Chapter 87 - Machine Mage
“Come on! Come on!”
The turrets on my shoulders laid the hate, sweeping their muzzles over the oncoming horde and spraying them with metal death. Their stub barrels belched purple Volatility mana as their overcharged propulsion cubes sent rounds screaming into the mob of scourge.
*THOOM**THOOM**THOOM**THOOM*
They moved in swift, jerking motions as they detected and engaged with targets from closest to farthest, almost too fast to track, and there was no shortage of targets. The recoil was gigantic, made worse by how high above my center of gravity the turrets were operating. Every round fired wrenched my body in a new direction and threatened to send me down to the ground, and I got to live life for a few seconds as my tripods did. It wasn’t pleasant.
The only thing keeping me from being blasted off of my feet was the prodigious weight of my body and my new suit of armor. It was a hodgepodge, full plate setup with the exception of my prosthetic arm, overbuilt and thickly reinforced, angular where there should have been curves. Then there were the pistons. I hadn’t gotten them working well enough to have them help me run, but I’d certainly gotten them to take a position and stay there. Once I’d activated my turrets, I’d fed power into the activation Triggers of the stabilizers, and the requisite joints on my armor all locked in unison while steel anchor spikes shot out of the boots and into the ground.
Kuul and Tiba did their parts too. Kuul sprang forward with a mighty leap and landed directly into the middle of the horde to my left, crushing dozens underfoot. Then came the fire, geysering from Kuul’s mouth and blasting scourge to ashes. Tiba directed from atop Kuul’s shoulder, pointing him toward targets of opportunity and, hopefully, keeping him a safe distance from me.
I stood as tall as I could, but I couldn’t see the others anymore. The scourge had moved in as soon as I was on the ground. I knew my people were in front of me, though, right where I needed to be. The magazines on my back went dry, and I deactivated the joint stabilizers with a metalic *CLACK.* The anchor spikes in my boots retracted back into their housings, and I was free to move again as the backup mags on my lower back whirred into place.
I moved forward, my heavy boots making *THUP* *THUPs* in the dirt. All I could manage was a fast jog, as fast as I dared. I couldn’t sprint in the armor without falling on my face. However, I needed to cover ground before I had to re-engage with the anchors. I raised my prosthetic arm, the only piece of me I hadn’t bothered to armor, and fired my arm cannon.
*FOOP*
The wall of flesh directly in front of me burst into a plasma induced inferno.
Go. Go. Don’t think about it. Just go.
I lowered my head, tucked my shoulder, and covered my eyes as I barreled through the flames. The air crackled. Flames licked at my armor, and my flesh sizzled as hot became scorching. I made the mistake of taking a reflexive breath when the pain got to be too much, and it nearly killed me. I got a lungful of greasy, superheated air and felt my body nearly double over with the pain. The only thing that saved me was momentum. I stumbled forward, my armor clanking together. Crisped bodies crumpled underfoot as my legs wobbled and my momentum carried me forward until I finally smacked into something that gave me pause.
Said something was soft… softer than me at least. I heaved before it could arrest my momentum entirely. It gave way with a surprised grunt and went down under my feet. Then there were more, soft squishy things lying there, piled high. I plowed through those too.
Then the world went weird. My stomach got that feeling again, where gravity wasn’t working as it should, and then everything felt lighter.
It’s Anchor. I’m climbing!
*PANG*
I took my gauntleted hand from my face just in time to smash into a gaggle of Returned that had chosen to brave the flames to get at me as my climbing ability told the fundamental laws of force and inertia to sit down and shut up for a moment. Under the influence of Anchor I was effectively 30% less affected by everything, including the weight and force of a bunch of monsters trying to bring me down. I smashed through them like they were made of paper, one of them even going airborne as I gave it a hard smack with my prosthetic.
Then I was out. The air was suddenly cool, crisp. It had moisture and life. I took a big desperate gulp of air.
Except I was among them now. Hands reached out to grasp me. Claws slashed at my face. Teeth gnawed on my legs. The scourge, yet again, pressed in from all sides.
Grunting, I flexed until I was standing tall again. I pulled my feet apart and set my hips, then I activated the stabilizers, the anchors, followed swiftly by the turrets.
*BRRRRRRRRRRRRRAP*
Full auto. Non stop. The monsters practically disintegrated under the close range barrage. I lashed out with my prosthetic, caving in a monster’s face then summoned another round into the arm cannon.
A Black One hung from it, frantically trying to use it as a handhold to climb up to my face, but I smashed it into another scourge that had taken hold of my shoulder.
*FOOP*
*BOOM*
The explosion was close. Very close. The round hadn’t even made it the minimum safe distance away from me before detonating this time. However, I didn’t use the plasma. My brain was still somewhat functioning. The scourge in front of me were reduced to bloody chunks as the shrapnel from the grenade round did its grim work. I felt the force of the blast generally in my chest and acutely on several spots of my body where it felt like being punched by a leori, but my stabilizers kept me up while my armor kept me safe.
The ringing of metal on metal echoed in my helmet a full second after the grenade went off.
Still too close.
They were climbing over each other now. Monsters scrambled over the dead, over the injured, standing on others’ shoulders to leap at me. A horned humanoid of some kind, missing its legs after my grenade, climbed up my chest to claw at my face. I headbutted him again and again until he fell away. Others grabbed for the barrels of the turrets, despite their tips being red hot.
Another trigger, this time next to my wrist. I had to concentrate to get the mana to flow that way instead of through my hand, costing me precious seconds, but I was able to manage. A pair of curved blades sprouted from my wrist quicker than the eye could follow. Even quicker, they began to spin. The Returned that had been gnawing on my wrist at the time lost the better part of the front of his skull, the Willing Edge enchanted blades cutting through flesh and bone like butter.
“Auuuuuuuuuugghhhh!” I yelled in their faces as I swept the spinning blades from side to side. The small monsters died instantly. Then a leori with the flesh missing from half of its face got a hold of my helmet and pulled me close to go in for a bite from its broken, rotted teeth.
I pushed against it, gaining a miniscule amount of space then jammed my wrist blade into the monster’s open mouth. Black blood gushed over my arm and down to my shoulder where I could feel it seeping through the joints and soaking into my shirt.
The leori let go of me when I got to his brain stem, his expression, such as it was, going slack as he slid down to the ground. Then I was left with a little space.
The turrets had gone dry sometime in the melee, so I retracted them and kept moving forward.
*FOOP*
Another shrapnel round to the fore. This time I didn’t even stop to aim.
I ran through the bloody mist, shoulder checking the pulverized scourge that were cognizant enough to get in my way.
Forward.
Forward.
*BOOM*
A giant fist slammed down on the scourge in front of me then went back up into the sky, stringy giblets and blood stuck between its fingers.
Forward.
Forward.
I extended my fist and led with the spinning wrist blades, charging through the ranks of the scourge and wreaking havoc on their numbers. Yet there were always more. More faces to cut. More to get through.
I stopped once more to anchor and let the turrets drain their last mags as I heaved for breath and tried to-
There. There they were. Sissa, Samila, Geddon, Trix, Bole, Beedy, Kelub, Grorg… they were all there together, their backs against the crumbled concrete wall, bleeding, weak, a pile of dead things around them, felled by hand to hand combat.
*CLANK*
I disengaged the anchors and plodded forward even as my turrets bucked and boomed from my back. I staggered drunkenly, at the mercy of physics as my turrets did their best to lay waste to my enemies while I concentrated on moving forward. I went down on one knee as something hit me in the back, but the presence dropped away once I brought my spinning blade around in a blind sweep. My machine pistol appeared from my dimensional storage, barked, splitting another Black One’s head down the middle.
My ragged breath echoed in my helm.
*BOOM*
Another massive impact somewhere to my side. Tiba shouted something I couldn’t understand.
I was close. One last push.
I summoned and let a charged flamer bulb drop at my feet.
Now move! Move!
“AAAAAAAAUUUUGGH!” I roared as I charged through, battering the scourge aside, guns blazing on my shoulders. The flamer bulb I’d just dropped went off with a *FWOOSH* and my back was on fire again as I gave my last to get airborne.
Then, I was amongst them, or at least in front of them, just as the turrets went dry once more. I landed, went down on one knee, my head drooping down as spots danced in my vision. My lungs burned, and my legs felt like someone had removed their bones.
But I was here.
I’d given everything just to get here.
Quest Complete: Tutorial
You have learned the basics of your class and are ready to begin your new life as one of the Chosen. May you go on to do great things, Ryan Kotes.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Rewards:
+1 level
ERROR: Rwrd_failed:Max_level_ttrl=exceeded
Resolving…
Rewards:
+10% to all stats.
Return to point of Integration? Y/N
“Not yet,” I grunted.
I wasn’t done yet. the stat increase did make me feel a bit better, however. It took the edge off the exhaustion.
Organ Grinder appeared in my hand, summoned from my spatial storage. I tossed it in the general direction I’d last seen Geddon.
Two swords. Shields. A rifle.
Hands helped me to my feet, and my swimming vision landed on Samila through the narrow slit. of my visor.
She was breathing hard, bleeding from a cut on her cheek, her top lip was split, and she had blood in her teeth.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Ryan!” she yelled. “What are you-”
I put both hands on her shoulders to steady myself and panted as the world stopped tilting on its axis: “I need two minutes.”
I turned to regard the rest of my friends. “Give me two minutes to set up. Then we’re killing them all. Together.”
“Hell yeah we are!” Geddon whooped.
Leadership is now level 2.
—--------------------------------------------
“RARGH! Thirty seconds is the best we’re gonna do here!” Samila shouted, suddenly letting go of me and cleaving through a Black One’s chest. The strike itself was powerful, but Samila staggered afterward as if it had taken a lot out of her. She shook her head and widened her stance drunkenly. “Trix, no offense, but I’m asking the goblins to do my healing next time!”
“I keep saying that I am not a healer, but no one listens!” Trix shouted shrilly from half way up the pile of rubble to our rear. He spun and shot a gangly troll type creature through the eye just as it crested the top in an attempt to flank us from behind. Spinning, he let off another expertly aimed shot at another scourge at his feet. Then another. Every round from his weapon was a kill.
Geddon’s chainsword roared. Blood and viscera soaked his entire body and the ground around him, but gone was the joviality of before, his face a picture of pure, single minded focus. His posture, outside of his armor, was lithe, dangerous, and he moved with a dancer’s grace, performing the duty easily of three capable fighters at once.
Sissa and the goblin royal guard were on the left flank with Sissa performing the shield function of a rudimentary phalanx while the goblins did the stabbing. They were taking on scourge ten at a time, and they’d racked up as many bodies in the handful of seconds I’d been among them.
My armor popped its seals with a series of clanks, and I fell out of the metal shell onto the ground, my helmet landing in the dirt with a *thump*. I felt the stinging, ripping sensation of burned skin peeling away as I left the armor behind. The pain was distracting but not something I hadn’t experienced before on some level. Even so, even if my mind didn’t register it, my body certainly did. The world swam in front of me, and darkness pressed at the edges of my vision.
Stay awake. Stay awake. They need you.
Samila paused to look back at me with concern. “You set yourself on fire again?!”
My spatial storage called. I got to summoning.
A rounded ball of nickel osmium plopped down to the ground followed by another. Then another.
“Not exactly!” I shouted. Talking was good. Talking kept my brain engaged and not focused on the pain. “I set them on fire, and then they set me on fire! It was a mutual thing!” I wasn’t sure if she could hear me over the din, but I was too distracted to really put much effort into projecting.
One mental command later, the metal balls sprouted their legs and instantly took off in different directions, putting distance between them and me and from each other as I’d programmed them to do.
Next were the guns. Piece by piece I summoned the reclaimed parts of some of the turrets. I’d stripped them down, made them smaller and easier to assemble, fattened the barrels and gave the action some play. The scourge had done a good job destroying a lot of the carefully crafted efficiency of the last model, so we were down to boomstick level of sophistication. That was alright. We weren’t going for long range precision today.
*BOOM**BOOM**BOOM*
Kuul was having a grand time. He stomped and kicked at the mob of gathered scourge like a hyperactive kid with a toy train set. A very angry hyperactive kid. Dozens of bodies went flying off into the woods at a time, their arms and legs pinwheeling, some flying so far that I lost sight of them. Others smacked into trees and practically popped like water balloons.
Focus.
Right. Barrel one. Barrel two. Piping. Hopper. Bulb. Legs. Damnit… clamp. Come on. Come on. Clamp! Done!
My first turret was assembled, and it was ugly even by my standards.
It looked like a moonshine still had made a baby with a sawed off shotgun.
I picked my new invention up and put it on my shoulder, wincing as the metal scraped against one of the fresh burns. Then I ran with it to the front, right between Samila and Geddon.
The scourge knew what this was. They’d lost a lot of bodies to similar machines, and they didn’t plan on letting me set up another. Howling with renewed vigor, they lunged forward with reckless abandon at full sprints, no longer taking any time to try and skirt around my allies or come at us strategically. Overwhelming us immediately had become the tactic of choice.
They almost made it too. Almost.
I activated the turret just as I became able to see the whites of their eyes.
*BOOF**BOOF**BOOF**BOOF**BOOF**BOOF**BOOF*
For the second time today, I felt the horrible sensation of my skin flash cooking as the world in front of me turned into a stew of bloody chunks and pex oil fire.
The turret had come to life amidst a buffet of valid targets. It hit them with both barrels, spewing four, sometimes five rounds at the same time, its overcharged propulsion cylinders expending a grotesque amount of energy with each working of the trigger. The rounds weren’t even necessarily coming out point first. They were just mass being hurled at the nearest scrougeling. Meanwhile, as they were programmed to do upon close contact with the enemy, the pex oil canister’s valves depressurized and sent a jet of sticky, yellow fire into the horde’s faces.
The results were messy, a fact I got to appreciate up close. Wet ‘parts’ of formerly living beings flew into the air and dismembered things collapsed at my feet while the aerosolized blood and the scent of cooked flesh invaded my nostrils, threatening to make me empty my stomach. I turned away, slapped at the latest part of my already ragged shirt to catch fire, and went back to the inner part of the circle to do it again.
One. Two. Three osmium nickel drones. They plopped down and skittered away as the others had.
One container of turret rounds.
“Ryan!” Samila called. She had backed off of her position to get more near me, still keeping an eye on her sector but sparing short glances back to check on me as the turret did some of the heavy lifting. “What do you need from us?”
“More time! Need more turrets! Ammo! Reloads!” Was all I could say. My plan didn’t go any farther than this. Get to my friends, set up, hold out. That’s all I had hoped for.
A hand tapped me on the shoulder, and I spun around to find Beedy there, weak and pale but upright. He reached out to take the canister of turret rounds from me. “Where do I put them?” He asked.
“Uh. The top. There’s a lid. Swivels to the side. Fills like a bucket,” I replied.
He nodded slowly then shot me a grin. He was missing teeth. When had that happened? “I’ll get it done. You keep keeping us alive,” he said.
And then he was off, the can of ammo obviously weighing him down, but he didn’t let that stop him.
That reminded me. I summoned the automated guts of the old magazine reloader and gave it a little prod with the mana trigger.
“There. Now our ammo has a chance to find its way back to us,” I said to no one in particular. “If you see ammo rolling around out here, stick it in the nearest turret!”
“You plan to stay a while? Maybe pitch a tent?” Samila asked sarcastically, but she wore that little smirk of hers too if only to cover the fear she was feeling just as I was. I took some comfort in the fact that she was making the effort at least. I guessed certain death wasn’t going to keep her from being herself.
I summoned the first part of the next turret and got to work. “If that’s what I have to do. Are summer homes a thing here? It’s a nice spot,” I replied, mirroring her grim smile. “This ends today, one way or the other.”
The top half of the turret came together and the clamps activated to attach the top to the base. This one went much smoother.
I ran it over to the spot between Geddon and Sissa’s position and set it up, activating the firing sequence with largely the same results as the last one. Everyone gave ground and shied away from the blast of heat as the turret went to work clearing 180 degrees of field for at least ten meters. My allies weren’t too pleased at how little regard the flame nozzles had for friendly fire, but they didn’t complain once the turret relieved some of the pressure on them.
“Much obliged,” Geddon panted, giving a sloppy salute with Organ Grinder as he caught his breath.
“You guys tell me when you need a break,” I said to him and Sissa. “Hold the line, and I’ll get you more help.
“I need a break,” Bole croaked from behind me. His arm was broken and in a makeshift sling, and half of his face was swollen so that I couldn’t see his eye.
To my shock, Sissa of all people reached out and put a hand out to support him.
“We all could use one,” she said, wincing as she gently turned Bole’s head to the side to examine his wounds. “Our captors weren’t kind. We’ve been through a lot, but we’ll fight to the last.”
Hearing that, seeing the state of them all, I felt that cold anger I’d been nurturing get that much colder.
“Noted,” I fumed, though my voice was calm. Enough time should have passed by now anyway. I reached for the Triggers in my head and activated them
*FWOOM*
The drones that had dispersed among the horde suddenly felt the urge to convert the state of their matter into plasma, and the world went incandescent for a handful of seconds. Everyone that didn’t know it was coming put up warding hands in front of their faces as the light became blinding and the atmosphere ignited.
Reams of experience messages scrolled through my log all at once.
“That’ll hold them for a minute or two. Take a breath,” I told the others. “Then we’re fighting for our lives some more.”
I strolled back to my assembly area and began summoning more parts. Against the backdrop of the burning forest, I spied Samila looking me up and down in that way she did. She spared a glance over her shoulder to make sure we were safe for the moment then limped up to me and crouched down until she was looking me in the eye.
“This better end the good way, Ryan Kotes,” the dragonkin purred. “I want you to do that thing again.”
I blinked, mid summon. “The- What? The kiss?” I realized.
This time she looked taken aback, like I’d just insulted her mother or something. “That wasn’t just a- It wasn’t- Okay. It was. But yes. Absolutely. I want you to do it again, so now we have to live.”
I felt the blood rush to my cheeks.
No, Ryan. We’re not blushing during our last stand. Cool guys don’t blush during their last stand.
“Deal,” I said, hoping I’d make good on it.
“Look out!” Trix squeaked from the rubble pile as his rifle barked as fast as he could pull the trigger. Panicked fire. “Ryan!”
I looked up to see some kind of black substance ooze its way over the lip of the rubble. It flowed like tar, sticky, and sedate, but in other places, it seemed to flow unnaturally fast, tendrils of it waving like seaweed in a spectral tide. Other tendrils stuck to obstacles and pulled the rest of the mass along where gravity wasn’t getting the job done fast enough.
The liquid surged, crested the lip of the rubble and splashed down to coat sections of the barrier. Trix did the smart thing and leaped before it could touch him, coming down lightly at the bottom and scrambling to get amongst the others.
Sweet, rotten, cloying, the smell hit me like a blow to the face. I staggered and, for some reason, felt my saliva glands go into overdrive. The tar substance, though it was far away still… reached for me. I knew it was reaching for me.
That’s it. The smell. It was here. It was in the tower with Ephelir. Void corruption. Scourge.
I stood so I would have a chance to move if we were attacked.
“There you are. Finally showing your face.” I said. I didn’t know how to fight something that was only semi-solid, but, for the scourge, I was willing to experiment.
A massive three-clawed hand, dripping with black ichor, slid up and over the lip of the rubble. It moved languidly, relaxed as if it was caressing the concrete after waking from a long nap. Then, suddenly, the hand contracted, crushing the concrete with enough force to send shards of it flying. Rebar squealed as it bent between the fingers. Another hand appeared. A wave of black broke and splashed down the wall as something massive climbed its way out of the pit.
The head of a very dead, very pissed dragon pulled its way out of the scourge tar. It was missing scales where massive gashes had been carved in its face. Its head sat strangely on its neck, seeming to not quite connect how it should have. Its horns were, at once, broken yet razor sharp with new points jutting out of them at odd angles, and its teeth were crooked and oversized to the point it could no longer close its mouth.
She’d changed, been despoiled or corrupted or… something, but this was most certainly Myss. Emphasis on the was.
“Th-They’ve been emerging from the black pool for some time. I was killing them as they got free, but-” Trix stammered.
“Of course,” I said. “Pretty sure the black stuff is the real scourge. It was distracting us with the little guys while it summoned its real heavy hitter.”
“Always a scam,” Bole growled. “Guess we’re fighting a dragon now, eh human?” He stood at my side, sword in hand, the good side of his face a stone mask of determination. If he felt shocked or betrayed or slightly annoyed at having been lied to about my species, he didn’t show it. No, he seemed almost eager to step to a fallen god.
“Not if I can help it,” I said to him. I put my fingers in my mouth to let out a short whistle, loud as I could make it.
“Yo! Tiba!”