As Grey climbed atop a nearby rock, settling in in stealth, virtually invisible, in a good position where he could see both the party and the Minoans… he blinked. His plans hadn’t even lasted seconds. The invaders had split up; six of them were remaining with the children, while the others… seventeen by his count… were all heading towards the rest stop, carefully, rifles raised…

  He focused on the first one for a moment.

  He nodded. And turned, focusing on another.

  Not much detail. He whispered into the phone. “You’ve got seventeen headed your way, level six and seven looks like the norm for them. All uncommon armor, most without headgear, all with rifles. Mind if I put all six ants on this side? They left six of the medium-level and the all of the lower-levels behind.”

  After a few moments, he heard Sledge on the phone. ~Can you drop that Curse patch thing on the trap right before you attack the rest? If they average out at that stage, we shouldn’t have a problem, but every bit helps.~

  “Got it. Diverting the ants.”

  He carefully, slowly, slid down from the rocks. He knew the slower he moved, the less obvious he would be in Stealth… and as the war party of invaders approached the ambush point, he glanced their way… and focused.

  Right as the ground began to collapse, he laid out the Curse spell…. And as the first half of the group started to fall into the pit, he diverted his attention… drawing the Left and Right hands, trusting Sledge to handle business there.

  Sure enough, even as he commanded the Ants to attack; the six remaining guards looking in the direction of the ambush… he could hear the familiar crack of lightning striking down… and the ‘fwoosh’ of a burst of flame.

  The defenders looked… frightened. And then… the venom blasts struck… and all six of them looked… just awful. None of them were killed… but one of them dropped his rifle… and all five clawed at the places where the venom had struck, letting out shrieks.

  Inside the container, the younger Minoans were screaming out in fear… as Grey raised both revolvers, aiming, center of mass, at two of them… pulling both triggers.

  One of them was taken, center of mass; a clean hole the size of his fist burst through… while the second… was a complete miss.

  Grey shook his head as he focused both guns on the next target; the movies made two-gunning look so much easier; and as they realized their predicament, four of them leveling guns on the ants while the fifth struggled to pick up his rifle, seemingly blinded…

  He fired again. The ants pounced, biting down on them; with only three left armed, they were able to double up on their enemies… but the Minoans didn’t go down without a fight.

  One of them smashed an ant with the rifle he held; shattering its carapace and instantly destroying the undead, sending its corpse flying… and stomped on the other, letting out a cry of rage…

  While his companions fared far worse; collapsing, missing hands, missing arms, injected with venom… being actively shredded by their own enemies.

  The cry of rage, of course, drew Grey’s attention; and this time, one of the two rounds fired went cleanly through the Minoan’s head… sending him tumbling, limp, to the ground.

  Soon, the only one left standing was the blind one; lashing out with his gun, swinging at random… not coming close to the Ants, which held back, watching… as Grey calmly leveled Right Hand of Death on the Minoan’s chest… and with a final gunshot, the last of the adult defenders was gone.

  Inside the container, the older children; teenagers; had grabbed clubs. Wrenches. One even had a handgun of some sort. They looked afraid, desperate… but willing to fight, to try to survive.

  But while the cargo container meant that they could only be fired on from one direction… it also meant they were all in a confined space.

  Grey reached into storage, grabbing hold of one of his improvised venom sprayers; one that had survived his testing; and squeezed it, before rolling it into the container… and stepping out of view. It was a bit late; the sole handgun was fired, and the youth had fairly good aim… Grey stumbling as he felt an intense heat and pressure on his left side… but the fire resistance of his armor apparently did some good. It hurt…. But he was okay.

  He could hear it. At first, shouts of fear. Then, confusion. Then… silence. This was some of his earlier stuff; pure Serpentfolk venom. It would paralyze the victims… entirely. Arms, legs.. Lungs… heart… and shortly after it worked… they’d be dead.

  Clearly, most of them had already died. But he could still hear, for a few, the moans of pain, desperate struggles for breath.

  Once the noise stopped, he ordered the four Ants that survived into the container; he could see through their senses as they finished off the surviving Minoan teenagers, and gave a nod, before turning to check on the other battle; only to stumble in pain, holding his chest.

  That… was probably broken ribs. Just turning was agony, and his vision turned a bit red as he focused back that way….

  And blinked.

  He’d expected to see the enemy buried in a pit; a dozen corpses, fried and electrocuted, his allies either starting to loot or mopping up the stragglers.

  Instead… while there were some corpses in the pit, yes… his allies also seemed to have suffered. Star and Shockwave were nowhere to be seen, only Sledge still standing; and him in a brutal struggle with a pair of Minoans, clearly injured.

  Dismissing the two revolvers back to storage, Grey called Cold Dead Hands into his arms… and started to jog towards the skirmish.

  Sledge smashed one of the two Minoans over the head, screaming with fury.. Even as the other stabbed him in the gut, a strange, almost perfectly triangular blade skewering right through his armor; and judging by the blood, it wasn’t the first, he kept beating on the now-injured man… not stopping until Grey arrived… and with a single shot at the unsuspecting Minoan… ended the bull-man’s life.

  He looked around for a moment, frowning. “...Star and Shockwave?”

  A display popped up.

  Sledge was on his knees, gripping the injuries. “...Fuck! They’re both out! Shockwave’s dead. Star… probably will be, soon.”

  Grey frowned. This was… unfortunate This… Ah. “The System Store…. There might be an item…”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Sledge blinked. “That’s right! I got about two thousand credits, but… did you get…”

  A quick nod. Ensuring Sledge’s good-will would be worth the delay in opening it up at home for a proper perusal. He focused on the words… and a sudden silver spire appeared, bursting up from the ground as if it had always been there.

  Sledge was staring at nothing for the moment… then called out. “Healing items! Regeneration! Restore severed limbs!”

  He stared into the void a bit longer… and then two vials appeared in his hands. One of them a dull, glowing green… the other a vibrant red. “Sorry, sis, I meant to do this the other way, but…”

  He drank the red vial… and quickly ran to a nearby rock… Grey leaned over a bit… and could clearly see a severed arm… and quite a bit of blood. That… didn’t seem survivable. He stepped a bit further to get a better look… she had a nasty wound in her torso, the black-red leather completely breached… but as he watched, Sledge said something…

  And began to glow intensely… as did Star. Before… he poured the green vial down her throat.

  Grey took in the scene… and nodded. Either system items could save Star, or not. Either way…

  He’d give the siblings some privacy. He walked the short distance back to the fight at the cargo container, and lifted his arm, waving it over the enemies he’d slain, one by one; starting with the children to avoid notice, and finishing with the first two snipers. He’d let Sledge and Star loot the ones that group had handled.

  He studied the loot altogether for a moment, and then removed one of the Mana Rifles… trying not to pay too much attention to the sound of Sledge fervently praying in the background over his sister.

  Interesting. Some of the rifles may have been rendered nonfunctional in the fight; most of the weapons he’d seen here on earth were more durable than that… something to consider.

  He stored the rifle back away, and looked at the various equipment the Minoans had left inside their storage container, checking for anything of interest.

  The container itself showed up on examination? What about the rest? There had been several boxes that the Minoan teenagers had been sitting on, though one of them had been damaged by the Ants.

  Definitely not what you brought with you for an invasion. These people looked less like genuine invaders, and more like refugees in need of a new home, with everything he examined.

  He added the crates to his storage; starting to get a bit crowded again.

  There only remained one real question… whatever portal that these people had taken advantage of to come here. It would only have formed if something had happened here… something that wiped out all living things at once, releasing their mana into the environment, rather than building up in whoever was responsible.

  The amount killed… should also need to be more than a rest stop would have.

  He focused on the Ants; he hadn’t bothered to create more after the fight, but the four that were left were plenty for scouting purposes. He sent them around, scouting, investigating…. And could see, in the distance… a group of buses, parked next to… some sort of scenic overlook?

  He hadn’t driven this highway before. But from what he could tell, there were a series of telescopes mounted on poles, pointed at something, not a mile from the rest stop…

  Whatever had happened there must have been what created these. Though… if only four buses full of people could create one…. There might be more than he’d initially thought. That couldn’t be more than what… a few hundred people?

  ***

  When Grey returned to Sledge; the kiosk having long since vanished; the man was still there, kneeling beside Star; whose missing arm had now become a stump… which had a strange, bulbous protrusion growing out of it.

  He glanced down at it, then at Sledge. “I… take it you got what you needed?”

  Sledge looked up… and chuckled. “If we ever got enough credits… I was gonna head to the kiosk in Dallas and get a regeneration mutagen, so I could regrow lost limbs and organs… and Stacks was going to get one that would give him an off-class Healing spell without having to waste an Ability point, with Star doing the same. But… with Stacks and Shock dead… and Star out of it.. And missing a limb… I had to get the Healing ability… and make Star drink the one to give her Regeneration.”

  He dropped down, just laying on the paved parking lot space, staring into the sky. “...You finished them off, then. If you hadn’t, then you couldn’t have summoned the kiosk.”

  “Yep. All gone. Though… something had to happen here to let them arrive. Something nasty. We need to check it out.”

  Sledge closed his eyes. “I lost alot of blood. But I’m healing… you can wait for us…” He reached over, eyes still closed, and set an arm on his sister’s shoulder… “Or go check it out on your own.”

  Grey looked at them for a moment… then at the ants. “...I’ll wait. I could leave an ant to protect you, but if something killed me, it’d suddenly want to kill you. Best go together.” More importantly, Sledge could fulfill the all-important job of attracting enemy fire.

  Judging by the group here, and their equipment; some of them actually had something better than light armor; Sledge and his friends had done the lion’s share of the fighting here, leaving Grey to handle the second-stringers and a bunch of practically helpless children.

  One of the guns actually looked interesting; it was mostly the same as the others, but had an attachment below the top; a second, thicker, barrel, almost like a grenade launcher, and… what looked like an earth magazine attached to it from a handgun. He examined it as it lay on the ground beside the dead Minoan.

  That was… both absurd and potentially useful. Could use it to feed a grenade, or a jar of poison… if he used a smaller jar. He glanced down at Sledge… the man was still conscious, and likely saw the gun… it might even have been used on him.

  “Mind if I take this Multi-rifle? It might be useful for, say… launching venom at people. I’ll trade you the five regular ones I got from the others.”

  Sledge didn’t really seem concerned. “Sure. Whatever. We’d probably all be dead if not for you, take what you want.”

  He weighed the explicit permission against the likelihood of causing irritation, and Sledge being useful going forward… and decided to do exactly as he suggested, leaving the five rifles on the ground beside Sledge… he’d loot the rest, and leave everything but the Multi-Rifle for the others.

  After they got a bit of rest… they could check out the buses. See what sort of problem that was.