While Dante was trying to calm himself down, Beagle, who stood the whole fight behind shooting his rifle from a distance, took it up himself to collect the weapons and loot, leaving his companions to rest. Even though the Vipers were one, if not the poorest group of raiders in the whole Mojave, those guns could still get sold to the NCR for a few caps, rather than letting them rust near the bodies of their previous owners.
A few minutes after Beagle went into the station, Dante regained his composure, before alongside ED-E went after the ex-deputy, leaving Vito as the only one on watch. As soon as the boy and robot duo walked past the entrance, they saw Beagle holding a book in his hands, laughing like a child that just got a new toy.
"What are you holding?"
"Oh, Dante, are you better now?"
"I'm still feeling sick, but it's definitely better than before. Anyhow, what's that?"
"Well, there are quite a few books all over the wasteland that would make you smarter on some subjects, and this book in particular would make your knowledge of anything scientific increase just a little."
"That makes little sense. How could a book make you smarter instantly?"
"Here you are wrong, Dante. I've never said that it would be instantly. Not even close to that. As much as I would have loved for this to be a game and have everything magically sent into my brain, you will have to read and learn everything in the book for you to even gain that knowledge. Here, take this. I've already read it a few times."
Not waiting for Dante to respond, Beagle took a book from his backpack before handing it to the boy.
While Beagle left him alone in the station, Dante was staring at the book that was given to him, not knowing what to do with it. Should he read it or should he keep it for when they were in a safer place? Just as he was about to put the book in his backpack, a strange thought appear in his head. Thinking that it might be worth the shot, Dante deactivated his collar before using his ability on the book.
[Special book: Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor
Reward for understanding the book: increase user's knowledge related to the barter skill]
No matter how he looked at it, Dante couldn't figure out how would this work. Understanding the book won't be that hard for someone who, most of his life, read books to cure his boredom. However, how will his skill increase? Would it be instantly or over a period? Before he could make a choice, his ability answered his question for him.
[An anomaly was found inside the book… waiting for a solution… solution found… assimilation protocol online.]
"Assimilation protocol?"
[The assimilation protocol is one of the experimental protocols within ********. Should the user desire, the book can be assimilated inside the brain, thus earning the reward without wasting your precious time.
Without missing a beat, Dante accepted and in the next second, the book disappeared, leaving no trace of ever being anywhere here. Just as he thought everything was a scam, a small headache followed by some new ways of trading and bartering appeared in his head. While Dante was digesting the new information, ED-E stood beside him, beeping anxiously for a little over a minute now, watching his new friend freezing in place.
Even though he was a robot, ED-E still viewed Dante as his friend, even more so after his computer processed that he was "alive" thanks to this human teenager. Almost a minute passed since his human froze and since he didn't show any signs of waking up soon, ED-E did the most logical thing his processor could comprehend, and that was to bump into the boy. A second after it issued this command, ED-E bumped into Dante, scaring the daylight out of the boy. Caught unprepared, Dante fell to the floor, looking disoriented and confused. When he looks up, he saw ED-E, however in place, letting out a series of rather fast beeps.
"That hurt."
Seeing that ED-E didn't have even a gram of regret in his beeping, Dante could only shake his head as he got back on his feet before leaving the station together with ED-E. As soon as he walked outside, Dante saw his companions burning the bodies, not wanting to let those poor souls rot under the sun. Luckily for him, his companions were almost done, and it didn't take them more than a few more minutes before all four of them left the station.
Despite having been on the road for a few hours now, the road to the outpost was still at least three hours away from their position and with how unluckily they had been, the chances are that eventually they will once again meet raiders or worse mutated creatures. As if god was playing a trick on them, an hour after they left the station, they saw the remnants of the ant colony that Dante and Vito cleared a few days ago.
While there weren't that many ants, that those things survived was a sign that a queen had been born amongst them and if Vito's experience was anything to scoff by, that means one tough fight in the tunnels.
Any further thoughts Dant might have had on the ants were quickly driven from his head when ED-E's cannon opened fire, followed shortly by Vito's and Beagle's own weapons.
"They are coming!"
Beagle, in all of his fear, shouted, rather unnecessarily, under the circumstances. However, that didn't stop Dante from turning around to look in the direction the ex-deputy was pointing. At least he had the common sense to do it with his rifle, though, and opened fire on a small group of ants that was closing fast, skipping the sand with unnatural ferocity.
"What's wrong with them?"
"You might be right, kiddo. We must out gun them heavily and yet they keep charging!"
Sadly, for the ants that attacked, half a minute later, all six of them were now lying dead on the sand. However, all of this commotion made the rest of the ants quite volatile, and before we could even relax another wave, was more than twice as big as the first one charged towards us, this time though with a few bigger variants in the front.
The closer they got, the more detail Dante could make out, and the less he wished he could see. If the normal ants were ugly and quite horrific to look at, the slightly bigger ones were even uglier, almost making the boy regret looking at those arachnids. There were twelve of the normal kind and four of the bigger kind, and all of them seemed to be as ferocious as the first six ants. Suddenly, gunfire was heard. Sure enough, the bullet hit one of the smaller ants, killing the creature in one clean shot through the head. A few other similar gunshots were heard, and it threw sand and blood up around as the explosive projectiles detonated thunderously, tearing two ants apart.
In all honesty, as soon as the gunfire stopped and with it any of the ants, Dante and his companions saw what it left of the ants, a bloody mess.
"Damn, that's an anti-material rifle at work if I ever saw one. Those ants didn't even know what hit them."
< Just change "3" with "e" Patr3on Link : https://patr3on.com/meatbunkun>