Nick had made a grave mistake. He acknowledged that he definitely should have tried to clear the higher levels before venturing so deep into the car park. A nice trip through the 69th to 66th floors would have given him a great opportunity to regear, build on his fighting technique, and gain that mental sharpness he needed. In hindsight, that would have been the smart thing to do. Instead, Nick was running for his life from a two-metre tall boar coated in sinister-looking black plates. Nick had been walking along pretty peacefully, counting his lucky stars when he’d passed a section of wall and found the gigantic Brute lying in wait.

The two of them had stared at each other for a moment before Nick took off in a sprint. The nightmare boar hadn’t just let him go and had started charging after him, which had led to the current predicament. Nick wasn’t faster than the charging creature and had to rely on Hasten to give him small bits of distance that the boar would quickly close. Nick knew he’d have to change his strategy, thankfully he had some experience dealing with such oversized monstrosities. A benefit that Nick had over the last time he’d been chased by a boar was that this floor of the car park was still packed with cars.

His hopes of an easy escape were quickly dashed though. As he darted between the vehicles he looked back and watched in horror as the Brute just pushed right through the rusting car, parting them like the red sea. In his brief moment of observation, he saw that the boar’s armour was barely even scratched from the high-speed collision with the cars, which was rather worrying. Nick quickly strung together a new plan, he didn’t like his chances of just trying to outlast the stamina of his opponent again. He also wasn’t sure what other horrors he’d end up running into during his chase.

Nick ran until he found himself in a good position and charged directly towards the wall he was now facing. He heard the monster slowing down, clearly not as stupid as its distant cousin back on the higher floors, Nick didn’t need it to slam into the wall though. Nick activated Hasten and used the increased speed to send himself running up the wall and pushed off it, loading as much power through the legs as possible. The boar skidded towards the wall, not quick colliding with it, but Nick managed to clear it and grabbed onto one of the massive plates covering the creature.

Before the boar could get a good grasp of its situation Nick scrambled up its back and got to the back of its head. He cut his legs on the rough edges of the thick plates as he tried to clamp them down to stablise himself. Nick chose the biggest plate on the back of the creatures head and just started slamming, feeling a strange sensation flood into him from his fists. The creature let out a guttural roar and started trying to buck Nick off its back. Nick’s calves and thighs were getting sliced up but he held on, his leather greaves were completely shredded at this point and offering no protection. Nick endured the pain and just kept punching, relishing in the strange feeling of vigour that flowed back into him from each strike. He gave up punching with both hands and used his left hand to grab onto the edge of a plate for extra stability, with his right hand he kept slamming down into the same spot over and over.

The nightmare boar began to panic, or at least Nick thought it did. It must have realised that it wasn’t going to be able to just throw Nick off and tried something else. Nick looked up and saw that it was now starting to run. Nick then felt the plate start to give and started slamming into it with renewed vigour. He wasn’t sure what the boar was planning to do but he needed to finish this as quickly as he could. The plate on the back of the creature’s head finally broke and exposed disgusting flesh that had been hidden beneath. It was a rotten looking purple, with a purple liquid oozing out of it. Just as Nick was about to start punching into it he felt the boar suddenly stop its panicked charge. Nick looked up just in time to see that the boar had jumped and tucked its head down, leaving Nick fully exposed to the obstacle they were about to collide with.

Nick acted quickly and stopped clamping his legs down on the boar and tried to push away from it. Nick was sent crashing into the rear end of the car but managed to narrowly avoid getting crushed between it and the boar that was following. The impact knocked the wind out of Nick’s lungs and he definitely felt more than a few things crack. Nick grunted and pulled himself out of the car’s boot, looking at the boar that had narrowly missed him. The creature was struggling to pull itself out of the car, having gotten wedged into it at an awkward angle and getting its legs tangled up in the wreckage. Nick went to take a step towards it but stumbled, pain running up his leg. He looked down and saw that a stray piece of metal was sticking through his boot and foot. He reached down and yanked it out, pulling more flesh and delicate bone out in the process. That probably hadn’t been the smartest idea he thought as he winced.

Nick then hopped over to the boar, looking to finish the fight before it could get back up on its feet and maul him to death.

“Here little piggie piggie pig!” Nick yelled out, remembering a skill he hadn’t used in far too long.

The creature let out a literal squeal, one that sounded like it had been dragged through a blender filled with gravel and razor blades, but a squeal nonetheless. Nick hobbled over to the creature, climbed up onto its back and smashed his fist down into the exposed section of flesh he’d opened up. Sadly, the fight wasn’t ended with that punch and Nick had to repeatedly slam his fist down, enduring the growingly desperate struggles and screams of the creature. Not with a bang, but a slump, the boar finally stopped moving. Nick collapsed on top of his felled foe as he felt his strength disappear from him and get replaced by a slowly spreading tingle. Gritty Consitution once again proving to be the bread and butter of his survival. The skill worked in two parts, giving him a buff to strength and endurance during his fight, then when it was over he’d lose that buff and get some healing based on his endurance stickers, injury severity and fight duration. The evolution had changed both effects to add increased buffing and healing based on the duration of the fight and he was certainly feeling it.

He hadn’t noticed the increasing buff but he was made very aware of it when it all suddenly left him, he realised that without it he definitely wouldn’t have lasted anywhere near as long as he did. As he felt the tingle spread down his leg and into his foot he let out a relieved sigh. He looked down and watched as skin stitched itself together in a grotesque fashion that left him uncomfortable. Nick took a moment to go over the fight in his head and work a few things out, first order was that feeling of vigour he got from beating the Brute. It took him a second to remember the skill he had picked up from his level three evolution, Endurance Sap. He had to say, he was extremely happy with it. He had certainly felt the fatigue building up from Punishing Blows, but he’d made it far longer into the combo than he ever had before.

That brought him to Deep Blows and Punishing Blows, the real breadwinners of his kit. The changes to Deep Blows had lowered his initial damage but increased the internal damage he dealt as the fight increased, he wasn’t sure how effective it had been overall as he didn’t really have anything to compare it to. It did feel like it had done some serious work though, especially when combined with Punishing Blows, the skill that increased the damage of each consecutive hit he landed. As he was questioning how much work the evolved skill had done he realised something. The boar that he was currently collapsed on top of was a creature that usually took a team of level fives and sixes to deal with, and he’d just beaten it solo. Nick couldn’t doubt the power of his skills at all. Nick would try and remember to use Jeer more actively in his next fights though. He’d gotten so used to all his Brawler skills being passive that it was easy to forget he had an active one.

Nick pushed himself up and onto his feet, wincing as he felt that his foot was still pretty sore. It was much better than being completely unusable though, so he couldn’t complain too much. He also noticed that whatever damage his collision with the car had done to him was mostly gone. Nick quickly started making headway through the car park again, though he was a bit turned around now. He had been cutting through the car park diagonally towards the hotel before his encounter, but he wasn’t entirely sure where he was now. He had taken various twists and turns trying to lose the boar, so he was all sorts of turned around. Nick sighed. Of course, he’d managed to get lost already. Nick weighed it up for a while but decided to use his Explorer skill Map. He’d been trying to avoid using it since the Hogs had explained its growing drawbacks but he didn’t have much of a choice right now. He didn’t want to be aimlessly walking around the car park for hours, risking life and limb just to avoid using a skill.

Nick opened up his map and saw that he really had been going in an entirely different direction than he had intended. After doing a little course correcting, Nick took off towards the hotel with haste. He was still a bit banged up and didn’t want to get in another fight. Thankfully his light crystal revealed any Tricksters before they could ambush him, letting him give any of the devious monsters a wide berth. Nick was feeling pretty good about his progress when he encountered his next problem. He had almost missed them as he closed the distance but luckily had managed to focus in on them before he’d unleashed a disaster upon himself. A group of cars had been bunched together suspiciously, with a van at the centre of this bundle. It was only when he looked closely that he could see the creatures moving around the insides of this makeshift nest.

They were ant-like creatures each about the size of a cat. With six legs and an appearance Nick could only really describe eloquently as ‘that looks like a bloody big evil ant.’ Just like the uniform colour scheme of most of the monsters found in this place, the ants had a deep black carapace. Nick very carefully began to move away from the nest of untold horrors, not wanting to draw the ire of the Horde that was likely filled with monsters that were individually almost as strong as he was. It was as he was creeping away from the nest that he heard the yelling.

He heard the distinct sound of a masculine voice letting out a loud yell and his curiosity was piqued. Against his better judgement, Nick decided to investigate what exactly was happening. He was getting relatively close to the hotel anyway, so it wasn’t a major detour. As he moved towards the sound Nick realised that it was coming from right up against the edge of the car park, seeing just a bit of ‘natural’ light was quite refreshing. Nick heard more yelling and realised that it was coming from pretty close by now, he peaked his head around a bit of wall and finally found its source. There was a young dude standing in the middle of a pile of what looked like either Ghouls or the Infected, being lit by the headlights of a car.

This guy had no armour on at all, he was wearing a hoodie and some track pants. He was holding a baseball bat that was dripping with black and purple gunk and looked pretty puffed out, sucking in deep breaths. Nick saw the car had an open trunk that was still running behind the man and quickly made the connection.

“Huh?” The man suddenly said, “where’d this light come from? There ain’t no lights around here?”

Nick realised that it was his light crystal giving away his position from behind the wall, the light cutting through the darkness around the area. Wow, he felt a bit stupid. He had been trying to sneak up on the situation and had completely forgotten to deactivate the light crystal. Nick shook his head and stepped out from behind the wall.

“Hey there-” Nick started.

“Christ, what the fuck happened to you?” The man gawked.

Nick looked down at himself and realised that his clothes and armour were in tatters and his body was covered in dried blood from all his wounds. Probably not the best of first impressions, huh.