Double-Blind: A Modern LITRPG

Despite being pinned between a brick wall and a ton of vehicle, the arrow still planted firmly in its half-destroyed head and frost covering its entire body, the Minotaur was moving.

“What the fuck!”

I drew my hand-crossbow at the waist and fired through the windshield. The bolt landed lower than I’d intended, surprise throwing off my aim, bolt stabbing through the creature’s neck instead of its head. Black ichor spewed from the wound, the rainbow dark of oil covering the windshield and dripping through the spider webbing puncture.

Without hesitating, Sae slammed a studded, enchanted metal stick into its forehead like the bases were loaded, and there was a pair of wet thumps as its head recoiled from the impact, bouncing against the brick and slamming down into the engine block.

Miles fired an arrow into its incapacitated head, then another. When he lowered the bow, his satisfied smirk from before was nowhere to be seen.

“I thought you killed it?” Sae snapped. She stepped backward shakily.

“Should be dead. Necromancer creation or not.” Miles frowned. “Ability packs the impact of a 50 cal. Even if it didn’t do enough immediate damage to the brain to put it out of commission, the connecting vertebrae should be toast.”

There was motion in the rear-view. Iris had curled up into a ball, her knees flush to her chest, breaths coming in quick gasps again, hands on her head, shielding her view.

Before I knew what I was doing, I stepped out of the car and withdrew a new acquisition from my inventory, a rare quality serrated blade I’d picked up mainly for gathering and harvesting valuable ingredients. warned me I was on the outer fringes of socially acceptable actions, and my current course might tip my hand to Miles.

But when I looked at Iris again, traumatized and terrified in the backseat, I found that—at least at that moment—I didn’t care.

“Keep an eye on the road?” I asked Miles, my voice cold.

“… Yeah.” Miles said slowly, sensing what I intended from the blade in my hand, walking backwards a few steps before he turned to keep watch. “Don’t take too long.”

“Take Iris?” I said to Sae.

Sae nodded grimly, pulling the passenger seat open and fishing my sister out, angling her head from the downed minotaur.

I gripped looking for weak-points. At first I thought it wasn’t working, as nothing in the creature lit up at all, until I saw Sae’s nearby vitals light up like a Christmas tree.

Is it… actually dead?

Not trusting the info, I fired off next. It was the most subtle of my mind-influencing abilities and served as a litmus test for whether the stronger abilities would work. And if this second death stuck, I’d get no feedback whatsoever.

There was a spark of awareness still burning within the darkness of the creature’s mind. It was still alive. When I exerted influence and attempted to lull it back into unconsciousness, my connection was violently severed.

For a moment I reeled from the snapback, weathering the psychic storm. Then stared down at its motionless form, grimacing in distaste.

“Okay.”

Hard way, then.

I decapitated it first, carving through the muscular neck and dense spine. I’d used the rare-classification blade to great effect on tough-to-carve-through materials, but it still took longer than I expected and I was thoroughly winded by the time the blade finally cleaved through. If the neck was any indication, completely dismembering the thing would take all day, so next I settled for severing as many tendons as I could, carving into sections of muscle that would most hamper its mobility.

From the outside, it might seem a little macabre, maybe even like a waste of time. But in theory, the worst thing you could do with a regenerator was leave it be after you spent the effort and resources to bring it down.

There were really only two viable options.

Figure out its critical weakness.

Or B. Inflict catastrophic damage that will take too long to repair.

Would be ideal, but I didn’t have time. So I settled for B.

All throughout, I could feel Sae watching the process, her stare unflinching. She’d taken her system transformation hard—a penalty for being in a trial after it closed—and she’d come out the other side a harder, colder person. We had a lot of history, but were on shaky ground of late due to the temporary alliance with the Suits. They’d played a role in what happened to her, and I suspected the only thing stopping her from attempting to march straight into the summit and spill Aaron’s brains all over the table was that most of the strike-team’s activities involved hunting, capturing, or otherwise eliminating members of Sunny’s faction.

Sae still wasn’t happy about cooperating with the group in any capacity, but seeing how Sunny was the one who botched Nick’s recruitment which led to the series of events that trapped her in the trial and led to her transformation, I hoped eventually serving her his head on a platter would function as a stopgap.

No, not literally.

Miles whistled low from the mouth of an alley, catching our attention. He spoke in a low voice. “That’s the bell. Scalpels down, kids, biology class is over.”

“Chimeras?” Sae asked.

Listening while they conversed, I picked up the pace. Grabbed a canvas bag from the Prius’s trunk and unceremoniously shoved the minotaur’s head until it was mostly inside, save one curved horn sticking out from beneath the tie off. His body had been relatively motionless, and I hadn’t felt another spark from his mind yet, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

I also wasn’t done.

From what little we understood, the inventory the system gave everyone inside the dome was essentially a small pocket dimension. In theory, it could store anything from the leaf of a plant to a mid-sized vehicle. Any ingredients placed inside—no matter their shelf-life—wouldn’t spoil until they were withdrawn, their biological timers essentially paused.

It was unfortunately inconsistent. System vehicles, for example, could be stored easily, while non-system vehicles could not. And despite the obvious potential utility for live capture of small monsters and other specimens, it didn’t work that way. Any creature had to be unconscious to be stored, and came out flatlined.

The latter was what I was banking on.

There was almost a tangible relief when I successfully inventoried the skinned creature’s head.

Miles peeked around the corner and turned back. “Four of them now, heading this way, moving with purpose. Not as fuck-you big as nightmare-fuel over there, but big enough to be a problem.”

“They see you?” Sae asked, rubbing Iris’s back with one-hand.

“No. But smart money says they know where we are. Could be using the ravens to scout.”

Sae chucked her thumb towards the dead-end back of the alley. “No outlet. Need to make a break for it before they close the distance.”

“Even if one of us stays behind to stall them, too high of a chance they’ll ignore us and rush straight for him.”

I looked up at a series of spiraling ladders, extending upward in ascending rectangles. “Fire escape? Buildings are close together. Not great with the birds, but maybe we go up and climb down to the next street over.”

Miles nodded. “That’ll work. I’ll take the car and run interference. Might buy us time if they think you’re still in it. Just try not to be up there for too long.”

While Miles busied himself with the car, I climbed on top of a dumpster, then leapt up to the bottom platform of the fire escape, seizing the ladder in both fists and hoisting myself up. Sae followed in the same path and lifted Iris above her head.

“Miles.” I called out.

“Yep?”

“Thank you.”

Miles nodded, slipped into the driver’s side and started the car.

Before long, we were running across the rooftops, my damaged Prius chugging the opposite way on the road below, directly towards our pursuers.