My NPC and I were mining downstairs. After 7 hours of labor it was finished. I went downstairs. As usual, he came with me.
As we descended, I saw solid rock from 8 directions around me. My NPC had no place to be. He must have been left behind! Then I went back to surface. He was not there!
The NPC was pushed into rock as we descended.
I mined a small room around the stairs and went to slept. I hope that the NPC magically reappear tomorrow morning. He’s a level 7 programmer. Very precious skill!
A week later Chi Meade reappears.
“I really need to eat something.” That’s what he says when he sees me. I’m jackhammering around. After that, I give him some sausage and fruit leather.
I burn a counter and the fire gets out of control…
This is the first time it actually happens on me. I’m not fast enough when running away, and the loaded gun in the holster explodes.
I cannot tell which is more depressing: my two broken legs, or seeing all things burning. I crawl away. This is the second cataclysm for Sakzul Kaktovik.
I still have the car, a full set of things for long travel in the trunk, and many guns and ammo stashed in another place. Chi Meade is probably still alive, too.
I sleep in car for a chilly night. Miraculously, my legs begin to heal! In the morning, they are 50% intact!
I don’t intend to investigate the burning dungeon yet. The next day, I fell a tree, skin a hulk, and boil some swamp water.
edit:
I sleep for another night. I go down the stairs, and see the aftermath. There are rocks and wood splinters here and there. All books and many other things are burnt or shattered. The pile was about 800L, and is only 200L now. The power armors are badly burnt, but not totally destroyed.
It’s not a complete loss. It improves the lag.
Chi Meade survived the fire but was later dead. I didn’t see him for several days. One day I saw his body in an unlit corner. It must have been an infection that got him.
I used to have a nice hillock, gallons of sugar beet syrup, thousands of dried blueberry, almost every books in New England, an abundance of CBMs, and a company of other humans.
It was one day in last autumn, I walked from underground and sat on the stairs, gazing on the vast grassland on serene hills where undead humans and animals used to roam. Behind me there is a forest, a quiet track through which leads to a town. There used to be swarms of flailing corpses marching on street, pushing their way through shops from windows to windows, bleeding oily goo from their wounds glistening under the sun. Those restless bodies were put to rest. I smashed them to pieces, but even the skulking coyotes left those alone.
The tranquility of the landscape set my mind into a search beyond the daily labor of fighting and traveling. I had the power to burn a forest, but it only went through from a finger-tip lighter. Dedicated warriors used to sacrifice one of their arms for a laser gun that runs on bio-battery. I had the battery, and power could go through my implanted wire into the weapon should I had one. I could have both arms and use the gun. Where would I find the gun, then?
It was hidden in a labyrinth where hundreds of scurry feet moving in unlit rocky corridors.
I walked from the stairs and got on my car. The new travel to the unexplored north began.
I drove to the northwest into the sparse woodland. A farm by the road. A hive in the middle of field. Another hive, like a citrine silo, surrounded by soaring giant bees. A gun shop and a pawn shop at the end of the highway. A busy town run by dead people. A ranch where I helped two men two years ago. Were they still holding on against the tides of reviving enemies? I hadn’t found what I was looking for.
I then drove to the north. More woodland, grassy field, and dead towns. A moose stood by the setting sun, slivers of zombie cougar hanging down from its antlers. It became darker and darker as I drove down the road. I sensed ripen apple and pear in the wind, although they were only traces in the rotting gust, in which I sought in vain for any molecules of those chitinous creatures.
It was a small town that consisted of 3 houses. I silently parked along one of them, pried open the window, and walked around. There was a cellar! I spent the night there.
The next morning, I continued my journey. It went on for days. My route cut through the land of undisturbed undead horde. Lightning showered from my palms onto the zombies, and my fists shattered their hollowed rib cage. Occasionally a hulk jumped out of the green group, like a carp leaping out of mossy water. My trained legs whipped at this fleshy monster and it tumbled and collapsed. Skeletons walked to me, and flew away in spinning bits of bone.
I had been on search for about a week, and that day, on a peaceful field behind several busy towns, I found it. A giant ant hill, for giant ants.
I parked the car, climbed onto the mount, and went down the dirt slope. In the darkness, the ants nibbed at my armor. I gently pushed them away, crushing some accidentally along the way. The corridor came to a dead end, and my jackhammer drilled through the rock wall. I searched through the underground maze and lost track of my position. I stumbled among the busy crowd of ants for a very long day and found the way back to surface, hungry and thirsty and tired. I didn’t find any laser gun.
The rest of the story is blurred because it was many worlds ago. I remembered seeing a lab which I decided to move in, and driving back home, packing useful things on the car, burning every thing else, burning and shooting all companions except two( who were both lost on the week-long trip to the new home), and then I met Chi Meade.
I still did not find the laser gun and lost all that was not made of metal or kevlar, but I had this new hillock with a side adjacent to a freezing lab room, a good place to enjoy frozen fish sandwich at summer. There were new places to go and new things to do. I was going to pay a visit to the town to the northwest.
I pushed the little wooden cart along the quiet road in forest. It was early morning. “Kerblam!”. There were two green turrets placed around the corner, behind battered wood frame. That burst took away the right half of my chest. My body, leaning on the rolling cart, moved forward for a few meters. “Kerblam!”. This burst took away the rest of my chest.
Sakzul Kaktovik died on the road east to a town known as New Fort when the world was better place.
Sounds like a pretty awesome run.
Yes it is. This accomplished survivor marks the end of “Sakzul” line.