《Empire of blood and steel》


 Chapter 1 - Initiallizing

    <u>Chapter 1 - Initiallizing</u>


    "Good luck, Kyung Min" Was the last thing Kyung Min remembered as he woke up from a strange lucid dream. As he slowly opened his eyes, he felt a cool breeze on his face and his back was strangely damp and numb. As he slowly lifed his body up and looked down, he found he was still in his pajamas and was lying down on a damp patch of dirt with his familiar bed nowhere to be seen. He habitually moved his hands around looking for his glasses that he wore for most of his 26 year life but quickly realized he could see clearly without them. Bewildered, he was finally snapped awake from his stupor and slowly stood up to take a look around.


    "What the hell? Where am I? What is going on here?"


    It was dark and humid around him, and when he looked up, he saw a humungous dark red tree that looked like it could be more than 30 stories tall and realized he was lying down under its huge shade. He was standing in a small clearing surrounded by those trees with large exotic looking colorful plants nearly as tall as he was. He was in some kind tropical jungle and even with his lack of knowledge in plant biology Hunter realized he was not on earth; or at least anywhere on earth he was aware of. On the ground on his left, he saw a conspicuous looking metallic grey box the size of a mini drink fridge with a strange glass window completely looking out of place in a jungle.


    Realizing he was in a strange unknown place barefoot and in his pajamas, Kyungmin suddenly felt a shiver up his spine when he started to hear all the foriegn sounds from unknown animals around him and jumped when he heard a strange feminine mechanical voice speaking in what sounded like giberish in his head.


    ''Initiallizing........ Welcome user - my model number is GLADT-100020. I am your assigned support AI, How may I be of assistance?''


    "Uhhh....What the fuck?"


    ''Registering command ''what the fuck'' - detected language - Earth English - changing system language to ''english'' - From your tone user, you seem to be disoriented from waking up from teleportation induced shock. My name is - GLADT-100020 - or - GLADIUS - Terraforming AI from Terra corp assigned to aid new habitants on planet #145012 on orders [classifed not enough clearance]. How may I be of assistance?''


    "Where the hell am I and what kind of scifi bs is this? Teleportation, you mean this is not earth? You must be messing with me right?"


    ''Again user you are on planet #145012 on mission [classified not enough clearance]. What would you like me to call you by user?''


    "My name is Ky - , wait a minute hold on. My name is Hunter...... Yeah my name is Hunter"


    Realizing he had no idea what was going on, Kyung Min was not willing to answer with his real name to an unknown entity seemingly talking to him in his head. Since the talking voice decided to speak in English, to better hide his identity, Kyung Min decided to come up with a random english name. It was strange for a Korean to be named Hunter, but Kyung Min knew he was always horrible at names so he decided to just roll with it for now. He knew he was overreacting by suddenly going with a new alias but it never hurt to be careful; who knew if it was some alien entity probing his head to find out more about him. He could be abducted by some aliens to study humans behaviour and he was not going to willingly comply.


    ''Confirmed user name ''Hunter''- I detect that your temperature is starting to drop - I suggest you find a shelter and start a fire immediately''


    "Yeah, I guess thats fair. Wait, where the hell are you to talking to me from?''


    ''I am installed on a biochip in your cerebellum Hunter''


    Hearing this, Hunter started panicking inwardly ''Oh shit, I really am in some kind of alien experiment on an alien planet. Last thing I remember yesterday was downing some beer with fried chicken and passing out as usual in my room, what the hell is going on?''The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    As he brushed his hands around his neck in nervous frustration, he suddenly noticed his neck felt thinner and harder. Feeling something was not right, he looked down to check his body and realized his beer gut from not having much needed excersise was gone and his body was way more in shape; much more in fact, since he was never this fit even during his military service as a tank gunner.


    ''What the hell, of course they won''t just mess with my brain and leave my body alone. They went with the full course and put me in a brand new body! I am not sure, but the ground seems further away too, did they somehow make me taller?''


    Deciding to let it go for now, it was time to find some wood for a fire. It was dawn and he was starting to lose a lot of body heat from his damp clothes. Not knowing what kind of valuables were in the box which he assumed the aliens prepared for him, he picked it up to take it with him and found it was surpisingly light. Either the sci-fi box was light or he was considerably stronger now. Carefully walking around the clearing barefoot, he found some sticks but realized that he had no way to start a fire.


    '' What do I do now?''


    ''Hunter, that rock over there is flammable when you break it up''


    "What? Like magnesium? I don''t have a fire steel and a knife though"


    ''With the material and energy saved on the printer I can print x1 standard terra pattern nano-steel composite combat knife''


    "What? You are telling me I am holding a 3D printer?"


    ''Confirmed Hunter. That was what you requested along with me when you were given this mission.''


    "What mission ? ... nevermind, just print me this damn knife, I am freezing here."


    ''Printing.......''As the box started making the familiar laser printer sound, Hunter placed the machine down on the ground to let it do its job. After a minute he could see a sillouette of a suspiciously familiar looking Kabar sized knife slowly appearing out of nowhere through the glass of the side.


    ''Woah, that is wicked''


    Forgetting his situation, Hunter was mesmerized by the uniform sounds of the printer slowly materiallizing a combat knife out of thin air and after 3 minutes, he had his knife. The full tang combat knife was lighter than it looked and was made out of somekind of greyish alloy that was nothing like he was familiar with and when he tried to do the standard sharpness test by shaving his arm hair, he damn near sliced his forearm open. He decided to be extra careful with the knife and he went to work and broke up the strange alien rock with the pommel of his knife over the small twig pile and finally started his little fire by striking his knife on another rock the AI pointed out.


    As Hunter started to warm his body up, he suddenly heard a feminine yell in the distance. Kicking dirt over his fire to quickly put it out, he grabbed his knife and ran towards the direction of the yell. Then, Hunter remembered how exposed and vulnerable he was with only his pajamas on and stopped. He then heard the stranger agin, this time a scream, so Hunter steeled his nerves up and started to jog towards the direction of the scream as quietly as possible. After a couple of minutes he finally came into another clearing just like the one he was in, and Hunter had to stop himself from gasping out loud when he saw a stranger holding a spear, facing against what looked to be a larger more sinister version of earth''s jaguar.


    The stranger was breathing hard and was bleeding from her abdomen where she had a nasty gash with blood pouring out. The woman of asian decent looked to be in her early twenties and was wearing an out of place looking casual office wear with torn stocking and no shoes. The spear or staff she was holding was comically large compared to her stature and was completely green without a visible blade. On a closer inspection the green stick had what appeared to be magical runes engraved, which were slowly flashing on and off.


    ''So this is a magical world huh, what the hell is with this setting. Artificial intelligence within a magical fantasy world? What should I do? That Jaguar is gonna maul the shit out of her.''


    While Hunter was in a panic, think about a way to help the woman out, the jaguar lost its patience first in the staring contest and finally pounced. With the runes on the staff brimming with light, the woman retaliated by slashing across at lightening speed with a shrill yelp while dodging out of the jaguar''s way. It all ended in the blink of an eye and Hunter could not believe his eyes when the Jaguar looking thing was almost bisected in half by the woman who did not even look to weigh 45kg (100lb) dry.


    Seeing that the exhausted woman was fine besides the single non-fatal looking wound and some small scratches, Hunter started to go into the clearing to speak to her and maybe help out if he could.


    "Hey there...."


    Before he could catch her attention and awkardly say hello, Hunter heard a terrifying roar from the forest behind the woman. Before he could even blink or scream at her to look behind to give a warning, the woman''s neck was lifed up into the jaws of the largest bear, Hunter has even seen in his life and half of her upper torso was torn in half with a sickening pop. Hunter was horrified to see her head lifelessly dangling from her body with a piece of skin and what remained of her spine and he immediately turned and started running towards the clearing he woke up in, in absolute panic.

 Chapter 2 - Mama Bear

    <u>Chapter 2 - Mama Bear</u>


    It did not take long for Hunter to return to where he started the fire. He did not hear the telltale signs that a large 4m tall bear was chasing him, but Hunter did not dare to look back. He picked up the 3d printer and threw the knife in so he could use his both of his hands to carry the printer, and he ran like hell towards the opposite direction of the gruesome sight he just witnessed.


    After half an hour of running like crazy, which felt like an eternity, Hunter finally slowed down to catch his breath and look behind. He felt like vomiting from what he witnessed but he was in so much shock and strained from running, his body could not even bring itself to gag.


    ''WHAT THE FUCK is going on? Jesus h christ, that was messed up. Besides the fucking 4m tall grizzley bear, the lady tore a damn jaguar 3 times her size in half!''


    "Hey AI or gladius what ever you are called, what the hell is going on?"


    "That was another ''summoned'' like you, attacked by what the local population of this planet call the shadow jaguar and the basilisk bear translated into your language. Hunter, You seem confused by my name. Would you like to set a name for me?"


    The cold and unfeeling voice of the AI calmed Hunter down a bit, and after thinking for a bit, decided to call the AI with not even a sliver of warmth in its voice, Glados for the uncanny resemblence it had to the creepy AI in that video game both in name and character.


    "I am gonna call you Glados. First question Glados, do I have a chance against those monsters, and do I have some kind of spells or magic like that woman used? How strong are they?


    ''Those monsters should be equivalent to 6 and 10 times your strength respectively, based on the records of the strength of the people needed to fight them. You have a lack of mana in you body, which the other summoned used to fight against the jaguar, so you currently cannot utilize any weapons that have rune or use any offensive spells''


    "Holy Shit, that sounds really bad. Tell me what and how much more I can make with the 3D printer. We are going to need something more than this knife if I am going to have any chance of surviving against them."


    ''The Terra Corps Personal Standard Template Printer is capable of printing anything that I have the required scematics and license for, and fits within the dimensions of the printer. Currently the printer has 97% charge remaining and 90% of the material left. I also require nutrition for power to operate the printer, so you currently need to obtain more food''


    "Well, I am now 100% sure those things are gonna maul me. Can I at least charge the damn thing? And where do I get the materials?"


    ''Existing preferred power sources are not avaliable, Alternate power sources are currently unknown. Any Matter can be used as materials, however power needed varies considerably.''


    ''I guess its back to walking to put as much distance between me and that basilik bear or whatever it was called, and find a shelter and something to eat''.


    Hunter found a small wild path made from travelling wild animals and after passing a small stream, he walked for another half hour or so before coming across another opening surrounding a cave entrance cutting into the side of a small cliff. The cliff was next to a series of cliffs of various sizes and the incline around the cliffs were so steep, Hunter was not certain he could climb them in his current state.


    ''Crap, looks like somewhere some kind of animal might live; or even worse this might be the bear''s den. I have to quickly find a way around and get the fuck out of here, before that bear or something living in that cave tries to kill me''


    Suddenly, Hunter smelled the stink of a wild animal coming upwind from where he came from, and heard small animals frantically running away and plants being pushed aside in the distance. Having no choice against out-running the calamity coming towards him, Hunter headed into the cave praying to find somewhere he could hide in where the bear was too large to squeeze through, and who ever that lived in the cave was not home. He frantically ran into the cave to hide before the beast arrived.


    The cave was much larger than Hunter had thought, wide and tall enough for two large tractor trailers to pass through side by side, and after a short while he had to rely on feeling the sides of the cave wall to continue. After what felt like eternity, where Hunter jumped histerically at any small sound expecting to find a monster that would brutally end his life, he finally came into a large cavern lit with daylight coming from an small opening at the top of the cavern. On the sunlit center of the cavern lay two bear cubs the size of a small car, taking a nap next to a mountain of bones and half rotting carcasses of unknown origins and sizes. Some of them were even larger than Hunter and it was clear the bear he saw at the clearing was the alpha predator of this area. Hunter was trespassing and he needed to find a place to hide quick, or he was going to end up in that pile of steaming bear shit in the corner.


    ''Look up Hunter''


    Hunter looked up and saw a small opening located 3 meters above, large enough for him to crouch into, but he grimaced when he realized it was on the wall past the bone piles and the sleeping bear cubs. Hearing the thump of the bear''s footsteps echoing behind him, Hunter stopped hesitating and rushed towards the small opening, ignoring the terrifying man eating bear cubs that stood between him and his only way out of this ordeal. The cubs thankfully did not wake up and when Hunter was near the opening, Hunter realized he could not jump into the small cave with both of his hands full. Hoping for the best, he took his knife out from the printer and lightly tossed the printer into the smaller cave, to free his hands to climb into the small cave.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    The metallic case of the printer sliding across the rocks made a horrendous noise that echoed through in the cavern, Hunter felt his skin crawl, and when he turned around, he was horrified to see the bear cub wide awake, hungry and curiously looking at him. Giving out a cowardly yelp, Hunter darted towards the wall, and with an athletic feat he would never have been able to be accomplish before, ungracefully collapsed into the opening of the smaller cave with the two bear cubs close behind him. Before Hunter had a chance to believe he was safe, one of the bears managed to stick its paw in before Hunter had a chance to retreat further into the cave, and took out a large chunk of Hunter''s back.


    "Fuck!"


    In an uncontrolled panic, Hunter lashed out with his knife and succeded in slicing the cub deeply between its eyes and snout causing it to yelp in pain. Hunter using that chance tried to quickly retreat further back into the crevice but he did not get very far before he tripped and fell backwards onto a rock, and he blacked out immediately.


    Hunter was back in his lucid dream, and he was back on earth, dreaming about his childhood and recent times, both good and bad; flashbacks of unpleasant times eating alone during school, the faces of people trying to mask their awkardness and displeasure to be in the same group projects as him, his awkard confession as a teenager in class infront of his crush during middle school, his hectic college life of weed and alchohol, his sick mother, his recent 21 months of military service that ended a year ago and finally his recent unsuccessful job interview. Near the end, when the dream about his mediocre life was about to loop itself again, Hunter was suddenly woken up by Glados calling out to him.


    ''Wake up Hunter''


    When Hunter woke up with his head throbbing and feeling like it was going to explode, while his body was sore all over, he realized the deep wounds on his back and feet that was bloody before had healed and the cuts were no longer visible and Hunter was not dying from an alien diesease from infections. Whatever the aliens did, they made sure he was not going to bleed out on them. Hunter was thankful, even though it might have nasty side effects like turning him insane like that red masked guy in the comic books, since the speed he had healed at was physically impossible for a normal human.


    Hunter cautiously listened for the bears and after not hearing anything suspicious, decided to take a chance and look down. From the moonlight bouncing off the pile of yellowish white bones, Hunter could tell it was night outside assuming this planet followed the same idea of rotating around a star like earth did. He looked more closely around and found one of the cubs near the bottom of the his little cave, half eaten. His slice with the knife was apparently where the bear''s important artery was, judging from the thick puddle of blood around it; the bear like creature from hell dying by bleeding out. After spending five more minutes agonizingly looking and listening to see if the bears were hiding somewhere, Hunter was relieved to conclude neither the bear cub nor its presumably furious parent was in the cavern anymore.


    "Glados, did I level up?" After saying that Hunter immediately felt stupid and as his face flushed red, Hunter face palmed himself.


    ''There can''t be levels in real life, am I losing my mind here after all this''


    As expected Glados replied ''No Hunter, killing monsters directly does not make you stronger in anyway''


    "How am I going to get stronger then and kill those bears?"


    ''From the database, Natives seems to get stronger by training or finding artifacts left from gods in this world and receiving their blessings. Some of them seems to have a way to get stronger from the materials gained from hunting those monsters''


    "What? There are gods in this world? Wait, you must know where we are right now then? You seem to know a lot about this world."


    ''What I know is only preliminary research Terra has performed on this planet and has records of, right before the mission. I do not know where we are. I am a newly activated AI from mother. More data needs to be collected for me to estimate location on the planet''


    "Some useful AI you are. Never mind then, we need weapons Glados, any ideas?"


    ''I have standarized plans saved for all Terran Infantry Weapons. Considering the resources on hand, would you like me to print a standard pattern 6.5mm ETC TMC-103 Assault rifle?''


    "Weapons we don''t even have a way to power? Forget it Glados, I don''t even wanna know how much material that is going to cost us. Do you have any stronger melee weapons like that lady used?"


    ''Melee is strongly not recommended for Hunter right now against those monsters. From all possible calculations, including the fact Hunter lacks mana, Glados concludes Hunter is too weak physically. Glados is certain Hunter will perish, thus failing the mission''


    "...... Traps maybe?"


    ''The Bassilisk Bear is considered to be smart enough to not fall into a man made trap''


    "Hey, maybe I pissed the bear off enough for it to work"


    ''Glados still recommends a ranged weapon''


    "Fine, what is a rifle and some magazines with ammunition going to cost us?"


    ''It will use up the remaining 80% of resources and power and Glados will have to enter sleep mode due to lack of critical nutrients in the body''


    "Just go ahead, I don''t think we can leave this area with this killer bear roaming around waiting to muder me in my sleep"


    ''User has Weapon Production Access authorized - Starting printing process now - Time remaining 60:00''


    While Glados was doing its thing, Hunter decided to look around. Thinking back, it was starting to creep Hunter out how bold and calm he was being compared to his normal self back on earth. Hunter decided it was another thing that could be explained by alien modifications on his body.


    ''Maybe they modified the part of ny brain that dealt with emotion, who knows.''


    Suddenly remembering all those novels he read back on earth when he was bored, Hunter decided to go through the carcass of the bear cub to see if it had something like a monster core which could help in this situation. Hunter chuckled to himself at the ridiculousless of all this and started to wonder if he was in a coma from an accident and he was imagining all of this. The last day or two felt very surreal, but the very real pain he felt from the bear cub and the fact he saw a woman getting brutally murdered right in front of him, made Hunter quietly acknowledge this was all real, and Hunter started to cut open the still warm carcass of the bear with his knife, occasionally stopping once in a while to look around and listen for the bears.

 Chapter 3 - This is my rifle, This is my gun

    <u>Chapter 3 This is my rifle, this is my gun</u>


    Hunter was disappointed to not find anything other than disgusting bear guts and half eaten flesh. He was not sure how he did not puke his guts out, but again, all hail the mighty alien overlords. He considered cooking and eating the meat but he was not sure it was contaminated therefore decided it was wise to ask Glados before attempting to do so.


    After the amateur butchering of the animal that resulted in what looked like a scene in a terrible B horror movie, Hunter sat at the edge of the small cave and waited for the printing to finish. The hour took way longer than he thought and all the contents of the previous day came rushing to him at once.


    ''What is this place? Why am I here? What is the ''mission'' the AI keeps raving on about? Who was that girl? Did the other bear eat its sibling to get the monster core? Did infant monsters even have monster cores? Were monster cores even a thing? How the hell am I going to power the printer again? Crap I should have asked Glados before it started since its going to go to sleep mode now. Shit........ btw should I consider Glados a ''she'' since it has a feminine voice?''


    As Hunter was working himself into a panic, with a satisfying ping, the printer was done. Inside the printer lay a futuristic looking, yet crude looking rifle with its stock folded that strangely resembled an AK-103 rifle from earth which Hunter guessed the name TMC-103 came from. Hunter had a strange nagging feeling since all these names were too familiar to him like the name Terra and the fact that the alien AI knew both English and the curse words he sporatically spewed out in Korean, but Hunter decided that was a problem for another time and he had much bigger problems on hand to worry about .


    When Hunter picked up the familiar looking rifle that he used to own a civilian clone of during college in the US, he started checking out all the controls of the rifle. After Hunter was confident each of the controls on the rifle were exactly what he thought it was and got familiar with them, he picked up one of the 6 magazines and with a familiar rocking motion inserted a magazine into the rifle. Hunter then pulled back and released the charging handle.


    The cool sci-fi rifle had some kind of miniature battery pack in each of the magazines, presumably to electronically ignite the propellant and there was a tiny display below its integrated holographic sight showing rounds left in the magazine which indicated 1/29. After disengaging the safety and aiming at the bear carcass, Hunter suddenly realized he would go deaf and get titinnus like the alchoholic spy in archXX, firing something like this in a cave.


    "Hey Glados, are you there?"


    "Yes Hunter, be quick please, I will switch to sleep mode in 2 minutes"


    "Is that bear edible? And also can you make me a set of foam ear plugs?"


    "Yes Hunter, the bear is edible but unfortunately I have no more energy left"


    "Well, Shit....."


    Hunter decided that the sleeves of his pajamas cut, folded and wet would have to make do and after doing a hasty job of making a temporary ear plug, nervously fired a round at the bear''s skull.


    The rifle had surprisingly more recoil than what he was expecting, but the thick skull was shattered and the rest of the head behind the skull exploded clean off. Surprised by the rifle''s power, Hunter hastily put the safety back on and could not stop himself from grinning and laughing maniacally.


    "Oh, those damn bears are gonna git it now!"


    Not sure when the bears are coming back, Hunter decided to have some food and rest until the bears were back. He decided to place some traps first and after sharpening some wicked looking bone spears with his knife and sticking them in a small area around his little hiding space, he carefully went all the way out of the cave to find some firewood. He was not willing to eat the bear raw even if he was absolutely hungry and tired. He found some driftwood on the shore of a nearby stream and with the rocks he somehow managed keep in his pajamas, started a fire. The wood was still wet so it created a lot of smoke, but Hunter was hungry and stuck a decent looking piece of meat with all the fat trimmed off on a stick and started cooking.


    The bear meat on a stick smelled absolutely awful and was extremly gamey and made Hunter question his sanity at believing glados was right about the bear being edible. After the torturous but filling meal washed down with a small drink from clean water flowing out of a crack on the wall, Hunter crawled back as far as he could into the crevice and immediately blacked out from the fatigue.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    ''Hey Hunter, Wake up!'' After a short dreamless sleep, Hunter was startled awake by Glados who was once again operational. From the light flooding into the cavern, Hunter realized it was near dawn again and started to hear the angry grunts from the inhabitants of the cave returning to find their house in a complete mess.


    Steeling his resolve and making sure all his valuables were deep inside, Hunter took a deep breath and quietly aimed his rifle at the nape of the remaining bear cub who was facing with its rear end towards him. After a sharp crack, the bear cub was no more and Hunter was face to face with mama bear the alpha predator staring at him outside of his little crevice. Hunter wasted no time with his chance at easy shots and put three quick shots into the area where he got his lucky one hit kill on the first bear cub. However the shots were stopped by a faint blue hue covering the bear and what Hunter thought would be an easy kill quickly turned into a nightmare.


    Shot after shot rang out after Hunter started to panic and the bear angrier than ever, started ripping the entrance to the crevice apart sending rock shards everywhere, completely oblivious to the rifle shots and the makeshift bone spears around the entrance. After Hunter emptied 3 of his magazines the frenzied bear finally spent all of its energy keeping up the barrier and another full magazine worth of bullets ripped off most of its arms that were trying to stop the bullets and a couple of shots finally managed to blow past the weak snout area of the beast and turn its brain into a bloody pulp.


    Breathing heavily from adrenaline, Hunter realized how reckless he has been. From his nerves breaking down from the horrific murder he saw yesterday, Hunter gained too much fake confidence from finally having a weapon he could somewhat use proficiently. He was forgetting the fact he was in a magical fantasy world and a scenario that a already terrifying 3m tall bear on all fours had some kind of energy shield did not come to him. Feeling the cold sweat on his back, hunter reloaded his rifle and just to make sure the beast was dead, Hunter dumped another couple of shots into the beast''s head and jumped carefully down from the crevice to inspect his kill.


    From close inspection he realized just how massive this creature was, from the creature dwarfing him even when lying on its belly on the ground. Glados who stayed silent until now suddenly concluded that the bear indeed might have a monster core seeing how much energy it used to move its body and all the kenetic energy it had stopped. Hunter with a long sigh, went back up to grab his knife.


    After almost half a day of slicing the bear up, Hunter finally found a golf ball sized crimson red sphere that was incased in a hard slimey and fleshy carcass near the heart. Hunter then decided to try the bear cub too and found another 2 small shards.


    "You think this would do as a power source Glados? - That energy barrier that the bear was running was pretty intense."


    ''The remaining power and material might just be enough to make an adapter to power the printer using the core. The shards are not large enough though.''


    "Looks like we are in business then. Do we have to keep hunting monsters like these to keep powering the printer? "


    ''If we have enough power and materials we can build a simple wood gas generator. And with enough parts I can print the parts for a minature cold fusion generator''


    "Wait, cold fusion actually works? Although I don''t know if I feel safe working with stuff like that glados, I fixed planes on earth not build and design nuclear generators! I am not even close to be qualified to even attempt that."


    ''Don''t worry Hunter, when we upgrade your brain with the 3D printed bio computers, with my increased computing capacity and your improved intelligence, you would soon learn and understand all the basics you need to know in no time''


    ".......How much did you guys mess with my brain for that to be even possible? And do you even realize how long thiswould take? I quit school and became a mechanic precisely because I don''t wanna do engineering anymore Glados."


    ''This is all what you wanted Hunter''


    "Why the hell can I not remember that?"


    ''The procedure requires some time to fully work with all those nanobots in your bloodstream slowly doing its job. Don''t worry, you will remember everything in due time Hunter.''


    "You are sounding a lot more like a person now Glados. Now you are trying to reassure me and you are really starting to freak me out. You aren''t even talking in that creepy monotone anymore. Are you really just an AI program on an alien computer chip?"


    ''I am still learning about human behaviours and nuances . After all Hunter, you do realize I am only 3 days old. And again, I already told you, I am different than just a ''computer'', I am one of the most advanced AI in the galaxy created by MOTHER herself.''


    "Well computer or not, having a completely sentient being in my head seeing and hearing everything I do is not very comforting Glados"


    ''Nothing I can do about that Hunter, again, its what you wanted.''


    ''God dammit past me, at least include the option to turn the damn thing off!''


    ''As long as you have sufficient nutrients, I am operational 100% of the time controlling all of your bodily functions for optimal performance. I highly recommend not attempting to turn me off seeing you almost died twice in your sleep''


    ''Great..... it or she can read my thoughts now.''


    ''You are just a simple man Hunter, so simple in fact, just a ''program on a computer'' can read you.''


    ''Well, fuck you too Glados''

 Chapter 4 - We require more vespene gas

    <u>Chapter 4 We require more vespene gas</u>


    Hunter decided the cave was secure enough to be his base for now since the cave had only one entrance and he was sure nothing stronger than the bear was nearby and the lingering scent of the local alpha predator was enough to ward off potential predator. He alse decided to make crude traps all around the cave to try and trap small critters.


    Living off the bear was absolutely horrible for the first couple of days but with Glado''s help he was able to find some edible herbs and what looked to be wild onions, strange looking fruits and mushrooms to help make the meat more palatable. For the remaining bear hides after he was done butchering, he chemically treated with the extract of some unknown plant from the forest per Galdos''s instructions and dried it for next time he goes into civilization since it might be valuable. He then crudely make some clothing again with Glado''s instructions.


    Solving the food and clothing situation for now, Hunter spent the next 2 weeks chopping down trees nearby, collecting iron near the cliff and producing hand tools to build the wood gas generator to power the printer. Although the printer seemingly could make anything, it only could make items or parts smaller than its mini fridge size so he had to manually assemble and build all the tools and equipment to make the gas generator. Glados gave precise instructions and to produce the steel, Hunter was able to make a crude crucible to smelt the iron and the other 3d printed ingredients together. With the powertools and a welder powered by what remained of the monster core he was able to finally assemble a wood gas powered generator the size of a small shed.


    By then the wood he chopped up and prepared was sufficently dry enough to be used and with a lot of trial and error Hunter finally managed to power the generator up.


    "My God, that took a lot effort."


    ''We need to make 3 more of those to power the printer Hunter''


    "I  am sorry what? You are telling me I need that much power just to make some more bullets?"


    ''Breaking down matter and reassembly them takes a lot of energy, especially with the materials we have. You should know that Hunter.''


    "I am getting cabin fever here Glados, I mean I have you to talk to and all but its been 2 weeks and we have not found anybody else nearby. From what you told me about local habitants and all, I was at least hoping to find me some blue aliens, Glados."


    ''Since you never asked so I never told you this, but Hunter, this world is 10 times larger than earth''


    "What? some support AI you are Glados. Am I right in the middle of  the Amazon Forest or something? You would think for a mission given by some alien god, I would need to be closer to civilzation."


    ''......''


    "Glados?"


    ''You were supposed to be summoned in a civilzation but I don''t know what happened. This shouldn''t have happened. I am sorry Hunter.''


    "... Fine, lets just forget about it. Lets just get this over with so we can leave this god forsaken place. I don''t know how long the smell is going to keep the predators away."


    It took Hunter more than a month but he was finally done.


    "Ready Glados?"


    ''Yes, Hunter''


    It took a while but when the four sputtering generators were connected to the small box, Hunter finally heard the telltale sounds of a laser printer booting up and getting ready to print. The monster core from the bear was almost depleted and if something went wrong along the way, Hunter would have had to go out and hunt another monster like the Basilisk bear which would have definately ended up with Hunter getting killed. He knew just how lucky he was with how the recent battle went. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    "Yes it works!!! It works! It was way too close but Glados we finally did it!"


    ''Congradulations Hunter''


    "Now lets start printing some ammo. Lets get the hell out of here"


    After celebrating by drinking himself to sleep with his homemade alchohol he brewed from the fruits, he was awaken by Glados.


    ''Hunter wake up''


    "Shit, this is a comon theme ain''t it. What happened?"


    ''There are three monsters scouting the area east of  the entrance''


    With the surplus of power they had now, Hunter installed a couple of sensors and cameras near the caves, and since Glados did not need to sleep he had the perfect warning system. Hunter was relieved he followed Glados''s advice earlier.


    "Scouting? Scouting!? Why the hell aren''t they just attacking? You are telling me there are fucking monsters smart enough to bother checking us out first? Shit, are they like following orders from another alpha monster or something? How many more are out there? Or is that a beast tamer checking me out or something? What do we do Glados? We are fucked if those guys have some magical shields or even worse some fantasy skills. Wait is this a start to a territorial war?"


    ''Calm down Hunter, we don''t know what we are dealing with yet. Take a look''


    " Is that a fucking 3m tall chicken with horns? Holy shit they look pissed and mean Glados. Do they have a beef with the bear or something?"


    ''I don''t know Hunter, but they are leaving. We better get ready, I think they are going to be back''


    "How many magazines have you managed to make? I should have gone for the anti material rifle first."


    ''10, but the anti material rifle is going to need 4 hours''


    " So 12 total and no way to deal with the shields for now even if we don''t know if the anti material rifle will even be enough. I am not sure about this Glados.


    Waiting for what hunter decided to call Raptors to attack, Hunter tried to stay awake but after 2 hours of silence started to doze off


    ''Hunter! They are back and they are rushing for the entrance!''


    ''Wha? Shit how many?"


    ''I count about thirty of them and one that looks to be an alpha at the rear!''


    "Shit its going to try overwhelming us and tire us out!"


    Hunter quickly grabbed his rifle, jumped out of his crevice, took a knee and started opening fire blindly towards the entrance of the cave. He then started hearing the dull thuds of bullets hitting flesh and breaking bones and saw a dark sillouette of one of em thumbling down and getting trampled over, followed by another tripping and breaking its neck.


    Then the lead raptor jumping over its fallen brethrens triggered a trap wire and a couple unlucky raptors were impaled by logs lined with bone spikes. The advance was slowed down as the raptors had to jump and dodge its fallen brethen plus the logs and once the raptors reaching the end of the dark tunnel to the cavern was visible, hunter started to take careful aimed shots.


    It was like a turkey shoot as the raptors fell one by one before reaching the cavern, Just as Hunter was starting to feel the entrance was going to be filled with the raptor''s broken bodies, the alpaha raptor decided sending its underlings was not enough and started charging through the tunnel, trampling and blowing through the bodies and started to faintly glow red from all the blood and its activated skill.


    With Glados''s urgent warning Hunter managed dodge out of the way in time to the ground before the Alpha suddenly barreled its way into the cavern. It tried and failed to skid to a stop and barreled into the pile of bones. Hunter on the ground on his back, took the chance and started firing at it again.


    When Hunter saw a faint aura stopping the bullets which was what he was dreading the most to see, he immediately started to run towards the crevice to use the same tactic he used on the bear. When he was about to pass the alpha still recovering from the skid, it whipped its tail and Hunter was flung towards the wall of the cavern.


    Hunter had the air knocked out of him and blacked out for a couple of seconds from the pain. When he recovered and was back up again it felt like his chest was caved in and Hunter struggled to take a breath in. Then, he saw the alpha rear its head towards him and start to glow red again.


    As soon as he saw the red glow, Hunter instintively dodged and heard a deafening crush above him as the alpha slammed its entire body into the cave wall crumbling large parts of the wall into powder. Hunter quickly reached for his rifle and started shooting at it again and was surprised to see his shots do damage.


    The alpha screamed in surprise as it started bleeding profusely from its sides and slammed Hunter with its tail again. Hunter managed to block it partially with his rifle but was sent flying with a large crack along with his rifle. After sliding and rolling for a short distance on the cave floor, Hunter now angry and the adrenaline numbing his pain stood up and reached for his rifle again. Hunter picked up his rifle with his left hand since his right arm was dislocated, cradled the rifle against his bloody chest and started firing at the alpha that was roaring in terror and anguish.


    The harsh recoil of the rifle against his broken ribs made Hunter want to scream as well, but with a broken wind pipe, all he could manage was a muffled cough filled with blood and mucus. With the magazine empty and rifle smoking, Hunter quietly watched as the alpha died and against his wishes Hunter blacked out from the shock.

 Chapter 5 - Meeting with god

    <u>Chapter 5 The meeting with god</u>


    It was just another normal weekend night for Kyung Min as he lay on bed, getting ready to end another day of his mundane and boring life. The pleasant feeling of sleepiness lingering on from being drunk quickly dragged him into a deep slumber. He was not aware at that time, but while he was starting to fall asleep, his body started to brightly glow white and suddenly his entire body broke up into tiny light particles and floating towards the sky, seemingly disappeared into thin air.


    Kyung Min opened his eyes and found he was on lying down on a cold marble floor that was completely white and speckless. He slowly stood up, and when he started to look around, he realized he was inside an arched corridor in some kind of underground tomb or cathedral with walls made with the same white marble as the floor. There were strange statues of creepy looking fantasy creatures on the wall, with some looking quite familiar, neatly spaced out along the length of the corridor. The corridor was dimly lit with exquisite looking skull themed blue tikki torches that were glowing eerily without any flames. When he looked up at the ceiling, he could see epic drawings and illustrations of large alien creatures fighting what looked to be cavemen pointing at the aliens with what looked like sticks and the battle was surrounded by detailed drawings of stars and planets.


    After a minute of admiring the various artworks around him, Kyung Min shrugged and decided he have seen enough and started to walk towards the end of the corridor. He never had such a realistic feeling dream like this before and the strange things he was experiencing was starting to make him feel excited. There were ancient looking doors with the same exquisite carvings and painting on them on each sides of the corridor, but Kyung Min strangely did not have the urge to open any of them.


    When Kyung Min reached the end of the dimly lit corridor, he was surprised to see he was standing at the base of a large underground plaza with steps leading up to the top. There were eight other arched entrances to corridors similar to where Kyung Min had entered the plaza from, but he had no idea where those led to. In the center of the plaza up the steps was another, smaller plaza with a pedestal surrounded by 9 pillars.


    On top of the pedestal floated a bright blue sphere that was large enough to fill the smaller plaza the size of a small house completely. The sphere looked like a miniature blue sun and was magically floating in mid air mysteriously pulsing blue.


    When Kyung Min climbed the steps and stepped past the pillars to have a look at the mysterious ball, he suddenly heard a feminine voice that was calming but oppressive at the same time.


    "Welcome summoned, Kim Kyung Min. I am the goddess of fire and technology of Vocorve and you are one of the thousands of chosen ones from earth summoned by me to represent me on Vocorve."


    "You........ are the goddess of technology of Vocorve?? What are you talking about?"


    "I am not exactly a god Kyung Min, as an entity created to develop civilizations, the biological beings I was in charge of decided to call and worship me as a god. That was during the time I was fully operational. I was woken up recently like the many others who are like me, by the god in charge of protecting this dimension to warn us about the incoming danger to Vocorve. It appears an alien invasion is on its way"


    "That was not I was curious about......Wait hold on, Why me, and why would I or how can I even represent you? Oh, what am I saying, you are just a imagination in my head, I am sure I had too much to drink last night. I need to stop reading too many shitty novels and focus on getting that job."


    "You were chosen by me due to your inner desires and dreams, you always wished for something like this didn''t you?"


    "Well yeah, I sometimes imagine building and commanding my own scifi army but that is only because I am a huge military and science fiction fan. Which does sound like a lot of fun, but thats not nearly enough reason for me to help you nor am I even capable of doing anything I said. So, are you at least going to give me some cool powers something?"


    ''Although, this situation is quite interesting so why the hell not, how badly can it end in a dream anyway?''


    "Just like the other summoned, you get to pick three things"


    "Three what? Powers? Weapons?Abilities?"


    "Any of those."


    "Hells yeah, then I want the biggest and baddest battlecruiser you have. You sound like you are some kind of AI. You should have one don''t you? Why not go easy mode when you can?"


    "Be reasonable Kyung Min, I am limited in resources and there are more than 90,000 summoned left that I am in charge of sending down"


    "Okay then, fine, I can comprimise. A smaller ship like a cruiser?"


    "No KyungMin. I have to remind you this would be considered a fantasy world on earth with what you call magic existing, you can always ask for any magical power or weapon you want"If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    "Soo.... A magical corvette?"


    ".......no......."


    "Hey, mages and knights are really cool and I enjoy those stuff too but I am pretty unathletic and I don''t think I am smart enough to use magic like in all those novels. A good ol'' laser rifle sounds like it would do me good."


    "So you want a laser rifle?


    "No wait, no hold on. I don''t even know guns are even a thing or even useful down there. Are you going to at least give me some ideas about the planet you are sending me to before you make me choose something and potentially get me killed?"


    "It has been 3000 years since I was last operational and I have no idea how technology advanced on the planet. The only other operational AI that was operating told me new gods were born while we were dormant and what looks to be new civilizations appeared. I will update your brain with knowledge about the information I had during that time for now.


    "What? Besides the 3000 years old part, you sure I can remember all that?"


    "You will understand them all eventually"


    "Fine last option then. I have a good idea. I want you, you know, like stay connected to you down there. From what you told me so far, I am assuming you are some kind of AI right?"


    "I am sorry Kyung Min, it would take too much energy to reach me in this dimension of space and I am going to be overloaded with other things. You are one of the first wave of summoned and you are going to be on your own down there. I sent messages down to the empires and republics that worshipped me before and maybe still do. I am sure they can assist you. "


    "Well any AI would help. If you are not gonna give me my ships in my own fantasy dream, I am going to build my own. An AI and a printer that can print everything I need sounds like a good idea"


    "You still have one item left KyungMin"


    "Hey, I want a fit body. Its been a while since I went out for a run since my service and and a year is more than long enough to turn someone chubby. I don''t think I am fit enough to be fighting space aliens."


    "A healthy body free and immune from all known disease and disability is basically included for all summoned. Would you like an enhanced physical body then?"


    "Nah, can you just combine that last item with the other two and send me down with the best AI you can afford and with all the technology you know on it?"


    "Very well then, I will send you down with one of my children and a 3D printer.


    After that, Kyung Min was finally briefed about the mission he was summoned for and some other details about the AI he was going to obtain. He saw images and footages of worlds overrun with millions of ghastly beings that were a good mix of demons you heard about in bibles and fictions, familiar looking fantasy monsters, alien creatures, and even love craftian horrors that looked absolutely horrifying. And after a few parting words Kyung Min started to slowly fade away


    "Be careful down there and please be nice to my child. From what the Overseer of time told me the new gods are the crew members who retained their memories - they became so powerful after going rouge, after getting worshipped as gods by the local inhabitants who are reality bending psychics, actually became deities. The Overseer thinks one or more of them called the xenos horrors onto our world over a power struggle. Find who that is and eliminate them. - This is your secondary mission You will not remember this part for your own safety but, good luck boy"


    "New gods what???"


    Hunter woke up on his back with his body extremely sore and when Hunter tried to lift his body up, he was barely able to move a muscle.


    ''Stay still Hunter, I am not done yet! Hunter, you almost died. ''


    "Oh, Hey Glados. Whew look at all that mess over there, we really did a number on those chickens huh. I am starving Glados, do those oversized chickens taste as good as they look and sounded like? Looks like we are having fried chicken fried in bear fat for dinner tonight!"


    ''I am glad to know you are feeling better Hunter. But, I was barely able to heal you this time. You are running dangerously low on the nanomachine reserves in your blood, Hunter. And since they are bioengineered cells and are used up whenever they regenerate bone and tissues by growing into the neccessary components, if you sustain critical injuries like that again I will not be able to save you. You need to be more careful.''


    "Thanks for saving me Glados. You are right; I am getting absolutely tired of this almost dying thing. We really need to do something about the monster problem in our area. I haven''t even ventured further than a few klicks from the cave and I have no god damn clue what is out there."


    ''Should I build more drones Hunter?''


    "Yeah, I don''t think the anti-material rifle is going to help much with how fast those fuckers are moving, unless I know where they are coming from and are ready for them. I am going to need some actual armor too. This bear hide did not do much and I look like a complete tool in it."


    "Oh yeah, Glados, I remember talking to your mom now. Man, I totally thought that was a weird dream and did not take that seriously at all. You should have told me you can see my dreams and memories when I sleep, that was stupidly embarrassing. I hope my brother is nice enough to clear my hard drive..... You know, like what true bros knows to do for his fallen brother. Why couldn''t your creator give a guy a warning and give him some time to get ready? We literally have to fight demons and I have to worry about my collection being scrutinized by my family and some poor cop when they try to find out why I supposedly went missing?"


    ''That is hardly important right now, and mother did what she must, why should she care about your collection?''


    "Oh don''t be like that Glados, like hell you would know what an socially unhealthy young human male still living with his parents in his late 20s have on his hard drive? Okay, Jokes aside your creator really did mess up, we were supposed to be teleported someplace where people actually knew we were coming and could help us. I am pretty sure that office lady was also one of the summoned like me and it did not end well for her for sure."


    ''We should not be that far from civilization Hunter, Mother could not have made that big of a mistake. I think she sent us to the right place but we are just on top of a civilization that went extinct. Humans seems to enjoy fighting each other to annahilation from what I glimpsed from your world.''


    "Hey that was only movies and worse case scenarios that could happen, we never actually got close to sending each other off. Well, on the way to find the nearest human civilization, I hope we don''t run into anymore of those merry groups of raptors running around. We are going to need more than just a few drones, and we are not leaving this place until we are prepared and can cover the whole forest with drones."

 Chapter 6 - Gearing up part 1

    <u>Chapter 6 Gearing up part 1</u>


    Another week quickly passed, and Hunter was finally back on his feet. Glados could have completely healed all of his torn muscles and broken bones immediately, but to save the dwindling supply of the miracle juice in his blood, they decided healing naturally was a better choice. Hunter had plenty of time to brainstorm new ideas with glados during his downtime, so he immediately went about implementing them when he was mobile again.


    For his power problems, Hunter considered a larger, more complicated generator powered with steam turbines, but the size of his printer severly limited what he could do and he ended up giving up on that idea for now. He considered using solar power, but, even if the panels were 100% efficient, since he was in a jungle, he needed a large number of them to produce enough power. Keeping the four generators running was a chore since he had to chop and process the wood, which took the majority of his time, but for now his simple generators powered by IC engines were his best option. He did find another monster core from the alpha raptor, but decided to use it as an emergency power source.


    Hunter built a crude conveyer system with machines that could process the raw logs and supply the generators with wood chips. Now, as long as he had fresh logs piled up in the feeder, his generators happily chugged along, with the new machines supplying it with fuel. Everything was fully automated with the machines being electronically controlled by Glados, and as long as Hunter periodically cut trees down with a chainsaw to replenish the wood, Hunter was finally able to focus on scouting the area and finding more resources to upgrade his arsenal.


    After he got his factory running smoothly, Hunter immediately asked Glados to print a hundred of the tiny B2 bomber looking palm sized drones. As soon as they were all completed, Hunter deployed all of the drones around the vicinity of the cave. He wanted to operate more, but that was the maximum number Glados could control at one time anyway, so he waited to see how the drones performed. Small birds and sometimes enormous unknown airbourne predators attacked his drones, which resulted in the loss of more than half of his fleet, but by the end of the first couple of days, the drone army was finally able to map everything within a radius of twenty kilometers. Hunter wanted to scout further but Glados had a range limit on how far she chould control the drones. 20 kilometers was the maximum range even with a ridiculous metal helmet with two antennas Glados made him put on to increase the range.


    From what the map revealed, the cave was located southeast inside a valley. On the north side of the valley, was a large mountain where Hunter was certain some dangerous creatures lived, and the South side of the valley was where the series of cliffs that the cave entrance was located at. The east and west were the entrances to the valley, but he could see another large mountain in the distance towards the northwest, so Hunter decided he was going to scout towards the east with the added benefit of the cave being closer.


    Hunter spent the next few days stocking up on supplies and producing extra drones as preparations to head towards the valley''s exit to the east. Since his printer was his lifeline, he placed most of the supplies and the monster core in the printer and secured the printer with his broken down anti-material rifle to a small metallic carrier with backstraps. He was initially afraid the printer might get damaged but it has proven to be durable, perhaps even moreso than himself. Hunter, then stored the rest of the remaining food, materials and the extra drones in a small one wheel cart, and made the final adjustments to his prep to leave at dawn the next day.


    Before he left for his scouting trip, he headed to the clearing where he witnessed the death of the stranger. Hunter looked all around the clearing, but could not find any remains, besides some jwellery, torn clothing, and the staff/spear weapon she used. Hunter buried her remains along with the small earings and a ring she had, since he could not find anything on them to identify her loved ones. Hunter was not religious but he gave a short prayer as best as he could, and quietly left her grave with her weapon.


    Hunter finally departed on his scouting trip, and using the staff as an extra durable walking stick, Hunter trekked the routes that the drones previously scouted to have relatively light local wildlife traffic. He did not feel confident with his rifle doing much against one of those alphas again, but with the drones diligently doing their jobs, it gave Hunter comfort in knowing he would see them before they saw him.


    After half a day of brisk walking, Hunter was well past the 20km mark and decided to stop for a drink and some much needed rest. He then started to check his progress on the map with what the printer lazily named the Terra Tactical Commander''s Terminal. The small device wraped around half of his forearms, with a flexible screen going the entire way around so the user could see the screen, no matter what angle the device was viewed from. He was not sure how, he was going to use this when he was finally going to put some armor on, but it was a very useful device nonetheless showing him live feeds from the drones, maps, targets that the drones found which got labled and marked neatly; all on an easy to use interface. He spent some time having fun with it while having a rest, but Glados suddenly spoke up and told him she found something interesting.


    Hunter zoomed in on the drone footage and around what looks like the remains of a large concrete building, saw what looked to be the entrance to an underground structure.


    "Looks like your mother sent us to the correct place Glados, just 3000 years too late."


    ''A 3000 year nap would do that to anyone, Hunter''Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    "Should we go and take a look? You mentioned something about the locals finding things gods left behind and getting stronger before right?"


    ''Lets be careful Hunter, we don''t know what we are going to find down there. I am going to send the drones in''


    "Hell yeah, hope we find some some awesome stuff down there, like power armors and stuff"


    The drones quietly wizzed into a large hall which looked to be used as the main entrance to enter into the underground structure. The drones quickly scanned every inch of the hall and Hunter was able to have a good look of the interior. There were large holes in the celing of the hall where the rest of the large building collapsed and some of those openings had trees covering them.


    The main hall was laid out like the ones in large corporate office buildings, with what looked to be old electronic half doors used for employees to pass with a key card and desks for security with the familiar metal detectors. Besides the futuristic looking furniture, nothing looked out of the ordinary besides the fact everything was stained brown and green from corrosion and the alien plant life that took over all the cracks.


    There were signs some animals used this as a shelter from the piles of dead animal carcasses in the corner, but it looked as if it was not used as a shelter for quite a long time. Behind the half doors lay the structure''s entrance; wide open with two large rectangular vault doors that each looked to be least 2 meters thick on the sides of the entrance, confirming Hunter''s suspicions that this was either a military facility or a bunker for important government or corporate officials.


    The entire facility strangely had no markings of anykind showing where it belonged to and the lack of bodies on the ground made all of this more strange.


    "Can you tell where and what this facility is Glados?"


    ''I am not sure,but we should scan the whole building first before we can be sure''


    The rest of the bunker looked exactly like what he imagained a US presidental or military nuclear bunker would look like with posh meeting halls, a large central command room with hundreds of computer screens, suites for VIPs, bunkers for personnel, dining and breakrooms for the occupants, and finally large number of storerooms and a small hanger leading to another hidden entrance. The drones finally were done scanning the entire structure and Hunter finally saw a flag of a country he never saw before in front of a small hall that seemed to be used to announce to the public.


    Since the drones reported no traps or scary things lurking to kill Hunter, he wanted to go down and investigate, but when he saw the footage of the hundreds of remains that were absent in the entrance main hall scattered about in the bunker, since he had no idea how they died, Hunter decided against going down there for now.


    "Well, there''s the end of it.... You think the hangar, and some of those locked storerooms have some gear we can use? Or at least have those alloy you keep harping we need for an exosuit or power armor? I am still confused on how you can print drones and rifles but not a simple exosuit"


    ''The control chips needed for the suits are patent and security protected so needs an extra level of authorization, and therefore cannot be printed on the printer even though I have the license for it.There is probably a memory device with the neccessary codes saved on it that grants the printer authorization. Although even with the autorization codes, we still need the specialized materials since there are exotic materials, that we just can''t make with the current power barely enough to run the printer.''


    "So are you are telling me, I still need to get my ass down there if I want better gear?"


    ''It should be safe down there Hunter; the bodies and the facility looks to be at least 1000 years old, no virus or bateria can survive that, and the sensors on the drones are not picking up any dangerous radiation.''


    "Fine, at least make me a gas mask to stop all the dust and corpse dust will you? Vaporized corpse dust does not sound very pleasant to me at all."


    After some more arguing back and forth, Hunter finally mustered the courage to walk into a mass grave and started to gear up. He decided to just bring his wheel barrowed that he emptied out and his carbine along with his knife for prying things open.


    "Here we go Glados, point me to the nearest storerooms"


    Hunter could not see very clearly with him insisting on donning a full PPE that looked like he was in chernoybl, but he was not going to risk his life anymore with his magic juices running low. Navigating using the light of his rifle and carefully avoiding stepping on the bodies, Hunter finally reached his first destination, an equipment repair shop/armoror. He blew the lock to the entrance on the side of the caged desk, and entered with his rifle at the ready.


    Hunter was absolutely glad he was wearing PPE, since the interior was in worse shape than he could ever have imagined. All the weapons and armor that lined the racks completely broke into dust on a slight touch. There was a hole at the celing of the room where a water pipe seem to have blown. He guessed some poor soul was trying to bust his way out of the room and only managed to get to a water pipe judging from the body Hunter saw near the busted pipe. The water was long gone, with the water source empty, but it still managed to do its full damage on the equipments.


    "What now?"


    ''Look around more. Its a shame about the equipment but we need those authorization codes''


    After opening all the containers he could find, and after a lot of cursing and long winded arguments with the AI, Hunter finally managed find and open a airtight plastic container and get his prize. Hunter went to the next destination and found two large containers of exotic alloys and other parts Glados was always harping on about. Filled with glee at all his recent findings, Hunter rushed to the hangers and finally found a rusty old exoskeleton that was painted yellow in one of the locked garages.


    "Sweet Jesus, is that what I think it is?"


    ''Its just an old model used to move heavy items, Hunter''


    "Can you imagine what we can mount on this bad boy?"


    '' I have to remind you that the walker is tethered to a power supply and is also extremely slow. It looks like it needs a lot of work to get it working''


    "Who cares Glados, that looks like a more advanced version of the freaking loader that ripley used to kill some aliens. Even it is old and not suitable for battle, at least we can get those crates out of here. Besides, its is cool as hell. Quick!, lets fetch the rest of our stuff and get that sucker fixed and powered up. Although Glados I have to say its such a shame whoever opened those gates before us hauled most of the valuable stuff away. Didn''t you say these facilities had larger 3D printers and cold fusion reactors?"


    ''Small steps at a time Hunter, now lets go fix that walker up.''

 Chapter 7 - Gearing up Part 2 - home made power armor

    <u>Chapter 7 Gearing up Part 2 - home made power armor</u>


    The multipurpose loader that was originally used to assist workers to lift and move heavy items around the hanger was of an unarmored exoskeleton design, that was closer to a suit than a piloted mech. The only similarities it shared with a mech was that the operator''s arms were not directly connected to the arms of the suit; the arms of the suit were instead, connected to the the main frame and the cage surrounding the operator. The legs were also a simple framed design like the rest of the suit, powered by hydraulics and electronic servos, but unlike the arms, the operator''s legs were used to move and control the suit.


    Working underground in a mass grave with centuries old corpses was terrifying, but Hunter was soon lost in excitement and quickly forget about the bodies surrounding him. Hunter began the repair by completely dismantling everything down to the frames, removing all the moving parts and the control components. The hangar was thankfully empty of any bodies and he was able to move and place all the removed parts around the broken down suit. After finding more spare parts and miscellaneous items in the rest of the store rooms and garages, Hunter was soon surrounded by a small pile of parts. Using the diagnostics tool of the printer, Hunter one by one sorted through everything, and reassembled the suit with the reusuable old parts and newly printed parts. To finish off, he repainted the bright orange suit with a woodland camo and he was finally ready to modify the suit for combat.


    After a brief planning session with Glados, Hunter went to work on modifying the suit, and two days later, he was finally done with his homemade power armor.


    Since the loader was not self powered and ran off a tether connected to the ceiling, Hunter fabricated an armored metal box on the back of the suit, that had space for his printer and the monster core to use as a power source. He also added a ammo box for his belt fed turret, and a tube loaded with drones to have a ready supply of drones when he needs them.


    For weapons, since the arms of the suit was not dexterious, precise nor nimble enough for Hunter to hold and shoot the rifle with both hands like a human would, the weapons had to be mounted on the arms themselves. For use against fast moving targets, Hunter heavily modified his rifle to have electronic fire controls and to be belt fed, and mounted his modified TMC-103 on the right shoulder of the suit on a custom weapons station complete with optics and servos. It was not really ideal with the center of gravity that high, but the suit was not made for combat, so there was not much he could do.


    For his 20mm anti material rifle, Hunter made a special mount under the right arm with a mechanism where, at the press of a button could quickly slide up along the back of the arm, and mount the rifle to his pack, freeing the arm to allow him to switch to his secondary weapons. For his secondary weapons, Hunter printed another compact version of the TMC-103 which could be fired one handed by the suit, and a large chainsaw as a last resort to wear down the alpha''s shield at close range, giving him a chance at defeat it.


    For protection, he covered the entire exposed frontal arc of the mech and crtical components like the controller and servos with crude alloy armor plates and repainted the entire exterior with the same woodland camo he used on the frames. He also added simple magazine pouches and dispensers all around for quick access to reload his weapons.


    To stop projectile and melee attacks, Hunter decided to make a shield. He removed one of the heavy blast proof fire walls in the bunker and cut and trimmed the sides to be about 2/3 the height and width of the suit. Extra bright lights were installed to blind foes at night, the teeth at the bottom of the shield was sharpened, and a small viewport was added. At the back of the shield, the carry handle with a shoulder mount was welded in and a holster for the compact TMC-103 along with sheaths for his combat knife and the staff was added.


    For vision and control of the suit; with some salvaged displays and cameras installed all around the suit, he was able to have a 360 viewing system inside the cockpit. He switched the control of the arms to Glados, since she could send his brain signals directly to the arms, and with some finishing touches like exterior lights, upgraded support for his legs, he was almost there. Since Glado was an advanced AI at the level where she could potentially control the suit by herself, Hunter added more structural modifications, so even if he was inside the suit, Glados could operate the suit remotely. After Glados added the remote control software and the targeting software for the guns, they were finally finished.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    It was a shoddy job, but the suit still looked cool and menacing; standing at 2.1 meters tall, armed to the teeth with all the added armor and weapons he could fit. To finally test the suit out, Hunter opened the front hatch to the cabin and with the hatch still up, slowly practiced walking. After almost stumbling to the ground a few times, he got the hang of walking, and tried running but could only get the suit to a slow jog; the outdated servos and hydraulics not being able to keep up, even with all the upgrades. Hunter spent another hour getting himself used to the suit and making final adjustments.


    After he was confident the suit was ready, Hunter finally decided it was time to leave the bunker. After collecting all the paperwork and storage devices he could find in the bunker, Hunter secured all his loot, and after one last look and a short prayer to the unfortunate souls in the bunker, headed back to base, with drones wizzing over his head.


    His journey back home was fairly uneventful, too uneventful in fact, that hunter was slightly disappointed since he was eager to try his new gear out. However, Hunter soon got his wish, when the drones found a pack of twenty wolve look-alikes that decided to make his cave their new home. These ones were luckily not as big as the previous monsters he faced and were not too much bigger than the ones on earth, so when Glados concluded none of them were on the level of the alphas he faced before, Hunter decided to fight.


    Hunter slammed his shield down on the dirt to make a mobile barricade, and a drone was sent in to annoy and lure the beasts out. Soon, the drone constantly buzzing around woke the entire pack up, and two of the annoyed wolves took the bait and rushed out of the cave, yelping and snapping at the nuisance that disturbed their sleep.


    The pair of wolves were instantly blinded when Hunter switched all the lights on, and the turret controlled by Glados nailed the two stunned wolves. Startled from the rifle fire and the surprised whimper of the wolves, the entire pack rushed towards the exit of the cave, and it turned into a turkey shoot where the AI nailed the wolves with machine like accuracy and Hunter''s solid 20mm slugs blowing through multiple wolves at once.


    After the first twelve of the younger and more inexperienced members of the wolf pack fell, the remaining eight larger adult wolves who were behind them, unexpectantly began to use skills, and with a blue flash every time they dodged, zig-zagged at speeds defying physics, dodging shots with finesse. Although Hunter and Glados managed to pick more of them off with the overwhelming amount of firepower, the remaining five wolves were getting dangerously close.


    Hunter cursed at the slugish arms of the suit and retracted the 20mm, removed the carbine on his shield, and picked his shield back up. The wolves were quick, but Glados with her inhuman reaction speed managed to nail two more of them before the last three of the wolves reached into melee distance. Two of the wolves pounced from the front aiming for the right arm not protected by the shield, and the the last one which went around and pounced at the turret.


    Everything ended in a flash as Glados fired full auto into the wolf from the rear, finishing it off, and Hunter, trusting his armor, leaned in and gave his right hand willingly to the pouncing wolves.The momentum of the wolves almost knocked him over, but after quickly releasing his shield, he grabbed one of the wolves with his left arm and threw it to the ground, ending its life by stomping on its head. Hunter then gripped the head of the last remaining wolf strongly, crushing its skull, and held the wolf up and shot it with his carbine.


    Hunter, high from adrenaline, quickly surveyed the aftermath looking for more enemies, but when he could not see one anymore and the drones confirmed the coast was clear, breathed a sigh of relief and left the suit after leaving Glados on guard duty. After a short time to catch a breath, he on habit, started to butcher all the animals up looking for cores.


    "That was awesome Glados, the suit''s protection worked much better than I expected and you totally kicked ass there with all those impossible shots. I couldn''t hit any of the bigger ones and I don''t know how we would have won without you. It is awesome that you are finally able to fight with me now."


    ''Something like that was a piece of cake for an awesome AI like me, aren''t you glad you have someone like me with you?''


    "I am going to shower you with all the praises you want, you smug bastard, you totally deserve it. Although, those wolves were fast as hell using those skills.. I think we need to assume any adult monsters in this place has some kind of skills in their pokets now."


    After he was done, he was quite satisfied with his haul of 7 small monster cores minus the one loss from a slug shattering it, and stashed all his loot into the cave along with the wolf fur and fangs. Finally back home and feeling secure with Glados standing watch with the suit, Hunter was finally able to relax next to a fire after a satisfying meal and a long needed shower. Feeling the warmth of the fire, and thinking back on his journey at the bunker, Hunter decided it was time to take a look at the storage devices and paperwork he found in the bunker.

 Chapter 8 - History of Vorcorve

    <u>Chapter 8 - History of Vorcorve</u>


    There was an overwhelming amount of material in the archives Hunter managed to salvage from the bunker, that included all kinds of books, personal diaries, reports, encoded messages, maps and even some leather backed books that that included pictograms and knowledge about what he assumed was magic.The biggest thing they found was a digital encyclopedia that Glados managed to download from the mainframe. Hunter decided to start from there so he could form a general idea first. The encyclopedia included knowledges that were missing from Glado''s database and included all known history of Vorcorve, details about the ancient civilizations that preexisted before the arrival of the A.Is, Vorcorve''s geography, known countries and the biology of various races that lived on the planet. It was just like the wikipedia of earth and included much more knowledge than Hunter could handle, and soon he was overwhelmed by all the information that was on the encyclopedia. Thankfully Hunter had the A.I to help him and after Glados shifted through all the archives and the encyclopedia, Hunter was finally able to see the whole picture from what Glados was able to summarize.


    Vorcorve was around 10 times the size of earth and was comprised of five main continents; West, Central, North, South and Northeast/East. It was inhabited with countless different kinds of races that Hunter was familiar with such as elves, dwarves, orks, beastkin, demons, dragons and many obscure fantasy creatures that looked completely alien to him, and other worldly creatures that were chimeras born/summoned from dark magic. Before the A.Is arrived on Vocorve, the world was an age of magic, where the entire world was ruled by mages and knights who were powerful mana users. Most of the ancient civilizations were brutal to those weaker or not capable of using mana, with the powerful mana users treating those weaker as slaves and cannon fodder in battles against other powerful mana users. One ancient empire eventually caused the beginning of the end of the ancient civilizations by delving into forbidden dark magic, and corrupting parts of the world with dark magic. Large numbers of weak and non mana users were scarifised for powerful magic, and eventually empire began to kidnap and sacrifice powerful mana users from other countries. When the truth was finally out, large crusades between the powerful ancient civilizations began. With the powerful magic they used, many perished in the great wars and large battlefields were permanently warped by the magic; mostly creating monster infested areas, some turning into mysterious places with distorted warps leading to other dimensions, and some areas with distorted realities and mana levels so high, most beings cannont survive. Ancient gods are said to have been involved in the Great War, with many of them perishing alongside the mortals. After the Great War finally subsided, the A.I finally arrived on Vorcorve and the age of technology began.


    Three millenniums ago, before the A.I shutdown, Vorcorve was controlled by four noteworthy groups; The the most powerful of them was the empire of mankind on the West continent, who were religious zealots solely dedicated on worshiping the AIs. Although they were known as the empire of mankind, they included other races as well whom were annexed by the powerful military might of the empire. The empire being the decendents of people who were the ruled in the ancient civilizations, naturally hated magic that was the source of their misery and despised anything that was related to magic; considering magic users to be heretics and demon worshippers, and therefore became the most technologically advanced civilization on Vorcorve.


    The second powerhouse on Vorcorve was the Atrena Federation, which was composed of allied countries of both human and all the other races such as elves, dwarves and beast kin. Most of the Federation''s control was on the central continent with small pockets of influence on the other continents. They went with the route of practicing both magic and technology and were at the peak of magitech. Their general goal was to oppose the Empire, but the lack of central leadership and political disputes between the different races and interest groups never allowed them to surpass the empire even with the Federation''s larger size. The Federation was also avid supporters of the A.I like the empire, but considered them more as powerful beings rather than gods to be worshipped.


    The rest of the countries were those independent from the Empire or the Atrena Federation; smaller nations, kingdoms and federations that included the powerful dwarven republics, and the elven empire. Each of the smaller independent nations were powerful to stand on their own, famous for things such as high quality crafted magical items, elixrs, scrolls and in the case of the elven empire, which was an ancient civilization, powerful magic that no one could rival. They were scattered on all five continents, and were neutral to the disputes between the empire and the federation. They mostly believed in the ancient gods and were indifferent towards the new gods.


    The remainders were the barbarians and cultists, who were royal remanents of ancient civilizations that came before the arrival of the AIs. The barbarians and cultists strongly opposed the A.Is and continued to practice magic that were passed on to them by the survivors of the ancient civilizations. They were known in the history as mostly elves, demon kin and humans who belived in the chaotic ancient gods, and they were the target of mass exterminations; all the civilizations including the elven empire shunned them for practicing forbidden magic such as dark magic that destroyed the ancient civilizations. The barbarians and the cultists on the other hand claimed the AIs were otherworldly abominations that the ancients civilizations called onto Vorcorve and it was them that were responsible for the end of the ancient civilizations.


    The bunker originated from the Federation, and was used to house a small enclave of corporate officals with their immediate family and a small group of guards and employees, which explained the lack of military equipment in the entire facility. The enclave was surprisingly still alive until five hundred years ago and managed to fill in the majority of the 3000 years Hunter was most curious about. They were able to survive for more than two millenia, by going into cyrosleep for 100 years at a time to wait for the AI''s return, and each time they woke up, they sent scouts out into the nearby civilizations, trading information for technology. One scout party that went out 500 years ago unfortunately brought back a disease that no one in the bunker was immune to and quickly wiped out most of the small enclave before they could ask for help. The archives ended with what remaining of the enclave leaving towards the new civilizations with what they had left, finding no more hope of surviving in the bunker. It baffled Hunter a little that the enclave suffered this much with access to the encyclopedia, and suddenly realized the encyclopedia he was using was the very ''holy'' libary the old civilizations had lost access to.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    From what the enclaves discovered, unlike what Hunter had initially thought, the old civilizations did not simply disappear and go extinct, but rather over a long millenia of slow agonizing decay and constant wars, weakened and broke up into new nations. Most of the technologies that the civilizations had access to, no longer functioned with the A.I no longer operational; with the most critical of them being the ''holy'' libary of information which ultimately caused the end of the era of science and technology. Knowledge passed down from generation to generation was limited and soon in the turmoil of time, almost all the critical knowledge was lost to rebuild the technology that was lost.


    The 1651th year after the AI arrived on the planet, was the year civilizations completely lost contact with the A.Is. The Empire and the Federation soon lost control of the space elevators that led to the various space stations that orbited around the planet, and lost contact to their space fleets, when life support systems on the ships was no longer functional. With all that remained in orbit dead, the ships no longer having a crew lost control and crashed onto the planet surface, wiping out entire cities. Followed by the massive disasters, and nearly all technology ceasing to function, humanity and the other various races living on the planet lost control of all the weapons of mass destructions, and they were back to using conventional weapons and magic in wars.


    During all this chaos, territorial wars that were stopped by those powerful weapons broke out again, and the entire world went back to the chaotic times before the AI arrived. The Empire and Federation fought over what remained of the powerful technology that was still functional and the rest of the world, using this chance, went to war to gain territory and fight other races they had grudges against. The elven empire was initially the most powerful, aggressively taking over neighbouring nations and quickly taking over the central continent, due to their extremely xenophobic nature and slavery of all the other races, were not able to stay in power for very long and lost control of the continent. During this time of a power vaccum, the cultists and barbarians attacked the old civilizations, adding fuel to the fire. Orks who loved wars, became mercenaries in every major conflict, even fighting in battles against each other.


    After a millennia of long drawn out wars and the remainder of critical knowledge being lost in time, the dark ages finally began when large monster waves not kept in check broke out, and the Cultists started to use dark magic; causing mass plagues, undead scourges and demons hordes summoned from other dimensions. The countries that were weakened over the long wars were not powerful enough to stop the onslaught, and the short, but brutal three hundred years of dark ages began, where large battles were fought for the survival of those who remained. It was during those dark ages, powerful beings claiming to be decedents of the ancient gods appeared. They were the most powerful mana users the world has ever seen, and soon unified the scattered civilizations together, and formed large crusades to exterminate the monsters to take back the lands they lost. By the end of the dark ages, when the majority of the world was finally reclaimed, the new gods finally ended the dark age by reconstructing new civilizations, aided with the excavation of the ancient civilizations found in the ancient battlefields. Most of the new countries took the name and tradition of the old and ancient civilizations, with each of the self claimed decendents of the ancient gods choosing a race and creating their own empires and ascending to godhood, with other notable heroes creating their own kingdoms and republics. The dark ages ended a little more than a millenia ago, and after the rebirth of the old civilizations, until the demise of the small enclave five hundred years ago, nothing noteworthy happened, besides small wars over territory.


    With the long history lesson finally done, Hunter was finally able to take a look at the maps of the new civilizations that the scouts managed to obtain. Five hundred years have since passed, so the map might no longer be accurate, but Hunter was delighted to finally find where he was on this planet and the locations of the nearby civilizations. However, he was horrified to discover that the closest civilization was past the northen mountains, which was certainly was filled with powerful monsters. The only civilization infact, since there were no known civilization on this continent other than the ones on the north.


    The valley was located on the South of the central continent, in an area that is considered to be a monster infested land, since this area was near an ancient battlefield filled to the brink with monsters. Every monster season when the ancient battlefields were overpopulated, weaker monsters left there enmass, thus forming the monster waves. The nearest country to the North past the mountains, used the tall mountain as a natural fort, and Hunter suddenly realized he was in much more trouble than he thought.


    "How far apart are those seasons Glados?"


    ''The records state between 10-20 years. Smaller waves happens before the large ones and .... the hordes of redbeaks you killed are known to mostly be found in the beginning waves''


    "Shit, how much time do you think we have left?"


    ''Not very long, mean time between the initial waves and the main wave seems to be 6 weeks, shortest being just 3 weeks''


    There was so much he could do now with the information he gained from the archives; such as securing nearby facilities he could reactivate to manufacture equipment, find more materials that the enclave smartly hid away in other locations in the valley, but with the deadline approaching, Hunter had to get ready fast. With a new headache coming from the stress of being forced to face situations where he can die again, Hunter quietly planned out his next move for the rest of the night with Glados.

 Chapter 9 - The great escape 1

    <u>Chapter 9 - The great escape 1</u>


    It was became clear Hunter did not have much time left and he had to leave the valley as soon as possible; he was woken up by Glados during the night, warning him about a large horde of various kinds of monsters, including redbeaks, werewolve lookalikes, innumerable numbers of large insects and even flying creatures passing near the cave, headed North towards the mountains. They were enough distance away from the cave, that Hunter was not in danger of them discovering this location, but it was getting obvious it was time to pack his stuff up and leave. Those groups of monsters were only small fries at the tip of the monster wave, and much stronger monsters were soon going to be at his doorstep.


    The next day, after the coast was clear, Hunter immediately rushed towards the cache he found to be absolutely critical. At the location of the marked area, he dug up a metal box that contained five cyro containers storing canisters filled with nanomachines. He immediately injected himself with one of the canisters, on the spot and felt as if he now had five extra lives. He wanted to collect all of the remaining caches in the valley that contained valuable supplies like this, but first, he needed to try and find the industrial printers located on the map. His current printer was very capable at printing precise small parts but it was slow and the limitation in size was beginning to be a huge problem, where he could not print armor plates that could properly armor his suit and a new suit with limbs powered by carbon nanotube muscles was out of the question as well. He could print all the parts to make an industrial printer, but the sheer complexity and size of the cores of one of those industrial printers meant it would take much less time and resources just to salvage one. He was not sure what he was going to face in the mountains, but by just looking at the large number of monsters heading towards the north, if he was to survive, some major upgrades were neccessary.


    When he arrived at the marked location on the map, he saw that it was a huge underground military facility, closed off to the outside world with massive bombproof doors. With power supplied to the facility''s emergency power system using the suit and Glado''s security clearance, they were able to slowly open the doors and enter the facility. The facility was evacuated a long time ago, likely with the Federation no longer able to keep military control over the area. There was nothing in the large vehicle bays, barracks and armory, everything of value stripped and removed. Hunter was not willing to give up, and after searching the entire facility, he was finally able to locate a printer core that was removed to get repaired and was left behind by the evacuating personnel. The industry printer''s core was enormous, almost the size of his printer, and all he needed to do to have a functioning industrial printer was to build a frame and a controller after fixing the core.


    Hunter was delighted, but when he was about to retrive it, triggered an alarm left by the personnel. He managed to shut it off by shutting the power to the facility off, but a small group of monsters was alerted nearby and left the horde they were travelling with, and started to madly rush towards the facility. There was no way he could return to base carrying the printer while in combat, so he decided to come back for it later on his way out of the valley. Fearing he would attract the rest of the horde and end up getting trapped in the facility, he quickly got into his suit and moved as fast as he could to put as much distance between the facility and the horde as possible. The asswipes who decided to follow him was a group of Redbeaks, and Hunter swore under his breath when he saw two alphas were leading the pack. He was better armed than last time but he had no idea how his armor was going to fare against the skills the dumb birds used.


    When the monsters were finally in viewing distance, Hunter made a mobile barricade by planting his shield down onto the ground, but got behind the shield this time; and to better brace for impact, took a knee and planted himself firmly against the shield to get as low to the ground as possible. When the Redbeaks came into the clearing past the treelines, Glados began firing while Hunter held his fire waiting to use the anti material rifle on the alphas. The Redbeak alphas were surprisingly crafty and hid behind their underlings to get close under gun fire, and when they got in range to use the spell, Hunter saw the familiar bright flash as one of them thundered towards him. The impact was deafening and Hunter felt the whole suit buckle as the beast slid across his shield that was angled and flew above him. Hunter got up and immediately fired his 20mm into the beast, aiming for the brief period of vulnurability. The slugs exploded out of the side of the beast and it died with a bloody gurgle filled cry.


    The other alpha with its mate dead, stopped in its tracks and circled around, looking for an opening while the rest of the Redbeaks finally caught up and entered into melee distance. Hunter, annoyed he could not finish off the remaining alpha using the same tactic, retracted his 20mm and activated his chainsaw, while picking his shield up with his left hand. When one of them got past the gunfire, Hunter stopped its charge with his shield, stabbed through, and sliced the bird in half by lifting his arm up. Another redbeak, slammed hard into the shield and bit onto it, but Hunter in turn, slammed his shield face down into the ground along with the bird to hold it down while he stabbed and sliced another one in half. He lifted his shield up again and finished the bird off by placing his chainsaw against the back of the beast until he felt the chainsaw scraping against the metal of the shield. During the hectic melee, Glados was finally able to kill the remaining redbeaks, and feeling the danger of being singled out, the alpha finally used its skill on Hunter.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    With Glado''s warning Hunter was able to get his shield up, but got flung tens of meters away by the sheer momentum hitting his shield and slid across the ground, with the box on his back digging him to a stop. It felt like a train had just crashed into him, but when he quickly got back up from the ground, Hunter realized, besides the bent shield, he was completely unhurt in the the suit, and the armor worked far better than he would have expected. The alpha roared in frustration at its attack being ineffective and because it was too close to use its skill and build enough momentum, attacked Hunter with its tail. Hunter was able to brace properly against the attack this time, and after stopping the attack with his shield, retaliated by charging towards the alpha and stabbing its tail with his weapon and slicing it off. The alpha screamed in pain, and Hunter quickly body slammed it to the ground, and with a foot on its neck, sliced its head off with his chainsaw, ending the battle.


    With blood dripping down from the chainsaw and the guns quietly smoking, Hunter quickly checked the area for more enemies, but thankfully, the horde was long gone, not bothering to change its mad rush towards the north and come after him. He quickly looted the corpses for the monster cores and, after a short trip back to the facility, he was able to retrieve the printer core and quickly returned to base.


    Although Hunter obtained the core for the industrial printer, he was quickly running out of time so he gave up on repairing the industrial printer and building a new suit. He instead decided to just upgrade the weapons on the suit and make it a walking tank. He switched out the anti material rifle, to a belt fed three barreled 20mm chaingun. The chaingun fixed many of the flaws that the anti material rifle had, and with the much higher fire rate, he was now able to hit targets that moved at great speeds with the sheer volume of fire it was able to put out. Since he no longer had to manually reload the main weapon with the ten round magazines, it freed up his left arm and allowed him to carry the shield or use a secondary on his left arm without his main weapon running out of ammo and having to switch to melee. Since the ammunition was of caseless telescoped design; (the cartridge does not have a brass case and the bullet is completely encased in a solid propellent greatly reducing the overall size and weight of the cartridge. The HK G11 and the planned 40mm CTA gun the Warrior IFVs are some irl examples) it was very compact, and allowed for a massive ammo drum, containing 1000 rounds to be mounted on the back of the suit. Hunter also rearmed the weapon turret with a compact light machine gun to increase its reliabilty and finally repaired everything that was broken from the previous battles.


    While he was working on upgrading the suit, Glados reported the concentration of monsters in the valley increasing more and more, and as soon as he was done with the suit, Hunter immediately started working on his next project with Glados standing guard with the freshly upgunned suit. He was going to build a vehicle he could use to move all of his tools, materials, food and the monster hides over the mountain range; he considered many different ideas, but after finding details about hover technology in the database, Hunter decided to build a hover cart that could be pulled or pushed around by the suit. And since a hover vehicle floated off the ground, it could pass through any obstacles if the trail was wide enough. Although Hunter had no idea how the technology worked, he was able to assemble the hover plates with Glados''s precise instructions, and after working day and night for two days, Hunter was finally done. During the two days, a couple of stragglers from the main horde were lured to the cave with all the racket he was making but Glados managed to stop the waves by herself with the upgraded guns, and by the time Hunter was done building and loading the hovercart up, the entrance was filled with corpses with their mana cores neatly harvested.


    The finished hovercart was a fully enclosed metal box the size of a small cargo van with four of the hemispherical plates mounted on each corner. The entire the cart was made out of the same alloys, that was used to make his armor on the suit to ensure the cargo was going to be safe; with the side benefit of being able to be used as a sturdy cover during combat. There was ample space in the cart to function as shelter at night and along with some creature comforts, he added another weapons station on top of the cart for static defence. With the various obervation equipment and the woodland green camo scheme the box was painted in, it was going to be much harder for the monsters to surprise him at night with a sneak attack.


    Since the cart was a much more secure place to store it, Hunter moved the small printer from the suit to the cart and with space freed up from removing the printer, he was able to mount another drum on the back of the suit, raising the total 20mm ammunition loadout on the suit to 2000. With the printer removed from the suit, Hunter needed to come up with a new way to power his suit, and came up with a system of dual armored powerpacks filled with the monster cores. Since the powerpacks were armored, he did not have to worry about the cores getting damaged and with two redundant powerpacks, he could still keep moving even if one of them got damaged in battle. With more than enough monster cores to get him over the mountain, he had more than enough power left over, and set the small printer to coutinously print ammunition using the scrap metal from the generators.


    Hunter finallized his prep up by stowing the combat shield, extra ammo drums, magazines and the extra powerpacks on the exterior of the cart, and he was finally ready to leave this godforsaken valley. After a long filling meal that could very well be his last, Hunter went through final checks on all of his gear, and finally got into the suit. He switched the cart on and the four hemispherical plates on the bottom of the four corners wirred into life, effortlessly lifting up the entire cart that weighed at least two tonnes with its cargo and all his gear. With a beating heart, both excited from finally leaving this valley after the two long months he was stranded on this alien planet, and scared from the unknown dangers he was going to face in the mountains, he finally set off without sparing a look at the cave.

 Chapter 10 - The great escape 2

    <u>Chapter 10 - The great escape 2</u>


    Two days passed since he left the cave, and he was already off to a rocky start. He was only halfway towards the base of the mountains, but he already lost most of his drones to the thousands of flying creatures above. With the printer no longer able to keep up, he had to resort to sending only a couple of the drones in the air every hour. The only chance he had against the hordes was his eyes in the sky, allowing him to detect and move out of the way of passing hordes, and being limited to scouting every hour caused him to almost get overrun by a passing horde a couple of times. His luck finally ran out when his dwindling supplies of drones finally ran out by the time he got to the base of the mountains, and soon, Hunter found himself in the path of a horde with hundreds of the monsters.


    He was truly boned this time; it was a mix of a different kinds of monster groups and there was an alpha he have never fought before. There were redbeaks, zergling lookalike bugs half the size of a family car and a massive monster with spikes protuding all over its body like a porcupine. The monster horde charged at him, and Hunter opened fire while slowly retreated backwards, pushing the cart with his back. With the overwhelming firepower of the chain gun ripping through everything; even the alphas did not stand a chance at lasting very long against the barrage of 20mm and, he was able to stop them from getting closer. However, the assault from the horde was relentless and when the slower members of the horde finally caught up to the main assault, Hunter had to resort to dropping his shield and dual wielding his secondary, with Glados now controlling both his left arm and the MG.


    The monsters got closer at breaking through and overwhelming the duo with the massive zerg rush by the bugs, and a redbeak alpha finally got past, tanking some of the autocannon fire. It charged and slammed into his left shoulder, knocking the rifle out of his left hand and severely damaging his left arm in the process and Hunter was flung against the hover cart with the overloaded hydraulic servos leaking fluid everywhere. On the ground, Hunter finished off the offending redbeak alpha with the chaingun, and while Hunter moved his suit to get back up, Glados quickly switched control and started to fire the turret MG on the cart. Hunter quickly retracted his chaingun and changed out the ammo drums under covering fire from Glados, and with a fresh resupply of ammo, the duo fought on. When they were almost through the monster horde, the humongus armored porcupine beast finally caught up to the assault and started to thunder towards them. Seeing the massive threat closing the distance, Hunter ignored the rest of the horde and immediately started firing at the beast.


    The massive armored beast thundered on with its powerful shield blocking everything; and even after its shield eventually got destroyed, it still did not go down, with the slugs not powerful enough to get through its thick outer carapace, muscles and fat to reach its critical organs. To Hunter''s horror, the armored beast finally got close enough, and it lowered its body to the ground and with a deafening roar, shot all of its six foot long spines in all directions. The spines were accompanied by a thunderous sonic boom, and all the nearby monsters including the ones that were crowding near Hunter were instantly killed, leaving most of them impaled to the ground and trees, some of them gruesomely blown up by the mana infused spines.


    Hunter did not fare any better; he did not have his shield, and even though the monsters in front of him and his armor was able to stop most of the mana infused spines, a couple of them managed to get past the weakspots in his suit, and impale itself into Hunter''s body. With all of the optics on the suit damaged from the attack; screaming from the pain and anger, Hunter opened the hatch of the suit and manually aimed the chaingun to finish the beast off. Seeing that the now defenceless beast was slowly dying from its injuries, it was clear the fucker was not going anywhere, so Hunter decided to let it suffer and focus on getting the spines removed.


    The pain was absoutely agonizing with the spikes in the spines digging into his flesh and not allowing them to be pulled out. Realizing the fact they had to be cut off to be removed, he begged Glados to shut the pain going to his brain, but she was unable to, since the pain kept him awake from losing consciousness and bleeding out. Whimpering and crying from the pain and fear, he slowly cut the ends of the spines with his chainsaw, and slowly and painfully removed them one by one, biting onto a peice of rag. After removing the spines, he stopped the bleeding with a gel that quickly closed his wounds, and about to lose consciousness from the shock, staggered into the cart and closing the door behind him, blacked out.


    He woke up a day later feeling like shit, with all of his wounds healed. Although it was still uncomfortable to move around, he had to quickly repair his suit and continue on, and after a quick meal he left the cart. A gruesome scene was waiting outside with dead monster carcasses laying everywhere along the retreating path, and a group of carrion monsters were having a feast, picking meat off the dead animals. Hunter shooed them off and quickly repaired the left arm and the optics on the suit just enough to let him move and when he was finished, the suit was barely back to its functioning state. Before he left, Hunter quickly digged through the strongest monster he had met so far besides the basilisk bear and was greeted with the biggest mana core he has seen to date. Although he was tempted to loot all the other bodies, he knew he had to keep moving. Just as he was about to leave, he heard the sounds of a massive battle further up the mountains echoing down the mountain.


    The battle was so intense that he saw flashes from what he assumed to be spells lighting up the sky over the horizon, and from all the flashes happening in quick succession, he could guess it was not an individual but a group of people fighting. He was certain it was other survivors, since the path he was using led to the lowest point between the mountain peaks, and was the quickest and only way to get across the mountains without having to go all the way around or up the steep mountains. From what the A.I implied about the 90,000 people she had to summon, it was obvious he was not the only nor the first one to be summoned, and from how he was teleported together with the woman that died infront of him, other surivors likely met and formed a group to survive. With the monsters coming from all directions other than North to form the monster wave, all those who survived would likely have been funneled into this narrow path heading North over the mountains.


    With all the monster hordes nearby attracted to the massive battle and distracted, Hunter could move at a faster pace, and from what the maps indicated, he was only a day''s travel away from where they were. Afraid they might leave before he arrived, he quickly sent some drones ahead to check the survivor groups out and reach out to them. After surviving this cruel world surrounded by monsters by himself for 2 months, he was starving for human interaction and even if he was used to being alone back on Earth, the two months of solitude was unbearable to the point where, if he did not have Glados to talk to, he would have given up much earlier.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    The path going up the mountain was empty and filled with monster remains, an there were traces of combat left behind by the survivor groups. When he finally arrived at the large area the battle he saw over the horizon, what he saw terrified him. The battefield was filled with thousands of broken monster carcasses, with the ground filled with holes from explosions and trees broken in half, with some still smoking spewing ashes everywhere. The ground was muddy with blood and the smell of partially burnt flesh and rotting meat was absolutely disgusting. Most of the monsters lay dead in front of a large area filled with wodden spiked barricades, and behind the multiple rows of barricades was a crudely made wooden wall made by the survivors which was dyed dark red, almost black by all the blood and covered with the porcupine spines.


    He did not know why they bothered to build a wall and defend against the monster waves instead of crossing the mountains but the only reason he could think of was, they were probably to waiting for more people since stronger monsters were blocking the way up the mountains. The door of the walls were broken open with dead bodies of large monsters leading inside, and inside the makeshift castle, he was dismayed to find a few dozen looted corpses surrounded by bloody monster bodies and broken gear. The dead were from all kinds of age, race and sex, one even as young as ten holding on to her mother''s hand who lay dead next to her. From what it looked like, they were ambushed by a large group last night and those people were unfourtunately killed in the chaos that insued after the monsters broke past the castle gates. He wanted to bury them, but cursed when his drones warned him of a monster horde closing in behind him. He wanted ignore the horde and speed up to catch up with the rest of the survivors, however the incoming horde was werewolves and Hunter knew he was too slow to run away from them.


    He ran up the stairs leading to the top of the walls and found a box with a couple of bottles filled with a red liquid. He noted that small detail and when his chaingun rotated to life and he was ready to fire, Glados stopped him and showed him the zoomed footage of survivors being chased by the werewolves. Hunter quickly left his suit leaving Glados on fire duty and went to the cart to fetch the anti material rifle. Hunter was considered to be a decent shot in the military, and with the electronic scope automatically adjusting his recticle for elevation, lead and windage, he fired a shot at the lead werewolve that was about to nip the slowest survivor. The werewolf was not expecting a ranged attack was caught off guard, and since it did not have its shield up, immediately got killed by the shot and rolled on the ground, and the rest of the werewolves slowed down a bit to go around, buying the survivors just a little more time. The survivors thinking they have entire base''s ranged support, and that the entire base knows they were coming now, stopped to fight back against the werewolves. Hunter wanted to yell at them to keep running, but he had no time as he continued to shoot at the werewolves to keep them back. None of the survivors wore heavy armor and Hunter knew if they did not get any armored support, they were going to get ripped apart, so he ordered Glados to rush towards to go help while he kept firing.


    However the group knew exactly what they were doing, as they suddenly moved into formation. The party of six immediately reorganized; the two ranged users moved to the back and sides, keeping the two robed people who looked to be mages safe between them and the frontline melee fighters stood at the very front. The two melee fighters suddenly rushed foward, moving at inhuman speeds faster than his eye could follow and started to brawl with the werewolves in direct combat. Instead of blocking their attacks, they dodged, weaved and parried, redirecting the monster''s attacks and sliced the enemy up, effortlessly dismembering monsters much larger than them with ease. The two bow users drew their arrows, and using somekind of skill, shot arrows which was like a tank round, breaking the sound barrier and peircing through multiple enemies. They, then made multiple arrows out of light and shot them towards the sky, and the arrows exploded in the sky and separating into multiple arrows, rained down piercing and maiming multiple monsters. All of their attacks did not seem to be stopped by the shields, and while the party was killing the monsters with ease, the mage finished with her spell, and when she was ready, the party gave way for the mage who unleashed a bright blue ball of lightening that slowly moved above the monsters while vaporizing those on the way, and with a bright flash, vaporized all the remaining monsters.


    By the time Glados reached them, the battle was over and they party was busy collecting their loot. Hunter also left the wall and approached them, intimidated by how much stronger they were than him, remembering that the wolverines'' mana claws were sharp enough to almost slice through his 2 inch thick shield and he was lucky so far to never meet face them in large groups. When Hunter walked up together with Glados, the party finally looked up and Hunter was finally able to take a good look at them.


    The party was formed up of five girls and a boy who looked to be a sibling to the archer. They were of mixed nationalities and ages with the archer siblings looking to be of Spanish decent, the mage who looked to be Korean, the healer a blonde Scandinavian, and finally the two melee fighters who were a black girl with a spear and a Japanese girl with a katana. Thinking to himself at how the A.I really went ham with the picking one from random places thing, he suddenly realized all of them were talking in English, besides the Korean girl. Or it seemed they were, since their mouth did not match what they were saying at all. Realizing it was probably a translation skill or something the A.I added so everybody can communicate with each other, Hunter awkwardly said hi in English to not give too much of himself away. He decided to have Glados speak from the suit to make them think there was somebody inside and made her say hello too. The leader seemed to be the Korean mage who looked to be the oldest of the group and at the same age or older as him and she cheerfully said hi and asked some questions.


    "Hello there"


    "Hi"


    "Hey guys, you guys must be new here, we have not seen you guys around before. Where is Rodriguez and Chang Chee? They should be the guards right now, did they go up the mountain again? I told them we were going to return by today. Can you ring them up and tell them, that Bravo team is back and we could not find anymore survivors?"


    "Oh shit, uhhh, I don''t know how to put it to you but, ummm, they are gone"


    "What?"


    "The survivors were gone before we arrived. I am sorry to inform you, but it seemed to have been really bad."


    The archer girl hearing this gasped in horror as her amazing eyesight allowed her to see the state of the wall and what lay beyond the walls. Without another word, the party left Glados and Hunter behind and ran as fast as they could towards the wall. Hunter shook his head, and with a heavy feet, slowly headed back to the wall.

 Chapter 11 - The great escape 3

    <u>Chapter 11 - The great escape 3</u>


    <u>Part 1</u>


    Seoyun sighed as she looked around the carnage surrounding her. Gabriella and Agustin, the party''s long range dealers were sobbing as they held on to their lifeless younger sister and mother whose body was still warm, and Marie the spear user was quietly sobbing at the gate next to her dead brother. The man fought till his last breath; still clutching on to his weapon surrounded by dozens of broken bodies, dying heroically desperately trying to stop the monsters from getting to the young and old. The rest of the party went around, covering up the bodies and giving them short goodbyes while they shifted through the remains of the burnt down campsite, looking for any survivors. Seoyun still couldn''t believe on the day they left, the camp was full of hundreds of survivors, with people finally having hope of crossing the mountain to safety with so many people joining the camp; she was just gone for two days, and the base was overrun.


    As Seoyun looked around, her eyes finally rested on the strangers who came to their help earlier on. The pair was busy helping the party out at and they were a quiet bunch, not saying a single word unless it was neccessary. They were quite a strange pair; the man who called himself Jason (which she did not believe was his real name) wore a sleek, full face helmet that closely resembled a mix of an astronaut''s helmet and a motorcycle helmet, and a thick leather trenchcoat padded with fur and armored plates. He seemed to be a ranged user, with his large rifle, and together with the woman who was in a crude looking mech suit with a large machine gun, they made for a strange duo in the fantasy world they were now in.


    There were people she met that used guns as well, but those guns were magical artifacts that amplifed their magic just like the ones their party used, and nobody had a fancy mechanical suit like that. She was still wary of them even though they seemed friendly enough to came to their help; they said nothing about themselves other than their names and since their entire body was covered up, she could not even tell what they looked like or even what ethnicity they were. She found it rude that neither of them took their helmet off nor got out of the suit when introducing themselves, but she decided to let it go since, the fact they were being wary of strangers made sense with all the dangers surrounding them.


    The past two months was hectic for everyone; most of the people in her party and the camp had lost someone precious in the initial chaos, she herself was the only one left from her entire office, with all of her coworkers dead or missing. Nameko (sword girl) lives in perpeptual guilt after failing to save any of her friends, and Hannah (healer girl) also lost her boyfriend who died trying to save her when she refused to kill a monster out of fear. As Seoyun was reminicing about the past two months, The duo noticed her looking at them, and stopped what they were doing to come talk to her.


    "What now? You guys have a way to catch up to those buddies of yours, right?"


    "They aren''t our friends, Jason. Its obvious they ran away as soon as the gates fell, leaving everybody behind to die."


    "Friends or not, how are we going to get off this mountain by ourselves? You said something about a dragon stopping the only way out of the mountains didn''t you?"


    "Well, it wouldn''t have been a problem if one of Dominic''s lackeys didn''t piss off the dragon in the first place, trying to foolishly hunt it while it was busy feasting. Leave those idiots to take care of the dragon, we are not leaving here until we bury everyone. You do whatever you want Jason, I can give you the directions if you want to leave and join them."


    "This is only the start of the wave Seoyun, we have to leave immediately and cross the mountain now or its too late. There is a fort across the mountains, you can mourn your dead there, after you and your party members are all safe."


    "I don''t care, we are not leaving until my party members are done burying their loved ones. You can just leave by yourself, no one is stopping you."


    ".... Fine, I will help you guys. Listen, I understand you guys are pretty strong but, those are only the weakest from the monster waves according to the records. From what the records describe about the stronger ones that arrives after the weaklings, you really don''t want to be in the path of a group of one of those."


    "Records? Is that one of your powers?"


    "Its... nevermind, its from some books I found in a ruin, they explained all about the monster waves in detail. Given the number of people in the camp, I am sure you guys already know most of the stuff I know. Anyways lets just finish up and leave."


    Just as she was about to ask Hunter more questions, a small group of people showed up at the entrance of the campgrounds. As soon as the party noticed who was at the front of the small group, they quickly ran and raised their weapons against them.


    "What do you want Chang Chee? Why aren''t you out there hunting the god damn dragon with your buddy Dominic and your lackeys. You are pretty fucking brave to come back here after what you have done!"


    "You know we had no choice but to retreat Seoyun. Look around you, how desperately did you think we fought to keep them at bay; just look at how many we sacrificed so more people could live! A lot of our people died, and a lot more people would have died if we didn''t pull back when Dominic decided to."


    "You still haven''t answered why you are here."


    "With how many people we lost last night, we need your help, your party is essential in taking down that dragon and you know it. I understand you are still mad at us and also never really got along with us, but we promise that we''ll get this matter settled with, after we defeat the dragon and get to safety."


    "Screw you, the only reason why you guys took our group in, in the first place was to recruit my party and to attract more people to your group by showing that your group will keep everybody safe. You are a piece of shit and you know it."


    "You know how I stand on this matter Seoyun, I was never against letting the old, younger and people with non-combat skills into the group. Dominic was the one yelling about survival of the fittest, even going as far as suggesting sacrificing them to distract the dragon so we can all escape. Ignoring the fact he is a fool, in the end, we are not responsible for any of this, its the monsters and the gods who kidnapped us and left us here to die who are at fault. Strong people like us, need to work together if we are to get out of here alive and you know it."


    "So, what you are saying is, now that we can''t use all these people as meatshields anymore since they are dead, you assholes need us now? It was just a few days ago when you were questioning our decision about why we were waiting for more people, and trying to convince us to ditch our group and join you while bragging on about how you were more than strong enough to finish the dragon off!"


    "Okay, okay, look, I am done trying to convince you. You and I both know all of the remaining non-combat skill users are dead if you don''t help us, and they certainly will be the first ones who end up dying not us. We all had our chances to pick our skills and it is their fault if they don''t make it. We are attacking in the morning two days later with or without you so don''t be late."


    After Chang Chee''s group left, leaving Seoyun fuming, Hunter concluded that he needed to put as much distance between him and the party or every other summoned''s groups for that matter, as soon as they were safe past the mountains. He could just imagine what would happen to him if he somehow joined a party like theirs or ended up travelling with them. They were quite powerful; he could tell they were holding back from using all their strength fighting those werewolves, with the whole ordeal nothing but a walk in the park for them. They were also nice and virtuous, so they were the perfect candidates to become the heroes in stories; the protagonists who lead the story, with all kinds of problems that naturally followed them.


    Things like dealing with politics, betrayals, extreme suffering and sacrificing your own life was definately not Hunter''s cup of tea. And Seoyun party''s goal of trying to save and care for the weak were very admirable traits, but they were also the kind of people to force their ideals on not just themselves but the people around them that they deemed "strong" and that meant risking your life for other people whether you want to or not.


    Hunter who was someone with almost no mana and no combat skills at all; no matter which group he joined, was destined to either die tragically in the hands of one of the bad guys as cannon fodder, slave away in the shadows making weapons and gear for the party, or worse, land in situations where he has to sacrifice himself to save the main members of the party or someone sacrifice themselves to save his weakass. In conclusion, unless Hunter got really strong, staying or forming a party with any other summoned groups was a bad idea all around and keeping his distance and staying out of sight and laying low was a great idea to stay alive and also avoid getting targeted by opportunistic/predatory people like ChangChee.


    Hunter was not willing nor capable of staying with other summoned people, but he also had one final reason why he wanted to be independent. After two months of just aiming for survival, Hunter finally had a clear goal on his mind after witnessing just how powerful mana users could be. Hunter wanted to have a chance at more than surviving, and to truly become powerful in this world, he needed his very own army. One that was loyal and only answered to him, one that was composed of well trained mana users that were fully equipped with the very best weapons and gear he could make, and in large enough numbers were powerful enough to rival the summoned.


    He was never going to be able to achieve this overnight, and he certainly was not going to achieve that by joining some hero''s party and becoming their underling. He was a soldier before, and having experienced the life of a grunt, if he were to die, he was going to die being his own boss. Joining a decent party might in some cases guarantee his safety, but, in the end, his army would never be his own, since he still has to follow the party leader''s orders and the wishes of other party members. But first, before all this could even happen, he needed to survive against the dragon to get to civilization and he needed to come up with a plan to ensure that his survival and also succeed at hiding from any unwanted attention.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    <u>Part 2</u>


    The day long journey to the rest of the survivors was completely silent, with Seoyun''s party still devastated from seeing their loved ones and friends die and finding no survivors at the burnt down camp. There were serveral monster hordes they had to face on the way, but the party, enraged and not in the mood to play around, finished each horde in mere mintues without Hunter even having to lift a finger to help. They were headed to an area near to the entrance of the dragon''s den, just outside of it''s territory; the dragon apparently only leaving its den to attack if they enter its territory.


    The path over the mountains covered a large area of its territory and now that the dragon is hostile to humans after being attacked, and also gaining a taste for human flesh from feasting on its attakers, there was no chance of crossing the mountains without defeating the dragon or getting the dragon full enough to not bother attacking them. Considering the fact that the dragon annihilated and devoured entire monster hordes just for one meal, the second option was of course not really an option.


    When the party and Hunter arrived at the makeshift camp, Hunter was finally able to meet all the other survivors. The survivors looked like they just jumped straight out of a fantasy fiction, with people wearing fancy armors with colorful runes engraved all over, all kinds of melee weapons, and mages armed with the sterotypical staffs and wands. It made sense they were well equipped by now, since there had to be people who chose to specialize in production skills such as blacksmiths, and tailors.


    While Hunter was busy checking them out, a few curious survivors approached group, and knowing that Seoyun''s party was a ticking bomb, decided to leave them alone and focused their attention on Hunter and Glados who were newcomers. Hunter again refused to take his helmet off to introduce himself and there were some banter aimed at the duo for their adamant refusal to show their face and reveal themselves, but Hunter was not keen on revealing his identity to other summoned and was determined to stay under the radar and hide his status as a summoned until he was strong enough to protect himself.


    The survivers insisted until Dominic, the survivor group''s unofficial leader arrived and shooed them away. Dominic seemed to have a skill that sensed the mana levels of a person and concluded that Hunter and Glados were completely insignificant in the upcoming battle and after a single glance, completely disregarded them. He instead immediately went to talk to Seoyun''s party who looked like they were about to explode and start a fight with him.


    The talk between them went just as it did between Chang Chee''s group and Seoyun, with Seoyun blaming them for falling back to this area where monsters did not dare attack and leave most of her people behind, and Dominic defending himself and insisting it is survival of the fittest now and it is not their responsibility to risk their lives for others. The argument went on for a while and was about to heat up, but immediately ended when Dominic brought up his dead wife, who he said was just like Seoyun and lost her life risking herself to save others, and Dominic did not want to make the same mistakes again and lose his son or die and leave his son an orphan.


    With nothing more to say, Seoyun finally calmed down and together with Chang Chee, who led a large group of fifty chinese survivors (almost 1 out of 5 ppl in the world are chinese, do the math), the three began to plan out the raid on the dragon. The meeting went on for most of the day, and after a night of rest, the day for battle finally arrived. Hunter was placed in Seoyun''s group in charge of providing ranged support and protecting the non combatants and support specialists, and Seoyun''s two attackers were sent to Chang Chee''s group where the majority of them were close combat specialists and was in charge of attacking in close range. Glados was sent to Dominic''s group, that was in charge of holding the dragon''s attention and blocking its attacks. The trio must have played too many mmorpg games as just tanking attacks from a enormous 20m tall beast did not sound very realistic to Hunter, but since they were all magical superhumans, and all Hunter had to do was hide in a corner and snipe, he was not complaining.


    A small team of survivors with scouting skills came back and reported that the den was empty with the dragon out on a hunt. Leaving behind a few to defend the non-combatants, the 300 men raid team quickly moved in and set up position in the massive lair as they planned before, and Hunter quickly deployed tiny bug sized drones of his own to scout the large cave out. After half an hour, everybody was ready and tension started to slowly flood the entire den, when suddenly the telltale sign of a gigantic beast thundering on near the entrance of the den could be heard. Two speed based survivors zipped in to the den with the dragon close behind.


    Before the dragon entered the den however, deafening explosions were heard as the dragon triggered the magical traps marking the start of the battle and after an angry roar, the dragon finally entered the firing line of the more than hundred ranged users. It was as if flashy fireworks went off as everbody used their strongest long range skills on the dragon. The attacks seemed to be more effective the traps and this time, it roared in pain and surprise under the onslaught, and when the attacks finally subsided, Hunter was finally able to take a better look at the dragon.


    Its silluette initially looked similar to the ancient dragons in Earth folklore, until the dust settled and the abomination was in full view; it was a chimera with disportionately mismatched bodyparts and looked like it would make any evil necromancer cream their pants. It had two car sized reptillian heads, and had spikes on its long tail that had another mouth on the end of it just like its head. The crimera was covered in a strange insect like carapace with a pair of large bladed forearms and had wings that looked to be from a large beetle. And the thing that horrified Hunter the most was its size; it was the size of a small office building and just its heads alone was large enough to swallow a family suv in one bite.


    Some of the skills it was hit with were mana shield penetrating and it had parts where its carapace was cracked and burnt, but beside looking pissed it was completely fine. The survivors, who were confident of their powers immediately wavered at the sight and sensing the moral dropping, Dominic immediately took the lead and charged in at the stunned dragon with a roar, swiping across with his battle axe that was glowing bright red. Dominic''s charge woke everybody up from their stupor, including the dragon, and chaos insued as the chimera started to unleash burning poisonous acid from its three mouths in all directions.


    Dominic''s group immediately activated their defensive spells and stopped the poisonous fire with a few unfourtunate souls who were too slow to activate their skills immediately dying, and Chang Chee''s group using inhuman speeds dispersed to avoid the attacks. The support group had a magical shield array up, that stopped the onslaught of fire for a couple of seconds, but the fire eventually blew through the shield and a third of the ranged supporters who were not in cover got covered by the stream of poisonous acid before the crimera ran out of whatever liquid it was spewing. The burning acid was devastating, going past any natural magical defences and armor people had, burning and melting entire parts of the body it came into contact with. It was an absolute hell, with dozens of unlucky people screaming in fear and pain as they were not hit by enough acid to instantly kill them, so suffered in agony as the acid slowly melted parts of their body away.


    Seizing the short window of oppurtunity, the melee attackers moved in and started pelting the Crimera''s head, legs, tail and wings with their strongest skills. It was a chaotic fight as the attackers dodged and weaved the crimera''s tail and claws as it frantically tried to swat the nuisances away, with a few unlucky people getting skewered and instantly killed or get brutally injured. The crimera''s immense shield was still up, and the attackers were not able to any real damage in , but by then, had earned enough time for the ranged users to finish preparing their attack. With Changchee''s signal, all the melee attackers pulled back as the ranged attackers sent another volley, that was powerful enough to shake the entire den, that was large enough for the crimera to fly around. After getting pounded by the intense volley, the crimera was finally visibly wounded with its shell cracked and bleeding all over, and it decided that it finally had enough and spread its insect like wings, and flew up. Several magical runes floated above its two heads and suddenly, dozens of man sized fireballs materialized in the air out of nowhere and rained down on the survivors.


    The heat was intense as the fireballs falling like homing missiles closely missed Hunter''s cover and exploded in front of his makeshift emplacement, and Hunter even with his helmet automatically diming was barely able to see what was going on around him. People were screaming all around him as the massive magical shield array was broken again, and while the fireballs were slow enough for agile people to quickly dodge out of the way, slower people along with the dead bodies and wounded people on the ground were hit by the fireballs and quickly got burnt to a crisp.


    The fire instantly sucked up all the oxygen in the air near the explosions and even people with shields still up, started to suffocate as the air in their lungs were rapidly sucked up by the pressure differences and collapsed their lungs in. Hunter''s helmet was connected to a small reserve air supply and was airtight, so he was fine but the situation was now looking bleak with more than half of the three hundred men raid team either dead or incapacitated, and besides the party of six and the elites of each groups, only a few could keep fighting. Thankfully Glados was okay with the exception of the thick combat shield completely destroyed by the acid and fire attacks and was already up again, peppering the crimera''s wings with the chaingun.


    With the shield of the Crimera finally down, and the rain of fire finally over, the survivors immediately went on the offensive again. Everybody joined Galdos at attacking its wings, and soon the Crimera came crashing down with its wings shredded to bits. All the melee attackers rushed in and started attacking its legs and tail while, Changchee and Dominic each charged up their strongest melee attack and together, attacked one of it necks.


    The crimera was left groaning in pain with one of its head almost sliced off and dangling, and bones showing on its thick legs and tail. Everybody quickly fell back when the Crimera started to show signs of using another magical attack, with its remaining head and tail starting to glow bright red, but before it could fire its spell, its tail was exploded by the siblings.


    The head which was uninterrupted, shot out a devastating stream of plasma like a laser and ripped past the defensive formations, ripping dozens of people in half, who, with their mana empty, was not able to stop the attack. Before it could finish off everybody however, Dominic stepped in and raised his shield, and sending all his remaining mana into the runes on his armor, stopped the plasma blast by standing right in front of the crimera''s mouth.


    Dominic''s armor soon glowed red hot, with smoke coming off from his melting skin and using the opening, Changchee moved under the crimera''s body and pierced its heart with a single thrust. With a surprised gasp, the plasma blast was stopped and sensing that its life was now in critical danger, the crimera unexpectantly turned its large body around and started to run away, bowling through the survivors that tried to stop it and thundered out of the den. ChangChee, with a visible glint of greed in his eyes, was about to order a chase after the fatally wounded monster to finish it off, but was stopped by Dominic, who was still on his knees with steam still coming off from the red hot armor. ChangChee briefly showed an ugly face filled with raw hatred, unable to contain his annoyance but quickly went back to his normal smiling face and turned around to face the aftermath of the battle.

 Chapter 12 - Beginning of a new life 1

    <u>Chapter 12 - Beginning of a new life 1</u>


    Two hours have passed after the battle has ended. The lair was eerily quiet with the pile of the more than hundred bodies still smoking, with destroyed weapons and armor scattered all around the large cavern. There was nothing left alive in the empty lair, without even the usual carrion animals that feasted on corpses present. Suddenly, the deadly silence was broken by the wet sound of something moving around and digging through something. Hunter emerged from a huge pile of the crimera''s feces, covered in absolute filth with half digested bits and maggots, stuck on his leather gear. As soon as he was free from the pile of shit, Hunter took off his helmet and immediately got on the ground, vomiting nonstop, until nothing was left in his stomach and only bile came out.


    To complete the plan they came up with, Hunter and Glados needed to die in this battle, since it was risky to arrive at the fort together with the other survivors, and be identified by the local powers as a summoned hero. Since he did not have anymore information about the time after the 500 years the encalve was gone for, he did not know what state the new civilization was in, and how they will react to the large group of survivors showing up from no-man''s land. Problems will certainly arise if he still tried to hide his face, or even worse, the fort could be overly paranoid and suspicious about the strangers coming from the monster infested no-mans land and imprison them immediately. Getting imprisoned in what will likely be medieval fantasy land with nobles sounded pretty horrifying considering this was a land of magic and slaves also exsisted.


    So, Hunter, to disguise his death, as soon as the fireballs fell and chaos was everywhere, ditched his rifle and some of his spare gear and immediately hid in the location he chose before the battle. There were many small crevices and caves he could hide in, but since he was paranoid someone would notice him while he was running away, or people finding him while they were looking for survivors after the battle, trusting his airtight equipment to stop the smell and the filth, Hunter did something he would regret for the rest of his life, and dived into the pile of shit.


    The small air supply connected to his helmet lasted for merely ten minutes and after that, the filter was only able to stop the stench for a little bit before it finally clogged up, and Hunter was fully hit with the stench. He immediately started to gag, and Glados had to take control of his body so he did not end up throwing up, and try her best to stop his sense of smell. It was not completely effective and it became the single worst experience Hunter ever had in his life, as he was forced to stay still and breathe in the stench until all the survivors have left and the coast was clear.


    Before the battle, to make sure the survivors leave in haste, Hunter shared everything he knew about the monster waves with the group''s leaders, and when they saw the illustrations of the powerful monsters that have appeared during the waves in history, they could not help themselves from panicking a little. So when the battle was over, to avoid being enclosed into the lair by the monster hordes massing up, they got ready to leave as quick as possible, and since with no time to bury the dead, burned all the bodies so the dead can at least keep their dignity by not having their body devoured by the monsters. After setting fire to all the bodies, they took what valuables to remember the dead, along with their weapons, and as soon as the emergency treatments of the injured were finished, the surivors left in haste towards the fort, with no more obstacles stopping them. The lair was now completely empty, and the first part of the plan was a success with Glados and Hunter successful in faking their death. Glados was hit by the plasma, and from the glancing blow that blasted into the suit with ease, the fake body he placed in the suit blew up simulating a gruesome death (which the survivors removed as best they could and burned along with the others), and Hunter''s burnt rifle and his destroyed gear made it seem that he died in the acid.


    Hunter told the groups everything about the waves, but there were two important information he did not share; the first thing he did not share was that, monsters of the crimera''s caliber had their mana ''scent'' linger on in the area for quite a long time even after their death, and any monster that were strong enough to sense mana will ''smell'' this and stay away, making this a safe area. The second thing he kept to himself, was that, there was another, much smaller route to pass the mountains from here that did not go to the fort, but instead led to a border village that the scouts used. The monsters followed the path of least resistance, so compared to the large path that lead to the fort, the smaller trail would be much safer for Hunter to travel on, and with the village deserted with people taking refuge in the fort, Hunter would be in civilization without anybody noticing. He felt bad about not telling the other about the village so they did not have to risk being imprisoned, but he comforted himself by promising to come back and free them in the future after getting stronger if they ever did get imprisoned.


    Now that he had the lair to himself, which was now a temporary safezone and the survivors not coming back anytime soon with the season long wave, it was time to go onto the next part of his plan. He needed to prepare an alias to use in the new world, and with the stories of magical golems he read in the database, building a mech disguised as a magical golem and acting as a golem meister sounded like a viable option as a job. It has been more than five hundred years, so he did not know if it would work, but he decided to use an alias as a survivor from the enclave as his background, and together with the honorary noble title that one of the scouts received after pleasing a loyalty, his fake background could be used to explain his ''golem'' and all the artifacts he had in his possesion. He was worried about the remaining survivors of the enclave and his lies easily being found out, but five hundred years was a very long time, and since he was only going to use it as a last resort when absolutely necessary after gathering enough intelligence, he decided to roll with that plan for now. There was nothing else he could do at this point to forge an identity, and he had to just hope that the country he was going enter was not going to be as stringent on checking someone''s identity and just avoid attracting any unwanted attention.


    After a short time to recover at the cart (that the survivors did not take since it was visibly just full of scrap metal and spare parts and was inoperational), Hunter moved his cart deeper into the lair and began to work on his industrial printer. Before he began however, he asked Glados to go harvest the mana core from the crimera''s corpse that died not too far away. He felt bad about taking the core for himself, but it was not likely that Dominic nor Seoyun would come back to this valley after so many people they knowed died here, and even if they did come back, they did not seem like the kind of people that would be interested in searching the valley for the crimera for the loot, and Hunter absolutely did not want someone like Chang Chee taking the core.


    Something was off about the guy with how much control he had over all the other chinese people in his group, with his people willingly following his orders to the death and voluntarily giving up their lives for the group. The extremely disciplined way his group moved, their gestures and how they communicated, all told Hunter that, one, they were either trained soldiers and Chang Chee was a high ranking soldier/official back on earth, or two, ChangChee had skills related to mind control, or three, in the worst case scenario, all of the above. With their large numbers, they were sure to become a powerful group later on, and Dominic''s group, who banded together under survival, was not likely to stay together as a group after they reached the fort, so denying more power to a potential enemy/competitor seemed like a good tactical choice. He knew those were just piss poor excuses, but powerful crimeras like this one, according to the encyclopedia, had manmade manacores that stored imense amounts of mana, and had complex runes that automatically regenerated mana unlike normal manacores. It was the perfect candidate for a powerplant for his mech and a stable power source for his industrial printer, and it would be stupid for him to let this unexpected oppurtunity go, even he if failed at his his initial goal at not leaving any trace whatsoever (he is going to ditch the cart and suit). But, he was never going to be on the list of suspected people, since he was now among the dead and the risk was worth it.


    By the time Glados, who was absolutely covered in blood returned with the mana heart, the printer core was fully repaired and finally ready to be operational after centuries of being abandoned. Hunter connected the adapter that was included in the printer to harness to the mana heart (the printer is from the federation which is magitech based), and activated the printer core, and watched as the tethered box, floated up in the air, propelled with its hover propulsion systems and shoot a beam at the pile of material that was placed next to it.


    The printer core then projected a wide beam that started to materialize the frames of the industrial printer. It was much faster than his smaller printer and he could visibly see the pile slowly decreasing in size, and after an hour, his industrial printer was complete. The completed printer was a simple four by four and six meter tall, negative pressure steel box that was set at that size to be able to fit and print the entire frame of his mech and its armor. At the side of the printer was a laser emitter that was used to supply the printer with material and a box that could fit a power source and on the bottom of the box was four hover plates that held and moved the object being printed around.


    But before he started to design and print anything however, there was something he needed to do. He retrieved the remaining nanamachine canisters and injected himself with four of them. It was finally time to build the biochips and upgrade Glado''s capabilities and his. With how important magic was in this new world, he needed a way to utilize runes, and decoding and translating the magic books that he found at the enclave was proving to be a challenge even for the advanced AI. Runes formed the basics of magic in this world, whether it was engraved onto an item or into the ''soul'' or mental world of the individual, and when the appropriate amount of mana flowed into the runes which was basically a complex circuit, the runes produced the same phenomena everytime following a certain logic. Runes were basically a pattern, a language, a code that were utilized and combined into more complex things, to produce different results.


    Learning this language was taking Glados a long time since she had to go over all the runes, spells and mana circles shown in the books and compare thousands and thousands of common patterns and find the pattern''s relationships and common rules between them, so they could be translated into something comprehensible that Glados and Hunter could understand. If Hunter was educated and trained as a mage, it would not be very hard to just read the books written with the specialized language that required someone to be able to utilize mana to read, but the real problem was that the books were not basic beginner''s books and did not go into any detail about how each runes worked in large complex circuits as a component with just basic illustrations of what effects the entire circuit had as a skill. Also basic theories and knowledge about magic was only mentioned sporatically all over the different books.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    However, now with Glados finally being upgraded with more than thousand times the computing power compared to before, she was able to quickly go over all the circuits in detail and by running complex calculations and testing multiple theories, she was finally able to translate how each of the circuits and runes worked in all the magic books they had. Until now, the only way they could utilize mana cores was through the mana to electricity adaptors that was purely based on technology with its plans already exsisting in Glados''s database, presumably since mana which was pure energy was a potential source of power for the terraformers. Now that they were able to fully utilize runes and create magical equipment powered with the mana cores, with Glados''s knowledge of runes combined with her knowledge of technology, there were now endless possibilites on what they could accomplish.


    From what Glados could translate and summarize from the books and the enclave, the basics of magic was the following; The largest and most complex collection of runes was a mana circle which every mana user possessed in their mental world or ''soul'', and could be divided into three distinct groups of runes, that when combined together, completed the three basic steps which allowed a mana user to use magic. The first part of the mana circle contained the complex rune systems which collected mana from the surroundings/material (mana cores) and distributed it to other parts, and was where the mana was ''produced'' in the mana circle. The second group contained the circuits that controlled how and where the mana was stored and this mana storage was what the mana core was for the monsters. For mana users, where the mana was stored varied widely between with race, external magic users and physical magic users and so on. The remaining part of the mana circle was taken up by the mana circuits that determined how the mana from the two groups were utilized and this was the main area where the runes for most of the skills were located at. Skills could overlap in two or all different parts, like specialized skills like detection skills and mana siphon skills etc. Mana circles were extremely important to Hunter since, mana circles formed the core concept of magical equipments with runes on magical equipments following this exact same theory of collection, storage and distribution of mana and were simplified form of mana circles. For example, in the case of the woman''s staff it did two things, it amplified the users spells and stored skill runes for faster casting. It recharged mana on its own just like the crimera''s core and was also able to be recharged from other sources of mana, like monster cores.


    Mana circles was not really a flat circle but was more like a three dimensional sphere with each sphere greatly larger than the one before it (think about a ball''s surface area in relation to its diameter), and so the number of mana circles was used to measure a mana user''s overall strength and the level of skills were based on how many circles it required. More space meant more space for complex circuits/more skills and along with the increased complexity that was allowed, multiple circuits could be added so more mana could be processed at once to power much more powerful skills and allow the use of multiple skills simultaneously and faster spell recasting.


    How many mana circles a person could ultimately obtain in their life was limited at birth, with multiple factors such as innate talent, mana sensitivity, mana capacity, race, family heritage, and the most important part, whether they were born with or without a mana circle. Non - mana users could also obtain a mana circle and become a mana user but it was extremly difficult to do so with their lack of talent and mana sensitivity, and methods to ''awaken'' as a mana user was a closely guarded secret along with the mana circles, with unique mana techniques and skills passed down in the family from generation to generation. The main way to get more powerful as a mana user in this world was to train and increase mana capacity and mana circle size, learn new skills, new mana techniques and knowledge and theory of magic, and in the end ultimately form another mana circle by breaking past and ''leveling'' up their mental world. The average person could achieve all of this by doing things like joining the military, becoming a mercenary or adventurer, entering schools or buying mana techniques from fallen nobles, but truly powerful mana users were predominantly limited to nobles and the ruling class. There were powerful people that were recorded in history that were normal people, but even then, most were nobles with those that were normal being exceptionally talented. This was all information from five hundred years ago, but Hunter did not think the status quo would have changed much.


    Now that he got the larger picture of the magic in this world, Hunter realized just how ridiculous the gods were, sending brand new mana users down to this valley without giving them a chance to ''level up'', resulting in them not being able to fully utilize the overpowered spells they were summoned with. In fact, it limited them so badly that, they were only able to use a couple of skills and subsequently ran out of mana they could use with the single circle being a chokepoint even with the insane amount of mana they had in their body. With all the handicap they had, Hunter realized just how much of a monster, people like Seoyun''s party, Dominic and Chang Chee were, absolutely overshadowing others, and from what the books said about some truly talented people unconciously forming new mana circles on their own, it terrified him that those people with just two or three circles at max, were already strong enough to down a crimera that were said to have required entire armies to defeat.


    Now that he understood the overall power levels of mana users in this world, Hunter realized he did not have to worry about standing out too much, with other summoned heroes and the inhabitants of this planet completely overshadowing him. Extremely powerful mana users above the 5 circle mark were certainly rare, but according to the scout''s reports, powerful adventurers and mercenaries ranging from 3-4 mana circles were dime a dozen in this area where monster attacks were frequent, and with the current monster waves going on, he could fit right in with all the other adventurers and mercenaries crowding here from all over the country to make quick money. Even if he went all-out on his new mech, it would still be hard to catch the attention of the powerful mana users, since, while golems were certainly rare, anybody could own one if they were wealthy enough with even competent 3 circle mages able to build one.


    To begin, he first brought up the design program for the printer and started designing a new power armor that he could always have on at all times. With his intelligence and mental capacity greatly improved with the biocomputers, Glados forcefully uploaded engineering knowledge into his head, and in no time, Hunter was able to understand most of the basic knowledge to build his powerarmor. Hunter was immediately able to skip 8 years of engineering school in just three days and his new intelligence was on a level that could be called a super power now. It was a strange feeling, how he had no memories of learning any of those knowledge, but when relevant, any related knowledge all magically appeared in his head, and he felt like a genius scientist, even when this only being possible with the biocomputers and his nanomachine modified body.


    Having the knowledge and utilizing the knowledge were two very,very different things, but with Glados''s help and shamelessly copying the database''s exsisting powerarmor plans to reference, after a few days he was able to finish his first ever original design. The powerarmor was composed of five large components;


    - Extremely thin synthetic full body innersuit that had temperature regulation and cleaning runes, and it was made of a material that automatically contracted and sealed his wounds in case of injury.


    - Airtight synthetic nanotube muscle suit mixed with metal alloys strands that greatly increased his muscular and skeletal strength and blunt attacks resistance and the suit also included recepticles and mounting points for armor and gear. The entire suit was covered by the best mana circle Glados could currently make and a couple of the larger refined mana cores were placed in strategic locations to be used as a host to store mana. Unfortunately the space on the suit was limited and made the mana circle only equiavalent to a 2 circle.


    - Plate armor that resembled medieval armor, covering all of his critical areas with plate armor and chainmail on other parts and the entire armor was covered with runes that increased defence, elemental attack resistance and many more utility runes. Runes were mostly inscribed on the insides of the armor to hide how complicated it was and make it seem much simpler.


    - A simple surcoat + cloak that covered most of his armor, and gear that had stealth runes that matched itself to the environment and better hide his presence.


    - A fully enclosed helmet that completely lacked any vision slots. Visibility was obtained with vision runes on the exterior of the helmet combined with various optics, and the innards of the helmet was filled with everything that his old helmet had such as infra red/thermal vision, video feed from drones, maps, and Hunter also covered the entire inner surface of the helmet with runes that infinately supplied him with fresh air


    All of his gear needed immense amounts of mana to power, so the power produced from the 2 circle mana circle was entirely used up to power the suit''s functions, and he was left with no power left for any offensive skills. He could potentially solve his power situation by attempting to duplicate the crimera''s core, but it was simply not on the level that could be currently be duplicated, with the core, leagues beyond Glados''s current level of magical knowledge.


    Since he had to give up on using any magic for now, and had to go back to using firearms, he decided to make a blunderbuss that shot rune bullets unlike most mana guns that were just fancy wands and staffs that amplifed magic. Actual guns that shot mana bullets like the one that he was attempting to make did exist, but they were more for rich people show off their wealth, or for sidearms, with rune inscribed bullets being prohibitably expensive. Hunter could just print rune bullets all day long, as long as he had mana cores and materials, so while people might look at him like an idiot for using rune bullets in actual battle, this was the perfect option. Alsosince his main weapon was going to be his mech powered by the crimera core anyway, it did not matter as much.


    Magical equipment in general was expensive; magical equipments like his suit that had a lot of functions especially so, with how hard it was to produce, with all the mana circuits used on equipment difficult to design and implement with the extremely limited space and all the precision engraving it required. It was comparable to designing a computer chip, and if the size, shape, location of the runes was just slightly off or not optimal, the runes did not work at all or got destroyed. It required truly skilled mages to design runes for complex magical equipment, and only the most skilled blacksmiths could ingrave all the complex runes precisely without error. Even for the more common magical equipment with much less features, they were still expensive, with engraving runes a time and money consuming process with all the specialized skills it demanded.


    Hunter was basically cheating at this point, with 3D printers that no living being could compare when it came to precision, and Glados''s ability to design magical equipment with ease. While thinking about all of this, he suddenly had a no shit moment, coming to a realization that he could just make an easy living selling weapons, and not even have to worry about risking his life at all. A merchant that was a golem meister that sold weapons sounded like an exceptionally good idea, and in the excitement, Hunter got ahead of himself and started to print various weapons that he could use to sell as a travelling merchant.

 Chapter 13 - Beginning of a new life 2

    <u>Chapter 13 - Beginning of a new life 2</u>


    After a short while, Hunter had to calm down and stop himself from getting too ahead of himself. It was true that he can easily become wealthy from selling high tier magical weapons and luxurious magical equipment to nobles, but he was still too weak to protect himself, and at his current situation of trying to be low key, it was foolish to attempt to sell any of those things right now. On top of being weak, Hunter had nobody to rely on, so there was nothing preventing him from ending up as an easy prey to powerful individuals like large merchants and nobles. With the market for magical weapons and equipment currently at the center of attention right now due to the monster waves, if Hunter tried to sell anything too expensive or high tier, he will surely attract the attention of other merchants and they will certainly look into how he procured those expensive mana artifacts.


    Hunter did not have to imagaine very hard about what would happen when his lack of a powerful background becomes apparent to all, as he will likely end up in danger from some shady merchants trying to force the information out of him, to try and find how someone like him managed to obtain those expensive artifacts. So, before Hunter even think about making any amount of money from selling high tier magical artifacts, he first needed to establish himself and build his own strength up.


    Hunter had to give up on becoming rich overnight, but he still needed some wares for his identity as a travelling merchant. He printed just a small number of basic magical equipment that the average adventurer would use, such as mana lamps, mana stoves, basic armor with some utility runes like self cleaning/repair/increased durability, and generic magical weapons with the same utility runes. He was not 100% certain those were going to be at the level that the average adventurer could afford, however, considering the immense strength of the monsters that the adventurers and mercenaries were going to face, most of them will probably be at the level where they will consider his wares to be low tier or average. From what he concluded from the theory of magic, even high leveled adventurers would still need basic gear with utility spells, since those extra spells would otherwise take up valuable space in their mana circles. The stark difference between his golem (mech) and his low tier/average wares might raise some suspicion, but it was much better to explain, than selling higher leveled gear that was guaranteed to catch unwanted attention from other merchants.


    Finished with all the miscellaneous stuff, it was time for Hunter to switch his focus to his most important weapon, his mech. He started by looking for a suitable design in the database to use as the base for his new mech. A mech was a lot more complicated than his power armor, so even with Glados''s assistance there was a limit to what he could currently design, so Hunter decided to use the established designs of people who have much more experience in mech design than him. The Terra database was truly massive, with thousands of mech designs from hundreds of companies, ranging from utility mechs used in mining/space/underwater construction, to full size 6m tall mechs designed for heavy infantry fire support in harsh alien terrain. Looking over all those cool weapons and designs, Hunter cursed at himself for not upgrading Glados sooner, since after her upgrades, she was now able to go past any protections placed on the virtual plans. Large and extremely complex things like large military vessels were still out of bounds with Glados''s current capabilities, but the important fact was that, Hunter now had access to much higher tiered weapons. Even if Hunter did not have nowhere close to enough resource and manpower needed for most of those weapons, it was only a matter of time and money before he could eventually build everything he saw in the database.


    All the fancy scifi weapons distracted him from his goal, but eventually Hunter found a suitable 3 meter (10 foot) trainer mech that fit his goal. The main reason why he went for such a small size was because of the kinds of golems that were prolific in Vorcorve, and also the smaller size allowed it to be a smaller target and also require much less alloy for the armor.


    All kinds of golems existed in this magical world, ranging from human sized drones to behemoth 20m tall golems used as mobile fortresses on the battlefield. Golems in this world was quite similar to how they were depicted in popular fantasy fictions back on earth, and were psuedo magical creatures/robots mimicking the human form, created by mages. Advanced golems were depicted to be able to speak and be autonomous, but for the most part, golems were just mindless robots following the user''s commands and its programming, powered by the user''s mana or its manacore. Golems required immense amounts of mana; the more complex and powerful they were, the amount of mana needed increased exponentially. So, due to their inefficiency, large golems had very limited uses in the battlefield, since mages could use that same amount of mana more efficently in the form of spells. Pilotable golems existed, but they were extremely expensive, requiring complex manahearts* like the one in the chimera to power them. Pilotable golems were mainly used to fight large monsters and serve as a morale boosting figure for allies on the battlefield, and outside of battlefields, they were used for duels between nobles and sports entertainment for both the rich and poor.


    6m (20 feet) was the most common size for pilotable golems since it was the most ideal size to be able to fit all of the necessary runes to operate the mech. There were smaller pilotable golems, but due to their lack of space for more complex runes, they were vastly inferior in every aspect compared to the larger 6m class golems. Since Hunter''s mech was not actually a golem and thus did not need a lot of those runes, he was able use a much smaller frame and allow it to masquerade as somthing much cheaper and inferior than it actually is; nobody was foolish enough to put a mana heart in a pilotable golem that was so small, that it wouldn''t be able to utilize that mana. 6m class pilotable golems were expensive because of their mana hearts and complicated runes; the 20 foot tall golems were so expensive that they were usually transported around in magical airships to reduce wear and tear, and, due to the immense cost and logistics required along with the ships and the support crew needed, they were mainly only used by powerful organizations such as the military, nobles and elite mercenaries/adventurers. Nobles were only considered wealthy if they owned at least one on their territory, and even the most powerful nobilities only had a few dozen at most.


    Hunter designed his mech primarily to be the new physical body for Glados, making its role as a pilotable mech secondary, only including the bare amount of space needed to accomodate a pilot and adding its own inferior version of Glados (sacrificing the last vial of nanomachine blood). After messing around with the design adding magitech elements to streamline the design and replacing all the armor and exterior components with armor with runes on it for its disguise, Hunter went ahead and printed his very own first mech. The new industrial printer was quick, taking just a day to finish printing the new mech that weighed at least 3 tons. Hunter came close to running out of the alloy, but thankfully, there were plenty of scrap metal scatted around in the lair from the battle and the chimera''s past victims, and with the increased power from the mana heart, he was able to replenish all the alloys he needed.


    The finished mech was unimpressive looking, resembling a metal garbage can with large metallic arms and legs sticking out of it. Due to the limitation in height, the pilot''s legs slightly extended below the waist line of the mech, with the mech''s digitigrade legs attached to a shaft below the seat, right behind the pilot''s feet. The manaheart and electronics were located inside the cockpit at the empty space right in front of the pilot and was attached to the seat via a metal cage, staying stationary with the lower half of the mech, while the upper half of the hull rotated. Instead of hydraulics and servos, the mech''s limbs was powered with the same synthetic nanotube muscles like his combat suit removing any need for a hydraulic powerpack, so besides some electronics for the optics and life support systems, nothing else was in the cockpit besides the the manaheart supplying the power (heat) to operate the suit. The mech lacked a physical head, and instead, an optical array on a ball mount was mounted on the front of the hull right in front of the pilot''s head and a hemispherical cupola with magical cameras (like his helmet) facing in all directions was installed on the very top of the mech to act as a 360 viewing system.


    The mech had an armored backpack that contained storage space for the ammunition, heat vents, two retractable arms with weapons and two turbine engines. The thickly armored legs contained hoverplates, and together with the tubine engines on the backpack, allowed the mech to glide over the ground at a decent speed. Hunter added a mana circle to the mech, to act as an auxillary power source, and with the larger area compared to his suit, could achieve 3rd mana circle when powered by a supply of monster cores. (the crimera''s core is a 5th circle).


    The entire mech was extremely bulky with thick armor and muscles, with the main focus being on armor protection, mobility and long range firepower rather than agility; while the mech could still get up to a decent speed even without the hoverplates and turbines with the powerful muscles, and was powerful enough to rip monsters in half, it was no way close to being agile with all the bulky armor on its limbs and torso. Even if Hunter was able to make the mech as nimble and agile as possible so it is able to dodge attacks and use melee, he would still not be able to efficiently use that agility, since he did not have any mana techniques (i.e. sword arts, martial arts), and his unenhanced body would still not be able to keep up with the faster monsters like the wolverines without Glados assisting him, which was not very ideal as a permanent solution. Hunter decided not to make a shield this time, since the armor on the mech was thick and well covered enough that a shield was going to be redundant. So now that both hands were free, the mech coupled together with Glados being able to fully utilize the 360 view, was now completely ambidexterous, able to fight using both hands separately.


    To compensate for the mech''s lackluster melee, Hunter mounted as many weapons as he could on the mech, including a 20mm chaingun, 8.6mm machinegun, a plasma cannon, 4 cell rocket pod, flame thrower, and two powered combat knifes.


    <ul>


    <li>The main weapon was a belt-fed steampunk fantasy looking 3 barreled 20mm chain gun that the mech could wield two handed, and a powered combat knife that could melt and slice through metal (through intense heat and vibration focused on the blade tips) was mounted on the gun as a bayonet.</li>


    <li>The plasma cannon and the 4 tube missile pod was mounted on the two retractable arms on the backpack, with each tube holding three magitech missiles.</li>


    <li>The flame thrower along with the belt fed 8.6mm machine gun was attached to the left arm together with the power fist, and the remaining powered combat knife was attached magnetically to the left thigh of the mech</li>


    <li>All of his weapons besides the magitech flamethrower and the power fist, were entirely tech based except for the runes used to increase the durability and better cool the weapons, and like the 20mm chaingun, were changed aesthetically to appear magitech.</li>


    </ul>


    Looking at the fully armed mech, Hunter was thankful that firearms already existed in this world, the dwarves in particular having a liking for them, since he otherwise would had to give up on his weapons for how many guns the mech was armed with. Hunter designed new magitech ammunition for his weapons that had runes printed on it, which when precharged with mana from the mana core, powered the various spell runes that converted the physical energy and the stored mana into penetrating through manashields and armor. The new ammunition was also was much more destructive, with the projectiles exploding after penetration with the remaining mana. With all the new magitech ammo, Hunter could now face monsters up to 4 circles with no problems, and the magitech rockets and the plasmacannon alone were powerful enough to kill the porcupine monster with just a few hits.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    With the mech finally completed, filled with excitement, Hunter quickly got into the cockpit of the mech through the hatch on the top of the mech, eager to test drive his new mech. He sat silently in the cockpit, admiring the design of mech, and started to look back at the past two months reminiscing all the life and death battles he fought with his hand on the mana heart. Suddenly as if jolted awake from a long dream, his good mood disappeared along with whatever mental block Glados had on him and all the supressed shock from the past two months of near death experiences came rushing to him like a tsunami wave. It was an overwhelming and suffocating feeling, with all the brutally killed people in his mind screaming and seemingly pushing him down into the seat making him unable to move a muscle, and Hunter was suddenly back to being the old Kyung Min back on earth, a coward weeping and scared shitless from facing the horrors he has never experienced before in his short life. The fear was nothing like the time when he almost drowned in the dark cruise ship as a child, and the absolute despair and crippling fear blacking out everything else but the never ending loop of screams from the tortured souls who burned alive, the unending waves of horrfying monsters and feeling the same pain from his fatal injuries over and over again. His conciousness faded on and off, deep in the depths of despair, until he was pulled out from the darkness slowly taking over his mind by the muffled sounds of Glados in his head slowly getting louder, until he could clearly hear her worried yells.


    Hunter woke up drenched in sweat, his heart beating so hard that it was sending ripples of pain to his head, threatening to split his head with every beat of his heart, and the faintly remaining phantom pains reminding him of the fact that he almost died multiple times. His hands were no longer on the manaheart, and his hands were dripping blood from Hunter clutching his hands so hard. He was back to his usual errily relaxed state, and fighting back his inner self which was still riled up from the shock, Hunter calmly tried to figure out what just happened to him.


    After finding out what happened from Glados during the brief episode, Hunter had to curse at himself; somehow the damaged soul/conciousness of the chimera remained in the heart after its death, and attempted to take over his body during his brief moment of weakness, when his psycological block was overwhelmed from its attack. He should have seen this coming, there were stories of this exact thing happening where sentient mana artifacts took over bodies when a careless non-mana user touched a mana artifact, but Hunter never took those stories seriously, treating it like complete hogwash, even when he was currently in a fantasy world. Hunter was weak enough that an inanimate object almost managed to kill him, and Glados was only able to save his life from the mental attack by stopping his heart, killing him before the conciousness of the chimera was able to take over, and restarting his heart to revive him after his hands were free from the mana heart.


    Hunter was not going to be piloting the mech anytime soon, so with his hands still shaking from the shock, he let out a long sigh and began to design new bodyguards to pretect him, since relying on the mech''s armor was no longer an option. Back to square one, Hunter decided to build a fire team of four man sized golems (androids) equipped with simple AIs, that was commanded by one of the four androids installed with the downgraded version of Glados removed from the mech. The androids looked just like traditional knights in full plate armor, and were completely identical to each other, with the team leader only able to be differentiated by the color of its helmet and pauldron. Glados was powerful enough to control the androids by herself, but Hunter wanted autonomy, so that the androids stayed operational, even when Glados was not avaliable.


    The entire internal structure of the androids were able to be covered in runes, in addition to the runes on its armor, allowing the androids to have three mana circles. While they did not add too much to Hunter''s overall strength compared to the mech, their strength in numbers could not be underestimated when they were equipped with magitech weapons. Hunter was still unhappy about not being able to pilot the mech, but looking at the bright side, the androids, besides acting as his guards, could also perform mundane tasks like cooking, butchering the animals, and other chores, allowing him to save his time. There needed to be regular replacement of monster cores during battle, but with the ammo already precharged using the mana heart, the androids did not really require a lot of mana for combat.


    With all the obstacles out of the way, Hunter began his final prep to leave. To better fit in with the locals, he learned the language of the country he was headed into, which having its roots in the Federation, shared a lot of similarities with its official language; so much so that the enclave''s scouts did not have any problems communicating with the locals. Five hundred years did pass since the records ended, so the language was certain to be different, but it was better to sound old fashioned than use the language translation which was not perfect, and the whole ordeal was only a chore anyway, with his instant memory.


    Using the short few days while he was recovering from his mental shock, Hunter trained using his weapons against the fast moving androids since being proficient in firearms was his only way of getting stronger, and simultaneously began to send out drones to scout the route prior to leaving this safe area. The new magitech drones were much more resilient, with anti-detection skills allowing it to avoid predators and when he saw the footages, Hunter was in shock at how many monsters were headed towards the fort, some even larger and powerful looking than the massive porcupine. There were no longer separate groups of monsters, but more of a steady stream and it was not going to be easy getting past the stream of monsters into the small path that was the only way out of this hellhole. Fortunately none of the monsters were at the level of the chimera, which was a 5th circle monster, so his mech was not in danger, but if he ever ran out of ammuntion, he could easily get overwhelmed by the sheer number of monsters.


    It was when Hunter was trying to come up with a plan, when the drones spotted a small group of people trying fight their way through the stream of monsters, and head towards the lair. It was hard to miss the small group of eight, even when they were completely surrounded by the monsters, since the adventurers? were shooting flashy magic left and right, blinding the surroundings with bright light, visible far away, even during daylight.


    For every swipe of the warrier''s sword, large monsters were sliced in half, and entire groups of monsters were vaporized every time the the mage lifted her arms. The spear whielder disappeared in a flash, and when he reappeared a few meters away, every monster in his path was left with a large gaping hole. A knight of intimdating stature, holding a shield and mace stopped all the monsters in their tracks with a thunderous slam into the ground with his mace, stunning them, and arrows unleashed from the archers and the second mage''s AOE attacks finished off the stunned monsters. The group of eight trudged on, leaving behind a bloody path, full of broken bodies


    However, no matter how many monsters they cut down, the group was eventually, completely surrounded by the monsters, and their formation was broken when the ranged mana users got assaulted by a pack of wolverines who managed to get past the frontline. With the mages and archers no longer able to focus on the large groups of monsters, there were just too many monsters for the frontline to deal with, and just when he thought they were going to be completely overwhelmed, all eight brightly lit up with a spell from their healer.


    Suddenly, the direction of the fight changed, and the group of eight burned like wildfire through the black swarm of monsters, and quickly began to retreat back the way they came from. For a brief moment, it looked as it they would be able to breakthrough and retreat towards safety, but the buff did not last long enough, and one by one, the light on their bodies flickered off. With dispair visible on their faces, it all ended aburptly when a pack of porcupine monsters managed to get throught the barrage of spells and unleashed their barrage, depleting all the remaining protection spells the party had. While, the dumb creatures ended up killing themselves and their allies, that was all the opening the thousands of monsters needed as they piled on to the defenceless group, finishing the job.


    Hunter had to look away at the gruesome sight of the eight getting torn to pieces, and he began to consider giving up on the small path, and find another way out. A sliver of regret began to creep up, and he started to wonder if he overracted too much and should just have left with the other summoned heroes. The regret was only brief, with the ship already sailed, and Hunter had to distract himself by coming up with new ideas to escape, to avoid having another panic attack from the the gruesome scenes.


    The party was certainly not from the summoned hero''s group he met before; compared to the crude but practical equipment the summoned used that were given by the AI gods, their armor and weapons were exquisite, and it was clear they were made by extremely competent blacksmiths, even with Hunter''s untrained eye. They must be the local adventurers who unfortunately got too ambitious, since he could not imagine the summoned being crazy enough to come back here so soon.


    Judging from the idiot''s gear, they were obiously someone with some influence, so he wondered if a search party for them would arrive. Hunter was getting real sick and tired of this valley, and wanted to leave right now, but it was possible he was going to end up just like the party he called idiots so Hunter decided to wait a little bit, at least until the night where his night vision equipment gave him an advantage.


    Death was becoming a such a routine occurance and being helpless and just witnessing people dying was starting to seriously degrade his mental health. He did not know any of those people who died, but they were the first local people he ''met'' since he arrived on this planet, and now, they were dead. Tonight was the last day he will ever spend in this valley. Hunter can''t take this anymore, and he would rather die then spend another day in this place.

 Chapter 14 - Beginning of a new life 3

    <u>Chapter 14 - Beginning of a new life 3</u>


    It was night time in the lair, with moonlight seeping through the many openings in the massive cave. The lair was eerily bright, with the pale moonlight bouncing off the ghastly white walls and all the broken weapons and the pile of bones littered around in the cave. The otherwise eerily atmosphere of the lair was broken by the constant whirring of the two printers working incessantly, printing out thousands of ammunition to prepare for the final escape that was to ensue in a few hours. The mech stood under one of those openings, glowing brightly in the moonlight, and was surrounded by dozens of missiles and long belts of ammuntion, neatly laid out on the ground around the mech. The upper hull of the mech was wide open, with the core exposed, and the alien heart had bundles of powercables jutting out, that was connected to the two printers. The androids were busy working around the mech, working the printers to assemble and load the ammuntion belt, and arming the the mech with as much ammunition/munitions as possible, including the empty space that the pilot''s seats used to be, now converted for that purpose.


    The large onboard drum magazine in the mech''s backpack whirred to life, and the thousands of linked 20mm rounds neatly laid out on the ground began to be rapidly fed into the mech, while the androids carefully armed the missiles launchers on the shoulder of the mech and fill the various exterior containers on the mech with magitech explosives like elemental grenades, mines and explosive satchels. Large claymore mines were attached to all four sides of mech to be used as a final resort when it got surrounded, and disposable missile pods were added to the legs and pauldrons to provide extra fire power.


    After the mech was completey loaded up, the androids began to equip themselves with their specified weapons. The fire team leader armed itself with a scoped version of the new 6.5mm rifle disguised as a magical musket, and the grenadier armed itself with the same rifle without a scope, along with a compact recoiless rifle (think of the carl gustav M4 irl) that looked like an exquisitely crafted brass cannon. The automatic rifleman went with the 8.6mm (.338cal) medium machine gun, and the rifleman was equipped with a combat shield and the pseudo musket with an underbarrel grenade launcher (I loosely followed the modern Swedish army''s fire team loadout, since it included a dedicated AT weapon per fire team). Along with its ranged weapons, all four of the androids were equipped with the miniaturized version of the mech''s powered combat knife, and each android carried enough explosives to blow anything he had encountered to dust. All of Hunter''s truckload of monster cores were now completely gone, with the majority of them used to make the explosives, but Hunter was okay with losing the additional source of power, since he was now confident that he had enough explosives to blow this entire valley up. Earlier during the day, Hunter lobbed a couple of those magitech missiles and grenades that contained the monster cores at a large group of monsters to test them out, and the resulting carnage surprised him, with the magitech explosives rivaling powerful spells he had witnessed.


    It was midnight, with plenty of time remaining until daylight, and with all of the equipment ready, it was finally time to leave. The disassembled industrial printer was safely tucked away into the armored compartment in the mech''s backpack, and the small printer, due to its significance to his survival, was carried by Hunter. The remaining loot was equally distributed among the androids, and overall, the group looked the part of a ragtag group of scifi post apocalypse travelling merchants. Before he left the lair for good, Hunter used the mech''s flamer to burn all the remaining things in the lair along with the completely gutted out chimera''s corpse, and stomped and destroyed everything in the cave to make it look like a large group of monsters went through the lair. Anybody with half a brain would be able to tell it was not done by the monsters, but the sabotage met his goal of preventing people from pinpointing who did it, and destroy any evidence remaining that somebody survived.


    Hunter felt horrible for disrupting the ruins of the dead, but now was not the time for feeling guilt about the dead people. Shaking the sliver of guilt away, Hunter began to work himself up to leave the safety of the lair, while he nervously waited for the drones to find a brief opening they needed. The forest path leading to the exit was pitch dark, even under the bright moonlight, and it was now or never for Hunter to fight his way out of here. Fortunately, he did not have to wait for very long; the drones spotted a brief opening in the stream of monsters that contained only fewer monsters, with some fair distance between the tail end of the front wave and the start of the following wave.


    He left the lair and inched as close as he could without alerting the monsters, and just before Hunter activating his night vision, launched the large missiles he set up in the lair. After screaming up the nightsky, leaving behind an invisible streak, the missiles exploded in midair and rained down the Chimera''s flamable liquid on the unsuspecting monsters, creating two massive walls of fire that isolated the area from the main body of the monster waves for a brief amount of time. The launchers, done with its job, exploded, and using that as a signal, Glados fully activated the mech''s hoverplates and boosters. With its mana shield fully up, the mech charged into opening at full speed while Hunter was hanging onto a foothold on the back of the mech, while the androids kept up with the mech, runnning at inhumanely fast speeds. They were able to blast across most of the way before the surprised monsters even realized what was going on, and when they were near the entrance of the small trail, Hunter jumped off the mech and started his mad rush up the path, together with the androids, while Glados stopped and opened fire at the incoming wave of monsters.


    The dark forest was lit up with the bright tracers from the 20mm blaring away, and the surprised swarm was met by a barrage of shells, that melted through their shields and thick carpaces/hides like hot knife through butter; some rounds even going through multiple monsters, exploding torsoes and mincing limbs apart. However, even under the heavy barrage of autocannon fire, the inumerable monsters crept closer and closer to Glados in the darkness, and soon, some got close enough for Glados to resort to using the powered fist. The powerfist, that expended a small monster core canister every hit, made short work of the overly aggressive critters that got too close, as it blew the weaker monsters into bits, and disabled larger monsters by vaporizing their bones and internal organs.


    Unfortunately, there were just too many monsters, and a few still managed to get past the powerful, but slow melee attacks, and the mech was quickly surrounded from all sides. Before any saw a chance to pounce, Glados triggered the claymores, peppering a large radius around the mech with thousands of metal balls, which obliterated most of the monsters around her metallic avatar. After a wide sweep with the flame thrower to finish off the majority of the weaker monsters crippled from the claymore blast, Glados released the first barrage of missiles into the dense pack, and rushed back towards Hunter and his fireteam, dropping mines and placing explosives along the way. The barrage of missiles contained the acids collected from the dead Chimera, and the numerous monsters struck with the missiles let out inhuman screams filled with terror and pain, not unlike the ones let out by the unfortunate summoned.The screams from the dying monsters were intense enough to convince the mindless monsters to briefly stop to avoid the pool of acid, and they could do nothing but roar angrilly behind the pool of acid and fire, screaming bloody murder.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    By the time, all the screams ended in the distance, after the monsters finally succumbed to the acid, Glados silently emerged from the darkness, rejoining the group. The mech was unrecognisable, thickly covered in the blood and entrails of the monsters, with the power fist still dripping blood on to the ground. The grotesque view of the mech and the still lingering screams of the monsters in his mind made Hunter go slighly weak in the stomach, but in order to increase the distance from the monsters, Hunter quickly got on the back of the mech, and the group swiftly proceeded to travel up the path. In no time, they were sufficiently far from the valley, that the group of monsters on their tail were completely separated from the main monster wave, allowing the party to fight the persistant horde on their tail without fear of attracting the main wave. The monster horde on their tail was reported by the drone to be massive, with the initial missile barrage catching a large number of monster''s attention, so after entering a suitable clearing able to be used as a chokepoint, the party stopped and prepared to face the final wave, so they could safely escape.


    In the distance, even without the drone''s footage, Hunter could make out the massive monster wave, as the enraged monsters kept triggering the explosives on the path, seemingly unaffected by their losses, and rapidly closing the distance. The strategically placed explosive traps took out more than half of the swarm of monsters, killing weaker monsters instantly, but a large number still managed to get through, and rushed into the first killzone that was rigged with most of the remaining explosives. After a large number of the monsters entered the clearing, Glados launched multiple missile volleys into the group, to soften the hard targets up, and dozens of large monsters were blasted apart by the precise missile strikes, the magitech missiles exploding on shields and sending jets of plasma into their body. Immediately after the missiles struck, the elemental explosives were set off, and the rest of the horde caught in the killzone was covered by a huge series of powerful magic attacks, and after the thunderous explosions were over, the remaining monsters finally emerged out of the smoke, enraged more than ever.


    While the monsters were still blinded from the explosions, as soon as the thick dust/smoke cleared a little and the monsters were visible with their night vision equipment, the small group that were fortified in hidden dugouts opened fired with everything they had. The rifle wielders focused on the light/fast targets, while the mech with its heavy weapons and the anti tank weapon equipped grenadier focused on the heavier targets. Occasionally, along with firing charged plasma bolts that blasted groups of monsters apart, the mech threw large mech sized grenades that froze and blew up large groups, while the missiles with laser like pinpoint accuracy, struck large monsters in the thick swarm.


    Before it died horrifically to multiple missile hits, one of the porcupine monsters launched its spines, and one of the spines narrowly missed Hunter''s head, scraping the side of his helmet and leaving a deep gouge. Hunter, who was caught up in the excitement of battle, continued to madly fire his rifle, and did not even realize he was hit. The battle raged on, and the barrels of automatic weapons, even with the cooling runes, started to glow red hot from all the heat, and empty missile canisters and ammunition links started to form a small hill around Glados. After what seemed like an eternity, when Glados was down to using the MG and the combat knife after running out of everything else, and the androids also out of ammuntion and running around with the knife, the battle ended as quickly as it started when there was nothing left alive. The field suddenly went silent as the gunfire stopped, and besides the crackling sounds of burning bodies, the silence suddenly returned and enveloped the field like a dense fog.


    Hunter was jarred awake from his trance in the sudden silence, and he blinked slowly, while trying to process his surroundings. The short but brutal combat was absolutely devastating, with the small field littered with bodies, covered by a nauseating smell, of a mix of the sweet and oddly appetizing smell of burning flesh, the metallic smell of blood, and the smell of ozone from the elemental grenades. One of the spines from the porcupine had severly damaged one of the androids, with another android missing an arm following a deadly melee with a werewolf. The mech did not even have a scratch with its powerful shield generators doing its job, but was still covered in dried blood aside for the squeaky clean vision ports.


    Confirming that the area was finally clear of monsters through the drone reports, Hunter gave a long sigh of relief and lifted his hands to his helmet to take it off, and finally discovered the massive gouge on his helmet. A chill went down his spine, realizing the near death experience he was in, and Hunter realized just how lucky he was to alive, with all his near death experiences so far, including one that resulted in his actual death. With both the relief of being alive, and the relief from finally making it out of the valley rushing into him all at once, all the remaining tension escaped from Hunter''s body, and he slumped down to the ground, lying on his back on the cool forest ground. But, he could not stop himself, and after raising his upper body up, did some cheesy fist pumps in the air, while yelling and crying with mixed emotions. Then, with his energy now completely spent, he was back on the ground murmuring whoohoos silently.


    According to the map he was not far from the first village that the path led to, and if he was lucky, he could get past the village and slip into civilization unnoticed by dawn, and find someplace to rest after selling some wares for money. After spending a some time until repair the androids, salvaging the monster cores, and a simple meal, Hunter was back on track. He was on foot this time, since he could meet people at any moment, so although it took longer than he wanted, it wasn''t too long before he saw the crude wooden wall of the village in the distance that the drones have already scouted out.


    The village looked abandoned, with no light visible, and the wodden wall made with the same red wood in the forest was in various state of rot and were thickly covered in moss. Relieved that the place was abandoned as expected, Hunter lowered his guard, and approached the wall to look for an easy way in. However, before he was close enough to touch the damp wall, he cursed and immediately ducked to the ground when he saw something that was not right. When the passing wind moved the leaves on the ground, barely visible footprints could be seen going around the bottom of the walls with the thermal optic. Even though the drones could not find anything in the village from above, somebody have recently walked past this area and left those footprints, presumably patrolling around the walls. Hunter realized their mistake of being too reliant on the drones and the team silently retreated back to the treeline, until they were out of earshot from the village.


    Cursing under his breath, Hunter decided to deploy some miniature stealth drones directly into the village to find what was going on. It was probably a group of people looking for the missing heroes? in the valley, but it was strange how stealthy they were acting, especially this far from the monster infested valley. When the miniature, insect sized drones entered the village, it looked just like the footage from above, with the village in various states of disrepair, until the bug sized drones suddenly passed through an invisible wall, giving Hunter a jump scare when the screen suddenly changed. What he saw further ruined his mood, and the day absolutely could not have gone any worse.