Chapter 374: The Buffet Tried to Collect Me

The cage door lifted before the train slowed, and the creature inside unfolded enough extra limbs to make every person on the flatbed reconsider his choice of employer.

I backed toward the occupied carriage while Lukas grabbed the handler’s sleeve and hauled him away from the opening. The beast struck the threshold with one grafted foreleg, tested its weight and dragged the rest of itself into the narrow strip between the crates.

Its eyes were fixed on Lukas. Mine were fixed on the surgical seams, because this was finally a problem my most unpleasant purchase had been designed to solve.

[System: Twelve thousand EXP and forty IP for clearing that occupied carriage and securing this loose buffet, mate. Get its eyes on you before it starts checking the passengers for dipping sauce.]

"Lukas, get everyone through the front door and keep them away from the gap between cars."

He moved immediately. The handler followed, shouting into his radio as the driver finally answered. I slapped my tail against the crate frame and gave the creature something closer to hate.

"Over here, you badly assembled family meal, because the spider would only get stuck between your teeth."

It turned its head. One eye met mine through the space beneath a hanging strap, and Aggressive Bio-Recall found the grafted flesh exactly where the skill required it.

There was no grand struggle between my rank and the creature’s health. The unnatural tissue folded inward with a horrible wet noise, and the rest of its body vanished into the small, sealed block that struck the deck at my side.

The packet landed label up. HICKORY SMOKED looked back at me while the handler made a sound usually associated with finding something alive in a public toilet.

[System: Lovely presentation, although I wouldn’t pair it with anything you planned to remember fondly.]

I wasn’t eating something whose medical history needed more pages than the menu.

Then the cage moved, because deleting its occupant hadn’t repaired the damaged restraint beneath it.

The beast had torn one chain free while climbing out. As the driver braked, the heavy enclosure slid across the flatbed and struck the rail beside the coupling. Metal buckled, the deck jumped beneath me, and the hose joining the cars snapped loose with a hard crack.

The carriage ahead lurched away from our flatbed by a handspan before its remaining connection caught. The space between them was suddenly large enough to swallow a foot and small enough to invite a fatal mistake.

Lukas had reached the occupied carriage. He planted himself beside its forward exit and sent passengers into the next car, one at a time, while the handler warned them away from the damaged connection behind us.

The blanket box began screaming that it had paid for a quiet seat. I would have sympathized if three feeder creatures hadn’t spilled from a compartment beneath the cage.

They were pale, thick-bodied things with hooked mouths, released when the enclosure hit the rail. One fastened onto my lower length before I could move, and the sharp pull made my entire morning unpleasantly personal.

I crushed it against the deck with a hard twist, caught the second beneath an empty feed pan and drove the pan flat. The third darted under the cage, where the handler blocked its route with a shovel from the emergency rack.

Bio-Recall’s fifteen-minute cooldown had only just begun. Fortunately, ugly little parasites hadn’t developed an immunity to ordinary heavy objects.

"Keep it trapped there, because I would prefer to finish one disgusting job before adding another."

I checked the creature against my side. It no longer resisted, but its hooked mouth remained caught, and pulling it free risked tearing more of my body than I intended to donate.

Devour gave me a slower answer. I held continuous contact while the skill worked through the incapacitated parasite, counting ten long seconds with the damaged carriage shaking beside me.

Nothing useful flooded my mind. I didn’t gain memories of being a floor maggot, and I appreciated the restraint.

[System: No extra EXP for eating the receipt, mate. Also, ten minutes before you do that again, so please stop collecting things with your arse.]

The pressure at my side disappeared. I left the flattened second creature beneath its pan and helped the handler pin the third securely under the shovel until he killed it with a second tool.

Ahead of us, Lukas reached the marked handwheel beside the carriage door. The driver shouted instructions through the radio, and he turned until the manual brake bit hard enough to drag a screaming line along the track.

The freight service slowed beneath a broad rib, then stopped beside a maintenance walkway. Nobody cheered until the driver confirmed the cars had settled and the damaged coupling wasn’t about to drop us down the slope.

I waited for the handler to check the sealed food block and secure the remaining feeder compartment. Lukas counted the evacuated passengers against the carriage list, including the furious blanket box, before Old Mate cleared the objective.

My EXP reached thirty-seven thousand and my IP reached five hundred seventy-five. It was a respectable reward for a morning that had briefly tried to feed me to my own lunch.

The driver called the repair yard at the far edge of the Cut. Its crew could tow us once the damaged brake connection had a temporary replacement, which he said should be mounted beneath the service platform.

He climbed down, checked the bracket and swore loudly enough to disturb several birds nesting in the bone above us.

The driver told everyone to stay aboard until the repair crew secured the cars. For once, nobody argued that an inconvenience mattered more than keeping their feet attached.

The bracket was empty. Fresh tool marks showed where somebody had removed the spare assembly, and a folded sales receipt lay beneath its retaining strap.

A man beside the maintenance road looked up from a low black car and raised the missing part with both hands.

"Before you lot start shouting, yeah, I’ve got an idea that’s considerably more entertaining than whatever you’re thinking."