Outrun - Cyberpunk LitRPG

“Two Scavs with bear traps set up. Scav Marks are on the floor, so we might be near a Scav Den. Do we want to go around?” I asked Mira as soon as I returned back in range of her.

“Hmm…” She went silent. “I doubt we can clear a Scav Den by ourselves, at least not without proper equipment. Anyway, we can mark the location for someone else to clear out? No way we leave their operation untouched.”

I thought about it, but without a proper map, it would be difficult to mark its location. Difficult, not impossible. I just dropped a pin on the Mapp™. “Yeah.” If someone was willing to come into the Underground to hunt Scavs, then simply pointing them in the right direction would be good enough. “Are we going around though?”

“Do you want to spend another hour looking for a way north? And it's just two. We could probably flatline the gonks without alerting the whole den.” The passion in her voice was evident. I could understand. This was probably burning at her to intervene at least somewhat.

I bet my bacon the only reason she didn’t want to attack the den was thanks to our current mission. So what if she didn’t have her ‘proper equipment’? She was a crack shot, and could easily outpace any of the Scavs in combat. They were one of the weakest groups out there combat-wise since they only preyed on people through ambushes. In outright combat, even most low-level mercs could wipe a den with their team.

“Don’t suppose you brought a silencer and subsonic rounds?” I asked, my voice tilted up with an ember of hope.

Mira simply handed me a knife as we moved back down our tunnel. “You know those are heavily controlled.”

We hatched a quick plan after I relayed all the intel. Once she was in position - a bit of ways back from the Scavs standing guard - I moved forward with all of my Perks active. The tunnels were massive, so I easily skirted my way around the lantern's light. Moving slowly, they didn’t even see me as I passed around to the tunnel behind them.

Then, I picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the only tunnel not occupied. The rock bounced down the path. It was the oldest trick in the book, and quite effective against terrible guards such as the two on duty. Immediately, the one not on withdrawals moved to investigate with a muttered curse while the Patch withdrawal guy just jittered in place.

I moved silently, creeping up on the guy from behind as my hand tightened around the handle of the combat knife. Once I was right up on the guy, I froze for a moment, catching sight of sundered flesh stuck to his welded armor. The poor victim that was used to make such armor probably didn’t even get the mercy of death before being ripped apart. Chrome of the dead tended to be locked up and required some effort to make it usable again. A flawed attempt by manufacturers to stop people from icing others for their chrome, I suppose. Much easier to keep someone alive as they rip it out.

I struck like lightning and ripped the blade across his throat while I wrapped my hand around his mouth and yanked his head back. The dagger easily sunk through his flesh, grating against bone and chrome as the edge cut through the important bits. Blood instantly spurted up into my wrist as I pulled the guy down and finished him off.

‘Course, such a move wasn’t entirely silent. The other guard immediately turned back, but it was too late for him as well. Mira, for all her lacking stealth skills, was damn good at combat. Before he could fully turn around, she was already moving towards him, easily dodging the beartraps. Just as he was about to make a move of his own, she chucked a brick at the guy’s head, catching him off guard. As he was falling, she smoothly iced him with a strike through the neck and disarmed him in the same motion.

And just like that, the Scav checkpoint was cleared. I shoved the dead Scav off of me, careful to avoid too much arterial spray as I looted him. Or at least attempted to. The guy had nothing of value on him, and I would probably have to pay someone to take his trashed gun off me. Not worth lugging it around.

While Mira wasn't looking, I summoned Crow's Canteen of Chaos and washed off the blood as best I could with water. It was just easier if she didn't know anything about the interface, at least as long as nothing goes stupendiously wrong. D-did you just jinx it? Bad Shiro! It's like saying 'Is it over?' A chill went up my spine as I cast a superstitious glance around.

“That went well,” Mira cursed us too as she cleaned her knife off. Her trench coat was covered in blood, but it looked as if the fabric was liquid-resistant. It easily slid off the garment and dripped to the tunnel's ground.

“Yeah.” I looked down at my latest victim, feeling only a fraction of the usual remorse towards murder. Really, could it even be called murder when I was simply taking care of society’s trash? Scavs were the scum at the bottom of the barrel- no, they were the floorboards below the barrel... or was I just dehumanizing them to make myself feel better?

Mira blinded me with her flashlight as she flicked it about the tunnels. “Which one?”

I also looked about, but the decision was fairly easy. Considering we wanted to avoid the Scav Den at the moment, we would continue on straight north. Most likely, the one that painted it came from the den. Using that tidbit of information and the direction of the Scav Mark, it was safe to say the den was to our east.

We dragged the corpses a bit down the tunnel, delaying the eventual discovery of the flatlined gonks best we could. I also messed with their guns and permanently jammed up the barrels. Whoever tried to shoot it next time would be in for a nasty surprise. Then, we continued our journey down through the dastardly depths.

Mira and I walked amongst the ruins of ancient sewer systems and subways. Dozens of paths had either led into dead ends or other groups which we promptly avoided the best we could. None of them were as easily identifiable as the Scavs had been, and we didn’t want to get into a fight we might not win. While it was shoot first down here, avoiding trouble was also common.

We had already put up quite a bit of distance between the Scav Den, and we were slowly closing in on Talus Tower as we walked parallel to a rail line. Debris cluttered the once pristine tunnels, and the metal rails had long rusted over.

Mira stopped behind me, causing me to also stop as I heard her footsteps cut out. “I hear something up ahead… growling maybe?”

I nodded to her. “Might just be some rodents… I’ll go look and see if we can’t sneak around if it's something serious.”

“Okay.” Mira looked to struggle for a moment before shaking her head. “Good luck, Shiro.”

“Thanks, choom.” I turned off my light, and once more edged forward along the path with a silent note that I should ask for Low Light sensitivity when I meet up with Advent.

I nearly fell after a while. A hole, covered in darkness, plummeted deep beneath the surface. Half the rail line had caved in at some point into a massive chamber with dozens of different pipes leading into it.

The bottom of the hole was dark, and yet not pitch black. Massive growths of the glowing lichen ran rampant across the cavern, illuminating the surrounding areas semi-decently. It looked to have once been a control station of some sort, with hundreds of valves and pipes intersecting across the gargantuan chamber. It was hard to tell for sure. Age hadn’t treated the place well at all. Debris covered the entire space, and several pipes had been busted by falling rocks. There was even a rail sticking straight up as if impaled into the ground by a giant.

Shambling shapes stumbled around the rubble, light shining through the holes and thin spots in their flesh. The skin was stretched tight, giving a clear view of bones and rotting flesh. Eyes, forever lost of their humanity, stared ceaselessly around as they groaned and growled. Ghouls.

Aetherial Perception triggered as I looked around, allowing me to see little kernels of something corrupted in each of the ghouls. It was nauseating to look at like I was staring at some kind of flame. Yet, the kernels gave off a sickening darkness that attempted to imitate light. Thankfully, they were quite far so it wasn’t too big of an issue.

I looked around a bit more before I radioed into Mira. “C’mon up. And watch your step.”

Her quietest still made enough noise for me to clearly hear her creeping up long before I saw her. Every step would crush the ground underneath her as if she were intentionally trying to alert the ghouls below. “What was it?”

I just pointed down towards the ghoul nest. She edged up closer, though I could see the hesitation to approach the drop clear through her body language. For a moment, I was tempted to kick a rock at her feet like she was caving in the hole, but rationality won out and I resisted.

“Why are you smirking?” Mira asked as she backed up from the straight drop into the chamber.

How could she see?! The mask should cover everything. “N-no reason. Let’s keep going.” I didn’t wait for her as I started moving northward once more.

“Chek chek…” Mira pounded the floor behind me, every other step clanking subtly with a metallic click as her boots clicked against the subway rails. She really didn’t have a clue about subtlety.

The subway tunnel led true as we split through the darkness. Graffiti of an age long since past covered the walls. The occasional light paint artwork sat atop the foundation of ancient paint, depicting dozens of different types of gangs and icons.

The subway had been such a good find. It went almost straight north and had enough branching tunnels and caves to easily get back into the sewer system if need be. ‘Course, that also increased the likelihood of ambushes, but we thankfully didn’t see anything bigger than the rodents and the occasional group we avoided until we were about a mile from Talus Tower.

“Damn, what happened here?” Mira asked as we approached a platform area of the subway. A long-abandoned train, its parts rusted and slopping off, sat flopped over at its station. The entire thing was so aged that even the windows inside were covered by debris.

Bullet holes littered the walls of the subway tunnel, and the number of corpses sharply increased. The bones of the corpses sat in mere remnants of worn and tattered clothing. The shreds of fabric had been torn to pieces over the years they rested down here, making it almost impossible to tell who they once belonged to. Humans weren't the only ones though; there were plenty of weird-looking animals and grotesque-looking vermin.

Sure, corpses weren’t anything new down here, but the amount of bones far outpaced the last several miles of occasional corpses. Just like elsewhere, they were mere remnants of gnawed bones, with many of them missing several. Most likely, the missing bones were taken by scavengers over the long years they had been down here.

They were almost all human-looking, though they probably weren’t humans themselves. Kinda. The state of the corpses, most only laying in tatters of long worn out, and slightly off human bones, suggested the majority were ghouls. It must’ve been a rather large ghoul nest too based on the body count. At least thirty, though I got the feeling I was undershooting it.

I walked around and pried a small handful of bullets from the wall after some time. All, though deformed to a certain extent, looked to be the same caliber. A preliminary guess says they came from different shooters based on the scratches from the rifling. “Looks like a big fight.”

I made a move to head further toward the platform to collect some shells glinting in the darkness, but was stopped by Mira. “I have a bad feeling about this… let’s just- let’s move in slow, okay?”

“Right.” Insight wasn’t triggered at all, so I didn’t have a similar feeling. Still, probably best to listen to the resident combat expert. Or as much of an expert as she could be. She had been training for most of her life to fight, so she definitely had a far better grasp than I did.

I moved forward, though moved slower to follow her request. I also checked several shells buried in dust as I went, noting down their markings as I put a handful into my bag. It was military ammunition, of which I had no doubt. Really, it wasn’t too hard to find out. The FSA had a clear munition mark.

“I’d say one of our missing squads traveled through here a decade ago.” I crouched down and brought my flashlight a bit closer to the ground. There were splatters of blood, looking slightly fresh. “What do-”

“Look out!” Mira tackled me to the ground in the split second I felt the icy cool caress of Insight cover my body. We tumbled to the side, her strong form easily moving me out of the way as the oxygen escaped my lungs in a rough rasp.