Chapter 21: Book 1: Chapter 9 (Part 3 of 3)

I was no expert tracker; I’d never hunted in my life but even I could spot the signs of disturbance in the detritus on the woodland floor that suggested bodies had been dragged further southward.

We moved deeper, but it wasn’t long before the trees grew less dense, and we could see the sun further up ahead. And that was when we saw them shambling in our direction. Vincent and the other three meatheads who had followed him and Constance. They were all zombified and we spotted them before they became aware of us.

I took Shana’s hand, and we hid behind the largest tree we could find and waited.

All four of the zombies shuffled by us, headed for the houses on Saratoga Drive.

I didn’t understand how their senses worked but they failed to spot us as they went by. I motioned for Shana to stay put and then I approached the trailing zombie and swung my scimitar two-handed and decapitated him in one hit. The sound of his bouncing head and his falling body alerted the other three to my presence and they turned to face me. I hadn’t waited and was on the move as soon as the first zombie fell and stabbed a second in the temple before it could react, which dropped it.

Then Vincent was swinging for me, while an arrow streaked past me into the throat of the other remaining zombie. The arrow didn’t drop him, but he did stumble backwards and topple over a tree root.

I fended Vincent off with my blade and swiped at him several times, even shearing off his left hand halfway up his forearm. With him literally disarmed, I circled to that less dangerous side and attacked with verve until Vincent and his ratty ponytail crumpled.

The fourth and last zombie had regained his footing and lurched at me, but without anything else to worry about I gave him the same treatment and used my superior quickness to stay out of his range and slashed off his fingers and hands. Then moved in to finish him off once he’d been effectively neutralised.

The fight only lasted thirty seconds. Shana ran over to join me and we took a minute to loot and stab between the shoulder blades of the dead bodies to be sure we finished off the scarabs. Vincent and one of the others oozed a yellowish substance rather than the coagulated blood we’d observed in the others.

I cut the clothes from Vincent and examined his body quickly. He was covered with puncture wounds. He hadn’t been killed by the zombies; he had been taken to the nest and embalmed alive by the death puppet scarabs.

We got their twelve Gold and two hundred Silver from them, as well as two more venom sacs and two Shoddy Carapace. I got 62 XP and Shana 68 XP.

“Only Constance left to find,” I announced.

“Do you think she is back the way they came?” Shana asked.

“Probably. If not, it’s the direction we need to head in anyway, let’s go.” I stated.

We jogged back through the woodland and hunkered down as we came to the edge of the trees. In front of us, the land had been cleared and dug up, another housing development that was seemingly abandoned.

There was an earthen embankment that dropped three or four feet and we would have to go down. There were several more banks of dug up earth in rows on the right where we were looking and a dirt track that led back to Corunna Road on the left.

The sun glinted off the dark blue scarabs that skittered around the first bank of earthworks where I could see a three-foot-wide dark hole had opened. Lying next to the hole was Constance. She had about a half dozen scarabs on her, with their mandibles sunk into her flesh as they pumped in their venom. Her body twitched and as we watched I heard a faint mewling whimper come from her.

She was alive and very much awake as she suffered a slow and agonising death.

For a moment I felt the darkest of impulses. Surely confirming the scarabs would kill her would be enough to complete the quest. That meant we could leave her to endure the horrific consequences of her folly and still collect on the offered rewards. I shook the cruel impulses away. I may be changing, but I was determined not to become a sadist, even if Constance would have happily done the same to me.

“Let’s finish this,” I told Shana.

With Shana following me, we scrambled down the bank and walked carefully up to the scarab nest, avoiding the junk strewn about which had been coughed up by the eventual expiry of the scarab’s earlier victims.

We squished the first few of the beetles we came across but then the rest of the nest became aware of our presence and skittered off, most escaping down the hole. Even those who had been slowly killing Constance.

I trudged up to her. Constance was laying on her back and her ankle was broken, the white of the bone poked out from her flesh. Had she fallen while running from the zombies?

I would never know and grunted as I understood that I didn’t really care. Her eyes, which had been rolling aimlessly, settled on me as I scowled down on her.

“This is more mercy than you probably deserve, Connie,” I declared as I brought my scimitar down on her chubby neck and beheaded the annoying cow with a deep sense of satisfaction..

Critical Strike! x8 You have inflicted 136 piercing damage and 80 points of cold damage. Overflow of 126 damage converted at a rate of 2 for 1 (vital spot) for 63 health loss. Constance LaFleur is slain.

You are reading story Corsairs & Cataclysms at novel35.com

You have slain Constance Lafleur. Torin receives +16 XP, +1 notoriety, Shana receives + 17 XP.

I may have overdone the power of my blow as my ice scimitar cracked and then shattered when it hit a rock hidden underneath her. That wasn’t a big deal; I just made another one.

<Quest ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’ completed. 62 XP to Torin and 68 XP to Shana for those five zombies. 416 XP to Torin and 456 XP to Shana for the quest. +10 Notoriety for killing the whole group> Quixbix intoned formally.

<Woohoo, that was badass, I loved the part where you beheaded her> he hollered enthusiastically after.

“Glad I could entertain you, Quixbix,” I chuckled to the bloodthirsty imp as I looted Constance for her starting gold.

<We’re really rocking and rolling, to you use one of your Earth expressions. There is more good news. I fed back the location of this Death Puppet Scarab nest to the Flint podium and you have been rewarded with one hundred gold and experience. That extra XP has pushed Shana over one thousand. Whenever you are ready you can initiate your audience with the Framework admins to level up> he added.

“That’s great news, Quixbix. Thank you. Torin, did you want us to do that now?” Shana asked.

“Hmmm, let’s get away from here first. We can follow the dirt track back to the main road. Quixbix can you confirm that killing Constance, who hadn’t become a zombie, hasn’t also triggered a capture quest against us?” I asked the imp.

<No, Torin. You are still under the effect of the shroud you earned yesterday and there were no witnesses> he affirmed

“Excellent, best we keep it that way,” I suggested.

Then we summoned our bikes and rode the mile or so down the track and got back on the M-21. I decided that we should keep going and put a bit more distance between us and the headless bodies we left in our wake. However, before we cycled down the road a stray thought crossed my mind.

“Quixbix, did the scarabs come from one of these spawning crystals or were they something like the dogs we encountered yesterday?” I asked the imp.

<They came from a spawning crystal, Torin> he replied.

“Humph,” I muttered. “Dean told me these crystals would be outside the population centres. Was that a lie?”

<No, it wasn’t a lie and technically the scarab crystal is outside a population centre. As you observed the scarabs were ungraded mobs, allowing their spawning crystal to be placed anywhere not within range of a settlement podium. The crystal must be sited beyond the Flint podium’s area of influence, which because it’s big enough to be a town, is two hundred and fifty metres beyond any qualifying structures. That limit on a podium’s influence is the same under the settlement as well, which is where the scarab crystal is> he lectured.

“So, you’re saying the nest is two-hundred and fifty metres below that hole in the earthen embankment,” I clarified.

<Exactly.>

“Good to know,” I said.

And it was good to know. If we did choose to create a home base of some kind after I got my ship, knowing we would have to account for potential threats from below was important.

“Daylight’s wasting. Let’s get out of the Flint limits and then we’ll stop and process your character progression,” I said to Shana.

“Okay,” she responded, and we kicked off.

We rode West until we were on the other side of Clayton, a small community so close to Flint it was essentially part of it.

Then we pulled over, put the bikes away, found a shady spot under a large Beech tree and I opened Shana’s character sheet. Sure enough, she had 1,114 unused XP and I selected the level up option that was blinking in the mental interface.

Blink.

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