FMH: Everything ~ Thirty-Nine

The Murderhobo was pressed to the ground, but he shoved his hands out straight and caught himself in a push-up position. Bending his arm slightly, he shoved backwards, sending the creature flying into the air above him. Then Luke pulled, sending himself across the ground toward the odd rectangular box that had a silhouette of his face, thanks to the strange fluid that dripped from the T.O.E.S. he had smashed through. He had seen something like this before, back when he got his Mage Hunter set.

“This is something the world itself makes. When I crack this, another one of these is just going to appear somewhere else, and eventually this Zone will be overrun again. Ugh.” Luke didn't particularly care about that; he assumed his line of thinking was extraordinarily similar to whoever had come before. “At least it'll be someone else's problem, not mine.”

He had decided to accept the minor wounds that his enemies were able to inflict upon him, seeing as defeating them would have no purpose other than to bring another of their ilk into existence. It was a great relief to see the enormous needles hit his armor, slow to a stop, with only the very tip of them able to penetrate the armor and into his flesh. It still hurt, but it wasn't instantly deadly, like it otherwise could have been.

At first glance, there was no way to open the box, but that was perfectly acceptable to Luke. Switching his weapons over to his Battering Ram Knuckles, he forced his way over to the box, straddled it as though it was an enemy he had knocked over, and started raining blows down.

The entire time he was putting every ounce of his strength into use, his enemies were trying to disrupt his armor to get at the soft, meaty core inside of him. Luke ignored them as much as possible, only wincing and grunting as his health was slowly whittled away. Finally, on the fifteenth blow, a large chunk of the outer box cracked. This showed that he was accomplishing something, so the Murderhobo redoubled his efforts, even as his blood pooled around him.

On the thirtieth blow, his fist went through the outer shell and into the inner mechanisms of the box. Luke’s hair stood up on end, and it felt like a minor lightning bolt had just been cast on him. His thoughts shifted, static filling his mind then exploding outward.

It took him a moment to realize that the attacks on his person had ended. He pulled his hand out of the box, looking around at the Sentinels that were now just standing there, staring at him. One by one, they slowly started to topple, falling over in concentric rings as the nearness of their bodies forced the others around them to drop.

Congratulations! You have cleared the respawn buffer! The standard time to respawn a Sentinel has been set to one per hour. Make sure to clean up any remaining enemies, as they will be coming back online… now!

“Aby~yss!” Luke howled into the air as the Sentinels around him started flailing, trying to regain their footing. He looked up the hill, down the hill, and made the decision to go find his team. “I hate backtracking.”

Yet he found that the trip was extremely productive. He was able to move forward at a consistent pace, swinging his weapons and giving himself plenty of breathing room. The Sentinels were perfectly happy not to rush into the open space, firing needles at him that were simply stopped and returned. Nearly two hours into his upward slog, a loud crashing sound approached him far too rapidly. He steeled himself for a new type of enemy, only for Cookie to smash past another Sentinel and fly into his hand.

“Cookie!” he shouted happily, grabbing on to her with both hands and charging uphill. He whirled around, slamming her into half a dozen Ossified Sentinels, excitedly chattering about what he had done. “Then I flew in, smashed through one of the biggest ones, and pounded their box until it broke! After that, I've just been coming back to get you.”

Luke paused for a moment, then nodded consideringly. “No, you're right, we should probably go get them. It's just… who wants to go up when you're in Murder World? What, you think I can just run? I suppose we could do that.”

He didn't wait a moment longer, tensing his legs and throwing himself forward. Holding Cookie in front of him, he lunged forward and activated Bum Thunder in the same moment, blasting forward with her knocking the enemies to the side. He repeated this every few seconds, and ever so slowly, they made their way back up and out, nearly to the edge of Zone twenty.

That was where the travel got difficult.

“I don't suppose this enormous briar patch is going to be friendly if I step onto it.” Luke unhappily stated as he whacked a nearby Sentinel and kicked it in the side, sending it toppling on to the innocuous-seeming underbrush. Just after it landed, the vines shot upward and wrapped around the fallen creature, spinning and swirling to grind through its metallic body.

In only a few moments, it had been reduced to chunks that were rapidly broken down even further by the plant. “I don't understand how he doesn't get that this stuff is freaky. If he wasn't able to perfectly control it, I'm sure Andre would have been eaten by his own creations by now.”

“-Ke, is that you-” The Murderhobo rubbed at his ears, trying to figure out if he was hearing things, or if Zed was attempting to contact him. About a minute later, the sound came again, just as distorted and broken. “-still find you if you don’t talk, you gorilla wannabe-”

“Are you saying that you can track me by my voice? Not sound, or my presence, but my actual voice? If I don't speak, will you leave me alone?” Luke spoke aloud, since he was trying to get back to his people. In the same instant, he felt the weight of Zed's attention entirely focusing on him.

“-Alive! I knew you wouldn't get yourself killed and doom us to this blue Abyss until we finally succumbed to insanity!” Zed’s voice was growing stronger as he spoke, as though the man himself were coming closer. “Okay, I think I have your location now. you're a little under five miles below us; we're still back at the edge of Zone nineteen. You did something, didn't you? About half a day ago, all of the attacks suddenly stopped for a few seconds, then the creatures stayed down when we hit them.”

“Yes,” Luke answered the only question that had been asked of him. “Tell Andre to get this plant out of my way.”

“Yeah, no can do, friend-o!” The reply was instant and annoyingly cheerful. “You're going to have to go around! Take a left-hand turn from where you're standing, go a quarter mile, then start walking back up. Andre told me you would hate it.” The Bard seemed to be amazed that the redhead was correct. “I told him, ‘Andre! You can't just assume that he is going to hate anything that is growing and eating other creatures! He loves seeing stuff get savaged’! Then he says, ‘he only likes to see things get destroyed by people, not plants’-”

The Murderhobo groaned and clapped his hands over his ears, trying to drown out the endlessly droning Bard. Unfortunately, it was some kind of magical connection, and the sound continued unabated, though the ambient noise was completely removed. In other words, it just made the rambling worse.

For a few long seconds, Luke considered simply going downhill and getting out of range again, but after tossing Cookie in the air and losing his guess as to how she would land two of the three times, he let out a deep exhale and followed the instructions. Soon, he was close enough to see lightning still striking nearly constantly.

Yet, there was one major difference. The Sentinels were moving. With their front ranks having been absolutely decimated, and open areas being laid out in front of them, the ranks of monsters had room to approach their attackers. There were so many of them that the vast majority of the creatures had not yet been given a chance to move, which was why he had not seen anything of the sort on his climb upward. Still, it was a sign of actual progress, and it lit a fire in his gut. “Taylor wants to know if every Zone was like this, and is speculating on if this is why-”

“Zed. You have to know that I'm nearly close enough to get my hands around your neck,” Luke finally cut the Bard off with a very light threat.

The other man went silent for a long moment, and when he spoke again, the words were very different. Crisp. “Fifty paces to your right, there's lightning rolling your direction. Eighty-six paces left is another swath of anti-sentinel foliage. Continue at your current heading and speed, and you'll be able to rejoin the group within ten or fifteen minutes. Please keep all arms and legs attached to the body to maintain maximum speed.”

A hint of a grin lifted the right corner of Luke's mouth, then he doubled his pace. In what felt like no time flat, he was back with his party, and they retreated away from the edge of the Zone, slightly deeper into Zone nineteen. Zed flopped to the ground, rubbing at his legs and stretching them out. “I don't know about you guys, but standing in front of a firing line of angry monsters is tiring work.”

Luke could hear Andre muttering softly under his breath, “First he gets carried everywhere, now he can just literally sit around and gain Potentia…!”

“I'm down to only getting two Potentia per kill,” Taylor informed the group. “How is everyone else doing in their accumulation of energies? How long would everyone like to stay here, and how long do you think the monsters will last? Luke?”

“We could stay here for weeks and not run out of monsters.” He begrudgingly spoke to the group. “There's a hundred miles left to right, fourteen hundred long, and the Sentinels take up five square feet each. You do the math; I refuse.”

“I'm having good success setting up plant Zones that keep the Sentinels out. They don't seem to react to it growing along near their feet.” At this point, Andre sent a challenging, fierce smile at Zed, who merely shrugged in response. “It would take a while, but I can carve out a path for us to get to the next Zone. Can't guarantee it will be safe, but when it just isn't worth killing all of these things anymore, I'll be able to get us to the next one.”

As the team started making plans, with even Zed inputting good information and ideas, Luke slowly let his gaze drift across the three of them. For the first time since he had gotten to this world, they didn't feel like a burden. In fact… they were being extremely helpful.

He liked that.

“Huh. Maybe it’s not so bad having you around.” Somehow, he had said the words out loud, and it ended the current conversation for a moment. Taylor flashed a bright smile at him, and the others nodded with pleased—if scrutinizing—expressions on their faces.

Not missing another beat, Taylor prodded Andre to continue where he had left off, and the strategy was slowly laid out. The more Luke listened, the more he liked the sound of what they were saying. “It's different… maybe that doesn't mean it's bad.”