Chapter 29: Ruins

Jerry rode along the road slowly, removing the bullets from the magazine in his hand and then repacking it. There was no need for a rush at this current time, and Jerry could do with some experience handling his magazines.

Click. Click. Click.

The bullet made a noise as it slowly clicked into place in the magazine. Soon, he unloaded them as he slid the bullet out of it’s slot. After a while, he put the magazine back into the gun before starting reloading drills. He took a magazine out of his vest and replaced the magazine in his gun, before putting it back into his vest. He repeated the process for the next few hours as he rode down the path.

The sun eventually set and Jerry decided to settle down for the night. Jerry opened a MRE from his backpack and ate it’s contents and placed the tablets in his pocket. He then scaled a tree and found a suitable branch to hold Jerry and his belongings. He would arrive soon at the ruins and he would need to clear them out. Jerry let his eyelids collapse as he fell asleep, falling still as the night passed.

Jerry opened his eyes and took a deep breath in. He stretched his arms and back as he awoke to the new day before hopping off his tree.

His feet landed on the ground with a thud. Jerry looked into the sky, finding it still dark out. Jerry got on his horse and quickly set off on his horse to the ruins.

He soon arrived at the ruins. There was a stone tower in the center that over looked the land that surrounded the ruins and there was a collapsed section of the wall that was guarded by bandits. Jerry didn’t exactly want to wait, but he could never be too careful and brought out the recon drone. As it flew into the air, Jerry could get a grasp of what was inside. Around center, bandits slept in the center and off to the side was a canteen which can be told by the assortments of pots and pans near it. HVTs or anything important were likely inside the stone tower in the center.

Jerry grinned as he recalled the recon drone as he thought of the loot that he could get from this. Jerry wanted to release the frustrations he had on Larmen’s group by screwing them over once or twice but this will have to do. Jerry looked around him, figuring out a plan. The ruins stood atop a hill, giving the bandit’s the height advantage that could prove dangerous if they are able to get archers out quickly. However, Jerry did have his blink ability that could assist him.

He didn’t want to sneak around, so he decided to do the next best thing and the blink as an offensive tool. Jerry examined the walls and determined that they were too high to blink atop of. There was also a lot of open ground between where he stood to the hole to run, so Jerry just decided to just shoot them from where he stood.

Jerry got off his horse and tied the horse to a tree. He should probably feed it soon as he hadn’t fed it in the last few days. Jerry patted the horse a couple times before moving away from the horse to not scare it as bad when he fires. He looked for somewhere that he could have a good line of sight, but have good concealment. He found himself a nice little bush that wasn’t the tallest, but hid his body if he crossed his legs.

Jerry sat down and looked down his sight. This was the first time that Jerry really used the C-More sight that came with the rifle. The sight had a thick housing and was long. The sight’s outer casing had 3 dials with two on each side and one on the top for tuning the sight. Jerry tinkered with the sight to find that when he rotated the dial on the left side, the sight would be magnified while the other two were used to zero the sight in.

Jerry looked into the sight to find a cross with a stadiametric range finder on the bottom left and the zeroed distance on the top right. Jerry found there was little to no wind and started to zero in his sight. Using the rangefinder, he was able to roughly estimate that they were about 250 meters away and zeroed that in with the help of the sight.

Jerry lined up his shot and pulled the trigger, feeling the recoil hit back on his right shoulder. He quickly relined his shot with the other guard before shooting again as the first guard’s head recoiled back as he fell down. Jerry then moved to the right a bit before laying down on his belly and then watched the walls and hole in the wall and waited.

Another guard came out of the opening only to be put down by Jerry as he fired his rifle. Another guard peeked the opening but Jerry missed his shot causing the guard to hide himself with the wall. Jerry quickly reloaded before starting to run down the field towards the opening with his weapon up. Occasionally, Jerry would out a burst of bullets to suppress the guard and stop him from peeking.

Jerry then realized that it was a pointless idea as he is in a medieval setting and they likely only had swords and bows and stopped suppressing them and reloaded a new magazine. As he started sprinting towards the opening, what seemed to be an archer gets onto the wall along with 3 others start taking aim. Jerry kept sprinting but fired in the general direction of the archers causing them to flinch and miss their shots.

He soon arrived at the opening and did a quick pulse scan.

45 Hostiles Detected!

Hostile Classification:

25x Grunts

5x Brutes

10x Archers

5x Mages

Red outlines started to appear on his visor and easily recognizable icons appeared over them. There were circles above what seemed to be mages as there were five of them. Arrows appeared over archers, brutes had shields over their heads and grunts had nothing over them. There was an outline waiting on the opening lying in waiting for Jerry to come through to ambush him. Jerry turned the corner, already firing his weapon and causing the outline to fall on the ground.

As he did this, many of the bandits awoke as the shots echoed throughout the ruins. Jerry quickly turned to them and started to fire in small controlled bursts at the bandits as they grabbed their swords. Jerry soon ran out of ammo and reloaded a magazine while looking around.

Jerry currently stood at the south east of the ruins where the opening was. The ruins was a square shaped area and because of this, to his left had a staircase that led to the top of the walls where the archers were. To his right, there was a wooden door that led to the inside of the walls of the ruins that had the possibility to be a good choice, but also a bad choice. However, there was another opening that Jerry spotted on the north western side of the ruins.

The magazine slid into the rifle with a click and Jerry pulled back the charging handle to chamber the next bullet before taking more shots at the bandits. As his weapon ran dry, the bandits started to charge at Jerry with a war cry. Jerry turned around and ran out of the opening and turned left and ran down a bit before the next magazine was ready to be fired.

As the next magazine was ready, Jerry turned around and found the bandits clumped up together and charging at him in a blob. Jerry unloaded into them causing a good chunk of them to collapse dead. As Jerry got ready to run down again, he heard more war cries but it came from behind him. The bandits had used the north western opening to flank Jerry and pinch him. There were still bandits in front of him that were still charging him, causing Jerry to have to run east into the open field. Jerry ran into the open field as he inserted the magazine into his gun and cocked it before turning around to open fire.

Jerry found that the flanking groups had merged into one but they started to put spacing into their formation as they charged at Jerry. As Jerry took aim, a red fiery ball was launched towards him from the wall. Jerry jumped to the right and as his body hit the ground, started to unload into the bandits running at him, causing a decent chunk to collapse. Jerry looked at where it came from to find that the Mages and Archers were on the wall, taking aim at Jerry. He quickly got up and started to quickly reload his rifle, dropping the current magazine on the ground and inserting a new one.

Jerry looked at the bandits, seeing that their eyes were filled with fear as they charged him. Jerry used his sight and shot towards the bandits on the walls being able to drop one mage before the rest ducked into cover. He looked at the bandits charging at him to find 8 bandits left. He took aim at one before taking a shot towards their head. He shot his rifle, one by one, watching each one fall down and felt the rifle kicking back on his shoulder.

As the last one fell, Jerry picked up his dropped magazine and placed it back into it’s slot and blinked towards the castle as he reloaded his rifle. He kept blinking, towards the opening but soon felt a heavy wave of fatigue fell upon him as he reached the wall of the ruins.

‘Yea, thought this would happen’

Jerry pushed his back against the wall as each second passes and the effects get worse. He felt dizzy as it felt like his head was imploding in itself. His ears started ringing and the effects kept getting worse and worse each second. Jerry let go of his rifle letting it drop to the grass that he stood on and sat down against the wall. His breathing started to be labored soon after but that was the least of his problems. He felt an impact on his helmet, causing the effects to get even worse. Jerry quickly drew his pistol and shot towards where he got hit from.

He could see a silhouette fall to the ground and quickly reloaded but his movement started to be equivalent to a drunkard. It took him three tries to get the magazine seated as his vision started to blur. A silhouette then appeared emerging from the corner causing Jerry to shoot at it. The pistol kick up, more than usual due to his weakened body as the sound of the pistol was hard to hear as the ringing in his ears increased.

Jerry’s visor started to show his pulse being erratic as his BPM increased. The silhouette quickly ducked and pointed his hands towards him. Jerry quickly rolled out the way as his instinct told him nothing good would happen. An icy spike then impacted where Jerry once laid as he rolled away. Jerry shot at the chest of where the bandit stood and it was clear that he struck him as the bandit’s shoulder recoiled backwards from the shot.

“Bastard!” The bandit shouted.

Jerry let out a second shot, causing the silhouette to cover its neck as he fell on his knees. The effects that afflicted Jerry started to steady as Jerry looked around for his rifle. He did a quick Pulse Scan to find the remaining bandits.

14 Hostiles Detected!

9x Archers

4x Mages

1x Brute

Jerry struggled to get onto his feet as his movements were sluggish and slow along with his rifle in hand. He used his rifle to prop himself up and was able to get on his feet with his back against the wall.

Jerry remembered that he blinked five times before he started to feel the negatives from what can only be assumed to be the drawbacks of using too much magic. He looked up to find a large, bulky red outline about to turn the corner. Jerry could feel the adrenaline start to pump through his body as he raised his rifle and got ready to fire. As the large man turned the corner, Jerry unloaded into him, feeling the rifle kick back more than usual. He was unable to keep his stance and fell back down onto his back but causing the large man to do the same.

Jerry took the magazine out and held one side of the magazine towards the edge to get a feel for how many bullets were left in it. Jerry estimated that it was closer to the top than he’d like before putting it back in while he was on his side. Jerry looked around for the other outlines to find that they were waiting for Jerry to enter the opening as he found the outlines waiting to launch arrows and magic at him.

Jerry got up, stumbling to his feet again before thinking of a plan. He looked at where they were positioned and it was almost perfect to start “slicing the pie”. Jerry reloaded his rifle and walked towards the opening and readied his rifle. He stood outside the opening, taking deep breaths to prepare himself to do something stupid. He started to “slice the pie” as he moved to the left. As a red outline approached his sights, Jerry got ready to fire his weapon. The red outline finally fell into his sight and a bang was heard as Jerry pulled the trigger. However, an arrow was let loose and it impacted Jerry’s face mask, causing him to recoil backwards.

As he recovered, from the impact on his helmet, Jerry saw the bandits slowly approaching the opening cautiously. Jerry decided to hurry up and wrap up this fight and loaded in the AP-F rounds that he had. Jerry continued to slice the pie, taking each step slowly as he peeked the opening. As the first bandit fell into Jerry’s sights, he pulled the trigger causing the AP-F round to be launched into the bandit. The first thing that Jerry noticed was that there was a slightly larger entry wound than those that were found in regular rounds. But, the effects were easily seen as the bandit quickly fell down face first with a thud as he hit the ground.

Jerry then picked up the pace as he continued to peek, finding another one in his sights. Jerry shot off a small burst into the next one and found the effects even more amplified as it made big holes in the bandit. Jerry’s next bandit found a round to enter his mouth causing the jaw to be blown off and a mangled gargled noise to come from the bandit. As this was happening, the effects of the excessive use of magic started to increase again, making Jerry fall onto his knees. His stomach twisted and turned but the adrenaline flowing through his body kept going. Jerry got up and picked up the pace of slicing the pie even more.

Each time a bandit fell into Jerry’s sight, he would pull the trigger causing the bandit to drop dead. As Jerry’s sight fell onto the last bandit, he was seen dropping his bow.

“W-Wait, I surrender!” The bandit said.

Jerry looked at the silhouette that he could see, feeling the amplifying effects of excessive magic use.

Jerry lowered his rifle and held it in his left hand by the foregrip.

“Thank you, I’m in your debt” The bandit said. Jerry looked at him before pulling out his pistol and shooting him.

“B-But” The bandit said as the blood from the bullet wound expanded throughout the robe.

“Can’t take risks” Jerry said as he collapsed on the spot as his adrenaline faded away. Before his consciousness could slip, Jerry did a pulse scan.

No Hostiles Detected

Jerry let out a sigh of relief before his arms dropped to his sides and dropped his rifle. His consciousness slipped away into the void as he fell unconscious.