A technomancer’s journey in an apocalyptic world - Chapter 115

A large heap of tools lay on the ground and behind him stood its creator Ryan as he spoke with a small smile, “So are they up to mark?”

An elderly looking dwarf picked up an axe as he checked it over before he spoke with a smirk, “It is a wonderful piece of work Your Holiness, it is really marvelous.”

Ryan did not know whether the elderly dwarf was being courteous of him because of his status or he had genuinely made something impressive though from what he had learned about their species he was leaning towards the former since from what he had learned about the dwarven race are made up of narcissistic fastidious grumps.

“Thank you for your praise though I am only able to do so because of my patron God’s blessings and even then I have much to learn from the true masters of the craft.”

The elderly dwarf simply gave a nod and a grunt while others slowly began to pick their tools of choice, when a few humans appeared as one of them spoke, “Excuse me Ryan but can ask you to make us some weapons for us.”

Ryan looked at the group consisting of six men and four women, a good few years older than him, but before Ryan could speak one of the dwarfs growled as he spoke out loud, “You insolent how dare you speak so casually with His Holiness.”

Ryan quickly turned towards him as he spoke with a small smile, “Please brother do not get angry at them, everything is new to them, so please be patient and upon saying that our world had many different religion and people followed them and I hope you all irrespective of your race, gender or religious believes would be tolerant to each other and respect them, I have no problem with anyone’s believes until they do something immoral.”

He then looked back towards the group as he spoke with a sigh, “Are you with the militia?”

The person who had spoken earlier shook his head as Ryan spoke with another sigh, “Then I am afraid I cannot provide you with weapons as I do not have time to make them.”

“But…”

“I know what you are going to say but please hear me out, I am extremely busy with various projects as such I do not have enough time to make weapon for every person, upon saying that I understand the dire need of protection, the Black Wolves are excellent guards but they lack in number as such the militia would be formed and they will be armed before anyone else”.

Ryan paused for a moment before he continued, “And if you still wish to fight please try your luck in joining the militia, and if you fail it is not the end of the world there would soon be various other jobs that would be announced and I hope you would fine the one you would be comfortable with.”

The group looked at each other as one of them spoke with a frown on her face, “How do we apply for it?”

“Sometime today there will be recruitment drive for people, you will know the details there so be patient and as I said before if you are not fit for being in the militia then there is nothing to worry we have plenty of work and I doubt we would have enough to fill them all.”

With his words being said to the group Ryan turned towards the elder dwarf as he could not help but ask a question that was running through his mind, “I do not wish to sound rude but why do you use normal weapons not magic.”

The elder dwarf instead of being offended looked pleased with his question as he spoke with a huge smile on his face, “Gods created us from the dirt before we learned magic from the Gods when we faced life threatening difficulties, so we try to do work in mundane ways in order to remind ourselves of our humble beginnings, also another reason being that there are certain ores that reacts badly if you use magic on it so we have to work with our hands and even then the ore is very hard to work on as such by doing this simple tasks we can increase our strength.”

“I see, then please carry on with your work and I will be off.”

With that Ryan turned and left while internally he was extremely giddy, ‘I am finally acting as an arms dealer just like that anime, now if only I had a strong and beautiful female follower with an eye patch on one of her eyes and it would have been perfect.’

A few hours later a tired Ryan looked down from the only portion of the wall he had managed to successfully raise to its intended height, most of the Black Wolves including both Ciara and Michalina had left the base, as well as the other two apostles, the reason for their departure was simple, it was to gather combat experience as well as increase their level.

‘I do not know which is better, kill and work hard to increase your stats by various means, or kill and use blood points to increase your stats, why do we apostles so different from norm? At the end of the day, are we simply tools for the patron Gods, tools who exist only to fight in their name.’

He then glanced at the large queue that had formed, with Zhan standing at the front of it, the reason for the queue was to register the newly arrived people, it was also to recruit people for various available jobs.

Ryan sighed as he looked towards the forest as he spotted a pack of a rather familiar creature moving fast towards the wall, he extended his hands as a familiar rifle appeared, and then after aiming he pulled the trigger.

Zhan even amongst the cacophony of noise could easily notice the distinct sound of a gun being discharged in quick succession, and she looked towards Ryan’s direction she was greeted by a loud bone-chilling howl.

“Everyone to the shelters now, the wolves are attacking.”, as soon as she shouted those words panic seemed to settle amongst the people making her growl in anger before she discharged her revolver drawing everyone’s attention as she continued, “Move in orderly manner and you will be able to enter the shelter fast and safe but if any of you get any funny ideas you will wish those wolves had eaten you.”

She looked at three of her subordinates as she spoke with a growl, “You three are with me.”, that she dashed off towards Ryan’s location.

Ryan meanwhile had the luxury of sitting on a high vantage point from where he aimed the wolf pack that was fifty strong.

‘They are fast very much so, but not fast enough.’

As he pulled the trigger his gun roared out raining a hail of bullets on the wolf pack, the one leading it howled as the bullets hit it, while the others simply broke off and at a glance it looks as if they are afraid and were running off now but it turned out to be false as they tried to circle him and then find a way to reach him and which they did.

Ryan cursed his luck as he watched the wolves using the unfinished parts of the wall as stairs to reach up to him.

‘Damn it, it just became difficult.’, he took aim as he fired his gun as one of the wolves fell with a whine the one behind him suddenly jumped as a cyan glow came from its mouth, Ryan suddenly felt the hair on his neck tingle as he lay flat against the wall, and his danger senses proved to be right as a gust of air missed him by a hairbreadth.

‘That was close, it was like a air cannon being fired at me, and if I had been hit by it then I would have fallen from such a great height but enough is enough it is high time I become serious.’

One of the wolves jumped from behind him only to meet headfirst with a conical shaped concrete cocoon that Ryan had hastily created to protect himself and thus ended up volunteering itself for being impromptu test subject of the newest runes of Ryan, which according to its nature had made the surface of the cone to be slippery to the point that the wolf soon found itself to be taking a stumble from top of the wall.

Suddenly a part of the conical cocoon opened up as the muzzle of a certain pistol peaked through it, before firing with a familiar sound and one of the wolves collapsed on the ground, the heat of the laser having cauterized the wound.

The wolves were suddenly taken aback seeing their brethren fall, but before they could regain their wits part of the conical cocoon would disappear at random with enough space for Ryan’s pistol to peak and then he would fire at the wolves before moving to a different spot.

The fifty pack wolves had in reality broken off into two groups a group consisting of the lions share making up to four-fifths of their size had attacked Ryan, his scent had caused most of them to attack while the rest had ventured forth towards the base.

‘Wolves this big, they are at least twice the size of the ones I have seen, not to mention their abilities if it were not for the fact that I had such powers I would have been dead, I have to be extra careful about how I create from now on, the last thing I want is a repeat of today’s situation, I am glad that even if I have raised it to the required height I have not do so with the width so it funnels them down a bit.’

It took less than a minute for Ryan to deal with the beasts that were surrounding him, his eyes then fell on the group that was fighting with Zhan, and as such taking his rifle he aimed before pulling the trigger.

‘Aiming from such a distance from the iron sight is difficult, though I am glad that this gun has a selection between single and multi shots  otherwise it would have been difficult for me to aim from such a large distance.’

And as the last of the wolves fell everyone let out a sigh of relief only for Ryan to get ramrod as he heard a growling behind him.

He jumped away from his position as a wolf’s maw missed him by mere inches but seeing the wolf his eyes widen, ‘It was the one that was leading the group and the one I had fired at first.’

With great show agility Ryan dodged before punching the wolf’s torso with his right hand, and no sooner did he do so a large beam suddenly appeared bursting out of the wolf caking him on its blood and gut.

The wolf collapsed on the ground whimpering in pain as its life fluid coated the top of the wall while Ryan froze seeing the destruction that his experiment had wrought.

‘No way, no way it worked I just wanted to experiment it a bit but to really work it is as fascinating as well as horrifying, the beam that he had created inside the wolf had torn the wolf apart as it appeared out of it, it is horrible.’

The pain-filled whimpering drew his attention as he looked at the wolf’s pain-filled eyes begging for mercy, the beam had appeared by tearing its spine out while at the same time perforating the majority of its organs in such a grisly manner that it was not a clean kill and the wolf was suffering from it.

A pang of immense guilt welled up in Ryan’s heart upon seeing the condition of the wolf, ‘Damn it, even if it was my enemy I should give it a proper death not torment it.’, as such he quickly put a bullet in the wolf’s head killing it.

Ryan stared at the spot for a moment as he took deep breaths to calm him down, before suddenly felt as if he was being watched as such he quickly turned towards the direction from where the wolves had appeared, and he spotted something move in the distance but it was too fast and brief for him to register.

‘What was that? Was something spying from me or was it my imagination?’

“Ryan, are you alright?”

Zhan’s shout drew his attention as he peered down before he spoke with a small smile, “I am fine, but what about you all, after all you all fought them head to head.”

Zhan narrowed her eyes towards the blood that was on him as she spoke, “We are fine just a few scratches here and there but nothing extraordinary and now you stay up there we are coming up.”

Ryan sighed as he sat down on the floor with the dead carcasses of the wolves surrounding him, he let out a sigh before he waved his hand making the beam disappear while his eyes lingered on the mutilated carcass.

A couple of minutes later Zhan stood by his side as she spoke with concern in her voice, “Are you alright Ryan? You are covered in so much blood.”

“I am fine auntie Zhan, this is just wolf blood.”

“How did they reach you?”

“The wall is kind of like stairs now, I am making in this manner so that it would be easier for me to climb up to the top, and those wolves used them as stairs to reach me.”

“I see each block that you place is like a cube of a meter long on each side, and they climbed through it to reach you.”

Ryan nodded as he spoke, “Yes, they did and I am glad that the wall is not ready at all as it still lacks the width as you climb higher which made it easier for me to deal with them, though you may accuse me of being paranoid but I do not think the entire thing is a bit weird.”

Zhan frowned as she spoke, “Why do you think so?”

Ryan brow scrunched up to a frown as he stared hard into the distance as he spoke, “Wolves are one of the finest predators that has graced earth, they are intelligent and as far as I know from my limited knowledge that they know when they are beaten up and as such they also retreat yet they pressed forward rushing to their death without a care for their pack mates, something like this does not feel right to me.”

Zhan bit her lips as she spoke, “You are right, I may not be an expert on wolves but I know that any creature that knows that it is beaten would retreat especially in case of animals but they were different.”

“Aunty there is also something I need to tell you.”

“What is it Ryan?”

“After I had finished dealing with the wolves I might have spotted something that was watching us from a distance but it is so fast that I was barely able to make out what it was and for all intent purpose it might be my hallucination.”

Zhan stood silently for a moment mulling over what Ryan had just informed her off before she spoke in a stern voice, “Then we have to be prepared even if it turns out to be a hallucination there is nothing for us to lose but if it is not…”

As Zhan trailed off, Ryan continued with a sigh, “It would be dangerous as such the wall is needed ot be completed fast as such I will be working day and night to make it.”

“I see I will make sure to post some soldiers near you to lend you a hand if needed.”

Ryan gave a small nod before he looked down at his hands before he spoke with a grimace, “I need some shower I do not like being covered with blood and guts.”