Thames held the gun in his hands, feeling the weight of the body. It looked like a pistol, but larger than any pistol he had ever seen.
It felt light in his hands and it grips felt comfortable. It was black with subtle hexagonal textures and thin LED strips shining gold, complementing the power armor he was wearing.
As he examined the gun, symbols flickered onto his visorat the corner of his eye. It was a blue progress bar with the number 60 written beside it. Since the bar was in the same shape as the gun, he surmised that it was the number of bullets left. There was also a crosshair in his visor, pointing at whatever he pointed the gun at.
"If only I grabbed this first, that fight would have ended so quickly". Thames lamented for a while before starting back into the pod to see what else was there.
There was a large knife, serrated on one end, a spear that was taller than the great sword, it's head was tapered to a single point and the shaft was a crisp white to balance the dark mass of metal at the end.
"It's probably 2 meters in height" Thames thought as he balanced the spear in his hand. Unlike the Great Sword which just looked like a big slab of metal, the Spear had a beautiful design, with small glowing lines running through the whole thing. There was also a button on the shaft and satiating his curiosity, he clicked it. The spear folded in on itself and reduced to the size of a baton.
Thames tried that a few more times, trying to understand how that worked, after a while and no progress, he decided to shift his attention to the Great Sword to see if it had the same function. "Lord knows I don't want to be slugging that hunk of metal around". To his dismay, there was no such thing.
There was also extra cartridges for the Gun, about 5 of them, and a bunch of what looked like grenades, although the AI told him that they were flashbangs. Thames took them with him too. "So that's about 300 bullets, not bad".
SCREECH.
Thames could hear sounds of other creatures coming to his position, no doubt alerted by the commotion he had made.
He too one final look at the monster on the floor, took a deep breath and after holsting the weapons on his Armor, he turned away and walked in the opposite direction from the noise.
Or at least he tried to.
More Words flickered onto his Visor.
ENEMIES DETECTED,
PROCEED TO EXTERMINATE.
"Sigh..., This again?." Thames was exasperated, he had to complete his trial but he had no information on what he was supposed to do and he wanted out. But remembering the pain he had gone through, he decided to at least see it to the end.
"Since I have no idea how to complete this God-Forsaken trial, I'll just follow the objectives of the creepy AI".
With that, Thames walked towards the eerie sounds, gripping the gun in one hand and the large knife in the other. He found that the Great Sword just rested on his back if he placed it there and he put the spear in it's compressed form and attached it to his belt, along with the extra cartridges.
With that he made his way downstairs, thinking since the AI wanted him to eliminate monsters, going below where monsters where undoubtedly crowded would be the best at least according to the HUD.
He walked slowly towards the stairs, navigating through the broken weird looking desks and trying not to make sounds by avoiding the broken floor tiles.
He had gotten to the stairwell and was peered into it, he couldn't see anything because the light from outside didn't reach this part of the building, only illuminating the first few steps.
He inched closer to the steps when the mech suit made a whirring sound and as if a switch was flipped, light poured out of his visor, allowing him to see his surroundings.
"Well, it's better than nothing, I'm not sure I could even interpret it if it switched to infrared or night vision" Surprisingly out of the skills the Buzzology Bureau (that's what he decided to call the freaky fly scientists) had imparted into him, night vision wasn't one of them. "You would think they would give their killing machine a way to actually see in the dark since they love it so much".
Thames tentatively walked down the stairs, going one step at a time and inching closer to the eerie noises. He decided to go with the Knife and Gun and leave the Great Sword and Spear holstered as the environment was cramped and would not allow for him to wield them effectively.
SCREECH
SKREE
The creepy noises increased in volume as whatever was making it rushed up towards Thames. He held his breath, using the implanted skills to steady his aim, waiting for whatever was making that sound to come towards him.
Then it did, or more appropriately, they did.
Multiple creatures each the size of a medium sized moose. They moved like shadows, peeled from nightmares- sinewy and really fucking fast. Their limbs bent in odd ways as they scrambled up the stairs, their skin a mesh of blackened plates.
Thames didn't even finish seeing their bodies before he let the pistol rip.
He fired 6 shots into the crowd of Black Mass, surprised at the lack of recoil. (coming up with a cool name for them wasn't high on his present priorities).
The bullets flew silently and hit what was probably the heads of 5 of them, the sixth catching one in the leg. The bullets pierced through the armor plates like they were paper and continued causing major damage if not killing anything they touched.
Thames baked up as fast as he could while still trying to stay steady less he trip and fall into their midst. The only thing on his mind being the agonizing sounds they made, and how to kill them as fast as possible.