid of this crap, and I'll concentrate it along the rail network."
Water pipelines tended to follow the metro network in big cities because it was convenient. They were already digging big tunnels underground, after all.
"That's not going to stop it from getting reinfected," Jill pointed out, and she was right about that.
"I'll need to create a filter," I reasoned. "Something to protect this treatment plant, something to clean whatever water does get into the pipes on the chance of lingering infection… and probably another filter back at Central Station." We had water bottles, so we could survive for a little bit, but water was too valuable a resource. Seventy thousand people would go through our reserves in a flash. "Of course, people are going to bitch about it."
"I'd rather them complain than be dead," Jill decided. "How long will this take?"
"To build the filter? An hour, maybe. Issue is that when we purge the system, it's going to get loud. And I'm worried about whatever is living here getting pissed off at us for wrecking his home," I said and, to that, Jill grimaced.
"So, things will get loud. I can handle the loud if you can handle this," Jill said and I got up, heading to the supply closet and opening it. Inside were a lot of chemicals -- industrial amounts. It wasn't everything that I wanted, but it was enough that I could make do.
"Should be," I replied before I started grabbing things. Reaching into my Bag of Holding, I pulled out my Alchemist Tool. Or, in this case, a chemistry set.
It was there that I was reminded again that time was the greatest weakness to my class. Infusions were short cuts. A design that was built on a single cornerstone -- my magic. If I removed the Infusion, then the magic left the item. A real magic item, however, was self sustaining. For that reason, it was independent of my Infusions.
The issue there, however, was time. Magic items needed time to make. Sometimes days of uninterrupted labor. Sometimes it required special materials, of which I was shit out of luck for some. I very much doubted that I was going to find any hill giants to create a Belt of Hill Giant Strength with. Though, I could probably substitute some materials. Maybe.
I could create an Alchemy Jug pretty easily. I would need to shape the clay, inscribe it, wait for it to dry, glaze it with a special magical compound, fire it, and that was it. But, again, that took time. Instead, I was forced to turn the canister with the vaccine into an Alchemy Jug. It could produce up to a gallon a day.
Well in excess of what I needed. I barely needed more than six ounces.
Infusions were instant. Only limited by the number of them I could sustain at a time. At Level 6, I got three of them. So, Bag of Holding, Spellwrought, and Spell-Refueling Ring once I was done with the Jug.
"Hey, Rude?" Jill spoke up, watching me as I got everything ready to make the filter. I would just need to replace them with whatever they had in the pipes now.
"Hm?" I hummed, watching as the chemicals boiled over a flask, straining in to a tube, and then a pale pink fiber began to curl into itself in the framework for an industrial grade water filter.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but… are you… actually smart?" Jill questioned and I paused, looking away from my work to see her watching me.
"...How exactly am I supposed to take that?" I asked flatly, cocking an eyebrow.
"Half the time you run around the place screaming, so you can't blame me for being surprised," she shot back at me, somewhat apologetically. To that, I just huffed and rolled my eyes. "It's weird seeing you do… science. You even look like you know what you're doing," she admitted.
Fair enough, I suppose. "I didn't go to school for it, if that's what you're asking. I'm self-taught, but I could be blind, drunk, and recovering from a lobotomy and I'd still out-do those hacks in Umbrella."
My intelligence was weird. I didn't feel any smarter as my Int stat went up. I didn't suddenly become Lex Luthor or anything, who could play 8D chess and plan a hundred thousand steps ahead with a million contingencies and a million contingencies for each of those contingencies. I did find that I understood things easier though. Learning was simpler. As was applying what I learned.
I'm not sure if there were some skill checks that I was passing, or if I was just generally less stupid than I was at the start. In general, though, it was me applying what I knew and utilizing my tool proficiency. The result, after about forty minutes, was a magic filter that could purify any traces of the T-Virus that passed through it. The mesh was pinkish from the vaccine that was mixed in.
Making it was only so easy because I had access to the vaccine. It was doing most of the leg work. The rest was just making the filter itself.
"Well, you'll have to get used to it. Once everything is less of a chaotic cluster fuck, I'm going to take a step back and really start cranking out what we need," I swore. That was the reason why I chose Artificer over something like Wizard.
Jill chuckled, "Let's see you put your money where your mouth is before you start bragging," She said and I did exactly that.
Initiating the purge on the treatment plant, I heard an alarm going off shortly before the water began to move. It was utterly disgusting, especially when it got to the bottom and I saw the zombies that had fallen in and sunk to the bottom. All of the waste water was pumped out into the reservoirs, which probably pumped that filth into the overflow chambers. Once the water was empty, I headed down to replace the filter while Jill was on overwatch.
I secured the filters to the intake and the outage pipes, meaning that the water coming and going from the treatment plant was double tested for the T-Virus.
It was as I was securing them that I heard it. A low, deep, rhythmic rumbling. Instantly, my gaze snapped to the busted in gate, but that was the wrong place to look I learned when Jill called out to me.
"Rude! We have company!" Jill shouted a split second before I heard her shotgun go off. In haste, I scrambled up the ladder to help her out and it was then that I saw what she meant.
Striding through the door, built like a brick shit house at seven feet tall, was a gray skinned man wearing a black trench coat and a fedora. No- not a man. A corpse. A zombie.
One whose milky white eyes zeroed in on me as it began to march with a terrible purpose.
...
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Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
Could be much worse. They could have sent beachboy Mr. X after you.
MaimakteriAnn
(Verified Sleepy)
- Location
- Enormous And Round Terran Homeworld
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Dr
For some reason I irrationally assumed the zombie at the end there was ODZ for a second ...
The eyeballs in the walls and crab flesh things reming me of the evil flesh things in stray. (the cat adventure game)