As the adrenaline of their mad dash started to fade, Gen's mood gradually started to improve. Aubrey and presumably Zach had died, but disregarding the very real pain of dying, the event was basically a game without consequence, so she couldn't stay sad for long, as she had only lost her allies temporarily.
Hon's excitement about flying the UFO definitely helped as well. While his ability worked with bicycles, it was certainly more impressive when used on a literal flying saucer.
The circular porthole where the broken tractor beam had operated through was stuck open, and she could see the ground whizzing past wildly, the view even transitioned to the sky several times as Hon gleefully flew the ship in loop-de-loops and did barrel rolls.
She was extremely thankful that the ship apparently had some sort of inertial dampener or artificial gravity, as despite their wild accelerations and flying the ship upside down, she didn't even feel any movement from the inside.
Far too quickly, Hon announced they had returned to zone 98. After such a long bike ride and then hours chasing around the UFO it almost felt trivial that they managed to return to their original zone in just a couple of minutes.
She quickly checked her phone to make sure they weren't flying into an active fight and saw a picture message from Morna with the text Look Mom! No hands!
Looking at the picture, she grimaced as she saw that Morna had somehow managed to lose her only remaining arm. It didn't seem to have affected her mood, as she was happily posing in front of a horde of zombie iguanas. The angle implied she was holding the phone with her feet and Gen didn't even want to know how she managed to text.
Gen quickly sent a message in the main group chat to let G2n know they were flying in so he didn't preemptively shoot them out of the sky or anything.
G2n didn't respond, but she got a notification as she was added to yet another group chat. This one was titled Zone 98 Defense Coordination. In it were a dozen or so new names, along with G2n, Francine, and Pali. Scrolling through the past messages, she smiled. It seemed Francine had succeeded in their objective, and that these people were antagonist reinforcements from zone 60 who were helping defend zone 98.
The UFO slowed to a halt above a large fortress, which took Gen several seconds to realize was the ability testing center that served as her zone's headquarters. Previously, it had looked like a large nondescript community center, but now it was a cross between a medieval castle and a sci-fi bunker.
The general layout was the same, but the walls were made from steel and rose into battlements on all sides. On top, she saw quite a few people holding guns and other pieces of equipment. There were mounted machine guns and a carsized tuning fork for some reason. Signs of an assault were everywhere, with dead humanoid and iguana zombies, melted and scorched sections of the wall, and remnants of several disintegrated heavy machine guns.
As she watched, more defenses appeared from nowhere, and some damaged areas began to repair, presumably as the defenders spent contribution points. Her eyes focused on the streets outside, however, as hundreds of zombie iguanas were lining up into organized ranks and standing at attention.
Hon lowered the UFO to only a few feet off the ground so she could jump out, seeing as the tractor beam was broken. She looked at him and asked, "Are you coming?"
He shook his head vehemently, "No way! I finally got a cool vehicle! I'm staying in this thing until the event is over! Those other guys were chumps, leaving a beauty like this undefended! I'm not going to have some nobody fly off with it while I'm taking a break!" His eyes sparkled, "Plus, my poll isn't finished yet! I need to see what upgrade it's getting!"
She nodded, he'd already told her how much he was hoping his viewers would pick antimatter bombs. She was curious what other options his poll had, but he was so focused on that one that she hadn't even gotten a chance to ask.
Waving him goodbye, she dragged the leashed leaper zombie with her as she headed to the iguana nest. As she walked, she nervously eyed everyone watching her, it had taken a lot of work bringing it here, and if somebody killed it in the last few feet, then it would all be for nothing.
Thankfully, nothing happened, and she was able to reach the nest without incident. Inspecting it for a second, she saw that the giant egg had grown slightly while she was gone. Not overthinking it, she shoved the leaper zombie into the nest. The giant egg slurped the leaper up through a large slit with a disgustingly wet noise and she shuddered as she turned away. The nest wouldn't actually start creating leaper iguanas until 10,000 contribution points were spent, and as usual, she was broke.
She quickly sent a message in the new defenders' chat.
Gen: Leaper mutagen is in the nest, I need someone to spend the contribution to upgrade it.
The nest was originally hers, but it didn't give her any more ownership of it than anyone else. The basic iguana zombies that came with it were treated as fully hers in terms of getting contribution points from the iguanas' accomplishments, but for the spitter iguanas, the contribution was split 50/50 between her and G2n, as he was the one who paid the points, and she had only added the mutagen.
She was greedy enough that she wished she could monopolize the nest, but she knew that it was far more practical to let someone who already had the points upgrade it than to somehow get that many herself, especially considering she was stuck in the negatives still.
As she waited for some rich savior to come upgrade the nest, she saw an extremely fat zombie iguana slide out of the hatchery. It looked almost like a beach ball with legs as it fumbled forward awkwardly, but still surprisingly fast.
Touching the nest, she accessed its upgrade menu.
Spawns per minute
- Standard: 50 (+10)
- Spitter: 8 (+2)
- Explosive: 3
She whistled. It seemed that their new allies had brought another mutagen with them. She wouldn't get any contribution from the explosive iguanas, but anything that increased the number of iguanas in the world was a good thing in her book. Regardless, upgrading the nest with each mutagen increased the spawn rate of all the existing mutagen types. The change in the spawn speed since last she had looked was helpfully labeled next to each type.
"Our leader was skeptical about investing in an iguana hatchery instead of just making a conventional nest, but in the battle, they were quite impressive specimens."
Turning, she saw a newcomer named Todd, he was level 4 and muscular with geometric tattoo sleeves on both arms. He held out a hand and she shook it, "I'm glad they worked well, I have a greater appreciation of iguanas every day."
He smiled and looked back to the headquarters, "I took a peek at the incubation chamber that one is going to be a sight if it can finish incubating."
She saw G2n, Francine, and an armless Morna approaching and gave them a nod before asking, "I'm still catching up on things. How did the defense go? I presume your people are from zone 60?"
He nodded and was about to answer before G2n interrupted, "Upgrade the nest first, we don't want to waste any spawn time talking."
Todd shrugged and walked up to the nest, touching it briefly before turning back to them, "Done."
Gen watched the egg rumble as it grew in size again. Stepping closer, she touched it as well to see the updated stats.
Spawns per minute
- Standard: 60 (+10)
- Spitter: 10 (+2)
- Explosive: 4 (+1)
- Leaper: 12
The spawn speed was getting quite out of hand already, as at least one iguana slid out every second now, with often more than one emerging at a time. Each new iguana moved in the same direction, forming up in the organized ranks she'd seen from above.
Looking questioningly at G2n, he answered, "It's one of the headquarters upgrades. There's a station inside the base that allows controlling zombies within a certain radius of the headquarters. It can only control a limited amount at a time, however, so the excess is just sent to the East to increase our buffer with the other zones."
She nodded, having suspected something like that already. Cheap equipment like her amulet made the zombies ignore you, but presumably, there were higher-level ones that let you directly control zombies. Otherwise, the coffin item that had created the zombie swarm before wouldn't have been so effective against the protagonists.
She spotted the first leaper zombie emerge and smiled. It looked mostly standard, except its legs were oversized and highly muscled. It held still after being born before abruptly leaping. The leap was like a flea, where one second it was there and the next it was a blur and gone. Spinning, she took a second to locate it and saw that it was on the roof of a nearby building, having jumped over a hundred feet in a second.
Everyone else was also staring at it in surprise, "Umm, is that normal for leaper zombies?"
Morna shook her head, "No way! Iguanas are way better than normal zombies! When those protags showed up, they were all like what are these dumb lizards and tried to ignore them, but then they got swarmed and were like oh they're our worst nightmare!"
G2n rolled his eyes. "The iguanas have several advantages over traditional zombies. To start, they are much faster than their human counterparts and spawn faster, giving a numerical advantage. Also, their small size makes them easy to miss and harder to hit." He paused before continuing, "They are not without disadvantages, however, they are much more fragile than traditional zombies, and their attack power is much weaker against armored enemies."
"Except for the explosive ones!" Morna helpfully added.
G2n shook his head, "No, they're still weaker than normal explosive zombies, the blast is roughly half as powerful, but it's still powerful enough that it's hard to ignore."
Wanting some more context, Gen asked, "So what happened with the defense?"
G2n looked at Todd, "I'll let him explain as I'm going back to monitoring the protagonist chats. They are debating their options at the moment, and we have to be ready."
Gen watched him go and turned to Todd. When G2n had interfaced with her phone, he had explained that he'd cloned her profile so he had full access to the locked protagonist chats through her user. She was thankful he was keeping an eye on that as the information management was more responsibility than she was interested in.
Morna stepped between her and Todd, "Why would he explain things!? I was in the heat of it! I can explain!"
Gen felt helpless as Morna immediately launched into a Morna version explanation.
"So we knew they were coming and we were like all ready. I was in the sky because I can fly with my ability, you know, and I wanted to get a drop on them. My hammer was hard to use with one arm, but as long as I am falling it's easy! They show up and they have like this floating platform thing. It flies, but not as cool as the UFO that I'm definitely going to steal from Hon. Anyway, it was slow, but going high enough that the iguanas couldn't reach them. That was no good, so I dropped down like a meteor and smashed it with my hammer! I was gonna smash them too, but one of them must have an ability or something, as he warned them in time, and I only managed to break their ride! Anyway, then we were all falling, and one of them grabbed me in midair and used some sort of ability, and my arm fell off! What type of bullshit ability is that? He looked real smug about it so I wrapped my legs around him and inverted gravity and pulled him into the sky, I don't know what his other abilities were, but he was freaking out and when we were way up I dropped him. Then---" She stamped her foot for emphasis, "Splat! Honestly, it's embarrassing to be level 6 and be that bad at fighting! His inventory at least had a bunch of kickass traps!"
Morna stopped talking, and Gen gave her a polite nod before glancing at Todd. "What happened after Morna abducted her victim?"
Morna scowled, "My victim!? Did you forget the part where he took my arm!?"
Gen ignored her and kept looking at Todd, who looked a bit uncomfortable, but answered anyway. "So, to start at the beginning, we obviously had heard of the incubation here and were doing our own investigation of which group was behind it. It's a bit convoluted, but protagonists have set up elaborate traps in the beginning, and we were suspicious of what was going on." He gave Francine a polite nod and continued, "Francine and the others from your group showed up at our headquarters and requested help. My clan, Fortune Wardens, is pretty big both inside and outside the event, so they already have their own machinations going on. The leadership didn't want to overly invest in this with how many unknowns there were, but I was interested enough to volunteer and brought a leashed zombie with the explosive mutagen along with a dozen fighters to scope out the situation."
Gen nodded, noting down the name of his group. She really needed to get a handle on what groups were important in Spotlight and the world at large. She also looked at Francine and gave them a nod. Todd hadn't gone into detail, but it must have been a struggle to convince an influential group to even listen. Granted, Francine hadn't gone alone, but Francine had made enough of an impression that Todd at least remembered them specifically. Francine smiled at the recognition.
Todd continued, "So we got over here and honestly I didn't know what to expect with how few people were involved, but Twen has a good head on his shoulders and had already started upgrading the headquarters defenses and wisely focused on a downsizer so we had a good foundation to add to with our own contribution points."
G2n had mentioned a downsizer as well, so Gen asked, "What is a downsizer?"
Todd pointed at the giant metal tuning fork on the roof of the headquarters. "It's a weapon that targets an individual actor, this one is level 4 so the targetted actor loses four levels while under the effect of the device. G2n wisely targetted the actor that Morna abducted dropping him from having six abilities to only two.
Morna blew a raspberry, "I could've taken him even with six!"
They all ignored her as Todd detailed the battle, "The downsizer has a cooldown, so the other two were still at level 6, and even after they were dropped into the zombie horde, we were at a disadvantage. One of them had a plasma ability that burned through everything except her ally. She dissolved the zombies and even started melting her way into the headquarters. Her friend had a shielding ability that they used to protect themselves from our attacks. We didn't have very many explosive iguanas yet, but the ones we had were enough. They really saved us by detonating all at once and cracking the forcefield. Once it was gone, the spitter iguanas started unloading on the pair. They had advanced enough antidotes that we couldn't take them out before they used an emergency escape device and retreated."
Gen nodded. It was a bit disappointing that with their combined forces they had only managed to actually eliminate one of the enemies, but considering the highest level person on their side in the area was Todd at level 4 it was a good outcome when fighting three level sixes considering that UFO team was only level 5 and they had almost successfully routed Carlos and all his allies.
Ding~!
Once again, I had a tie, and LEO's voice echoed. Oh wow, it's you again! You already know your issues and clearly still haven't gotten a therapist, so you get… dry-rubbed in experience and a little bit of trauma.
P.S. Get a therapist!
Gen felt a rising heat on her skin, and deep inside her body, it was gentle at first, but quickly started to burn. Collapsing to her knees, she made eye contact with Francine, who was also in distress.
Next to them, Todd and Morna tensed and were looking for an enemy, fighting through the pain, Gen gasped, "It's a poll!"
The pain intensified again, and she lost sight of her surroundings as every cell in her body died and regenerated rapidly over and over.
When the pain finally subsided, she realized someone had lain her down on her back. Morna leaned over her looking excited, "I always wanted an older sister!"
Gen ignored her as she sat up, Francine was already up and looked hardly changed, maybe a year or two younger, but still around early twenties.
Gen pulled out her phone and used the selfie camera to inspect her features. She hadn't changed much either, maybe a few years more mature than before, but still a little under thirty.
Todd helped her to her feet, and she asked, "How long was I out?"
Morna shrugged the body language looking odd when she had no arms, "Just a few minutes."
Gen tried really hard to move on from the completely unnecessary traumatic experience and pulled out her blowgun.
She hadn't used it prior to being upgraded, so she didn't know if its appearance had changed, but it looked like an unremarkable purple hollow reed.
Reading the updated description her eyes widened. Blowgun can sample mutagens to alter infection types. Sampled mutagens can be combined to create new types.
Not explaining herself she walked up to a freshly spawned spitter iguana and poked it with the blowgun. A simple on/off switch appeared on her blowgun with a helpful label of spitter next to it.
Being able to shoot spitter darts was neat, but not very useful, considering the spitter zombies already did that. What truly interested her was the ability to combine mutagens.
It didn't take long before she had sampled a leaper and explosive iguana as well.
Todd, Francine, and Morna were all watching her now with varying degrees of patience.
Ignoring them, she summoned a fresh iguana, made sure all three switches were flipped to on, and shot it.
As usual, black veins quickly spread across the iguana's skin, and it started transforming. It became more bulbous and its legs became thicker, but it didn't reach the same level of roundness as the basic explosive iguanas. It held perfectly still.
Looking at the group, she questioned, "Why isn't it doing anything?"
Morna ignored her question, "Better question, what the hell did you make Gen? I want one!"
"My blowpipe can combine mutagens, so it's a spitter-leaper-explosive iguana."
Todd stared at it in consideration, "In the headquarters, there's a control station for the nearby zombies. It has preset commands of what to do with the zombies based on their type. As this one is a new type, it must not have any commands set and is just idle?"
Gen narrowed her eyes, "If it's a new type, can I use it to upgrade the nest again?"
Todd hesitated before shaking his head, "Honestly, I have no idea. The nest already has the base types in it, so I would think it wouldn't accept duplicates, but you might as well try. These events usually get a bit crazy toward the end, as different edge-case scenarios start spiralling out of control."
Morna helpfully added, "Some people think LEO makes mistakes, not considering edge cases! But they're not bugs, they're features to keep the viewers engaged!"
Not hesitating, Gen dragged the stationary iguana to the hatchery and tried to shove it inside a slot as before. The hatchery flap opened, but there was resistance as she forcefully shoved the iguana inside. Ignoring the obvious issue, she forced the mutant the rest of the way inside.
Opening the upgrade menu, she saw the text was flickering with an almost glitch effect until a new option appeared and stabilized. The new option for purchase was called Jet Smogger.
Smiling happily, she looked at Todd, "It worked! How many more contribution points do you have?"
He hesitated, "Most of my team is transferring points to me, so I still have ten thousand barely…" He glanced at the base, "There are more upgrades for the headquarters that we are considering, however."
Morna shot him a look, "You have the opportunity to make super zombie iguanas here! Don't squander it!"
Todd continued to hesitate, but eventually was bullied into it as he stepped forward and purchased the upgrade.
Gen inspected the spawn rates again.
Spawns per minute
- Standard: 70 (+10)
- Spitter: 12 (+2)
- Explosive: 5 (+1)
- Leaper: 15 (+3)
- Jet Smogger: 2
Morna giggled, "We need more mutagans! I want to create the ultimate zombie iguana!"
Todd was also nodding, "My group will be interested as well. I already sent leashed zombie iguanas of the existing types back to my group. They're a pain to transport still, but still easier than humanoid zombies. They are working on creating mutated zombie hordes in other regions to help the overall chaos. If we could instead send a sample of these jet smoggers it would be a game changer."
Gen asked the obvious question, "Are we aware of any other mutagens we could get samples of?"
Todd shook his head, "Not currently, it's possible that some others might appear, but they are always rare to begin with. From previous zombie events, we know there are a dozen or so possible mutagens, but not every mutagen appears in each event, and rarely LEO will add a new one." He glanced at Morna, having obviously already picked up on her personality, "The problem is complicated, that many people who get mutagens will waste them on a short-lived horde without saving any samples for creating new hordes or upgrading nests."
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Morna didn't seem to notice the insult as she nodded authoritatively, "Yeah! People are so stupid! Obviously, you've gotta make the mutagens count as they're so rare!"
Francine, who had been very quiet so far, asked, "Can you sample the armored mutagen from the special zombie?"
Gen looked at Todd, anticipating the answer.
He shrugged, "I don't know about that either, special zombies are special. Unlike nests, you can't create one with just a sample, you need the full original mutagen. The bosses can spread the mutation once they're done incubating, so we could potentially get it later, but I've never heard of one being used mid-incubation…"
They shared a glance before hurrying into the headquarters and going to the incubation room. The flesh ball of iguanas was still hovering in the center, it had changed a lot since Gen last saw it. Before, it was just a bunch of iguanas crammed together, but now they had partially merged together, and armored scales were growing out randomly."
Gen deliberately didn't look for Jasper in the ball of flesh as she strode forward and poked it with her blowgun. Nothing happened initially, but she kept poking and when she pressed on one of the armored scales the blowpipe activated and a fourth switch appeared.
She couldn't suppress a laugh, but paused, as she looked at Todd with a sad expression, "You're really broke?"
Todd paled, "I really am…"
Francine spoke up unexpectedly, "My spitter zombies that we sent out initially have gotten me a lot of contribution points… I hadn't been keeping an eye on them, but I've got 10,000 now…"
They all stared at Francine before running back out to the nest. Gen made sure all switches were flipped on, summoned an iguana, and shot it again. The transformation looked similar to before, except the resulting iguana had thick scales all over its body.
Picking it up she noted that it was heavier than normal, but ignored it as she shoved it into the slot once again. There was a resistance again this time, but maybe only a little more than the first time.
Opening the upgrade menu, she saw it doing a quick glitch effect before the new option of Rocket Smogger.
Gen nodded to Francine, who stepped forward and purchased the upgrade. Gen smiled, but then hesitated as she considered something. Looking at her blowgun, she quickly switched everything off except for armored. Summoning a new iguana, she shot it immediately. The transformation was slower with only a single mutagen, but quickly the iguana turned into a basic zombie iguana, except with armored scales.
Picking it up, she shoved it into the hatchery once again, and she was sure this time that it was getting harder to shove inside, but she ignored it as she forced it all the way.
The issue now was contribution points…
Todd and Francine sadly shook their heads, but Morna strutted forward, "I got 10k for taking out that level 6 loser."
Giddy, Gen looked at Morna, "Upgrade it again!"
Morna walked forward, without arms she headbutted the hatchery instead. The giant egg seemed to rumble as it grew in size once again, it was now double the size it initially started at.
Placing a hand on it, she saw that the increases reflected the two additional upgrades so far.
Spawns per minute
- Standard: 90 (+20)
- Spitter: 16 (+4)
- Explosive: 7 (+2)
- Leaper: 21 (+6)
- Jet Smogger: 4 (+2)
- Rocket Smogger: 2
- Armored: 20
Gen was pleased as the zombies were hatching out at a visibly increased rate. The new types were all still just sitting limply after emerging and were starting to look creepy as they piled up.
She relished the growing horde for only a moment before greed started to set in. There was something here… the blowgun and the way spawn rates for every existing type would increase whenever a new type was added. Her brain was itching about how exploitable this was. Victor had found several game-breaking oversights in board games during his time. Bad balance ruined a game, obviously, but the first time you found an exploit was always a rush.
Looking at the switches on her blowgun, her eyes flashed. She flipped on only the leaper and armored ones and repeated the process from before. She hardly looked at the new armored-leaper before shoving it inside. She had to use her back to get it into the slot this time, but it still went in.
Ignoring the increased glitch images on the upgrade menu, she confirmed a new type called Rocket was available for purchase.
She couldn't stop herself from laughing again and had the sudden thought that maybe Morna was a bad influence on her…
Looking at her companions, she said, "We need more contribution points."
Todd recognized what she was intending and pulled out his phone, sending several messages back to his main group. Francine hurried inside to go tell whoever was in charge of controlling the zombies that they had to do something about the new types before they piled up too much.
While they worked, Gen started making new combinations of zombies to get a full count of how many points they would need. There was a unique one for every combination of mutagen, so leaper-spitter, leaper-explosive, spitter-explosive, spitter-armored, armored-explosive.
She made one after another, ruthlessly shoving them into the nest, each time it got harder and harder to force a new one inside. Pretty soon, Morna was having to help her, which wasn't very helpful considering she had no arms. Todd stepped in and had some of his subordinates come over, and pretty soon they had a group taking turns shoving the iguanas inside. Gen had no idea how contribution would end up working when multiple people shoved a zombie into the nest, but she didn't care. Her points were still negative despite anything and she'd lost hope on correcting the issue.
People kept coming by and inspecting the progress including G2n who she felt like had comments, but wisely said nothing.
Once she had finished the combinations of available mutagens she stared at the hatchery spewing out zombies. It was a good exploit, but maybe not big enough to be considered completely balance-breaking. The large contribution point expense was a big downside. There were hundreds of thousands of antagonists on in the event however, if some of the big antagonist groups started to buy-in then getting the required points would be easy.
She looked down at her blowgun and the four mutagen switches on it before freezing. She looked at a nearby rocket smogger iguana that had started moving toward its rally point. Hesitant, she walked toward it and poked it with her blowgun. The blowgun vibrated in her grip, and a fifth switch appeared on it, labeled rocket smogger.
She glanced up at the sky, she didn't completely buy into Morna's theory that LEO made exploitable situations on purpose as this was going to get ridiculous.
Switching perspectives as Gen is very rude, and no one wants to watch exactly how many iguanas you can shove into an egg.
Susan was looking at her phone, feeling bored while reading all the different chats. The beginning of events was always fun because she could just do what she wanted, the longer it went on the more and more things descended into dreadful bureaucracy. She should've tried out that swimming pool the generated girl made when she had the chance…
She was level 7 and one of the most powerful people participating in the event. By all rights, she should be free to parade around the event area with impunity, but in recent seasons, things like downsizers had been increasingly common, and being high-level wasn't sufficient anymore. You needed allies and an actual strategy.
As a result, she was forced to wait for the group to make decisions far more than she wanted to. When she first saw that an early special zombie had been started, she wanted to rush over immediately and find out who had been so brazen.
Instead, hours were spent debating options before another group was sent. One of their few level 6 resources had been killed, so she was forced to admit that heading over herself would have been reckless.
The door to her room opened, and her daughter Sarah entered and slumped into another couch, mirroring her mother by pulling out her phone.
Sarah had been in the thick of things, almost getting eliminated herself right as the incubation began. Susan felt the fight was a good lesson for her daughter, she had done her best not to shelter Sarah and give her a wide ranging education, but it evidently had fallen short when faced with fighting the crazy cat lady that had managed to defeat her.
Sarah spoke dryingly as she read the various threads they were both in, "They've finally come to the conclusion that there's an iguana themed nest in addition to the special zombie. Our monitor team says the zombie level is spiking alarmingly, so they must have upgraded it a crazy number of times."
Susan nodded, scanning through the messages as well. Themed nests were rare and always came with pros and cons compared to the default humanoid zombie nests. A few years back a mosquito themed nest had almost crippled the protagonist side before they quarantined the originating zone with a bug zapper defense.
Reading the messages, now she saw that quarantine was already the preferred option. The initial scouting attempt hadn't uncovered much with primarily low-level antagonists appearing and still managing to repel three level 6's. The prevailing conclusion was this was a deliberate ploy from their opponents to hide their real forces until absolutely necessary.
With the zone having a special zombie and a unique zombie nest it was impractical to invest more resources in attacking it. It being on the perimeter meant that quarantine upgrades were far cheaper there than anywhere else, making it an easy decision.
Susan still felt something was off… why was such a massive investment made in a zone that could just be cheaply quarantined? Quarantines weren't invincible, but they were incredibly cost-effective, especially on zones near the event edge. Worst case, it could just be upgraded additionally if the antagonists were determined to break through.
Sarah spoke again, "The main focus is shifting to what to do with the mutated hordes popping up all over the explosive ones don't spread easily, but we've got dozens of antagonist teams with leashed spitter zombies running around and even some new types that nobody knows how to categorize."
Susan looked at the battle map, this event had initially been very protagonist sided with the antagonists groups failing to quickly unify or make any coordinated efforts. The momentum of the battlefield was shifting now.
Antagonists were acting more coordinated and on more than one occasion, they had anticipated protagonist actions. They even seemed to have detailed knowledge of all the protagonists' headquarters locations.
She was starting to think they had a leak in their chat channel. They put a lot of effort into only adding verified users, but she wouldn't be surprised if someone got sloppy.
Leveraging her years of experience and the wealth of her family's training, she pointed to a few locations while avoiding whatever was going on around zone 98 and stood. "Come with me, I wanted you to get some experience with others at your level, but as they all got eliminated, you might as well tag along for a headquarters crushing run."
Acting without a large group and lots of planning was risky, but the momentum of the battlefield was something that couldn't always be reclaimed once lost.
Sarah stood excitedly, but immediately schooled her expression as she gave a serious nod. Susan turned away before smiling, her daughter was acting more aloof since hitting level 2, but evidently she still enjoyed mother daughter time.
Switching perspective…
Gen looked at her blowgun, which was constantly vibrating now, and felt a bit hot to the touch. It was giving her the same vibes as a swollen lithium battery, but she suspected it was substantially more dangerous.
It had taken several hours to get to this point. She had initially started with four mutagen switches, but once she realized she could also sample the combinations, things had gotten out of hand.
She'd shot an iguana with the Rocket Smogger and Explosive switches turned on, and then sampled the resulting iguana, which caused a new switch labeled Explosive Rocket Smogger to appear. She'd then flipped the new switch on and shot another iguana, resulting in a Super Explosive Rocket Smogger.
Things had spiralled from there, especially when she started listening to Morna and selectively combining names to try and create the most explosive sounding iguana possible.
There were now hundreds of switches on the blowgun, and the text next to each one was almost entirely illegible. Half of them, she was pretty sure, weren't even written in English at this point, with the characters randomly switching between other languages and even what she was pretty sure was the Wingdings font.
The blowgun hadn't gotten any longer, but it was getting fatter and fatter to accommodate larger and larger darts, with the current ones looking more like organic syringes of dark liquid than the original thin darts.
Turning them all on and shooting an iguana had caused it to turn into a frankly terrifying creature. The iguana's black veins were so thick that it was entirely black, but underneath its skin a pulsing red light was visible. Just being near the creature allowed you to feel a painful heat emanating.
They'd of course shoved it into the hatchery, which had proved difficult when even touching it caused painful burns, but they'd eventually gotten it inside after destroying several pieces of defensive equipment.
Accessing the glitchy upgrade menu, she looked at its name Xx_?IGN?TUS_FRAG??_G?DZILLA_?C0RE-BLAST3R_xX.
Their unique situation had succeeded in getting more funds diverted their way from Todd's faction. At the very least the unique iguana samples they were producing were more deadly than the base ones and they were being exported to other zones to create new hordes. So getting some contribution points to support their efforts was more than fair.
She'd been so focused on making new crazy combinations that she honestly hadn't gotten a chance to witness the combat testing going on around her.
There were leaping iguanas that left infectious clouds in their wake, iguanas that shot explosive balls, a giant explosive iguana that leveled the building opposite her, and deafened everyone when it detonated.
People were popping by now and then and accessing the nest upgrade menu to purchase more and more of the crazy types that had been shoved inside. The nest was highly resisting more iguanas being added, but Hon had helped locate a forklift of all things and was using it to physically jam more into the nest.
The upgrade he'd gotten for the UFO was size-control, which he was now insisting was actually the best option he could have gotten. He wore the UFO on a keychain around his waist and wouldn't let anyone else touch it.
The hardest part of upgrading now was that the upgrade menu was so glitchy that selecting the correct option was all but impossible. People resorted to just frantically pushing buttons until something somehow went through..
The hatchery itself now dwarfed the headquarters and towered above it being double the size. The spawn rate section was completely broken with multiple types written over top of each other making it impossible to read the numbers. She knew for a fact that the numbers were getting crazy though as it looked like a literal tide of iguanas were oozing out of the hatchery at all times.
G2n had been struggling to upgrade the zombie controller enough to just keep the zombies docile in a small area around the hatchery itself, a blanket command was directing the iguanas to the East before leaving them to their own devices.
Gen was pleased to see a monitor that showed that zone 98 had reached 100% infection rate, having fully fallen to the zombie control. The protagonist headquarters in the area had also all been exterminated, and Francine had joined an attack team, managing to complete their bonus mission. For Francine's bonus reward, they'd received a poll which ended up selecting a house upgrade that added an advanced robotics workbench. Gen briefly had seen it, but it was somewhat comically placed as it took up the full room when in use and could only be used if Francine stood in the hallway of the dormitory room until the room was upgraded with more square footage.
Gen glanced at the clock again. Only a few minutes remained until Jasper's incubation was complete, and her own bonus mission would be completed. She'd been worried about a follow-up protagonist attack, but none had been forthcoming.
The protagonist chat was also oddly silent. G2n had been dispersing insider information from it to Todd's faction, and it appeared the protagonists had caught on and moved their important conversation elsewhere, leaving only low-level people in the original chat. Gen didn't think she'd been revealed as the traitor, but evidently, Susan wasn't in a hurry to add her to the new channel either.
Regardless the damage was done with all the protagonist headquarter locations revealed and multiple protagonist teams having been ambushed before the other team realized something was amiss.
While waiting for the incubation to complete she wandered into the headquarters and found G2n to harass him with more questions and see if she could break the event to any greater agree.
He was busy typing away on multiple keyboards and monitors that his ability was interfacing with as usual and didn't even glance her way before asking, "Are you done breaking reality with that thing outside?"
She shrugged, "I am for now, but there's like a hundred more upgrade types that haven't been upgraded yet, and people are still stopping by to donate more contribution points."
The iguana hatchery had basically gone viral throughout the different antagonist teams and many people were making their way over for a chance to contribute points or purchase an upgrade directly. Nests were uncommon and mutagens even rarer so few people ever got to experience upgrading a nest and nobody wanted to miss their chance.
Gen asked G2n, "Why can't a special zombie be incubated using a zombie as a sample in the same way that the nest can be upgraded without needing an original mutagen?"
His eyebrows crinkled, "There likely isn't a technical reason it's just the rules, the balance would be thrown off if anyone could just grab a mutated zombie and start incubating another special zombie. Nest upgrades are balanced by the contribution point cost of upgrading with a sample, but aside from the biomass incubating a special zombie is free once you use a mutagen."
She shook her head, "Yeah, that's the reason it's set up that way, but from what I've seen, LEO always says when something is a literal rule that can't be violated. For everything else, he sets up the literal mechanics to facilitate whatever balance he desires. I haven't seen any rules that say a mutagen is required. It's just the only known way to incubate a special zombie, and hypothetically, there might be another way, right?"
G2n stopped typing and looked at her, "Is there a point you're trying to make?"
She held up a dart from blowgun, "Every time I added more mutagens to the blowgun the darts go bigger and this is what they look like now, does it look familiar?"
G2n took it and squinted at the warped and diseased-looking sharp hunk filled with viscous black liquid, looking back at her, "It's a similar size to a mutagen syringe, but I don't think it's that simple to incubate another special zombie. People have tried in the past by extracting blood from mutated zombies and creating fake mutagens."
She nodded, "Put it in your inventory and look at the description."
The dart disappeared, and his eyes flickered, looking at his inventory screen that only he could see. She had done so on a whim and knew what he was looking at when his eyes widened.
F???????????U?????????S?????????????I????????????O???????N????????????C?????????????R????????????A??????????C????????K??????????? M????????????U????????T??????????A?????????G????????????E??????????N?????????
They shared a look and she said, "Aside from the extra words and weird glitch thing going on, the keyword mutagen is there, so it should work right? My thought process is that, mechanically, the requirements for something being a mutagen are that the virus, essence, or whatever this event is using as the source for the infection, just needs to be concentrated enough to facilitate the process. Normally, this is hard to accomplish unless you distilled the blood from a hundred mutated zombies and managed to concentrate it without impurities, but the blowgun basically is doing that automatically by distilling a hundred different infection types into a single dart."
He held her gaze for a long time before looking back at a nearby screen for a second before saying, "We have a couple of elite command rod equipment at the base here, they can be used to control mobile hoards of zombies, which would each be large enough to supply the necessary biomass. Start making more of those dart---"
His words were cut off as a message scrawled across both of their visions.
ALERT! QUARANTINE HAS BEEN ENACTED ON ZONE 98! CURRENT QUARANTINE DEFENSE LEVEL IS LEVEL 1!
G2n frowned, "Annoying timing as if your idea works we won't easily be able to access headquarters in other zones, but there's still six antagonist headquarters in zone 98 so we can test it in those at least."
Gen frowned too, "Doesn't it make it pointless, though? Everyone keeps hyping up quarantine defenses and how bad of an idea it was to set up here on the edge of the event zone because they can cheaply upgrade the defenses and contain the nest and even the special zombie."
G2n gave a rare smile. "Gen, are you familiar with the sunken cost fallacy?"
Her response was interrupted by another message.
Bonus mission complete! Incubating a special zombie at level 1 was honestly a joke mission. You weren't supposed to complete it… Like, sure, a nepo-baby could've done it, but you're a nobody and all your friends are mentally ill… Anyway! Here's a special bonus award for beating the odds!
Gen smiled, but also felt nervous. Aside from the crazy amount of emmys that was being offered as a reward, and the other two impressive-sounding options, she was more worried about something else. It was time to go check on Jasper…
Switching perspective…. Why? Because it'll be more entertaining, if you don't want to randomly change perspective, turn off automatic perspective switch in your viewer settings. You don't know where that setting is? You should have read the manual before becoming a disembodied viewer!
Headquarters destroyed! +10,000 contribution points!
Susan wiped some sweat off her brow before glancing back at Sarah, "You doing okay?"
Sarah was gasping for air, looking clearly exhausted even though most of the defenders Susan had eliminated herself, but Susan smiled regardless her daughter had taken out a level 4 defender in that attack and they'd just eliminated four antagonist headquarters in a row.
The protagonist team had a new, smaller and more secure channel, several troublesome antagonist teams had been eliminated, multiple enemy headquarters had been razed to the ground, and zone 98 was safely quarantined. Whatever momentum the antagonists had been establishing was slowly dwindling away.
Sarah was checking her phone, frowning, "They had to upgrade the quarantine zone defense again…"
Susan frowned as well, the iguana nest had proven to be more resilient than expected. A level 1 defense surrounded a zone with towering walls and automatic machine guns that would target zombies that approached, and was usually enough to defend against zombie hordes and even groups of antagonists up to level 3 all by itself. That, combined with multiple high-level protagonists manning the walls, should have been plenty to close out the zone for the rest of the event even after the special zombie finished incubating.
The iguana zombies were bizarre however with over a hundred different variations having been detected so far. The most dangerous were the highly explosive and armored types that were blasting large holes in the quarantine wall and bleeding contribution points to repair.
The decision had easily been reached that upgrading to quarantine level 2 was necessary, but even after upgrading the walls to be steel reinforced the damn iguanas were still melting their way through. They then upgraded to level 3, which added force fields over the walls, and that had stemmed the flow temporarily.
The special zombie had finished incubating, and the expected final hurrah of the antagonists in the zone was expected to come, but never did. Special zombies were different from standard and even mutated zombies in that they couldn't be controlled by any means. They were a little more intelligent than a normal zombie, but not by much, and by all reason the special zombie should have charged the wall immediately after completing its incubation and been easily eliminated, but instead there was nothing…
Well, not exactly nothing, there was still an endless horde of insane amounts of zombie iguanas slowly chipping away at the quarantine wall and picking off protagonist defenders the second they made a mistake.
Reading the chat Susan tried to understand why upgrading to level 4 defenses was necessary, sure it was on the event zone edge so the upgrades were cheaper, but they had already invested 200,000 contribution points into the quarantine upgrades and each additional level exponentially increased in cost.
The reports weren't too clear, but the main issue was that somehow the approaching swarms of iguanas were coming faster and faster, but that didn't make any sense. The only way to increase the spawn speed of a nest was to upgrade it with more mutated samples, but as they were fundamentally limited in quantity and variety it couldn't just be done indefinitely.
Her confusion was interrupted by several system announcements.
Special Zombie Incubation Started in Zone 98! Time Remaining: 31:59:59
Special Zombie Incubation Started in Zone 98! Time Remaining: 31:59:59
Special Zombie Incubation Started in Zone 98! Time Remaining: 31:59:59
Special Zombie Incubation Started in Zone 98! Time Remaining: 31:59:59
Special Zombie Incubation Started in Zone 98! Time Remaining: 31:59:59
Special Zombie Incubation Started in Zone 98! Time Remaining: 31:59:59
Sarah looked at her, her face slightly pale, "Mom, what the heck is this a glitch? What type of special zombie would incubate for 32 hours? Don't very rare mutagens only take 16 hours?"
Susan pursed her lips and then smiled, "I don't know, but this zombie event is good experience for you learning to deal with the unexpected."
Sarah groaned, and Susan returned to her own thoughts. She'd felt the protagonists were overestimating whatever was happening in zone 98, but it seemed that she was the one who was underestimating their opponents. Whichever faction had orchestrated this was clearly bigger than they realized and must have been planning for possibly years leading up to this…
Switching perspectives…
Gen took another bite of the apple, almost choking as Jasper took another lumbering step forward. "Can't you walk more gracefully?"
Jasper gave a shake almost bucking her off and she clung on desperately, "Calm down! Okay! Okay! Sorry!" she kept mumbling under her breath however, she still felt he was doing this deliberately and that he should have more consideration seeing how she'd spent so much time carrying him around when he'd been the small one.
Leaning over his massive armored head, she asked, "If you're still so mad about being jammed into that incubation ball, was it really a good idea to stick six of your friends with the same fate?"
With a giant claw, he smashed a phone booth into rubble and gave her a confident nod. She shrugged and returned to eating her apple. Zone 98 was as secure as it could be with tens of thousands of zombie iguanas inundating the area. The majority of them were moving to the quarantine walls, but the monstrous hatchery was replacing them as quickly as they died.
The antagonists inside the quarantine area had finally exhausted their available stockpile of contribution points, so the hatchery wasn't being upgraded further, but the situation was far from a stalemate.
She and the other antagonists in the zone were taking it easy, relaxing while the zombie hordes endlessly attacked, and the protagonists were stuck patrolling the walls constantly and trying to make sure none of the more nuclear iguanas managed to reach the wall and blast any new holes.
Time was also on their side. Her mutagen idea had worked, and they had six fusioncrack special zombies incubating. She didn't know what that was exactly, but given that they took four times as long to incubate as Jasper had and he was stronger than a tank she knew it was going to be a nightmare for the protagonists unless they made the ballsy decision of trying to invade the zone.
The only downside was that her contribution points were still at -2,000 and not moving by much, as any zombies she would get contribution from were being killed by the quarantine walls and only picking off protagonists rarely.
Even food in the event needed contribution points to buy. The apple she was eating, Francine had had to buy for her as she couldn't afford her own food, much to Morna's amusement. As she finished her apple, another poll appeared.
Ding~!
You still haven't used the gloves, but I suppose you managed to use the blowgun to a barely passable degree, and I should reward good behavior.