Carnival - A LitRPG Apocalypse

Ryn ran through the portal and stumbled into hell. Smoke was everywhere, clouding the air and making her choke and cough. She quickly activated her mask, something she would probably get a lecture about later when they went over whatever was about to happen. For some reason she had no fear of not making it through the day but whether that was the arrogance of youth or delusion from her recent increase in power wasn’t clear to her.

She turned to flame and launched herself skywards. In her fire form she could clearly make out all the nearby fires burning away in the ruins of a small town. The neat rows of houses had been levelled in most cases but a few still remained to provide some cover for the fighters.

Jane glowed like a light bulb in her vision, the girl was swooping over a barricade to the west that had been thrown up by some geomancer and she was raining torrents of fire down on whoever was hiding behind it. Ryn really hoped Jane wasn’t attacking the defenders. She looked up and gasped, above her two suns shone. One was the sun you would expect to see but the other zipped back and forth as she dodged projectiles and powers, launching her own attacks in return.

Ryn blipped up to her mother only to find Vic was engaged in a vicious dogfight with three flying supers. They were wearing segmented armour that covered them from head to toe. One was hurling conjured spears that flew almost too fast for Ryn to track, another was flinging balls of green fluid and the last was trying to fight up close. He was faring the worst of the three attackers. Getting close to her mum when she was in her elemental body was a bad idea and the metal of his gauntlets was already glowing cherry red from the few blows he had almost gotten to connect.

Despite his disadvantage he was the real threat. Even with Vic’s augmentations and implants she couldn’t go toe to toe with a real bruiser. Ryn cocooned him in fire and blipped him into orbit. The others pivoted and the acid caster moved to put herself between Ryn and her ally who continued to hurl spears at her mum.

It was strangely silent in her mind. Not that her thoughts weren’t racing but there was no traffic on her implant, no teamchats coming through. Normally in a fight or even in training there was constant communication and chatter. Everyone having what amounted to a mobile phone in their head had made battlefield communications better than any pre-system military commander would have ever dared to dream about.

Ryn reached out to cocoon the woman moving towards her in fire and tried to blip her away but something dripped out of her fire and the fire pulled away from it. A ball of viscous green liquid, shot with flecks of black and grey, formed below her flames and stretched out towards her.

Ryn waited patiently for it to arrive. Identify wasn’t working either. Whatever the Imperium was doing was messing with all her system notifications. The thing moved like a snake, slithering through the sky towards her and then lunged, spreading out into something resembling a hand. As the distended fingers snapped shut around her she teleported away and appeared next to her mum. She immediately dodged again as the spear thrower lobbed a javelin at her as soon as she appeared.

She snatched him up in fire and blipped him into space. It seemed she’d only have to worry about people with odd physical traits or immunities. Everyone else was fair game.

“Thanks Ryn! I’ll deal with the slimy bitch! You need to get to Kev, find out what he can sense and then start coordinating the teams. It’s pretty easy to tell ours from theirs!” called Vic.

“I’m not playing messenger Mum! I want to fight!” Ryn barked back.

“You’ll help us all far more if you help us coordinate! The Imps aren’t affected by whatever the hell they’ve done so they’re kicking our asses! I need you to bring us all back together!”

Ryn wanted to argue back again. She was tough, fast and strong. She could fight above her level much better than any caster. Ryn caught the look in her mum’s eyes and bit back the response. Vic looked haggard. Anger and sadness warred on her features until she smiled gently at her daughter.

“You’ll see too much action anyway Ryn, please go help bring everyone back together.” Ryn nodded and blipped to the ground below her.

She ran through the smoke and haze looking for people who weren’t wearing the strange segmented armour. As she found wanderers who were lost and not holding down a bunker she began bringing them back towards the portal. She found one of the new B-3000s engaged in a fist fight with a bruiser. The machine moved with a speed she couldn’t follow and only the incredible physical toughness of the bruiser was letting him face off against it.

Ryn blasted the armoured man in twin columns of fire, causing his armour to smoke and eliciting a howl of outrage. He turned and rushed at her, fist cocked back to smash her into pulp. She teleported behind him and drove her wrist blades deep into his thighs. She had mistimed the move so she didn’t remove the limbs but he collapsed to the ground cursing in Italian. The B-3000 had trailed after him and as soon as he was down the machine sprouted jagged blue crystals from its palms and drove them into his back, pinning him to the ground.

“Thanks Ryn. It’s tricky getting into position to use these bloody crystals,” said Bob. “Where is everyone else? I’m cut off from the collective and it’s been years since I didn’t have thousands of me’s in my head.”

“I’m trying to bring everyone together. I’ve sent some wounded back to the portal but we can’t pull back from points of contact without getting overrun. What the hell are you doing to him?”

“Draining his Essence. He’ll be level one again in thirty seconds.”

“Since when could you do that?” Ryn exclaimed, horrified at the idea someone's growth could be taken from them. The man thrashed but the drone did a flip, shoulders rotating through 360 degrees, over the crystals impaling him to the dirt and then it kicked him in the head until he stopped struggling.

“A while. Didn’t dare to use it. If this tech gets out in the wild… It doesn’t bear thinking about. Once I've dealt with this lad I’ll head forward. Down the way you came?”

“Yeah there’s a caster exchange going on down there,” Ryn pointed the way she had come. “I’m going to try and find Kev, see if he can scan the area and then work out a plan with Mum.”

“Good idea,” the drone stood up and the crystals retracted into its palms. The spikes sticking up from its back now seemed to glow faintly.

“Do we have control in the air?” the drone asked, looking up and panning his head back and forth.

“There was one acid user left. There are some low flyers but as soon as Mum deals with her they’ll be toast if they aren’t on our side.”

“There’s a real chance for collateral damage here. Not something I ever thought I’d say again but the Imp tech that’s fucking with the system and our comms has dumped us back to the dark ages. Find the other me’s and get them to Kev, use us as runners. Here, this will speed things up for you,” he held out his hand where a chip of silver metal sat in his palm. “Just hand it over and I’ll be all up to speed. Watch out for roving bruisers, they’re all pretty high level.”

The drone blurred away towards the defences Ryn had pointed out. She took off and flew low, using teleports rather than fire as it seemed less eye-catching. Once she arrived back at the portal she found most of her team waiting for her.

“Where the hell did you go? You know what never mind. This isn’t as bad as it looks!” called Kev as Ryn landed next to him.

Ryn glanced around. Off to one side Claire was tending to Starfall, attaching his severed leg with hands that glowed a faint green colour. Armand had conjured a series of barricades and a dozen illusory Bolfs patrolled round them. Simon was doing something incomprehensible, stringing wires between pegs he’d driven into the concrete in a pattern that made her head hurt as she looked at it.

“What do you mean it's not as bad as it looks?” she asked quickly.

“The locals all hightailed it to the east, the ones who didn’t get through the portal. They’re bunkering down and preparing for a counter push to take back the portal site. Give it a couple of hours and we’ll have hundreds of mid level bodies coming to help.”

“Mid levels won’t be much use against the boosted Imps,” Ryn protested.

“They would be. There’s only about two hundred Imps left here. Of them only about thirty are a decent level. It’s hard to tell, I can still read them and feel them but I can’t use telepathy like normal. Whatever tech or power they’re using has screwed things up more through our shock of losing comms than anything else.” Kev shrugged and rubbed the back of his helmet, a habitual gesture to straighten his unruly hair that was completely pointless with his mask and helmet up. He dropped his hand with a sigh.

“They’ve got roving bruisers all throughout our positions who are ambushing the teams as they move. We’ve got seven points of contact,” he waved his hand in the direction of each of the bunkers he could sense. “Once we’ve secured the portal we should move as a team and help them one by one. With you we don’t need to worry about being outlevelled.”

“That’s why I’m here. Mum and Bob want to use you to coordinate. You should stay here and I’ll go find some B-3000s to serve as runners.”

“I can run for you,” said Bolf. Ryn had thought that one had been illusory but he had been using the fakes as cover should anyone attack them.

“Me too,” said Sally. I’m fast as hell now.”

“Janes already buggered off and we’ve no way to get her back any time soon. I’m going to bollock her when I see her again but there’s nothing we can do about it now,” Kev said firmly. “We need you two here. Besides, the rovers are too strong, if either of you bump into one alone you're dead.”

“Battle involves risk, non?” called Armand. “I can send illusions to the rovers, that you can surely sense, to distract them.”

“Yeah, I know where they are. That might work. Ryn, go find some Bob’s while we come up with a plan. When they get back here we can start untangling this knot.”

“Ok, don’t start without me!” Ryn grinned and vanished.

“Do you think she is enjoying this a little too much?” asked Andrea after the girl vanished.

Ryn blipped low in the sky and moved rapidly across the battlefield. She stopped to help fend off an attack on the nearest bunker to the portal. She arrived and found a B-3000 engaged in a fight with half a dozen bruisers. The rapid exchange of blows left her dizzy but she began blipping away the lower level people, merely moving them as far away as she could see and letting them fall from twenty metres up. Despite what her friends seemed to think and the thrill she had felt when she went to help her mum at defeating, and probably killing, two of the attackers she wasn’t planning on going full murderhobo.

If she could afford to spare an enemy she would and these lower level fighters weren’t worth the marks their deaths would leave on her soul. As soon as she had dealt with half of them the remaining bruisers bolted back towards their hastily constructed bunker and a barrage of metal slugs and powers was launched to cover the retreat. Ryn blipped the B-3000 back to the local defences and handed over the chip. She received a nod, another chip and then the drone took off back to the portal.

“Thanks for the assist. You aren’t going to hang fire and help out properly are you? Just drop rocks on them!” called a young woman with short golden hair. Her arm was strapped to her side. Not having Identify was an absolute pain in the ass, Ryn decided.

“No. That’s my Dad. Once we’ve got enough force to deal with the rovers behind you we’ll come back and finish that bunker off. Then we’ll all join up and move to the next one. There’s only a couple of hundred Imps left. You guys did a great job though!” Ryn didn’t think she sounded particularly encouraging or supportive but a few of the dozen fighters straightened up a bit. Others scowled and Ryn realised they had probably lost friends, maybe even family in the attack.

“Where the hell are the Sigs?” demanded a man with an impressive moustache. “How come they aren’t here to deal with these bastards?”

“They’re busy in Africa. Look I’ve got to go. Stay safe!” she called as she stood up. The moustachioed man snorted and muttered to himself as he turned back to the slot he was watching the opposition from.

Ryn resumed her hunt. It took her ten more minutes to locate five more B-3000s. She found dozens of them that had been reduced to scrap. Clearly the drones hadn’t fared too well against the force they’d been facing originally. Human bodies were also scattered about like dolls left out by a thoughtless child. Men and women, thankfully no children that Ryn saw, lay broken and bleeding. The evidence of the fighting showed the battle had been a lot fiercer before she and her team came through the portal. She picked up two more B-3000s, coating them in fire and teleporting them to five metres above where her team waited then blipped back herself.

As she landed whatever weirdness Simon had been working on came to fruition and a refractory shield sprang up around the clearing by the portal. The light bent as it came through, giving the world beyond the appearance of being the other side of twisted glass.

“That’ll hold us against anything short of level thirty five,” he said proudly, dusting off his hands before moving along the inner edges of the shield and throwing down metal cubes that sprouted little silver tentacles and dug themselves into the earth.

“That high?” asked a B-3000 sceptically. “Are you sure?”

“Oh yeah,” Simon grinned from behind his faceplate. “I’ve been thinking about this apprenticeship you mentioned. I think I might want to negotiate on the salary element.” The B-3000 grunted in response.

“So what’s the plan kid?” another drone asked Kev.

“Well, here’s the situation…” Kev knelt down and began scratching out a map in the dirt.