Steel Waste Chapter 77
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*Knock, knock*
...
*Knock, knock*
Eddie scowls at the door and drops tosses teh empty jet to the floor with the rest, "Who the fuck is it?" he calls out in irritation.
The door opens with Karl and Afton walking in, the two bodyguards sitting around sit up slightly to be ready for an attack should it come. Eddie gestures at Scrambler who seemed like he was about to start firing shots any minute, the man was a short fuse that lit spontaneously and randomly.
"Oh, so it's you two... I don't see Tommy so..." he starts, his voice trailing off suggestively.
"Tommy and his gang decided that they didn't want to come back with us, they'd just raided a caravan and saw it fit that they keep all of the spoils, ignoring your tax." Karl explains.
Eddie shrugs, "So they're dead then? I'd say good job but they were technically still Powder Gangers. Whatever, doesn't matter now."
"So, we gettin' paid for this or what?" Karl asks abruptly.
"Why would I pay you to deal with your former posse?" Eddie muttered with a weird expression.
"Because we had to take down the whole gang with just the two of us, add the fact we brought this." he gestures at Afton and he drops five bloody Powder Ganger jackets as well as some supplies the NCR had handed them. "I thnk some caps are in order."
Eddie chuckles, "Fine, a hundred each... No more than that, we're fucked on food and water but I'll not be ripped off by my own gang." he states.
Karl slowly nods, "One last thing Eddie. One of the men in the caravan had ties with the NCR, I managed to... Persuade them to answer some questions, the last NCR caravan to Sloan was destroyed, so they're sending a larger one with more men. That's not all though, it apparently has triple the supplies we found last time."
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Eddie's eyes widen greedily, "That could sort us out for a while, you sure they were telling the truth?"
Karl nods, "The man was given the choice between watching his wife die or answering... The torture softened him up... I killed them both afterwards anyway." he admits with a hard look.
"When's this happening?"
"I don't know exactly, but Sloan will be receiving their supplies by tonight or tomorrow morning... Setting up an ambush today is the best choice, plant some traps, get into position, etc." Karl goes over a quick plan and the others nod.
"I want you to go with the group Karl, you're one of the best we have, we can't afford to fail this." Eddie asks, Afton struggling not to be affected by this.
Karl shakes his head, "I'm old and tired, just been walking for a couple of days with minimal sleep. You'll be fine without me, I've already given you the info. Now, are we done? I wanna drink." he huffs.
"Fine, piss off and get your drink. Scrambler, grab some men and set up an ambush for that caravan. Bring a lot of guns, you're gonna need it." Eddie states as he tosses a bag of caps at Karl and Afton.
The duo leave and Afton sends a relieved glance at Karl, the plan had worked unexpectedly well. Karl had managed to portray the strength of the 'NCR caravan' so that Eddie would be forced to send many Powder Gangers with the best weaponry to seize it.
This would no doubt be a huge boon during the upcoming siege, especially since one of the guys leaving would be Scrambler... Afton had heard stories about him, and had no wish to see the man in action.
Karl left to start drinking at the bar and await the signal, Afton knew he couldn't just walk over and plant a bomb in broad daylight, he'd need to wait until nightfall to do it. The courtyard of the prison always had a few people wandering about, playing caravan or other card games while eating or drinking. Their attitudes would make you rethink whether they were in a supply crisis...
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So, until that time he'd do what he usually does in the NCRCF... Sit in his designated office and wait for patients to need his services. Fortunately, there didn't seem to be anyone injured today, which left him alone to go over the plan in his head.
Glancing over to the medical supplies, he decides to steal all the stimpacks they had, he shoved the ten syringes into his Deathclaw leather satchel. Taking another look he figures that if he's going to steal the stimpacks, he might as well take the other things as well.
[10 stimpacks acquired] +30 Hit Points
[5 Radaway acquired] : -50 Radiation
[7 Med X acquired] : +25 Damage Resistance for 4 min
[6 Rad X acquired] : 25% Rad. Res. for 4 min.
[2 Jet acquired] : +15 Action Points for 4 minutes
[3 Psycho acquired] : +25% Damage for 4 minutes
[1 Rebound acquired] : Regenerates +5 Action Points per second for 1 minute
[1 Fixer acquired] : Permanently removes addiction
[2 Antivenom acquired] : Cures animal and arthropod poisons.
[1 Mentats acquired] : +2 Intelligence for 4 minutes, +2 Perception for 4 minutes, +1 Charisma for 4 minutes
[2 Buffout acquired] : +60 Max Hit Points for, 4min +3 Endurance for 4min, +2 Strength for 4min
Quite the haul, but similarly pretty terrifying when you consider these were all the medical supplies the Powder Gangers have... They had around a hundred members so this was really the minimum you could have before people started dying due to injuries...
Afton could also notice the obvious lack of addictive Chems, with how much Jet Eddie was going through he was surprised to find two... Oh well, he didn't intend to use Chems unless the circumstances were incredibly dire, he had no idea what effect they'd have on him as he'd never done them before. Obviously, he could see their effects with the Pipboy but that wasn't what he was referring to.
Once he was out of this place and in a safe area he'd sell them off for some extra caps though, maybe he could buy himself a better Energy weapon than this piece of shit laser pistol. If he couldn't then he'd just go with ballistics until something dropped into his arms.
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- In Serial20 Chapters
Sword System Academia
2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. The elven mage researchers are figuring out how to imbue heroes with power, while the heroes are trying to figure out how to use the powers that they gain. Humans are the best hero templates because they are blank and have no intrinsic magic. Or at least that what the elves thought. The human MC has his own secrets... There will be some similarities with litrpgs, but I would call it more a progression fantasy or gamelit story. For example, the stats are very low, at least initially. Say we have a stat called Str. Going from Str = 1 to Str = 2 is a huge deal. Also, going from Dex = 0 to Dex = 1 is an even bigger deal. I guess you could call it a "low-stat litrpg", haha. Also, the heroes won't be gaining stats simply by killing things or leveling up. You can't increase stats arbitrarily, either. There will be rules to how stats can increase, and how they work with each other. The elven mages will be figuring out these rules in order to craft stronger and stronger heroes. Some inspiration will be from cultivation magic systems, but there won't be overt cultivation, at least for now. A theme I really want to explore is the idea of interactions. That includes things like hero crafter vs hero, tactics vs strategy, skill synergies, racial interactions (dwarves, elves, etc), and son. Yeah, so hero crafting. I'm super excited about this project and venturing into publishing. If you want to check out the upcoming story, you can follow my RR author profile to see when it drops here. Finally... THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! I'm very sorry that SSA is stopping, but I hope at least some of you will find the next story at least as enjoyable, if not more. Thanks to all the readers who gave SSA a shot. Big hug or solid fistbump to all of you, whichever you prefer! I hope this message is not a downer but an upper, because I am psyched!! -purlcray -------------- BLURB: Talen, youngest Master of the Koroi, makes his way to the Empire's capital to salvage his clan's fate. But the bustling city has few opportunities for the traditionalist. For the old sword clans are fading. With the rise of alchemy, gold can purchase strength that ordinarily took years of training to cultivate. Sword artists, once rare and accomplished, are quickly growing in number, especially among the wealthy noble class. Even with such alchemy, though, no one has advanced to the rank of Grandmaster in countless years. Talen's true dream is to walk the path of a sword artist to the very end while fulfilling his clan duties. And then the Swordgeists return, fabled founders of all sword arts, gods who had touched the world long ago and vanished. These myths turned into reality warn of a coming threat. Alongside this warning, they issue an invitation to the Sword System Academy, a path to power beyond the mortal realm. But first, they will hold an entrance exam... Story notes:Sword System Academia blends elements of western and asian fantasy such as xianxia and litrpg. I took parts from different genres I enjoyed and twisted them into my own creation. There will be an explicit system, both of the litrpg kind and the hard(ish) magic kind, but it is embedded within an academic structure that will develop over the course of the story. This is my attempt to design a unique type of system, the System Academia.
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My baby ~ Cohen musey
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