Chapter 23

The good thing about floor twenty-one was that there were still lots of unbroken doors. Yes, they were all off their hinges, but they were there to be used and Daniel did not have to personally collect them.

With a smile, Daniel turned to Luke, and the muscle that Carly had sent down. “I need twenty doors and I’ll be in the west corner.” Then he picked up the nearest shattered door and walked to the room he had nominated. The suite had afternoon sun streaming in and before he started working, he glanced quickly outside. Except for the lack of moving cars, it almost felt like the world pre-event. There was nothing living visible that screamed unnatural or impossible. And the slight glare of the sunshine hid the signs of the structural damage that he knew was present. Of course, when he looked closer it was easy enough to break the illusion. There were multiple crashes on the roads. Two cars crumpled together, a truck had gone through a house, the roof of another had buckled in wards. But without a visible monster, it was peaceful.

With a shake of his head before something disturbed that serenity, Daniel turned away to prepare his work station. The two halves of the broken door he had brought were lying in the room’s antechamber. “Not enough space.” He muttered, looking sideways at the bed. With a sigh, he positioned himself.

Strength.

Filled with power, he pulled the bed up with a single motion and placed it on its side. Then he turned tapped his hand on the table and with a burst of energy it collapsed into pieces. The couch and desk chairs got shifted into the corner of the room and he suddenly had significantly more room to work with.

There was a clatter of wood as doors were brought in and ceremoniously dumped in one of the corners he had cleared before they stomped out to get more.

Daniel smiled at them, playing up their surliness at being made to do manual labour. They did not know what was going to hit them. The room was hot and stuffy and had balcony doors, so he threw open to let in the air and a gust of warm wind struck him. He hesitated for a moment. It was hotter outside than in, which made sense given it was midafternoon in early autumn. After a moment’s thought, he went with the breeze and then set to work.

His plan was to create thirty or forty of the one shot rockets that Cindy had designed but get Luke’s team to supply the tension. Daniel remembered how he had created the traps personally. The type of wood that he needed and the setup where he would strain to bend the piece of wood and then clip it in that tensed state till he was ready to use it at a later point in time.

The door split into three lengthwise and after he had folded it out, it left Daniel with a thinner chunk that was over two metres long. Every five centimetres he pulled up a meter long piece of wood and further down a spot to hook it to once it was bent. What he had built looked weird.

More doors got thrown into the corner, but Daniel ignored while seeking to test his contraption. This setup took him back to that first day when it had only been him as opposed to what he had created now, which would hopefully industrialise the process. With a sigh, he placed two hands firmly on the top of a rod and pulled downwards. His muscles flexed and he could feel the strain as he bent it all the way till it was secured. The wood thrummed with tension and even without his magic it looked like it was ready to snap.

Daniel breathed out and slapped his biceps. He could feel the lingering ache from his exertion.

Perfect, he thought, and made a second row of poles by splitting another door. The idea was that Luke and the team would bend the wood to create tension and then he would use that power to fuse the one shot rocket. The potential trapped in those bent pieces of wood could fuel both the explosive projectile and the launcher component of the weapons he was building.

More doors were delivered, and the others left, but Luke stayed.

“You’re going to get us to bend them aren’t you.”

“Of course.”

Luke stepped up braced and pulled down. He seemed to struggle less than Daniel had, but he still grimaced as he locked into place. “That’s hard yakka, but we can do it.”

“I think maybe fifty cycles will be enough.”

Luke pointedly looked down at the two rows he had created the two bent poles. “You’re kidding aren’t you.”

Daniel stared him down.

“God damn it. I’m going to have words with Carly once this is finished. ‘Daniel just needs a little help.’ ‘Grab some others. It would be easy.’” Luke said, putting on a poor imitation of his daughter.

He chuckled and patted Luke on the back. “Hard work is character building.”

With that, he sat down and started crafting.

As he rested next to the open doors with the pleasant wind blowing over him, the five fighters cranked hard on their levers to generate the kinetic tension that he wanted. Every minute, he would use a small amount of his magic to transfer the energy that their struggle had built up into the weapons he was creating.

“And this is absolutely necessary.” Luke grunted as he used all of his strength to lock another lever into the fixed position. “Because its hard than it looks.”

“Yep,” Daniel said happily. “And I know how hard it is, because this is what I did to create all those traps that pushed back the ferals and saved everyone.”

“We know.”

The basic structure of the forty-one shot rockets he was making had been created already. All he was doing now was transferring the potential energy into them, which was simple. The process required less than half of his mana regeneration and only thirty seconds of concentration every three minutes.

The rest of the time, he focused on Priscilla as she explored the zombies below. Sneaking up on them and studying them for strength. She had already located three ultra’s and more elites than she could count. Daniel was pretty sure she was up to twenty-nine though he admitted there might be some double counting in there as the zombies kept moving around.

They were also disturbingly organised.

That was the bit that scared him the most. They had a system going and whatever master plan drove their action it was currently focused on a floor Priscilla could not reach. She was uncomfortable going further since his animal sense had noticed what had felt like more of the weasels on the lower floors and Priscilla’s survival instincts agreed. Despite that, it was clear the ferals were fighting the battle because of the continual flow of injured humanoids.

It was scary. He had sort of known for a couple of days that the ferals below floor twenty were organised and special, but he had been hoping that he was exaggerating their capabilities. The more he learned the less likely that was to be true. The damaged monsters were moving up from a lower floor to an infirmity on level fifteen. Hurt Zombies would retreat there and then wait till they were fully recovered before heading back down to fight whatever they were attacking below. There were even rations supplied to the injured to help fuel the healing. Tables filled with meat and from the images Priscilla had shared the meat comprised human and feral parts along with wolves? Daniel was not sure about the last one, but it was something like that.

It was, in simple terms, chilling.

“You listening?”

“Yes,” Daniel lied as he tried to recall what Luke had been asking. They had been talking about the weapons he was creating. “The best analogy I can think of is that they are souped up shotguns.”

“You said they’re accurate to around five metres.”

“I said three to four.”

“We all heard five.” Luke laughed.

Daniel smiled politely, but his mind was still fixated on the problem below. The fact the ferals were fighting something made Daniel even more determined to push down fast. He didn’t want to end up in a position where the Zombies finished the monsters below them and rotated upwards to fight them exclusivity. Plus, Daniel did not know who the zombies were fighting. Worse case was the situation where they fought other ferals. If that was occurring, the ferals might be physically upgrading themselves via consuming cores. Though if they were attacking humans that wouldn’t be much better.

With a wave of his hand, the energy from a new line of bent poles was sucked away. The sticks no longer under pressure sagged.

There were loud groans, and his helpers moved to push the used ones into an upright position, leaving them there for Daniel to reinforce their internal constitution while they rotated onto the second lines of poles and commenced wrestling them into place.

“I hate you.” Luke said with a grunt. “You’re so buying me a six-pack tonight.”

Daniel chuckled.

Below, Priscilla was dancing on the shoulder of one of the sentry zombies. It slapped at the mouse and occasionally spun on the spot to catch her, but try as she might it never chased her out the door. This was the eighth zombie she had tried this trick on and this one was as adamant as the previous ones that it wasn’t going to be tricked into leaving its post.

Out of the previous seven, Priscilla had been successful exactly once.

The first time she had been successful.

An enraged sentry had chased her right into the hulk that patrolled the hallway. A feral that had promptly gone biblical on the sentry in apparent punishment of it for leaving its spot. The first blow had broken the collarbone and left three centimetres deep gouges down its chest. The second swing had removed a sizeable chunk of its skull.

The third strike was converted into digging into the dead zombie’s chest to get the core, which was promptly swallowed. Priscilla had got very excited at that outcome and put some genuine work into repeating it with the other sentries but to no avail.

It seemed they had all heard the demise of their fellow guard and had no desire to join it.

That dead one had been replaced twenty minutes later and since then Priscilla was almost completely ignored. Apparently, applying capital punishment for slight mistakes inspired the ferals to studiously complete their duties.

Daniel pulled his attention back.

“How many more to go?” the hammer wielding woman complained.

“I reckon we’re only halfway though,” Luke told her.

“This is turning my arms to jelly.” Karolina sent him a hopeful look, but Daniel refused to make eye contact. Luke was right.

“Well, now you know how Daniel felt when he was building all those traps to keep us alive.”

Daniel smiled at Luke, appropriating his words from earlier.

She wiped the sweat off her face. “Respect Mr Mage.”

“Mage?” Luke sputtered in amusement.

“Karolina was on floor thirty nine or something.” A dark-skinned, earnest young man said. “Hasn’t seen Daniel fight.”

“Mage,” Luke repeating laughing uncontrollable.

“You guys told me he was throwing lightning around.” Karolina argued.

Luke calmed down slightly. “He was also the person who took the biggest baddest enemies one on one in melee.”

“Respect, Mr Mutant.” Karolina said with a nod.

There was a hiss of surprise and Luke’s expression sobered awfully quickly.

“Better,” Daniel said. “Don’t ever call me a mage again.”

She howled in laughter and the others joined in.

Daniel waved a hand, and the poles that were strained promptly started sagging.

About two minutes later, another line of poles had been prepped for him. He reinforced the first row of poles to allow them to take tension once more and then sucked the energy out of the second lot. There were more groans as they switched positions once more.

He checked his progress. He only had ten more launchers to prime. “Chin up. We’re almost ready.”

“Thank god.” Luke said with an exaggerated sigh.

“You still whinging?” Daniel asked. “What’s up with you? You’ve complained five times as much as your underlings.”

“They’re not my under…” then Luke’s eyes twinkled when he saw the expression on Daniel’s face. “I enforce good discipline.”

“Nope, you’re just soft,” Karolina quipped. Everyone, including Luke, laughed.

“As I was saying finish these,” Daniel waved at the straight sticks. “And then we’re done.”

While he waited for them to finish forcing potential energy into the poles, his attention returned below. Daniel continued to direct Priscilla. She had been perched on the entry to the infirmity floor, cataloguing the injuries. To his uneducated mind there seemed to be a variety of causes. Some looked like they had beaten others like magic had hurt them and others appeared to move unsteadily with no physical damage apart from the change in gait. The lack of cuts or arrows holes made Daniel hopeful that they were not fighting other ferals or humans.

The number of ferals rotating through the room was impressive, but only normal and elites. Not a single ultra had presented amongst the injured, and only a few elites, for that matter. Whatever they were engaging with seemed to struggle to hurt the stronger, feral varieties. A very distinct feral with no hair or nose and almost fluorescent pink skin, returned for the third time. Twice he had what looked like burns on one of his limbs. This time, blood was running from his ears and nose.

The number of hurt zombies was not decreasing, and Daniel was concerned with what he was seeing. If the ferals were engaged in a war of attrition where they were not losing anyone… If they were smart and the disciplined sentries implied they were, then those numbers worried Daniel. If they were killing the enemy and only getting injured in return, then eventually the ferals would win. There could only be one winner in a fight where one side had no one dying. Worse, the continual fight would only upskill the zombies even if they did not get any direct power up they would be better at using their skills and Daniel with his own powers had already seen how time let him.

There was a cracking noise as the drill split the floor and created a long crack. “Damn it.” he cursed.

“What?” Luke asked.

“Was being careless when digging down.”

“And?”

“No issues with structural stability. If anything, the cracks will let us get through faster. I’m annoyed because it was careless.”

With another wave of his hands, more sticks sagged, and they kept going.

“Mr. Impossible Task master are you sure you don’t want to have a go doing this.” Luke nodded at the poles and looked hopeful.

Daniel considered it and chuckled internally. Luke knew they were almost finished. He was just trying to get a rise out of him. “Nah, I’m currently filling the roles of Mr Scout and Mr General at the moment. Don’t really have the mental energy. To add Mr Manual Labour.”

“Please don’t.” Luke grumbled straight after he locked another pole in place with an explosive grunt. “I hate Mr Men books.” He visibly strained to push his current pole down far enough to be latched into position. “And have you increased the bloody difficulty? These last few seemed harder.”

Daniel shook his head. “Nope, you still suffer muscle soreness and degradation if you overdo things. An hour’s rest will fix it but. You should be thankful I’ve given you a proper workout. That’s hard to do these days with our enhanced strength.”

“Shut up, you.” Karolina mock yelled at him.

The last set of weapons was rotated in.

You can come back now, he thought to Priscilla. She had discovered nothing new for almost half an hour.

Animal Sense.

Daniel leapt to his feet and instantly froze the drill to the room below. His heart was pounding. He had felt the presence below.

Animal Sense.

He used the ability again, but this time he restricted it to a small area on the floor beneath them. In the room below them, two elites had joined the sentry. They had clearly heard the noises he had made and were looking up at the ceiling. That was terrible. The one thing he did not want to do is to draw the attention of the ferals below before they were ready to fight them.

When Daniel opened his eyes, the warriors in his room had caught his sudden alarm and had reacted by snatching up their own weapons. Daniel put a finger to his lips and none of them asked any questions.

Priscilla? he thought.

An immediate affirmative came back to him. She understood what he wanted, and she was on her way.

Quietly, Daniel left the room, with the others following.

“What,” Luke whispered.

“The zombies heard us and there’s three of them in the room below.”

“Damn. Are they doing anything that looks dangerous?”

“No, and Priscilla will have eyes on them soon.”

“What do you think?” Luke asked.

“The ferals knew we were here. This proof will make it a little harder for us, but I doubt they’ll change their strategy immediately.”

“We’ll see,” Luke said grimly. “Plan?”

“Let me finish the last lot and then we’ll have a battle council.”

“Down here?”

“Yes, I don’t want to risk them coming up without me being here to see them off.”

“Fair.” Luke hurried away.