Save Scumming Chapter Ninety-One - Fixing Problems

Chapter Ninety-One - Fixing Problems

"Okay, start from the beginning," I said as I helped my new pal down. "Like... what's your na?"

"Who even are you?" he asked.

"Deadline," I said. "I'm Deadline. I find problems, I fix them. And I'm usually pretty quick about it. Co on, sit down, that's right. Your na?"

"Martin," he said. He winced, and I tugged on the sleeve of his arm a little, hoping to see why. He hissed, though, and I let go. "It's not broken," he said in the tone of soone hoping that it wasn't broken.

I nodded along. "Sure." I crouched, so that I was level with him, elbows on my knees. "So, Martin, story from the start."

"I shouldn't tell you anything," he said.

"Yeah, but I'm a mysterious stranger that grabbed you in the middle of the night, wearing a mask and almost all-black. I'm also a ranker, and that's very scary. Right?"

"Uh."

"Exactly. So spill. Corp ain't gonna be angry at you, they'll be angry at ," I reassured him.

I don't know if that worked, but he did spill, at least a little. "We have a portal that breached a long ti ago. Orcs co out of it. Five, six per hour or so? When it calms down, we send a team in, rile them up."

"Uh-huh," I said. "And this had been steady?"

"For years. With only a few blips. Low turnover. Good pay. I'm just a technician here."

"Cool, cool," I said. "And what happened today?"

It took Martin half an hour to give the whole story, half an hour during which the fighting inside escalated, then went very quiet. It turned out that Martin's manager was a dickbag, and had been cutting a few corners. He'd bumped heads with the team-lead for the squad responsible for keeping the portal more or less culled, and fired her a week back. She took two mbers of the team with her.

Still worked for Synthcorp, but not for the ENE division. Figures.

So, the company had this portal. It breached, and then they kept it on that knife's edge, culling monsters as they ca out and imdiately processing them into so much at. I'd probably eaten orc before... gross.

Anyway, keeping a portal semi-breached like this was, in a word, stupid. Mostly it was stupid because the portals could slowly beco stronger. This one had started as an E-rank. Now it was edging closer to C. The orcs coming out of it were more nurous, and bigger, and stronger. For more chapters visit novel•fire

And today, they'd stopped altogether.

Last ti this happened, according to Martin, it had been a second boss that spawned and held them back. The squad had lost two mbers that day.

This ti they'd lost contact entirely, and the orcs were coming out in bigger numbers than usual.

So, soone in there might have been holding back the number of orcs coming out for a few days or weeks. With a couple coming out every hour, that was... a lot of orcs? I'd assu fifty or so, then double that to be safe.

That was too damned many orcs.

I jumped as I heard movent by the front of the building, then saw an orc stomping out and sniffing the air. Martin went still.

"How long until reinforcents arrive?" I asked him in a low whisper.

"The manager won't," he admitted. "He'd never call for help. We have a second subjugation squad."

"And where are they?"

"They... went in a few minutes ago?"

The bunch I saw with the armour and shotguns? Yeah, nah, they were fucked. None of them felt like C-rankers, so at best it was a bunch of D-rankers, and they probably weren't ready for the resistance they t.

I helped Martin up, then snuck him around back. The orc and his pals were more interested in the hub-bub by the entrance.

"Do all the workers here know?" I asked Martin.

He blinked, then shook his head "No, but we're all under NDA?"

"Is there an alarm or sothing? Fire alarm, maybe?"

"In every building, yeah," he said.

"Cool. Run off and pull that," I said before giving him a shove.

I watched him run off, then took a mont to consider what to do next. A C-rank portal... that was beyond what I could handle. Probably. I'd have to go through a ton of loops, and orcs weren't an enemy I had any particular advantage against.

Still... I was here, so might as well get a lay of the land, as it were. I had so ideas percolating at the back of my head for what to do. So of that was experience from past loops coming into play, but I had had a few original ideas too, once in a while.

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I unsheathed my sword, checked it real fast, then pulled out my revolver in my off hand. I had Shadow Bolt on the edge of my tongue as well.

Ti to fight.

I bounced on the spot a few tis, limbering myself up, then I walked around the back of the building, heading out towards the front.

An orc saw , snorted, then brandished a large wooden club at . He didn't seem to like the way I just kept walking towards him.

Orcs were big, an, slled sothing fierce, and had tougher skin than any normal human. Physically, they were definitely upper D-ranked threats. Worse, they weren't entirely stupid. I'd looked them up. They ranked higher than kobolds or goblins in terms of raw intellect. So, as smart as a roided up teenager, but with less communication skills.

I shifted my stance between one step and the next, then lunged, sword point stabbing towards the orc's neck.

He batted the blade aside, but my next thrust caught him in the throat.

It was enough. The stab opened his airway, and he clutched at the hole. I took that opportunity to swing hard into the side of his head and my blade bit deep. The orc fell. My arm was a bit rattled by the blow, but I could manage.

I walked up and around, finding three of them walking off, and two more waiting by the entrance.

Damn, they were guarding it?

Since they hadn't seen , though, I had a nice opportunity that I took. I stabbed the nearest in the neck, sidestepped while he went down, then fought with the second. This one had a crude sword, rusty tal, rough hamr blows and an uneven edge. He parried my thrusts, so I switched to cutting and used the longer blade I had to get a quick stab in past his guard and into his pecs. Didn't do much though.

The orc charged in, roaring, and I found myself backpeddling to stay away. I eventually managed to jump by, landing on the ground and rolling up only to stab the orc in the calf. When he stumbled, I chopped hard into his side, landing a pretty deep cut below the ribs.

The orc went down, eventually, but I was breathing damned hard and sweaty.

Yeah, I needed to get better.

Still, the coast was clear. The orcs that had moved to the front were ssing around over there, so no one was left guarding the place.

I walked in, then scanned the area.

The building was obviously built to be sowhat secure. There was an antechamber with a security room to one side, then another room past that. An orc was there, eating one of those armoured guards I'd seen earlier.

I swallowed past a lump in my throat when the orc looked up, blood dripping down his jaw.

I shot him in the face. He looked a bit bigger, tougher. And it was good to know that my revolver could take one out in a single hit. Still, shooting indoors left my ears ringing.

Deeper in was a larger room, this one clearly designed to process at, with wheeled tables, butcher stations and trash containers. A few conveyor tables lined the room, and there were fluorescent lights above. No portal, but a few bodies. So were techies, but it looked like the main factory floor was closed at night. There was a fridge to one side. The door was opened, a body laying at the foot of it.

Within were orcs. Two dozen of them, stripped naked and hung on tal hooks within movable racks.

Right... at processing place.

Three orcs, living ones, were in the room. They eyed , so I backed up to the antechamber, stashed my sword and revolver into their respective sheathes, then picked up that guard's shotgun. The guy had a bandoleer with more shells, so I walked back in loading the gun up.

It was a lot more satisfying to use than my revolver, though the effects were... h? It was loaded with so sort of shot, I think. Buckshot? It worked to blow open flesh and sent the orcs reeling back, but didn't have that penetrating killing power that my revolver had.

Whatever, it worked.

I reloaded it as I moved into the next room. There was a waiting space, and then a small armoury, with more of the sa orc-holding racks, and finally a large, long room. Concrete walls, with tal plates over the lower half, plenty of lights above, and barricades to hide behind.

A killing floor.

At the end of it, buzzing with magical energy, was the portal, and even as I watched, a group of five orcs stepped out.

***