Chapter 3 - Rescue
"We have Survivors here!"
Aaron laid with his back to a tree uninterested in whatever survivor they had found, a few Einherjar ran towards the voice as Beta 1 barked commands.
"Teams 4 and 5 set up a perimeter, Beta 4 contact command, I want to know if we have any friendly forces close by."
As he was catching his breath Eric approached him "You fine man?"
he just nodded as his head was still killing him, he would recover soon enough, taking off his helmet despite his orders, and when the hell did he follow those anyways, he took a deep breath and decided to see those so called survivors.
It was a nightmarish vision to say the least, the park was full of children, young mothers or innocent couples enjoying their holiday when the <system> arrived, most of their bodies were in a huge pile, naked, about 20 of them were hung from trees by their hands, their blood draining in a big puddle and all their body hair shaved, yet another 7 people were impaled in spears over a huge bonfire being roasted.
There were only 6 survivors, all of them adult woman 3 were overweight mothers 2 were clearly strong athletes and a single unexpectedly petite girl probably the only ones to survive the brutal rape from the creatures, all but one of them had dead eyes and wouldn't even move as the Einherjar tried to help, the only one to react was a black athlete as she clutched desperately at the medic's arm.
"Fucking cattle" cursed Beta 1 as she helped take the bodies off the fire but Aaron remained quiet, he briefly wondered if that's what happened to his mother or if she was simply killed in the attack.
As rage flooded his mind it washed away the pain and he stopped panting and righted himself, his powers had always answered to strong emotion.
Reloading his rifle he changed it to armor piercing bullets, he also took the time to change his Smith & Yessel to exploding bullets as the normal ones had proved far from adequate.
"Ok people change of plans! Teams 4 will still stay here and protect the node but team 5 will stay with them, control just informed me we have some resistance still alive at fifth street barricaded against those giant rats, we rescue the cops there and send them back here before taking out the rat node" letting her weapon hang from its shoulder strap she turned to one Einherjar "Beta 17 you're in charge here, burn those corpses quickly"
"Ok boss".
As they slowly left the park, weapons at the ready, they saw the destruction brought onto the city and one couldn't help cursing "Fucking monsters this is worse than Iraq"
"Shut up soldier"
"Whatever" they advanced quietly so as to better focus on finding threats and keep their concentration moving as fast as they could without being negligent.
Aaron took the time to think about his new status point deciding to spend it into <INT>, although the strength of his strings was directly linked to his own <STR> making them stronger and <SPD> would make surviving easier he still chose <INT>, it increased his mana and learning capability, plus he had a feeling that with the <system> it was far easier to raise physical attributes than it had been before, at least to the maximum human level.
"Enemy sighted"
"Halt" crouching down behind an abandoned car he watched as every Einherjar took positions behind cover, looking over his helmet he spotted 3 giant rats at the distance coloring them red, focusing on one of the rats the visor automatically zoomed allowing him to use inspection, his visor also gave an estimation of size, weight and distance.
[Horned Rat – Level 1]
[1.5m high – 2.31m long – 191kg – 613m ahead]
[TARGET ASSIST…?]
[YES / NO]
Glancing aside the data vanished and the zoom returned to normal only leaving the red colored rats "Switch to silencers, I want precision shoots, team 2 take them out"
4 muffled sounds were released from under cover and the heads of the 3 rats blew up soundlessly, their bodied fell "Team 1, torch then, all teams, advance."
Looking up as they advanced Aaron wondered how many survivors were holed up in these tall buildings, a pity they had no time to evacuate them all, some could prove to be useful workers or even fighters.
"Beta 1 I may be able to scout ahead from above." She paused a moment to consider
"Siegfried can you follow him?" Eric shook his head
"It's not that I can't but it would make far too much noise"
"Very well, Loki go ahead"
Wrapping a string around his own waist and another on the top of a tall building he pulled himself up to the seventh floor window and looked ahead "Ok, there are Horned Rats everywhere from here to a single building where about a hundred or so of them appear to be trying to get in"
"Loki can you clean the way so we can approach the target without being detected?"
"If you lend me a sniper, sure" Beta 1 lifted her own gun taking off the shoulder strap and he pulled it up with a sting
"All teams, Loki is gonna clean the way to our targets, advance quickly and take positions here, here and here, Loki you and Eric will stop the rats retreat so we kill as many as we can."
Taking the safety off he took aim at the closest rat, his helmet doing nearly all the work as it showed him the best angle for the shoot, pulling the trigger he made sure the rat's head blow up then changed targets.
Some of the closer rats noticed their companion's deaths but were too slow or too stupid to escape before being shoot themselves the aim assist making his job incredibly easy, it seems being so huge caused the normally sharp and quick-witted rodents to be overconfident and dulled their reactions.
[You have slain Horned rat level 1 x 17 + 340 XP]
[You have slain Horned rat level 2 x 9 + 192 XP]
[You have slain Horned rat level 3 x 2 + 48 XP]
[You have learned the <shooting> ability]
[Your <Telekinesis> has increased a level]
"The way is clear!" Slinging the gun over his shoulder he used another string fixed at the top of the building like a rope to run along the wall and jump into the next one advancing ahead of the team to scout,
Fortunately there were no rats on the smaller side streets but he saw thousands of human skeletons laying around, their flesh picked clean, most likely by the rats, he saw a terrified woman locked in a room through a window while he was advancing but had no time to save her, making a mental note to send someone to help her he moved on.
When they reached the point where Beta team would stay he sent a string down and wrapped it around Eric's waist, with a grunt he pulled the larger man up.
He started moving before Eric got a good footing purposely letting him hang on the air as they passed through the rats on the ground, a smile crept into his mouth as he heard the whispered "fuck, fuck, fuck" in the common channel of their helmet.
Landing about a hundred meters away from the targets behind an abandoned car in silence he had to dodge an arm punch "the fuck man I almost fell in the middle of them!"
"Sorry my mistake, Beta 1 we are in position." He lied speaking softly.
"Ok from what we know those rats will not run away when attacked so… you guys will hit them first, when they charge you we strike to cause confusion, a few of them will probably escape but none of us should be in any danger, do you see any elite or boss?"
"Nope"
"Then start."
Putting his hands bellow the car they was currently hiding behind Eric lifted it up over his head and threw it with all his strength at the mass of horned rats smashing half a dozen to a pulp, the other 94 turned our way, murder in their eyes, "Show off".
As he materialized his power, all 7 blades sprang into life, twisting his strings he sent them whirling towards the horde, activating <Titan's hand>, this time even faster with the help of the <system>, he caught one rat's tail and used its body to bash the others out of the way
[You have slain Horned rat level 1 x 5 + 100 XP]
[Congratulations <Titan's hand> has increased a level]
Suddenly the other side of the rat tide exploded in noise as Beta team switched to full auto and threw fragmentation grenades, Eric continued with his brute force approached Smashing into the rat tide with his massive sword, using his armor to absorb the bites that got through.
It only took a little over 10 minutes to completely clean the streets of the critters but, as rats were quite adept at escaping, quite a few of them managed to scurry away amongs the explosions and blades.
[You have slain horned rat level 1 x 16 +320 XP]
[You have slain horned rat level 2 x 5 +110 XP]
[Congratulations <Titan's hand> has increased a level]
[Congratulations <Multitask> has increased a level]
Sheathing his blades Aaron righted himself, while the rest of the team went to inspect the corpses and check the survivors he decided to check his own status.
[NAME: Aaron Ross RACE: Human(variant)
TITLES: Calamity child, Codename: Loki
STATUS: Well rested (-10% stamina loss)
LEVEL: 2 HEALTH: 92%
STAMINA: 66% MANA: 638/962
STR: 8 SPD: 8
END: 9 DEX: 12
WIS: 7 INT: 10
ABILITIES:
Telekinesis (string) – Beginner level 8
Multitask – Beginner level 2
Shooting – Beginner level 1
SKILLS:
Inspect – Beginner level 1
Titan's hand – Beginner level 3]
So, he gained 50 mana from a single level, quite a significant increase, wondering what else he gained he concentrated into the new abilities
[SHOOTING – Beginner level 1
Ability to use firearms: + 10% damage with guns]
[DAGGER – Beginner level 1
Ability to use small blades: + 10% damage with knives]
[MULTITASK – Beginner level 2
Ability to do more than one thing at the same time: + 12% performance]
[TITAN'S HAND – Beginner level 3
Manifests a giant hand that imitates the body's movements: 13 x User strength]
Wow, that's some ridiculously strong increase, Aaron already liked this <system>, if it hasn't killed his mother, he could even learn to love it.
Turning his head away from the many blue windows he watched as Beta team finished cleaning the bodies from the front of the barricaded door "This is the U.S. army open up!"