A bloody Wasteland

As the light dissipated, the group could see a big hangar made out of tin around them, filled with lots of trash and scrap. The roof of the cylindrical structure was eroded and porous, worn down by time and exposure. One side of the hangar was missing, revealing a vast red wasteland in the distance. There was some smoke rising from something beneath the hall, but no one could see it right now.

Create Barrier, Lv. 6, Difficulty can be raised to 250%, Level selection enabled

Type: Hostile
Level: 8
Mode: Annihilation
Enemy Type: Raiders (Mutant)
Scenery: Radiated Wasteland
Difficulty: 200%
Objective: Inside the Barrier are 150 enemies. Kill them all to spawn the Boss. Minimap enabled.
Bonus Objectives:
Rescue 20 Bloodbags
Reward:
+100% EXP
+1 Rare drop

Kill 60% of the enemies
Reward:
+100% EXP

Good Luck!

Looking around, John could see that the people were expectantly looking at him, expecting something. “Oh, right, you’re not in my party right now, so you didn’t see the pop-up. Probably should fix that… Anyway, the Barrier is created with enemies inside. There are 150 enemies scattered around the outside, and once we kill them all, there will be a stronger boss monster which we also have to kill. If I add you to my party, you should get a minimap in your vision, displaying to some degree where the enemies are. I can currently add five people to my party, so who thinks they would benefit the most from the minimap?”

Magoi then immediately raised his hand, “You won’t need to add me to your party. I’m not much of a fighter; I will simply inspect the Barrier and keep out of trouble. I’m pretty good at that.”

Well, that at least cleared that one up, so John sent out the party invites to the remaining five people. All of them were startled as the pop-up to confirm appeared in front of their faces. After all of them accepted (with much **** from Hannah), each one of them pulled out some kind of weapon. Hannah pulled out a golden staff with a big ring on one end, Kwang revealed a sword from somewhere in his sleeves, and Wotan pulled out an intricately crafted bow, materializing a quiver on his hip. Kaen put on her gauntlets again, and Kim simply put on some bandages around her fists.

All in all, they looked like a pretty standard adventuring party. Pondering if he should get Gary and Thorn again, John decided against it for the sake of the dragon puppy. This was clearly more dangerous than the fight against the Imp, and he had no sure way to keep him out of trouble. He didn’t worry so much about Gary, but Thorn would surely use the opportunity to get out of the Nexus as well, and he would rather avoid that…

After a nod from everyone, confirming that they were ready, the group walked forward to the exit of the hangar. The closer they got to the end of the hall, the more they could see of the world spanning in front of them. They were apparently on some kind of hill, or rather next to a crater, and the crater was filled with rusty, square houses. Looking down from the hanger, it looked like a fortress, with many little bridges between the buildings on which misshapen humans were running.

The group had a bit of distance to cover to get to the complex, but they could see the mutated humans running around outside. They were wearing mixtures of scrap and leather armors, had weapons made of dented metals, and had various tools on them.

Kaen was the first one to speak up, “The hell is this place? It looks like we were dumped into the set of some Mad Max movie… Is it really okay if we kill those people?” To which all of the older men nodded.

“This place is obviously the extent of John’s powers. Nothing here is real, even if it might seem so at first glance. There is no actual life **** in the creatures. Do not feel bad about killing these things; they are only here to provide some sort of population for this ‘hostile’ Barrier. They seem to be barely human as it is,” said Wotan, looking over the fortress beneath them. He was the first one to go down into the crater, already planting two arrows in the heads of two mutants standing outside of the metal walls.

The mutants didn’t splatter any blood, and their bodies instantly vanished as they dropped to the floor, proving the shaman’s point.

“Well, if that’s the case… CHARGE!!” bellowed Kaen, sprinting after Wotan, using his shoulder as a platform to fly further towards the metal buildings.

The others then slowly followed suit, splitting off to deal with the enemies in their own way.

Auditory Atmosphere Supplement Activated. Now Playing: Bignic - Little Aliens

Suddenly there was music blasting inside John’s head. What the hell? Where did that come from? He then remembered Sarai telling him about a ‘secret upgrade’. Was it necessary? Probably not. Was it awesome? Hell yeah! The music always was just loud enough to be properly heard but without impairing his hearing. This was really weird… Did the connection use his phone to look up music? He had to investigate at a later point.

John himself jumped into one of the higher buildings thanks to his Flash Step and kicked one of the mutants out of a window before the mutant had any time to react to John and before John had any time to use Observe. Thankfully, there was another mutant in the
room he could Observe:

80 DMG (Falling) + 60 DMG (Piercing)

Looking out the window revealed that the mutant landed on a metal spike coming out of the building. The second mutant now charged towards John, who simply ducked out of the way of a rusty blade and then pushed the mutant out the window with his back. The creature quickly followed the path of the first one, piercing itself on the spikes and disappearing into nothing.

Now that he had time to think about what he just read, it seemed awfully familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it…

The small room John was standing in now was mostly empty, except for some drip stands with blood bags. Were these the blood bags that he was supposed to ‘rescue’? Rescuing them seemed like the wrong word… Observing them made John doubt that those were the things meant:

Food Pack
Contains 2 oz. of blood. Not recommended for consumption.

So, there had to be something different meant with these blood bags…

Seeing as how the only way from this place was down, that was the way John went. The scene downstairs was a lot more macabre than one floor above, and John had to fight hard to keep his food in.

This room had no windows and was only illuminated by the light coming from the staircase and some red lights glowing on the ceiling, tinting the whole room in a bloody red tint. Two mutants were hooking tubes up to some kind of flesh mountain. The mountain was giving off some agonizing groans from it, making John really queasy in his stomach.

Thankfully, the mutants hadn’t noticed John yet, so he used the opportunity to take down both of them at the same time.

Throwing a Mana Dagger at the exposed head of one, he charged the other one, impaling it on his spear.

**** Area! 2x Damage!
Backstab! Enemy caught unaware! 2x Damage!
Physical Damage Multiplier: x4

188 DMG

Charge Applied! 2.5x Damage!
Backstab! Enemy caught unaware! 2x Damage
Critical Hit! Damage x2 after calculation
Physical Damage Multiplier: x5

210 DMG + 30 DMG (Light) + 10 DMG (Fire)
Elemental Weakness! Light Damage Tripled! Enemy is stunned!

That stun was irrelevant as the mutant disintegrated from the tip of his spear.

Okay, so these things fed off of blood, had an elemental weakness against light, and were mutated from some mythological creature/person.

Are these things mutated vampires?