Havok Bringer

I stared at the Level 8 Drill Sergeant, my heart nearly beating through my chest. It stood at around 8 feet tall, with a head that appeared proportionate to its giant body, unlike the infantry and corporal level Trimeans. The Sergeant had rippling muscles all over their body, with mostly blue skin speckled with orange. It wore a tight grey body suit, black knee-high boots, and a forward-tilted drill instructor's hat on top of its head. Carrying a thick baton crackling with electricity, I wondered how the hell I would get past it, as it was standing right in front of the stage.

"It's enormous! How am I supposed to get past that thing?!" I exclaimed, "I'm assuming it's a he. I mean I don’t know much about Trimeans, but that certainly doesn't look like a female," I added.

"Well, that’s a bit sexist, but yes, it's male. All male Trimeans must serve in the galactic military,” Tiff responded.

Looking around, I spotted a couple of burnt-out ships. It seemed that the Drill Sergeant wasn’t going to let anyone take a random ship, which probably explained the earlier explosions. The drill instructor just stood there slapping the baton into his massive hand, waiting for anyone to try and get past him.

“That explains the explosions from earlier. I guess I’m not going anywhere unless I go through him,” I said.

I sat down to ponder for a minute, going over all my supplies trying to figure out if I had anything that would give me the edge I needed to make this fight winnable.

"What are you doing?" Tiff asked as I started untying my boot to take off my sock.

"I have an idea,” I said, “I can’t take that thing one-on-one, not in a straight up fight but I’m betting it's not fireproof."

I fumbled around with my boot and took my sock off before reaching into my pack and pulling out the MREs.

“Okay, I’ve got 4; that will have to do," I muttered as I started opening the packaging of each one. Honestly, I had kept them for a while and didn’t plan on eating them unless things got really bad. I guess this would qualify as really bad, but I had things other than food on my mind right now. I would figure out how to get food if I survived this mess.

“MREs have packages that contain Magnesium powder, which is highly flammable and hard to put out. I’ve got 4 of these, so about 30 grams of magnesium dust,” I explained as I started ripping open the chemical heater packages containing the magnesium dust. “I may not be stronger than this guy, but he doesn’t look very fast. If I had to guess, I would say he is gonna try his hardest to hit me with that baton and end things quickly."

I crouched down and started pouring the magnesium powder into my sock. I then took out the first aid kit, which had a small pair of finger-sized scissors in it. Using the scissors, I made a few very small holes in the sock.

“I just need to get close and dodge that baton for a few seconds. If I can do that, I think this will work,” I said, twisting the sock and tying it in a knot. I held the sock up triumphantly “I’m gonna introduce him to the sock of shame.”

"Sock of shame? That is what you are going with?” I could hear Tiff exhaling in frustration. “Andrew,I am gonna ignore that you just said sock of shame, let’s never bring that up again. I am being serious when I say that you need to stay away from that thing! There should be a way to avoid the boss; it usually isn't mandatory on the tutorial level."

"Well, I can't see any other way to get through to that stage," I said. "I'm not sure how these things typically work, but I assume I need to get past that Drill Sergeant, or it's all over." I knelt down to put my boot back on, feeling the dampness of my bare foot inside it. "You mentioned that the Lacertines were crooked, right? So it makes sense that they included this guy as a mandatory boss. Maybe it's not legal or normal, but he's definitely here," I stood up slowly and looked toward the Drill Sergeant, "and he definitely sees me.

"The Drill Sergeant held the baton over his head and howled a deep guttural howl before slapping the baton back down into his palm.

“Well, I guess there is no turning back now,” I said as I ran toward him.

He was about 50 yards from me but I closed the distance faster than expected with my increased agility. “Good,” I thought to myself. I was hoping the increased stats would help here and it looked like I was right. As I approached, the Drill Sergeant stepped forward and swung the baton with his right arm. Just as he did, I baseball slid right under his swing; I could feel the crackling electricity as it came close to my head lifting my hair slightly as the static electricity pulled at the individual strands.

As I slid by, I took the sock I was holding in my left hand and swung it into his chest. Magnesium powder covered his chest and stomach creating a small cloud of dust. Immediately upon stopping, I popped up and hit him again, covering his back with the magnesium powder. He spun around furiously, a small cloud of dust surounding him before lifting his baton and screaming in rage. As he did, I raised the sock and slapped him in the face with it again.

“Oooh, that’s a tad disrespectful,” I heard Tiff say as I dodged around to his back.

The Drill Sergeant coughed as magnesium powder filled his mouth and lungs, Stumbling back as he wiped at his face with his free hand trying to escape the powder that covered his torso. The cloud necessarily large as I continued slapping him, but it grew big enough to see as it fell loosely to the ground around him.

The Drill Sergeant quickly became enraged, gathering himself up and spitting to clear the magnesium powder from his mouth as he looked me dead in the eyes. He yelled loudly as he raised his hand to swing his baton, but I was ready. As he swung with his right hand, I dodged the left and peppered him again with the sock. This time he was ready for me. He shot out his left hand faster than I had ever seen any living thing move before and grabbed me by the throat, quicklylifting me off the ground. It happened so fast and with such utter force that I didn’t even have time to react.

See the problem here is that I am no trained fighter or soldier, I am just a guy. I had done okay so far, early in this thing, but let’s be honest the enemies up to this point were pretty weak. The Drill Sergeant? He was a different story. He was fast, strong, and obviously intelligent. A couple slaps with the sock got past him but he wasn’t going to let it happen again. That was fine by me since my sock was pretty much empty now, but I didn’t expect him to be so fast.

As I hung there grasping at his giant three fingered hand, he looked at me, chittered something I couldn’t understand and suddenly touched his baton to my chest. When he made contact the electricity rippled through my body; It felt like I had been kicked by a horse, a horse that shot lightning from its damn hooves. The blast of the baton knocked me back several feet out of his hand.

I lay there stunned. My whole body ached, my chest burned, and my shirt was in tatters. As I landed it felt like I cracked at least one rib. In my interface I saw my health indicator blinking red with about 10% left. I felt like a damned idiot. Who did I think I was? I came into this dungeon and assumed that I would be able to make a difference? I would be able to stop what was going to happen to my world, to somehow claim the Right of Reaping? Nah, this makes more sense, I thought as I lay my head down on the ground. My chest was on fire, it hurt to breathe and then I heard the Drill Sergeant's footsteps; slowly, intently approaching.

“Get up, Andrew!”

Was that Tiff? She seemed so far away and the ringing in my ears was so loud.

“He is almost on top of you! Get the hell up!” she screamed in my head.

Then, he was there, standing right over me, looking down laughing.

”haaa, haaa, haaa” the thing growled with contempt.

I looked over at my pack, which had fallen off during my fall. My baton lay on the ground beside it, just within arm's reach. I looked back up at the Drill Sergeant, who was now looking down on me, and with my bruised, bleeding face, I smiled.

“OOH RAH, BITCH!” I growled as I stabbed the baton into his chest.

Normally, the Level 3 baton wouldn’t do much to a much higher-level enemy, but in this scenario, he was covered in magnesium powder. The large alien's entire chest, back, face, and even inside his mouth were covered and he lit up like a pile of dry kindling as the baton skill flashed to life. The Drill sergeant howled in agony and flailed his arms around, trying to escape the chemical flames. I quickly rolled away and fell back to what was becoming my signature move. I grabbed my tire iron and, with two quick moves, finished it.

Baton to the knees and once he was down, tire iron through the temple:

result - bye-bye, Drill Sergeant.

Level Up – Level 4

Boss – Trimean Drill Sergeant – Level 8 Defeated

Claim reward in your ship safe room upon exit of the tutorial.

“Holy shit, everything hurts,” I said as I slid down against the side of the parade stage. “Let me catch my breath real quick and remind me to get a new pair of socks,” I laughed.

“That was impressive, Andrew. I honestly didn’t expect you to get through it. The good news is that your health should be refilling as we speak. It will usually top off after a level-up,” she said.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said, chuckling, "and you're right, my health is filling back up quickly; I can feel myself healing, and it feels really damn weird. Let me get topped off, and let's check out this console."

After a couple of minutes of resting, I walked up the stairs and onto the stage, where I saw the podium. As I walked up, it lit up with words:

Congratulations on completing the tutorial level, Participant Andrew Timothy Dawes! You will now be presented with your ship based on selections made during the class selection portion of the tutorial.

Participant Andrew Timothy Dawes, you have selected class N/A and will be designated ship N/A. Please proceed to the parade ground and board the highlighted ship.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked Tiff. At that moment, she reappeared beside me, returning to her space-age uniform look.

“Something is off here, Andrew. I know the class you selected was provided but they are always approved by the system and added to all codices. The system doesn’t seem to recognize your class and therefore did not assign you a ship,” she said looking concerned.

“What do you mean it doesn’t recognize my class? It gave me the damn class!” I said.

“No, it presented options. An outside entity provided the class, thus the Rule of Duplicity,” Tiff said. “The Council usually provides all outside assistance, if any is given, but something different is going on here," she said, looking concerned.

“Well, we can figure that out later," I said, "I just want to get out of here, and I see a light over there, so I must have a ship. Let's go check it out.”

As we ran over, I saw a ship light up as we approached. I stopped, my mouth opening in disgust. “What in the hell is that?” I asked as I approached the “ship” if that was even the word to describe it. “All of the super advanced, space-age ships that are sitting in this parade ground, and I get that? How is this fair?" I asked.

The ship was a large brown rectangle. It had a propulsion engine on each side and what I guessed was a bridge on the top. The bridge was raised and ran about one-third the length of the hull. The body of the ship was large, like if you took four mobile homes and stacked them on top of each other to make one big rectangle. It had two pieces of landing gear in the back and one large piece in the front that looked like a big ski. There was an open loading bay in the back.

The name “Bloodhound” was painted on the side of the ship, like the nose of a fighter jet.

I identified the ship and it simply said:

Blood Hound

Havok Hound Transport and Evac Ship

As Tiff and I approached the open back loading bay door, I could hear music…

“I can feel it coming in the air tonight"

"Hold on. Is that fucking Phil Collins?” I asked.

As we walked up the ramp, I heard a voice speaking in broken English:

“We kill now, we go, we kill now!” the voice was low, and rumbling; very gravelly but very excited.

The music was still playing.

“Who is that?” I asked, “is someone here?”

“I am Ship AI, you are Captain. We kill now!”

The damn ship AI could talk, and apparently, I was now The Captain.