The Prodding Enemy
Fighting the Undead wears you out. They keep coming back if you don’t crush their heads and burnt them to a crisp. The undead functions through the will of the Necromancer and with the miasma of death increasing; the power of the caster increases as well.
I swung the sword I got from one of the dead and cleaved the spine of an undead. The sole of my my boot crunching its skull.
“A-san! Need some assistance!”
I moved my exhausted body and used the sword to deflect a flesh golem’s strike. Kei moves under the arm, thrusting a retaliating strike under the armpit of the golem. Eta swings her two-handed from bottom to up with such ferocity I can feel the force of her swing. I can also hear her augments creaking, the tiny moving parts inside groaning at the overuse of her augments. Kei’s cane shatters the flesh golem with an incendiary grenade, and burns it to a crisp.
Flesh golems are not a problem usually. Problem is the concrete plating the golem has. Flesh golems are resilient, but the armoring of these golems make them able to take more damage than usual. And banging your weapons on concrete, even with augments is not wise.
The resiliency of a flesh golem and then a set of armor made to resist them dulls our blade weapons faster than we can kill them. Eta is kneeling. She takes a cooling shot and injects it straight into her veins. She’s heating up so bad I can see a faint glow under her arms. Cyberware and bioware differ in procedures and approach. Most prefer easily replaceable and cheap augs like Eta has since any Surgeon can outfit them and you don’t spend a fortune for reserving and the waiting list is hellish.
Just in case she runs a diagnosis mode on her augments. Most of her augments are holding, but the rattle of each strike on her organs, the vibration on her bones seems to have shook her. Applying an auto-syringe on her neck. She makes seizure-like movements before gathering her wits about. The undead has changed drastically for the past five days. The increase in miasma means we have to make sure to keep our sanity check all the time. Some have taken in focus-pills to hyper focus themselves on the end goal while others are starting to play safe. The Draugr who turned into a Wight, and now a Scourge has been empowered by the death we displayed. It’s unavoidable when fighting the undead.
The room where we are in is a vantage point. From here the view of the newly constructed palace made from the concrete and plywood of the lanes now stood tall. With rounded walls, and thick concrete walls mixed with all sorts of materials; reinforcing the walls to such a degree it is hard to permanently damage them, especially when you have a creature who can manipulate concrete on the enemy's side. It doesn’t help the undead can use the concrete so efficiently and attempts from snipers, precision bombs, and Graded Agents have been useless because of the concrete reinforcement the ability provides to the undead horde. The enemy is sentient and it has enough wits to understand how much of an asset the concrete manipulating creature is.
“Assistant, there’s a poll two years ago about resurrected ancient warriors and their legends. How would they fare in our modern times? The result was 60% thought they can’t possibly do something when we have so many long range weapons and advanced minds. The rest of the survey said these creatures are be able to do something. I guess the folks who said they can are grinning up their now.”
Strategy. Attention to details. The right pawns to deploy. Countermeasures. The Scourge we’re fighting has been impressive. It manages to understand our movements, anticipate and use its greatest strength, the miasma and the ability to resurrect the dead to exhaust the Associates, and when we think we’re done. The Scourge has been sending kill teams, armed to the teeth undead with concrete-based weapons and armors to decimate us. Their greatest strength against our number so far has been their ability to perform shield wall tactics. The undead, although not proficient with the spears they are throwing, are able to do damage by throwing them recklessly at us. They also like fighting in areas where there is little visibility, using the fog of miasma to their advantage. And in the lanes, they are able to use this tactic to cripple the hand trying to feed us and have been launching critical strikes against the supply team to the point we have to allocate Associates to the defense of the supply lines. Why are we not bombing them? Using air vehicles? Because burning the lanes will cause an influx of refugees to flood into the city. It also doesn’t guarantee the undead will perish when so far it's been shown the undead are able to make use of the flesh pits and the tunnel systems below the lanes to avoid mortar fire. The tunnel systems, and the service areas below are now like an intestines. The last team who tried venturing there didn’t eat for two days. Saying that the view was so horrible and disgusting they’d need some time before they can eat anything with meat on it again.
Not to mention the flesh golems have been carrying thick concrete walls to defend against RPG’s and mortar rounds. When the flesh golem is defeated, the undead will just assimilate their flesh to keep the golem active and they even have started to put fire out. The mud water they are using is thick enough to stick to surfaces and have been their go-to against incendiary rounds, and bombs. Just this incursion alone has made us catalog new types of flesh golem. Our enemy has wits and isn’t as brain dead as we thought it should be. Even in death, a warrior remains a warrior and I guess even our ‘superiority’ doesn’t stop this Scourge from having common sense when it comes to fighting against an overwhelmingly strong opponent. Poking defenses, testing the waters, and finally understanding what we will and will not do seems to have been the intention of the monster of the lane when fighting us.
Eta secures the room. Kei tunes in her equipment and takes pictures of the lanes. The lights are still on and I see the lightshow behind the lanes' towering tenements; the skyscrapers, and the platform of Upper Changye held by eight pillars. Light beams seem to race up only for the very platform itself to stop them. The districts aren’t as bad here, and although the district apartments and tenements don’t stack up on another creating this chaotic appearance.
“Miss the City?”
“I just hate the smell here. LC has acrid air. It smells of exhaust and sweat and people and smoke from fast foods and restaurants and you know what? I prefer the smell of LC than the smell of the lanes.”
“Can’t disagree with that. Too bad we can’t just go and bomb this anomaly now. Know why?”
She raises a finger. Her tone’s soft despite the exhaustion on her grimy face. She’s starting to smell. Not as bad as Eta who is always fighting, but the professional in me doesn’t need to mention that.
“Because someone needs them.”
“Precisely. When you were out purging with El. I had the displeasure of speaking with our Associates who are interested in the acquisition of the Undead and the Anomaly.”
Her face could scare a kid or two. She has this bite on her tone. I can somewhat guess why the Associates want to study and capture these specimens don’t care about those who capture them, and honestly despite how much I want to say they are insufferable. Most of the tech we use and how we kill these monsters better are because of these associates who are heartlessly pragmatic.
“They told me the undead have quite the magical solution. Although the brain should have rotted many years ago, the consciousness remained. The Ego of the Undead is still intact despite the years. My assistant, if you only know how unhinged these assholes are and how I’d like nothing more than to punch them in the head.”
“But we can’t since they’ll pay us.”
“Such is money. All that is good needs money! It’s all about money, A! We risk our lives for money and then spend more money so we can fix ourselves and do more risky jobs to spend and lose money. Such a vicious cycle. Not even ‘winning the lottery’ is considered lucky nowadays.”
“This is just life now. Honestly, we have it better than the poor sods who can’t even fight back. How do you even like that? Be willfully ignorant about the dangers of the outside world.”
“A-kun, you sure speak like it's from the bottom of your heart sometimes.”
“They can escape the lanes if they want to. It’s themselves saying they can’t do it. They cannot win against the mentality the lanes gave them. They are afraid of what comes next after leaving the shit bubble they call home.”
“You know what, Assistant. I’m going to call you Akun now.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“Guess that means you're fine with.”
Eta slides into a corner and takes a rest. I can see the steam coming out of her body and she is sweating profusely despite her cooling jacket chilling her body.
“I need her to change her Augs one day.”
“Eta? I think her Augs are fine. I think you need to change or upgrade the cooling unit of her augs.”
Behind her arms are these tiny openings where the cooled air is coming out. She’s not as heavily augmented as Elvira, but the augmentation procedures she went through is barely keeping up with her new augments. Flesh can be trained or enhanced to match steel, but there is certainty in steel that bio-ware augs just don't have. It doesn’t matter if you have a pain editor, because flesh bleeds while steel only dents. You can’t feel steel, but you sure as hell can feel flesh your skin tear and bruise. It’s not a surprise many prefer to mutilate their bodies to keep up with the ever-changing world.
I never really got into the idea. Replacing your body with steel and chrome is weird to me. I wouldn't worry about taking some serum to improve my condition and make myself physically better, but cutting a part of yourself and replace it with metal is something I’d never understand. I’m not a purist either who’d complain about a prosthetic in this day and age. The maintenance alone is tiresome and don't get me started on the housing unit and the upgrades you need on your frontal cortex and nervous system to handle the feedback of using the Augments. Importantly, the payments you need for your augs are usually harsh and just makes you vulnerable to Gearheads who knows how to string you like a puppet.
But one thing about being partly machine is you can resist the dread of the monsters. The miasma is less effective on you and ocular systems are effective in dispelling illusions and can pierce through their veil of lies easily.
“Akun, hey, Assistant of mine, we moved here.”
I look at the equipment and move the camera slowly until we spotted the target. Kei increases the magnification of the equipment and we saw something worse than we ever thought.
Four arms. Two heads. Covered in intricate bone armor reinforced with concrete. Adorned with beautiful symbols. A staff brimming with so much miasmic energy we can feel it from our vantage point. Then, as if noticing our glare, sends this diabolical energy our way.
Kei dodged late. She fell on the floor clutching her neck, trying to rip the chainmail and body armor off her to claw her chest. I restrained her on the floor and stabbed her neck with an adrenaline shot. Her eyes rolled and after a second she spits out a mouthful of blood. I poured anointed oil on her and then wrapped her neck with a talisman and peeled the purity seals off her holsters.
“You almost got cursed to death.”
“Should have pulled me out fast if you saw it coming! Anyway, ugh, we need to report this. We got a Dreadlord in the lanes!.”
If it can throw a curse like that, then there is no doubt the undead evolved again to an even more dangerous variant of itself.
The Prodding Enemy
Fighting the Undead wears you out. They keep coming back if you don’t crush their heads and burnt them to a crisp. The undead functions through the will of the Necromancer and with the miasma of death increasing; the power of the caster increases as well.
I swung the sword I got from one of the dead and cleaved the spine of an undead. The sole of my my boot crunching its skull.
“A-san! Need some assistance!”
I moved my exhausted body and used the sword to deflect a flesh golem’s strike. Kei moves under the arm, thrusting a retaliating strike under the armpit of the golem. Eta swings her two-handed from bottom to up with such ferocity I can feel the force of her swing. I can also hear her augments creaking, the tiny moving parts inside groaning at the overuse of her augments. Kei’s cane shatters the flesh golem with an incendiary grenade, and burns it to a crisp.
Flesh golems are not a problem usually. Problem is the concrete plating the golem has. Flesh golems are resilient, but the armoring of these golems make them able to take more damage than usual. And banging your weapons on concrete, even with augments is not wise.
The resiliency of a flesh golem and then a set of armor made to resist them dulls our blade weapons faster than we can kill them. Eta is kneeling. She takes a cooling shot and injects it straight into her veins. She’s heating up so bad I can see a faint glow under her arms. Cyberware and bioware differ in procedures and approach. Most prefer easily replaceable and cheap augs like Eta has since any Surgeon can outfit them and you don’t spend a fortune for reserving and the waiting list is hellish.
Just in case she runs a diagnosis mode on her augments. Most of her augments are holding, but the rattle of each strike on her organs, the vibration on her bones seems to have shook her. Applying an auto-syringe on her neck. She makes seizure-like movements before gathering her wits about. The undead has changed drastically for the past five days. The increase in miasma means we have to make sure to keep our sanity check all the time. Some have taken in focus-pills to hyper focus themselves on the end goal while others are starting to play safe. The Draugr who turned into a Wight, and now a Scourge has been empowered by the death we displayed. It’s unavoidable when fighting the undead.
The room where we are in is a vantage point. From here the view of the newly constructed palace made from the concrete and plywood of the lanes now stood tall. With rounded walls, and thick concrete walls mixed with all sorts of materials; reinforcing the walls to such a degree it is hard to permanently damage them, especially when you have a creature who can manipulate concrete on the enemy's side. It doesn’t help the undead can use the concrete so efficiently and attempts from snipers, precision bombs, and Graded Agents have been useless because of the concrete reinforcement the ability provides to the undead horde. The enemy is sentient and it has enough wits to understand how much of an asset the concrete manipulating creature is.
“Assistant, there’s a poll two years ago about resurrected ancient warriors and their legends. How would they fare in our modern times? The result was 60% thought they can’t possibly do something when we have so many long range weapons and advanced minds. The rest of the survey said these creatures are be able to do something. I guess the folks who said they can are grinning up their now.”
Strategy. Attention to details. The right pawns to deploy. Countermeasures. The Scourge we’re fighting has been impressive. It manages to understand our movements, anticipate and use its greatest strength, the miasma and the ability to resurrect the dead to exhaust the Associates, and when we think we’re done. The Scourge has been sending kill teams, armed to the teeth undead with concrete-based weapons and armors to decimate us. Their greatest strength against our number so far has been their ability to perform shield wall tactics. The undead, although not proficient with the spears they are throwing, are able to do damage by throwing them recklessly at us. They also like fighting in areas where there is little visibility, using the fog of miasma to their advantage. And in the lanes, they are able to use this tactic to cripple the hand trying to feed us and have been launching critical strikes against the supply team to the point we have to allocate Associates to the defense of the supply lines. Why are we not bombing them? Using air vehicles? Because burning the lanes will cause an influx of refugees to flood into the city. It also doesn’t guarantee the undead will perish when so far it's been shown the undead are able to make use of the flesh pits and the tunnel systems below the lanes to avoid mortar fire. The tunnel systems, and the service areas below are now like an intestines. The last team who tried venturing there didn’t eat for two days. Saying that the view was so horrible and disgusting they’d need some time before they can eat anything with meat on it again.
Not to mention the flesh golems have been carrying thick concrete walls to defend against RPG’s and mortar rounds. When the flesh golem is defeated, the undead will just assimilate their flesh to keep the golem active and they even have started to put fire out. The mud water they are using is thick enough to stick to surfaces and have been their go-to against incendiary rounds, and bombs. Just this incursion alone has made us catalog new types of flesh golem. Our enemy has wits and isn’t as brain dead as we thought it should be. Even in death, a warrior remains a warrior and I guess even our ‘superiority’ doesn’t stop this Scourge from having common sense when it comes to fighting against an overwhelmingly strong opponent. Poking defenses, testing the waters, and finally understanding what we will and will not do seems to have been the intention of the monster of the lane when fighting us.
Eta secures the room. Kei tunes in her equipment and takes pictures of the lanes. The lights are still on and I see the lightshow behind the lanes' towering tenements; the skyscrapers, and the platform of Upper Changye held by eight pillars. Light beams seem to race up only for the very platform itself to stop them. The districts aren’t as bad here, and although the district apartments and tenements don’t stack up on another creating this chaotic appearance.
“Miss the City?”
“I just hate the smell here. LC has acrid air. It smells of exhaust and sweat and people and smoke from fast foods and restaurants and you know what? I prefer the smell of LC than the smell of the lanes.”
“Can’t disagree with that. Too bad we can’t just go and bomb this anomaly now. Know why?”
She raises a finger. Her tone’s soft despite the exhaustion on her grimy face. She’s starting to smell. Not as bad as Eta who is always fighting, but the professional in me doesn’t need to mention that.
“Because someone needs them.”
“Precisely. When you were out purging with El. I had the displeasure of speaking with our Associates who are interested in the acquisition of the Undead and the Anomaly.”
Her face could scare a kid or two. She has this bite on her tone. I can somewhat guess why the Associates want to study and capture these specimens don’t care about those who capture them, and honestly despite how much I want to say they are insufferable. Most of the tech we use and how we kill these monsters better are because of these associates who are heartlessly pragmatic.
“They told me the undead have quite the magical solution. Although the brain should have rotted many years ago, the consciousness remained. The Ego of the Undead is still intact despite the years. My assistant, if you only know how unhinged these assholes are and how I’d like nothing more than to punch them in the head.”
“But we can’t since they’ll pay us.”
“Such is money. All that is good needs money! It’s all about money, A! We risk our lives for money and then spend more money so we can fix ourselves and do more risky jobs to spend and lose money. Such a vicious cycle. Not even ‘winning the lottery’ is considered lucky nowadays.”
“This is just life now. Honestly, we have it better than the poor sods who can’t even fight back. How do you even like that? Be willfully ignorant about the dangers of the outside world.”
“A-kun, you sure speak like it's from the bottom of your heart sometimes.”
“They can escape the lanes if they want to. It’s themselves saying they can’t do it. They cannot win against the mentality the lanes gave them. They are afraid of what comes next after leaving the shit bubble they call home.”
“You know what, Assistant. I’m going to call you Akun now.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“Guess that means you're fine with.”
Eta slides into a corner and takes a rest. I can see the steam coming out of her body and she is sweating profusely despite her cooling jacket chilling her body.
“I need her to change her Augs one day.”
“Eta? I think her Augs are fine. I think you need to change or upgrade the cooling unit of her augs.”
Behind her arms are these tiny openings where the cooled air is coming out. She’s not as heavily augmented as Elvira, but the augmentation procedures she went through is barely keeping up with her new augments. Flesh can be trained or enhanced to match steel, but there is certainty in steel that bio-ware augs just don't have. It doesn’t matter if you have a pain editor, because flesh bleeds while steel only dents. You can’t feel steel, but you sure as hell can feel flesh your skin tear and bruise. It’s not a surprise many prefer to mutilate their bodies to keep up with the ever-changing world.
I never really got into the idea. Replacing your body with steel and chrome is weird to me. I wouldn't worry about taking some serum to improve my condition and make myself physically better, but cutting a part of yourself and replace it with metal is something I’d never understand. I’m not a purist either who’d complain about a prosthetic in this day and age. The maintenance alone is tiresome and don't get me started on the housing unit and the upgrades you need on your frontal cortex and nervous system to handle the feedback of using the Augments. Importantly, the payments you need for your augs are usually harsh and just makes you vulnerable to Gearheads who knows how to string you like a puppet.
But one thing about being partly machine is you can resist the dread of the monsters. The miasma is less effective on you and ocular systems are effective in dispelling illusions and can pierce through their veil of lies easily.
“Akun, hey, Assistant of mine, we moved here.”
I look at the equipment and move the camera slowly until we spotted the target. Kei increases the magnification of the equipment and we saw something worse than we ever thought.
Four arms. Two heads. Covered in intricate bone armor reinforced with concrete. Adorned with beautiful symbols. A staff brimming with so much miasmic energy we can feel it from our vantage point. Then, as if noticing our glare, sends this diabolical energy our way.
Kei dodged late. She fell on the floor clutching her neck, trying to rip the chainmail and body armor off her to claw her chest. I restrained her on the floor and stabbed her neck with an adrenaline shot. Her eyes rolled and after a second she spits out a mouthful of blood. I poured anointed oil on her and then wrapped her neck with a talisman and peeled the purity seals off her holsters.
“You almost got cursed to death.”
“Should have pulled me out fast if you saw it coming! Anyway, ugh, we need to report this. We got a Dreadlord in the lanes!.”
If it can throw a curse like that, then there is no doubt the undead evolved again to an even more dangerous variant of itself.
