Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG

Chapter 232

I followed behind the Knights as we headed through one of the bulkheads. Just to be safe, we all held onto each other to ensure we ended up in the same place. The internal dock was quite far from the wolf sprite, so the hope was to get somewhere closer using the spatial distortion.

We left the Supercarrier’s internal dock, the distortion whisking us away to another part of the ship. Like usual, it was a long corridor ending in a T-junction. Tables and cots were dragged out into the hall defensively, though there were no signs of actual fighting.

I pulled out Crow’s Celestial Compass. “Just- uh- just give me a second to see how far we are.”

”Right. Hmm… the spatial distortion is quite something.” The Blue Wolf stopped just next to the bulkhead, staring at it intently.

”Is this your first time? How’d you end up down at the internal dock then?” I asked as I moved down the hall to get my second point for triangulating the wolf’s position.

The man sighed, shaking his head. “The Circle’s fell magic didn’t activate till we were already down here. The illusion took us by surprise, though the fighting was intense enough, we couldn’t leave.”

I did a rough calculation. We were a bit further from the wolf than we had been in the dock. “Let’s keep moving. We’re further now.”

Autumn led the way forward, pausing at the door. “Are we sure this is the best way? I don’t like having no idea where we’ll turn up.”

“Unless you want to cut through hundreds of walls?” I asked. Based on the ship’s schematic, it’d be a long, long time to reach our destination just by cutting through the walls without at least trying to get closer.

The knight shook her head and grabbed my arm. Tyrone joined us as we passed through yet another door. Moving with three of us like this gave me a strong sense of vertigo, as if the magic couldn’t quite tell where our center of mass was with the three of us.

This time, we ended up in a hallway completely different from what I’d seen of the rest of the ship. The halls here were wider, and everything looked clinical, albeit a clinic ripped straight out of a horror movie. A faint scent of industrial cleaners burned my nose. And yet, even that wasn’t enough to hide the distinctly metallic scent of blood.

Corpses in lab coats lay scattered around, heavily armed security guards interspersed amongst them. All were undoubtedly dead, with blood scattered across the once white walls in arcs of arterial spray. Deep gouge marks, similar to the claws marks on the corpses I found earlier, marked the walls and bodies.

A few of the bodies were even burned horribly, as if lava had been poured over their skin. The nauseating, greasy scent of burning human flesh soon overpowered even the blood as I looked at their faces twisted in utter agony.

Fire still burned here and there along the hall upon fallen robotic defenders. As we passed by a few, I tapped them with my foot to send a pulse of Technical Expertise through. The bots were too scraped to get anything good out of.

“On your toes.” Knight Tyrone stepped forward, his longsword loose and pointed almost lazily toward the ground. Autumn shifted behind me, protecting us from the back as I was sandwiched between the two Crusaders.

”They had a lab aboard this thing?” Autumn asked as she crouched, poking at one of the corpses with a shortsword.

I thought through the blueprint, struggling to place where we were for a moment. There weren’t enough clues yet. That, and there were too many laboratory-like sections of this ship to place it accurately. “Dozens.”

The Knight stood up, wiping some blood off her sword using one of the scientist's lab coats. “Why? What’s the point? I thought this was a military force?”

“From what Lord Lykos said, it seemed Sentinel originally had this one stationed just off Cwalu. Sentinel's other two Phalanx-class Supercarriers should be more militarized from what I've heard.” The Blue Wolf informed us. He paused at an open door, tilting his head curiously as he gazed into a room.

I followed his gaze, noticing a surgical table covered in blood. What looked like a surgeon was strapped to the table, a massive pool of blood flowing out underneath him.

Whatever killed this guy hadn’t been focused on brutal efficiency like the rest of the dead in the hall. At a glance, his arteries had been severed, and he’d been left to bleed out. Malice practically radiated from the room.

”The only thing scarier than a beast is an intelligent one.” Tyrone muttered. He shifted away, glancing down the hall once more before nodding to me. “How far?”

”Right.” I checked the compass a couple more times. “Closer. If we go from here… maybe fifty walls separate us? And we’ll have to go down through the floor a couple.”

The knight stroked the pommel of his sword. ”Hmm… What do you think, Autumn?”

”Will we be able to cut through here? There's a good chance the lab’s walls are reinforced.” The woman raised a valid concern.

I thought through the schematic for a moment before motioning down the hall. “Should be personal offices down there. Walls are thinner.”

We continued down the hall, eyes up for anything that might pose a threat. It was a needless concern. Whatever had torn through here hadn’t left anything remaining.

That being said, we did freeze just outside of the first office. Inside, everything was burnt out into a husk. There wasn’t an untouched piece of paper or device left in the place.

What gave us pause, though, were three corpses hanging from the ceiling. All three of them looked to be higher-ups in this lab. Absolute terror and despair twisted all of their expressions into horrifying visages.

They didn’t hang from nooses either. Whatever did this had strung them up from their own entrails in a macabre display. Even at a glance, I could see they had their tendons severed so they couldn’t even try to escape like the surgeon. Even I, who was becoming increasingly numb to displays of brutality, found it off-putting.

”That's… unsettling.” Autumn said timelessly. “Seemed like they messed with something they shouldn’t have.”

”Corpos for you…” I muttered. More like corpses. Could never leave well enough alone now, could they?

”Let’s go to the next one?” Knight Tyrone suggested. “Looks like it has a working door, at least.”

We moved on, heading to the next office over. Likewise, it was burned out entirely. I couldn’t keep my curiosity caged. “What’s with all the burned-out spaces?”

“Standard procedure for a lab working on something the owners would rather keep private. Happens in Savant labs all the time when we raid them.” Tyrone shrugged. “Which way is it?”

I lined up the compass. “That way.”

The Blue Wolf wasted no time heading to the wall. He raised his sword and activated it. The blade started buzzing as intense vibrations slightly distorted the shape. With three smooth slices, the Knight cut through the wall with only slight resistance, leaving a triangular gap into the next space over.

We moved through the gap into the next room over. This one was filled with the tell-tale signs of the Circle. Plants clung to the doorway leading out into the hall, vines dangling low as if to block our vision.

Knight Tyrone stepped forward, his longsword flashing as the vines were severed in one smooth slice. The rest of the hall outside the room was seriously overgrown. The plants block almost all of the visibility-

Tyrone slashed at me, making my entire body freeze up in confusion. Usually, dodging would be the right call when someone attacks you. And yet, I didn't feel the normal phantom pain of Insight? What’s-

His blade passed over my head to the top of the door frame. The blade caught on something before cleanly vanishing overhead. “Contact! Get cover!”

I ducked out of the way as my brain finally caught up and flung myself into the room as I raised my rifle in confusion. Tyrone backed into the room a step behind me, his sword flashing as he cut down something small darting at his face.

As he cut down one, five more took its place as they lunged at him. Three of them were taken out by the Knight, and one of them was cut cleanly in half by Autumn’s short sword as she moved to support.

The last one snuck by at a weird angle, slipping past the Knight’s longsword as it latched onto his arm. The horrific sound of metal loudly grinding hit my ears as the creature’s thorny vines tightened around the silver armor.

With the one so cleanly latched around Knight Tyrone’s arm, I got a clear view of our opponents. It was a small, octopus-like plant. Vines acted like tentacles, and its ‘face’ was a maw filled with serrated bark shaped like a saw.

A dark liquid dripped from inside its maw, harmlessly trickling down the Knight’s silver armor. Its tongue, a long tendril covered in needle-thin thorns, wagged frantically as it suction-cupped down onto his armor and began grinding away at the metal.

I fired a shot, tearing through its head in a spray of dark sap. The tendrils released as the creature flopped to the ground, lifelessly.

“Thanks.” The Knight said, though he was too busy slicing through another wave of the huggers to face me.

More and more of them swarmed toward us, as if drawn by the gunshots of my rifle. They didn’t seem like much of a threat to the Knights with their armor, but if one of those grabbed onto me? A shudder went down my spine.

I fired another shot, protecting the Knight’s off angles as best as I could. I stared down my barrel, flicking around with bursts as more of the beasts flew through the air. My gun clicked, giving a momentary pause to my fire support as I reloaded.

“How many of these bastards are there?!” Autumn called, her twin swords flashing in a dance of death. Already, a pile started to form at the entrance of the doorway as we held the choke point.

I dropped my rifle into its sling and pulled my grenade launcher out. This time, I skipped right past the frag grenades and grabbed a couple of my pyro grenades. They looked similar to my frags, though with a red strip around their base.

I loaded a grenade and aimed down the hall, launching it into the jungle like overgrowth. The grenade exploded as soon as it impacted just down the hall, turning into a blaze in no time. It spread rapidly, consuming the plants as smoke and screeches filled the air.

Without the thirty-minute limitation of my normal Molotovs, I’d filled them with plenty of supplementary chemicals. The pyro grenades lasted much longer after ignition, stuck to their target like a sticky resin, and burned much hotter.

All that being said, a firewall emerged at one end of the hallway, dropping the rushing tide of huggers as we gained space to breathe. It burned brightly and cleanly, not letting even a single one of the beasts by.

With reinforcements cut off, it took no time for us to cut through the several dozen remaining huggers. Knight Tyrone flicked his blade, bisecting one of the octopus-like entities. “How many more of those do you have?”

I checked my bag, getting a rough count. Since we were coming after the circle, I’d loaded up on pyro grenades. I had far more of them than I did the basic frag variants. “Eighteen more.”

”Good.” Tyrone shifted, cutting through another plant monster as he fully blocked the door by himself. “Autumn, grab something to barricade the door. We’ll set a fire and then wait.”

”Roger.” Knight Autumn sheathed her twin short swords, backing away toward a filing cabinet. She easily pushed it over to the door.

Seeing what the Blue Wolf was planning, I reloaded and shot two more pyro grenades out into the hall, spreading the fire over as much of the jungle as I could. With each additional grenade, the pressure on Tyrone lifted.

”Save the rest.” Tyrone moved swiftly, swinging the door closed and bracing his shoulder against the metal. Autumn soon joined him, shoving the filing cabinet against the door.

I wiped sweat off my brow and dropped my launcher back into my bag. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

“Damn bastards probably have traps like this set up all over the ship. No telling how many of us have already fallen.” Tyrone’s voice twisted in barely contained rage as he nodded to the door. “How long do you think it’ll take to burn through that?”

”I don’t know.” I wasn’t a fire expert. And there was a chance the fires would kill each other with all the smoke before having a good effect. “Maybe… ten- fifteen minutes?”

The Knight nodded, moving over to a chair in the room and unceremoniously plopping down. “Then we wait.”

Autumn joined him, and I followed a moment later. I stared at the door as silence filled the room.