It had been four hours since he'd first arrived on Floor One, and those same four hours were the most tense four hours of his life.
Descending the vine and fungus-covered stairwell, Deacon was careful to ensure that his footsteps were light and far enough away from the glass that had fallen from the destroyed windows that lined the middle sections of the stairwells.
The flame above his head, followed silently, casting long shadows that danced along the moss-covered walls that were caked in fungi.
Thank the System for its low mana cost, Deacon thought to himself.
As he reached the next landing, he pressed himself to the side of the wall and peered through the doorway that had long since lost its door.
A wide, open room stretched beyond, once perhaps a call center or an office floor. Now, it was just decay and danger.
Moss carpeted the floor where old cubicle partitions had collapsed, and mold climbed the walls in irregular patches. The rot in the air was rancid, but it was what he saw that made him narrow his eyes.
At least three mutated humans shuffled lazily across the space – jittering with that same disjointed, twitchy gait. But there were also mutated rats, each one the size of a medium dog. They scurried between debris piles and under tables, their oily fur mottled with scabs and their tails barbed and twitching.
Oh, that's where the door went, he thought to himself as he saw a mutated human more or less dry humping both it and a mutated rat corpse.
Deacon lowered into a crouch.
Four rats. Three humans, he counted, scanning for angles, openings. Too many for a frontal assault… I have to thin them out before jumping in.
His hand moved swiftly to the second pouch on his left thigh. With a practiced flick, he pulled three of his throwing daggers and held one between his teeth while aligning the others with his target.
He exhaled slowly.
One of the Mutated Humans turned slightly, exposing its back.
Now!
With a fluid snap of his wrist, both daggers flew, one embedding itself cleanly between the mutated human's right shoulder blade and the other into the base of its skull. Which had caused it to crumple to the floor without releasing another croak.
In the same motion, he grabbed the third dagger that was being held in between his teeth and hurled it like a dart toward a nearby Mutated Rat, the steel punching clean through its eye socket with a wet squelch.
The moment the rat collapsed, the others let out high-pitched screeches at the noise of the mutated human's corpse crashing to the floor, and the remaining enemies snapped toward the commotion, snarling.
Deacon charged forward, short swords already drawn – mana flaring around the blades of his short swords.
Flame Armament.
Both blades erupted in flame, licking up the length of the steel but leaving the hilt of his blades untouched. The mutated humans and rats rushed toward him.
The second Mutated Human lunged at him, its jaws snapping wide open.
Deacon ducked low beneath its outstretched arms and pivoted into a 180 to slice through the back of the Mutated Human's knees with a single swipe of his right short sword. But, before it could fall, he drove his other short sword up from under its chin and through its skull, flame igniting through the wound as the creature convulsed and collapsed to the floor.
One of the rats leapt at him from the side. He twisted mid-step, catching it mid-air with a clean slash across its midsection, fire scorching as it fell in a pile of smoking fur and blood.
Another rat lunged at his side, but reacting quickly, Deacon turned on his heel, and Spartan kicked it into a nearby desk with a wet crunch, where he then flicked another dagger from his pouch and impaled it by its neck to the ground.
Only one Mutated Human remained. With garbled screeching and clicking, it charged him head-on, claws extended and twitching with erratic spasms.
Deacon braced himself as the creature closed the distance faster than expected. At the last moment, he twisted sideways, the thing's claws grazing across leather armor and tearing shallow cuts atop it.
He pivoted on his heel, ducking as it swiped again – this time narrowly missing his head.
You're one fast bastard, Deacon grimaced.
He parried a third strike with the flat of his blades, sparks jumping as bone met steel. The creature reeled from the clash for half a breath – and that was enough.
"Got ya," he smirked at the Mutated Human.
With a surge of mana, the flames atop both his blades intensified. Deacon surged forward, driving both flame-wreathed short swords straight through the mutated human's chest. The Mutated Human spasmed for a couple of seconds as a strangled, chittering, croaking shriek tore from its throat before it fell limp on his blades and began sliding off of them and crumpling to the floor with a wet smack.
Please let no one hear that.
Holding his breath, he braced his right boot against the corpse and yanked both blades free with a wet, tearing sound. The flames sputtered low but steady. His heartbeat had just begun to slow when he heard it.
A wail of high-pitched screeches and angry clicking, rose up the stairwell from the floors below.
His head whipped around to the hallway. The sounds were growing louder and much closer.
"Ah, crap," Deacon muttered. Damn you murphy!
As he drew closer to the window, he spotted his exit strategy, a swing stage scaffold suspended three floors below him, that was being rattled in the harsh wind caused by the thunderstorm outside.
He didn't waste a moment.
Deacon quickly sheathed his short swords as he darted from corpse to corpse, yanking his daggers free. From the stairwell behind him came a rising cacophony – snarls, growls, wet gurgles, and the rapid, uneven thunking of claws raking through what could only be assumed to be barricades, judging by the noise.
His heart thundered in his chest like the war drums of the dwarves, with each beat of his heart sounding to him like some sort of countdown to the mutated humans and beasts scrambling up the stairwell toward him.
He ripped the last blade from a mutated rat's eye socket, pivoted, and sprinted toward the window.
Mana surged through his legs.
He raised his gloved fist and smashed it through the grime-covered glass. Shards exploded outward, and the wind howled in.
Then he jumped.
The scaffold rushed up beneath him, but too fast, too far left. His boot clipped the edge and slid off.
"Shit!"
His hands shot out – fingers catching the cold, rain-slicked metal railing just as gravity tried to rip him down.
His arms yanked tight, shoulders screaming in protest, legs dangling above the fifty meter drop into the streets below infested with mutated beasts and humans.
Gritting his teeth, Deacon pulled himself up with a snarl, boots scrabbling for purchase. Several strained moments elapsed before he flipped a leg over the railing and pulled himself fully onto the platform.
The scaffold creaked and lurched from the sudden weight falling atop of it, as well as the winds caused by the thunderstorm.
Above him, the broken window filled with activity – dozens of fur-covered forms and thrashing bodies filling the broken rectangle. Snarls and screams laced the storm.
He exhaled, low and steady as rain pattered against his shoulders, soaking his leather armor. "That… could've gone a lot worse."
Taking a moment to catch his breath, Deacon leaned back against the rattling scaffold rail and looked up. Movement flickered in the shattered window he'd leapt from – misshapen heads of mutated humans and beasts jostled for space, limbs writhing as wet claws scraped at the broken glass.
But none of them looked down.
None of them had seen how he escaped. Or at least, he hoped they hadn't.
A group of mutated humans and beasts jumping at him from a three floor drop sounded like straight up nightmare fuel.
His chest rose and fell in shallow, steadying breaths as the adrenaline that rushed through him had begun to loosen the grip it had around his heart.
With one hand still gripping the slick rail for balance, he turned to look at his System Notifications.
*[Mutated Human Lv 1] has been slain – XP has been given.*
***
*[Mutated Human Lv 3] has been slain – XP has been given.*
*[Mutated Rat Lv 2 ] has been slain – XP has been given.*
***
*[Mutated Rat Lv 1] has been slain – XP has been given.*
*Your Class has reached Lv 2 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point*
*Your Race has reached Lv 2 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point*
"Sweet," Deacon said before dismissing the System Notifications. I wonder if that was enough to level up my Basic One-Handed Weapon Mastery or Flame Armament.
Stepping back to catch his breath, Deacon braced himself forward, elbows on top rain-covered rails of swing stage scaffolding that he was standing on. His gaze shot upward reflexively, fixing on the jagged rent in the broken window he'd jumped out of – bits of glass still attached to the sill, reflecting fleeting strobes of lightning from the storm-turbid air above.
He let his breath out slowly, tension leaving his body as he was able to not worry about being mauled to death for at least a few more seconds.
"That was a bit too close for comfort," he chuckled to himself as he swept a hand over his dripping face, pushing back handfuls of dripping hair, and leaned out over the edge of the creaking scaffolding. The wind tugged at him again, and the stage creaked, dipping under him.
Below, the ruined city sprawled endlessly into the storm. But what caught his attention was the rooftop of a nearby building. It sat about five floors down and maybe thirty meters across from where he stood now. Cracked solar panels and ventilation units littered its surface, along with an old, rusted billboard that stood slanted on the far side, displaying a rather risque-looking woman blowing a kiss with the words: "I can blow your brains out" above her head.
An escape way, he thought.
"Five floors down, thirty meters across…" He exhaled sharply. "Yeah. I'm definitely gonna hate this."
Deacon cautiously stepped off the swing stage scaffolding and pressed himself against the wet stone exterior of the building, with one hand gripping the slick railing, and the other found a ledge just above his shoulder. And when and only when was he confident in his footing did he begin to shimmy along the narrow platform, the scaffold creaking with every shift of weight.
Deacon pressed the front of his body against the wet windows on the side of the building, fingers gripping the slick metal frame of the building's windowsill.
"Thirty meters," he muttered to himself. "I just gotta do this for thirty meters, then I'll be good, and never fucking decide to do this type of shit again."
The ledge he moved across was narrow and covered in vines, which, to be honest, he quite liked, as they provided him with a way to keep his feet firmly on the windowsill as he moved forward, by putting his feet under them.
Thunder boomed again overhead, which yet again vibrated the very building he was hanging on. Somewhere above, several floors up, a window shattered with a wet crunch, followed by a chorus of shrieks.
"Yeah, yeah, keep screaming, you mushroom-headed fucks," Deacon muttered, pressing himself closer to the wall.
And unbeknownst to him, three mutated humans had been pushed from the broken window by the sheer number of mutated humans and beasts within the room he just escaped from, only to splatter across the asphalt below in a mess of torn flesh and twisted limbs.
Ten meters.
Fifteen.
Twice, he nearly lost his footing, due to him almost slipping on the wet moss that covered the walls and edges of the building, but he would quickly catch himself by keeping his hold onto the concrete that was either untouched by the moss or fungus or by keeping his feet under the vines on the windowsills.
Twenty.
He glanced over his shoulder and past the rain-soaked building curve, the other rooftop was closer. Five floors down and ten meters away till I line up with it.
Twenty-five.
Then thirty.
He came to a stop and sucked in a sharp breath. The rooftop was directly below and to his right, far enough that he wouldn't survive the fall without some kind of control, but close enough to risk it.
Deacon carefully slid a dagger out from one of his leg pouches, turned toward the window just behind him, and jabbed its pointy tip into the glass.
Crack!
Yes!
It didn't shatter completely.
Fuck!
His brain blanked for a split second before a tinge of panic came over him, but that was quickly squashed as he took in another breath of air.
Bracing a boot against the bottom corners of the windowsill and shimmying his right hand against the top of the frame, he slowly moved his left hand back as the dagger remained perpendicular to the window, then slammed his left fist against it, driving the blade deeper into the glass.
The window burst inward, glass exploding with a hollow crash. Shards scattered across the interior floor as the blade slipped free and Deacon fell forward with it, landing inside the building in a low crouch.
Without missing a beat, he snatched the dagger off the floor and slipped it back into one of the pouches on his left leg. Thanks to his leather armor and gloves, the glass scattered across the floor hadn't torn through them.
Then he ran.
Boots pounding against cracked tile, Deacon sprinted across the dark room. Wind and rain tore in behind him through the shattered window. At the far wall, he pivoted hard and pushed off, charging straight back toward the opening.
Mana pumped through his legs as he charged toward the large broken window, and only sending a massive surge of mana into his legs after he leaped onto the aluminum window frame. From there, he shot out from the twentieth floor of the thirty-nine floor building and toward the rooftop five stories below him.
He landed hard, twisting into a roll to bleed the momentum, but pain exploded across his left side as his shoulder popped from its socket on impact.
"Shit!" he hissed, as he forced himself upright and staggered toward a vine-covered ventilation unit that was being elevated by a couple of rotten two-by-fours. From beside it, he released a muffled grunt of pain as he rammed his shoulder against the ventilation unit and popped his shoulder back into place with a loud pop.
Fuck me, man.