[New Base Completed!]
[Acquired Special Ticket]
This was the third base Rick had built, as he looked at the simple but sturdy cave, which had a huge stone wall blocking its entrance. Rick finally understood some of the requirements to have a safe place that the system would recognize as a base...
Walls and a water source were the essentials, and inside this cave, there was indeed a water source. This base was not meant to be used as a survival site, but as a safe resting place for the many hunters who enter the forest daily to gather all kinds of materials, and also eliminate all kinds of threats to Pineview Base...
The next step was to see if creating a large reservoir with rain and snow collectors would also work; if that were the case, many options would open up... Rick wanted to learn more about his Universal Force skills, but he also wanted to learn the new skills of his system. Mainly those that seemed almost miraculous, like Primitive Shelter and Underground Shelter... But at the moment, he decided to save the two tickets for an emergency or situation that required their use...
But it seemed that Rick wouldn’t have much time for new tests, since not only was the snow piling up with each passing day... And he needed to use his remaining time wisely...
"Where are we going now, brother?" Rhayra asked, excited to finally be on her first expedition with her older brother...
"Let’s go to the SC02 university. I still owe the hunters the Olympic bows, and Maya wants some medical books for her training. While we enter the city, I’ll teach you more about how to eliminate level 2 zombies using ranged attacks..."
"Yay!" Rhayra celebrated.
"No... You’re doing it wrong... The throw should come from a fluid movement of the arm and back... You only don’t use your back if the target is very close and you want to make a quick throw."
Rick demonstrated once more, and the dagger was thrown at a level 1 zombie, piercing its left eye and killing it on the spot.
Then Rhayra tried again a few more times before finally getting the hang of it. The fact that she could do it so fast and had such good aim was because of her new ability that saw everything in constant slow motion.
According to Rick, racing thoughts were the first sign of a speedster. If your mind wasn’t racing, you would never be able to keep up with your body’s movements...
"Look, I’m teaching you what I can with dagger throwing, but I’m not a master of this martial art. The best thing you can do is learn how to use a bow. When you master your Universal Force, you’ll be fast, very fast... But that won’t make you stronger. Never try to punch or kick your targets using your speed, your body will probably get hurt due to the Speed Force, and monsters always have stronger bodies than ours..."
"But how can I be useful by shooting arrows or daggers? All hunters already do that... So everyone is fighting, and I just stay far away? This is so boring... You’re just trying to keep me safe, right?"
"Here! Your bow has already been reinforced; it will never break or snap..."
"I hope so..." Rick thought after using the system’s ability to strengthen one of the Olympic bows from SC02 University.
Rhayra looked at the beautiful Olympic bow that now had a different shine, before she could ask her brother how he did it, Rick continued:
"Your job as a speedster is to hit the target’s weak points from afar, or save your friends and companions when they are in danger or seriously injured... Carry them away from the fight, even if I’m the one who gets hurt, okay?"
After finishing his sentence, Rick ran one of his hands over his little sister’s head... Which left her a little frustrated, since she always said that this gesture was as if he was treating her like a child... But this time she didn’t complain, since her brother had allowed her to fight throughout this trip together, and taught her many things, in addition to, in the end, assigning her a very important mission during the group’s next fights...
While she and Rick finished collecting the last books for Maya, a certain call that came on his radio made him quite anxious...
"Rick, are you there?"
"I hear you, Fabian. Is everything okay?"
"We need... Humpf... Your help... A level 3 zombie has appeared..." Said the Sergeant, speaking slowly and breathing with difficulty...
Lieutenant Lambert followed Sergeant Fabian’s orders and shot the strange white zombie, whose only clothes were still on were tight military pants, which were torn at the shins...
Being experienced in the use of sniper rifles and already knowing the weakness of these zombies, the Lieutenant aimed right at the heart, where he imagined the core of this white abomination would be. But to his surprise, the shot only pushed the zombie back and left a light purple bruise on the monster’s white skin.
The creature’s red pupils crossed the almost 1.5 kilometers away and looked into the eyes of Lieutenant Lambert, who was on top of a 4-story building. Before starting to run extremely fast in his direction...
Lambert’s eyes widened with speed, and he broke out in a cold sweat, dropping the powerful rifle. He gave up shooting a second time, and jumped on the zip line previously set up as an escape route, quickly escaping from the top of the building and reaching the ground...
The moment he landed on the ground, three huge explosions rang out. When Lambert looked back, he saw that the explosions had come from the first floor of the building, the zombie had crashed full force into its concrete walls and had broken through the entire building in a single sprint, affecting the entire structure of the four-story building that was now threatening to collapse.
All that remained now between Lieutenant Lambert and the giant white zombie was less than 100 meters between the two...
"LIEUTENANT LISTENING?"
"LIEUTENANT, IS THE TARGET DOWN?"
Lambert gave up running because he saw that the level 3 freak was not only strong and resilient enough to nearly collapse an entire building, but was also fast, very fast...
Lambert tried to reach the radio, but before he could, the creature was already in front of him, throwing a powerful punch in his direction. As a level 2 mutant, Lambert still had the reflexes to place both arms in an X shape in front of his chest. But the zombie’s punch was so strong that it turned his arms into ground meat and even threw him dozens of meters away, hitting the wall of a house and making him spit blood.
Before he could get up, a bare white foot crushed his entire skull along with parts of the wall he hit...
After devouring Lieutenant Lambert’s body, the white zombie made a sound of contempt while saying words in the human language:
"Take cover, he broke through the second line of defense!"
"Sergeant, should we retreat? This monster is unstoppable!"
"1st Squad, prepare to detonate all explosives in the first line of defense of the police station when he gets there. Then spread out in all directions... The rest of you, come back with me into the building..."
Everyone hurriedly retreated into the police station along with Fabian, and soon heard the explosion of the last line of defense.
"All of you, go out the back, spread out, and wait for contact by radio."
"I have one last plan..."
After everyone left, Fabian went to the top floor of the police station. Upon reaching the third floor, he saw the white zombie chasing some of the officers in the last line and killing them easily... Then he aimed his automatic rifle and started shooting through a window, trying to attract it so that the few remaining men could escape...
And when he finally succeeded, the zombie looked directly at Fabian and started smiling as it ran towards him like a train. The last cars in front of the police station were thrown away when he crashed into them and went straight into the first floor of the police station, blowing up the tempered glass door.
But just as he was about to climb the stairs, he saw several red lights flashing inside the police station...
This time, the explosion was several times bigger than the one at the last defensive line. Fabian, who had jumped from the third floor of the building, was still caught in the impact of the explosion and was thrown almost a hundred meters away, in addition to having many broken bones, his ears were hurt, and he could no longer hear anything...
After getting up with blood coming out of his mouth, nose, and ears, he looked back one last time, mourning the loss of the main police station of SC12, and headed towards the secondary police stations to find his comrades, and hoping that that aberration had been buried within the rubble of four floors of concrete and metal of the police station...