Chapter 689 - Self-Pity

Afton throws himself behind cover while patting out his currently ON FIRE shirt. It was hard enough dealing with one of those damn things, but a hundred at once? Who set the difficulty to impossible!?

The concrete wall he was hiding behind shudders, forcing him to move as lasers disintegrate the material. He leaps into the air and kicks off of the wall to intercept an aircraft bombarding his location, launching a hard kick at it in an attempt to destroy it...

Unfortunately, his leg collides with the ship's shield, knocking it away like a football and sending it careening down the street. It bounces between buildings and eventually comes to a halt nearby... But almost immediately begins flying again, his kick and its subsequent crash landing having done no meaningful damage.

Gritting his teeth, Afton continues to try and break their shields unarmed, but obviously fails every time. Even with weapons made from his plant arm, he simply didn't have enough energy to break the shields, despite his almost godlike stats.

His attempts become more and more creative, even one time trying to destroy an aircraft with his saliva... Yeah, hocking a loogie at it didn't do much, aside from infuriating the strange creature piloting it.

Eventually, he just decides to fight fire with fire, shooting his plant arm out and using it to grab ahold of one of the aircraft, tightly entangling it and beginning to swing it around like a massive glowing flail.

Another aircraft comes by while shooting lasers, but Afton easily avoids it before counter-attacking with his new weapon.

The alien spacecraft bleeds a turquoise stream behind it as it swings through the air, the alien inside gives a shocked scream and tries to cover itself with its arms as its ship collides with another.

*CRAAACKOOWW!!!*

The ships collide and their shields almost seem to implode on one another, utterly crushing both aircraft as a large explosion consumes them. Afton pulls back his root arm with a snap, now grinning at this effective method at dealing with the enemy's shields.

Afton begins using this method to destroy the ships, but after twenty or so are destroyed, the aliens learn their lesson and keep a good distance from him while continuing to try and hit him with their lasers.

Again, Afton takes cover behind a destroyed alien ship, the lasers seemingly unable to harm the weird metal that composes it. He calms his breaths as he takes a short break, glancing to the side at the corpse of an alien who was still holding some sort of device in its hand... It was cut in half and wearing a heavy spacesuit, so Afton wasn't able to see what its body actually looked like, only able to see its bulbous, green, fanged face through its visor.

As for the device itself? It almost reminded him of a holodevice, used to store information like any typical smartphone... Unable to endure his curiosity, he takes it pressing the large button that presumably turns it on.

It activates, but Afton is shocked to find some sort of file on... Him?... His face was prominently displayed on it, and had many paragraphs of alien language below it, though, he obviously could not read it...

He frowns, but an idea pops into his head about how to solve this... He accesses his status and presses his points, causing time to pause as he's greeted with the familiar screen.

He ignores the [Skills] and [Mutations] tabs for now, pressing [Perks] instead and searching for any language abilities.

He's quickly greeted by a few pages of each and every language, French, German, Mandarin, Japanese... Afton ignores them and continues searching for a Perk that'd enable him to understand the alien language.

Unfortunately, Afton didn't know the name of the alien language, meaning he couldn't select it out of the random, weird sounding perks from the list... What is Sjhemnina and Ukkjuupanip anyway!?

This, forces him to look at the last perk that could help... [Complete Language Aquisition].

[Complete Language Aquisition] : Enables user to speak every language in existence after hearing or seeing them at least once. This includes reading, writing, speaking, and other facets that may be vital to understanding said language.

Sounds good right? Well, that's until you look at the price tag... 20 Points.

Twenty, fucking, points. Just so he could read this god damned holodevice. Afton sighs, thinking it over and eventually buying it. It might be useful in negotiating with other Alien races that may be out there, he'd hate to have a full-scale war every time he encountered another race.

Afton doesn't feel like he needs anything else from the system yet, so having a stockpile of 10 points to spend might save his ass later on... Time resumes and he feels an influx of information crawl inside his brain like billions of chittering ants as he looks at the holodevice.

A small trickle of blood flows from his nose as his eyes glaze over, his brain working overtime to comprehend this language in good time.

Thankfully, due to his massive intelligence and many perks aiding it, he's able to understand the rather peculiar language with which the aliens speak... Looking down at the holodevice, his eyes widen as he reads it, cold sweat dripping down his back.

He'd only read a few sentences, and he felt like his world was imploding... "Target's growth is abnormal and not slowing. Recommendation; Annihilation before target becomes a threat.

Extermination method; Target appears to be susceptible to diseases, parasites, and viruses. Tailored Genocide Virus recommended."

...

"Did... Did they attack the planet, just for me?" he mutters to himself, becoming increasingly distraught at the implications. This basically meant that he was far more responsible for the death of Josie and everyone else than he'd originally thought... It wasn't just his orbital strikes that he was responsible for, but indirectly the virus the aliens had sent as well...

He forces back a shuddering breath, almost choking on his emotions... Fortunately, he wasn't able to wallow in self-pity for long. The Alien aircraft had come back around for another bombardment, with Afton clear in their sights.... He crushes the Holodevice with a fierce growl and begins trying to destroy the flying saucers again, rage apparent on his face.