7

The wind roared in my ears as I watched the ground steadily grew closer to me till I pulled the straps of the parachute listening to the 'fwoop!' of the chute as it unfurled from its pack and lurched as the chute caught the air and jerked my body to a slow fall.

Thankfully the skies were clear of any ork fighters and the landing zone was cleared of any orks as well. However, looking back behind me I could see the smoke stacks of the advancing ork horde and following that horde back their route of travel I saw could barely make out, even with my enhanced vision, the outline of a small mountain, a rok. I was near a ork landing site and in between them and their target. I did not have a lot of time to prepare, maybe a hour or two at their current rate.

My mind raced as I debated on what to do. Fight? Run? Hide? I sure as hell can't fight an army by myself, yet. Run? Run where? The hive? The hives fall with only Yarrick's side of the world holding out for space marines and he was pretty much on the other side of the continent. Hide? Seems like the only option. Underground as everything above ground was choked with poison and had absolutely no cover. The whole damn terrain was nothing but small hills and plains, nowhere to hide above ground. Also with my luck the orks would still somehow find my hiding spot and siege me. At least I can't starve to death if that happens. A idea came to me, why not do both, hide underground while running by digging towards Yarrick. Better than just hiding or just running.

That meant I was going to have to make the tunnels defensible just in case. They would have to be cramped. The tunnel's size would keep any big orkoid species from coming down or surviving the fall with the tunnels filled with traps meant to take out any that would make it down, if they discovered the shaft entrance. Things such as snotlings, gretchins, and squigs. That should allow me to work with enough of a headstart to constantly keep one step ahead of them as long as I could keep up my predicted digging speed.

The world began speeding back up as I got out of planning mode and as soon as I was just high enough to survive the fall unharmed I inventoried the chute and began falling. In my hands a shovel formed from a blur of rapid hand movements and blue sparks, one in the style of Krieg and made entirely of adamantium with a monomolecular edge. As the last of the light faded I landed shovel first into the ground and the dirt evaporated under my feet as my hands blurred with inhuman speed. A adamantium shovel hard enough to handle inhuman amounts of force with a edge that made even bedrock feel like soft butter, combined with both my Digging and Melee Weapon Mastery which combined increased my base attack speed by 305% on top of increasing the damage rating of the shovel itself by 255%. I practically swam through the earth at jogging pace even as I inventoried the loose soil and packed the top of the shaft with 10 feet worth of compacted dirt, hopefully enough to survive the passing of the horde without breaking if my math was right.

In less than a minute I was already over a 100 feet down below the earth and quickly began digging towards the east, following the mental blueprint I already had in mind. The walls of dirt faded and behind me reinforced frames of wood with tiny temporary lanterns were hung even as spiked traps and automated buzzsaws were installed behind me with the occasional flamethrowers and shaped charges were placed to clear out the tunnels later, of either the corpses or the tunnel itself. On and on this went, hours passed like this in the silence of the dark with only the sound of the crafting and digging I did to keep me company.

Eventually I stopped, my ears perked for noise as I felt a ripple of vibrations through my boots. Again the ripples came with more and more coming one after another, it was the orks there were above me now, marching in such numbers that even this far down the very was shaking with their presence. In addition to the constant shaking from their march various louder shakes could be felt, were they firing at the ground? Now was the moment of truth to see if the shaft entrance held up or if I was going to have to fight some orks after all.

I held my breath, even though I did not actually need to breath anymore except as a reflex, and there with a falling sensation in my gut was a screech. A screech of something falling down a hole getting louder. Rubble. The entrance of the shaft was discovered and broken! I quickly began getting to work again, only to stop as a Quest appeared.

QUEST CREATED!

STAND AND FIGHT! THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER!!!

YOU ARE UNABLE TO ESCAPE FROM THE ORK WAGGGGGHHHHH!!!

YOU ARE UNABLE TO HIDE FROM THE ORK WAGGGGGHHHHH!!!

YOU ARE ABLE TO STAND AND FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE!!!

GOAL: SURVIVE

OPTIONAL GOAL 1: ???

OPTIONAL GOAL 2: ???

OPTIONAL GOAL 3: ???

OPTIONAL GOAL 4: ???

OPTIONAL GOAL 5: ???

OPTIONAL GOAL 6: ???

OPTIONAL GOAL 7: ???

OPTIONAL GOAL 8: ???

OPTIONAL GOAL 9: ???

OPTIONAL GOAL 10: ???

OPTIONAL GOAL 11: ???

OPTIONAL GOAL 12: ???

REWARD: LIFE! AND DEPENDENT ON QUEST GOAL COMPLETION PROGRESS

PENALTY: DEATH!

ACCEPT OR DENY?

What? What do you mean I can't escape! The orks are hundreds of meters behind me! There are enough traps there to stop an entire army of gretchins and another army after that! Do you not see how fast I am digging you crazy system! Why the hell would I have to turn around and fight them! UNGREY THAT DENY BUTTON!

A roar of 'WAGGGGHHH!!!' from a multitude of high scratchy voices followed by growling echoed down the tunnels alerting me that the enemy had arrived. Snarling I accepted the Quest and proceeded to get myself ready for battle. My clothes instantly disappearing only to be replaced by a set of black power armor with a white helmet. A design used by the Sisters of Battle that luckily the Gamer System considered to be gender neutral when crafting, allowing me to wear it without any stupid gender restriction stopping me. This would grant me much needed defense and some measure of strength enhancement even though it would obviously not be to the extent of astartes power armor given their most likely higher base stats allowing for greater stress from stronger enhancement systems.

The adamantium shovel in my hands disappeared in a shower of blue sparks as it was recycled and then proceeded to be recrafted by me for tunnel fighting while taking advantage of my skills. Where once I held a very hard shovel, now I was wielding in two hands a very hard shovel spear. I was going to take advantage of being able to combine skills to maximize my chance of surviving. It was something I realized when digging. Digging with a melee weapon like I was attacking the dirt let me combine the bonuses from the two skills. So how about I dig into the enemy with a melee weapon instead? It was certainly worth a try and if not then I still had the boost from my Melee Weapon Mastery skill.

As I was crafting for those few short seconds my notifications kept pinging me nonstop even as the noise from the tunnel entrance continued. Many many enemies were dying to my traps consisting of everything from spike lobbers to lasguns on full auto whose triggers were pulled and stuck closed by trip wires and glue.

DING! YOU GOT 250 EXP POINTS X5!

DING! YOU GOT 450 EXP POINTS X7!

DING! YOU GOT 250 EXP POINTS X4!

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DING! YOU GOT 600 EXP POINTS X12

Nice to see that traps made by me gave exp for deaths.

"WAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!"

Now I could clearly hear the sounds of the enemy as they gotten closer to me and past most of the traps. What was worrying was that it sounded a lot deeper and there were at a lot more explosions that I remembered setting up.

I was not idle of course, during the time they spent making it to my current location I used my shovel spear to quickly enlarge the end of the tunnel into a small cave 30m in diameter as I just needed a lot of space and did not have to worry about moving the dirt. I just smashed the dirt around me as fast as I could to quickly loosen them up and cause them to fall around me, only to end up falling into my open inventory screen. All around the cave I had set up clusters of hotshot lasguns all controlled by a primitive firing system that I could remotely trigger. In addition I prepared another surprise for the orks in case they actually do cause me to use those guns something they would definely not enjoy. All of this being insurance in case I was pushed all the way back by the orks and needed something to delay them long enough for me to start digging my way up and out of current tunnels.

I hope to the God Emperor that orks were like the stories and were actually killable with just head shots to the heads with las guns. I crafted 6 hellguns and proceeded to glue 3 of them all together and combined the triggers, giving me 2 tri-linked hellguns. Man, if a tech priest saw me now they might just murder me before the orks do.

Ok, I prepared what I could for now. Time to start pushing back against the orks and hopefully survive.

'Good thing I made the tunnel straight.' I thought to myself as I attached my shovel spear to my back via mag locks and hefted my two monstrosities. Standing at the cave entrance I could see the glint from the red furious eyes of the orkoid race and instintively used Observe on the largest one and the one next to it.

ORK BOY STATS AVERAGE (YOOF)

STRENGTH: 900 (200)

CONSTITUTION: 300 (100)

DEXTERITY: 50

INTELLIGENCE: 5

WISDOM: 5

LUCK: 5

'Well shit. That's just a boy! That's a lot of CON! How the hell did he fit in the tunnel! Fuck it!' I thought to myself in slow mo as I realized that my chance of surviving was a lot lower than I thought and this was going to be my first actual fight.

"DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!" I roared aiming down the tunnel and pulling the trigger; grinning as a storm of blinding red laser death filled the tunnels along with the screams of the orks, the smell of burning flesh, and my crazed mechanically filtered laughter as the tunnel fight began.