Fallout Wastelander

Leaving the vault behind, it only took a couple of minutes to reach the cave entrance of Vault 101, with my small army of bots following my lead. And as we began exiting the cave, I was blinded by light, the exact same light that takes your vision when you first depart from Vault 101 in Fallout 3. Giving it a few seconds my vision cleared and what came into view from our elevated position was a gray, barren wasteland as far as the eye could see.

Turning my head to where the ruined town of Springvale should be, I saw the destroyed town at a much further distance than where it was in the games. This town was far larger than the one from the game, with many more buildings that were in varying degrees of disrepair and collapse. 

I knew it was going to be rough, but taking it all in real life is something else.

Having seen enough of the town that was nothing but a long abandoned burnt husk, I focused my attention further out to the southeast where the Megaton settlement was. All I saw from my elevated position was a bunch of tall rusted scrap walls protecting Megaton from the dangers of the wasteland.

I continued looking around the general area for several more minutes and when I was finally satisfied; I opened the map on my Pip-Boy to see where I needed to head to and what roads would be the most optimal to take to get to my destination. The instant I navigated to the map on the Pip-Boy, it displayed a satellite view of the capital wasteland, which is about 68 square miles in area, with a ton of different locations highlighted all across the map.

Hmm, let's see what route I need to take to get to the RobCo Facility.

After a bit of fumbling with the Pip-Boy, I found that I can just take the main road to the west that then branches to the south where the RobCo Facility is located. My robots and I will be traveling quite fast, therefore it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to arrive there as long as we don't encounter any hostiles on our way there.

About to close out of my Pip-Boy, I had a sudden idea.

Before I resume my journey, let me see what the limits of the map are.

Interested in seeing how capable this map function of mine was, I started zooming out the map. It first displayed part of the state of Maryland and Virginia with more and more new highlighted locations popping in the further I zoomed out. Several seconds later into my investigation, I was staring at a map of the earth with innumerable locations spread across its entire surface, along with several hundred locations that were constantly moving around the orbit of the planet.

Oh, I even have the option to zoom out further... that can wait for till later since I have no use for anything located outside of earth at this current point in time.

From there I went on and spent the next several minutes checking out all the additional functions and features that the Pip-Boy map had. As soon as I was finished browsing through them, I closed it and headed down the road eastward toward the town of Springvale to get to the main road that was located to the north.

As I was heading down the dilapidated road that was hardly much of a road anymore, I couldn't help but think it was kind of a waste of time to visit Megaton right now. Since it's probably not a great idea to roll up on them with a small army of robots following right behind me. I would like to make a good impression when I do visit, hence I might as well just skip introducing myself to the settlement for now and head directly to my main objective.

Yeah, I'll skip going there for now and when an opportunity presents itself, I'll head on over there and introduce myself. 

If I do a good enough job, I might even be able to make some decent connections there with the various merchants and traders that either have shops there or frequent the settlement. Nonetheless, there's no point overthinking about this any further since I can't make any moves till I'm set up and I have a decent amount of production capacity built up.

With that thought finished, my robots and I continued heading down the road for the next few minutes when we started getting close to Springvale. Because caution is king out here, I scanned the buildings, looking to spot any potential threats. However, after scanning the area for short while, my efforts proved fruitless since there didn't appear to be much life here other than rad roaches and some feral dogs that fled at the sight of us coming into town.

"There don't seem to be any hostiles. Let's continue."

Around the three-minute mark, we reached the main cross-section of town without issue and continued north towards the Springvale School, which I remembered having a decent raider presence in the game. I don't know if that's the case here, but we shall see in a moment here.

A couple of minutes later, we were around 100 meters out from the school when I noticed a male raider up on top of the partially collapsed school who appeared to be the lookout. Although not a very competent one, since he appeared to be asleep in a beat-up school desk chair.

"Alright, guys, hold up for a second." I told my robots, making them all come to a halt while I began thinking about how I was going to handle this.

There are a few ways I can go about this situation. I'd prefer to pass by without getting noticed, but there is no way that's going to happen when I have a small army of robots following me, hence they will no doubt be alerted to our presence. So the first option here would be to turn back around and go south through the Fairfax Ruins, which we're crawling with raiders in the game.

I know for sure one of them had a missile launcher so on the off chance that there are enough of them, they could overwhelm Hauler's defenses. Yeah, there ain't no way I'm risking all the shit I've built up over the years for my goals, so that's out.

The second option is I can go in and clear them out. I doubt they'll have anything all that difficult for me to handle, thus this is a viable option as well. That said, I don't really want to waste all that much time here, so that's out too.

The third and final option is I can draw them out and just slaughter the whole lot of them along with my robots' help. That would definitely be a hell of a lot easier as well as faster than going in and clearing out an entire school. I could also use this to test out whether I gain any xp from my robots killing enemies, too. Hopefully, that's the case, otherwise I'm going to have to tag everything before they kill it, which will obviously be a huge pain in the ass.

I thought over my ideas and didn't come up with any other alternatives, so I went ahead with my third plan, the plan to draw them out. Right as I made my choice, I sent my robots a signal with Mechu-deru and had most of the robots get set up in the nearby buildings for cover. As for Hauler, I had him pull himself into a nearby alleyway between two ruined red brick buildings that was wide enough to accommodate his size. Once all of my robots were in position, I set down Mulcher for a second and retrieved my A-21 Anti-Material Rifle.

My big gun in hand, I took aim at the passed-out raider's chest on the top of the partially collapsed school and pulled the trigger, firing one shot. This shot released a deafening gunshot rang out across the area while the bullet had already flown to its destination that being the male raider's chest cavity.

And before he could fly over what I presumed to be the edge of the collapsed floor that he was on, his back burst open with blood and pieces of flesh spraying and splattering everywhere in his vicinity. Following that, he was thrown out of his chair and off the floor he was on into what I guessed was the collapsed interior of the building.

One raider 100% dead and out of sight, I waited a few moments to see if I would feel a sudden onset of sadness or some other negative feelings for killing my first human. But I didn't really feel much of anything other than maybe a small amount of satisfaction from removing a blight on the world and gaining a bit xp.

With the male raider dispatched, I returned my A-21 Anti-Material Rifle and leaned over and picked back up my Mulcher gatling gun and got ready for any incoming raiders that may exit out of the front entrance of the partially destroyed school. We sat there waiting for something to happen, but no one came running just yet, thus I kept scanning the windows and the top of the building, looking for any raiders. However, none showed up there either, so I continued waiting. 

Eventually, our waiting paid off around the 3-minute mark with a group of 24 pissed-off raiders storming out of the front entrance of the school unaware that they were already dead.

While they were busy trying to locate where the shot came from, I spooled my Mulcher gatling gun that was already aimed in the general direction they were standing and let loose a hail of 7.62 bullets at 6,000 rpm for a few seconds. As the bullets came in contact with their bodies, they were quickly ripped and torn to pieces almost instantly, without any chance to react. When I let go of the trigger, the barrels of my weapons quickly spooled down, leaving one lone raider remaining, which was my intention since I needed one of them left alive to test out whether or not I can gain xp from my robots killing things.

Opening up my Pip-Boy, I checked how much xp I had gotten from slaughtering that group of raiders going through the usual freezing of time. The moment time was frozen and my status screen was in my view, I looked at my experience points that were now sitting at a total of 47,340, meaning I received on average 75 xp per raider.

Not too bad. I wonder how much a super mutant behemoth will be worth once I get around to killing the ones I'm aware of... Hmm, on second thought, that might be a waste. If I could find some sort of way of controlling them, that would be far more valuable to me than just a large one time increase to my exp total.

Ding! Level Up

Oh, and a new level too, nice. I would spend it now but I'll hold off on leveling up until I reach my destination, the RobCo Facility. The trip there will give me plenty of time to think about what to best spend my perk and skill points on.

After looking at a couple of other things in my Pip-Boy, I closed the holographic screen, displaying my stats unfreezing time. Right as things resumed the raider looked like he wanted to say something but I didn't particularly want to waste any more time here so I gave the signal to my bots to finish off the last remaining raider immediately triggering a laser light show on another level. As the last of my robots' laser fire stopped, I looked to where the last raider was standing previously and all I saw was a literal pile of ash and a sizable scorch mark on the pavement.

Time to check whether I received any xp from that kill. 

Going through the whole process of freezing again, I navigated to my xp and found that I do in fact receive the full amount of xp from them, eliminating a target.

With that mystery solved, I wonder if I can gain xp with robots I haven't constructed, like the Protectron units that I will take over when I get control of the mainframe at the RobCo Facility. That'll definitely have to be tested at a later date, but even if I don't end up gaining xp from them, I'll just scrap them for their components and resources and build better bots.

Finished with that thought, I resumed time again and waited patiently for a few more minutes for more company to arrive, but none came, so I presumed that was all of them and reloaded my weapons. Completing that minor task in seconds, I gave the signal for all the bots to come out along with Hauler. The instant they were all back in their positions I had them in originally, we made our way north to get on the main road that will lead us to our destination.

...

About 50 minutes later.

Things are pretty calm it seems, we haven't encountered much danger other than the occasional group of mindless Bloatflies and one Yao Guai thus far that were effortlessly dispatched by my robo fighting force. That Yao Guai did tank quite a few more beams than the Bloatflies, but that was to be expected since we're comparing mutated bears to flies, after all.

As we continued heading in the westward direction following the road, we passed by the Jury Street Metro Station and right as we were passing it; I spotted something in the distance on top of a building.

Siding on the side of caution as usual, I stopped in place and took out my A-21 Anti-Material Rifle again and looked down the scope to figure out what exactly we were dealing with in the distance.

"Ohh, would you look at that more raiders and this time they're on the roof of a shop. Lucky me, I get to work on sniping skills and do a bit of target practice." I said aloud while lowering my rifle and also getting a response from Hauler.

"Do you want us to take care of them, boss?" Hauler inquired, ready to deliver a speedy death unto whomever I wish.

"Nah, I got it this time. I can't let you guys have all the fun." I replied before raising my Anti-Material Rifle and adjusting the range of the large caliber bolt-action rifle to 1,000 meters since that was about the distance I was getting from the built-in rangefinder in my helmet.

Once the range was adjusted, I aimed at the left-most raider and lined up the center of the scope's reticle on his chest first and took one shot. A little more than a second later, whilst I was in the midst of chambering a new round, I saw the raider I had just taken a shot at fly off the side of the building most likely dead. After he sailed off the roof, I lined up another shot on the raider directly to his right and pulled the trigger.

A repeat of what happened to the previous raider happened again, the moment a little more than a second had passed. With the second raider flying off the side of the rooftop, the last of the three raiders finally noticed what was going on and tried to make a mad dash to the back of the roof where I remember there being a ladder hatch on that particular building. I could be wrong due to the multitude of differences this world has with the games, but I was pretty sure that was the building I recall.

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If you're looking for something else to read, that's similar to this, check out my other webnovel Wasteland Conqueror. It has a lot more chapters released.