Apocalypse: Regression

As the stampeding oxen monsters with their sciuri riders came charging in, Nick gripped his spear tightly. It was the one weapon type he preferred against larger monsters. Blades were good against numbers, small monsters, and swarming monsters, but the spear was good against formations or larger enemies.

“The champion,” he heard Landry mutter, his axes glowing as he pointed at the five-foot-tall sciurus, the hero of the herbivores. “I’m going to kill the champion the moment the fight starts.”

“Count me in,” Akiko replied, a grin on her face as she held out her sword.

“Forget that. We hold the line like the boss ordered,” Captain Eizo ordered, drawing an invisible line with his sword in front of him as he spoke.

Nick thought for a moment and then shook his head. “No. If they want to kill the champion, let them. They’re both in the back line at the moment. If they can knock him off the field of play, that’ll be a great win.”

“There ya go. Boss says it’s okay,” Landry said, the veins on his arm muscles growing as his boisterous laugh filled the air. “Now, time to mutilate a monster.”

Just then, the moment the oxen monsters hit the caltrops. They started to buckle at the knees, the large beasts crashing to the ground, squishing several of the horned lepuses beneath their bulk as the squirrel riders jumped off their backs, not missing a beat in their charge straight at the group.

They’re smaller, and they have an army moving behind them… Nick thought, looking at the fresh ox-monsters that were charging in behind the ones that had just been killed. We need to finish these off fast. Then we can back up. We can’t let them merge with the ox riders behind them.

“Alright, form up on me!” Nick called out, committing to the new plan and hoping it was the right strategy. He grabbed the Standard of Greatness he had planted earlier and yelled, “CHARGE!!” He threw the standard with all of his might at the incoming squirrels and remaining horned lepuses from the first wave.

Due to the speed of the monsters, the standard didn’t hit anything, but that didn’t matter. The throw had changed the buff’s AoE, allowing Nick and the others to charge forward and meet the enemy within the standard’s effect. They group rushed forward, and Nick raised his spear in front of him, preparing for the clash.

Three lepuses shot their horns at Nick as he ran towards them. He lightened his spear as he moved, knocking the projectiles away before they reached him. His charge put him in range of his target and he returned the weapon to its normal weight just a moment before he sank the spear straight into one of the lepuses. It was a clean hit. As the monster bled, Nick saw the pink petals of Seo-ah’s aura behind him as she pushed her own weapon through the same monster to finish it off.

Each retracted their weapon at the same time before thrusting at the incoming pair of sciuri. The one downside to their fighting style, with Seo-ah behind him instead of beside him like she normally was, was that they couldn’t communicate well, and they ended up striking the same target, completely annihilating the sciurus, but unfortunately the sciurus’s companion, unharmed, was left with an opening to attack Nick with a spear to the chest.

Nick barely dodged enough to stop the weapon from hitting him in the sternum, but it still ended up striking his side, digging in between what felt like the outermost part of two of his ribs. Seo-ah flew in front of Nick with a kick to the sciurus’s face before the monster could press its advantage.

“Thanks,” Nick told her as she stabbed her weapon through its throat and took point beside him.

“Yeah, we got this,” she replied confidently, but her eyes widened as they fell on the open wound.

Luckily for Nick, he was still drenched with the healing liquid Topaz had tossed over him, and the potion slowly patching up his wound just enough to where he wasn’t bleeding. The mending flesh ejected the tiny scuirus’s spear from his ribs.

Topaz drank a potion of her own, drastically increasing her speed, and joined the fray with a rapier, doing her best to stab and parry at the horned lepuses, but she struggled because, as fast as she had become, the lepuses were just as quick.

Glancing to his side for a moment, Nick saw Mr. Walters using his orange hexagonal shields and punches to wreck the enemy. He looked less like a brawler and more like a bulldozer as he plowed through the charging sciuri, pushing them out of the way. Captain Eizo and Arnold were doing the same on the sides of the old powerhouse. They had created a mini V with Mr. Walters in the front, Arnold on one side, and Captain Eizo on the other as they knocked the lepuses and sciuri out of the way for Landry and Akiko.

“That’s it! You’ve got this!” Nick shouted loudly. Trusting Seo-ah to watch his flank, he turned to quickly throw a single gout of holy fire at the ankle of the moose the sciuri champion was riding. It wasn’t enough to kill the large creature, but the beast caught fire, the flames quickly spreading across its flesh, and that was enough to send the monster toppling forward as it let out an agonized yell.

This sent the sciuri champion rolling forward as he expertly maneuvered through the tumble, sliding across the snow right toward the incoming five-person snowplow death squad. The sciurus stood up at just the right time to use his gargantuan sword to block Captain Eizo’s longsword.

However, even as he blocked Eizo’s blade, Landry, who was in the pocket of the V formation, jumped forward, two axes in hand, each of them raining down on the little squirrel as he barely withstood their ferocity. As he blocked Landry’s axes, moving his sword as fast as he could, his eyes went wide in horror. Akiko’s blade appeared out of his chest as she stabbed him from behind, ending the little sciuri hero’s tale as the champion. His eyes still wide in shock, the slain sciurus slid off her blade onto the ground.

It was at that moment that Seo-ah, Elizabeth, Lou, Topaz, and Nick, who were on the side of the V formation, which had just pushed farther ahead than they had by a good thirty feet, were forced to deal with what felt like an outburst of rage as, upon seeing their hero die, an ox and a dozen other woodland monsters stampeded straight at them in anger.

In reality, all of the herbivore horde had broken out in pure rage, pressing in on all sides. Nick furiously stabbed and thrusted his spear in all directions, barely able to free his weapon from one foe before another was right on him.

As Nick struggled to even maintain his breathing under the relentless assault, Topaz, who was working on something some distance behind him, tossed her contraption forward.

“Close your eyes!” she yelled, and after half a second, Nick saw a sudden flash even through his eyelids. He opened his eyes to find most of the monsters disoriented. Topaz’s concoction had created an explosion of bright light, leaving the creatures stunned.

The blast also provided enough of a distraction that the beasts’ initial anger at losing their hero was replaced by fear, and the previously berserk monsters began to scatter in all directions, the terror of losing their champion finally gripping their hearts.

You have gained 15,324 EXP.

Congratulations! Charge IV has evolved into Charge V.

Congratulations! Parry Master has evolved into Parry Master II.

Congratulations! Survival Tactics has evolved into Survival Tactics II.

Congratulations! Potion Master has evolved into Potion Master II.

“That’s it! We won!” Nick shouted triumphantly, turning to see how the other half of his group was faring.

“Great, and not a moment too soon. I need to heal up,” Arnold replied with a wince as he pulled bandages out of his inventory and began to treat wounds across his body that Nick hadn’t seen him get, carefully pouring a little bit of a clear liquid onto each wound that caused bubbling, before applying an ointment, then wrapping the wound in the bandages.

He wasn’t the only one hurt. Lou had already been hurt, and Landry, Eizo, Akiko, and Mr. Walters were all looking worse for wear as they stood beside four large oxen bodies and dozens of dead sciuri warriors. Nick had been so focused on his own conflict after the champion’s death, so focused on handling the waves of monsters trying to kill him, that he hadn’t seen how tough their skirmish was.

Nick nodded in agreement with Arnold. “Yeah, healing sounds like a—”

Don’t let them run! Hunt them down, the Black Witch’s voice whispered through his thoughts. Kill them all, every single one of them. Each body is another essence for the heart!

Nick blinked, hesitant at first, but he floated the idea nonetheless. “Do you want to pursue the monsters? We could leave a few people here and—”

“We’re too hurt, Nick,” Mr. Walters interjected, his hands working on healing Arnold’s wounds despite the gashes across his own back.

Nick hadn’t realized how intense that last push had been. He had been so focused on his own job in the fight: stabbing, retracting, stabbing, that he had, in a way, failed to lead. He hadn’t organized and regrouped his people against the onslaught as a commander should have.

If they won’t do it willingly, use your magic. The Cloak of Madness will move them. They can outrun the slow, short-legged, scampering creatures. Drive your companions to kill off the herbivores, the Black Witch insisted, but he shook his head. He had followed her advice as far as he saw it reasonable, but he wasn’t about to do that.

There was a line in the sand, and he drew it at risking the lives of the people he cared about. Whether it was the best decision for the future or not, he wasn’t able to send people into battle that were still patching up their wounds.

They’ll be back with more. You know this, the Black Witch warned him once more, but Nick had made his decision. He just smiled as he thought back to the woman, Then I’ll have more essences for the domain heart.

“Don’t even think about it,” Seo-ah said threateningly as she attacked Nick with bandages she had probably pilfered off Topaz. She seemed to be looking where he was looking: at the fleeing monsters. “You even try to move before we get you healed up, and I’m going to kill you.”

“You’re going to kill him so he doesn’t get killed?” Topaz asked, her eyebrows scrunched up as if she was actually confused by the turn of phrase.

“What? It’s not meant to be literal. You know what I mean,” Seo-ah huffed as she continued to patch Nick’s side up. The wound on his ribs was a lot worse than he imagined, and the pain from it was only growing every second as the adrenaline slowly faded from his body.

Why do I feel like adrenaline would be a way better pain reliever than the crap they give me at the doctor’s office? Nick thought as he gritted his teeth, trying not to let out any noise as the stinging sensation from the bandages and whatever else Seo-ah was doing to his wound bit into him.

“You think you got it bad? You should take a look at Arnold,” Elizabeth remarked, a medicine ball appearing in her hand.

“Wait, you’re not . . . You’re not going to throw that at him, are you?” Nick asked as he followed the direction of Elizabeth’s gaze.

“They call it a medicine ball for a reason,” she replied, staring at the ball like she was still debating whether or not to throw it.

“That’s . . . That’s not what it means when they call it a medicine ball! It’s called that because it promotes health! It’s not actually a medicine!” Nick tried to explain to her.

“Right. Health. Healing. Throw at the injured man to heal him . . .” Elizabeth droned, voicing her train of thought aloud and causing everyone present to stop and stare at her for a moment, horrified by the fact that what she said both made a little sense and was completely ridiculous at the same time. Everyone except Mr. Walters.

“Liz, what have I told you about throwing your medicine ball at your brothers when they’re injured?” Mr. Walters asked with a sigh, not even looking up from his work patching up Arnold.

“Don’t do it . . .” Elizabeth grumbled, looking more than just a little disappointed.

“Right, so put the ball down,” he scolded her, this sounding less like a fresh lesson and more like a rehearsed response.

“Has she done that before? Throw that at one of them when they were hurt?” Seo-ah whispered into Nick’s ear.

“I’m afraid to ask,” Nick replied as quietly as he could.

“Welp, if we’re not chasing after them, then we might as well start harvesting,” Landry said as he popped his neck, stretched his limbs for a moment, and headed to a body.

“You need to patch your wounds up too,” Akiko said, tossing bandages at the man, only for him to catch them and toss them back.

“No time. The corpses will go rotten. We need to harvest first,” Landry explained as he stepped up to the nearest dead body, using one of his two axes to cleave into its chest while he ripped out the essence with his other hand. It was a brutal, harsh way of opening a body that was nothing like the careful dismantling that the Walters had done before, but it was efficient in its own way.

With so many monster corpses around them, Nick couldn’t fault him for prioritizing quickly getting the essences over preserving the other materials that were likely to go bad anyway.

“You know, I’m going to admit it: that Training!! buff of yours is nice,” Eizo said as he closed and opened his fist a few times. “I got a full point of strength from a single fight. Who would have thought that was possible?”

“I got one strength, one agility, and a constitution point. It’s the same as if I had trained for two weeks,” Akiko nodded. “Talk about an amazing gift.”

“Is that enough to offset paying you?” Nick chuckled.

“The point of strength is to pay bills, not the other way around,” Akiko quipped and then added with a wink, “but if you pay enough, I’ll hop ship for you.”

Landry and Eizo looked like they’d both taken a blow, only for Landry to say, “Yeah, what she said. We’re mercs. You can work something out with the captain right? You got that Gallows money, right?”

Before Nick could take them up on the deal, Seo-ah, pausing her bandaging of Nick, smugly intercepted the offer. “We’ll have to go over your qualifications to determine what type of package we can offer.”

“Cold,” Landry grumbled as he hacked open another body. “Maybe I need to re-evaluate how many of these essences I pass over to you all after I finish collecting them.”

“Don’t let her hurt your feelings. We all know who the real boss is,” Akiko said, giving another suggestive wink to Nick as she did, causing Seo-ah to look more than just a little annoyed.

It must be the charisma I used on her last time, Nick thought, remembering how he’d used charisma and magic during what would have been the beginning of the Eternal Night to get her to work with him.

Then, suddenly, before he could even bother trying to cut whatever tension was manifesting between Akiko and Seo-ah, an ethereal chime resonated through the group, and from the expressions of everyone there, it was clear he wasn’t the only one who heard it.

As the notification rang out, the Heart of the Gym also pulsed one final time and then burst with energy. Nick was blinded for a moment, and when the spots in his vision cleared, he saw a heart-shaped crystal the size of two fists floating above the snow.

Congratulations on forming the Heart of the Gym. When planted, the Heart of the Gym will serve as the interface to your base, which will allow for rapid construction and improvement of structures as well as the creation of community improvements.

Nick grabbed the floating heart and shoved it into the snow below it, hoping that they didn’t have to actually dig a hole and bury the artifact to activate it.

The object seemed to sense the intent and burrowed into the snow and then the hard ground below before re-emerging as a large, empty glass-like orb that hung above four marble spikes. Then, in an instant, everything around the orb and the four spikes began to change. The snowy, icy terrain transformed into perfectly flat and level concrete that started to extend out in all directions, leveling the ditches that the group had carved out earlier in their efforts to funnel the enemies into a narrow path. The glowing energy spread out from the point, covering Nick and all of his allies, the hastily created fortifications they’d made to defend themselves, and everything in between.

The concrete spread out a hundred feet in all directions, forming a perfect circle around the heart, and the four spikes grew and transformed into the most amusing structure to be the heart of any base: a squat rack, bar included and weights hanging off the ends, with the orb in the middle.

Congratulations on forming your first base.

Due to your heart type and your title, Frontier Warden, you have been awarded a single defense-related structure of your choosing.