If there had been a mistake he could point to and blame, the situation might have been easier to take. Maybe if he'd slacked off on Accelerate, or been imprecise with Mana Blade, or hit the wrong monster at the wrong time with the wrong spell, then he wouldn't have found himself raging at the unfairness of the situation they found themselves in.

But there was nothing like that. The closest thing to an error they'd made was that it took them so long to clear the portal world, and could they really be condemned for that? They hadn't known they were on a time limit.

What happened was this:

John led the way onto the seventh bus, the Z7 service to Wastechapel. They'd developed something of a routine strategy, and he kept to it, activating Accelerate before rushing straight towards the stairs that led to the lower floor of the bus, where he intended to kill the driver before any fuckery could occur on that front.

And then, through no fault of his own, when he was barely more than halfway to the stairs, every monster on the bus came alive at once.

The monsters themselves weren't so hard to deal with, all things considered. They were long-legged crab monsters, between three and five of them combining for each phantom passenger, and he had to admit they were unnerving to look at. But they were, ultimately, blue souled. None of them posed a threat individually.

But the bus was one of the busier ones, perhaps second only to the rat bus that had been akin to a rush hour commute, and for all the disparity in strength between him and the crab monsters, he couldn't carve straight from them all like a scythe through wheat. Not immediately, anyway. Worse, the sudden shock of this situation had set his heart to racing, and so Accelerate didn't last anywhere near as long as he would have liked.

These factors added up, and the result was that Accelerate was already over before John reached the bottom of the stairs to the ground floor, and the driver (five crab monsters working in tandem) had a crucial second to switch the engine on. John's Elemental Bullet arrived too late.

The bus started rolling forward.

John spat a curse, then took a minute to slaughter the rest of the monsters on the ground floor with brutal efficiency, sparing no time on flashy moves. It meant lesser Aura gains, but that had dropped on his list of priorities, overruled by the need to figure out what the hell was happening and just what had gone wrong.

As aforementioned, he discovered that there wasn't really anything they could have done, aside from recklessly speeding through the portal world. Investigating the bottom floor revealed nothing in particular, though he quickly hopped into the driver's seat and brought the bus to a stop again.

Only for a crash to come from the back of the bus as the bus directly behind them rammed into them. It was followed by a more distant crash, then an even further one, and the chain reaction seemed to go on forever. Shortly after that came screeching tires, and his bus started to inch forward once more. Even after he activated the parking brake, the bus was still being pushed forward by the ones behind it. It slowly briefly once more as it rammed into the bus in front, sending a spider web of cracks through the front window, but was soon moving once more. John had no doubt all seven buses would soon be on the move, pushed along by however many buses were behind them.

Cursing under his breath again, he rushed back up to the upper deck, where he found his comrades looking grimly out at the scene around them.

The noise was incredible. Countless thousands of engines rumbled as every bus in the garage made its steady way forwards. There was a surreality to the sight. It was like watching a red wave washing across the depot. Or endless columns of ants marching.

It was when he looked up at the roof that John finally understood what had happened. The black veil was gone, allowing the burning sky to brighten the world with a twisted, hellish facsimile of daylight. Evidently, the buses were now heading out on their designated routes.

Part of him wanted to stay on board and see where the hell this led. He was curious to find out how these buses worked, and the smell of petrol from so many engines was nauseating. Getting out of this place would be a blessed relief.

But the part of his soul that burned with hatred for these beasts overruled it. Their objective here had always been to wipe out as many monsters as possible. Or, at least, that was how John saw it. He couldn't speak for the others.

We need to destroy this entire goddamn place.

That was the thought that filled his mind as he watched the endless lines of buses trundle slowly forward. Even the unobstructed buses were moving at a pace slower than a casual walk. The ones at the front of the lines would probably already be out, purely because they didn't have far to go, but there was still plenty of time to catch the majority of the rest before they could escape. How he was going to do that was still somewhat up in the air, but he had an idea that he thought might be worth trying.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"Okay. This is crazy," Lily said, dragging John out of his thoughts.

"Are the buses going to be going out through the portal, into the real world?" Chester asked, sounding like confusion had overcome his default fearful state. "It wasn't big enough for that, right?"

"I don't think it matters," Jade said. "Might be that they'll all be able to squeeze through that one portal, because things don't work how they're meant to in these portal places. Or maybe the garage doors will open up and reveal more portals behind them? Who the fuck knows. Either way, I'm pretty bloody sure they're not just gonna be crashing in some great pile up."

"That would be too easy, yeah," Chester said, shoulder slumping as he let out a sigh.

John frowned. "We need to stop the buses. All of them."

Doug snorted. He was staring out the back of the bus at the one directly behind them, where it turned out a bunch of ghoulish bear monsters with mangy grey fur were gathering at the front, glaring at them with feverish yellow eyes. The next bus had monsters gathering too, and the one after that, and so on. It seemed the monsters couldn't transfer buses, even after a way had been opened up for the humans. "Not that I'm against that idea, but I have to ask: you got any ideas as to how we're gonna do that?"

"First," John said, staring back at the bear monsters, "we have to kill our way to the back of our line as fast as possible."

"Ha. I have to admit, I do like that idea."

"Wait," Alissa said. She was at the precise opposite end from Doug, staring out the front of the bus, her head on a constant swivel as she took in the steady procession of red double-decker buses that seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon in every direction. "There are a bunch of things that don't make sense, here."

"Aye, but if we listed them all, we'd be here for years," Jade said.

"We saw monsters coming out of the portal," Alissa said, "but now that we're in here, they're all inactive, waiting for us? Why are we forced to kill all the monsters on a bus before moving to the next one? Why restrict us at all? It feels like a fucking game, like we're being put through trials or some shit."

"Valid questions," John admitted, because the very same ones had been running through his mind non-stop.

"And they extend out even further, if we take the implications of them and apply it to all the nonsense that's been going on," Lily said.

John nodded. "But we don't have any way to answer them on this bus." He pointed towards the back of the garage without looking. "If we want to understand all this bullshit, we're going to have to kill our way to the back of our line of buses. That's what I'm going to be doing, anyway."

+400 Aura

A hush fell over them. The bus' tires continued so squeak as it was slowly pushed forward. It was barely moving at a crawl, and would surely take hours to reach the front of the depot, but they still couldn't dawdle forever.

"I'm going," John said. "Follow me or don't."

+400 Aura

Acting on his words, he moved to the back of the bus, shimmying around Doug to reach the passage that would transfer him towards the waiting bear monsters. They were each about as tall as the bottom of his rib cage, but their claws looked sharp, their eyes were full of malice, and he held no doubt they had some little gimmick up their sleeves.

There was no longer any gap between their bus and the one behind, so there was no passage to walk through. They'd be able to get to him the moment he was through the doorway, and undoubtedly they'd waste no time in trying to tear him limb from limb.

So he slotted two Elemental Bullets, one for each hand, and activated Accelerate and opening fire before the foul creatures had any chance to act. With the only motion required for the Spell being raising and lowering his thumb, he was able to launch quite the barrage.

The front ranks of the bears reared back in pain and confusion as they were struck by a Spell that combined the powers of ice, electricity, light, wind, and fire. Some had body parts frozen. Others were zapped by the electricity. An unfortunate few were temporarily blinded. A few were buffeted by vortexes of wind. The remainder were singed and burned by white-hot embers that danced on said wind.

Resistance melted away before him as John stepped forward onto the next bus, distantly noting Aura notifications start to come in. The commotion drew what few bears had remained on the lower floor, but they didn't stand a chance against him either. In moments, the only enemy remaining could be found downstairs, in the driver's seat. It didn't move when John reached the bottom of the stairs, clinging to the driving wheel and keeping its paw pressed down on the accelerator pedal, revving the engine to its full capacity in its attempts to ram the line of inert buses forward.

It glared at him over its shoulder, but kept up its duty even as he aimed an Elemental Bullet right at its skull and fired. The monster's head snapped back from the force of the Level 4 Spell. It fell limp and slid down its chair. The engine quieted a second later.

For the sake of being thorough, John went and tested to see if he could open the bus doors himself, but the bus' controls resisted him. He rushed back upstairs to find the others waiting for him once more. At this point, he was growing used to the staring.

"Just leave a few for the rest of us, eh?" Doug said, arching an eyebrow.

"I'll make no promises," John said.

+400 Aura

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.