*[Mutated Human Lv 3] has been slain – XP has been given.*
*[Mutated Human Lv 3] has been slain – XP has been given.*
*[Mutated Centaur Lv 5] has been slain – XP has been given.*
*Your Class has reached Lv 3 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point*
*Your Race has reached Lv 3 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point*
As Deacon pushed himself off the blood-soaked floor, and let out a soft grunt as he shook out the tension in his limbs. Should I just check out the lower floors? He asked himself as he inhaled the scent of charred flesh that hung in the air, half buried by the wet, pungent odor of moss and fungus covering the walls and floor.
"Fuck it, we ball," Deacon muttered to himself, somewhat disappointed that the thought even popped into his head, before turning around and heading up the staircase. His boots squelched a bit with every step as he headed to the next floor. "Nothing much to see on this floor with everything all trashed."
The moment he stepped through the doorway, a low hiss echoed from somewhere inside the darkened hall. He slowed, eyes narrowing just as a slick blur shot out from behind a broken vent.
He twisted to the side on instinct while also simultaneously activating Identify.
[Mutant Garter Snake Lv 1]
The thing missed his face by inches, hissing as it whipped past him, bloated and twitching with fungus along its sides. It crashed against a filing cabinet and coiled fast, readying to strike again.
Deacon didn't give it a chance.
He darted forward and pinned it to the ground with his knee. One short sword came down like a cleaver, slicing clean through its head in a single motion.
[Mutated Garter Snake Lv 1] has been slain – XP granted.
He exhaled through his nose, flicking blood off the blade. "Not even a minute in."
Keeping alert, he moved forward, skirting puddles and scattered debris. The hallway opened into a wide office space littered with cubicles covered in moss, and around a quarter of them were torn to shreds. He crept forward, checking blind spots. That's when a sharp movement to his left caught his eye.
A lizard, its body swollen with tumors and spores, scurried out from a broken ceiling panel and lunged for his shin.
Deacon met it with a kick to the face, catching it midjump and sending it tumbling across the floor. It skittered to its feet with a screech, only to be silenced by a downward stab of his other short sword.
[Mutated Fence Lizard Lv 1] has been slain – XP granted.
"If I'm getting these guys here, then how fucked are those who were teleported near a zoo, if this Seattle had one," he chuckled to himself, wiping his sword off on the nearest cloth scrap.
With the immediate threats handled, he began rummaging through drawers and overturned desks, scanning for anything remotely useful.
Most of it was junk. Dead terminals. Cracked keyboards. Soggy paperwork.
But then he popped open a rusted filing cabinet and blinked.
A stash of worn magazines spilled out onto the floor – glossy covers wrinkled by moisture. One showed a woman draped in silk… barely, the headline reading: "Lingerie Madness: Kiss Me Edition."
He stared.
"…Really?"
He dug a little deeper. More of the same… some worse. He shoved them back into the cabinet with a grunt and moved on.
A nearby desk had a sticky note still stuck to the monitor: "If you break this monitor one more fucking time, I'm gonna tear your ass a new one. – Trevor <3"
Another note beside it, half-torn: "I put laxatives in the creamer bottle. DO NOT DRINK IT. I'm ganking the fuck who's using the creamer that I purchased and use for my coffee pot here. Don't snitch."
Deacon snorted.
One drawer did offer something of actual value: a slightly singed cookbook titled Bunker Bites: Meals for the Modern Underground Man. The corner was water-damaged, but the recipes were still legible.
"Protein Brick Deluxe," he read aloud, squinting. "Sounds like prison food."
He tucked it into the side of his belt anyway. Might be useful later.
But before he could move on, a grating scratch echoed above him, like claws on metal.
He glanced up and noticed a vent just above him.
Something was still watching him.
"…Alright," he sighed, short swords in hand once more. "Round two, then."
The vent rattled once more, but whatever was inside didn't move again.
Deacon kept one eye on it as he backed away, angling toward the far end of the office floor. Short swords loose in his grip, he moved between broken cubicles and collapsed ceiling tiles, checking drawers, overturned lockers, and the occasional cracked vending machine.
No food was left within them.
He found a few more oddities tucked between destroyed desks and cabinets: A rather oddly shaped mushroom stress ball, a half-eaten emergency ration bar in sealed packaging, and an old ID card with the label "Senior Intern – Joshua Srips."
He paused in front of a row of glass-walled offices, the kind reserved for middle management. Most had shattered or fogged-up glass, making it hard to see inside. He tried one of the doors – it opened with a sticky creak.
Inside was an amazingly intact rusted office desk, two rusted filing cabinets, and a tipped-over boardroom table. The walls were also decorated with fading motivational posters: "Reach Higher!" and "Success Starts With You!"
As soon as Deacon saw the last poster, the one with the rather portly looking man saying "Success Starts With You", he held back from saying aloud, "Damn, what the fuck did they feed you? I've never seen a human that portly before."
One of the drawers on the desk slid easily open. There was a small black box inside, locked and plain. No key to be seen either in the desk or around it, but that wasn't necessary. Deacon had dealt with more difficult locks.
He wedged the tip of a dagger under the lid and pried, but instead of hearing the satisfying click of the lock, he heard nothing. Shit… No, wait I got my throwing knives.
Taking out a thin throwing knife, Deacon pushed up the pins one by one until he heard that oh so satisfying click as the lock gave way, and the box popped open.
Inside? A neatly folded black poncho with light armor padding stitched into the shoulders. His brows furrowed.
Item Name: Poncho of the Radiation Walker
Type: Environmental Gear - Light Armor
Rarity: Uncommon
Description:
A black poncho made of treated synthetic fibers, with considerably light armor padding stitched into the shoulders. Designed for harsh wasteland climates, this cloak offers full-body coverage and environmental protection. The fabric is infused with radiation-resistant compounds, which allows for safe passage through radioactive rain for the wearer without any damage so long as they are covered completely. Although it is excellent in protection against radioactive rain and various radioactive atmospheres, its physical defense is poor, offering very little protection during combat.
Effect:
Grants immunity to environmental radiation effects from radioactive rain while worn.
"Jackpot!" Deacon muttered in surprised shock as he read through its description. "Holy shit!"
As he tucked away the thin, folded poncho into his belt, the vent cover behind him suddenly snapped open.
Deacon barely had time to pivot before a mutated rat the size of a pit bull exploded through the opening. Its hind legs were bent into massive spring-loaded haunches. One slightly smaller squeezed through immediately behind, and then the thudding noise of still more scratching in the vents.
"Of course there's more of 'em," Deacon muttered, stepping back quickly.
The larger rat let out a warbling shriek and charged, its rabid teeth chattering in the faint light. Deacon grabbed the broken chair leg and hurled it squarely into its face.
The mutated rat yelped and skittered sideways, dazed but not dead.
The second mutated rodent bolted toward his ankle. Deacon brought one boot down fast, pinning it to the ground by its neck just before he whipped one of his short swords free and swept it in a clean arc, severing its spine before it could screech.
Behind him, more claws scraped metal.
Without wasting another second, Deacon pivoted around to face the open vent. He grabbed a nearby rusty file cabinet and heaved it angrily toward the vent with a loud clang. The cabinet overturned, covering the hole and cutting off the rodents' straight route to him.
He didn't stop there.
Sprinting across the room, he reached for another vent on the far wall. The metal grate hung loosely, barely attached. Deacon's eyes darted around until he found a twin-bulb light stand lying on the floor and jammed it inside the vent with all his might.
The grate rattled violently as the light stand's tip pierced through the thigh of one of the mutant rats inside, which caused the other mutant rats inside to try a different path. Deacon turned his head to the side and spat out a wad of blood as he accidentally knicked the side of his mouth with his teeth when that first mutant rat shot out of that vent, then darted toward the stairwell door. With a swift kick, he shoved it open and slipped inside, slamming it behind him and clicked it shut with its button lock on its knob.
A guttural screech echoed faintly from the room he'd just left. Mutated rodents clawed at the door and banged on filing cabinets, frustrated but blocked.
Deacon's eyes flicked upward to the worn sign above the stairs with an arrow sign pointing upwards: "HR Floor – In Renovation."
"Finally, some good news up here." He muttered to himself as he flexed his fingers around the hilts of his short swords. "A potential cache of loot."
From his repeated trips to the HR department during his time at the Academy of Beginnings, he'd learned it wasn't the place of punishment the professors made it out to be. Instead, it was a goldmine of resources – home to hundreds upon hundreds of confiscated contraband items, all conveniently stored in one place.
He moved up the staircase slowly and quietly, doing his best to prevent his leather boots from squelching against the damp, cracked concrete stairs. The air thickened the higher he went, replete with mildew, rust, and faint burn of something chemical. The green rain has shifted into something like Piss-colored water now, he thought to himself as the green rain water that previously dripped from the ceiling from a high up broken window shifted into a dark yellowish color.
Deacon dodged as a near-deafening clap of thunder boomed in the radioactive thunderheads above the city.
Meanwhile, a creaking, twisted sound came from the vents overhead. He stood still, against the wall, eyes squeezing. Whatever was coming through the vents was big, too heavy to be a rat, too clumsy to be a bird.
He remained still, listening until the noise faded before he moved again.
Maybe an Elite rat that's traveling in the vents? He guessed. Or maybe just a supersized mutant that's small enough to still be able to make use of the vents.
Continuing upward, he finally reached the In-Renovation floor. The door hung crooked on its hinges, its frame blackened by traces of an ethanol fire. The grime-covered wall beside it had been scrawled over in faint orange-red marker, barely visible through the grime: "DON'T ENTER!"
No, Deacon thought with a frown as he stepped closer to the words on the wall, taking out a dagger from his pouch on his thigh, and scraped the letter T with it before bringing the dagger tip to his nose. "That smells like... dried blood."
"...Well, doesn't fill me with confidence," Deacon muttered under his breath as he took a tentative breath before nudging the door open with the dagger; its hinges groaning just loud enough to make him wince.
Inside, the floor was covered head to toe with office cubicles, moss carpeted half the floor, and strange growths that clung to the ceiling vents like tumors.
And near the center of the floor, a shape moved low to the ground, crawling. Something with too many joints.
Deacon crept in slowly and silently, eyes scanning the room. The rain outside had turned from steady to savage, pelting the windows with radioactive rain. Lightning forked inside the dark amber clouds that covered the mutant-infested city of Seattle.
He crept low behind a fallen display case, observing the general shape of the mutant creature, not wanting to Identify it as he was unsure if it was able to detect mana, because if it did, it would be able to pinpoint his location.
Thunder boomed around the building and lightning flickered in the clouds, sending crenelated shadows leaping about the lounge as Deacon crept past the fallen display case he hid behind, eyeing the many jointed mutant creatures from out of the corner of his vision.
The low-to-the-floor creature quivered at the sound of thunder booming but didn't otherwise react poorly to it like the beakswines were, too engrossed in sniffing at the moss-covered floor and the scent of the heavily seasoned chip dust that stained the carpets.
He kept low, stepping wide to get around the fallen glass and cracked tiles that littered the floor of the In-Renovation floor, and only occasionally ducking under and out of collapsed office cubicles.
It was only when he caught sight of a pale blue glow emanating from one of the half-whole cubicles in the farthest corner away from him on the floor he was on, that he finally had a goal to head toward.
Deacon's eyes narrowed as he heard a faint whirring noise from around that area. He circled slowly, keeping away from the creature and working around the outer rim of the room. He crept under a dropped beam and slipped into the cubicle.
There it was: a sleek, silver rectangle sitting half-buried beneath scattered papers and files. The light glowed from its top edge, a strange crest-shaped symbol gleaming at its center.
Deacon leaned over it and used Identify on it.
Item Name: Issued Work Laptop
Type: Tool
Description: A slightly scuffed, company-issued laptop that's seen a few too many fiscal years. The trackpad's worn smooth, the "E" key and spacebar sticks occasionally, and the battery barely makes it through a meeting. Still boots reliably and runs office software without complaint.
Deacon blinked. "The hell is a laptop? Is that some sort of outdated Manatech?"
He glanced around as if expecting Jass to talk his ear off about Manatech, forgetting that he was alone.
The device chirped softly and blinked again, surprisingly still active despite the state of everything around it and its supposed battery issue.