Apocalypse: Generic System, Macronomicon [e book reader android txt] 📗

a broom, he took his strongest spear, a short spear made of pure steel – possibly some fanboy’s attempt to recreate a gundam’s pile driver weapon –  and braced it against the tree.

Crunch! Crash!

The entire tree bucked out from underneath him with far more force than he’d been expecting, throwing him flailing to the ground.

“EEE!”

Jeb flipped over and got to his feet – foot – with that kind of near-death adrenaline that makes you feel like Bolt-Goddamn-Usain, poky underbrush completely ignored.

There, only a few feet away, the krusker stumbled backward, iron spike embedded deep in its left eye.

The wailing creature bellowed with a force that made Jeb clap his hands over his ears and stagger backwards – hop backwards – , toppling over a nearby bush when his reflexive kick with his right foot caught nothing. damnit.

The krusker’s single remaining eye was bloodshot with rage as it focused on him. In the distance, he heard the hoofbeats of dozens more of the squat little bastards approaching, ready to trample him into a fine paste, and then eat him.

Maybe not even in that order.

Crap.

The big lug lowered its horn and charged.

With panicked speed, Jeb infused his last weapon – the trusty short sword – with a healthy dosage of Myst, yanking the weapon in his hand to the right, into the creature’s newly created blind spot.

Jeb awkwardly skated over the ground, pulled by his sword, the creature’s lightning aura singeing his hair and sending up the smell of ozone as it charged past.

Once Jeb was out of its way, he pulled up as hard as he could, dragging himself up and into the air, struggling against his own weight.

‘Standard’ speed and weight was about a hundred and sixty pounds at three feet per second. Right around walking speed.

These numbers were going up every day, but that was approximately where he stood right now. To move Jeb and his gear, a total of about a hundred and ninety five pounds, he had to drop his speed drastically.

That meant he was about four feet into the air when the krusker turned, looking for where the human had disappeared to.

Jeb cursed and drew his legs up, barely out of range of the creature’s maddened thrust, the lightning arcing from its nose to his pants.

Jeb’s pants scorched, but didn’t catch fire, admirably protecting him against the creature’s lightning.

A couple seconds later, he was out of it, dangling from a sword above it.

The boss squealed in indignation, stamping it’s feet and trying to charge him, but the poor creature couldn’t fly.

“Yeah, tough luck,” Jeb said, glaring back down at it, at an impasse.

In the distance, Jeb heard the clomping feet of more kruskers as they flooded into the clearing, their eyes mad with rage.

Behind the lead krusker, Jeb made out Jessica flickering past one of the thick-skinned creatures, her sword drawn, anime-style. A second later, she disappeared again, and a burst of blood erupted from the creature’s throat, similarly anime style.

She then continued to cull the herd by flickering between kruskers at a speed his eyes couldn’t even keep track of.

Well, I guess anything’s possible with magic.

“Here goes nothing,”

Nothing like a proof of concept while you’re in the shit.

Jeb siphoned a bit of Myst out, aiming for the broken spear-heads in the distance.

As soon as he did, his control over the short sword in his hand wobbled, then failed, and he began plummeting to the ground.

With desperate speed, he switched back to controlling the sword, wasting the Myst he’d spent on both the new object, and the original investment in his sword.

He felt the fledgling star in his chest flicker a little as he dipped into its reserves, like he promised he wouldn’t do.

Damnit. Probably set myself back a couple hours, there. And with only four days until the Safe Zones vanished, he didn’t really have a lot of time to spare.

Okay, two things at once feels like juggling babies. We’re not gonna be able to do that just yet.

Alright, think, what’s the safest, most boring way to kill this thing? I can’t afford to spend any more Myst, and I can’t afford to get hurt again.

Well, buddy, Jeb thought, looking down at the infuriated krusker, looks like we’re doing this the long and painful way.

He floated over to a nearby tree.

The krusker annihilated it.

He floated to the next one.

Same thing.

Gradually, he led the boss monster on a rampage through the forest, draining Its stamina over time as it brained itself over and over on tree after tree. The iron spike stick out of its eye made it squeal in pain every time it rammed a new tree, but the stupid thing didn’t know the meaning of the word quit.

Eventually, when the lightning died on the Krusker’s back, and the damn thing was fighting for breath, Jeb struck.

He simply dropped out of the air, riding the shortsword straight down. In addition to the pull of gravity, Jeb assisted with Myst, allowing him to plummet fast enough to catch the creature off-guard.

He dropped on its head and sank the short-sword into the creature’s left eye, putting all his weight and telekinesis behind it.

It was barely enough strength to push through the creature’s frightfully strong skin. up until this point he’d let the damn thing impale itself, which had worked pretty well, but that was because the krusker was outrageously strong.

His telekinesis-assisted stab barely put out its eye, stopping shortly after penetrating the orb itself, not nearly as deep as the iron spike.

But it did what it needed to do:

The krusker was blind now.

It threw its head up in outrage, bucking violently. Jeb and his sword flew off into the woods, landing in a bush.

The krusker squealed