Bullets collided with the shield wall at the front of the army as several Avatars opened fire. Flashes of translucent blue, white, and green appeared before the tank types as
It was day three since leaving Arconette, the army having just passed Arid Junction, the ghost town in the Contaminated Zone. On numerous occasions over the last 48 hours, the Avatars had been performing hit and run attacks with an unknown goal. The first time it happened, a few people with a high Perception stat heard a few Avatars, alerting the rest of the army to the attack.
Unfortunately, the Avatars got much better at this rather quickly. Instead of deploying Avatars to meet the army, some were positioned along their path ahead of time. It didn’t matter how good your hearing was if a robot sat in silence, making no noise until humans crossed its path.
To counter this, Nikolas and Ezio decided to periodically alter their path, making it a little more difficult for Chernobyl to preemptively place Avatars along their expected trajectory. It slowed the army down, but it kept them safer. Even so, they could never be completely safe.
Earlier that day, the army had finally gotten its first casualties. An undetected Avatar had waited until the humans walked into its line of sight, hiding within a cave, then opened fire on the unsuspecting people. With the increased reaction time from their stats, a wall of
It didn’t matter how good of a healer you had if you got shot through the head by a turret. A bullet shot straight through one man’s head and into the person behind him, only for another bullet to decapitate a different man’s head as it struck him just above the sternum. Another had blasted off a woman’s arm, hitting her in the bicep right as the shields appeared.
Just like that, two people had died and multiple were in critical condition. They hadn’t fallen in some grand battle, hell they had fought over a thousand Avatars and decisively won. Instead, it had been a random incident, an otherwise completely unimportant moment that had taken their lives. Lilith and Axton took out the Avatar responsible, but it didn’t bring back the fallen from The Mall. Neither had been a Completionist, it seemed the Avatars were targeting their back lines and trimming their numbers.
The drop in morale was immense. They had all gone into this knowing that there would be deaths, but this hadn’t been expected. Knowing you might get killed in battle, fighting to save someone’s life and giving your own to do so was one thing, but getting killed while doing nothing significant? That was different.
Nerves were high after the repeated small scale attacks, and after the deaths a fight had almost broken out amongst the humans. The party members of the fallen angrily confronted another man from The Mall, someone who was known to have the skill
That didn’t ease their anger. Trying to stop emotionally charged people with superpowers from fighting someone they blamed for their friends’ deaths was difficult, but thankfully no one was hurt too badly. A few members of the angry party had their arms broken to stop them from doing something they’d regret, but there were enough healers nearby to easily patch them up once they cooled off.
The dismembered woman who was missing an arm survived, but she was down a limb.
They couldn’t just place the woman’s arm flush with the stump, there was too much of it that was missing. She had been hit in the bicep, but the bullet had obliterated a lot of flesh. If they managed to reattach what was left, one arm would be drastically shorter than the other. Additionally, nobody could reattach it. A healer from the Completionist claimed he had done it before, but that had been a clean cut. Fixing dismemberment on this scale was still beyond the capabilities of those present, even beyond the strongest healers available.
Erika, the woman in question, was unfortunately a ranger type. She had gone into shock from the experience, and hours later she still wasn’t doing well mentally. She begged for someone to gather up what was left of her arm, for someone to put it in their
They couldn’t send her back, that would be too dangerous. She had to stay with the army, her eyes switching between hollow vacancy and overwhelming sorrow. Teresa felt nothing but sympathy for the poor girl, finding her reaction to be frighteningly familiar. The mood amongst the army was morbid, making conversation had become a herculean task. Nobody spoke except to convey information, and those with a higher Perception could hear Erika whisper to herself about how she wished she had just been shot in the head, to get it over with.
Her party members were doing their best to help her, but there was only so much that could be done. They could comfort her, talk to her, but they couldn’t grow back her arm. The world of magical abilities that she had grown accustomed to had been taken away, leaving her with a status screen full of skills she couldn’t use anymore.
If Teresa still had her crossbow, she would have offered it to Erika once she felt it was safe to do so, but Mathew still had the crossbow. There were also a few guns that Erika could use, but nobody felt comfortable giving her one yet. Not to mention, Erika didn’t have a skill to conjure Mana bullets for a gun. Her skills were focused on bows and arrows, not firearms.
Movement was slowed even more as scouting increased. Lilith and several light warrior types from the Completionists had to check each and every cave they were set to pass. In terrain where caves, hills, and ravines were commonplace, this took a little while even for the powerful scouts.
On the bright side, they successfully found multiple Avatars that were positioned to ambush the advancing army. The scouts searched a wide berth of land and found Avatars scattered in wait everywhere. They now assumed every cave had something that wanted to kill them until proven otherwise, it was safer that way.
Things were progressing at a steady pace until a Completionist scout didn’t come back.
A few scouts were responsible for clearing out the caves to either side of the army, even if they weren’t planning on passing those particular caves. It was to keep the number of Avatars capable of attacking from the flank to a controlled minimum. If they ignored too many caves, then a robot army would be able to completely surround the humans. Additionally, having scouts on either side of the human army could function as an early alert system should an attack be imminent.
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They were expected to return to report anything they had seen periodically, though one of the scouts to the east had not been seen in hours. As a result, the army stopped advancing and stopped sending scouts out. Those who returned stayed, while everyone remained on high alert.
“What’s the plan?” Teresa asked as she approached Ezio and Nikolas, her hand covering her mouth.
“We’re discussing that still, it’s a tricky situation.” Nikolas responded, also covering his mouth. “If we send people to find Yuki we’ll be splitting up our forces. We would be vulnerable, and so would the search party.”
“I don’t know if we have a choice.” Ezio said. “His party is refusing to advance unless we look for him. If we lose them too, we’ll be down four Completionists, we can’t afford that already.”
“Four?” Teresa asked.
“Their party only has four people in it, not five.”
“I understand. Maybe we should go look for him then. If there’s something capable of taking out a Completionist, we should address it now.” Teresa said.
“There is some truth to that, but we’ve had too many delays. Every day Chernobyl will produce stronger Avatars, faster than what we can keep up with. We’ve barely gotten the chance to level up ourselves since the first big attack, everything has been avoiding us. We think the Avatars destroyed a few Radioactive Portals to prevent us from getting the experience.” Ezio said.
“Then there’s our other concern.” Nikolas continued. “We haven’t heard any fighting from the east. Yuki is level 64, if anything happened then we should have heard something.”
“I could understand it if we lost a Completionist due to an attack, but for it to be completely silent? The Avatars aren’t exactly quiet when they fight.” Ezio said.
“Maybe he was abducted.” Teresa offered. “He was a Completionist, so that means he’s royalty, right? When I got attacked ages ago by invaders they mentioned my ‘Royal Soul’ so maybe there’s a connection there.”
“I suppose that’s possible, but to go completely silent?” Ezio asked.
“I’m sure there are some skills that could assist in that. You guys sound proofed your town hall somehow, could that happen out here?” Teresa asked.
“That would require a lot of preparation, to say the least. They’d have to predict Yuki would enter a specific, confined area… It is entirely possible, now that you mention it.” Ezio said, concerned. “That’s a closely guarded secret, the ‘sound proofing’ you mention. Very few know how it works, but a multiversal invader might have a lot more information on the theory that goes into it.”
“You mind spilling the beans then? I get we both have our own secrets, but this could jeopardize our lives. How does it work?” Teresa asked.
“It’s complicated, honestly I don’t know all the details myself. A librarian got a book in the Tutorial that gave instructions for a basic inscription. You grind up Mana Crystals, mix it into a putty or chalk, then draw a pattern across multiple surfaces to catch the sound. It requires a steady stream of Monster Cores, the higher the level the longer they last. It also requires someone with
That was definitely something that sounded interesting to Teresa, but she could leave that for later. Between alchemy, new spells, and a murderous nuclear power plant, she had enough on her mind.
“It could also be someone with a skill that puts people to sleep, that seems pretty common.” Teresa continued. “One of the invaders had a skill for that, and if I remember correctly one of the Completionists still in Arconette has a skill like that as well.”
“There are a lot of possibilities.” Nikolas said. “No matter what happened, it poses a threat to the entire operation. We need our scouts to keep scouting, and we can’t do that if something is picking them off. I don’t want another delay either, but this isn’t something we get to ignore.”
The group stayed silent for a few moments as they thought about the situation, processing the information they had. Teresa was inclined to agree with Nikolas for a variety of reasons, though she could still see where Ezio was coming from. Every delay meant stronger Avatars, meaning more potential casualties down the road. Then again, not addressing the situation could lead to a lot of casualties, perhaps even with a purely utilitarian lens they had to figure out what was happening. From a more humane standpoint, they also shouldn’t start leaving people behind.
“We’ll go east.” Ezio conceded. “Everyone will. I’ll tell Axton and Mordecai to keep an eye on Yuki’s party members so they don’t go running off without us, we’ll advance like we have been. Scouts will need to travel in pairs, so our advance will be even slower, but this isn’t something we can ignore.”
“Why not send a small squad out to handle it?” Teresa asked. “If Yuki’s party members are all Completionists, why not let them search on their own? I don’t want to sound callous here or anything, it’s just that they might be quicker that way.”
“Our forces are already being spread thin enough with our scouting, and we can’t assume they’re enough on their own. There are things even a full party of Completionists can’t handle, let alone three Completionists who aren’t thinking straight.” Ezio said.
“Okay, but what if we take too long and don’t find anything? What if the threat will see our numbers and continue to lay low? What if this is Chernobyl’s way of slowing us down so it can get even stronger?” Teresa asked. “There are too many ways for it to go wrong if we proceed slowly. Let’s say we all go out there and find nothing, at what point do we call it quits and continue on? I doubt you’ll be able to convince Yuki’s party to leave without any evidence of what happened to him.”
“There are also a lot of ways for it to go wrong if we proceed too quickly.” Ezio countered. “Everything we do in strategizing is to mitigate risks, not exacerbate them.”
“Then let’s set up a trap.” Nikolas offered. “Send in a small search party that we can expect to be attacked, then once they are we send in the cavalry.”
“I suppose we could let Yuki’s party run off in search of him.” Ezio pondered, both of them making Teresa more than a little concerned.
“Whoah slow down there, we accepted the idea of using human bait a little too fast don’t you think?” She said. “People aren’t chess pieces.”
“Do you have another idea?” Ezio asked. “I’ll happily hear another plan out if you’ve got one.”
“I don’t, but still. The way you made it sound felt like you didn’t want to inform Yuki’s party of the plan.”
“They might not like the plan. They’re angry, and angry people are irrational. What if they’re not onboard with it?”
“Then we don’t make them do it, the hell do you mean what if they’re not onboard with it?” Teresa asked.
“I know I was the one who proposed using a small search party as bait, but I was still under the assumption they would be informed too.” Nikolas said.
“We’re not mastermind manipulators Ezio, leaving them out of the loop can only go poorly. We just gotta give it to them straight and tell them the plan.” Teresa said.
“You think that’ll work? Telling them we’re going to use them as bait?” Ezio asked. Teresa shrugged.
“If they don’t like the plan, the plan shouldn’t be acted upon. We can also find another party willing to go through with it should they decline. I understand that you’re in a stressful position, Ezio, but we can’t stop thinking of people as people.” Teresa replied. Another moment passed while Ezio thought.
“Alright.” He said. “Let’s go tell them.”