NOVEL NEXT Chapter 27: En Route
As the last remaining raider was attempting to get to safety, I chamber another round and took aim, waiting for him to reach the rear of the roof, where I believed there to be a ladder hatch. So I could get an easier shot off as he's in the process of trying to scramble down the ladder.
Training my scope on my target, he reached the back of the roof and hurriedly opened the ladder hatch and began to climb down it, just like I thought he would. With my reticle on target already I made a few adjustments to my scope's positioning and lined up a shot where I believe his head would be in a second and pulled the trigger releasing another deafening bang along with a decent size fireball out the end of my A-21 Anti-Material Rifle's barrel.
Shortly thereafter, the raider's head exploded in the distance while the rest of his body fell down the hatch into the interior of the building, probably scaring the shit out of the rest of the raiders inside the building. Another raider dealt with, I chambered a new round and waited to see if any other raiders would pop out the front door of the building.
...
Several minutes passed by before a singular raider slowly creaked the double door open and took a look around, appearing very apprehensive about leaving the safety of the structure. As the raider was scanning around the general vicinity, I took aim at his chest and pulled the trigger one more time, ending that unfortunate raider's life then and there.
"I wonder if they'll send anyone else out after that, probably not, but I can spare a few more minutes to wait and see." I thought aloud.
"I think there's a 50-50 chance, boss." Hauler commented.
"Well, we'll see soon enough." I responded.
Waiting a few more minutes, no new raiders came out, so I reloaded my Anti-Material Rifle with a full magazine and put it away for later use. Once it was away, I took hold of Mulcher again and scanned the area for a moment to see if there was anything else that could be potentially dangerous nearby. Discovering not a single threat of any sort, I sent a signal with Mechu-deru to my small army of robots to proceed forward.
A short while later, as we were passing by the building, the raiders were in, I saw a somewhat legible sign on the front of the building that read Hank's Electrical Supply. Besides noticing the sign, I also sensed 11 more raider scum hiding inside the building. So I sent another signal to my group of robots to hold up for a second while I go inside to take care of the rest of the raiders. Can't be passing up on the opportunity to cleanse some filth from the world and earn a bit of xp.
The second all of my robots came to a complete stop, I set Mulcher to 2,000 rpm to conserve ammo and spooled its barrels while I walked towards the front entrance of the Hank's Electrical Supply they were hunkered down in.
Right as I entered the building, I walked in the direction of the counters the group of raiders were hiding behind in the back of the store. When I got to the point where there was nothing really blocking my way I pointed Mulcher at where the leftmost raider should be behind the counter first and held the trigger while making a left-to-right sweeping motion with it that only lasted a handful of seconds.
*Brrrrrt... clink-clink-clink-*
"That was easy." I thought aloud while spent shell casings clinked and clattered on the floor of the store.
Now that the raider issue was settled, I checked the store to see what sort of materials were here still after all these years. To my surprise, the place was quite filled and had plenty of loot to take. The loot consisted of about 6,000 pounds, worth of scrap, an assortment of different tools that I can either use or turn into even more scrap, 2 Dean's Electronics skill books, and lastly 1 Big Book Of Science.
Not too bad of a haul.
For the raider loot that survived my Mulcher burst, I found 3 Type 93 Chinese Assault Rifles, 2 Combat Shotguns, and 2 .32 Hunting Rifles that will all require a bit of fixing and cleaning up before they're usable. But that can all be done at a later date since I'm out of room due to my robots and I being at full capacity.
Therefore, I'll have to pick up all these resources some other time, probably when I'm coming back from Vault 101 again. I got several more trips back and forth to get all of my stuff moved over to the RobCo Facility anyway, so I'll just grab all this shit then. With that sorted, let me give this place another once over to see if I can't find anything else of interest or value before I head out. After that, I'll just lock this place up and keep on moving toward the RobCo Facility to the south.
Not wasting a second, I gave the place one last look over, not really finding anything else of value other than a hidden floor safe that I lock picked purely just for the exp. Having gone over everything in the place, I exited the structure and directed two of the worker bots to weld the entrance of the building shut, so no scavengers would steal my loot.
It took them a while to get the front entrance of the place welded shut real tight, but as soon as they did we continued our journey down the road going west for a small period and eventually south when we came across the road I wanted to take.
Continuing southbound, I scanned our surroundings occasionally, not really noticing much of interest other than some structures in the distance and a few sparse groups of mangy dogs that kept their distance most likely out of fear because of our groups large size.
Smart dogs.
...
Half an hour of traveling later, we came into an intersection with a power station located a bit out to the southwest along with the massive RobCo Facility and Tenpenny Tower that were located directly to the south. Besides that, there wasn't much else of note other than the usual rubble and deteriorating structures seen throughout the environment. After scanning the surroundings for a few more moments, I continued on down the road with my small army of robots following close behind, nearing closer and closer to my objective.
...
A short 10 minutes later.
"Hah, we finally arrived." I said aloud excitedly as we entered the parking lot in front of the RobCo Facility.
"That we did, boss. And we got here in not all that much time, too." Hauler added.
"Yeah, we did make pretty good time, didn't we."
Alright, before we do anything else, I'm going to check my Pip-Boy real quick and whilst I'm busy doing that, my robots can take up defensive positions around the place.
Sending out the command, my unit spread out and took up defensive positions behind the blown up nuclear vehicles throughout the parking lot. Everyone in position, I opened up my Pip-Boy to check my stats and spend the level ups I gained from killing the raiders at the school.
Time froze not long thereafter as per usual and the instant it did, a holographic screen popped up, displaying my stats along with a number of dings informing me that I leveled up again and that I received several new quests to work on. Checking things out, I soon had a good overview of everything.
It looks like I've gained 4 skill points, 2 levels, and a bunch of new quests from my relatively short journey here. I guess I'm not doing too bad so far. Moving on from that, it's time to invest my two level-ups and I already know what two perks I want to choose and what I want to dump my skill points into.
Initiating the level up in my status, it immediately brought me to the perk screen and right as it popped up, I navigated to the perk Silent Running.
| Silent Running | Requirements Level 12, Agility 6, Sneak 50: Your running no longer makes sound and vibrations.
This will make sneaking to the mainframe easier, far easier.
With that perk selected, I made my way down the list to where the level 26 perks were.
Level 26 Perks
| Lessons Learned | Requirements Level 26, Intelligence 6: +1% experience gain per level.
| Nerves Of Steel | Requirements Level 26, Agility 7: 20% Faster stamina regeneration and you can deal with most situations or unexpected events calmly.
| Rad Tolerance | Requirements Level 26, Endurance 7: Suffer no negative effects from minor radiation poisoning.
| Warmonger | Requirements Level 26, Intelligence 10, Guns 100, Energy Weapons 100, Explosives 100: You now have a knack for anything having to do with war and creating weapons of destruction.
When I got to the level 26 perks, I instantly selected the perk Lessons Learned because it would increase my experience gain by a huge percentage that would continue to rise with each new level I advanced. Now that I had my two perks selected, I finalized my choices, changing the holographic screen to the skill distribution, one with 48 skill points ready to be spent, however I pleased.
Quickly going over the skills, I dumped the 48 skill points I gained from my two level-ups into repair, bringing its total to 204. The reason why I went with that skill over others was because that's what I'm going to be doing a lot of in the foreseeable future as I try to get all the machinery at the RobCo Facility back up and running. With the skill points dumped into repair, I locked in the distribution, changing the holographic screen again, now displaying my upgraded stats.
Pip-Boy
Name: Harold Todd Woods
Age: 16
Height: 6 Feet 6 Inches
Body Weight: 295 lbs
Race: High Human
Level: 26
Experience Points: 1,902/3,950
Total Experience Points Earned: 51,186
Experience Rate: 256%
Health: 1,230 | Formula: Base of 90 + (Endurance x 30) + (Level# x 20) |
Healing rate: 4.2 Health a minute | Formula: 0.1 x Endurance
Carry Weight: 592.25/3,200 | Formula: 150 + (Strength x 100) |
Critical Chance: 50%
Resistances:
Armor: Body Damage Threshold 27, Armor Damage Threshold 166, Total Damage Threshold 193
Poison Resistance: 105% | Formula: (Endurance - 1) x 5 |
Radiation Resistance: 44% | Formula: (Endurance x 2) |
| S.P.E.C.I.A.L. |
Strength: 27
Perception: 18
Endurance: 22
Charisma: 15
Intelligence: 24
Agility: 19
| Skills |
Barter: 134
Energy Weapons: 136
Explosives: 136
Guns: 145
Lockpick: 129
Medicine: 200
Melee Weapons: 136
Repair: 204
Science: 228
Sneak: 228
Speech: 136
Survival: 128
Unarmed: 136
Skill Points Per Level Up: 24 | Formula: Base of 10 + (Intelligence x 0.5) |
Traits: |Gifted|, |Sex Appeal|, |Skilled|, |Take Another Rank 1|
Perks: |Adamantium Skeleton|, |Adeptus Mechanicus|, |All Seeing|, |Ambidextrous|, |Ammo Depot|, |Bulletstorm|, |Currency Maker|, |Daddy's Boy Rank 1|, |Educated|, |Energy Weapon Fanatic|, |Explorer|, |Gotta Go Fast|, |Herculean Strength|, |High Human|, |Human Skeleton Key|, |Human Supercomputer|, |Human Weapon|, |Intense Training Rank 6|, |Junk Rounds|, |Language Master|, |Lessons Learned|, |Light Step|, |Living Anatomy|, |Lurking In The Shadows|, |Martial Weapon Master|, |Mechu-deru|, |Medical Genius|, |Meltdown|, |Monstrous Physique|, |Pack Rat|, |Quick Draw|, |Resource Hoarder|, |Robotics Expert|, |Silent Running|, |Silver Tongue|, |Size Matters Rank 1|, |Stimpak Addict|, |Stonewall|, |Swift Learner|, |The Power Of Atom|, |Walking Treasure Detector|, |Wild Man|
Mutations:
Gear: 10,000x .308 rounds, 200x .50 MG rounds, |12G Laser Pistol|, |AER 18 LMG|, |Anti-Material Rifle|, 10x |Anti-Material Rifle Magazines|, 2x |Combat Knife|, |Exterminator Armor|, |Exterminator Helmet|, |Guillotine|, 100x |Med-x Syringes|, 20x |MFC Grenades|, |Mulcher|, |Mulcher Armored Backpack Magazine|, 100x |RadAway|, 5 |Serrated Spears|, 100x |Stimpaks|, |War Belt|
Loot: 500,000 .308 rounds, 2 .32 Hunting Rifles, 20,000 .50 MG rounds, 100 Anti-Material Rifle Magazines Assortment Of Automated Manufacturing Machines, 2 Big Book Of Science, Black Altyn Helmet, Black Hardened Metal Armor, 10,000 Bottles Of Modified Buffout, 1,000 Food Stuffs, 10,000 Med-x Syringes, 3 Chinese Assault Rifles, 2 Combat Shotguns, 2 Dean's Electronics, 250 MFC Grenade, 20,000 Microfusion Breeder Cells 100,000 Microfusion Cells, 4 Mulcher Armored Backpack Magazines, 10,000 RadAway, 100,000 Stimpaks, 4311 Duct Tape, 27,815 Scrap Electronics, 158,821 Scrap Metal, 6,923 Wonderglue, 728,569 Other Misc. Stuff.
Robots: Hauling Bots 5, 2 Mining Bots, Sentry Bots Gatling Laser Variants 2, Worker Bots 40
Quests: 0 Ready to turn in, Many in progress, 5 Completed
Quests In Progress:
| Save dad | Objectives: Prevent the death of your father, James Watson Woods.Rewards: New Perk? and 5,000 exp.
| Take Over The RobCo Facility | Objectives: Clear out all hostile forces and set up shop. Rewards: Perk RobCo Certified, 5 Science Points, 2,000 exp.
| Undegrounder | Objectives: Clear all metros of hostiles and take control of them. Rewards: Perk Mole People, 20,000 exp.
| Such Wealth | Objectives: Obtain 100,000,000,000 caps worth of assets by any means necessary. Rewards: New Perk?, 1,000,000 exp.
| Take Over Raven Rock | Objectives: Gain full control of the Raven Rock Bunker and eliminate all hostile forces. Rewards: Perk Enclave Secrets 100,000 exp.
| Orbital Weapon Acquisition | Objectives: Find a way to gain access and control over the many orbital weapon platforms across the United States. Rewards: Perk Hand Of God, 25,000 exp.
| To The Void | Objectives: …
| Yer A Wizard …
Other Statistics:
Kill Counter: 523
Animals Killed: 463
Humans Killed: 40
Insects Killed: 20
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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.