Brush tickled at my exposed skin, as it lay over me and my rifle. Only the silvery tip was visible, as I slid the barrel on the ground to take aim and watched the approaching patrol. The goblins walked side by side along the cracked stone road, chatting with one another in their primal tongue. One, with a green mane, had a shield and a bladed polearm, tapping away as he led the group. The others: one archer, one spear-goblin, and two club goblins, followed behind him in a kind of makeshift v-formation. Inhale, squeeze my eye shut. Follow the shielded goblin for a step until he's closer. Fire.
The gun roared to life, and the shielded goblin collapsed to its side while the rest scattered toward the cover of the trees. It tried to stand, but fell face forward, and pulled itself toward the nearest tree; leaving a trail of bright red along the bright gray stones of the unkempt cobblestone highway, before it finally lay still a few feet away from where it had started.
I shifted the rifle and took aim at the fleeing archer, who was now fumbling for an arrow out of its quiver. The rack slid with a pull and pushed a bullet into the chamber with a hard shove, and the gun roared to life and kicked my shoulder and a handful of dust at a pull of the trigger. Gunsmoke curled from the barrel and joined the puffy white clouds floating in the blue sky above the thick canopy of interlocking leaves.
The goblins had run in such a way that I couldn't follow them with my rifle. I fired once, but the Goblin zig-zagged, and the bullet whiffed through the air and tore off a couple of leaves as it sailed by. Reracking a bullet would take too much time, and it would get to cover before I managed to do so, I figured. I set the rifle down softly in the duff, sprang up from my cover, and unholstered my pistol. The semi-automatic gun roared with each trigger pull. Once. Twice. And on the third time, I managed to hit the sword using a goblin right between the shoulder blades. It collapsed to the ground and twitched until it was dead.
Now that I was out of my cover, one of the club-using goblins pivoted on their heel and charged for me. I aimed and fired. Once. Twice. Thrice. Four times until the bullet slammed into its shoulder, and it dropped its weapon. Five times and the bullet punched a hole through its throat. It gasped as all the air escaped from the hole in its windpipe.
The other goblin, taking cues from the fourth, now dead one, charged along the treeline: keeping to the cover for most of the time. I fired once. The bullet slammed into the trunk of a tree: splintering the rotting wood into black shards that exploded out from the newly-bored hole. I fired again, and this bullet flew beyond the treeline, and into somewhere beyond.
"Shit."
Quickly, I pushed the button to remove the clip and fumbled through my pocket for another. Noticing this, the goblin sprinted out of the tree line and charged. Before I could find another clip, the club crashed against my side and rang the cuirass like a bell. I staggered and dropped the pistol. I retreated a step and pulled out my sword.
Wait for it to commit to a swing, step back, and exploit the opening in the best way you see fit.
Alright.
The goblin pulled its club over its head and swung down hard aimed at my head. I stepped out of the way, and the overcommitted goblin's swing missed, and slammed against the ground instead. A downward arc of my longsword slices through the scale and bone of both of the creature's wrists. It screamed and pulled away. I stepped forward and cleaved its skull in two with a downward stroke. I take a breath.
"Is that all?"
Yes. Good job.
I breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on the side of the road to catch my breath. That worked a lot better than I expected. Ambushes sure are something. I'll rest here for a bit before looking for where they're coming from. I had packed a little surprise for their group.
Now to see the fruits of my labor. I pulled out my PID and read through the notifications.
[Rifle Mastery +5%, Pistol Mastery +3%, Sword Mastery +2% Reflexes Mastery +1%]
[Goblin Patrol Eliminated, +$1,000, +3% All Stats]
[Anima Manipulation Increased from F+ to E-. Anima Bullet Unlocked]
[Anima Bullet F- 0.0%]
Finally! I got something useful. I navigated through the PID to the skill section and clicked on Anima Bullet to see what tasks I had to use to increase its rank.
DRINK THE HEART BLOOD OF 50 CREATURES 0/50
REWARD
20% MASTERY, 10% MASTER IN ANIMA MANIPULATION
KILL 100 ENEMIES WITH AN ANIMA-INFUSED BULLET
30% MASTERY, 20% MASTERY IN RIFLES AND PISTOLS
FIRE 1,000 ANIMA-INFUSED BULLETS
50% MASTERY, 30% MASTERY IN RIFLES AND PISTOLS
Now, how do I use it? With a grunt, I pushed myself up off the ground and dusted off my pants. I picked up my pistol and wiped the dust off the barrel before sliding in another clip. I racked the slide and pointed it at a tree.
Take a deep breath, and on the inhale think of taking in some invisible force into your body, on the exhale move that invisible force up your arm.
I followed the Ego's instruction and took a deep breath. While the air flowed into my mouth and down my lungs I tried to imagine a faint light coming in with it, and once I expelled that air through the same manner, I pushed the light up my arms. The pistol glowed, and I fired. The bullet smashed into one of the trees and blew a quarter-sized hole right through.
"Amazing."
I put my pistol back into its holster and pulled out my PID once more to navigate to the jobs section to see if there were any clues about where the goblins were coming from.
[DANGER][CLEAR THE GOBLIN OUTPOST: 0/50]
REWARDS:
$20,000, +10% ALL STATS
There it is, and with a reward that nearly matched the one for the Rat King. How many goblins would there be? How many goblin hearts? Surely enough to reach the next rank, right? Speaking of goblin hearts…
I put my PID back into my bag, pulled my knife out approached the nearest one tore open its chest, and skinned it. I drained the heart of all of its blood and then did the same to all the others: four of the goblins still had their hearts intact after the battle. After draining them all, I checked my PID once more:
[HEART BLOOD CONSUMED, ANIMA MANIPULATION 10%, AGILITY 12%, STRENGTH 12%, ENDURANCE 10%]
After all of that, I left their bodies where they sat: not bothering to skin them. The outpost was about ten miles east of me along the cobblestone road, so I followed the road eastward. It was quiet along this stretch of road. Though birds called overhead, they were songs of warning and wariness and not songs of seduction. Bodies, rotting away into miasma, lined the sides of the street. The air was tinged purple with miasma and had the smell of sulfur. The white stones were chipped, and sections of the cobblestone highway were missing as if blown apart by some explosive.
About four miles down, I see something off the side of the road. Something unnaturally square jutting out of the back of a bush. I approached it cautiously, and pulled aside the branches covering it, until my fingers brushed against a metallic chassis hidden beneath the bowed branches: a jeep, crashed into a tree, half collapsed, and crushing the two bodies in the front seats: wrapped in metal and bark.
I examined the bodies. They were in a state of advanced decay, and half mummified. One had a tattoo of an anchor through a globe on its arm, and the other an eagle sat on top of a laurel-crowned globe. One...kind of looked like the US Marine Symbol, but the other I was unfamiliar with.
There were locked cases and trunks in the back. I had brought along some of my dismantling gear so I would be prepared to make traps for whatever goblins were in the outpost, so I had my prybar: the question should be: should I open them now, bring them back to my camp, and then open them, or should I bring them back later after I make it back from the outpost? I really didn't have room for anything too big, and I didn't want to walk back to my camp to stash it, so I decided on a fourth option: search for what I could use right now, and leave the rest for later.
The jeep tilted on its shocks as I jumped into the back, and pulled out my prybar. I pulled open the first large trunk: ripping open the top. MREs sat inside. Luckily, the area was still cold enough to preserve them, no matter how long Tens of them. With this, I probably wouldn't have to worry about food for a long while. I couldn't move it, so I shut the lid and pried open the next box.
White sand, and empty brass casings glimmering like golden coins sat in this one. No...not sand. I picked up a bit of it and it was far too fine to be sand and smelled a bit like sulfur. I took a small taste, and it was salty: I washed the taste out with a swig of water and spat it onto the ground. My PID dinged. I pulled it out from my bag and looked at it.
[Tundra's Salt Peter Added to Ingredients]
A flammable mineral found growing in clusters in ruins or deep in caves where the sun doesn't shine. Used in ammo production. Please note: do not be exposed to sunlight for long periods of time, as it could cause a rather violent reaction.
(common, mineral)
I slammed the lid shut and hopped out of the bed of the jeep, and behind a nearby tree for a few moments just in case the brief time I left it exposed to the stray rays of sunlight bleeding through the canopy that covered it. After about five minutes of no explosions, I reemerged and headed back to the jeep.
In one of the cases, I found a heavy machine gun and a lot of its large calibered ammo in good condition. I pocketed the ammo, with an idea to make a specific trap that I could use. I stuffed a couple handfuls of them into my own bag. For the rest, I'll take a couple of days to move it back to my camp. If I had a cart of some sort it would go by much quicker...there's probably some in a barn somewhere in the ever-after valley…
I spend the rest of the day going through the jeep. I found a couple grenades, a couple handguns, and rifles, and a couple melee weapons. This would make a good haul for next week. I set up my sleeping pad beneath the nearby tree and slept through the night.