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(BUS)Chapter 58: Mine, all mine(3)
🕑 Added 2025-01-17 16:26:08 +0000 UTC"Wish me luck I guess." Lil said before vanishing with her powers only to reappear behind the dude on the turret a second later.
She immediately unloaded her SMG into the bandits skull and the turrets loading mechanism before vanishing again as the bandits SWARMED that location like fucking angry ass ants. She reappeared over where we were with slightly heavy breathing since she wasn't really teleporting but rather legitimately running when she was in her powers overlapping dimension, for now anyways. I hadn't quite yet handed over my stuff on her powers yet so she hadn't moved past her current usage of her powers but it was coming.-
"Plans simple folks, if it moves you kill it, if it's dead you move on." I said as I dropped down into the bandit camp.
This area was littered with storage containers and tents that the bandits had either failed to get into or had repurposed to places to sleep. I dashed across the sandy stone ground and put four bullets in four heads as I did so. The bandits had already been whipped into a frenzy by Lil killing the gunner and sabotaging the turret so my presence and actions were noticed immediately. -
Bullets tore through the air and pinged off my shield as a good fifteen guns were unloaded in my general direction but I didn't make myself an easy target as I ran erratically. I certainly wasn't alone either as my friends were following me shortly behind returning fire which kept me from getting shot up to hell and back. At first we were on the backfoot here being out numbered but these were bandits who clearly never trained a day in their lives for something like this as their aims were all over the place and only just barely in our general directions unlike our shots that were precise or at least mostly controlled.-
One bandit after another kicked it until the tide turned and death arrived to collect the rest. 33 bandits with 1100- 900 lifeforce a pop earned me a tasty 29,461 units of life force and another degraded [Mechanical engineering expertise] trait. With this area now lifeless we walked up the rickety metal stairs to the side of a very large building that went two different ways.
"Let's check out that way since the objective is supposedly in this building." I said pointing to the left and everyone agreed.
We followed the mine tracks along the side of the huge rusty building and it led to an open area with a two storage buildings of the same rusted metal but otherwise almost empty. We split up to check different parts of this area with Roland and Lil checking the storage building at the end of the tracks while Mordy and Brick checked the other storage building. I on the other hand eyed the heavy mining vehicle at this side of the building.-
It was a large thing that was quite similar to a mix of a dumptruck and a front loader from earth. At it's front it had a large wide scoop clearly for collecting material. On the back there was a almost perfectly sized holding "basket" for the material picked up by the front scoop. The scoop had the ability to rotated fully sideways to dump it's load in the basket before returning to normal. The vehicle itself had four huge tires that even had protective metal covers built over the top of them. The entire vehicle was operated out of a single person cab that was fully enclosed right in the center of the vehicle with two huge floodlights on the top.-
"It's a rock loader not something cool so I don't know why it's got you so interested." Mordy said as he and Brick walked up from their search.
"I was just wondering how hard it would be for me to turn this into a tank." I said frankly.
"It'd be pretty hard right, the thing looks slow." He commented and I shook my head.
"Not really, swap the front loader for a railgun cannon and take off the wheels and engine for hover coils and a more advanced but smaller engine and it'd only need to be armored up to become a nightmare to combat. Of course I could absolutely make a far more intimidating vehicle for the same price but the potential is there assuming someone wanted to do it. Might have a word with Scooter about it later since it would be a fun project." I said with a grin.
"If you say so." Mordy said not really believing me but not wanting to argue.
"I think that sounds awesome!" Brick said with a huge grin as he imagined it.
"Oh yeah right did you guys find any sweet loot in the storage building?' I asked curiously.
"A couple of whites in a chest and some ammo." Mordy said with a shrug.
"Same over in the other building plus some unopened mining tools in boxes. So junk." Lil said as she and Roland walked over after having finished their own search.
"Not necessarily junk. Improvised weaponry is a thing after all." I said interested in these tools.
Depending on what they were it wouldn't be hard at all to rig up some pretty nasty improvised weapons or maybe just use the cannibalized parts for whole new stuff. Eagerly I headed over into the storage building and began to dig through the boxes to see what goodies I had to work with.
"Jackpot!" I exclaimed with a laugh as I pulled out a laser burrower.
The way it worked was that it superheated the stone it was pointed at to the point of structural weakness thus making the breaking and moving of it easier. The real value for me however was that you could jail break the safety mechanisms to effectively turn the whole thing into a gatling laser that could seriously fuck up anything unfortunate enough to get in front of it though it had a fairly short range of only about twenty yards.-
My friends watched on as I tossed out my house before dragging the burrower inside the portal. They didn't follow me so they didn't see me open up the casing for the targeting focuser and stop it. They also didn't see me casually pop out the target recognition chip and put the thing back together. When I left my house with the new laser weapon they just looked confused until I pulled the trigger and melted a hole in the wall.-
"DIBS!" Brick yelled loudly.
I had absolutely no problem with that and handed it over to him.
"Fair warning if you shoot any of us with this thing I'm going to take it away from you, other than that go nuts." I said and he grinned like a child before running off the opposite way we came.
"I almost feel bad for the bandits." Mordy said as we watched him go.
"I don't, they're delicious." I said casually earning weirded out looks from my friends. "What? I literally devour the lifeforce of anything that dies in my range. I am literally consuming the essence of the people we kill." I said with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah but you made it weird" Lil said with a hint of complaint.
Ok so I had to admit that I could see what she meant but to be fair nothing I said was wrong per se. Taking in lifeforce felt amazing so saying they were delicious wasn't wrong since I consumed them. Anyways we followed after Brick and with his headstart he was making the bandits panic as he fried any of them that crossed his range. -
We found scorched hole filled corpses littering the ground of the small dug out area with crystals that followed the path of the mine tracks. I took the lifeforce and smashed off some of the glowing crystals here for further study. Following the yells and gunfire we found Brick in what was clearly the main area of the mine given the many tracks, carts, buildings and equipment there was. There was an equally great amount of bandits as even with more coming out of the woodwork I counted close to fifty. We charged into the fray joining Brick on his murderous rampage and my lifeforce stores and traits climbed.-
5,000
10,000
20,000
50,000
Finally the number settled at 62,395 units of lifeforce AFTER I grabbed three more degraded [Mechanical engineering expertise] and surprisingly two more degraded [Gunsmithing expertise] traits. I was fairly certain I'd get the undegraded version of the first trait after integrating all the degraded ones I had copies of. Of course we also checked the whole area for loot but as was to be expected the bandits were pretty much broke bitches. That is to say we found only some more white items and like two green.
_______________________________________________
Alexander Drake
Lifeforce: 327,877
Integrated Traits: [Gun expertise-Uncommon grade], [Clever mind-Rare grade],[Enhanced senses-Epic grade]X2, [Omega body-Rare grade]x4, [Supreme armored hide-Epic grade]X2, [Bone regeneration-Uncommon grade], [Corrosion resistance-Uncommon grade], [Energy projection-Epic grade]x4, [Superior vitality-Epic grade],[Flame breath-Uncommon grade],[Regeneration-Epic grade], [Disease resistance-Epic grade],[Amphibious lungs-Uncommon grade], [Thermal sensing-Uncommon grade], [Water resistance-Common grade],[Active camouflage-Epic grade], [Eridian engineering expertise-Mythical grade], [Efficient lungs-Rare grade]x2, [Fire resistance-Epic grade]X2, [Elemental body(fire)-Legendary grade], [Shock resistance-Epic grade]X4, [Energetic sustenance(shock)-Epic grade]X2, [Radiation resistance-Epic grade]X3, [Energetic sustenance(radiation)-Epic grade]X2, [True omnivore-Rare grade], [Biometallic bones-Epic grade],[Elemental body(shock)-Rare grade]X3,[Quick thinking-Rare grade], [Hyperflexibility-Rare grade], [Strong circulation-Epic grade], [Minor spatial awareness-Epic grade], [Buzzaxe expertise-Uncommon grade], [Siren(Phaselock)(Altered)-Mythical grade], [Pugilist expertise-Uncommon grade], [Adrenal rush-Rare grade]
Stored traits:[Mechanical engineering expertise(degrading)-Common grade]X5, [Gunsmithing expertise(degrading)-Common grade]X3
Comments
Christian Jeffress
Thanks for the entertaining chapter
