Requiem's ivory flanges slammed into another set of burgundy armor. The hard metal resisted for a moment before his weapon tore it apart. Crushed by the blow and stuck inside the armor, the man popped open like a grape.

You have defeated Belar Trade Corporation Guard - lvl 16. Experience awarded.

A bolt of energy slammed into Reid's back, and he stumbled a half step. He grabbed the armor of the dead guard and used it as a shield while he charged over to the next enemy. When he was close enough, Reid shoved the armor forward, brought Requiem to bear, and slammed it down on top of the guard's head. It pulped him down to his neck, where his armor slowed Requiem's descent.

You have defeated Belar Trade Corporation Guard - lvl 15. Experience awarded.

The new body slumped to the floor. Killing these people was a lot easier when they weren't wearing helmets.

Fighting guards inside the building was much more taxing than taking them down outside. He couldn't just throw rocks at them and cut loose, but instead had to make sure he didn't damage their armor the wrong way. There were a number of datapads and traditional paper documents littered around the building's different rooms, and Reid intended to read them all and get a better idea of the situation he was in once the guards themselves were handled. There was also a slight possibility, Nyx had warned him, that setting off one explosion in a confined space like this could have a domino effect on the other sets of armor. And if there was an armory of any kind in the facility, that meant things would turn out fairly bad.

Footsteps approached from around the corner of the hallway, and Reid sprinted forward to meet them. Requiem swung out as he neared the corner, and caught a taller-than-expected guard in the groin. Requiem came back bloody when it dislodged from the mangled metal. The guard let out a soft grunt as tears welled in his eyes, then slumped to the floor. Reid was almost sorry for the man when a kill notification didn't immediately pop up.

A baton crackling with electricity swung at Reid's side, but he jumped over the strike and grabbed the guard's chin. Reid's momentum lifted the guard off the floor and to the far wall - where his head crunched against the building's solid metal.

You have defeated Belar Trade Corporation Guard - lvl 17. Experience awarded.

Despite the toughness of their armor and equipment, each one of the guards themselves were weak. The one he'd hit in the groin was still whimpering on the floor when the final guard in their trio screamed and started shooting wildly down the hallway. The projectiles were trouble. Just as tough as the guard's armor, the things were only barely stopped by Reid's armor. If he took too many shots, Reid knew his ivory plates would break down. If he got hit on exposed skin... well, he wasn't exactly bulletproof anymore, and had the blood loss to prove it.

Reid ducked behind the corner, but one lucky shot managed to get him in the side of the neck. The energy-laced projectile tore a gouge through his skin and a bit of muscle. Reid stopped the bleeding while the enemy emptied his clip - or bottle might've been a better word. The rifles pulled their ammunition from an attachment that looked like a squat water bottle, and connected where the lid would be. The whole thing then became the stock of the weapon.

He used the pause to rush out at the guard. The man's eyes went wide as he fumbled with the new bottle he was trying to attach to his rifle. But just like so many others, this guard wasn't wearing his helmet. Requiem painted the walls with his grey matter.

You have defeated Belar Trade Corporation Guard - lvl 16. Experience awarded.

Reid turned to the downed guard, and frowned when he saw a hole sizzling in the man's froglike skin. Dead by friendly fire, of all things.

Seconds stretched as Reid listened for more enemies, but there were no sounds of footsteps coming his way. Just the low buzzing of an alarm someone had pressed early on in the fight.

He let himself slump against a wall. The level of effort required to kill these guys had been high, despite their relative weakness. Win's warnings about the dangers of strong smiths came back to him. Crafters really could level up a fighting force. Going up against the results of that kind of effort made him better appreciate his own ability - and what he'd done for the miners against the vicipods.

Reid let himself rest for thirty seconds, then stood and walked forward. This was the last hallway in the 3rd level of the base, and there was a single door sitting at its end. As Reid neared the door, he heard slightly awkward, panicked shout-whispers coming from the other side.

"He's almost here! Yes - yes! Like I said, G-grade, no level, he's the same color as the rest of the locals... I don't know! How am I supposed to know that? You want me to run out there and say, 'oh, hi, won't you please tell me which faction you're with and whether that's step-down equipment', come on- .... No. No, sir I didn't mean to-... No, please, you can't do that. No... Sir? Sir?"

Reid had stopped himself to listen to the conversation, but it was over - although it still seemed quite odd to Reid. Would someone on the other end really just leave this guard to die?

The door was rectangular with no visible knob or handle, and Reid guessed there were hinges on the other side. He lifted a leg, and kicked forward where he thought the latch might be. He pushed power into his leg as he did so, keen to not have a slab of tough metal fracture his foot or screw up his knee.

It turned out Reid was concerned for no good reason.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The metal screeched as the frame bent inward and whole assembly - frame and all - launched itself out and across the newly revealed room. Office space stretched out on either side of Reid, and led to open doors that contained nicer beds than those he'd seen on the first floor. One of the doorways led to something that definitely seemed to be a multispecies shower, and a large clear window defined the left side of the far wall. The right side was a tangle of desks, where a fast-moving doorframe had just pinned a man in power armor to the wall.

Reid calmly walked over, keenly aware that despite his screams, the man was trying hard to reach his weapon. A datapad sat cracked on his thigh, and his armor itself had a shape on the breastplate that looked like a cheap ripoff of what the CCE's used. A helmet was knocked over on the desk where he'd been sitting.

The man's eyes were a scarlet red, and his skin looked like ash mixed with with yellow paint. He blubbered as Reid approached.

"Please - don't kill me! I have a family - I never wanted to come here in the first place!"

Reid arched an eyebrow, and picked the broken datapad off the man's lap. It hadn't been damaged by the door - a distinct handprint was visible where the man had slammed it with his power armor. Intentionally. To hide evidence, or to give Reid more reason to keep him alive he didn't know. But the blubbering was going to get old, fast.

"Reid, look at his eyes. He's only playing the coward. He'll try to stall you for time as long as he can to give the people he was talking to a chance to come back here, or to reposition themselves so you can't find them."

"You're sure? He's just going to stall for time?" Reid had gotten used to 'talking' to Nyx within himself, but made a point to ask the question aloud.

For his part, the man's face only broke from the coward's act for a moment as he reacted to Reid.

"I swear! I won't! Here - I'll tell you where they are, right now - just get me that map."

Reid saw something in the man's eyes that reminded him of... Bertrand. Hope and defiance, like he thought he still had a chance to get out of all this and get away from Reid - or a way to beat him. In that moment, he realized Nyx was correct. Despite the concern he'd heard from the conversation through the door, this person was ready to lie to him and lead him on a wild chase. Hell, the earlier conversation itself might've been an act.

Reid walked over to the remains of the desk where the man had been working. A few papers were crumpled as if someone was getting ready to throw them away, and the man's helmet sat on its side, facing the section of the wall that held the map. Reid picked it up, and turned it in his hands. There was a colored visor, and cutouts for the nose and mouth in a cone shape. It was too small for his head, but Reid flipped it over and looked inside anyway. A faint bit of energy pulsed in an arc from the visor down near the mouth.

"Reid, that helmet is transmitting. I'd bet audio and video. He wanted you to walk in front of it so that whoever's on the other end could see you."

Fuck. "Well, they've seen me now. I stared straight into the thing."

"Don't worry too much. It's not like they recorded you fighting. Just smash the helmet and be done with it."

Reid rolled his neck and held the helmet so it faced the floor as he walked over to the guard. The guard's eyes flashed in understanding and he yelled.

"Seven feet! Mace! Green eyes-!"

The helmet slammed into the man's skull, visor-first. It deformed as his head pulped.

You have defeated Belar Trade Corporation Officer - lvl 19. Experience awarded.

Reid took what was left of the helmet and pushed power though his arms until it crumpled in his hands.

Silence stretched in the room, and the building. The remnants of the helmet sparked twice, then faded. A bit of blood dripped onto the floor from the dead officer.

Officers and guards.

There was a hierarchy to things, and the man he just killed definitely wasn't the one in charge. It was possible that the 'sir' calls he'd made were also part of an act, but Reid doubted it. One desk in a cluster at the top of this building didn't really feel like 'head honcho' material. That meant a force - a potentially more powerful force, was out there and now keenly aware of Reid's presence at the base. Reid marched over to the desk, and uncrumpled pages. They showed nothing he could understand outside of a few tallies vaguely marked resources and requirements.

There was nothing inside the desk's single drawer, nor any of the others set up in the small office. No other crumpled papers - at least not in this room. The bunks were empty of any useful information or datapads as well, so Reid brought himself back over to the wall.

The map on it was huge, and showed a color coded topographic view of the surrounding areas. If Reid was correct, he was looking at nearly 100 square miles of mapped area. A page of notes taped on the wall next to the map had a list of points of interest not displayed on the main article. The map itself had a legend that had been burned away with an acidic ink-like substance that rendered it unreadable. Half a container was left on the floor, open and on its side. The map contained over two dozen burned out spots across the landscape. He realized his own location from the surrounding terrain outside - then stilled. Some of the spots were frighteningly close to the starting area, but most were spread farther out.

Reid focused as he swept his eyes over the thing. The officer had been thorough in destroying intelligence - but not thorough enough. Reid looked down at the man. Maybe he just hadn't been tall enough to notice. Near the top corner at the edge of a burn, a label was still intact. It held a promise that things wouldn't be easy - and that there were plenty of Belar goons left in this tutorial instance.

"Base 11, huh? So pick a burned patch, and you have a 50/50 shot at finding another base full of these nitwits. Based on the size of the burns, I'd say we're not in the main base, either."

"I'm mostly worried about the close spots. It wouldn't make sense for them to have other camps that close, so maybe they were decoy burns. But if they're real - power armor probably moves pretty fast for travel, so there might be reinforcements on their way here. Maybe with bigger guns. Or skills. Nobody here used a skill other than that one guy with identify."

"Of course they've got more powerful people. There are multiple camps, and power armor is enough to keep most of the locals in line. The good soldiers are probably off expanding Belar's area of control. I'm not curious about that. What I am curious about, Reid, is why you decided to once again ignore your notifications. Could it be that my student is afraid of quests?"

Reid sighed. He was kind-of ignoring it.

New Quest: Faction Wars!

Objective: Select Your Faction [ 0d 1h 34m 31s ]

As a new entry to the tutorial with no established faction, you fought your foes as a warrior and took control of their base. By killing the base leader, you have been deemed a individual qualifier. As an individual qualifier for Faction Wars, you may start your own faction or join an existing one.

NOTICE: You have shown immense hostility to the [Belar Trade Corporation] faction and taken one of their bases. You can no longer select the [Belar Trade Corporation] faction.

NOTICE: There are no other active factions in this tutorial instance. You must create a new faction.

Please choose your faction name to begin....

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