Carnival - A LitRPG Apocalypse

As Raoul strode forward he went from three metres tall to nearly a hundred. A single ponderous step covered nearly sixty metres as he moved towards the churning earth being thrown up as something emerged from beneath the soil. His shield vanished as he tossed it to one side and took a stance like a baseball player with his spear held behind his head, both arms cocked to his right and ready to swing through.

“Aww! It’s only a tiddler!” he rumbled as the ant head emerged from the cloud of smoke at his feet. The disappointing scale of the monster didn’t cause him to hold back at all as he pivoted and brought the spear like a bat in a whistling arc that intersected something in dust. There was a rattling hiss like an unbalanced kettle reaching the boil and something flew backwards into the flames.

“It’s level fifty eight. I can play golf with it all day! Hey John, Maybe open up some portals to space and I’ll try and launch it through?” Raoul asked with a chuckle.

“I’ll need to set up some portals to space to stop the flames. I don’t see a problem with it?” John laughed.

“Let’s focus on getting the fires under control, John,” said Vic. “You boys can be idiots once we know we won’t burn down the entire continent.”

“It looks like you’ve already done that,” snapped Winston, still following along on Evie’s disc. “All of eastern South America is covered by the smoke and ash from your bonfire. You’ve probably wrecked the ecosystem for this part of the world!”

“Pah! It’s not that bad. Besides… ah what’s her name? Summer Shy or something? She can fix the weather for us,” said Evie.

“Shimmer Sky can’t handle this much volume, Stormwitch. She’s only level twenty seven,” Winston complained, wincing as Evie slapped him on the shoulder.

“Yeah that’s the one! We can boost her up a bit if we need to. Might be an idea anyway. If we’re going to go all out against the wasps and the Thing in the Congo we’ll probably cause a few cold winters,” Evie caught Winston’s arm as he pinwheeled towards the edge of the disc and pulled him back like a mother with an oversized toddler.

“We can always warm things up later but right now we need to deal with this wildfire. John, care to stop staring at the sky and sort it out? What the hell are you staring at anyway?”

“Bob, what is that?” asked John. “Switch your HUDs to highlight Bob’s drones,” he said to the rest.

“Ah. New toy. Thought I’d try it out seeing as we’re not holding back. What do you think? I was aiming for an Independence Day vibe, but I think it looks more like Mars Attacks now.”

A dozen burning crescents were falling from orbit leaving long trails across the already smoky sky. John zoomed in and saw the disc shaped flying machines suddenly slow and a shockwave flew ahead of them as they braked in the deeper atmosphere. The crescents of fire and smoke vanished into a jet of burning light ahead of them. It took him a moment to appreciate the scale of Bob’s flying saucers. He zoomed out on his mask and realised he could still see them even though they were a hundred kilometres up. They looked tiny now but they must be huge.

"How big are those fecking things?” asked Reg. “I’ve got you!” he snapped as he used his power on a hurtling thirty metre long ant and it fell to the ground as its weight increased significantly. As it stumbled to its feet Raoul swung once more and batted it back into the cauldron of heat with an annoyed chittering.

“About a mile across. Most of the volume is storage space. And crew quarters. There’s quite a lot of physical ammo on them as well. They’re good to go to the Belt and back if needed. I figured an alternative to John’s portals for trade and troop deployments might be handy. And I always wanted an alien invasion fleet to call my own.”

“Are they armed?” John had vanished to the eastern edge of their inferno and began opening portals to suck the flames into the void. He blipped along, leaving portals all along the perimeter of the fire. As soon as a section sputtered and died down to an orange glow he moved on to the next stretch.

“No point not putting guns on them. Big guns! Watch this!” Bob sounded worryingly pleased with himself.

There was a series of flashes from the forerunner, now clearly recognisable as being modelled on UFOs from movies in the sixties. A live feed popped up in John’s lower left field of vision, showing a stretch of jungle that had burned out as they passed it. The charred and still smoking ground erupted as chunks were thrown skyward.

John continued sucking away the fires and began working his way inwards. Raoul continued to smack the ant away whenever it leapt at him. Once the smoke from the barrage cleared John could clearly see three massive letters carved into the charcoal earth.

“You just wrote your name on the jungle by shooting from your massive flying saucers?” asked Winston in an aggrieved tone. “Where the hell were you keeping those things? The council didn’t know about them!”

“Belisarius did. He actually helped out a bit on the prototype but he kept trying to steal schematics and materials so I gave him the boot. Sticky fingered bastard,” grumbled Bob.

“So why have you brought them out now?” asked John as he blipped over the Brazilian edge of the burn and began putting that out as well.

“Well if we all get to go ham I don’t see why I should miss out. Doris isn’t much use in this situation anyway,” grumbled the old soldier.

“You mean because she looks tiny next to me now?” laughed Raoul.

“No, because having two massive bruisers is redundant but mile wide flying saucers… that’s always a good look.”

“Are you boy’s done measuring each other up? Raoul might be having fun playing keep away with this enraged ant but I don’t think he’s doing it any damage,” barked Sam.

“Hang on.” John blipped the rest of the team over to join the pair to the south.

“Dad, you forgot Winston was on my disc didn’t you?” asked Evie.

John ported to where he had pulled Evie from, caught the screaming man before he hit the ground and then teleported him back to stand on Evie’s disc of force. He ignored the cursing and comments about his ancestors then blipped back to containing the fires to the east.

“So what are you calling the discs?” asked John as he moved along sucking the atmosphere away from the flames along the edge of the Amazon.

“I was thinking of General Reconnaissance Units,” said Bob absentmindedly as he brought down a barrage from the first one at where the ant queen had landed after yet another battering from Raoul. Sam’s eye beams flashed, leaving burning trails in the air and skittered along the chitinous armour.

“I’d have thought you’d go for BFO or something?” asked Flash as he threw conjured spears into the side of the ant as it regained its feet, leaving long gashes as they glanced off its flank.

“Hmm. I kind of like it. Thanks, kid!”

Another rain of hardened metal fell from the sky and battered the ant back to its many knees. Evie threw a lightning bolt down that caused Raoul's hair to stand on end all along his limbs.

“I think the worst of the fires are under control. Vic, do you think you can quell the heart of it now?” asked John as he appeared standing in the air amongst his friends.

“It’s still pretty hot here but I’ll try. Winston, can you help out as well? What’s a flameweaver?”

Winston coughed. “I can control an already existing fire, make it hotter and bigger or dispel it. I’ve never seen anything like this though, I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” he muttered.

“Fine. Every little bit helps, I guess. Evie, bring him over here and we’ll work on the fire while the rest of you keep the mummy ant busy,” said Vic. Evie flew down and Vic and Winston began working around the periphery of the heart of the fire they had driven across half a continent.

“So we can play golf then?” asked Raoul.

“Sure. I’ll open a portal behind it and you try to swat it through. The suction will help out so accuracy is more important than hitting hard, ok?” said John.

“You can make a portal big enough?” asked Reg. “She’s a big bitch.”

“Thirty metres long, seven high… it’ll be tight if she goes in sideways but if she hits head or ass first it’ll work. Ready? Hang on, where the hell has it gone?” finished John in an exasperated voice.

“She’s making a break for it to the east. I’ll tag her on your HUDs,” Bob replied calmly.

John saw the outline in his vision and quickly blipped the team ahead of the ant. The queen seemed to have given up on fighting and was now determined to run. As soon as they appeared ahead of her she changed direction and shot away from them.

“Well this is just wrong. Where’s the usual semi-suicidal approach to fighting monsters are famous for?” asked one of the Sams.

“We still haven’t put down many monsters over fifty,” said Flash thoughtfully.

“That’s because there weren’t that many of them to begin with. The Wasp is around what, ninety? No one who’s gotten close enough to the Thing in the Congo to Identify it has survived, but the best guess is it’s in the high eighties as well. The Worm in the Sahara is a ghost, we’ve only seen its babies but their levels put it in the fifties. Stay Puff is level seventy in NY. Anything less than fifty was easy once we had the Sigs working together,” grumbled Evie. “I could try and stun it? Hey, it must be hot as hell right? It’s been running through the fire for hours, blast it with ice or something and it’ll pop!”

“We don’t have any ice powers kid,” said John as he once again moved them to intercept the monster, this time laying the team down in a ring around it, leaving the thing nowhere to run. He could only see it courtesy of Bob outlining the thing in his vision but he realised it mustn’t be as hampered by the smoke and ash. Its antenna twitched as its head swivelled from point to point, briefly stopping in the direction of each of the members of the Carnival.

“Hose it down, John,” said Flash. “Deep ocean water is pretty cold and it should work.”

John thought for a moment before shrugging and opening three portals around the beast that gushed icy water from the depths at the thing.

“You’re explaining to Claire why I salted the earth again!” John laughed as Flash sputtered and refused that particular honour.

There were a series of creaks and pops that echoed loudly enough that even hovering five hundred metres up they were clearly audible. The area was covered in a fog of steam that made it even harder to work out what was going on. The steam took whichever server-Bob was running their updates a moment to work through and as the outline clarified again they saw scattered armour around the ant queen.

“Not dead then,” grumbled John.

A humming sound echoed out and the steam and smoke was blown away in a circle that expanded around the queen.

“And now it can fly. Well done you!” snapped Winston.

“Reg?” said Evie.

“Fecker ain’t flying nowhere,” Reg said as he raised a hand and the newly airborne queen crashed back to the ground.

“You know that was a double negative and basically meant she was going to fly somewhere?” asked Evie.

John snapped open a portal beneath the queen as she began an unexpected return to Earth. Reg’s power did make her contract somewhat as the internal gravity resulted in various vessels and internal structures in her body contracting but not quite enough for her to fit sideways through the portal John opened in line with her suddenly descending trajectory.

“Dude. For fucks sake!” said Evie as the head and tail section fell to the ground, separated from the bulk of its body.

“That was pretty gross John,” added Flash.

“I didn’t realise the edges of portals would work like that. It ignored the level gap. I could use inch wide portals to rip stuff apart as long as the monster runs into them no matter how high level the bastard is! Every day’s a lesson, I guess!” said John happily.

“What the hell is wrong with you people?” snapped Winston. “I’m going to write a very strongly worded report about this whole debacle! You people should be collared!”

Rather more than the sixteen eyes you might expect pivoted towards the official. Sam's clones accounted for the excess and hers were colder than the rest.

“Ah, perhaps I phrased that badly?” he stuttered.

“You think?” asked Raoul. “Where do they get these clowns? Mate, you don’t have any hold on us. If we don’t want to follow your fucking rules; what exactly do you think you can do? Report us to Mindscar?”

“I would follow the process,” Winston said stiffly, painfully aware any of the people around him could make him disappear and no one would dare to argue with them if they said he just wandered off on his own and got eaten.

“Relax Winston. Fill in your report as you like,” said Vic as she flew back over to the rest of the team. “I think we’ll be able to deal with any fallout. Just mention the ants are no longer an issue, eh?”

“I will be sure to include that in my report,” he answered uncomfortably.

Team report:

Worker/Scout Ants killed (various levels): 130,250,819

Essence per kill: various

Total Essence gained per team member: 152,019

Warrior Ants killed (various levels): 8,520,194

Essence gained per kill: various

Total Essence gained per 1,001,298

Ant Queens killed (various levels): 15

Essence gained per kill: various

Essence gained per team member: 201,150

Harmless Native Lifeforms killed: 360,002,588

Essence gained per kill: 0

Total Essence gained per team member: 1,354,467

“So we got bugger all Essence for that? What a crock!” yelled Evie as she began swearing and stalking back and forth, leaving Winston paler than he was before as he tried to stay away from the edge of the disc at the same time as keeping his distance from the enraged Signatory. It was like watching magnets repel each other in a petri dish.

“So who’s going to explain to Claire that we just killed a third of a billion native animals?” asked Bob. All eyes turned to Flash who immediately shot away into the sky.