Apocalypse: Generic System by Macronomicon (shoe dog free ebook TXT) 📕

Jess first,” Ron said, leaning against the wall in a puddle, putting pressure on his leg. “She’s lost more blood than I have.”

Jeb touched the bloody scrape in his scalp, and while it was bleeding pretty good, it wasn’t dangerous, and not as bad as the cuts the other two had all over their upper bodies. He could afford to wait until Amanda got around to him.

“Ron, your idea worked.”

“Huh?” Ron grunted, glancing at Jeb.

“The healer is perfectly fine.” Jeb said, pointing at Amanda, who didn’t have a scratch on her. The woman took off her helmet and shook out her sweaty hair as she went back and forth patching them up.

“Oh yeah. Huh.”

“Let’s have a debrief, then go back to the camp and turn in for the night.” Jeb said.

They spent the next half an hour resting and discussing possible solutions to the dungeon. One was to station zombies with Mystic Triggers on them beside all of the lava pits and have them walk in circles around them until a tentacle dragged them in. When a large beak got within a certain distance of the trigger, it would explode violently.

For the swarm, Jeb figured he could make some custom triggers that would throw up a shark-cage over the entire group and give them time to take out the attackers. Ron’s tactic with the exploding zombies worked great for the caterpillars and golems.

All that was left were the spear-throwers.

“They looked like humanoid insects,” Jess said. “They were maybe six and half feet tall, with a coppery, shiny carapace.

Jeb had seen the occasional shine of reflected light, but it hadn’t been bright enough to identify them.

“I can make some bouncing betties out of pebbles and key them to six foot humanoid insects,” Jeb said. “If they’re as smart as we think they are, then seeding the main area with a couple hundred explosive pebbles should put the fear of god in ‘em, and make them think twice about moving through the main cavern.”

“That sounds like it’ll work. But we need to be sure they won’t go off near us if we get attacked.” Brett said. “I’m not interested in getting cut in half.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Jeb said, nodding. That would require an if/and trigger, but the triggers were very smart, so he was fairly sure it could be done.

Amanda finally got to him, sending ice cold healing through his scalp as it knitted itself together.

Jeb sighed in relief as the constant sting let off.

“Let’s head back to camp,” Jeb said, patting the dried blood in his hair. “Let’s clean up and prep for another run.”

“Why are we going into the dungeon again?” Amanda asked. “Brett almost died.”

“Because it’s there?” Ron said with a shrug.

“Because it has something we need to get out of here,” Jeb clarified the mission statement for everyone. “This whole place has been laid out like a sadistic death game. Bosses and dungeons have been dropping items we need to survive, and at the same time the Safe Zones went down, this dungeon just happens to show up? It can’t be a coincidence.

“And if we do it right, today’s trip will have been the most dangerous one. We’re gonna recover for a day, then systematically empty out that cave system. There’s a good chance it’ll have something we need.”

Amanda frowned but she nodded. The alternative was forming a little family and living the rest of their lives on the side of mount doom.

It was an option. They had food, water and shelter.

It just wasn’t an option any of them wanted to take, yet.

***Later***

Jeb clomped back to the campsite, and immediately noticed something was wrong. Casey was sitting by the fire, nursing her baby under a blanket, humming to her as she did.

That wasn’t what was wrong. There were scuff marks in the dirt; size ten boots. There was a pile of extra scarabs shells on the ground and the ‘lobster tank’ was far emptier than it had been when they’d left.

“Anything happen while we were gone?” Jeb asked.

“Nope,” Casey answered with a smile. “We’ve been fine all day.”

Jeb saw motion out of the corner of his eyes, and glanced over to see the mannequin motioning for his attention. It held up three fingers, made walking motions toward the pot of food, then shook its fist, pointing to the northeast.

Three men came, ate some food and we scared them off? Jeb thought. He glanced back to Casey and sighed.

She probably had the teenage mindset where she had to handle all her problems by herself in order to be ‘an adult’. Sadly this mindset Included not telling them about possible threats, because the adults might step in and treat her like a child.

“Casey, if something important happens, you’d let us know about it, right? It would be the ‘adult’ thing to do.” Jeb said, sitting down beside the pot and spearing some meat with the nearby fork.

Casey gave him a deer-in-headlights look, her gaze flickering to Jess, who was already tracking the direction of the footprints toward the northeast.

“Some guys dropped by, I gave them some food and then sent them that way. They used to be on Eddie’s crew, but they were very well behaved after Mike talked to them.”

Mike kicked his heels on Casey’s shoulder, nodding.

At the mention of Eddie’s crew, Jess’s lips peeled back from her teeth in a snarl. It was only a moment, but Jeb caught it.

“Don’t kill them, please,” Jeb said.

“You got a reason I shouldn’t?” Jess demanded.

He glanced over at their healer, whose eyes were widening, then back to Jess.

The assassin got his meaning. “Alright. I’m not gonna kill them,” She said. “but if they attack us, I’m putting them down.”

“You can’t –“

“Amanda,” Brett said, putting a