Chapter 97: Rulebreaker

Sean had thought this before and would probably think it again, but he was a little sad to have been born in the pre-Plug Mud era. Besides a few specialty adhesives he had made himself since getting magic glue powers, he had never dealt with a glue that was so good at so much. Even factoring out how much better his Adhesives Mastery ensured glue worked for him, Plug Mud was basically magic in a tub. Or, in this case, mixed with huge amounts of powdered metal in big barrels he was carting through a city in the middle of the night.

At this point, Sean was pretty stealthy. High DEX meant he moved quickly, high SAV meant he moved well, and with multiple achievements pushing his stealth a bit farther, most people probably wouldn’t notice him unless they were specifically looking for him. Which was good because the hotel he was currently painting with glue was ground zero for bad guys, and even a single one noticing what he was up to would be a disaster.

He didn’t bother with brushes. Glue was his friend now, after all, and apparently making huge tubs of modified glue products had been enough to not only push his Adhesives Mastery up a level, but to give him a few achievements besides.

Insidious Prepper

You have accumulated a couple hundred gallons of some sort of material meant to hurt people. Worse, you made this stuff yourself. It’s not exactly a weapon. It’s just supplies meant to do damage to living things. Pain goop. Misery sludge. Whatever. You have too much of it.

The Apocalypse System could literally read minds, but chooses not to in most circumstances. Instead, it’s left scratching its head as to what you actually intend to do with the hundreds of pounds of horror you are storing in the literal basement you literally live in.

Effects: Any damage-dealing material (finished weapons excluded) made in your base in batches weighing more than 100 pounds are, when used as-is, 25% more effective.

He Always Seemed So Normal (Achievement)

You have created what appears to be a massive stockpile of incendiary Plug Mud. You know the stuff burns pretty good all by itself already, right? It doesn’t necessarily need the extra kick.

That said, you’ve made so damn much of it that it’s interacting with the janky qualities of your overall class to give you an entire new skill. Congratulations! You’ve done enough truly worrisome things that it’s integrating with the fundamentals of your character.

Rewards: Improvised Arsonist (Skill)

Improvised Arsonist

Alchemical mixtures meant to produce heat or fire that you prepare burn 10% longer and hotter. Scales with MAG and SAV.

He’d take all of them. As much as he didn’t really want to admit it, he still had no clue how any of the system enhancements worked. He understood that STR made him stronger, but he had never had much time to really sit down and experiment with his max bench press before and after adding a point to his total. When the system wasn’t absolutely clear how something worked, he usually had no idea what to expect. So what he was doing now was a crap shoot in the worst sense possible.

There were no guards around Eike’s hotel. The man probably figured he didn’t need them. In the village, he was safe from almost any kind of attack. Plus, he was the baddest kid on the block, other people had to hope that they would be safe from him, not the other way around. Sean meant to change that, but for the moment it meant he had a fighting chance of finishing what he was trying to do unnoticed.

He was careful anyway. He climbed the roof of an adjacent building from the far side, creeping across that surface until he was in leaping distance of the roof of the next. The building he was jumping from was nowhere near as tall, but his DEX made short work of that distance, putting him safely on the roof of the hotel with little issues.

The roof was thankfully built weird for the setting, in that it was flat instead of pitched like what he would have expected from the faux-medieval setting the system seemed to be going for. He deposited the first load of his weird cargo up there, everything that the system would let him pack in his storage pouch, then made another lap back home.

It took him two more trips to get it all up there. When the system said he had made a lot of the stuff, it wasn’t kidding. Every one of the containers he brought was substantial, the smallest of them holding about five gallons and the largest being giant barrels he couldn’t have hoped to have moved by himself in his old life. He careful set several of the medium-sized ones around the raised edge of the roof before tipping the bigger of the barrels over, dumping their contents out and allowing them to pool across the entire top of the building.

“Okay, Brett. Lets see if you actually managed to teach me anything,” Sean whispered. Now was the hard part. People were going to notice the next steps, no matter how stealthy he tried to be. How fast they were able to react to them was another matter entirely, one he intended to influence as much as he could.

Now! Sean thought, bursting into action. He dumped each of the containers he had placed around the edge of the roof down and covered columns of windows in pitch-black sludge. With one last bucket of adhesives in hand, he jumped down from the roof.

His plan hinged on too many things to be entirely rational. The first was that the average system-enhanced competitor could be hurt by his slapped-together concoctions. That was an open question in and of itself, one that the system had done little to resolve in its descriptions.

Appalachian Napalm

You have become redneck death, the destroyer of hick worlds. Utilizing actual thermite and your unlimited supply of Plug Mud, you managed to build an unholy, sticky abomination. Why does Plug Mud get thinner when you mix it with napalm, you ask? We don’t know! How hot will it burn? Find out for yourself!

This stuff is still thermite, and as hot as Plug Mud might burn, it’s not quite enough to ignite aluminum powder. Bring a fuse.

The fuse itself had been tricky. Brett had taught him how to make one, but it had been several tries before Sean had managed one that would reliably light. Still, it was better than nothing. Right now, Sean was breaking rules on a level that the system considered to be close to littering or vandalism. Without the fuse, he wasn’t technically building a trap since there wasn’t a source of flame or fire in the village that could set the thermite reaction off.

That meant his rulebreaker’s voucher was still ready to be used.

Hitting the ground running, Sean scooped huge handfuls of an entirely different creation around any window he could reach, smearing it on any joints in the frames that looked like they could potentially move and allow them to open.

Pome-granite

Did you know apples are their own special family of fruits? It’s because they have a core. That makes them pomes. What else are pomes? A bunch of shitty fruits nobody has any business eating. The “slowly rotting sand” experience of eating a pear comes to mind.

You’ve taken fake sticky apples and mixed them with plug mud, making a quick-drying cement of sorts. It’s honestly not great, besides the fast cure time. It’s brittle and not good for most kinds of crafting. But where this stuff excels, it excels hard. As soon as it’s applied to your target surface, it hardens into a rock-like material that won’t budge until shattered.

Sean had no hope of getting to all the windows, at least not after dumping gallons and gallons of molasses-thick goop on each of them. That was fine. His big goal, such as it was, was to constrict traffic as much as he could and keep people from running away as fast as they’d like.

He got about half the windows and all the exit doors on the ground floor before he started to hear sounds of confusion and fear from inside the building.

Looks like it’s time. Lets see how well that rulebreaker voucher actually works.

Lighting the fuse, Sean chucked it clear on the roof as the magnesium burst into a bright flame, then got the hell out of the way, darting across the street and in between two other buildings as he heard the Plug Mud bursting into flames on the roof. He hadn’t expected to actually be able to hear it, but it wasn’t a subtle noise. Whatever else the napalm would end up being, it wasn’t hard to light.

Rulebreaker Voucher Utilized!

Holy hell. Not what we had in mind, Sean.

I bet not, Sean thought. Still, it was too late now. Shouts of terror started to ring out from inside the hotel as the windows suddenly burst into flames, complementing the six-foot inferno on the roof. The fire was much, much bigger than Sean had expected. He kicked back and watched the show as it grew and grew, igniting all the wooden parts of the mostly-stone structure’s exterior.

Suddenly, the cries of terror turned into shrieks of agony as the whole roof collapsed under the blaze. There was still plenty of fuel left up there, too, and Sean could imagine the confusion inside as the roof rained down in a combination of thermite and burning wood, covering everything.

All around the building, people were now starting to find windows that would actually open or else brute-forcing their way out of other openings by bashing them down. One particularly strong person managed to actually bash down part of the wall, stumbling out onto the street as he did and laid moaning and covered in burns. But as many as were making it out, it wasn’t nearly enough to account for all the people Sean knew were holed up in that building. Some people weren’t getting out, and so far Eike was among the missing.

Sean’s hopes of cheesing his way straight through his biggest rival didn’t last long. Soon enough, the main doors of the building bashed open under the weight of what looked like the burning remains of an entire table, and Eike strode out, his clothes and hair singed and his body covered in little burns where the napalm had dripped onto it.

He must have killer regen, Sean thought. I can see it healing from here.

However many people hadn’t gotten out, Sean wasn’t surprised to find Eike had survived. It wouldn’t be that easy. As much money as he might be able to promise these people, and however credible his threats of retribution back in the system universe might be, there was no way he’d be followed if he wasn’t strong. Something like this was never going to be enough to get him.

The sudden realization that Eike would be healed back to full form soon hit Sean at about the same time Eike spotted him hiding in his alley. Sean gripped down on the handle of the Mystereamer, springing towards Eike as Eike screamed in rage and ran towards him. To his credit, Eike was done making threats. Whatever grudges laid between them, it wasn’t going to be something that would be resolved by words.