The hallway was a lot cooler than the engine room, but since he was running, Lus hardly noticed. Having the coat and backpack on made it a lot less convenient to sprint, but so far, he hadn't run into anything that he needed to run from.
Nippy and Dasht were still yelling for him to come back, but when he glanced over his shoulder, he noticed that they didn't dare stray from the room. It took a few seconds for him to realize that their yells weren't about coming back. They were more like "watch out."
"Watch out?" he wondered, facing forward again only to discover his path blocked by two of the mutant bears. One seemed to be the original one he and Dasht faced, with the extra legs and a fresh patch of missing fur along his head from where Nippy's sword hit, but the other was even more intimidating–larger than its companion, it had a second pair of ears along its neck and a third eye on its left cheek. Its paws held extra claws, and some of its teeth had grown past its lips to dangle beneath its jaw.
"Blast it," he said, his eyes darting around the corridor to find a way around the beasts. Unfortunately it seemed the only way past them was through them, and he would just have to hope his [Dash] would work as well as he expected it to.
His eyebrows knitting together in concentration, Lus thought [Dash] really hard, but he sensed no change in himself.
"What does it take to activate a [Skill]?" he cried as he slowed down before reaching the hungry-looking animals. The larger of the two took a step towards him, its three eyes glowering with danger.
"Come on, system! Just let me [Dash]!" he said.
Still nothing.
The mutant polar bears continued their prowl towards him, and Lus realized that unless he got his [Skill] to work soon, he would be dead. The only good news about that is that he wouldn't have to face Nippy and the others with his epic failure of a plan.
"Maybe I can outrun them normally," he muttered to himself, recognizing that was likely only going to lead to a faster death. Taking a breath, Lusac charged forward, screaming as he ran towards the bears. His hands found the pistols at his side and he pulled them out, shooting off as many bolts as he could.
The shots of energy blew parts of the animals' flesh away, but Lusac got a clear, horrific view of their bodies almost instantly mending themselves, sickly skin bubbling back over the burn marks from his shots.
He was very close to the bears when he reholstered his guns and tried one last time to get his new [Skill] to activate.
Calming his mind, Lus very clearly thought of the command, Activate [Dash], and to his relief, the stupid system decided to respond this time.
[Activating Dash for 50 seconds]
Immediately, Lusac felt the change in his body, and the world around him seemed to slow down. He looked up at the giant mutant paw bear swiping down towards him, but it was going so slow, he easily ducked underneath it and danced around the two white mounds impeding his path.
As soon as he was past the bears, Lusac bolted down the next corridor that would take him away from the engine section, wanting to give the rest of the team a clear path to escape. He hoped Nippy was going to be brave enough to take this opportunity, or that Zer-Dasht would find a way to bully the Kremel into it.
Lus ran for what seemed to be several minutes, his footsteps echoing through the corridor, and a glance behind showing that the bears were on his trail, even if he was easily outrunning them. For now. His [Dash] wouldn't last that much longer, and he needed to be somewhere safe before it ran out or else he was looking at the whole dying thing again, something he was still hoping to avoid.
He scanned the walls and doors as he went, knowing that he would need access to the maintenance shafts if he was going to get the parts they needed. That 12 [Luck] held out for him once again as he caught sight of a loose ceiling panel that would surely lead to where he wanted to go. It also looked far too small for any of the bears he'd come across, mutant or not, so surely he wouldn't have to worry about anything but gathering parts while he was in there.
Stopping below it, he then realized his problem of not having a way up to the panel. Since the ship had been designed to fit Kremel, the ceiling was far above his reach, even if he jumped.
[Dash deactivating]
[Cooldown: 5 minutes]
"Blast me," he murmured as the roar of the bears reached his eyes. He did not have long to figure this out, and there was nowhere else to hide.
Lusac turned to see the two monsters racing towards him. He did a brief mental calculation and cringed at his second horrible idea of the day. It was a long shot, but he didn't know what else he could do in such a short span of time.
He ran backwards a few steps and then crouched down, preparing to sprint towards the incoming bears. There was a high chance he was going to lose his foot or something in doing this, but he was willing to bank on his [Luck] which so far had done a lot to save him. If only he had a batch of [Beginner's Luck Soup] on him. That would make this far easier.
The first of the bears reached what he deemed a worthy condition, and Lus took off in a run, racing to meet his foe. As the bear reached its snout out to bite Lusac, he jumped upwards, landing on the bear's head.
Thanks to the boost from the large creature, it was only one more small hop upward to get his hands on the edge of the ceiling shaft.
Lus hung there, pulling his legs close as the bears below tried to swipe at them. He cursed himself for not cooking more to level up sooner and gain extra [Strength] as he attempted to pull himself up into the crawl space.
His arms burned as he hauled himself to safety, cursing the coat and backpack he wore for the extra weight, but after a few moments of intense effort, Lus was safely in the crawl space, the howls of the bears below warning him that they were unhappy to have lost their dinner.
Lus turned his headlamp on, sending a brilliant beam of white light out to illuminate the small space. It was roomier than the fsylan tubes but not by much. He sighed and carefully maneuvered himself to get a look back down into the hallway he'd left behind where the two bears from before paced, now alongside another one of their companions.
"Good. The distraction seemed to have worked," he sighed to himself. Reaching up, he pressed the button on his communicator to try and talk with the others.
"Nippy, Dasht. I'm safe in the maintenance tubes, and I can see three of the bears. You guys should have an easy escape if you leave now," he said. He then repeated the message three times in hopes of getting the majority of it through the interference caused by the broken engines.
"Lus—you blasted—-killl—-but—leaving now—see—wall," Nippy's broken voice responded.
Lusac waited several seconds, but nothing more came through the radio. Hopefully that meant they were on their way.
He glanced back down at the bears who were still staring up at him intently, and he realized that another two had joined their companions, making for a total of five mutant bears. All them were disfigured in unique ways, ranging from extra appendages to mutated faces. One even seemed to be growing a second head.
"Glad we're getting away from the radiation," he murmured as he ran his hands along his body to ensure no new arms or legs were forming. He'd rather not end up like the bears. Finding himself still a plain old Human, Lus breathed in relief and turned his attention back to the bears. He had no way of knowing how long it would take Nippy and the others to escape, and he wanted to make sure to keep these monsters distracted until he was confident he was the only one in the wreckage.
All at once, the bears swung their heads down to stare at the corridor, and one even let out a growl.
"That must mean they can hear the team," Lus told himself. He needed to find a way to keep the bears' attention on him without putting himself in too much danger. Grabbing his two pistols again, he leaned over the open panel and fired into the mutants.
The attack sent the animals into a frenzy, and they began roaring and jumping up at the panel as the blaster bolts rained down on them, marring more of their bodies with the oozing flesh that regrew with each hit.
"That's it. Keep your eyes on me," Lusac said with a smile, congratulating himself on a job well down. Once Nippy, Dasht, and Hwnlr were safe, he could go find the parts, and then make his escape with his recovered [Dash]. After that it would be the simple matter of repairing the shuttle communicator and waiting for the Argo to send help. This mission wasn't going to turn out so bad after all.
His happy thoughts were interrupted by a bear claw swiping at the gun in his right hand, nearly knocking it from his grip.
"Whoa!" he yelled, backing up as another paw appeared within the hole he'd been leaning over. The bears' anger had fueled their athletic ability a lot more than he anticipated.
He waited another minute, watching as claws grabbed the air he'd only recently been sitting in, before deciding that was enough of a distraction for Nippy and the others. He needed to go find the parts, and he didn't want to see just how capable the bears could become if he kept antagonizing them.
"I hope you made it out. My distraction has run out," Lusac said into his communicator. As before, he repeated it several times as he crawled along the unfamiliar maintenance shaft. It was a mess, with loose wires and jagged edges everywhere the eye could see. It was going to be tough to find the parts in this disaster, but at least that was his only real concern for now.
Unlike the fsylan tubes back on the Argo, these tubes had no kind of markings to denote what section he was in or where in the ship he was, which made his task far harder than it should have been. It took a lot of trial and error at random circuit boards before he found one that lit up a small holoscreen with a map of the wreck's fsylan tubes.
"Perfect," he said, memorizing the path to the communication section where the antenna and fretrics would be.
After he was sure about where to go, he resumed his crawling journey amongst the cramped shafts, finding it more difficult to get around with all the broken walls and supports protruding into the space.
He was about halfway to his next stop when he ran into a full blockage of his path.
"That's not good." He stared at the beam which lay across the entire tube. From what he could see, the tube did continue on the other side, but there were several tons of alunitanium in his way.
Sighing at the delay, Lusac pulled out his all-in cutter and began the agonizingly slow work of cutting a hole in the beam that would allow him through. It took nearly an hour to get through all the heavy metal with only a standard cutter, but eventually he finished his work and was able to worm his way past the beam (without his backpack, which he had to pull through after).
He was getting antsy with how long it was taking just to get to the communication section, and by the time he arrived, he was very tired of being in the freezing cold tubes. The task of getting the antenna and fretrics went much faster than cutting through the beam, and within half an hour his backpack was stuffed full of the equipment as he plotted his course to the nearest exit of the fyslan network.
When he reached the closest exit panel, he removed it and checked that there was nothing waiting nearby. Finding the hallway empty from what he could see, Lus sat at the edge and then dropped down to the broken floor. The mutant bears were probably still where he left them, waiting for him to return or something. He didn't think their irradiated brains could figure out that he wouldn't be coming back anytime soon.
Now all he had to do was reach the exit of the wreck and see if Nippy and the others were waiting at the crater wall for him. There was always a chance they'd decided to go back to the shuttle–
Out of nowhere, a white mound rammed into Lusac, knocking him to the ground. He'd been so concerned about figuring out a way out of the wreck, he hadn't noticed the mutant bear approaching.
Shouting, Lusac grabbed the slobbering mouth of sharp teeth that was descending towards his face. His body was exhausted from his earlier sprint and then handling all the tasks in the tube, and even with the extra [Strength] from the adrenaline in his system, Lus realized that there was no way he could beat this thing.
He was going to die.