Book 2 - Chapter 19: Quest Completion

No, it shouldn’t have worked. It was dumb.

The Big Book of Brett, PG. 23

—

Sean ran around in a circle. Jogged, really. Brett had rigged up the tub well enough that the flow of powder was pretty uniform. Brett had accumulated quite a bit of powder over the last couple of days from various cans, bottle caps, and other metal bearing objects. Anything aluminum, it turned out, was pretty easy to turn into metal powder.

Even so, Brett said it might all go up in smoke and not work at all without system assistance. He wasn’t a chemist, and only had the barest idea of how this was all supposed to work. Sean, on the other hand, was able to cook all sorts of weird shit that shouldn’t work. With some basic guidance and ingredients supplied by Brett, they were able to make something real nice.

Junkyard Scavenger’s Thermite

You aren’t the kind of guy who likes college words like “Redox Reactions”, “Exothermic”, and “horrible idea that will probably kill you.” Nope, you come from sturdier, less well-read stock. A hardier people who set things on fire not to accomplish goals, but as a goal in and of itself.

By mixing some stuff that burns pretty easily, some stuff that won’t burn at all, and some stuff that has to be coaxed into burning and then is pretty damn angry about it, you’ve made a horrifying concoction. It’s just as likely to explode in your face rather than doing what you want it to. That’s a choice you made. The Apocalypse System is not here to tell you whether it’s a good one or not.

Junkyard Thermite burns just a little less hot than the real stuff, but also ignores impurities, unbalanced ratios, and other sciency stuff that should make all this not work at all. On exposure to open flame, it carries a 50% chance of releasing all heat at once in a small, very intense explosion.

Have fun rolling those dice, my man.

By the time Sean had made several loops with the tub, a few of the surrounding enemies had twigged to his location. That was good, actually, as their surprised noises started a chain reaction that echoed throughout the woods as the remaining foes honed in on Sean’s location.

Sean ditched the tub, pulling a small, sharpened spike he and Brett had wrapped in paper towels soaked with oil. Lighting it up with his lighter, he chucked the flaming dart at the most distant bit of thermite he was confident hitting before diving as far into his spiral structure as he could.

Brett had spent an uncomfortable amount of their planning time with the phrase, “well, it’s our best chance right now.” Where Sean could, he had pressed on how things would turn out.

“So say this stuff does explode. How big of an explosion are we talking about?”

“Pretty big.”

“Like, big boom and I’m injured big, or?”

“More like a volcano of semi-melted slag, making the surrounding area into junkyard lava.”

Sean considered this. “Well, at least you’ll be safe in here.”

“Maybe. If it doesn’t suck out all the oxygen, sure.”

They had decided the gamble was worth it as compared to near-certain death, but Sean was still trying to get in the shelter if he could. He didn’t make it in time. A small hiss of whatever magnesium-based chemical Brett had mixed into the powder flared up. The fact that he heard anything at all instead of the sudden explosive spread of the fires of hell meant things had turned out pretty okay.

“I’m here!” Sean yelled, at the top of his lungs, trying and failing to come up with some non-embarrassing zingers to yell to attract the maximum amount of prey to the trap. “Come and get some Sean, idiots!”

Somehow, miraculously, the monsters took him up on the offer. He glanced around the corner just long enough to see a boxer’s foot enter the fire and immediately burn into dust. When Sean had expressed his worry about whether or not momentary contact with the flame would be enough to disable monsters who could more or less ignore large amounts of pain, Brett had just laughed and explained that he didn’t understand how hot this stuff would actually get.

When the ankle burned through and cracked off, he finally got a bit of what Brett had been talking about.

Thirty seconds, Brett had said. The thermite would burn for about thirty seconds. That was the minimum amount of time Sean had to last. With arrows following apples and perforating the trash maze like it wasn’t even there, Sean pressed as low to the ground as he could. Between the fumes from the thermite and the general stress of the situation, it was getting pretty hard to breathe, but he endured. It would be worth it, probably, so long as he didn’t die in the meantime.

After another few dozen seconds, the burning sounds faded to nothing, just as the heat inside Sean’s shelter began to reach truly intolerable levels. He slowly crept forward and poked his head outside the structure to see how things had gone. The sheer destruction that greeted him was more than he could have possibly hoped for.

The boxers, who were faster than the Tells, had gotten the worst of it. Littered all over were various pugilists in various states of burn-enduced disarray, looking immensely unhappy as they army-crawled toward’s Sean’s shelter without the benefit of functioning legs. Some of them had died out-right, falling back into the thermite where it then burned more vital areas to kill them outright.

The Tells were more of a mixed bag. Some were toppled over, but nearly all of them had approached more slowly and maintained some level of distance as they circled Sean’s tent to get a better firing angle. As a result, they sported a hodgepodge of damage ranging out-and-out disabled to very-bad-sunburns, with a few of them looking like they hadn’t taken much damage at all.

Best of all, it looked like the boxer’s second wind healing technique hadn’t mattered one bit. There was more than enough damage to trigger it, but apparently it worked fast enough that they weren’t able to get out of the thermite’s damaging heat before it tore through the monsters’ regenerated health.

Sean wasn’t in the mood to wait, especially with a few apples and arrows banging into the plastic shield around him. He leapt over the border of disabled boxers to give himself space, Trash Compactor swinging, and slammed it into the head of one of the more intact Tells.

Apples flew. Arrows came down like rain. Sean bobbed and weaved as he took shelter behind a tree, then leapt out at an unpredictable angle to down another archer. Dodging behind a tree, he ripped off a few apples from his clothes, took a chance, and pelted a Tell with them. Then, he watched in awe as otherwise Sean-bound arrows changed course midair to a new target.

With a few more archers down, clearing out the crowd was doable. It took a while. Sean took on wounds. He’d occasionally step on what amounted to molten caltrops of his own creation, burning his foot with little semi-melted globules of iron. But there was cover, and he had time. Finally, after the last functional Tell fell to a trio of well-aimed darts, he moved throughout the battlefield killing and killing.

At that point, it wasn’t even hard. He was just taking out the trash.

—

“You don’t have eyebrows.”

“Thanks, Brett. I hadn’t noticed that.”

Back down below the surface, Sean hopped in the shower while he verified a few things.

Quest Completions: Run Tell That, Ring The Bell

Quest Parameters: Destroy 100 William Tells (100/100), and Destroy 100 Fairy Tale Underdog Come-back Boxer Man (100/100)

Against melee and ranged

From the strong and the strange

You stabbed as they jabbed and launched arrows like fangs

Their gloves met no face

As you strove in this place

Midst tall trees, fake Alis, and a badly forced pace

Now in triumph you stand

Raising slightly cooked hands

Now rest in advance of new unexplored lands

Now, in generous measure

Are your prizes and treasure

To be used and abused at your whim and your leisure.

Congratulations! You’ve done reasonably well on this challenge.

Don’t whine at me. They can’t all be big winners. You didn’t die, but that’s the bare, bare minimum to get through. Did you dominate? Nope. You did okay. You worked cautiously at a medium pace and used your abilities well, and you eventually wiped out all the baddies. That’s normal, brother. That’s just what the job is.

You want the big bonuses? Do better.

Now, before you get too down, let ‘ol Apocalypse clarify a few things. First, you could have come dead last in this competition and still been fine. This is a warm-up. The prizes are pretty muted, compared to what’s possible for you later, and mostly have to do with what you did, with just a little bit of how well you did it mixed in.

With that in mind, here are the highlights:

1. You destroyed the majority of the enemies, and won the 1-on-1 competition between you and your partner.

2. You used every single one of your class skills in a significant way in multiple combat encounters.

3. You made good use of most of the natural resources available to you in this area (Terrain, Apples, Sports Drinks, and Trees). You left some resources on the table (seriously, it never occurred to you to use the poison leaves?) but overall, you made better use of the environment than most.

4. You reversed an ambush on a slightly superior opponent, destroying your partner in this location without actually betraying them.

All of these aspects were taken into account when determining rewards. Enjoy!

Several pings from the system then flooded through all at once.

System Reward: Tapple Tree

You like Tell Apples? I bet you do. Or at least well enough to accept them in an uncertain food environment. This tree produces three Tell Apples a day. Just the food kind, though.

System Reward: Boxer’s Grit (Skill)

Boxer’s Grit allows for a one-time burst of healing during battle, similar to a watered-down version of what you saw from the boxers themselves.

Note: As a healing skill, Boxer’s Grit has been absorbed by Stitch Up, granting the skill the same functionality and improving it one skill level.

System Reward: Skill Advancement

Due to extensive use during this trial, the following skills have been improved by one level: All.

Error: Advancement to Hard Time held pending other thresholds.

Achievement: Tell Me More

You destroyed the majority of the William Tell monsters in your trial, both before and after you had competition in doing so. In addition, you developed the insight into ranged attacks to develop specific countermeasures for both the apples and arrows you faced.

Rewards: Slightly improved SAV effect on ranged attacks, both those originating from others and your own.

Achievement: A Fighter’s Heart

Eat your heart out, Stallone. You’ve stood toe to toe with dozens of melee specialists, dishing it out more than you soaked it up.  When the final bell rang, you were the last fighter standing. Your grit was grittier than their grit, which comes with certain more tangible rewards.

Rewards: Improved SAV effect on footwork, Improved damage output from and resistance to blunt-force trauma, Fighter’s Heart (Crafting Component)