Shadow Runner [LitRPG]

I'd known for a long time that combat is nothing like what you see in books and shows. It's not some drawn-out, dramatic affair where you spend an hour posing and clashing. It's dirty, quick, and usually lasts mere minutes. Sure, large-scale combat can last longer, simply because of the numbers involved, but the individual fights? Those don't take long to resolve at all.

I knew all that. I'd learned it from hard-won experience. So, it was with some trepidation that I noted the good doctor both did and didn't follow the rules.

Did, because by the time we made it downstairs, he'd already squished all of our people who'd been with him in that room. Didn't, because in spite of all the bullets they'd pumped into him, his fight was far from finished.

He literally tore through the wall out into the hallway. I could see his wounds visibly healing, the process pushing the bullets out of his body to clink loudly against the floor.

The good doctor looked like he'd fit right in with one of Amelia's hand-crafted abominations. He turned towards Titus with pure frustration on his face.

"This has gone on long enough. Give me my daughter, or I will take answers from you myself," he snarled, his voice booming like the echo of a nightmare.

Titus raised his shotgun and fired. The doctor shrieked in pain and anger as the slugs tore through his shoulder, missing his neck simply by virtue of his instinctive dodge to the side.

My father didn't hesitate. He charged right at the monster the doctor had turned himself into. Even my newly enhanced eyes had a hard time tracking his movement. The mercs he'd brought with him also surged forward, ready to help and run interference, but our lot held back.

Harkness was deadly. Deadlier than most things I'd come across. His fists blurred and hit like a truck. His stomps caused quakes that staggered his assailants. I was pretty sure he was doing something Medic-related to the mercs whenever the relevant hand rippled through one of them.

I also caught several moments when everyone else flinched away from him after an odd shimmer traveled over his body. That meant he had Stalker skills in the mix, too.

Mercs got splattered, or slashed apart, or just dropped down dead. Yet Titus danced through all the doctor's attacks with effortless grace, continuously discharging shots from his handgun and shotgun.

He was hitting some rather sensitive targets, too. Fuck, one of the shots tore through the doctor's hip, targeting the seam where flesh turned into metal. For half a second, I thought the limb was lost. Then the angry horror murder machine stuck his Medic arm into his own side, making his flesh ripple and knit back together faster than even Amelia could manage.

Still, Titus was winning.

With all his ferocity, the good doctor hadn't laid a hand on Titus. Not once. The Nightfall Squad leader had actually driven his opponent to demolish parts of the nearby walls, giving the mercs more room to maneuver.

Besides, I knew for a fact that the doctor couldn't continue healing forever. Sure, Amelia made it look like she could work on her flesh experiments in perpetuity, but I knew she did that by pacing herself and taking an occasional break. There was nothing so measured about her father's current activities.

When Titus ducked under a particularly brutal swing and managed to discharge his shotgun into the doctor's armpit, practically amputating the limb, I knew where things were going.

Titus was going to win.

And while we wanted the doc dead, we did not want Titus to walk away from the experience unscathed. I only needed to look at his current performance to know that if I started to do anything suspicious, he'd take me apart in seconds.

At the same time… I really, really didn't want to ambush Titus right at that moment. I was a little more confident that we could take the doctor out, but I didn't want to test my luck there, either.

So, dropping all thoughts of sneak attacks and personal revenge, I indulged in humanity's oldest and most noble of traditions: I booked it out of there.

"Retreat," I announced. "Mela, Amelia, we're getting out of this building. You too, Patch. Jump out of the fucking window or something if you have to. We are on the ground floor."

Then I grabbed Amelia's hand and ran like hell.

Thankfully, no dramatic jumps out the windows were required for me that day. I did almost get my kidneys displaced when one of the Nightfall Squad mercs shoved past me to reach his commander, making sure I was punished for abandoning the fight, but no one actually tried to stop us. I suppose they had more important things to worry about than our 'cowardice.'

As we burst out into the hot slum air, I realized things outside were pretty horrible, too.

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About fifty of the guards Harkness had brought were still alive, but our side had paid for the extermination of the monstrosities in blood, sweat, and tears. Mostly blood, really, if the amount of it (not to mention other gross body bits) scattered all over the place was any indication.

I was relying heavily on Acuity and my mental stats, but I was pretty sure that only three hundred or so combatants were left on our side. The vast majority of them were our drones, who'd been ordered to hang back to begin with.

That pleased me, and pleased me greatly.

What pleased me even more was the sight of Mela running out the door right behind me and Amelia. Shortly after, following the drone tendency to disregard damage to their persons if they could carry out instructions faster, Patch yeeted himself out of a window.

I kind of regretted giving that order…

"Get the fuckers!" Mela cheered, much less restrained now that she was out in the open. Then she charged right at the eldritch guards. She was soon having the time of her life, treating our enemies more as bowling pins she could bulldoze through rather than threats.

I shrugged and launched myself right after her, still trying to keep an eye on the battle inside through the cameras. I also had to deal with those weird 'off' feelings the doctor's guards gave me. It was only as I sliced into one, a guy with long and slender Stalker arms himself, that I realized part of what was bothering me about them.

Their eyes were dead. Every movement they made was so precise, it could be called mechanical.

"These guys are drones! We are fighting drones!" I shouted, every instinct in me startled and horrified. It was fucking hard not to be. Stalker and Shadow practically screamed at me that this was unnatural, and not something that could or should be done to eldritch creatures.

My fellow eldritch creatures.

Still, it wasn't like there was anything I could do about it. I tore the guy's head off without much trouble and then punted it at one of his colleagues with enough strength to knock them out.

Amelia was a bit more of a precision fighter. Her fingers had turned into knives and partially fused. But once she heard my shout, she lopped off the limbs of one of her enemies and then plunged her right hand into his skull.

When she pulled away, she looked as disturbed as I felt. "They're incompatible with their cybernetics. The cybernetics started turning them into eldritch, and then my father… he copied the drone-crafting process, except he applied it to actual eldritch creatures! Well, corrupted humans, but you get it!"

"That so bad?" Mela cackled, not even sparing us a glance as she knocked yet another eldritch drone on its ass and stomped on its face.

"Yes! It literally goes against every instinct I have as a Medic! I fucking checked that shit 'cause I was worried I might mess with you or Adrian without meaning to!"

A tremor ran through the entire building we'd vacated. I quickly refocused on what was happening inside without paying attention to Mela's retort.

The cameras we had left on the ground floor were further away from the scene than I'd have liked, since the fighting pair had demolished the closer ones. The air was full of dust. But I still got the gist of the situation.

The doctor was slowing down. His regeneration wasn't working nearly as well as it had at the start. Titus, on the other hand, was still very much in the game. He looked faintly ruffled, but he refused to drop.

I made my decision then and there.

"Amelia? Give the order to blow it!" I shouted, switching from our private call to open comms.

The words made both Titus and the good doctor freeze up, even if for different reasons.

The grin Amelia rewarded me with was well worth it.

"Heard that, soldier? Blow that building the fuck up!" my lovely ripper chirped, with all the menace she was capable of.

"You are trying to order my man to —"

Titus' outrage was cut off by two simple words from Malt: "Roger roger."

I imagined there was a dramatic click, though I could hear no such thing.

And then the whole building exploded.

'Patch' and Titus had discussed setting explosives up as a final resort, in case things went to shit and we couldn't overcome the doctor's abominations. It was almost touching, really, to hear Titus so concerned about not letting 'our true enemies' loose on the city. It was also deliciously ironic when 'Patch' proclaimed that Titus' own men would set the explosives, and that one of them would have the detonator, as a show of trust.

Titus had even picked Malt out himself, after a chat with Gatorz!

To be fair, we hadn't actually lied. All the explosives had been set by Nightfall Squad members who had been sent by Titus long ago to run the Zerx. But thanks to our recent war, all of those 'Zerx' now belonged to Amelia. Including Malt.

And we did plan to use the explosives as a final resort. Just a final 'fuck you, we're taking you with us' if things went horribly wrong, and it looked like either or both of our parents were about to get what they wanted out of the little meetup.

Regardless, Titus hadn't seemed worried by the fact that we'd used up our entire stock of explosives to set the trap. And I do mean our entire stock. The stuff we brought along, and everything the Zerx had in storage, combined.

I'd never had much chance to see even the cheapest of fireworks in person, but I imagined the higher-grade stuff would be like the scene in front of us in that moment: all sound and light and fire, and this deep rumbling right in the core of me as the world shook beneath my feet.

Then we were ducking behind cover, because somehow, I'd forgotten to account for all the displaced rubble and bits of construction we'd suddenly loosed upon our surroundings.

Even as we huddled, however, I was deeply aware of the continued rumbling. The former Nightfall Squad member who specialized in demolition had explained it to me. He'd set things up to cause the entire building to essentially fold in on itself, then crumble down through the underground parking lot ceiling.

That meant the entirety of the building had been filled with explosion and fire, before getting dislodged and dropped, taking with it the two combatants our little trio hated so much.

I had no idea how heavy all of that actually was. Probably hundreds to thousands of tons. What I did know was that I could just imagine that final, satisfying squish. The moment when both Titus and the doc expired, and were out of lives for good.

I was so focused on that imagery, I ignored the last few of the doctor's abominations that had survived our rampage. I just stared straight at all of that settling rubble across the street from me.

That's why I noticed the instant that a section of the rubble started shaking. I watched as it quivered and rattled in the face of some unseen power acting on it.

"No. No fucking way," I hissed, drawing the attention of the others.

Just as something burst free.