The holographic guns responded relatively well to the control joysticks, moving smoothly in any direction and with a built-in windshield that pushed back the air rushing toward them.
[Pete] Sam, how badly are these affecting your driving?
[Sam] I honestly haven’t noticed any difference. They must be doing something to reduce wind drag.
Pete spun his gun to the right so that the barrel of the weapon was sticking out over the side of the RV and the turret was sideways, making the largest obstacle as far as wind resistance went. Curiously, as Sam had suggested, he wasn’t buffeted by the passing air at all but seemed to exist in a bubble that was devoid of the blustering wind that passed over the RV’s roof. It would be a different story the moment he climbed down out of the turret gun, however.
[Pete] How about now?
[Sam] No difference. I think we’re good.
[Coop] How the hell am I supposed to aim and fire this thing when the controls are so far apart?
Pete spun the turret around and saw Coop sitting on the seat of the smaller unit, which was inside the RV, pointing out a window.
[Pete] Doesn’t look like the guns adapt to new users. Just leave it.
The little ferret jumped down off the holographic seat.
[Coop] Fine. I’ll take care of anything that gets inside the RV.
[Sam] Wolfy can help.
[Coop] I don’t need help from the dog, thank you very much. It’s cramped enough as it is back here without that slobbering hell fiend—
[Sam] Sending him back there now.
The hellhound materialized in the rear cabin of the RV, prompting Coop to jump up, cat-like, and scurry up to one of the kitchen seats as the summoned beast stared at her with those unnerving crimson eyes. Coop watched the beast with distrust, apparently no longer at peace with the creature.
Pete couldn’t see the wolf completely from where he was, but the slight glance he got at the side of the beast suggested that it had grown considerably since the last time he’d seen it.
[Pete] Jesus! Wolfy’s twice his old size.
[Coop] And he smells worse, if such a thing is possible.
[Sam] Yeah, I gave him a brimstone upgrade as part of my latest Woe Binder skill update. He bites much harder now, so he can do decent damage against something the size of a hobgoblin. He’s also got a new bleed ability, which triggers when he bites an enemy.
Coop moved further back in the cabin, jumping up onto the bed and clearly keen to get as far away from the creature as possible.
[Coop] I’d suggest, with your next upgrade, that you do something about the smell!
[Sam] Noted.
[Pete] Alright, time to try out the guns. We don’t want to go wasting coins, but we should at least make sure they all work and we know how to use them.
Agreement emojis came back to Pete in the form of thumbs-up gestures floating in his chat next to small portraits of each of the party members done in 8-bit graphics. Pete loaded a few coins into the gun repository, which acted as an ammunition feed for the gun, noting that several new options had appeared on the gun display.
>> TONGSLY BELCH UBERMAX TURRET GUN
The most fun you can have sitting down!
>> AVAILABLE AUGMENTS:
+| NIGHTBELCH SPECTRAL FILTER
Cost: 250 Belch Bucks
A budget-friendly optical overlay that snaps onto the turret’s sightline array. It shifts the aiming feed into a green-tinted spectral night-vision mode, amplifying low light and highlighting moving targets.
Effect: Greatly improves visibility in darkness; enemies in shadowed or dim areas appear with a glowing outline. Accuracy penalties from nighttime conditions are removed.
+| SIGHTLINE SYNC MATRIX
Cost: 500 Belch Bucks
Upgrades the turret’s triple-tier aiming sights with a stabilization algorithm that auto-corrects for RV sway.
Effect: +20% accuracy on all shots; grenade arcs become perfectly predictable.
+| BELLYFIRE OVERCRANK GEAR
Cost: 750 Belch Bucks
A mechanical overcrank that boosts the rotary shell-feeder.
Effect: +30% fire rate for High Velocity Shells; minor recoil increase.
+| MAXBELCH PRESSURE COIL
Cost: 1,000 Belch Bucks
Enhances shell propulsion through superheated compression coils.
Effect: +25% damage for shells and +15% blast radius for rockets.
+| HOBSENSE TARGETING ARRAY
Cost: 1,250 Belch Bucks
Integrates a thermal-and-motion detection overlay tuned specifically for Hobgoblin heat signatures.
Effect: Auto-highlights drop-pods, midair Hobgoblins, and bomb-rocks; +30% critical hit chance.
+| TONGSLY’S LEGENDARY GUTBLAST STABILIZER
Cost: 1,500 Belch Bucks
A heavy recoil-dampening system bolted to the turret base.
Effect: Recoil reduced by 50%, enabling near-perfect sustained fire and doubling the grenade launcher’s effective firing speed.
[Craig] Are we getting any of these?
[Pete] Not yet. Let’s just see how the guns handle first. We need the money for ammo, and if we blow it all on extras, the improvements won’t mean anything.
[Craig] Very well.
Pete navigated past the initial gun menu, and the display showed a relatively conventional-looking heads-up display with a faint orange crosshair at the center of the screen. The moment he began attempting to find a target to test the gun, he realized that shooting in the darkness wasn’t going to work.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
[Pete] Shit! Okay, we’re all gonna need to get that Spectral Filter unless your eyes are better than mine. I can’t see shit at the moment.
[Nero] Goblin sight is much better at seeing in darkness, Pete. Given the circumstances, however, I suggest that the others would also benefit from purchasing that particular augment.
[Craig] Why don’t you try it on your gun and I’ll come see.
Pete did as the goblin suggested, purchasing the augment. The moment the payment went through, his view of the targeting area shifted to a light green tinge, and suddenly objects were far clearer and easier to target. He swung the gun around, targeting parked cars and letterboxes as well as signs and other objects.
Pete fired the gun, letting out a burst of projectiles that left a trail of tracer fire in the air. The gun controls jittered in his hands as the sound of rapid gunfire surrounded him. The spear of arcing bullets hit their mark, cutting through a large furniture store sign and shattering one of the lights positioned at its top with a satisfying burst of glass and flare of light.
That one burst of fire told Pete that the weapons were relatively accurate but that he’d need to account for gravity, particularly when aiming at enemies that were a long distance away, given how sharply the bullets arc downward after fifty feet or so.
[Craig] Coming up behind you.
Pete turned around to see Craig half walking, half crawling his way along the roof, rushing air blustering around him as he made his way to the rear of the gun. Pete slid out of the gun seat and was immediately buffeted by the air. He gripped the side of the turret as Craig hopped up into the seat and looked through the targeting display.
[Craig] Better. Much better! Despite the cost, I think we should all purchase at least this one augment.
Pete nodded as the goblin hopped down off the gun. Over the next few minutes, the group purchased the night vision augment, and each of them tested their guns. A quick assessment of the group suggested that Pete and Craig would be the most accurate shooters, with Grizzle too timid in her approach and Torgo far too wild. With little time to practice and no wish to burn through their ammo reserves, they had to be content with a few test bursts while they waited for the action to start.
[Sam] The speed marker just popped up. I need to keep it above 50 from now on.
[Pete] Got it.
[Coop] It smells like the devil’s anus in here, and that damned mutt is drooling all over the floor.
[Pete] Thanks for the update, Coop.
[Sam] It’s not real drool. Give it a couple of seconds, and it will vanish.
Before Pete could reply, he caught sight of something in the sky above. It looked like a shooting star, but instead of moving in a horizontal arc across the sky, it was heading directly toward the RV, growing steadily brighter. While he watched, several other lights appeared in the sky, all rocketing toward the Winnebago from ahead and above.
[Pete] Here it comes!
He took a few deep breaths as the closest object increased in size, heading directly toward Pete’s position. Making sure that the oncoming projectile was placed right in the center of the gun’s sights, Pete tried to guess how far away the object was as well as how fast it was moving. Even with the night vision augment, that wasn’t an easy task, and it was only as he saw the grinning face of a hobgoblin painted in comic proportions on the nose of the incoming drop pod that Pete fired.
The gun roared as a stream of coin-colored projectiles spewed from its barrels, arcing up toward the oncoming enemy. Several of the projectiles hit their mark, sparking and driving the pod off course a little as they impacted, but two things were immediately clear as Pete fired once again.
First, the standard bullets weren’t going to penetrate the noses of the drop pods. Second, he’d fired too late, allowing the enemy unit to get too close. That made it easier to hit the drop pod, but it also allowed far less time to knock it off course. He was forced to expend a lot more fire to get the job done, but eventually enough damage had been sustained so that the drop pod burst apart, veering sharply to the left and trailing chunks of metal as the flailing hobgoblin inside clung desperately to the shell of the vehicle.
>> ACHIEVEMENT: Pod Stopper!
Congratulations! You just shot a hobgoblin drop pod out of the sky and narrowly avoided being squashed into a bloody paste. Fortunately, the hobgoblin rider didn’t survive its landing. Unfortunately, you have hundreds more to shoot down, so get firing!
>> ACHIEVEMENT REWARD: Perception Proficiency +1, Hand-Eye Coordination Proficiency +1, Hobgoblin Bobble Head [1hr or until turret is no longer in use].
>> KILL REWARD: 500 Belch Bucks
A holographic hobgoblin head appeared suddenly, dangling from the top of the turret gun. Its bulging eyes leered at Pete while he continued to fire at the oncoming enemies, and the dangling hobgoblin head showed rows of mismatched teeth, swinging back and forth in response to the movements of the turret gun.
Realizing that he’d left his attack too late, not only with the first enemy but with the other two pods rapidly closing on the RV, Pete pressed the left trigger and fired a Bellybuster Rocket. Instead of a slowly narrowing focal point, which signaled that the gun had locked onto an enemy, the moment he fired the rocket, it shot from the underbelly of the gun and whizzed out into the night, leaving a trail of smoke and sparks in its wake.
The rocket also made a howling sound as it shot through the air. Rather than heading straight for an enemy, it darted left and right, spiraling apparently out of control until the last minute when it locked onto the closest drop pod and zagged sharply to the left, destroying the object in a plume of fire.
Pete felt relief flood over him as he finished off the third enemy using regular rounds and sent the pod drifting off to the right, where it collided with a shielded house and burst into flames. The spent Belch Bucks he used in the attack were immediately replenished, with more added as the kills were tallied up.
>> KILL TALLY:
4 x Hobgoblin Drop Pods
3 x Hobgoblin Marauders
5 x Goblin Belch Bombs
He spun around in his chair, hearing the sound of the other guns firing and confirming that the goblins had well and truly joined the fight. The money earned from their combined kills was spread evenly throughout the guns, but Pete could hear Torgo still firing his weapon well after the enemy had been destroyed. The little firebug was chuckling with delight as he fired, apparently as content to see the trailing arc of projectiles zipping through thin air as he was shooting down enemy units.
[Pete] Hold your fire, Torgo! Only shoot when you see an enemy. You’re wasting ammo!
The goblin didn’t reply, but the sudden cessation of gunfire suggested that the message had gotten through, for the moment, at least. Pete swept the sky up ahead of the RV, searching for more signs of the enemy. Given all he’d learned from the previous attack and the amount of coins the group had recovered and made as a result of their kills, it seemed like this would be a relatively easy fight.
That thought was thrown from his mind as the second wave of attackers came hurtling toward them from ahead. Instead of three drop pods, dozens were flying through the air, and a larger unit at the center of the formation was three times the size of the others, heavily armored, and with what appeared to be three spiked metal balls threatening from its exterior as the uber drop pod spun furiously.
“The fuck is that?!” Pete blurted, firing on the smaller drop pods to either side of the larger unit.
[Nero] At a guess, I would say that the drop pods will become more heavily armored with each new wave of attackers. The challenge here, of course, is that you will need to expend much more firepower dispatching the largest pod, but that will mean neglecting the smaller units. You must either hold your nerve until the heavily armored pod is destroyed and quickly turn your attention to the others, or approach the matter in reverse and hope that you are able to dispatch the largest pod before it crashes into the RV.
Pete triggered another Bellybuster Rocket, but the smaller pods shifted direction in midair, moving in front of the larger unit so that one of them took the brunt of the explosion, sacrificing itself so that the brute was left unharmed.
“Fuck!”
Pete tried to fire a second rocket.
>> Rocket Cooldown: 30 seconds remaining
“FUCK!”
He concentrated his fire on the larger unit, holding down the right firing trigger and trying to thread the needle and reach the brute. The smaller drop pods kept moving in front of the larger unit, however, taking the damage so that the brute was unharmed and getting alarmingly close.
>> Rocket Cooldown: 28 seconds remaining
Pete could see exactly how this was going to play out if he didn’t do something. Despite the risk to the group’s ammo reserves, he tapped the side menu and purchased the Maxbelch Pressure Coil augment, dropping a thousand Belch Bucks into the purchase, before immediately following up with the Bellyfire Overcrank Gear.
The gun immediately responded, its line of projectile fire tightening and the fire rate increasing. Instead of pinging off the armor of the smaller drop pods, the shells now ripped through the metal plating, decimating the enemy ranks within moments and allowing Pete to finally concentrate some fire on the larger unit.
The brute was dangerously close now. It was so close, in fact, that he could see the gruesome face of an oversized hobgoblin crammed inside the vehicle behind some kind of plexiglass shielding that acted as triangular windows at the pointed head of the large drop pod. The figure looked huge, even compressed as it was inside the pod, and Pete caught a glimpse of hateful yellow eyes staring at him as he held the fire button down and began ripping through the heavy armor plating.
So close now that Pete could practically smell the exhaust of the drop pod, the vehicle began to pull apart. Pete was about to give a triumphant whoop as it looked like the large pod was about to explode, but that elation vanished the moment the hulking form inside the pod thrust its hands and legs out to the side, and Pete realized that the pod wasn’t a pod at all, but armor plating that the huge hobgoblin wore on its arms and legs.
The large, spiked metal balls that had been spinning around the craft were grouped together at the end of a large flail that the giant held in one gauntleted fist. What had previously been a large part of the drop pod’s hull was now transformed into a reinforced shield that the hobgoblin enemy held out in front of its body as it closed to within twenty feet of an imminent collision.
Pete continued to fire until the very last moment, but the damage he did to the hobgoblin’s shield wasn’t sufficient to stop it from landing right on top of the RV and crushing the mounted gun. He leaped from the gun seat, narrowly avoiding the stomping boot of the hobgoblin as it landed with remarkable grace on the roof.
Instead of crushing the turret gun and the roof, the hobgoblin landed catlike, grinning broadly and showing rows of golden teeth as it hefted its flail. It stood on top of the gun, inside it, as apparently, its holographic nature meant that the brute couldn’t interact with it.
The hulking figure stood at twice Pete’s height and was apparently unfazed by the air rushing past and the occasional swerving of the RV beneath them. The hobgoblin extended a gauntleted fist, one finger prodding out toward Pete as it grinned with Belch Buck plated teeth, bulbous eyes staring out from the eye slits of a large metal helmet.
“I sees you, mucky muck!” the brute roared. “I is comes to kill the Vault Breaker!”