Chapter 10 - The great escape 2

Two days passed since he left the cave, and he was already off to a rocky start. He was only halfway towards the base of the mountains, but he already lost most of his drones to the thousands of flying creatures above. With the printer no longer able to keep up, he had to resort to sending only a couple of the drones in the air every hour. The only chance he had against the hordes was his eyes in the sky, allowing him to detect and move out of the way of passing hordes, and being limited to scouting every hour caused him to almost get overrun by a passing horde a couple of times. His luck finally ran out when his dwindling supplies of drones finally ran out by the time he got to the base of the mountains, and soon, Hunter found himself in the path of a horde with hundreds of the monsters.

He was truly boned this time; it was a mix of a different kinds of monster groups and there was an alpha he have never fought before. There were redbeaks, zergling lookalike bugs half the size of a family car and a massive monster with spikes protuding all over its body like a porcupine. The monster horde charged at him, and Hunter opened fire while slowly retreated backwards, pushing the cart with his back. With the overwhelming firepower of the chain gun ripping through everything; even the alphas did not stand a chance at lasting very long against the barrage of 20mm and, he was able to stop them from getting closer. However, the assault from the horde was relentless and when the slower members of the horde finally caught up to the main assault, Hunter had to resort to dropping his shield and dual wielding his secondary, with Glados now controlling both his left arm and the MG.

The monsters got closer at breaking through and overwhelming the duo with the massive zerg rush by the bugs, and a redbeak alpha finally got past, tanking some of the autocannon fire. It charged and slammed into his left shoulder, knocking the rifle out of his left hand and severely damaging his left arm in the process and Hunter was flung against the hover cart with the overloaded hydraulic servos leaking fluid everywhere. On the ground, Hunter finished off the offending redbeak alpha with the chaingun, and while Hunter moved his suit to get back up, Glados quickly switched control and started to fire the turret MG on the cart. Hunter quickly retracted his chaingun and changed out the ammo drums under covering fire from Glados, and with a fresh resupply of ammo, the duo fought on. When they were almost through the monster horde, the humongus armored porcupine beast finally caught up to the assault and started to thunder towards them. Seeing the massive threat closing the distance, Hunter ignored the rest of the horde and immediately started firing at the beast.

The massive armored beast thundered on with its powerful shield blocking everything; and even after its shield eventually got destroyed, it still did not go down, with the slugs not powerful enough to get through its thick outer carapace, muscles and fat to reach its critical organs. To Hunter's horror, the armored beast finally got close enough, and it lowered its body to the ground and with a deafening roar, shot all of its six foot long spines in all directions. The spines were accompanied by a thunderous sonic boom, and all the nearby monsters including the ones that were crowding near Hunter were instantly killed, leaving most of them impaled to the ground and trees, some of them gruesomely blown up by the mana infused spines.

Hunter did not fare any better; he did not have his shield, and even though the monsters in front of him and his armor was able to stop most of the mana infused spines, a couple of them managed to get past the weakspots in his suit, and impale itself into Hunter's body. With all of the optics on the suit damaged from the attack; screaming from the pain and anger, Hunter opened the hatch of the suit and manually aimed the chaingun to finish the beast off. Seeing that the now defenceless beast was slowly dying from its injuries, it was clear the fucker was not going anywhere, so Hunter decided to let it suffer and focus on getting the spines removed.

The pain was absoutely agonizing with the spikes in the spines digging into his flesh and not allowing them to be pulled out. Realizing the fact they had to be cut off to be removed, he begged Glados to shut the pain going to his brain, but she was unable to, since the pain kept him awake from losing consciousness and bleeding out. Whimpering and crying from the pain and fear, he slowly cut the ends of the spines with his chainsaw, and slowly and painfully removed them one by one, biting onto a peice of rag. After removing the spines, he stopped the bleeding with a gel that quickly closed his wounds, and about to lose consciousness from the shock, staggered into the cart and closing the door behind him, blacked out.

He woke up a day later feeling like shit, with all of his wounds healed. Although it was still uncomfortable to move around, he had to quickly repair his suit and continue on, and after a quick meal he left the cart. A gruesome scene was waiting outside with dead monster carcasses laying everywhere along the retreating path, and a group of carrion monsters were having a feast, picking meat off the dead animals. Hunter shooed them off and quickly repaired the left arm and the optics on the suit just enough to let him move and when he was finished, the suit was barely back to its functioning state. Before he left, Hunter quickly digged through the strongest monster he had met so far besides the basilisk bear and was greeted with the biggest mana core he has seen to date. Although he was tempted to loot all the other bodies, he knew he had to keep moving. Just as he was about to leave, he heard the sounds of a massive battle further up the mountains echoing down the mountain.

The battle was so intense that he saw flashes from what he assumed to be spells lighting up the sky over the horizon, and from all the flashes happening in quick succession, he could guess it was not an individual but a group of people fighting. He was certain it was other survivors, since the path he was using led to the lowest point between the mountain peaks, and was the quickest and only way to get across the mountains without having to go all the way around or up the steep mountains. From what the A.I implied about the 90,000 people she had to summon, it was obvious he was not the only nor the first one to be summoned, and from how he was teleported together with the woman that died infront of him, other surivors likely met and formed a group to survive. With the monsters coming from all directions other than North to form the monster wave, all those who survived would likely have been funneled into this narrow path heading North over the mountains.

With all the monster hordes nearby attracted to the massive battle and distracted, Hunter could move at a faster pace, and from what the maps indicated, he was only a day's travel away from where they were. Afraid they might leave before he arrived, he quickly sent some drones ahead to check the survivor groups out and reach out to them. After surviving this cruel world surrounded by monsters by himself for 2 months, he was starving for human interaction and even if he was used to being alone back on Earth, the two months of solitude was unbearable to the point where, if he did not have Glados to talk to, he would have given up much earlier.

The path going up the mountain was empty and filled with monster remains, an there were traces of combat left behind by the survivor groups. When he finally arrived at the large area the battle he saw over the horizon, what he saw terrified him. The battefield was filled with thousands of broken monster carcasses, with the ground filled with holes from explosions and trees broken in half, with some still smoking spewing ashes everywhere. The ground was muddy with blood and the smell of partially burnt flesh and rotting meat was absolutely disgusting. Most of the monsters lay dead in front of a large area filled with wodden spiked barricades, and behind the multiple rows of barricades was a crudely made wooden wall made by the survivors which was dyed dark red, almost black by all the blood and covered with the porcupine spines.

He did not know why they bothered to build a wall and defend against the monster waves instead of crossing the mountains but the only reason he could think of was, they were probably to waiting for more people since stronger monsters were blocking the way up the mountains. The door of the walls were broken open with dead bodies of large monsters leading inside, and inside the makeshift castle, he was dismayed to find a few dozen looted corpses surrounded by bloody monster bodies and broken gear. The dead were from all kinds of age, race and sex, one even as young as ten holding on to her mother's hand who lay dead next to her. From what it looked like, they were ambushed by a large group last night and those people were unfourtunately killed in the chaos that insued after the monsters broke past the castle gates. He wanted to bury them, but cursed when his drones warned him of a monster horde closing in behind him. He wanted ignore the horde and speed up to catch up with the rest of the survivors, however the incoming horde was werewolves and Hunter knew he was too slow to run away from them.

He ran up the stairs leading to the top of the walls and found a box with a couple of bottles filled with a red liquid. He noted that small detail and when his chaingun rotated to life and he was ready to fire, Glados stopped him and showed him the zoomed footage of survivors being chased by the werewolves. Hunter quickly left his suit leaving Glados on fire duty and went to the cart to fetch the anti material rifle. Hunter was considered to be a decent shot in the military, and with the electronic scope automatically adjusting his recticle for elevation, lead and windage, he fired a shot at the lead werewolve that was about to nip the slowest survivor. The werewolf was not expecting a ranged attack was caught off guard, and since it did not have its shield up, immediately got killed by the shot and rolled on the ground, and the rest of the werewolves slowed down a bit to go around, buying the survivors just a little more time. The survivors thinking they have entire base's ranged support, and that the entire base knows they were coming now, stopped to fight back against the werewolves. Hunter wanted to yell at them to keep running, but he had no time as he continued to shoot at the werewolves to keep them back. None of the survivors wore heavy armor and Hunter knew if they did not get any armored support, they were going to get ripped apart, so he ordered Glados to rush towards to go help while he kept firing.

However the group knew exactly what they were doing, as they suddenly moved into formation. The party of six immediately reorganized; the two ranged users moved to the back and sides, keeping the two robed people who looked to be mages safe between them and the frontline melee fighters stood at the very front. The two melee fighters suddenly rushed foward, moving at inhuman speeds faster than his eye could follow and started to brawl with the werewolves in direct combat. Instead of blocking their attacks, they dodged, weaved and parried, redirecting the monster's attacks and sliced the enemy up, effortlessly dismembering monsters much larger than them with ease. The two bow users drew their arrows, and using somekind of skill, shot arrows which was like a tank round, breaking the sound barrier and peircing through multiple enemies. They, then made multiple arrows out of light and shot them towards the sky, and the arrows exploded in the sky and separating into multiple arrows, rained down piercing and maiming multiple monsters. All of their attacks did not seem to be stopped by the shields, and while the party was killing the monsters with ease, the mage finished with her spell, and when she was ready, the party gave way for the mage who unleashed a bright blue ball of lightening that slowly moved above the monsters while vaporizing those on the way, and with a bright flash, vaporized all the remaining monsters.

By the time Glados reached them, the battle was over and they party was busy collecting their loot. Hunter also left the wall and approached them, intimidated by how much stronger they were than him, remembering that the wolverines' mana claws were sharp enough to almost slice through his 2 inch thick shield and he was lucky so far to never meet face them in large groups. When Hunter walked up together with Glados, the party finally looked up and Hunter was finally able to take a good look at them.

The party was formed up of five girls and a boy who looked to be a sibling to the archer. They were of mixed nationalities and ages with the archer siblings looking to be of Spanish decent, the mage who looked to be Korean, the healer a blonde Scandinavian, and finally the two melee fighters who were a black girl with a spear and a Japanese girl with a katana. Thinking to himself at how the A.I really went ham with the picking one from random places thing, he suddenly realized all of them were talking in English, besides the Korean girl. Or it seemed they were, since their mouth did not match what they were saying at all. Realizing it was probably a translation skill or something the A.I added so everybody can communicate with each other, Hunter awkwardly said hi in English to not give too much of himself away. He decided to have Glados speak from the suit to make them think there was somebody inside and made her say hello too. The leader seemed to be the Korean mage who looked to be the oldest of the group and at the same age or older as him and she cheerfully said hi and asked some questions.

"Hello there"

"Hi"

"Hey guys, you guys must be new here, we have not seen you guys around before. Where is Rodriguez and Chang Chee? They should be the guards right now, did they go up the mountain again? I told them we were going to return by today. Can you ring them up and tell them, that Bravo team is back and we could not find anymore survivors?"

"Oh shit, uhhh, I don't know how to put it to you but, ummm, they are gone"

"What?"

"The survivors were gone before we arrived. I am sorry to inform you, but it seemed to have been really bad."

The archer girl hearing this gasped in horror as her amazing eyesight allowed her to see the state of the wall and what lay beyond the walls. Without another word, the party left Glados and Hunter behind and ran as fast as they could towards the wall. Hunter shook his head, and with a heavy feet, slowly headed back to the wall.