CHAPTER 17 – THE DEATH DERBY 500 (OBSTACLE RACE) PART 3
Johnny pulled the prototype up to the next checkpoint. He let out a frustrated sigh. That was too close even for me. Thought Johnny. He was getting tired of the close calls, but it was also giving him all the excitement he was dying for.
The humanoid rift eater approached Johnny from the checkpoint building as he pulled up. "It is a pity you made this far. At least my master is getting a performance from this." The beast chuckled as he finished his response. The beast eyed Johnny again. "As before you have thirty minutes to prepare for this next quarter. It is an obstacle race." The beast finished as he walked away. With that he went to work on assessing the damage done from the weather race.
Johnny got to work using the onboard terminal to determine the damage that was caused and what needed to be fixed. Once again, the suspension had minor damage. He sighed with grief. When I get back to D.R.I.F.T. I am going to have them give me a suspension that will never break on me. This is just costing me too much with the core essence. A few other parts of the prototype needed minor repairs. He inputted the commands to fix the issues on the terminal. The prototype gave him a warning prompt he would be down to forty percent of essence after the fixes. He just ignored the warning and accepted yes. The prototype soon glowed with a dark purple color as it repaired the damage.
Johnny now how to figure out what he was going to add to the prototype or skip. He quickly dismissed the customization process. He also dismissed using any new weapons. He hadn't had to use any in the last quarter. He then went to work on the chassis of the prototype. He considered different suspension types but chose to stick with a rally car-based setup with tires. He kept the transmission to manual setup, instead he added a five speed with midrange gearing. He quickly made the changes as he watched the prototype begin to glow. The prototype glowed a dark purple as the body shifted into a Ford Fiesta RS. The prototype was now down to thirty percent in essence. I am really going to have to be even more diligent in this run. He sighed with more frustration.
He pulled the prototype up to the next starting line. Only 250 more miles to go. He let out a breath of excitement combined with fear. Johnny got a good look at the course from the starting grid which was perched on top on a mountain leading downhill. The course led off in many directions with a whole bunch of obstacles. One path was a straight shot down the mountain. He decided that path was a no go just by looking at all the loops. There were so many he lost count after the first ten. The loops got bigger with each one. The final loop he saw in the distance was tall as the mountain itself. Other routes had chicanes, moving walls, and trap pits, to name a few. Johnny decided to go with the route with the rally course. The onboard terminal told it wouldn't be the fastest, but he was confident with the route.
Johnny soon took his eyes off the downhill mountainside as soon as he saw the lights flicker on the starting grid. A screen above the lights flickered revealing the humanoid rift eater. "A quarter of the field will be eliminated at the next quarter." The beast spoke as the lights then turned from red to yellow. Johnny revved the engine with excitement as the light turned from yellow to green. As soon as It turned green he floored it down out of the starting grid for the route he decided.
Johnny was surprised how many other drivers broke off in other routes down the mountain. He saw a dragster take the looping route. I'll be surprised if that even makes it halfway up the final loop. Only a few took the rally course he had chosen. He expected as much only to encounter jumps and turns that a rally course would offer. Johnny was ascending the mountain In no time taking every corner and jump with stride and excitement. He had little concern of finishing. He was showing outside the top thirty a quarter of the way down the mountainside. Although, things soon would turn bad when he made it a third of the way…
Johnny had just made a jump a few hundred feet over a big hill going down when the onboard terminal alerted him of danger. Before he could check what, the warning was about, a loud deafening explosion rang in his ears. The blast was so loud his ear drums shattered. He ignored the pain as he gritted his teeth. He looked back for where the explosion had come from. To his horror the top of mountain had obliterated itself. What he had realized wasn't a mountain but a volcano. It spewed ash and flaming rocks all over the mountain as it continued to erupt. Soon the ground began to shake with each eruption.
Johnny was having a hard time controlling the prototype every time the ground shook. He had to let off the gas. The shaking and eruptions only got worse. By this point he was now halfway when things got even worse. The computer warned him of lava. It started to flow out slowly but got quicker with each eruption. Which were now from every few minutes to every few seconds. The lava soon began to pick up its pace. He looked to see other vehicles get consumed by the descending lava as it sped up down the mountainside. Johnny was now feeling way out of his comfort zone. He was beginning to make mistakes while driving. Things would only get worse as he made it to the final quarter…
The sky that was normally dark as night was replaced with a hellish red as fiery rock fragments fell from the sky. The clouds soon covered up the moon. Johnny had to watch out for flying rocks as they became more and more frequent. One rock hit the roof of the prototype, almost causing Johnny to lose control. He was running in the top twenty at this point with less than ten miles to the ash cloud became too thick as it now ascended the mountain side. Johnny had to pull the prototype over to see if he could conjure up an oxygen tank to breathe from. He was coughing and wheezing from the ash cloud. Unfortunately, the racing environment wouldn't let him. He had to endure the last ten miles…
Johnny managed to make it to the third checkpoint pulling across the line twentieth. He was gasping for air as he stumbled out of the prototype. He fell on his back as he looked up at the sky as it rained chunks of molten rock. With his lasts bits of breath, he finally succumbed to the ash in his lungs…