Poll World [LitRPG][Reader Polls]

(This is a free vote chapter)

Jasper seemed lost in contemplation as he stared at Violet's lifeless body, but with an army of gremlins surging forward and screaming protagonists confronting them, Gen didn't have time for sentimentality, so she started looting bodies.

She started with Harper and found mostly repeats with the exception being a belt that enhanced reflexes, her hammer, and her railgun. Her shield likely used to be valuable, but when inspecting it now showed as guardian shield (toy).

Her gnomes had been useful for negating whatever abilities the shield used to have, but she didn't have a way to undo the effect, and so the equipment was now a useless plastic version.

The hammer had an upgrade called flesh crater, which did exactly what it said. Luckily, Jasper hadn't been hit during the fight, or he would have been reduced to paste.

Harper's railgun was even more impressive with two upgrades, one called Armageddon and another called instant shot. Together, they made the weapon vastly more powerful and eliminated any need for it to charge up shots.

Looting the guards and Violet didn't give anything impressive, with several pieces of the guards' gear, unfortunately, also having been turned into plastic.

She took it all either way, as many of the gremlins were unarmed even after using up all of her previously looted items.

The one impressive find was Violet's wheelchair. Its ability was on cool down, but once per hour, it could create a powerful stationary dome shield. Throwing it into her inventory for now, Violet's body unceremoniously collapsed onto the floor. Jasper shot her a glare, but she ignored it.

Using their mental connection, she called for her personal gremlins that had been left behind in the UFO. Over half had died in the crash, but the survivors started weaving through the battlefield as they rushed to her and Jasper's position.

Hon's gremlins seemed to be winning, but the battle was so chaotic she had a hard time telling what was happening. Understanding the state of the battlefield was complicated by the gremlins' tendency to fire at nothing and blow up anything they could, regardless of strategic value.

The UFO was wrecked and still burning on top of the wall. She hadn't seen Hon, and hopefully, he had survived her crash. The UFO had self-repair, but with how damaged the vehicle was, she had no idea if it could recover.

Solomon and Trank were blitzing up and down the wall, crushing protagonists and vaporizing turrets, when suddenly Trank jumped straight up into the air an instant before another giant explosion blew a crater into the wall where they had been standing.

Solomon's expression was rage-filled as he looked into the distance and screamed, "You'll pay for what you did to my ride!"

She followed his gaze, but couldn't even see what he was looking at as he directed Trank to jump off the wall and start hurtling deeper into zone 98.

Tearing her eyes away from his disappearing figure, she focused on a glowing circle in the center of the command room that she had been ignoring so far.

Sensing its purpose, she landed and triggered a notification.

QUARANTINE CONTROL POINT INVADED!

BEGINNING QUARANTINE DESTRUCTION COUNTDOWN!

QUARANTINE REPAIRS AND UPGRADES ARE BLOCKED DURING OCCUPATION!

COUNTDOWN REMAINING 1 HOUR

ADJUSTING COUNTDOWN FOR WALL DAMAGE…

CALCULATING…

EXTREME STRUCTURAL DAMAGE DETECTED

COUNTDOWN REMAINING 30 MINUTES

ADJUSTING COUNTDOWN FOR RELATIVE OCCUPYING FORCES

CALCULATING…

OVERWHELMING ANTAGONIST ADVANTAGE DETECTED

COUNTDOWN REMAINING 5 MINUTES

Gen breathed a sigh of relief. The quarantine zone had been a constant annoyance, but luckily, the UFO impact and the swarms of gremlins reduced the timer to a manageable level.

Jasper walked up to her after having adjusted Violet's body into a more dignified position. He was mumbling something about respecting a worthy opponent, and she rolled her eyes.

Now that she was the mute one, she had a newfound understanding of why Jasper was always rolling his head at her when she was the one blabbing about things.

Her surviving gremlins arrived looking like seasoned war veterans. There were seven of them, one had an eye patch, and another was missing an arm. Each one had been maimed in its own unique way.

She was almost certain the injuries were fake, as their bodies were made of energy and didn't take damage like a human's. Her only conclusion was that they were cosplaying human injuries for reasons beyond her.

Ignoring their antics, she quickly assessed their gear and switched out a couple of their weapons with higher-quality ones she had just looted.

The plasma cannon from before was missing and presumably destroyed, but Harper's railgun made a suitable replacement as she assigned two gremlins to tag team operating it. Immediately after giving it to them, they went flying from recoil as they shot a random section of the wall.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

After confirming that they hadn't killed themselves, she gave the hammer and belt to Jasper.

The belt and his combat suit combined made him look like a Power Ranger, but dual-wielding the plasma sword and hammer barely managed to keep him looking intimidating.

The wardrobe upgrades were completed just in time for the next notification.

QUARANTINE DESTROYED

114,445 CONTRIBUTION POINTS EARNED

She didn't have time to appreciate the contribution points as the entire wall started to rumble dangerously. Still flying, she watched the wall rapidly shrink out of existence and deposit the survivors on ground level.

The few remaining protagonists were momentarily startled as their fortifications and turrets dissolved around them, but the gremlins didn't hesitate as they swarmed over them with murderous glee.

Jasper looked over the devastation like a bored tyrant before turning to Gen.

"I understand that you and Hon had every intention of flying the UFO to headquarters, but it appears contingency planning for spontaneous combustion was not taken into consideration."

Gen hovered next to him and rolled her plastic eyes at his patronizing tone. Multi-step plans were hard to make with such a chaotic event, so it really wasn't fair for him to hold this minor setback against her.

Destroying the quarantine wall was already beyond their original expectations, so as plans went, she rated it as an overall success.

Still talking, Jasper continued, "As such, we are now moving forward with my new superior plan."

He started marching towards the burning UFO, and with no choice, she hovered after him with the gremlins trailing behind.

Reaching the wreckage, he called out, "Hon! Are you deceased? You have performed admirably despite your feeble intellect, and we will render you aid."

The flames parted under a torrent of foam as Hon stumbled into view holding a fire extinguisher. He was bleeding from his shoulder and covered in soot as he sprayed another section of burning haul while breathing heavily.

Gasping for air, he looked at them. "Jasper, did you just call me stupid?"

Jasper shook his head, "No, I complimented you."

Hon gave him a blank stare before extinguishing another section of flames, "Whatever, man, are you going to help put out the fire or what? The UFO is still alive, but if I wasn't reinforcing it with my power, it'd be dead already. With all the holes the gremlins made in it, then getting shot with a missile or whatever that was, crashing, and then the whole thing being on fire, it's a miracle it hasn't bit the dust. None of its functions are working, including the size alteration."

Jasper looked at Gen and said, "Help your fellow minion."

Gen rolled her eyes wildly. What did he expect her to do? She had a lot of junk in her inventory, but the majority of it was for spreading chaos, not for stopping it.

Her teamwork augment was disabled at the moment so she could only make normal iguanas and her only other ability was to poop gnomes…

In desperation, she launched a gnome at a particularly dense section of flames and watched as it exploded into sparkly dust. Contrary to her expectations, the fire itself was turned into plastic and clattered onto the floor.

She could only fire a gnome every three seconds, and before she could launch another one, the plastic flames had ignited, making the fire even bigger than before.

She stared at Jasper accusatorily, and he only shrugged.

Ding~!

She quickly read the augment description and was thankful it wasn't ambiguous. Reduces cool down to .1 seconds.

It was a massive fire rate increase, making the gnomes fire fifty times faster!

Looking at the mess of flames in front of her, she considered if her plan was a good idea. If it went wrong, it would make the inferno twice as intense…

Hon extinguished another small section, but the flames were spreading faster than he could work, and that made her decision as she released her bowels.

The slot on her flamingo butt opened up an a steady stream of gnomes sprayed out. With her hat's targeting ability, the gnomes all flew with heat-seeking precision into sections of flames one after another.

Quickly, the crackle of burning spacecraft was replaced by the clattering of hundreds of plastic flames hitting the ground. Within just a few seconds, she'd extinguished the entire exterior of the UFO and was rushing inside to finish the job.

Seeing her having it under control, Hon collapsed in exhaustion and let the UFO roll away from him. Within ten minutes, the entire fire had been eliminated. It would've only taken five, but despite her fire rate, the plastic was still very flammable and kept reigniting if she wasn't meticulous.

Hon pushed himself to his feet and inspected a random wall, "Some parts of the ship have been turned to plastic, but the self-repair is slowly reversing it. It'll take quite a while, but eventually the ship should finish healing itself!"

LEO's voice boomed in her ears. You know, ever since the iguana has been in charge, you've stopped killing allies and started actually being useful to your team! You guys made an adorable army, defeated a nemesis, destroyed the quarantine, and even saved this lovely flying saucer! For once, you genuinely deserve a reward!

Used to LEO's sass, she didn't feel bad about his backhanded compliment and focused on the poll options. The UFO already had a lot of utility, and with another upgrade, it could be devastating.

Jasper started talking again, "Hon, I must go save my brethren, I task you with the defense of this…" He gestured to the wrecked UFO, "This relic."

Hon shrugged, "I was going to do that anyway. Solomon would probably kill me if I just left it alone."

An explosion shook the earth nearby as a gremlin with a rocket launcher created another crater.

Hon shuddered, "Take the gremlins with explosive weapons with you, please. The UFO can't take many more hits."

Jasper nodded, "Their short lives will be put to brilliant use under my command."

Close to a hundred gremlins formed up and started following after Jasper. They had bazookas, grenade launchers, and several other varieties of explosive weapons they had scavenged. Gen stuck close to Jasper and her own gremlins as she prayed none of the creatures got trigger-happy in their direction.

Jasper took a breath and started sprinting down the street, his breaths were clean and even as he maintained the pace. Gen hovered along with him, watching jealously. She'd spent the whole event struggling with her cardio, only for him to get the one piece of equipment that solved the issue right after they body swapped.

The gremlins kept up effortlessly despite their small size, not seeming to have lungs to begin with.

Jasper effortlessly spoke while he ran, "The zombie iguanas are not what I would consider my kin, but their slaughter at the hands of mechanical constructs is insulting nonetheless. We shall eliminate this threat and buy time for my true kin to awaken."

Gen glanced at her notification. Surprisingly, the quarantine wall battle had only taken half an hour, and there was still almost an hour and a half left on the incubation timers. Her windfall of contribution points was burning a hole in her pocket, but it seemed like she would need to earn some more before she would get a chance to spend it.