Titan Rising Online: World Breaker

Chapter 170 170: Ambush In The Apocalypse

?Cole had no idea what the satellites and the small stations behind them were for and frankly speaking he didn't care. This was the apocalypse, there was no time to bother about what the function of certain things were. He knew that one for sure at least and would not be bother with anything that did not have any immediate gain or consequence to him. Which was why he was content just sitting by the side, watching impassively as Irma and her new zombie dog burnt their way into a garage.

Cole got up just as soon as they got in, he had his guard up but was surprised when no zombie came running out of the garage. There were a couple of snow mobiles? Or not. The craft looked unlike anything he has ever seen. It was hovering off the ground with what seemed to be a massive rudder hanging low behind it. On moving closer Cole realized that it wasn't floating off the ground, rather it was held in place by two supports that looked to be charging ports. Cole looked outside, while it was absolutely freezing there was no snow in sight, just an endless expanse of ash and powerful dust clouds…..oh!

With how much dust and ash, something that Cole was now noticing covered most of everything that he could see with his eyes. The blackness and the grey that covered this world, an infectious stain that stretched far into the horizon. This world was sick, it was struggling hard to survive but eventually, from what he could see, it will come to an extremely sad and desperate end. It was pitiful and not because Cole wished to save it, heck if he was asked her say it would he better to squeeze the world dry of whatever could be gained and then put it out of it's misery.

"These Esquire Striders will get us to where we need to be in a few hours. They're fully charged so we have a straight 4 hour run with these things before we either need to get them to another charging port or wait for them to use ambient ultraviolet rays to charge up it's batteries. That could take at least 5 hours."

Cole didn't care about the explanation she was giving, they were on a tight schedule and had to get moving. They would be skirting the edge of the Babel Tower which still had that massive monstrosity moving about and king God knows what. It would still be an extremely dangerous, the terrain alone did not look safe and was all ruins and ash, not to mention the biggest factor to consider….. the zombies were still in play. Cole just shook his head and mounted one of the snow striders…. It sounded less of a mouthful than Esquire Striders.

"There's only going to be one pace and that's mine. So you better keep up with me Aspirant. If you can't then I would just take it that the money you have paid for transportation would be remuneration for all of the shit you just put me through recently." Cole narrowed his eyes to get dangerous slits as he observed Irma, he chuckled but wisely didn't say anything….. sue was doing that thing women do when they did not want to admit their own inadequacy. Pick a fight and always find a way to twist the situation and blame it on the man. Cole had already been in one heck of a toxic relationship and while he was no saint he knew better than to fall for her trap.

He started the strider, appreciating the deep rumbled the craft gave off as it started, purring out loud like some massive jungle cat. Irma found herself some new clothes and returned Cole's jacket to him, then she got onto the strider before throwing a set of goggles to Cole while she wore a full protective helmet with filtration systems to filter out the bad air.

The filtration mask however was not something that Cole needed. He already had his mask which did more than a good enough job of keeping 9ther things out of his nose. So he just followed behind Irma and her newly adopted dog. They rode past the satellite dish, the strider rising high almost a meter and a half off the ground as they ate up the distance, leaving massive plumes of black dust and spoke rising up behind them.

Cole was able to keep up with Irma, in fact dare he say he was a better pilot of the strider than her. But ultimately it was not her fault, his [Aeronaut] skill already made a crack hand with any sort of craft that had any form of flight, no matter how limited. And while it was called the Esquire Striders, these things were just over glorified hover bikes if Cole had to be honest with himself. He shrugged and revved the engine up, watching as the Babel Tower grew larger in their sights.

Irma stopped when she was a good 100 meters away from the building itself, then from there she started to travel perpendicular to the building, heading for the edge of the leaning building that was quite some distance away. They did not have any communication between the both of them, so Cole just followed behind her, until of course he began to received feed back from his [Sin Seeking Eyes] something was about to go wrong….. again.

But he was not able to tell what as all he had at the moment was an intense feeling of rapidly growing danger. Cole shook his head but made sure he could remain focused on the task at hand. They kept on their journey for close to an hour before the edge of the building showed up in front of them, Cole noticed Irma speeding up, but it was in that very moment that his danger sense went off with such an intensity Cole almost immediately developed a headache. His body reacted as he pulled bout his rifled and slotted an explosive bullets inside of its chamber and pulled back its bolt.

[Double Tap]

Two zombies hounds/ wolves with freakish scorpion tails leapt out of the second or perhaps it was still the first floor of the building. Breaking windows as multitudes of shards of glass rained down on them below while the two creatures carried out their ambush, their trajectory taking them stra8ggt to Irma and the Brand General, who couldn't put up a defense or go faster as they had been completely caught off guard.

*Bang! *Bang!* *BOOM! BOOM!*

Cole had a smirk on his face as he pulled back on the bolt of his rifle, letting the empty she'll from the previous explosive bullets fall out. He raised he left hand up and blasted up wards with 5% of his total energy pool, creating a powerful wave of [Gravity] that blasted the two new zombie scorpion hounds that had also jumped out of the building to attack him.

The creatures had their bodies twisted and broken from just the intensity of the attack alone, while Cole sled forwards until he was riding right besides Irma. They both made a sharp corner, coming up fully on the east side of the building. It was now that Cole discovered a highway... or at least what used to be remnants of one. It was filled with abandoned crafts in a manner than Cole could only attribute to a junkyard, but as far as the eyes could see, there were vehicles in various state of ruin and disrepair. But above all else, was the convoy of trucks on the horizon rapidly picking up speed, Irma's eyes widened as she said to Cole.

"Come on! We have to catch up to them or we're fucking screwed!" in response Cole rolled his eyes and thought to himself, 'what else was new'.

Either way Cole got the answer to his questions quickly as the black dust exploded from the side of the road besides him, a zombie wolf scorpion leapt out, jaws outstretched and aiming for his head. Cole had not seen it coming, it seems even with all of his strength his perception and domain were not that good with detecting things coming at him from under the ground. Either way Cole reacted just in time as [Vertigo] seemed to twist the beast out of the air while Cole turned for just a second and aimed with his rifle.

[Assassinate]

*Bang!*

The undead creature dropped with a loud thud behind Cole and Irma while they drove even faster, to watch up with the convoy still pulling away from them. By this point Irma was already waving her hands, pushing at the horn button on the strider over and over again, blasting and blaring out their location for every single zombie in the vicinity to hear. But Cole couldn't blame her, perhaps the idea of being left behind is a lot more worse than that of being chased by an endless horde of zombies.

.which was exactly what happened as Cole began to her the sounds of multiple breaks. He looked up just in time to see zombies of all shapes and sizes breaking or jumping out the windows of the building, all of them angled and heading towards Irma's and Cole's striders. Luckily for them, Irma had been able to find ammunition for her new K9 friend, and the Grand General did not disappoint as he lit up the sky with trails of blazing bullets that shredded many of the zombies before the hit them or the ground.

But he was barely putting a dent as Cole discovered more and more zombie wolves jumping out of the earth, and more zombies pouring out of the Babel Tower, or jumping out of it. All of them coming together to form the makings of a horde that was actively chasing after them with more than a few of them using their abilities as spikes of ice and bolts of lightning flew past his body to strike and impact on the ground either way….. they were screwed and Cole was right…..what else was new.