Chapter 5

Ultimately there were nine individuals who received the Nanobot treatment; all volunteers except the first. All except the first were terminal patients whom we believed the Nanobots could cure. The first seven terminally ill patients did not take the conversion nearly as well as my colleague. Each of the seven was treated with a different strain of nanobots, and each of the seven became delusional.

After the seven patients, the higher-ups did not want to allow any more nanobots to be installed. But shortly after that I became desperate. I was so wrapped up in my work I had put off doctors’ appointments until it was too late. I had stage 4 liver cancer that had metastasized to my lungs as well as a bit to my other organs. I was a dead man walking. I didn’t know if the Nanobots could save me, but I would damn well try.

Together with my colleague, without the permission of the higher ups, we were able to install the final strain of nanobots that we had developed without destroying my sanity. It seems the original countermeasures were the root cause. With the addition of a small number of the unrestricted nanobots from the original batch, the new strain did not affect my mind. When we tried to retroactively apply this to the other seven, they had decided they were gods of the various domains and did not want the treatment because they were, and I quote, “immortal gods” and we were just going to take that away from them. The attempts of the corporation to force the treatment on them led to them declaring war on Humanity.

Sir Francis Gordon, 2074

“33 down, 7 to go,” muttered Lucas. Lucas silently hoped that Rose was keeping track of what was cleared and what was not cleared. Floor 0 basically consisted of offices. With closed doors, it was easy to walk the halls and verify none of the rats were above ground. The suspended animation chamber floors were also straightforward to clear. They were basically one long meandering hallway with a couple of recovery rooms off the sides. That made it pretty easy to make sure there aren’t any enemies left behind on those floors too.

The Training Center and storage rooms on level 6 were another matter. The training center had traditional training rooms near the start of the floor. But there were also two maze-like constructs designed for training people in the art of tracking.

“Rose,” asked Lucas, “Is there any way to shut off the bottom floors from everything above? I would really like to not be attacked by goblins now that there are no rats guarding the stairs up from floor seven.” The light flashed once. “OK. One flash. That means yes so I should head to the stairs.”

As Lucas was heading to the stairs between floor six and seven, he heard a grinding noise. Quickly making the mental leap that it was a blast door similar to what was outside the AI server room, Lucas followed the staircase down a little way to see if he could get the door close.

“Rose!” shouted Lucas, “Back the door up. The door is stuck on a... well probably a chewed bone. Back it up, let me clean the track up and then you can try again.” There was no response from Rose, but the blast door retreated into the wall.

Moving quickly, under the assumption that the Goblins probably heard that, Lucas pulled the bone out from the track and dragged the bone down the track to knock any pieces of junk out of the way.

“Try it now Rose,” said Lucas. The door started to slowly close. As the door was closing Lucas heard grunts and hisses. They didn’t sound like rats, so Lucas guessed they were goblins. “Close the door faster Rose. I think we have company.” As the grunts and hisses get louder and louder the blast door got closer and closer to closed. Lucas watched from the opening hoping to get an inspect off on the goblins to see what he would be up against. The first goblin shot out from around the corner. Just before the door latches shut, a goblin arm darted out into the gap and stabbed at Lucas with some sort of sharpened bone. The goblin hits Lucas with the sharpened bone, but as the bone impacts Lucas, the arm is smashed between the door and the wall. Before Lucas can even check the Damage, Mind over matter heals him.

Lucas had barely managed to glimpse the Goblin before the door closed. It appeared overall as a combination between the colors brown and grey, but the grey turned to brownish green around the eyes. The goblin might have come up to the height of a 12-year-old. The Goblin’s face looked vaguely like someone had slapped some anime eyes onto a toddler’s head and called it a day. The head was the only place that didn’t have wrinkles. The goblin’s head almost looked too big for its body.

The arm that was stuck in the door bled red from the wound. The arm was mostly a straight grey, but besides that, it had the same build as any other humanoid would. Lucas knew that Goblins were created from scratch, but he thought that the base DNA for Goblins might have been drawn from gorillas based on the overall appearance.

“Phew,” sighed Lucas. “I thought I was going to get into a fight I wasn’t ready for there. Thanks for getting the door closed Rose. These Goblins look like they are going to be tougher than the Rats. Hopefully, the old storage room has something usable in it, or this might be tougher than I can handle right now.”

Turning, Lucas returned to the entrance to the training center and looked around. “I’ve got the three dead rats here that were guarding the stairs,” thought Lucas, “But there are 7 more within the base somewhere. The upper floors appear to be clear so the last 7 have got to be here. Well, here somewhere”

The room Lucas stood in is rather large, roughly 50 meters by 25 meters. It looked like it used to be set-up as a kind of weapons training dojo. Lucas recalled that the original intent was to allow enough space for the 2000+ troops to have somewhere to warm up after thawing out. There are three doors off the main room. One is labeled “Ninja Course,” the second is labeled “Storage,” and the third is labeled “Tracking Training.” Lucas noticed that someone has previously scratched in the words “Ultimate Hide and Seek” under the tracking training label. “Rose was this you?” asks Lucas while pointing to the “Tracking Training.” The lights flicker, “It looks like Rose is laughing again,” thought Lucas.

Looking at the three doors, it was pretty obvious which one was going to be easier to search. “The storage room should be laid out in a straightforward fashion. Rows and Columns are pretty easy to search through.” walking up to the door, Lucas tries the storage room first. “Locked, it figures” thought Lucas.

Peeking his head through both of the other doorways one at a time. The Ninja course appears to be in pretty good condition. A plaque was also visible after Lucas opened the door which said that the Ninja course leads into the Tracking Course. Peeking his head into the Tracking Course, it is very clear that rats had passed through here. Not only was their no true door in the entrance, just shreds of what used to be some sort of curtain, but there were piles. Piles that looked very similar to the trash piles that were scattered around on the other five floors the rats had infested.

Looking around, Lucas saw the remains of a weapon rack. Breaking off a piece of a board, Lucas wedged the board under the door leading to the Ninja course to prevent it from opening, and having made up his mind, Lucas walked into the Ultimate Hide and Seek room.

It is quickly evident that searching this room be next to impossible. There were ramps and stairs, random walls that you could go around both sides of and come out in the same place. There were tunnels Lucas would have had to crawl through as well as platforms he would have to climb up to. “Dang,” thought Lucas, “now I know what Rose meant by Ultimate Hide and Seek. If I could keep some space between the tracker and me, it would be very unlikely that they would ever find me, and I never won Hide and Seek as a kid!”

With no way to effectively search the room, Lucas decided to look for any entrances and exits. Following the wall in the direction that the Ninja course first took off in, the first priority would be to ensure that the Ninja course was secure. If the rats hadn’t gotten into the Ninja course, then blocking it off should limit the required searching.

Pretty quickly Lucas came upon the door he was looking for. “Thank God that’s shut,” said Lucas out loud, “One less nightmare room to search.”

“Squeak” came from the direction he had just come from

“And of course,” thought Lucas, “now the rats know I am here.” Quickly circling back towards the entrance, two rats come into view. They didn’t look the same as the Rats he had been fighting through the rest of the facility, they appeared to be larger overall; taller, stronger, and longer. “These rats are going to be a fight. At least there are only two of them.”

Activating Stealth and his spells, Lucas began to creep towards the rats to initiate combat. Quickly inspecting the rats, Lucas learned they were “Elite Giant Rats” and had 105 hit points. Still less than half of Lucas's hit points, but nearly twice as much as the non-elite rats.

This shouldn’t be any more difficult than the first set of rats he took out. Silently coming up behind the first rat, he stabs both of his daggers down into the back of the rat. Swinging around Lucas followed up the backstab with a three-hit combo to the side of the rat as it’s turning to face Lucas. The three hit combo relieved the rat of just under a third of its total health leaving it with a third of its health left after both hits.

Before anything else happened the uninjured rat headbutted Lucas and then bit his arm to try and get him to drop a dagger. The combined attacks knocked off almost 15% of Lucas's Health. While the rat didn’t manage to get Lucas to drop the knife, it did manage to get a Critical hit. As Lucas swung around his other arm to dislodge the new rat with his other dagger, a screen popped up. “Bleeding Applied,” followed promptly by “Bleeding removed by Mind over Matter.” As his dagger swung towards the head of the rat, Lucas saw two more rats running his way. With the rat failing to dodge as it was biting into Lucas's hand, the rat was on the receiving end of a critical hit as the dagger entered its skull. Quickly pulling it down and shoving it down again before the rat could retreat, Lucas scores another critical hit. The rat was down to maybe 20% of its original health in just those two hits. “Apparently critical hits to the head are extremely effective,” thought Lucas, right before his leg was bitten by the original rat. It wasn’t a particularly effective attack, but it did lock down Lucas's mobility advantage.

With the second rat retreating and the two new rats coming towards Lucas quickly, Lucas needed to finish at least one of the original rats off quickly. Pulling the first rat with him, Lucas activated Dash and slammed into the second rat daggers first which finished off the rat’s remaining health. Twisting, Lucas used his speed advantage to stab the first rat in the conveniently stationary skull. With that, he was able to finish off the first rat. Turning, at 75% health, Lucas prepared to face the two fresh rats.

As Lucas waited for their approach, he began working on the other mind spell that Rose told him about. “The enemy is slowing down; their heart is pumping slower, and their nerves are transmitting signals slower. The enemy is Slow!” The Spell hits the trailing rat, causing it to fall a little behind, but it almost didn’t matter as the first rat slams into Lucas. Lucas bounces off the rat and lands a few feet away without any significant injury. With the slowed rat still not quite caught up to the first. Lucas takes a risk and Activates dash on the second rat. Daggers first, Lucas dashes towards the second rat. Moving almost as if lightning, the second rat is only able to maneuver its head out of the way before the daggers slam into its side and shoulder in a critical hit and knocks off ¼ of its health.

Before Lucas could capitalize on this, the first rat jumps onto his back and savages Lucas with its claws. Slash, Slash Slash. The three hit combo drops him down to roughly 50% health. “Oomph,” said Lucas as he shakes the rat loose. As it falls, Lucas twists around and stabs his dagger into the underbelly of the rat. Getting very lucky, as his 7-point advantage in luck suggests should have happened a bit more often, Lucas manages to critically strike the rat and sever its Carotid Artery. With that rat quickly bleeding out, Lucas can concentrate on the sole remaining rat. With Lucas limping because of the injuries to his leg and slowed due to the injuries to his back, he is barely faster than the slowed rat. Facing each other, they both commit and moves in at the same time as the rat. Striking out at the same time, Lucas's first dagger blocks the swipe, while his second dagger lodges itself in the rat’s eye.

With the rat falling back, Lucas loses his grip on his knife. But with the rat partially blind and with next to no health left, a single nick from his remaining dagger could have finished it off. As the rat turns to run away, with as much speed as possible, Lucas throws the knife at the rat. Lucas’s lucky streak ends, as the thrown knife struck the rat with its pommel. The damage from the impact causes the rat to collapse in defeat. Still breathing but too injured to move. Its health is hovering at a single point

Lucas turned to finish off the rat with the severed artery, only to find that it had expired during the fight. Lucas turned back around, calmly walks over to the rat which had tried to flee and plunged his dagger into its other eye. As he watched it expire, Lucas slowly slid down against the wall and decided to take a rest. Grabbing one of the water bottles and MREs out of the bag, Lucas started to eat as he waits for mind over matter to regenerate his health. After Lucas finishes eating and drinking, he manages to examine his new spell and retrieve his daggers just as he reaches full health.

Congratulations!

You have learned a spell!

Slow

Beginner 1

7 mana/minute

Targets overall speed reduced by 1.0 x Affinity%

-8% Speed

Space / Time