Chapter 19 - Shade Radow Legends

Current Location: Confounding Cul-De-Sac

Brent’s party stood in the shade of the hill, discussing their plan of attack on the zombie portal.

Everyone was at full HP, which was 100 across the board. So that was good, though in this case if one bite was all it took to kill you, it didn’t really matter. No one could afford to get hit.

In terms of weaponry Harry had his badass machine gun, and would probably be doing the most damage. Brent would be using his shotgun, Karisma had that SMG, and Reisa…

Brent cleared his throat. “Look, uh, the having only four arrows-

“Three now,” Reisa corrected, “until I pick up the one I used.”

“-Three arrows thing is really going to be a problem.” Unless they could find more as loot drops somewhere, but arrows were apparently considered as “Rare” on the rarity scale, so they couldn’t count on it. “Do you really not have any other weapon else you can use?”

“The bow is all I know.” The elf tugged on her braid. “But… well, I did pick up one of your guns earlier.”

“Really? Can you show us?”

“Yes, I have it right here,” she reached into her bag, “It’s quite small though…”

All of a sudden, Brent had a dreadful premonition. Could it be?

“Ah, here it is.” She pulled a very familiar, almost comically tiny pistol.

Brent reached out and checked the stat block of the gun, just to make absolutely sure:

Celtic .22 rimfire “Noisy Cricket” Category

Pistol Rarity Uncommon Damage 22

Capacity

14

Firing Modes

Semi-Auto

Attachment slots

Optic, Barrel, Lower Rail Possessing a similar size and firing sound to its namesake insect, the Cricket excels against unarmored and unarmed opponents.

Of course it would be the Noisy Cricket again.

Brent sorely wanted to raise his head to the sky and let out a scream of frustration. That would alert all the zombies in the neighborhood to their location, but would it really matter? There was no escape. The Cricket was... inevitable.

“Is something the matter?” Reisa asked, as he hadn’t replied.

Brent snapped himself out. “No, it’s nothing, just- uhhh, how about you use a melee weapon instead? I’ve got a bat, or a knife if you want.”

“That’s out of the question. I would rather not get any closer to one of those things than I must.”

That was… understandable. Brent didn’t want to either.

Reisa sighed, looking at the pistol. “However, I suppose I shall have to learn to use your world’s weapons, if they are the only kind to be found in this cursed land. Might you show me how this one works?”

“Uh-” Brent caught his tongue, about to say that it would be more of Ray’s domain. But Ray wasn’t here.

After Ray, the most qualified person would be… himself, actually, as he’d used this exact same weapon before.

“Yeah, I guess I can.“

Now that he had stepped up to the plate, where should he start? He’d never taught anyone anything serious before, let alone how to handle a firearm.

Reisa’s gray eyes were fixated upon him, intent on what he had to say.

He gulped. “So, uh. The gun. Do you have any ammo for it?”

The elf tilted her head. “I don’t know, what is the ammo?”

Brent hesitated. Did she not know what ammunition was or did she just not know what kind the Cricket used?

“Uh, by ammo I mean like- the bullets, you know?”

He searched her face, and found nary a mote of understanding. She didn’t know. Oh boy.

“Okay, they’re these little uh, metal things that go into the gun and get shot out of them. Kind of like how your bow uses arrows. Did you happen to pick up any of those?”

“Little metal things… I see. No, I don’t think I have any,” she declared confidently.

“Are you sure?” Brent’s eyes went to her bag. She might have found some but didn’t recognize them for what they were. “Can I check your bag to make sure?”

“No.”

Her response was immediate.

What. “Huh?”

“You may not.”

“Uh… why?”

Reisa looked at him strangely, as if the answer was obvious.

“It is not yours,” she said after a moment.

“Uh… okay? I just wanted to see if you had any ammo boxes. Do you want to check yourself then? They’re the cyan colored ones.”

He gestured at her bag and she clutched it protectively.

“There’s no need. I do not have any.”

Why was she being so difficult about this? Was she hiding something?

Or maybe this was a princess thing.

Brent scratched his chin. “Hmmm. Oh, you can check in your Inventory screen! Yeah, just go to the ammo section, and look for- uh.” He stopped, realizing he didn’t remember what the ammo type was called. He knew it started with a decimal number, but that was about it. “Never mind.”

Brent didn’t want to just give up, but they were at something of an impasse and he didn’t want to pry. So much for being a raid leader.

“Um, you said cyan boxes?” Karisma piped up. “I still have the one you gave me before because you didn’t need it.” She took a box out of her giant level 3 backpack. “Looks like you do now.”

“Oh yeah, definitely.” Brent accepted it with much gratitude.

Incidentally, it had been Ray who suggested he give the ammo to Karisma instead of just dropping it. There was just no forgetting that guy.

Brent checked the stats for the ammo box:

.22 LR

Category

Ammunition

Rarity Common

Quantity

30

Small cartridge used by pistols and light rifles.

Okay, he would remember the name this time.

He opened the box up. “Right, so here’s how it works…”

--break--

Brent went through a quick rundown and demonstration of how the pistol worked, how to load and fire it.

It was a pretty crappy explanation, he was constantly stuttering, jumping back and forth between topics, and he was sure there were things he missed.

But Reisa didn’t fault him for it, and harbored no animosity about the bag thing from earlier.

She was quite cooperative, even allowing him to guide her hands into the proper posture for shooting. Brent’s heart still raced at the thought of that. Her skin felt so soft!

He still had the Silencer attachment from before, so he was able to have Reisa fire off a few test shots while making barely any noise. Click. Click-click.

Brent nodded in approval. “Yeah, there you go. Looks like you have the hang of it. Anyways, that’s all I have.”

Reisa smiled like the radiant sun. “You have my greatest thanks, Brent. Were we in Anlusia I would gladly take you on as a retainer.”

Wow, that sounded pretty good.

“Although…” she stared at the Cricket. “This weapon doesn’t seem quite as powerful as the others.”

“Tell me about it,” Brent quipped, “Yeah, not all guns are the same.”

He suddenly remembered Harry and Karisma were still there, watching him.

He turned to them. “Oh uh, are you guys okay? What have you been doing?”

“We’re fine,” Karisma replied, “We’ve just been like, looking through our stuff.”

“And listening to you, mate,” Harry added. “It’s been real informative.”

“Oh, really?” Brent flushed, unaware that he had been giving a group lesson this whole time.

“No foolin’. You’re doing great.” Harry gave a thumbs up, and Karisma followed it with an encouraging double thumbs up.

“Uh, thanks.” Right, they probably didn’t know too much about guns either. They were all blindly flailing about in the dark.

So that was their stats and equipment in order.

Now for enemy types. There were the normal zombies, which were slow but numerous, and there were the fast ones, able to close in quickly and deliver a lethal bite. According to the announcement, there were also tough ones? Brent hadn’t seen them yet.

Next up was their battle strategy. They probably wouldn’t need to worry about healers or healing since one bite was enough to turn someone, so it was better to just not get hit in the first place.

There were no tanks either, since everyone had the same HP. But… that didn’t mean someone couldn’t fulfill the duties of the tank role, even if they were not uniquely suited to do so via stats and abilities.

Since Harry and Karisma had the machine guns they were already serving as damage dealers, that left Brent and Reisa to draw aggro… somehow.

Would the portal even have anything to attack them with? Maybe he was overthinking things.

“Okay, so the portal is the raid boss, and any zombies that aren’t directly guarding it are all just adds,” Brent mused, mostly to himself but still loud enough for the others. “Assuming there are any with a guard directive…”

“Eh, you kinda lost me there, mate,” Harry said. “What are ‘adds’?”

“Uh, they’re the trash mobs,” Brent shifted his mental gears, remembering he was speaking with people who had never played an MMORPG before. “They’re not the main objective, the portal is. We should avoid fighting them if we don’t have to.”

Harry nodded in understanding. “Oh yeah, fair dinkum. What’s the plan, then?”

“Hm…” If this was an MMO raid, Brent would actually have just looked up a map of the dungeon on the Internet where someone had already laid out the optimal route and strategy. That obviously wasn’t an option here.

They needed to gather more information. “Uh, let’s go circle around the outside of the neighborhood, and see which direction has the least amount of adds- er, zombies in the way. Then we can uh, approach the portal from there. Quietly and cautiously, of course. Assuming we get there safely, Reisa and I can try to draw away any nearby zombies first so that you two can focus on damaging the portal with your big guns.”

“Um, this isn’t really a big gun,” Karisma said, holding hers up. Ah, he remembered the name now; it was the MAC-10. A submachine gun, or SMG. It looked a lot like an oversized pistol, yet still small enough to be held comfortably in one hand.

Brent shrugged. “Yeah, I guess not. But it’s one of those uh, fast shooting ones, you know? That’s what I meant. Good for dealing damage fast.”

He kind of wished he’d taken one of those instead of the shotgun Ray had recommended.

Karisma seemed to read his mind. “Do you want to like, switch weapons or something? I don’t know if I can do this destroying the portal thing.”

“Well you’re either doing that or pulling zombies and getting them to chase you.”

“Ah. Neeever mind then.”

It was tempting but Brent would stick with his shotgun. It was entirely possible the SMG wouldn’t be any easier to use and he’d have to start learning how to use it from scratch again.

Well, that was enough planning for now. “Let’s go scout out a direction,” Brent said, “We can start circling this way first,” he pointed counterclockwise, in the opposite direction of the hill where they had seen the guy explode. “Since we already know there’s a lot of them there.”

This sounded perfectly agreeable to the others, so off they went.

They tried to keep their distance while still remaining in view of the buildings, and more importantly the pink flashes that denoted the portal’s location.

As they progressed the terrain became less hilly and a lot more open and uncomfortably exposed.

It wouldn’t be too hard for a zombie to spot them, and indeed, after some time one of them did.

A walking cadaver that had wandered a bit out of the neighborhood slowly turned to face them. All four of them froze upon noticing this, but there was really nowhere to hide.

“Guhhhhh.” The zombie let out a low groan and started shambling towards them.

Crap, he hadn’t planned for this!

Brent started waving his hands around. “Okay, okay, uh, everybody stay calm,” he loudly whispered. “Nobody shoot, the sound will just draw more of them.”

The other three nodded, then stared at him in silence, expecting further instructions.

“Uhhhhh… let’s just keep going. It’s a slow one, so if we stay moving it won’t be able to catch up.”

They continued their walk, with that one zombie trailing behind them.

At last they had gone far enough around that they were past the house blocking the flashes of pink light, and had a clear view of the source.

In the middle of the soccer field was the portal, a tall, rectangular metal archway on a small circular platform. As Brent observed it, the empty space within the archway suddenly filled up with a bright plane of solid looking pink light.

A pair of bunny ears emerged from the light, followed by the zombie that was wearing it.

The plane of light disappeared, and the zombie walked off the platform to join its peers in aimlessly milling about the field. There were quite a few of them in the soccer field, though not nearly as much as the short street leading up to it, which was crawling with undead. Some of them were wearing red sneakers, while others looked… bulkier? And had boxing gloves of all things on their hands.

Anyway, they definitely weren’t going to be taking that road to the portal, which was a shame as it also looked like the shortest path.

Brent had so many unvoiced questions. Where were the zombies coming from? Unlike the robots from earlier, the walking corpses weren’t rising out of a hole in the ground but just popping out from thin air. Most likely they were being transported from another world.

Hm. This could be what they were looking for, a way to travel back to Earth.

Not this portal specifically though, it probably lead back to some horrible world filled with zombies, but the portal technology, or magic, or whatever was powering it.

“Guhhhh...” The groan sounded close. But that zombie couldn’t possibly have caught up yet!

Brent turned around to see another, different zombie approaching them from the side. It was one of the bulky looking ones with boxing gloves. Looking ahead he could spot a couple more wandering around the outskirts, which they would have to risk getting detected by on their scouting path.

Okay, maybe letting the zombies just follow them was a bad idea. Brent had already felt nervous enough from having one behind him.

Brent motioned for everyone to inch away from the second zombie some distance, then started whispering.

“I think we can do a silent takedown. Reisa, can you shoot that guy down?” he pointed at the bulky zombie.

The elf shook her head frantically, continuing to inch away.

“What? Why not?” Her bow made almost no sound compared to a gun, and they could retrieve the arrow right afterwards since there weren’t any other zombies.

She didn’t say anything, just reaffirming her refusal and stepping back.

Ugh. Time to try the next best thing. “Fine, I’ll do it myself. Can you give me your gun, Reisa? Please?” The Noisy Cricket with the silencer attachment was still pretty quiet, right?

Reisa was more amenable to this request, and quickly tossed over the tiny pistol. Expecting her to hand it over, Brent almost flubbed the catch but managed to get a grip.

He made sure it was loaded, then took aim at the gloved zombie. It was big and close, giving him an easy shot.

He opened fire. Click. Click. Click. The big zombie was completely unfazed by the shots, though the blue holographic number 16s still appeared above it to indicate that some damage was done.

But how much did he need? Click-click. The zombie just took two more bullets in the chest and kept on coming. This must be one of the “tough ones” Dombey mentioned earlier.

The zombie raised its fists, just a few feet away now. Brent gritted his teeth.

Or maybe this pistol just did crappy damage? Well, of course it did, but he’d already hit the zombie the same number of times that it would take to kill one of the skeletal robots.

What if… He aimed at its big, bunny ears wearing head. Click!

It blew a small hole through the left cheekbone. There was no reaction from the zombie, but the floating damage number was yellow this time, and read 32 instead of 16.

Oh. Headshots did double damage. He should have realized that before.

He plugged it in the head once more. Another yellow 32 popped out, and this time the tough zombie lost its animation and slumped to the ground with a soft whumph, just a few inches from Brent’s feet.

Zombies Killed: 6

“YES!” He pumped his fist in triumph, relief flowing through him. Man, that thing had felt like a raid boss all on its own, but he’d taken it down singlehandedly.

If this was a game, he was really starting to get the hang of it.

“Uh, guys?” Karisma spoke up. She pointed at the street, where every single zombie on it had now turned to look straight at them.

Or not. Brent facepalmed.