Choose Your Apocalypse (A LitRPG Apocalypse, Progression, System Fantasy) [CYA]

<Alex, Real - Secure, High School Stairwell>

Alex saw its hulking shadow at the back of the former students and faculty, interspersed with spawned undead. It was a flesh golem that seemed as large as a short bus in the comparatively small hallways.

…I really hope that isn't where it got the bodies… The dark humor of the thought almost made him laugh, but the reality of the situation was too grim.

"Flesh golem! We need to clear these lessers, NOW."

They had all heard from him about the flesh golem that he'd fought, and they should know to burn whatever resources they had to in order to clear out the distractions.

To be safe, he analyzed the enemy.

Flesh Golem of the Plague Guard
Level ?

Yeah, about what I expected. But at least he'd get another conglomeration of skeletons out of this.

John was the first to react to Alex's proclamation, his pistols moving to a staccato beat, alternating shots as Alex felt him absolutely dumping mana into the guns, likely to keep them loaded with the proper ammo.

He alone was insanely effective, every shot taking a zombie in their head, his elevated position giving him access to a truly target rich environment as he focused on the middle of the crowd.

Pilar was right behind her husband, fire dancing through the crowd, focusing on those whose heads were ducked down where John couldn't easily see them, which mainly meant that she burned at the undead nearer the back.

Natasha thrust forward like a sewing machine, magic wrapping her spear so that it encountered no resistance either going in or coming back out of her targets.

Grant swung in great looping arcs, his hammer absolutely blowing through multiple undead with each pass.

Alex was not to be outdone, advancing and chopping his dadao with power and precision.

Lenka's crossbow wasn't nearly as effective as John's pistols, but her work had been to prep the battlefield, and the already handfuls of re-dead and dozens of hampered zombies were testament to her contributions.

All told, Alex found his contributions overshadowed in this cleanup effort, the undead bending like grass before a strong wind, only the undead didn't rise again.

All told, in less than a minute, the entire crowd was overcome, leaving only the hulking flesh golem behind, waiting at the far end of the hallway, standing just in front of the light coming through the door out to the school-yard.

Grant spoke softly, ensuring that everyone could hear him, "I have a new skill that I think should help with the golems."

Natasha nodded, "We'll use it then."

"It's going to be painful for me, and I can only do it once, but it should leave the thing open to Pilar or Alex taking it down in full."

"That's great. We'll coordinate that then."

They all straightened a bit at that, a solid plan for victory beginning to come together.

Then, in that moment of hopeful silence, the ground trembled, the light coming from outside dimmed, and a second flesh golem looked around the corner.

Pineapple pizza.

<Kasim, Real - Secure, Downtown Bank>

Kasim grinned as he pulled out his RPG.

His group-mates had laughed at his choice of weapon, even if he had managed to survive until this point while keeping the rockets in reserve.

Well, they weren't laughing now.

The flesh golem looking thing was big, at least the size of three or four full-grown men, and it seemed to be immune to the vaunted magics that Odion had flaunted in their little base.

But Kasim would be the hero now.

He set the sights on the big, lumbering flesh-beast, checked behind him to make sure he wouldn't hurt anyone with the back-wash, and pulled the trigger.

The rocket propelled grenade sparked and screamed forth, tearing through the air to hit center mass.

A massive ball of flame obscured the enemy, but Kasim's group and the non-Initiates they'd saved cheered at the spectacle.

But even as the fireball faded, Kasim noticed that it was still getting closer and rapidly.

Trying to stay calm, he pulled out his second rocket and loaded it, causing sounds of confusion in those nearby.

The confusion faded with the fire and smoke.

The flesh golem was still barreling down on them, now mostly bone with just enough muscle remaining to maintain integrity. The rest of the muscle and flesh wasn't gone, however. Instead, it was trailing behind like the tail of a comet, somehow slowly catching back up to the charging undead.

Kasim cursed internally, lined up another shot and pulled the trigger.

Another boom rocked the street, and this time the skeleton was completely blown apart.

He sighed in relief even as his group-mates patted him on the back.

Odion even came over to congratulate him. "Not the most elegant weapon, but I won't deny its effectiveness."

Kasim laughed, slapping Odion on the shoulder in turn. "It was a near thing, but it did work."

Odion looked up, past Kasim, his face paling slightly. "Kasim?"

"Yeah?"

"How many grenades did you have?"

"Three. Why?"

"And you used two?"

"Yes, why?" Kasim turned to see what Odion was staring at.

Four smaller flesh golems stood at the far end of the street, seemingly drawn by the noise of the explosions.

"Oh… well… that's not good."

<Natasha, Real - Secure, High School Stairwell>

Natasha fought the urge to devolve into a string of entirely unhelpful curses as she saw the second flesh golem.

Her second urge was to pull out the handle of vodka she'd taken from her apartment and see how fast she could kill that before they all died.

Was it stereotypical? Of course.

Was she going to do it? Of course not.

That would be ridiculous.

No, she was going to buckle down, do her best, and go down swinging. Then, as she died, she'd call the vodka handle forth and go down drinking.

Panicking never helped anyone. We'll soon either be celebrating or dead, might as well give it my all toward either end.

<Alex, Real - Secure, High School Stairwell>

Alex did not have confidence in fighting two at once.

Not.

At.

All.

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If they could exchange bio-matter, they were utterly hosed.

Natasha was the first to speak. "Alex, you're in reserve, any part we separate from the bone, you dust. That's how it worked for you before, right?"

Alex shook his head to clear it, then nodded. "Yeah."

"Grant, we'll hold your new skill until we need to knock one down. You won't be good for fighting after, right?"

He grimaced. "Probably not, no."

"That's what it sounded like. So, don't use it until we need to."

"Yes, ma'am."

The two flesh-beasts had shifted into the hallway, each more than filling half, but somehow distorting to not be overtop one another. Clearly their bodies were morphic to at least some extent.

"Good. Pilar, help me with the one on the right. Grant, take the one that's left. John, support him. Lenka, anything you can do to pull flesh from bone would be appreciated. Are we good?"

Lenka quickly asked Alex a question. "Are they contagious? Do they carry the plague?"

Alex shook his head. "No. They shouldn't be. When I got inside the first one to destroy it, I was covered in their blood, and I didn't get any notices of resisting infection."

The woman nodded. "Then I've got some things I can do."

No one argued with her, maybe because of the authority in her tone, or maybe simply because she had a plan.

They all nodded.

"Ranged, let's get this started."

John and Pilar were kneeling to be able to see down the hall from their positions on the landing halfway up the stairs.

He raised a single gun, far more power pouring into it than he'd used for the chaff.

Pilar brought both of her hands together, seemingly locked in concentration before a line of fire shot out, bright white and blazingly hot even below the path of its passage.

The ceiling tiles bubbled above the line, and someone groaned in the increased heat.

John pulled the trigger at the same time, his gun barking like a dog of the apocalypse in the confined space of the stairwell. The gun almost tore itself from his hand with the recoil, even with his clearly experienced rolling absorption of the force.

The left golem's head exploded as the round hit true, that flesh beast slumping to the side.

The right one bellowed a challenge and charged forward even as the line of fire seared deeply into its chest to the left of its sternum, aiming for where the heart should be—if it had one.

It was odd, because seemingly Pilar had used magic to create the fire in some way, but the fire, itself, wasn't magical, at least not fully. That allowed it to be at least partly effective against the magical-resistant beasts.

The moving golem was halfway down the hall when the first golem rose back to its feet, a new head having sprouted in place of the ruined one. As it stumbled forward, John pulled the trigger again, dropping it once more.

The man coughed, swaying even as he knelt. "I only have a couple more of those."

Natasha nodded. "Keep that one delayed. Change of plans.Grant, engage with me. We need to take this first one down ASAP!"

To put action to her words, she lunged past Alex, Grant moving around on his other side.

The flesh golem skewered itself on her spear, seemingly without a care. Though the hit slowed the beast's headlong rush, some skill of Natasha's seemingly activating to steal its momentum.

She said she had something like Break the Charge? It had been something like that.

Grant's hammer slammed into the golem's bulk a moment later, something—likely a skill—adding even more stopping power to the blow even as it blew out a huge gout of flesh from the beast's torso.

Alex darted forward, dumping Basic Life Transfusion into the undead at his feet and the flesh golem muscle parts that were sprayed across the top of them.

Pilar's fire moved to focus on the beast's head, blinding and disorienting it even as Natasha acted as a harrier, drawing what focus it still had. That allowed Grant to take ever more pieces off. Then, Alex obliterated those pieces.

While it seemed like they were a well oiled machine, they were really stumbling on the edge of a perilous drop.

Alex was slipping and skidding as he tried to reach each gout of muscle, and blood that Grant blasted free, the bigger man seemingly more concerned with getting flesh off the golem then about where it went once blown free, making Alex's job harder.

Even so, they'd managed to separate a few bones among all the ashed flesh, and Alex had tossed those up the stairwell to keep them from rejoining the whole. It was irritating that his inventory was so much smaller, otherwise he'd have just tucked them in there.

Natasha was mostly focused on keeping the golem's eyes on her, occasionally stepping in Grant's or Alex's way seemingly without noticing, slowing their pace down a bit.

Pilar's fire was keeping it from regaining its eyesight, but that was basically all that the fire was doing at the moment.

All the while, Lenka had been moving around the thing, staying out of the way even as she worked.

Over all, they were mostly effective, and in less than a minute they had the flesh golem down to an emaciated skin-and-bones thing with most of the other undead ashed in the hallway—Alex having had a sneaking suspicion that the flesh golems could heal using the bodies of other undead.

Unfortunately, at that point, they realized that their myriad inefficiencies had totaled up to a collective failure to end the first massive enemy in time.

John's gun barked one last time, and the sound was followed by a body hitting the floor in the stairwell.

Pilar cried out, her fire vanishing from around the emaciated golem's head as she went to her husband's side.

Alex glanced back, seeing the man collapsed into unconsciousness, having used some resource or other to the point of losing the ability to stay conscious. Alex quickly focused, checking the man's spark and finding it dim, but holding steady. Good.

Natasha kept her focus forward. "At most twenty-five seconds before the other one is here!"

The one that John had been shooting had taken progressively longer to heal from each shot. Now, though, there would be no more delays. Its headless body was already stumbling forward, clearly adapting in some way to a headless state.

"Grant, it's time! Pilar!" Natasha called out the command, but they could all hear the tinge of desperation in her voice.

Grant—to his credit—didn't hesitate in the least, sprinting forward to meet the charge, his own wordless cry filling their ears.

Alex's eyes widened as he saw what was about to happen.

He didn't know if Grant lacked the skill to counter the flesh golem and attack, or some skill or other required exchanging hits, but whatever the reason, the result was going to be Grant hitting the beast at the same time it hit him.

No…

Alex dropped into a full-out dash after Grant, leaving the greatly weakened flesh golem to Natasha.

Grant's yell was suddenly filled with power, his hammer whistling through the air to impact supernaturally against the beast.

The monster's fist struck him at the same time and something seemed to take that damage, then amplify it and apply it on top of Grant's own hit to the flesh-beast.

It wasn't mana, so the anti-magic bones didn't seem to help.

Grant, himself, still took the damage from the golem's fist, being thrown into a bank of lockers, utterly destroying them while sending out a cacophony of twisting metal and breaking bones.

Even so, his strike had power to it, for it seemed to ripple through the beast, and did something to the bones—or at least the anti-magical defense—at least that's what Alex intuited, because an instant later, Pilar's fire struck.

Unlike before, the magic in the flame wasn't diminished in the slightest and the second flesh golem went up like a candle, burning even the bones to ash in a conflagration that was near-blistering to be near. It was actually a good thing that Grant had been tossed so far away.

Even as the resonant, dying scream of the previously more dangerous flesh golem filled the air, Alex slid to a stop beside Grant's broken body.

No, no, no no! Alex intuitively knew that even if he emptied his health-pool, he wouldn't be able to heal all the wounds that Grant was suffering from, making him unable to heal the man's health directly.

Grant's spark was sizzling, seeming on the edge of fading entirely.

No, that is NOT acceptable.

His health wasn't good enough… but that wasn't his only option, was it? He'd moved something else when purging himself of the curse of undeath. It had felt like something more precise than his health, something that would listen to his direction where his HP wouldn't.

Alex reached into himself, grabbed onto that, and shoved it out of himself into Grant.

"Keep him alive!" He growled as he enacted Basic Life Transfusion.

A weakness washed through him, reminding him of the times he'd donated blood, and a series of System Notices briefly filled his vision.

System Notice:
Life force divested.
Max HP:
1650→1500

Apology Tutorial Notice:
Skill Understanding Expanded.

Basic Life Transfusion (Uncommon)
It is good to have something that you believe in, something to fight for. In this case, you've taken 'I will give my life for the cause' quite literally. What's more, you're better at it than most!
Spend Mana to transfer your Life between yourself and a target.
Damage or Healing at the Caster's discretion.
Damage or healing done is equal to the Caster's Health Points (HP) sent.
Costs half that amount of Magic Points (MP) to impart.
Repairing the non-living will take 4x energy, damaging the non-living ¼.
Repairing that which was never alive—such as mundane metals—will take 4x greater than that, damaging ¼ as much.

→

Basic Life Transfusion (Uncommon)
It is good to have something that you believe in, something to fight for. In this case, you've taken 'I will give my life for the cause' quite literally. What's more, you're better at it than most!
Spend Mana to transfer your Life between yourself and a target.
Damage or Healing at the Caster's discretion.
Damage or healing done is equal to the Caster's Health Points (HP) or life force sent.
Costs half that amount of Magic Points (MP) to impart.
Repairing the non-living will take 4x energy, damaging the non-living ¼.
Repairing that which was never alive—such as mundane metals—will take 4x greater than that, damaging ¼ as much.

Alex narrowed in on the single, simple change 'or life force.' That, coupled with the previous message made what he'd done clear.

He had somehow given a portion of his life force to Grant, seemingly lowering his own max HP.

"Oh…"

Grant convulsed, coughing up blood before sucking in a ragged breath. He was still just as injured as before, but he seemed to have stumbled back from under the shadow of death, his spark stabilizing under Alex's gaze.

This… this might be good or bad… helping Grant was undoubtedly good, but he was down max-health, and that was definitely bad.

So, good and bad, then. That was somehow worse.

A part of him was rather irritated that the skill was still 'Basic' even though it was now (Uncommon), but it was hardly time to complain about such things… he could do that later.

He opened his mouth to call for help for Grant, but then the final flesh golem roared—its strange, high-pitched roar—pulling Alex's attention back to the mad scramble that was occurring near the stairway.

"Right… enemies first."