Chapter 88: Chapter 83

Axle was hurt. I couldn’t see how bad, but Jada was working on him, using something from one of the pouches on her outfit.

I pulled out my phone, swiped Rayna’s call off to one side, and asked the psychic head to call Dr. Miles. He scowled but nodded and connected us.

The doctor was at his desk again, looking at a screen in front of him.

“How can I help you,” he started, pausing to look at the screen. “Oh, Tyson Dawes, of Silken Sands. I was hoping you would call again, I wanted to talk to you about something.” His features lit up in a smile. “Something kind of important, actually.”

“Great, later. Are you Knowle qualified, and if not, do you know someone who is?” I said.

He blinked. “I am, yes.”

“Good, get here. As fast as you possibly can.” I glanced at Axle again, he seemed to be barely conscious. Jada was staring at me.

“Of course, just open a ticket, I’ll be waiting.” He swiped something closed on his screen and reached beside his desk for a large, boxy kit on wheels.

I nodded and disconnected the call, before pulling up BuyMort. Within seconds, I had his page pulled up and was filling in the requisite information. The cost was exorbitant, but I glanced around the opulent room we were in and shrugged. We’d have plenty of morties once the delves were all dead, or in Storage if they didn’t fight.

With a large fee for an extradimensional pod, Dr. Miles was there in seconds, along with two bodyguards. They went to secure the room as Dr. Miles quickly moved into place at Axle’s side.

“Hi there, I’m Dr. Miles and I’ll be treating these wounds today, do I have your permission to treat you?”

Axle croaked something, and Dr. Miles nodded. “Alright, thank you. It looks like you’ve been cut up some, and lost a lot of blood. That’s got you in a state of general shock, which I’m about to help with a quick jab, then get you an infusion while I work on these wounds. Oh that looks like a slag burn on your arm, don’t worry.” He smiled reassuringly. “This is all easy to fix.”

The doctor glanced between myself and Jada. “There’s nothing life-threatening here but the blood loss,” he said, turning back to his work on the Knowle.

I watched as he waved a device that looked like a phone over the Knowle, scanned through it for a few seconds, and then nodded. He produced a syringe. “The scanner says you’re healthy otherwise and have no allergies or expected reactions to any of my drugs or tools. Should have you patched up in no time.”

Jada was still at Axle’s side, gripping his paw. She had done enough anyway, I didn’t need her for what came next. I grabbed my sword Falcor out of Taytrinn’s midsection and returned it to its sheath. The sword gave me a moment of trouble, where the sheath didn’t want to click closed on the haft, but it worked properly after I pulled the blade back out and slipped it in again.

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I frowned down at the magic sword but swept away the ads and turned to leave. There was more work to be done. I’d take a better look at the blade when I had time.

The bodyguards had posted up at the door, and as I approached, one of them nodded his chin at me. The man was Orkreshi and carried an ax along with a large projectile weapon I couldn’t immediately identify.

He pointed at the corpses outside. “This your handiwork?”

I nodded. “They took my friend. Tortured him.”

The orc grinned and shook his head. “Didn’t say you needed a reason. They’re delves. Dangerous pests. I’m just impressed.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re having a good time,” I said, turning down the hall and walking the way the final elf had gone when he fled.

“Rayna.” I swiped the call part of the way back toward the center of my vision, but placed it down and to the side, where it wouldn’t be a hindrance.

“Yeah, boss,” she replied immediately.

“I’m heading back up. We need to clear this place out.” I paused at the staircase I had descended, leaning in to peer up.

“Right, we move down. Yarsps coming soon, boss. We need to get back on the walls.” She grunted in a low voice to her hobbs, and I saw them begin moving in the small image on my helmet.

Within a few seconds, a fire fight erupted on-screen. I pulled up the image to watch more closely. The hobbs were playing it safe, and smart. They had lined up their oversized metal shields at the front of their formation, and when they began taking fire, they simply established their own cover, and returned fire with the expensive plasma rifles stolen from the first wave of Dearth mercenaries.

Each of the delves guarding the facility were wearing personal shields, but a couple of blasts from a plasma rifle took those down quickly. Immediately after a shield would short out, a rifle would bark, and a dark elf would fall down dead.

Even in a fire fight, Rayna had them being careful with the plasma ammunition.

The delves fired molten slag ammunition back, but the huge metal shields caught the worst of it, adding the searing metal to their surfaces. Eventually they might get too heavy to move, but the simple defense was effective against the high tech rifle. The weapon appeared to have been designed with the Sleem and BuyMort bugs in mind, as opposed to the ingenuity of my combat hobbs.

Based on the way the delves talked about hobbs, I had worried about this battle, but BlueCleave proved to be exceptional yet again.

I charged up the stairs, watching the fight in my peripheral as I moved to join it. The dark elf with the bald head and fancy armor was in that fight, leading what was left of his security forces, including the elf with the plasma ax.

My headlong rush was interrupted by over a dozen delves as I crested the stairs.

They were all gathered around the dead guard, staring with wide red eyes, and open mouths. It was the crowd from the pearls. My arrival spooked the drugged up delves, and several of them produced weapons.

“Who wants to live?” I asked, trying to draw Falcor.

The same small hang-up that had occurred when I sheathed it happened again, in reverse. The sword stuck in the scabbard for an instant, before something released, and it drew as normal. “Does magic malfunction?” I thought as I swung the blade at the nearest snarling elf.

This group of delves were visibly intoxicated. Very obviously high. Their movements were lagging, and they swayed unsteadily. They held onto their weapons just fine, though, so I started cutting through them.

The first dark elf fell apart at the midsection, a look of abject shock firmly on his features. The blade sparked and vibrated in my hand as it passed through his shield.

You are reading story BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit at novel35.com

Several of them surrounded me and stabbed me repeatedly. My helmet took a count of the incoming blows, while I sank to my knees and welcomed the suit’s painkillers back into my veins. The hallway took on a glow, and the sounds of the firefight upstairs faded away to the rushing thuds of my own heartbeat.

I raised my head, as a swarm of tendrils erupted from the starfish suit and got to work. The delves noticed, and one of them screamed as they became entangled in the mechanical limbs. The suit was trying to extricate itself, but I used the opportunity for a little charge, grabbing the dark elf female by her shirt.

The elf snarled and stabbed into my forearm, twisting the blade, but I just pushed her into the nearby wall, crushing her sternum. I did it slowly enough to avoid activating her shield.

With a roar, I regained my footing and slashed at another elf woman adorned in silks. Falcor bounced off her shield, and I gaped at the weapon for half a second before trying again, adding a power blow activation to my strike.

The sword was suddenly light as a feather, and when it struck the delve’s shield again, a great burst of sparks and tiny lightning arcs followed it through her midsection. I stepped past, pausing to tap the elf in the temple with the tip of my boot. The look of shock and agony on her features instantly slumped to the vacant gaze of those in the void.

Another party-goer slammed into my cloud of tendrils, reaching past to gash my throat with a serrated blade. I felt faint as my blood fountained onto the delves in range, but an instant later fresh blood and more painkillers rushed into my veins from the factory on my chest.

Falcor sparked and hissed as it thrust through the delves’ shield, and I pinned the still-angry elf to the wall with the blade, before letting go of the vibrating hilt and pressing both palms flat against the wall.

I braced myself, and pushed off from the wall, activating my power blow ability and rocketing into the gathered delves. A chorus of screams and grunts of anger erupted as I slammed into them, sending several to the floor with me.

With a grip on any limb I could find, I started crushing down with all my strength. Each wrist, ankle, knee, shoulder, or hip I could get my hands on crushed into shards and powder, and my cartoon starfish danced happily in the dark hall beyond us.

After a few moments, the screams faded to moans and death rattles, and I rolled out of the melee. Several knife blades had been hilted in my sides, back, and chest again. The starfish suit tendrils yanked out any that remained and began repair work again, diligent as ever.

I hardly even noticed the lasers and flesh-foam anymore. It all became a pattern of pain, heavy doses of painkiller as a reward for pain, and then a pronounced physical and mental numbing while everything else happened. All the cutting, tearing, burning, and crushing was as unimportant to me as the violence I committed, while under the influence of the suit.

My cartoon danced and congratulated me when I turned toward it, but I ignored it, retrieved my sword with another explosion of sparks, and started running for the stairs. A few of the silk-garbed revelers had fled the orgy of violence and looked behind as I stormed toward them. I was considerably faster than they were, with the increased strength in my legs.

Most ducked into rooms, or dark hallways to avoid me. The one who didn’t, I slashed at with Falcor. The blade struck his shield at the lower back and rebounded from the static field with an explosion of sparks. He went down, slammed his head into the concrete floor, and slid to a stop with a streak of white blood.

I hacked at him on the way by, and this time the sword went through the shield, lopping off his head for good measure. With a few more steps, I was climbing the final stairs to the primary conflict zone.

Unfortunately, the stairs spit me out directly between both lines. The bald elf in armor spotted me immediately and roared orders, pointing his own rifle at me. I summoned the breaker gauntlets and slammed them together in front of my torso, an instant before slag rounds began to strike and splatter against me.

Rayna used my distraction to take out another three of their fighters with a coordinated strike of plasma rifles to overpower their shields, and then conventional rounds to kill the delves. I braced and took the slag, using my advanced strength to stay standing as hundreds of globs of barely solid metal struck me, splashing scalding droplets across my entire body.

Steam filled the air around me, and I smelled roasting pork in the hot, wet air. My clothing, already torn to shreds, began falling away in large chunks as molten slag clung to it. As the cloud of steam rose and grew, the delves slowed their fire, before ceasing it entirely. Even my boots were full of holes and worthless, falling off as I raised my horrifically injured feet to walk.

I pulled the remainder of my jeans off and tossed them to the side. The suit covered my junk, but before I stepped out of the steam I deactivated that with a command to the cartoon starfish that haunted my peripheral vision.

My highwater blaster was at my back, and my advanced bag had withstood the damage, so I reached inside and produced a MIRV shell. As soon as I cleared the steam, all of the gathered delves gaped at my nude form, swarming with repair tendrils.

I racked the MIRV shell into place and stopped, facing the dark elf with the shaved head. He blinked, a seemingly permanent scowl on his face. “Fighting nude?”

For an instant, I actually felt bad for him. But I shook my head and raised the highwater blaster, aiming it at his face. “No, I have a helmet.” I squeezed the trigger.

A series of explosions roared in the enclosed space, driving cracks into the walls, and knocking the nearby delves flat. I stormed forward, activating my suit’s cup again as I slid another MIRV round in place.

Suppressed rifle fire from the stairwell zipped past me, sinking into the delves spread out on the concrete. Their shields had shorted out protecting them, and most were dazed or already dead before the hobbs did their work. The only elf left standing after the explosion held a large, plasma laced ax. The hobbs targeted him first.

I grinned coldly as he went down, a small hole in the middle of his forehead, and a comically surprised expression on his face.

Within seconds, none of them were left breathing, and I slung the highwater blaster. Rayna and her hobbs approached in a tight wedge formation, with the shield hobbs at the front and sides.

Ordo was at her left, wire-frame Kalashnikov tucked into his shoulder. He was in the classic operator pose, covering his leader’s flank. I could see him take me in at a glance and turn away as mirth broke out on his features.

Rayna nudged my shoulder. “Good distraction, boss,” she grunted, before moving further down the hall. Her hobbs began a fast, but thorough and careful inspection of the residential area.

I sighed and grabbed some silks from the nearby elf corpses littering my basement. The pants I chose were light and airy, I actually ended up loving them the instant I slid them on. The top was a little less user friendly, and I gave up before I could figure out how to properly wrap myself in it to make a shirt. A pair of simple, but very high quality dark leather sandals finished my outfit.

The hobbs and I stormed through the rest of the facility, all the way down to Axle and Jada. We cleared out each and every single living dark elf remaining. None of them would even listen to us, let alone surrender. Every one of them that we found invariably attacked us, and was put down hard.

The only dark elf who hadn’t been aggressive was Dro’erja, and he was still hiding in the secret tunnel behind the old barbershop.

Rayna and the hobbs had less compunction about killing delves than they did about Sleem, if such a thing was possible. I thought about the situation for a moment as we approached the bottom of the residential complex and decided I couldn’t blame them for it.

As we descended the final staircase, I thought to check my app. The quest was complete.

Quest - Hostile forces have captured your operations manager to use as a hostage in an upcoming attack on your affiliate. Respond.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Locate operations manager. (complete)
2. Rescue operations manager. (complete)
3. (Optional) Ensure physical safety of operations manager during rescue. (complete)
4. (Optional) Eliminate hostile affiliate. 0/41 alive. (complete)

REWARD – BuyMort credit rating upgrade recommendation. Recommendation based on performance.

 

I was happy that the number of hostile enemies changed itself to reflect that I had spared one, instead of failing me for not killing them all. That also gave me a great deal of confidence in Dro’erjas stated motivations. I assumed Afflqwst had read his mind the way BuyMort constantly read all of ours.

The affiliate page chimed as my reward went in. I had a credit level rank up available from BuyMort.

Congratulations! You have been approved for an upgrade to your credit rating. After assessment, you are now considered a level 58 Fair Shopper. You now have access to 0% down financing and in-store credit! Seize the power to Buy More with BuyMort Financing!

It was stupid. It was lame. I hated it. It sounded like those credit cards that the online stores always tried to push on you. I was surprised that it didn’t include $50 off on your next purchase when using in-store credit.

But it was a good reward. One that I hoped I’d never ever have to use.

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