Chapter 59: The Relic Blade
After reducing the Gristle-Hound to a "human nugget," Kian put a final 9.9mm slug through the brute's chest, ending its miserable, drug-fueled existence.
The beast had been a goldmine for experience, single-handedly providing 5 points of Ballistics Proficiency. Kian checked his backpack—only twenty rounds of high-pressure ammunition remained. He had fired over eighty shots from his sniper's perch.
He massaged his shoulder. Despite the heavy recoil of the oversized caliber, he felt only a dull ache. Strength 19 pays dividends, he thought. A normal man's collarbone would have been powdered after twenty rounds; Kian was just getting warmed up.
He reloaded his final magazine, intending to finish his ammo before extracting. But when he scanned the warehouse floor, the battlefield was empty. During his "surgical" limbing of the Gristle-Hound, the surviving scavengers and junkies had taken the hint and vanished into the labyrinth of containers.
"Tsk. No more targets?" Kian muttered, panning his scope across the shadows.
Then he saw it. The Chem-Sow.
The massive mutant had finished its "noodle-slurp" and was standing in the center of the clearing, swaying drunkenly. Its chemical-bloated brain couldn't process the sudden silence. It stood there, a mountain of meat and iron, looking for something else to kill.
Kian didn't hesitate. He centered the crosshairs on the beast's left knee.
BOOM.
A fist-sized hole erupted in the Sow's leg. The beast let out a wet, metallic shriek and dropped to one knee. It thrashed its massive arms, clawing at the air, unable to locate the source of the pain.
BOOM.
The second knee shattered. The Sow collapsed forward, its tusks scraping the metal floor. It began to crawl, dragging its massive weight through the gore of its own victims.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Kian methodically raked the beast with fire. He shot the elbows, the belly, and the spinal ports. He poured every remaining round of 9.9mm into the Sow until it was nothing more than a twitching, hollowing slab of meat, completely immobilized but still wheezing through its Pig-Grit mask.
Kian lowered the smoking rifle. His Tactical Cogitator flickered with a new update:
[Ballistics Proficiency: 91]
Current Tier: Elite Marksman.
Effect: Recoil Control +25%. Aim Stability +30%. You now possess a "Master's Intuition" for long-range windage and elevation.
"Ninety-one," Kian whispered. "I can practically taste the trajectory now."
He packed his gear, took a long swig of water, and ate a few potato slices to top off his energy. He leaped from the high gantry, caught a lower railing to break his fall, and descended the spiral stairs to the warehouse floor.
[LOOTING PHASE]
The warehouse floor was a charnel house. Kian began the "Grave-Sweep," moving from corpse to corpse with the cold efficiency of a servitor.
Alchem-Hounds: He harvested 87 Tox-Stimms, 15 Onslaught-Stimms, and 65 elemental tattoo-skins. He pried the Frenzy-Spur Manifold from the immobilized Chem-Sow, ending its life with a knife through the eye-slit.
Sump-Rats: He moved to the independent scavengers. Most carried garbage, but he checked every pouch and pocket.
In a tattered hand-sewn backpack, he found a high-lumen tactical flashlight, five power cells, a power-transformer, a spool of industrial wire, and a pair of heavy-duty bolt-cutters.
Then, he found the prize.
Clutched in the dead hand of a scavenger leader was a sword. It was a Western-style Gothic Longsword with a heavy cross-guard and a pommel shaped like a skull. The blade was chipped from abuse, but the steel was a rare, high-density alloy that hummed when Kian flicked it with a fingernail.
"A Relic Blade," Kian muttered, swinging it in a practice arc. "Some Spire-noble probably lost this in a gambling debt, and it ended up in the hands of a rat."
He tucked the sword into his belt and prepared to head for the extraction point. He opened his mental map, but before he could take a step, the air was shattered by a sharp CRACK.
Kian felt a hammer-blow to his right thigh. He was knocked off his feet, tumbling into the dirt.
"I GOT HIM! I LEGGED THE SNIPER!" a voice shrieked from behind a nearby container.
Kian grit his teeth against the white-hot agony. He looked at his leg. His trousers were shredded, his thigh a mess of raw meat and bleeding holes. A scavenger had ambushed him with a pipe-shotgun, firing a load of rusted iron shards at close range.
The shooter was clever. He'd seen Kian's PDF helmet and flak vest and aimed for the unprotected limbs.
Ten more scavengers emerged from the shadows of the containers. Aside from the man with the pipe-gun, they were armed with machetes and iron bars. They looked at Kian's high-tier gear with eyes full of feverish greed.
Kian didn't panic. He rolled behind a shipping container, dragging his mangled leg.
"Come on then, you bastards!" Kian roared.
He unslung the sniper rifle and shoved the long barrel out from behind the container. The scavengers, seeing the "Hand-of-God" rifle pointing at them, shrieked and dove for cover.
Kian used the momentary pause to pop a bottle of Pain-Suppression Pills.
[Pain Status: Suppressed (2 Hours)]
The agony vanished, replaced by a cold, synthetic numbness. He could feel the blood pumping out of his leg, but he could move again. He checked his HUD. His right leg was "Blacked"—zero HP. In the logic of the System, he couldn't walk on it without a surgical fix.
He pulled out his Surgical Kit. He didn't have time for anesthesia. He grabbed a pair of forceps, shoved them into his thigh, and yanked out the jagged iron shards. Clink. Clink. Then, he used a surgical stapler to clamp the muscle together and sprayed the wound with bio-reconstructive foam.
In twenty seconds, he had performed a "Field Miracle." He followed up with a Med-kit, wrapping the leg in high-tensile bandages.
[Limb Restored: Right Leg (100% HP)]
"My turn," Kian hissed.
He left his backpack on the ground. He didn't use the sniper rifle—he was out of ammo and it was too long for a close-quarters brawl. Instead, he drew the Antique Longsword.
He leaned against the container, listening. He could hear the "rats" whispering. They were trying to flank him—four staying in front to pin him down, three circling left, three circling right.
Kian burst from cover.
The four scavengers in front were waiting for a sniper shot. They didn't expect a 19-Strength juggernaut to charge them with a three-foot length of Spire-steel.
Kian swung the longsword in a horizontal cleave. The blade, fueled by his transhuman strength, didn't just cut; it obliterated. It hit the first scavenger in the jaw, cleaving through the skull and exiting through the opposite ear.
SQUELCH.
The man's head split in half like a dropped melon.
Kian didn't stop. He performed an "Imperial Cross-cut." He ducked under a swinging pipe and drove the point of the sword through the chest of the man with the pipe-shotgun. The blade pierced the scavenger's heart and came out his back, pinning him to the container wall.
The remaining two froze. Kian didn't give them a second to think. He performed a spinning strike, his tactical flashlight blinding them as he lopped the head off the third man and disemboweled the fourth.
Clang!
One of the flanking rats had reached him, smashing a heavy iron pipe into Kian's left shoulder. Kian felt the bone crack, his HUD showing the shoulder HP drop by half.
He didn't even flinch. He turned, grabbed the man by the throat, and drove the relic blade through the scavenger's gut, twisting the steel until the man's eyes rolled back.
Kian pulled a fresh bandage from his pouch, wrapped his shoulder in a blur of motion, and felt the bone knit back together instantly.
He looked at the final three scavengers who were currently trying to run away.
"Running is a waste of stamina," Kian whispered.
He gripped the sword, his boots pulverized the metal floor as he exploded forward with twice the speed of a normal man. The hunt was on.
☆☆☆
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