I found the road, which I consider a personal victory.
I had crested a low ridgein the morning, everything pale orange, my knees still registering their complaints from the previous cycle and there it was below. Cracked asphalt. Sun-bleached and potholed, patched in places with different-coloured material that hadn't quite matched the original. Metal posts leaning at irregular angles where signage had long since been stripped by weather, scavengers or both.
"That's a shitty road," I said. "not just any shitty road"
Cortana, processing the visual, asked: "Meaning?"
"The patchwork pattern. The cheap spacing. That's not Hyperion construction Hyperion paves everything yellow-white and puts their logo on it. This is Atlas-era." I studied the road's curve. "If I'm reading the geography right which I doubt, I haven't exactly been navigating precisely, this could be one of the starting routes. Near Fyrestone hopefully."
"The settlement from your source material."
"Yeah."
Cortana was quiet for a moment. "How much do you trust that source material?"
"Enough to find it useful. But my memory of it is limited." I kicked some sand as I talked "I was playing it before using that wish version blender and whoever brought me here that got a giggle"
I had climbed down the ridge and set my boots on the asphalt. The surface was more uneven than it looked from above; cracks running in long diagonals, dry weeds pushing through in places, sand caked into every depression. It felt sturdier than canyons sand at least which should be easier to traverse.
I then started walking on the much more comfortable road.
Cortana flagged the movement signatures eleven seconds before the skags crested the rocks.
"Movement ahead. Low to the ground. Multiple —"
The first one came over a dust mound at speed, and I saw an acid-swollen throat sac before I clocked anything else about it. My hand was already on the revolver.
"— life forms," Cortana finished unsure of what they were.
"they're skags generally the weakest enemy in the first game" I add to her explanation
Three more followed the first. What i knew as Normal skags with one spitter hanging back the normal skags charged forward drool sizzling the floor beneath them
I drew and fired; the Jakobs burst fired, recoil yanking my wrist, shots going wide. The skags paused now slowly circling.
Seeing it in person with four things that wanted to dissolve him was different especially since they aren't just simple charging mobs anymore.
"Cortana, I'm open to suggestions."
"The right one is positioning for the next spit, move left now."
I moved left. The corrosive glob hit the road where he'd been, sizzling into the asphalt.
absorbing ground debris — loose stone, crumbled asphalt fragments and shaping the output quickly. I make a quick pointy thing. I flicked my hand forward and eject it.
It hit the nearest skag in the shoulder piercing but crumbling after. The animal shrieked and got flung back a meter.
"That worked?" I said, with some surprise.
"The geometry was acceptable," Cortana replied. "Two on the left are adjusting angle. You have about four seconds."
He used three of them getting behind a chunk of broken concrete. The fourth second the spit hit where he'd been.
The fight was not elegant. He used the Engine for three more projectiles, missed one, grazed two, scored a clean hit on a throat sac that made the skag gag and back off. The revolver contributed three shots, two of which were accidentally accurate and one of which wasn't. I Blinked once — panicking, badly aimed — and reappeared facing the wrong direction, stumbled, and came back around to find the last skag less than a meter away.
I hit it at a close range. Dense fragments, point-blank, driven hard.
It collapsed.
I stood in the middle of the road with four dead or retreating skags and a tremor in my hands from adrenaline and fatigue.
"That was messy," Cortana said.
"But it worked."
"It worked." She paused. "You're bleeding."
I looked down. The corrosive spit had caught my left leg during the fight I hadn't felt it register over the adrenaline, but the burn was making itself known now. My HUD flagged it.
CORROSIVE DAMAGE — MODERATE. TISSUE DEGRADATION HAS OCCURED.
"Can the Engine do anything about this?"
"You cannot absorb your own tissue," Cortana said. "But the acid is an external compound adhering to the wound. If you focus the Engine on isolating and extracting the corrosive material specifically, you can stop further damage. The wound itself will still need time to heal."
sitting down on the road. I didn't love the plan of directing the Engine at my own body, even at the surface level. It felt like pointing a gun at myself and hoping for precision but standing here bleeding acid into my leg was worse.
I focused. Reached with the Engine but outward in application, targeting the corrosive residue specifically. Separate from the still alive tissue.
The sensation was unpleasant in a way that was difficult to describe — a thin pulling feeling along my leg, accompanied by visible shimmer as the acid drew upward and dissipated into the Engine's internal storage in droplets.
The burning faded to a throb.
"Better," I exhaled.
"The wound will heal slowly without medical intervention," Cortana said. "A regeneration trait would help. I recommend not repeating that for at least a day."
"Not planning to." I stood carefully and tested my weight. And it's not too Painful. "How far to the settlement?"
Cortana analyzed the skyline. "Based on the road geometry and topographic data from your HUD... close. Possibly within today's walking range if you pace yourself."
"Then let's move" I wince, "and carefully."
He started walking. Every step on the damaged leg blared. The road stretched ahead, familiar in outline like rural roads but worse quality and unkempt.
He kept walking.