Chapter 40: Waste Management

In these trying times, everyone has to look out for themselves. That’s the rule. If you can save someone, you do. But if shit hits the fan and a wave of monsters is about to sweep over everyone, you need to take care of yourself. It’s not just me that’s telling you this. It’s an accepted, society-wide norm.

The rule exists for a reason, Sean. I know it’s harsh, but too many people have died waiting for tank players to catch up, and too many tanks have died trying to shield disabled allies in hopeless situations. When the Apocalypse came, we were soft. Too soft. We didn’t know how to make sacrifices, and we weren’t willing to give up what we needed to let go of to survive.

If those sacrifices sound heroic, reflect on the fact that nearly everyone is dead. Not that anybody really knows, but the entire population of North America can probably be counted in the hundreds of thousands. When the Apocalypse gained speed, we were weak, too many of us died too quickly, and we failed to keep up with it.

You can’t afford to be soft, Sean. That lesson has been learned for you the hard way millions and millions of times.

The Guide, Stuff I Don’t Really Want To Talk About, Page 2

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I can lead it away. It probably used some anti-ranged attacks, but it’s still following me. I can lead it away. Sean’s fantasy was almost immediately dissolved by the most unforgiving, concise window Sean had seen yet.

Dump Goliath Update

The target of the Goliath’s tracking has changed due to a well-targeted elemental attack. Congratulations!

After throwing the rock, the Goliath seemed to not see Sean at all anymore. It looked like it was lumbering slowly. That was the worst part of it, really. Big things don’t walk that fast relative to their size, but they actually move vast distances quickly. In seconds, Estesia would get absolutely obliterated, but from afar, it seemed like the giant was taking all the time in the world.

Sean’s panic increased when the golem suddenly started to speed up and get closer, which he didn’t know it could do. It honestly didn’t even make sense that it could. Something that big and that strong had to have some limitations, even at level 50. Sean's confusion was resolved suddenly as he realized the golem was not actually moving faster. It was Sean that was getting closer. He had sprinted towards the monster without actually realizing he was doing it.

This is probably a really stupid decision. I’m kind of glad I didn’t make it consciously.

It wasn’t as if there was no hope at all. If he could draw the attention of the beast, it might give someone in the town time to notice what was going on and evacuate Estesia from danger. If that happened quick enough, he was still technically faster than the Dump Goliath. He could run through difficult terrain, get some distance, and hope the golem eventually angered something bigger and meaner than it was.

Sometime during the run to the rim and back, Stitch Up had clicked his bones back into place. He doubted they were fully healed yet, but what he had would have to do. He doubted he’d notice the pain right now with all of his adrenaline anyway.

Diving between the thing’s legs, he stabbed it with his spear. It roared, but didn’t stop. He chased the leg as it walked, stabbing again and again. It was taking damage. He knew it was because the feedback from the spear itself was so clear on the matter. But it wasn’t taking enough. If Sean had to guess, only so much of the damage he did was making it through to wherever its core was.

Well, if that’s the case, I’ll get closer.

Sean jabbed his spear deep into the leg and pulled out two of his darts, holding one in either hand. Using every bit of STR he could draw on, he stepped on the spear, jumped as far off that foothold as he could, and buried each of the darts into the upper thigh of the leg. The golem screamed, but kept moving towards Estesia. Sean hung on for dear life, waiting until its leg was planted to pull out one of the darts, stabbed it as high as he could reach, and then used that new point of contact to stab even higher with his other hand.

His DEX and SAV came in handy as they allowed him to make the most of his legs as he climbed and his tiny, tiny increase to his STR score, made it possible to keep doing the pull-ups. With all three combined, he got the hang of it pretty quick, climbing a couple of feet higher per second. After his first few stabs, the Goliath started screaming, but still walked towards Estesia, now almost within attack range.

There’s no time. Sean felt the first Hard Time charge refill, **bringing him back up to three. He burned one of them on himself, managing to climb several handholds before it fizzled out. Then, as the monster pulled back its arm for a gigantic swing, he burned another one, this time pulling on both darts at once and launching himself upwards in a Hard Time assisted leap that took almost no real-world time at all.

Flying through the air, Sean arced his back as much as he could, and brought both darts down in the hardest, straightest overhead slam he could. They hit the monster just above its tailbone, driving in all the way to Sean’s clenched fists. The golem screeched, jerked, and immediately reached back to try to swat Sean off, an attempt that would have absolutely worked if he had kept still after the attack.

It also stopped going after Estesia.

Junkyard Goliath Update

You have been reassigned as the Junkyard Goliath’s target.

“Felt that, did you? You fucking thing. You fucking asshole fuck.” Sean was pissed. Not just because this thing had been chasing him, or that it spawn camped him outside his weird subterranean bunker-house. And not just because the shock of breaking his arm was wearing off, and he could feel the bone almost tearing apart every time he used his shoulder to propel his weight a few feet forward.

A lot of it was just that, for all the work he had done, this thing still had a level advantage on him. The whole world had a level advantage on him. He could work as hard as he wanted, and he wasn’t going to close that in time. If Estesia couldn’t kill this thing, it meant she was under level 50.

She didn’t have galactic-level training, or whatever offworlders got. She was a badass to him, and as far as he knew, he was still weaker than her after all that he had gone through. And whatever fucked up competition or race the offworlders were trying for, whatever would let them strip-mine the last bit of planet, they were winning. He was weaker than Estesia, and she was weaker than the offworlders. He was fighting a losing battle, and he knew it.

And it pissed him the fuck off. Any thought of retreat was gone as he bore down on the spikes harder than he had before, letting the pain ripple through his arm and shoulder, gritting his teeth and leaning into it as an indicator that he was making progress towards the top.

Not violent enough. No violent nature. Take a look at this, Jeff, you old fat bastard.

As easy as it should have been for the golem to reach Sean at that range, it was designed to move in a human-like fashion, and that apparently included a slight difficulty hitting its back. Sean kept ahead of its swats, moving faster and faster as he got increasingly used to the climb. And then, suddenly, his spear punched through something hard and metal, something that sat on the surface of the golem.

It was, if Sean identified it correctly, the roof of a 1995 Toyota Corolla. The golem was using it as a shoulder blade. He shot past it and to the right, hearing the golem’s hand smash into the roof just after he cleared it. In a few seconds, he’d be on the thing’s shoulder. Had he hurt it so far, with the dozens of stabs it took to climb up its body? Sure, probably. He had seen some pieces of garbage fall off here and there, but no large-scale crumbling. And while the Goliath had clearly not enjoyed any aspect of his ascent, it didn’t exactly seem to be in its death throes either.

In other words, he had no idea how he was going to take it down, or if it was even possible. He needed to hit it hard, somewhere weak, somewhere that would have made sense to the system as a point of vulnerability for a Dump Goliath. And suddenly, he remembered.

Oh, shit, Cedarhelm. He couldn’t have known, could he?

Cedarhelm wasn’t a talkative dragon, really. The few significant conversations Sean had with him, the introductions, the advice about his class, and the directions to get the glue were about all he had ever said. Talking a lot seemed to fatigue him, if anything.

And yet, he had interrupted Sean leaving that last time to give him a live-laugh-love level pithy piece of advice, like a dad would give his son before he left for a track meet.

“The troubles you face. Hit them hard between the eyes. I’m sure if you do, It will turn out all right,” Cedarhelm had said.

Sean climbed onto the shoulder of the colossus, immediately burning his last charge of Hard Time to get out of the way of an open-palm slap to the monster’s own collarbone. Keeping his momentum going and launching himself directly at the monster’s face, Sean prayed to whoever was listening that Cedarhelm hadn’t just been flexing some up-to-then undiscovered soccer-dad advice muscle.

One of his darts went through the thing’s forehead, which was blessedly narrow when it could have otherwise been very wide. Still, his target, the area between the Goliath’s eyes, was just out of his reach. So he let go, aimed carefully, and jabbed his other mini-sticker directly above the bridge of the Goliath’s nose.

The boss didn’t screech or scream. It opened its mouth and bellowed, making the loudest noise Sean had ever heard. But while it did, its hands dropped to its side. It froze, if for only a second. When its hands started moving, Sean knew his attack hadn’t been quite enough. But he had guessed it wouldn’t be. Cedarhelm had said to hit it hard, after all. And he knew just how to do that. At this point, he had more than enough practice with the Trash Compactor.

With his other hand, he pulled the weapon out and in a quick swing, aimed it at the dart, slamming one of the lizard spikes that had been glued to the weapon into Sean’s finger as the blow landed true. He screamed, but held on. The Goliath froze again, this time silently. And then, slowly, the dart Sean was holding on to began to slide through the trash. He held on for dear life as the dart continued downward. It had been lodged deep enough that it wasn’t falling out completely, but his descent was speeding up further and further as time went on.

All around him, on every side, was garbage. The Goliath was coming apart. At some point, the dart didn’t feel like it was facing any resistance at all. But it had done its job, in the sense that the impact with the ground only shattered Sean’s feet and shins instead of killing him.

His last memory was being buried in garbage, and then everything went black.