Chapter 25 - A Squads first steps

Garrett hummed a bit while he drove the SWAT van. And he heard Hicks over the radio humming the same tune as he drove the Uhaul truck. They were planning to hit a major office building in the area that had turned into a Hard Dungeon.

When Garrett asked to make sure they meant the Hard dungeon while they were still below 50s in their stats. They agreed and said, "Well sir... If we don't try to push our limits. Then how do we improve? You taught us that."

Garrett had no counter argument. He just drove. But he was glad to have Shiva and Betty ready to help him... Power level his men according to the terminology used by Hicks from his gaming days.

Garrett was a gamer but he preferred console single player games. None of those intrusive MMORPG games that you could get kill stolen or back stabbed in. Seriously!

Damn rank obsessed morons!! He was just playing for fun! Not to get on the ranks!

But he shakes it off and focuses on driving to the dungeon. According to his scan when he passed by it before it was a 5 floor Hard dungeon. Meaning it was a tougher one. But also one with more potential for them to grind stats and points in. Especially with their squad being so large.

They had a good chance of finishing this dungeon in an hour or two max. They would win this.

As they reached it they saw a pair of door guards, an unusual thing to see as the pair of Bone armor zombies readied their claws. Only to be suddenly sniped by Marina as they drove up. She blasted their heads open with her gun allowing their stat boosting points to go to her stamina stat. She squealed in joy at that as she told the others her points increased by 400 for both mutants.

Hicks snapped his fingers in disappointment at missing the points and stats for those. But he knows there would be way more mutants and variants to hunt within the halls of the dungeon.

Garrett calls them together to prepare for the incoming fights. They would be needing a solid formation. And they decided on this. Garrett would be in front with Shiva, she would lead with her heavy assault rifle while he was her flank guard with his sword and pistol combo for close ambush enemies. behind them waiting for those that outnumbered them or slipped past their front line were Mboto and Tomoe. They would have their SMG and Shotgun ready for close fighting and their knives were in easy to reach locations on their body to quickly draw should their enemies survive the gun fire. Or make it to them faster than they could get a clean shot on them. After their 4 front liners are Marina then Hicks with their sniper and longer range weapons. Betty would bring up the rear with her shield and armor to protect the squad from rear attacks or ambushes.

With this set up the squad would remain flexible and ready to aid each other no matter what kind of zombie they ran into inside the dungeon.

They geared up, made sure they were fully loaded, and entered the dungeons lair.

They swept through the first room of the office and saw around 50 regular zombies and surprisingly 9 mutants. 3 of each type.

Shiva grins and guns down the regular zombies easily with her heavy rifle shredding their pitiful defenses. As the regular mobs are being mowed down Garrett signals for his squad to assume their usual tactic formation. he rushes in with Mboto and Tomoe at his sides both rushing towards the Bulkers. As the trio rushes the slower heavy hitters, the speedsters try to rush in and counter their charge. But they quickly become fodder for Marina and Hicks as they are sniped from afar. The Bone armors join the bulkers to fight against the intruders but are met with a grisly fate.

Mostly the fact that Garrett brings out his hammer and smashes off the limbs of each bone armor zombie. Mboto uses this chance as the mutants are suddenly just torsos wiggling on the ground to smash their heads in with the butt of his shot gun. He crushes them with 4 hits each as Tomoe is shredded the bulkers chest and head away with concentrated fire from her SMG into the eyes and softer joints of the skull.

Soon the entry room of the office is empty of any undead. And the squad cheer as they enjyo their first victory.

Hicks even speaks out, "Damn! That was effective! I can definitely feel the difference of the last 4 days from the training rooms helping us out! It is nice to see it gave us actual results to quickly. Before all of this went down... I doubt we would see such a stark difference with less than a weeks worth of training to help us."

Everyone nods as Tomoe speaks, "Yes but we must not become comlacent, this was easy because of the leaders, Shiva is efficient with weeding out the herd, Garrett is able to effectively shred or shatter limbs from the zombies, and Betty is acting as an effective rear guard to keep us safe from back attacks and ambushes. Without them here, we would have been either heavily wounded or dead. I have no doubt about this as we could barely keep up with the speed zombies agility with our eyes. Either we would take damage from them until you and Marina took them out, or we would die to them before even getting a chacne to land a critical blow to them."

Mboto nods at that estimation as he looks to the dead bodies, "Indeed, remember we are under the protection of the colonel and our two new squad mates. We must try to reach their level quickly or we won't survive the next upgrade to these zombies stats."

Everyone shivers at that given how the General will now be able to grab the boost from him joining the enemy team. It was looking rather dire if the General, now being a zombie, gets the boost, or just a bonus to his current stats.

Either option isn't very promising to the squad. They press onward after reloading and checking each other for injuries. Once they reached the second floor it got tricky.

The first floor was just the atrium and a few basic meeting rooms that they mopped up quickly, here on the second floor was a maze of cubicles. There were a lot of zombies stumbling about between the maze corridors, but even then they could tell there were more hiding in each cube. And they couldn't be sure what type each hiding one was.

So it became like a sick twisted version of a corn maze. They peeked around every corner and blasted a zombie with a single round or stabbed them with a sword thrust from either the Colonels sword or Shivas machete. Betty was enjoying just back handing a zombie here and there that creeped around a previous corner and turning their heads to paste with her gauntlets.

Mboto and Tomoe saw how Betty did this a few times and began to think about purchases from their own shops that were not just new weapons or stat gems. After all quite a few high tech games had great armor used both for laser blocking and for up close and personal encounters.

Marina and Hicks were in love with Shiva heavy rifle. And the orc captain was more than happy to show it off by mowing down a squad of zombies with a controlled sweep of slicing them in half with her special heavy shredder ammo.

Garrett was glad to see his new companions were getting along with his original squad. And he was also glad they were able to handle any mutants that came calling from the higher up offices.

But the fact that this is a leveled hard dungeon brought a frown to his face. He was worried about any Variants in this place, and whether they will be the regular Bruisers, Spikers... or a new one they have yet to see.

He knows that he, Shiva, and Betty could handle a new one, but his human squad mates were still just humans in the 40-50 stat range. They haven't evolved into advanced humans yet. Let alone a Super human rank. He gripped his sword and pistol tighter and vowed to ensure they would survive and grow from this dungeon.

He waved them up to the next floor after blasting apart another Bulker with Hicks getting the kill for his stat growth. And they all went to the third floor.

Where they noticed the lights were dead and they only had the natural sunlight coming in from the windows. And a light mist coating the ground as well.

Garrett said, "Shit. Be careful everyone. Environmental hazard. We need to keep our lights on, our senses sharp, and be ready for any little sound, the light dies out as we go deeper into the office structure."

Garrett had a point, when he pointed down the corridor there were meetings rooms, a break room, and what looked to be a few executive offices for manages here. Which meant fewer windows the closer they got to the center of the office building where the next set of stairs were.

And they heard the tell tale sign of groans from zombies inside the rooms and down the rapidly dimming hall.

Everyone ensured their helmet lights were on, their vest lights too, and those that had rifles and heavy weapons had their muzzle lights on and sweeping the darkness.

The squad got into formation and began to walk deeper into the dark. Unsure of what they will encounter.

Current stats of Garret Grimsborne (Super Human):

Str- 536

Agi- 523

Sta- 508

Int- 284

Sense- 286

Store points - 214,830 +5,740 points from zombies hunted by party so far = 220,570

Companions:

Shiva Orc Captain

Betty Minotaur Sergeant

Upgrades to base:

Training room lvl 2: For every two hours spent training inside you gain +2 str and Sta to a maximum of 4 points in each stat daily. Maximum stat affected is up to 100. Once user has exceeded 100 then the stat will no longer grow in that room. For next Max stat please purchase to level 3. Cost for upgrade: 200k

Shooting range = Agility

Medical room = intelligence and Sense

(Please see authors note for voting details)