Chapter 80

When he got to the staircase, he was not at all surprised to discover that their fighting team had expanded further. On one hand, that there were so many of them had to be a good thing. On the other, it was slightly humbling to be in charge of such a large number of well-armed people.

“The plan is simple. We go up as fast as we can to save the trapped humans. Some floors have immediate threats in the corridors, in others they will be contained to the rooms.”

“Let’s do this,” Luke said.

“While we want to progress quickly. Safety is important, but we won’t take unnecessary risks. Where they are useful, we will put down traps to help. I will brief you on specific monsters floor by floor, but there are few ferals. For example, this next floor is a battleground between a mutated domestic house cat and the ferals. The ferals appear to be losing. There are four of them huddled over there.” He pointed. “And the cat is over there.” His finger stabbed towards the other corner. “Our standard setup will work.”

“That is where we create a fortified spot and then Ivey screams,” Carly whispered overly loudly to everyone.

Tamara and Luke laughed.

Ivey did not look at all fussed by the description. “We all have our own talents. But Gabby gets the honour today. Everyone ready.”

There were nods all round, and w ith that, they climbed the crappy stairs into the room above. Traps got passed hand by hand up the stairs. There was a crash as a restraint netting dropped through a set of hands and hit the floor with a clang.

All of them tensed.

Daniel pulsed out Animal Sense. A finger went to his lips to shut everyone up. Neither the zombies nor the cat moved, and Daniel relaxed, thanking his lucky stars that the floor footprint of the hotel was so huge and their opponents were each over thirty meters away, so the sound did not carry.

Another pulse. “We are safe.”

He moved to the exit, growing new hinges, reorganising the wood so that when he pushed, the door swung open silently. He fanned out on one side with Priscilla and Dave on the other. Just like on the lower floors, they placed down their collected traps. They shouldn’t be required, but it made him feel better to have the protection.

They were now on a floor dedicated to apartments, and the decor had changed. Slightly thinner corridors and the carpet was a plain light blue rather than the mix of colours below. It was overall less pretentious and more welcoming.

The others passed traps to him, and when the last one was placed down, he switched spots with Priscilla, checking the accuracy of her work. He strengthened a couple of trip wires and properly activated one that was only partially primed. She had done pretty well.

One bag, he sent fondly towards her.

She did a dance.

Chicken, he clarified.

She froze and looked at him suspiciously, sending over a request for salt and vinegar.

Chicken, he countered, but if you don’t like it, I will give you salt and vinegar. Happy once more, she completed her little dance.

“I assume we are good,” Tamara said, raising an eyebrow while staring at the dancing mouse. Daniel nodded, and everyone turned to look at Gabby.

“Help, someone help!”

“Put more effort into it,” Ivey coached.

“Help!”

“Better, but imagine that a giant rat is jumping at your face.”

“HELP!” Gabby screamed, putting everything into the cry. Everyone tensed, looking out at where they knew the enemies were going to swarm from.

The cat came bounding at them first. A hail of arrows greeted it, including two that exploded. The poor thing flinched, then stumbled because of a massive wound on its right front leg. It switched to moving three legged, but secondary arrows hit its other leg. With both of its front limbs taken out, it fell, and Daniel swung attention to the zombies. While the cat was not dead, he was confident that Ingrid and friends would have no problem killing the injured animal.

Magic was blasting out at the four elites charging him. One hulk, one earth, and two others. Not speed related or else they would already be at their fortifications.

“Lightning,” he yelled in warning.

Zap.

Blinding light arced out, but Daniel had covered his eyes. Arm or not, the blinding brightness still leaked through. Fifty percent of the mana vanished in an instant.

Boom!

The shock wave from the strike assaulted their eardrums, and the generated wind ruffled everyone’s hair. Daniel peeked out to see the results of his magic. Multicoloured floating light obscured his vision; his eyes watered, but he could see well enough. The hulk had been blown backwards, its momentum arrested. A massive hole smouldered in its chest. It was not getting back up. The two other unknown zombies went down a moment later under the combined attacks of everyone else, but none wisely targeted the earth feral. It slammed into the restraint netting and collapsed in a tangle. No one moved as it struggled with futility against the bonds.

The earth armour receded, and two arrows crashed into its skull, driving straight through it.

“Easy,” Ingrid said.

“Why did you target the legs?” Daniel asked curiously.

“Thought it prudent,” the archer told him. “We wanted to slow it in case it reached the melee.”

“Good thinking.”

“Dan, that lightning is lethal,” Tamara called out from where she had walked over to the hulk’s body.

“I didn’t get any experience,” Carly’s dad complained.

Daniel shrugged. Given he had one-shot the hulk, he would definitely have received something, but it was not like he could check. The experience this time had gone to the ranged fighters; he doubted he got anything from the traps, though. Possibly he might have got some sort of assist bonus on the earth one.

Ivey had mapped out how it flowed, and when a trap killed something, he got anywhere from sixty to eighty percent of the experience; the person placing the physical trap received the bulk of the rest but if the monster was fixated on someone like Gabby in this case, then Gabby to would get some spoils. Basically, it was complicated.

Daniel and Priscilla disabled the traps while the others split into three teams. They would clear rooms and save people, incorporating the fighters into their numbers and sending the noncoms downstairs. Part of him wanted to avoid the whole clearing rooms and rush up to save more and more people, but he understood that was short-sighted. They also needed the experience both from the system and the physical feel of killing something. The SOS the penthouse guys had sent played on his thoughts. By the time they reached whatever was responsible for that, they had to be prepared in case it was a genuine threat, but honestly, Daniel was expecting whatever caused the SOS would end up being no stronger than one of the more powerful zombies.

Three days had passed, so a couple of hours would not make a difference now, and if it did. Well . . . shit happens.

“You need to stay away from the groups,” Ivey told him., “Or else you will suck experience from everyone.”

“I didn’t think it works like that.”

Ivey shrugged, her eyes going unfocused. “Because you did the scouting and are the leader, experience will be assigned to you unless you are over ten meters away.”

“That is annoying.”

She shrugged and dug into the backpack she had lugged up.

“What is this?” Daniel asked, looking perplexed at the can of paint and brush.

“H for human, E for empty, W for weak, and D for danger,” she told him.

“I need experience, too. Why should I stay away?”

Ivey rolled her eyes. “We are using your traps . . . and ‘system experience’”—she physically made inverted commas around the words system experience —“is not your primary method of getting stronger. Boosts to us normies will mean more.”

“How about the doors?”

“Reinforce the dangerous ones and unlock all the rest,” Ivey suggested. “I think we should consult with you before fighting any Ds.”

“You know my Animal Sense is not that accurate.”

Ivey shrugged. “It is the best we have.”

Daniel nodded and went to work, pulsing his Animal Sense and then painting on the door. Only three doors got a D. Two had spiders, and the third had a dog that at the shoulder was as high as Ivey.

Loud sobbing distracted him. Ivey was being smothered by an old woman. She looked a little overwhelmed by the attention.

Daniel watched her. They were tears of relief and joy. That was a nice upside to why they were here, saving helpless people. Priscilla was on his shoulder, and he felt interest spike in the mouse.

What? he thought absently.

The impression of strength and speed reached him. She had a set of skills that boosted her physical attributes. He looked further and saw that a sword was discarded on the floor of the room. What the? That matronly, grandmother-type woman had chosen a hand-to-hand fighting class and wielded a sword.

Getting someone who could be his grandmother to join his army felt a little wrong. Then he shrugged. He would take it.

Finally, they were finished, and they prepared once more to go upwards. Daniel went up to the grandmother because he could not help himself. It was something about seeing an old woman with a naked blade that he could not pass up.

“I am Daniel.” He held out a hand. She shook it. Her grip was powerful.

“Call me Gran, everyone else does.”

“Welcome to the team. I look forward to finding out what you can do.”

“What? You will not challenge and ask if I know what I am doing?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Gran. If I did that with my nan, I would have sore ears for the rest of the day.”

Gran laughed. “I got warned that you were reserved as a leader, but I like you. You have your head on straight.”

“I do my best,” he said while shooting an annoyed look at Ivey. “Reserved,” he mouthed. She grinned and did not look at all apologetic.

There were no service stairs linking the floors up here. In their place, there was a marked stairwell, and the doors were mostly window, which let him visually confirm the stairwell was empty, at least immediately on his side. However, Daniel understood that would work in both directions. When he opened the door and stepped in cautiously, he found these had thick carpet instead of the more threadbare appearance of the previous stairs. Animal Sense flared upwards, sticking to the stairwells. Nothing had infested the space.

He released a relieved breath and then focused on the floor above. He had checked the floors so many times that he already had a pretty clear idea of what was needed, but he retested in case the status quo had changed. Of course it hadn’t. Everything, monsters, ferals, and humans, had dropped into a routine, at least for now. In a couple of days, he expected hunger and desperation to stir everything up again.

There was a bear, which Daniel was pretty sure had access to the corridors and was responsible for them being empty, but it was asleep, and they would have time to set up before it noticed them. Why a bear existed thirty bloody floors up in the middle of the city was a mystery. He knew monsters teleported in but a goddamn bear. It was ridiculous.

They crept up and brought the traps from earlier and placed them down.

“Golly gosh, you guys are organised,” Gran whispered. Ivey leant over and whispered something, and Gran looked at him with additional respect. Daniel pointed to where the bear was going to come for and then nodded at Gabby.

“HELP!” Ivey clutched her ears and Gabby grinned.

There was a rumble, and the bear squeezed out of where it had been sleeping. It was huge and there was no way it would have fitted through a standard-sized door. It must have been two meters wide across its chest. Black with yellow stripes and menace radiated from it. It had definitely been teleported in. That creature had not mutated from any earth stock.

Arrows flew at the moment it emerged, and Daniel was worried that the heavy-duty restraint he had put up that stopped the strongest of hulks would not even hinder this monster. It looked heavier than his smaller tractor at home. The bear must have weighed a couple of tonnes. If he hadn’t seen how sturdy the floors were, he would have fretted about it falling through them and maybe collapsing the entire tower.

It roared in fury at them, and the arrows that had destroyed the cat downstairs were just pinpricks to the bear, barely drawing blood. Two of exploded but only singed the beast’s fur. The monster roared and charged them, and from forty meters away, Daniel could vibrations of each step through the floor. It was shaking the entire goddamn building, or at least that is what it felt like.

The ranged would not stop it. He immediately focused and gathered two-thirds of his magic to form a lightning bolt in the hope it could hurt the monster where Ingrid’s arrows had failed. To control the energy, he needed to use both hands.

“Lightning,” he yelled, shutting his eyes before he unleashed the spell. His eyelids went white.

Boom!

The noise of the thunder physically hit him, and he stepped back in surprise as the wind buffeted him, almost making him lose his balance. He opened his eyelids, blinking away the tears caused by the brightness. The smell of ozone and then burnt fur reached him. The monstrous bear was still coming, but the care he had taken when aiming meant his bolt had struck it in the chest. The fur was burned away, and the skin vaporised.

It crashed into the restraints. For a hopeful moment, they held before the monster’s momentum tore them from the wall. Briefly, the bear’s charge was spent. One of its paws was mangled, having landed on a bear trap.

Daniel realised he was going to have to engage the monster in club-to-paw-and-teeth combat. While there was another set of restraints between them, there was no doubt it would brush through them, if not casually, at least with only minimal effort. He considered using the rest of his magic on another lightning blast, but instead swished the club through the air and bled the magic into it. Electricity started crackling between the spikes. He needed to prepare for a longer battle.

Arrows and magic went over his shoulder. Next to him, Dave shuffled uneasily, and he could see the young man with the shield charge considering doing something stupid.

Daniel grabbed his shoulders.

Arrows hammered home, targeting the tattered, fried hole Daniel had created. The monster bounded forward, a new set of traps went off, and the last of the restraints failed as quickly as he had feared.

Daniel tensed.

The monster was enormous.

Boom!

Someone had delivered some explosive ability into its open chest. The bear stuttered and collapsed.

“I will take that,” Ingrid said in satisfaction. The bear was clearly dead, as Ingrid’s exploding arrow must have blown up its heart. “Daniel can have the assist.”

The young man next to him vomited on the ground.

Luke lowered his shield, pulled off his helmet, and wiped sweat off his brow. “I was not looking forward to trying to slow that.”

Daniel nodded in agreement. It had been big, not fast, and he wondered if he should have fought it one on one. He was confident he could have avoided its teeth and claws, unlike the squishy ranged behind him. If it had reached their defence line, then people would have died. Then he stopped himself. Developing a hero complex would help no one.

“Good job all,” he said instead. “Same as downstairs,” he ordered, accepting the can of paint to go to work again. There would be no Ds on this floor, but even some of the normal fights had been challenging. Everyone would take their responsibilities seriously.

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