Excise: A Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG (Ether Collapse Book 2) Read online

  Common Skills: Barter – 5, Camouflage – 7, Endurance – 22 (+2), Perception – 24 (+3), Tracker – 16 (+4), Trance Meditation – 15

  Profession Skills: Actor – 5, Butcher – 19 (+2), Cook – 2, Herbalist – 19 (+5), Miner – 1, Skinner – 20 (+3), Trader – 5

  Moderate Skills

  Non-Class Combat Skills

  Common Skills: Analyze – 10 (+8), Sneak – 12 (+7)

  Profession Skills

  He’d become extremely used to having a status sheet, but he could still remember that first morning—afternoon—waking up, his body changed, and finding this thing. Back then he hadn’t had much basis to go on but had made some logical guesses as to where he was strong and weak. Now, however, he’d talked with the military officers, and they had conducted a tally to see where most people's baseline stats had been. From the Ottawa survivors, the average was eight across the board in stats, except for luck, which started significantly lower in almost all the individuals. Those numbers could be flawed, but they seemed accurate, considering he’d been above that mark in some and below in others.

  Looking at the screen now, he was disappointed he hadn’t leveled in a while. The lack of levels was particularly discouraging when he remembered the massive fight in Ottawa because surviving it had felt like a prodigious victory. Then again, he hadn’t fought anyone, just outsmarted them. He really hadn’t even left Stealth until Corsair was on death's door.

  He’d killed Corsair and gotten the Etherience notification, but since he had really only provided the final blow, he hadn’t gotten much Etherience. All and all, he’d been left with just over one million Etherience to level 22 when he left Ottawa. That number was minuscule, though, when put into context; level 22 to 23 needed over twenty-six million Etherience in totality.

  The current monsters that they’d been fighting were far too powerful for him alone, and sometimes, even with help from his friends, the monsters escaped. This meant that he was always splitting Etherience over his group of five and occasionally with the entire military. The trek back had further highlighted a future problem for survivors. They needed a safe place to level and live. Sela assured him that the Territory was just that.

  Fingers crossed! I would like to be able to plan my stat allocations a bit more instead of being forced to assign them like those seven I had saved up in Ottawa.

  The difficulty of achieving a new level was making his mind reel. The daunting task of becoming a Journeyman was huge. Then he was forced to consider trying to catch up to Master class monsters that were only getting stronger.

  With an exasperated sigh, he opened his nearly full Etherience bar to check its exact progress.

  174,231 Etherience to reach level 22.

  Each level doubled the amount of Etherience needed, and Rocky remembered a conversation with Sela; she’d told him this is what people of old had referred to as ‘the grind’. She had somehow insinuated that it happened at every class rank and that often, people would take years to complete it at higher ranks.

  Knowing she had been a Master class before she died, Rocky’s eyes had widened, and he had asked her how long it had taken her. She pursed her lips and looked away into the distance before responding very quietly, “My guild helped.”

  Often, it was easy to forget that Sela had lost everyone she ever knew or cared about from her previous life. She just seemed so strong and assured, like nothing could hurt her. Rocky often thought of her as a rock, and it was sobering when moments like that one came around, and he saw a glimpse of her fragility.

  The wind from the storm nearly knocked him off of Sela’s back and did successfully jar him out of his distracted thoughts. While the storm was still about fifty kilometers or more distant, it was growing in intensity and power. It was definitely a good call to have kept Azoth on the ground.

  Sela didn’t veer in her course, and Rocky scanned the landscape to try to make out something that looked like a cave. All he could see in the direction they were headed was a large hill, but since he trusted Sela implicitly, he assumed the cave must be on the back end of it. This was why when his vision suddenly seemed to turn black, he accidentally pulled Sela’s fur in panic.

  Sela yowled in complaint and slowly came to a stop. Rocky looked backward and saw Azoth and Zippo pass through a monstrous passage behind him. It must have been a gaping hole in the ground about twenty feet in diameter. Rocky blinked rapidly as he climbed off Sela’s back and walked to the cave entrance.

  Looking back the way they had come, Rocky realized how he had missed this massive cave in the earth. Like a crater, the edges of the hole had risen, and on every side, the grass was tall and unbent, obscuring it from view.

  He needed to mark the area for Joe. So, Rocky pulled out one of the lamp posts that was in his bag of holding. These lamp posts were previously used by a samurai golem in Pembroke, and he had been planning to melt them down, but right now, they were the only thing he could think of that would be long enough to be seen above the four-to-five-foot-high grass.

  His muscles strained under the weight of the post, but thanks to his high strength stat, it wasn’t an impossible task to lift it above his head. Twisting with all of his rather impressive power, he then drove the light post about three feet into the soft ground. After making sure it would stand up for a few moments, Rocky dog paddled dirt from around the pole, grass and all, on to the side of the cylindrical metal. Sela, Jason, and Azoth joined in, the latter a bit too exuberantly, causing dirt to spray in all directions. It was the work of a few minutes, but once they had enough dirt around the pole, they began to pack it down around its base. After the quick shod foundation, about six feet of the twenty-five-foot pole was covered.

  Once complete, he clicked his radio button. “Joe, I have marked the cave entrance with a lamp post—shoot, Eagle Eye here. Over?”

  A quick response of, “Affirmative,” was all he received in response, which added to his abundant confusion about radio etiquette.

  Turning back towards the cave, he walked in again. It wasn’t nearly as pitch black inside as his adjusting eyes had initially protested. In fact, it was rather bright with the massive open hole at the top. The cave descended at a fifteen-degree angle for approximately one hundred feet before Rocky lost the ability to see further because the land either began flattening out or ascending.

  “Want a light source now or later, Rock?” Zippo asked in his mock-business-like tone, which was all kinds of wrong from a fifteen-year-old. Zippo could now conjure a Fireball and have it hover above himself to provide something akin to a miniature sun’s worth of light.

  “Might as well do it now to get our eyes accustomed to the light source as we descend. Sela, is the creature still inside?” Rocky responded, realizing that they probably only had a fifteen-minute window at most before the survivors arrived or the storm overtook them.

  An orangish light cast back the darkness even farther, and Sela raised both of her cat brows and shrugged, indicating that she couldn’t tell anymore. Rocky’s eyebrows shot nearer to his hairline, and he swallowed visibly.

  Great! Time to explore the cave cautiously while being quick… Seems contradictory.

  “Alright. Let’s storm this place!” Rocky quipped while smirking, which caused Sela to growl, Zippo to shake his head, and Azoth to look around to figure out what had changed the mood.

  Sighing to himself, he led the way down to the bottom of the minor slope with the others following behind. To further his disappointment, Azoth mentally sent, “What funny?” after the flopping pun.

  Rocky looked at his pet and mentally sent, “The others don’t have a sense of humor.” Azoth tilted his head, looking confused, then looked over in Sela’s direction.

  A moment later, Azoth chuffed loudly, and Rocky glared back at Sela, who wore a cat smile across her rather pleased looking face. He felt his cheeks go red, and he turned back around, trying to pretend he wasn’t curious about what she had told Azoth to make his pet laugh at him.


  Once they reached the bottom of the decline, Rocky realized he had been right, and the ground now had a bit of an incline going back up into darkness. Once Zippo closed the gap with Rocky, the slope up resolved itself out of the pitch. The slope ascended quickly in comparison with the downslope before leveling out and turning a corner.

  Rocky led the way again up the incline and stopped just before the corner. Zippo sent the light source floating around the bend first without prompting, and Rocky waited for a slow count of two before he peeked his head around. There in front of him was a massive, hollowed-out chamber of stone. Something about it made Rocky even more hesitant to enter. Part of him was screaming that this was a perfect space to safely ride out the storm for everyone, but something about the cavern felt wrong.

  Is this a hallucination? Also, with all our stats diminished, can we even beat whatever lurks within?

  The tiny sun hovered before the room widened out fully, which effectively damped its light. He turned to Zippo and asked, “How far away can you control that Fireball?”

  Zippo formed his mouth into a line and closed his eyes. The Fireball moved another five feet forward before it stopped. Zippo started to sweat but stated through his clenched teeth, “About that far right now.”

  He was definitely improving with his spells, but it seemed like he was still somewhat limited. Rocky knew he had been trying to practice moving his firewall up into the air and cast it on spaces he wanted it to be. Unfortunately, this trip hadn’t given the group much time.

  As soon as the Fireball crossed the doorway, a loud bang sounded from behind them, and semi-familiar words appeared on a blue box in front of Rocky which caused him to clench his teeth.

  Welcome to the Arena Dungeon.

  You have entered in a group of four; challenges will be scaled to match. Harder and harder waves will be sent against your group until you face the Arena Champion.

  Good Luck.

  Level: Unknown.

  Age: 22 days

  Best time: N/A

  Clears: 0

  As soon as he mentally cleared that notification, a counter popped up in his upper left corner, counting down sixty seconds. If this wasn’t the worst time to find a Dungeon, Rocky would eat his socks, and he had been wearing them since they started this hell hike. Quickly glancing back the way they had come, he saw a solid piece of stone blocked their way out. If the survivors made it down to the bottom of that entrance and were stuck there during a storm…

  Well, there would have been water pooling down there if a drain didn’t exist. So perhaps…

  Regardless, a storm might overwhelm the drainage capacity. The problem didn’t bear thinking about. They would just have to crush every wave as fast as they possibly could and pray it would be enough. Another problem came to the forefront of his mind quickly after he resolved that decision. What if the Dungeon reset and then five or so thousand people came in?

  With some effort, he managed to push down the feeling that accompanied that thought. It was still a slowly mounting stress on the back of his mind, unfortunately, but nothing could be done now.

  Maybe I can talk to this core as well? Talk about stuck between a Dungeon and a storm wall!

  “We are staying here to use this door as a funnel and a line of sight portal in case the enemies have any ranged amongst them. Get ready!” Rocky spat out and pulled his sword out of its scabbard as the clock passed the thirty-second mark. Even though the scabbard wasn’t particularly necessary anymore, he found that having a liquid sword crawl on his body could get a little uncomfortable at times.

  Wind began to swirl in the cavern, and Rocky’s eyebrows rose steeply because he didn’t feel any movement in the air in the space he was occupying. “Is anyone else seeing this?” he asked.

  “The crawling walls?” Zippo asked back.

  “See nothing but cavern?” Azoth responded, and Sela pointed a paw in a specific direction behind the swirling winds that Rocky now saw.

  Oh, what a perfect time for hallucinations.

  “The walls aren’t crawling; there isn’t a massive tornado inside the chamber, and whatever Sela is pointing at isn’t there. We are hallucinating! Azoth, you’ll have to lead the attack against any real enemies you see! Got it?”

  “Af-form-ativ-ey,” Azoth mentally sent, accompanied by his massive, nodding lion’s head. He moved to take up the entire doorway, his bulky, sixteen-wheeler-sized body cutting off anyone else's view of the room.

  Rocky wanted to tell him to move over or at least step back so the group could also see, but trying to get exactly what you wanted from Azoth was like pulling teeth; they just didn’t have the time. So, instead, he just sent out a silent prayer that Azoth would respond the right way to whatever threat materialized in front of him.

  As soon as the counter reached zero, Azoth’s back lizard legs flexed then dug furrows into the ground as he bounded through the opening with puppy-like exuberance.

  Here we go. Drunken hell. Why is the massive Chimera the only one of us not hallucinating?

  Rocky rushed after his pet into what looked to him to be a massive, spiraling tornado. Typically, he would have played this a bit more cautiously and tried to set up some sort of strategy to defeat each wave. However, with their time crunch and debuffs, this was probably the best scenario to see everyone outside safe. Not to mention Azoth didn’t do subtlety…

  Once Rocky passed through the fictitious storm, he could see blue light materializing creatures in front of him. He assumed they were forming in the center of the chamber, and the group rushed towards the swirling, blue patterns. Sela bounded by him quickly, catching Azoth before turning invisible on his right side.

  Rocky veered his run left and also engaged Stealth and Dark Cloak simultaneously. Once Dark Cloak activated, he felt his vision increase drastically, and the shadows around the room gave up their secrets just as Zippo’s Fireball raced by in the space he had just occupied.

  Four snarling, Doberman-sized rats formed in the swirling light just as the Fireball exploded in their midst. Rats this size would be terrifying to fight, and Rocky knew that they would be terrors for the group if the group didn’t manage to crush them quickly. It had been a lucky break that he hadn’t expected. The creatures needed to form, and that gave them the advantage of surprise.

  The Fireball was unfortunately mistimed and splashed on to the space, flaring up and receding to leave still-forming, rat-shaped blue light. He heard Zippo make a noise of disgust behind him, but then the creatures seemed to pop into existence and fall to the ground.

  He managed to Analyze one of the creatures as it landed.

  Member of The Ratpack

  Splinter

  Level 11

  Apprentice-Ninja

  Azoth’s jaws chomped down on the head of one of the rats a moment after it formed, and his clawed, feline paw knocked another one careening into the air with a squeak. Rocky diverted to follow the airborne enemy, not wanting to let it recover and get behind anyone. Another screech signaled Sela landing on the back of another and severing its spinal column with her Sabertooth canines.

  A quick glance back as he continued to follow the flying rat told Rocky only one of the original four creatures remained alive in the center of the Arena. Azoth and Sela were already splitting up to circle the poor thing. He turned back to his target as it landed with a thud. He winced in pain as he listened to a few loud crunches of what must have been either shifting or breaking ribs, but a moment later, he had buried his sword through the rat's chest before it could even regain its feet.

  A new countdown timer appeared in Rocky’s vision as he turned away from the corpse of the rat to see Azoth toss his head to the side to dislodge the final member of the rat pack from his teeth. The creature flopped to the ground, and before his eyes, the corpse slowly sunk into the ground. He quickly glanced behind him to see the same phenomenon occurring to the other creatures there. It was disappointing they wouldn’t be able to butcher the creatures f
or meat, but the thought of eating rat did make Rocky shudder a little. Western culture standards still slightly affected him even though this wasn’t at all the same Earth from the pre-Ether crash era.

  The group gathered back up as the timer counted down from the sixty seconds again. Rocky clenched his teeth, realizing that the countdown timer might be the most significant problem for the group's objective. He forced his jaw to unclench and sighed before voicing his concern, “Honestly, this timer might be the bottleneck if all the fights are going to be that easy.”

  Hell mode initialized.

  All waves prior to the Champion will be released simultaneously.

  Remaining waves: 14

  Good luck!

  I need to learn to keep my big mouth shut.

  The group glared at him, except for Azoth, who jumped up and down in place as his excitement got the better of him. Rocky pointed in all four cardinal directions before saying, “Each one of us takes a side. Don’t let any creature by you, don’t hold back, and don’t downward dogging die!”

  Damn it all!

  Zippo summoned two Fireballs—one into each of his hands—Sela turned invisible, and Rocky triggered his Stealth again, still wrapped in his Dark Cloak skill. The group had fought a lot of battles together over the last week, and each member trusted the others implicitly. For Azoth, Sela, and himself, he felt that they would each die before they let a monster through. For Zippo, it might only be his intense desire to continue to get stronger; the young man was tough to read during a quick glance due to the perpetual snarl on his face. Rocky felt like this type of comradery could only be forged in the heat and blood of combat.

  Rocky felt his body calm slightly as the clock finished its last few seconds.

  3…2…1…

  At zero, blue light lined the chamber. The group stood at the center of a maelstrom of indigo, forming creatures hell-bent on their destruction. Rocky rushed towards the nearest forming group and arrived to see a Volvo-sized turtle pop into existence just as Dark Tidings removed its head before it could retreat into its massive shell. Spinning off and somewhat over the collapsing shell, Rocky saw his next target and cast Analyze.