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

<Alex, Real - Lost Sheep Have Gone Astray, Bank>

Alex groaned as consciousness returned to him. The occasional tack of gunfire caused him to sit bolt upright before clutching at his head.

Natasha was beside him, and she put a hand on his shoulder. "Take it easy. You collapsed and hit your head."

"How long?" He smacked his lips, feeling parched, and created water within his mouth almost without thought, alleviating the issue.

"You were only non-responsive for less than a minute. What did you do?" She was regarding him critically.

"Blood transfusion. I think I gave you too much, too quickly, and my body didn't like it."

The Russian woman gave him a hard stare. "You almost popped my leg by pumping too much blood into it?"

"I think so?" He gave a sheepish smile, still feeling a bit out of sorts. Thankfully, he didn't feel weak or dizzy anymore. He vaguely remembered seeing a System Notice before collapsing, and he pulled it up now.

Blood loss, a condition remedied by 300 HP, and a mild head injury that required 60. Yeah, that was about a minute of his healing, so it checked out.

"I apologize. I didn't consider the knock-on effects of my action. Is the infection cured?"

"Yes, and the paralysis was eliminated too."

"That's good." He turned and looked down the hallway to where John was moving among the bodies, occasionally pulling a trigger and causing a body to twitch. "What is he doing?"

"Keeping them down until you can go and finish the job. I really do think that we bypassed the greatest danger of the undead with your abilities. You can take them down for good, where few others can."

Alex shrugged. "I mean, so can Pilar and James?"

"That's… fair, I guess. James' knife is a bit of a special case, though. Even still, that's less than half of us. I suppose we could do extreme bludgeoning damage in many cases, but these at least—" John pulled his triggers again. "These don't seem to care how much damage I do to their brains."

"True, yeah." Alex scrambled up to his feet, only using Natasha's help as an assurance.

Then, he walked over to the downed undead and ashed them all, rolling his eyes as Natasha added that ash to her Inventory. She saw the look and shrugged. "You have your boxes, I have the ash of our enemies."

Alex blinked at that. "Your Inventory is filled with undead ash and dust?"

"Not filled, no, but I do use each new pickup to push outward on the boundaries."

He grunted. "Fair, I suppose."

John waited until the task was complete, then grunted. "Nice of you to end your nap early." Then, he smiled. "And thank you. Without Pilar, I don't really have a way to keep them down for good." He looked up and to the right. "Though, I might be able to modify my rounds…" He shook his head. "Later, we have more pressing things to be about."

Alex nodded. "Probably worth looking into it later, yeah."

"So… are we ready to see what's in the vault?"

They turned to look in the direction that Natasha indicated, and Alex grunted. "Yeah, right. Let's get that done."

The three approached the vault down the long, pitch black hall, only illuminated by their various lights.

John and Natasha occasionally ducked into the rooms to either side, seeing if anything of specific use stood out, and they seemed to grab things on occasion, but for the most part, they proceeded without delay.

Alex used his Detect spells again, and found the Life sources ahead still unmoving. To his relief, he did confirm that there were no undead nearby as well. So, John's firearms hadn't been loud enough to bring any down on them, at least not yet.

The large vault door was actually non-magical, which Alex found odd, until he'd sent his life into the metal with a command to dust the locks that held the thing in place.

He didn't feel any indications of magic, but a blaring alarm sounded in a room to either side of the vault. It was impossible to ignore while not being painful, or even as loud as a gunshot.

Natasha looked into each room and grunted. "A place for guards? Likely those who could face down anyone with magic?"

"That makes some sense, but they'd have to have the ability to close up and defend it during non-work hours." He frowned, feeling something with his Basic Mana Sense.

Both John and Natasha looked in the same direction, and it was John who had the first guess. "A signal, likely directed to some group who could get here quickly."

"And the only reason they don't is because everything is sideways at the moment."

Natasha grunted. "Indeed. So it's cheaper to have adventurers on retainer than commission a magically defended vault. That says something about magical constructs."

Alex nodded, feeling a bit better about the Symbology book in his Inventory. "Indeed."

Still, the door was unlatched a moment later, and it easily swung open on silent hinges, the well built mechanism making the weight seem almost meaningless.

When the door was fully open, the blaring alarms cut off, whether by design or if they only had a limited amount of emergency power, and that had run out.

Inside wasn't a pile of gold or stack of money, it wasn't even a safety deposit box area in the sense that Alex was used to.

Instead, there were rows of stacks of variously sized, seemingly glass cubes arranged to allow for easy perusal.

John grunted as he tapped the butt of one of his guns against one cube. "I don't know that we can break these. I'd shoot it to show you, but I'm afraid the bullet would ricochet."

Alex sighed, easily seeing a handful of familiar looking spheres, that were clearly the source of the Life energy that he'd sensed.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Even if they were familiar, they were still seemingly special, each looking a bit different. The one that caught his attention first even seemed to be on fire.

Natasha looked around. "I don't see any people, Alex."

"Yeah, I think it's those spheres. They seem to be Life cores with different elemental bents? My Analyze won't work through whatever this glass is."

She grunted. "Mine neither."

John chuckled. "They aren't locked in place." He pulled one of the small cubes free, taking a better look at the odd broach inside it. The cubes above it stayed in place as if held by magic. "This does not seem like a good design, from a security standpoint."

She shrugged. "We have no idea how hard these will be to open, and it's not like we can even tell what is valuable and what isn't. Look." She pointed, and sure enough, there were at least a hundred things that looked like the life cores that Alex was orienting on, but weren't. "Which of those are what Alex detected."

Alex could tell with his Detect Life spell, but apparently, that wasn't something directly defended against. "I'll get the right ones… As to anything else of value? I bet if we had something like…" He looked at Natasha, the obvious answer coming to him. "Detect Trove. That should find things worth grabbing."

She blinked. "It just pointed me here… do you think it could be specific enough?"

"Let me get the cores, and once we 'have' those, we can see what your detect spell points you to."

She nodded. "That sounds like a good idea."

John was looking around. "What do you want me to do?"

"I would say go and make sure nothing sneaks up on us, but…" Alex raised an eyebrow implicatively.

John snorted. "Yeah, we're not splitting the party."

"Exactly."

Alex had to cast Detect Life four times to properly pinpoint all the real spheres, and when he had gathered them all together, he found himself frowning.

Each was aspected in some way, whether smoldering, seemingly awash in water, or gently pulsing with force, each was different.

Natasha patted him on the shoulder. "Can you even use these?"

"I have no idea. Something makes me think not, but maybe you all can?"

That caused John to perk up, looking away from the long hallway for a moment. "Oh? If so, Pilar should have the fire one."

Alex smiled. "Undoubtedly. Regardless, they should be worth something to someone… eventually."

Natasha chuckled. "Fair enough. Can you store them?"

The glass containers were each about six inch cubes, so he was able to store eight of them before his Inventory was truly at capacity.

John sighed and took four, filling his. Natasha was able to wedge two into hers before she was filled.

Alex momentarily thought he had a way to cheat the system, but when he tried to pull out just the orb and leave the box behind, it failed. A similar thing happened when he tried to bring a box without the core within. "They're linked somehow."

With one in his hand after his last failed attempt, he used Simple Force Blade, to conjure a small cutting edge which he pressed against the box.

There was a screech like nails on a chalkboard—if that sound somehow made the listener's very spine buzz with the unpleasantness of it—and mana showered outward like sparks from a busted transformer.

Alex stopped immediately, shaking his head, and stretching his jaw in an attempt to pop his ears and reset his hearing… somehow.

John and Natasha both looked momentarily dazed, but they also recovered quickly enough after the noise stopped.

"I'll… not do that again. At least not until we're back at the base."

Natasha gave him a flat look. "That sounds wise."

John gave a small smile and shook his own head. "It was worth a try, though."

She grunted, then cast Detect Trove, her eyes lighting up as she clearly got something back. "Oh, this is good."

Five minutes later, they had a problem.

Natasha had a line of the clear boxes, arranged in the order in which they'd been flagged for her. They contained things as small as a ring—with a box sized to match—all the way up to a short spear—which was the first item that had called out to her.

There were books, boxes, gloves, and finally, near the end were simple clusters of clearly precious materials.

The vault was still packed, filled to the brim with copies of all the things that Natasha had found for them among the myriad decoys.

They all regarded the long line of boxes for a long moment before the other two turned to look at Alex.

Alex grimaced, then groaned. "Come on… We don't even know if we will be able to break these open. They might be useless."

"But they might be a truly amazing source of power and value."

His grimace grew. "But… the chair! It's actually comfortable to sit in."

He looked back and forth between the two, looking for even a sliver of sympathy to latch onto.

He huffed and kicked a bit of detritus, sending it bouncing down the hallway. "Fine. You are jerks, both of you."

The chair popped out of his Inventory already resting on the ground. A moment later, he swept down the line, taking everything but the spear.

"That won't fit." He pointed at the spear.

Natasha grunted, pulling out a rope and tying it around the boxed-spear quite expertly. Without another word, she slung it over her back and tightened it into place.

Well… that was easy enough.

As they turned to go, Alex took a moment to stare longing at the chair.

John cleared his throat. "Do you want a moment alone?"

"Go shove a bag of ghost peppers in your eye, John." Alex stopped, blinking. "Wow… that actually came across worse than the obscenity it replaced… somehow?"

John snorted. "Pretty funny, though."

A smile twitched at the corner of Alex's mouth. "Fine." He let out a long sigh. "Let's go. We need to get to that other group. They seem to still be where they were, but who knows how long they'll stay there."

John nodded, reflexively checking his pistols. "Still, less than twenty minutes to clear this place out wasn't bad."

Natasha nodded, clapping the two men on one shoulder each. "True, we make a good team. Not as good as having two Russians with me, but you'll do."

Alex rolled his eyes at the mid-aged, bear of a woman. "Yeah, yeah. I've got point."

John chuckled. "I'd take a couple of Texans any day, or some good ol'boys from the backwoods of Kentucky… or some Navy Seals… or—"

Alex cleared his throat. "We get it, John."

Natasha shook her head. "I've got rear guard." She then side-eyed John. "Besides, in Russia, the Navy seals you."

John frowned, blinking a few times in clear confusion, even as he fell into step in between the other two. "That doesn't even make sense."

Natasha shrugged. "I blame the American education system."

"Hey, now! It may not be the best, and we certainly leave some children behind but—"

Alex held up a hand and the other two instantly silenced, leaving the banter aside. He'd just pulsed Detect Unlife as he got to the top of the stairs and stopped mid-step. Apparently, the vault had been a 'reward' cache like the magic shop, or at least the System was treating it similarly.

"Formal complaint. We can't even access these rewards yet! You're sending enemies at us without reason!"

To his surprise, he actually got a response.

Watcher Response:
Sorry Alex, event opponents must be overcome when they are triggered, not when you want to face them. You could have stayed below and worked to get those items free, whether or not they'd have helped you.

Don't forget your goal in coming out here was to save people.

And with that cryptic final note, the notice vanished.

At least these aren't like the Undead Spawn-Queen.

As to what his Detect Unlife had revealed, and what he was even now able to see coming from the previously empty offices?

The workers of the bank had been recreated, turned and upleveled to 20. They barely looked undead, and that made their movements and actions all the more disturbing.

All that to say: They had a mini-horde on their hands.

And John's guns were already beginning to bark.