A Reborn: Apocalypse fanfiction

20. This One Must Be Special Or Something

The day passed relatively easily. He made a fair pace, less than 10 mph average as the morankai were a bit thick on this bridge so far, but not too many abnormal morankai so that was nice. He kept it up the majority of the day, focusing on practicing freerunning and parkour techniques as well as getting acclimated to his new pickaxe. It wasn't necessarily a great weapon for really strong opponents because his axe energy couldn't do anything with the hammer side, but it was heavy enough, Kev was strong enough, and his abilities suited for absolute overwhelming destruction. Instead of taking limbs, Kev broke bones. Instead of lopping off heads, Kev put holes through them. It was ... well gruesome but also not much more so than normal so Kev kept moving.

On the bridge and feeling less urgent, Kev stopped at night. He didn't have Kevin's Advanced Mask anyway. His night vision was good, everything getting better as he climbed in Cultivation and his Soul stat improved, but still, he didn't want to risk injury or surprise. He cleared the cabin area of the ship he was on, using a headlight and flashlights he bought from the shop as well as a few big glow sticks. He found a room and locked himself in.

Kev ate, had a sponge bath, and tucked in for the night. He woke up about 6 hours later, he might not be as urgent in need as Kevin, but Kev still wanted to see his mother safe to say nothing or telling her about Katie being there too. So, he had some breakfast and on he went. A couple more days passed like this. Compared to the novelty of the first bridge, combined with the lack of urgency to get to Katie, made the trip a little more enjoyable actually.

Kev trusted his mom to be OK and safe, at least as safe as one could be on the first layer. Her still being pingable by Soul Tracker meant she was still alive. If he found her and she was not safe and healthy, then someone would be paying for that in blood, but in the meantime this was actually not too bad. The grasslands were monotonous, but the different ships were kind of interesting. Kev even took the opportunity to explore a few of them.

As he had before, every once in a while, Kevin would ping for golden morankai or for the orb. Another few hours and Kev was going to call it a day and get some rest. He could pick this back up tomorrow. That's when he pinged and got a response. A black orb was on the ship up a little. A luxury cruise ship of some sort, old but still pretty nice looking. Kev kept pinging looking for where to enter while on a cruise ship. He was almost halfway across the deck when he found another pack of abnormal morankai. That could be a problem. He hadn't had the opportunity to restock the caltrops. He didn't have as good of weapons or armor. So Kev changed his tactic a little. He ran

This bunch was on a cruise ship with him. He could feel a black orb below him but was more focused on the abnormal horde. He entered a hallway. Doing so immediately limited how many of their number could approach him at a time, as well as separating them more from their normal morankai companions. He didn't want to box himself into a room where things could get hairy, so instead he found a stairwell.

Entering the stairwell, Kevin was able to prepare by holding his ice axe to the stairs. A layer of ice started to form as the abnormal morankai closed the distance, unerringly headed in his direction.

Unlike the normal morankai, these were larger, they had toughs of fur around their necks and shoulders like some proverse analog to lion's manes. There were only 7 this time, which was still more than he wanted to fight at once but was less than the other pack.

Kev pulled his buckler shield out of his storage ring. The small shield fit on his hand like an extra large dinner plate rather than a full shield, but a shield it still was and one that allowed for a little extra mobility.

Kev poured his basic shield energy into the buckler and intermediate axe energy into the double bit ice shield. The first abnormal reached the steps, took a step and slipped. It landed face down and before it could recover, Kev put his ice axe in the back of its head.