Gus exited the manor and found Razorback lying in the grass. He refashioned the handle as before but received no updates or notices, and the stats and name had reverted to their initial values. The uniform did have a nice belt attachment that held Razorback nicely, although the blade wasn’t covered, so he would have to be mindful to not stab himself by being careless. Gus then headed toward the jungle.
It was nice to have normal footwear for a change. The boots of the uniform offered much more protection and cushioning than his open-toed sandals. He felt surer on his feet and his movements were smoother without things shifting around. The polished shafts of the spears fit easily in his hands, and felt more durable than the bamboo one, despite being much thinner. There was a little more strut to his step, and he walked with a bit more confidence. Things were coming together at last.
Gus passed the bodies of the defeated Dark Nth. They were much more decomposed than Gus would have expected in such a short time. He thought he might have to unlock some kind of cleanup droid like on the beach to remove the bodies so they wouldn’t become overwhelmingly rank from decomposition. The fetid odor had dissipated as well, thankfully.
Without their Dark Nth sustaining their cohesion, most appeared as skeletons lying in oily patches of black goo. The fat zombie was less decomposed, probably because of its sheer mass, the large ribcage dripping ichor. It looked less like the thick tar that was the ‘blood’ of the Dark Nth, and more like used engine oil. The skeletons also looked less robust than a typical skeleton. They were pitted and sandblasted, with crisscrossing grooves and voids.
Gus stopped and plunged a spear right at the entrance of the forest trail from which the Shamblers emanated, then turned back. He stood there and looked over the vestiges of the battle. His mind flashed back to getting beaten up by the gang members and his father’s stinging words. He stood up a little straighter, smiling at his victory. It was sloppy as hell, but he had done it.
Even after one training session, he felt much more competent with the spear, and his gear had improved in quality as well. ‘Never engage a superior force…’ the words echoed back to him. It was hard to describe, but Gus didn’t feel like the loser he had gotten used to seeing himself as. The odds were against him, but that taste of success began to fan the flames of possibility for the future. Where will I be in a year?
He never would classify himself as a determined or driven individual, but he didn’t really have anything to work toward, either. Despite his family being supers, Gus had always been given the impression that, for some reason, he didn’t have the aptitude and probably would not get powers at all. The message was repeated so often, by so many different people, that he began to accept it as undeniably true.
But he could see that it didn’t have to be that way. That possibly fate had something bigger in store for him. He smiled and looked up at the sun. He had the whole day ahead of him to explore. Gus decided that he would leave another spear farther along the path in case he needed them while retreating; he couldn’t fight with three spears at once.
He knew he was taking a slight risk if one of these zombies happened to be able to use one of the spears against him. However, there were a lot of unknowns; he would just have to do the best he could. They would be too unwieldy to carry along in case he needed to react quickly. Even though these were from the training facility, the edges looked razor sharp. Perhaps there were other training modalities for humans sparring other humans, or they had healers to help people recover. He guessed that professional supers would be at the manor, so training with real weapons would probably be more on their level.
Venturing down the path, he was comforted by the chittering of monkeys, insects and birds. They quieted significantly as Gus approached, but did not go silent en masse as they had when he had met his first Shambler. Gus wondered if his perception made him more aware of the animal sounds, and whether they had been there all along.
The shade was welcome but the humidity increased noticeably as the vegetation became denser. Gus was unsure what had been done to the ground, but vegetation appeared not to grow on a two yard wide path that meandered through the jungle. Things grew into the path’s ‘airspace’ but nothing grew from the hard packed ground that formed the path, despite teeming life everywhere else.
After penetrating two hundred feet along the path into the forest, branches thickened over the path, making it hard to move smoothly. Carefully removing Razorback from his belt clip, he hacked off the limbs that got too bold in their growth across the pathway, kicking them off the path. Razorback functioned well as a machete, and had a similar size.
If he had to make a retreat, he didn’t want to have to second guess or have anything slap him in the face or trip him on the way out. Oddly, he felt like Razorback preferred to be in its current form as opposed to its spear configuration. Probably PTSD from being stuck in a zombie gut. Gus smirked at the thought.
Pausing to refer to his internal display, he tried to get used to the minimap function he had access to, now that Nick had linked his display to the manor’s sensors. The background of the circular map showed an aerial view, which only showed the green treetops. As Gus progressed, he found he could toggle layers and see that the fog of war effect was being lifted in
