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Getting swallowed by a gigantic ice worm was a new one for Max. He wasn’t impressed. The trope was a favorite of many games that he knew. It was a common method of taking out a giant opponent. In many ways, it was safer to be in the belly of the beast than to be exposed to its colossal attacks.
Max shot out his blade arms, locking him in place. He didn’t know if maybe the worm had powerful acid in its stomach and didn’t care to find out. Did it even have a stomach? He split his mind and ramped up his subjective time sense to consider his options and the bigger problem with his daemons.
“[A bold move, Max-San. You’ve passed the greater danger of the beast's teeth. If you extend your senses you may be able to strike a fatal blow from this advantageous position.]” Musashi praised.
“[The Ice Worm is but a distraction. The quest didn’t advance! The novice assumption that the puzzle required matching spheres in some way to the domains was obviously flawed. The ruse was likely engineered by the A.I. Clotho to extend the team's time in the level to fully advance your resistances.]” Sherlock berated Max and the others.
“[Not now, Sherlock! I need ideas to kill this thing.]” Max yelled in his head. He felt the chill coming off the Ice Worm and hugged the fire sphere tight. Instead of fighting off the chill, he got frostbite and scorched in equal measure.
Steeling his resolve, Max forced the blazing hot sphere against the worm's innards as the chill of the worm worked into his body. Max added his power skill, [Heat Touch] to the sphere, amplifying its energy even more. The Worm spasmed in pain, trying to dislodge Max.
[Resist Cold +1, Resist Cold reaches level 10, Skill cap award of +100XP, New skill unlocked - Chilling Touch 1]
[New Body Skill: Chilling Touch 1 - Augmented thermal superconductive channels enable internal nano-Peltier circuits to aggressively redistribute heat.]
[Max +1 Level, Max reaches Master level 23, +10 Free Stat points awarded, Progress to Level 24 - 20,050 of 22,250 XP]
Max focused and his sense of the battle was shifting. His view via his mote swarm showed Leah stitching a line of darts up the side of the beast, which exploded like a line of firecrackers making small but bloody divots down its length.
Charlie had stabbed the monster in the head, hoping to end the fight quickly. Unfortunately, the worm scarcely noticed. It lifted itself high, looking for another person to swallow, and Charlie was lifted high as he refused to let go of his blade. Now he was trying to keep a grip and not get thrown.
Max’s swarm sensed a deep roar that came from the side. He saw Xavier charging in with four lightsabers swinging. Max swore seeing what was coming. He pulled in his blade arms in and kicked himself lower as four energy blades slashed in where was had been lodged a fraction of a second earlier.
“[Max, I can’t sense the creature’s neural core. Our new Chthonic attacks need a target. It seems Clotho may have finally found a way to shield the beasts.]” Mal said.
“[Shit! Not helpful. Anybody?]” Max yelled as he tried to turn himself around inside the worm's gullet.
“[Alright, Max. It looks like Clotho knows her animal physiology. Worms, even giant ice worms apparently, have a large dorsal vein. That’s your best target, either slash it open longitudinally or stab in some of your top-tier neurotoxin poison.]” House said with authority, highlighting the vessel’s approximate location in Max’s vision.
Max stabbed and dragged himself up, stabbed and dragged, injecting a different poison each time. He made progress slowly, using one arm and his blade arms while football carrying the sphere. He finally got to the gaping wound that Xavier had left and tumbled out into the light.
“[Max, jump left. NOW!]” Musashi yelled. Max leaped with augmented speed and strength, barely avoiding being crushed by the rolling monster. Its roaring screams reverberated in the cavern. Max hit the wall and dropped into a pile of snow. He struggled up to see Charlie launching himself away from the worm. He screamed as he dove for cover.
“Fire in the hole!”
The Worm’s entire upper section split and exploded with a muffled explosion spraying worm parts across the ice cavern. Once the ringing in his ears stopped, Max shouted.
“Nice! Just like our game with my sis in the Mythic Realms versus the Great Viper.”
“Got to stick with the classics! Although, not as smooth as Tiamat’s recovery that time, huh?” Charlie said with a small bow.
“Hey, nice fight guys! We got enough daylight to get to the safe zone?” Xavier said.
Max eyed him. He doesn’t even realize he almost stabbed me. He shook his head and refocused.
“Actually, I think we’ve got a problem. The quest didn’t update yet.” Max said. The team went quiet, everyone pulling their status screens to check. Max, still running fast with a [Multitask] skills alter ego, checked in with his daemons. His internal copy faced a virtual room of shadowy avatars.
“The runes on the pedestals…pull my memories. What do we have?” Max said.
“Oh dear. I have them. Here…let me share.” Stephen Hawking said quickly. “My apologies. This is all so very exciting. I’m used to advising in less pressing circumstances. I was trying to decipher the runes, but I’ve never seen anything like them. Ah, by the way, Max, thank you ever so much for selecting my avatar to be a healthy version. Far too many of my instances are selected afflicted with advanced Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis like my predecessor had in real life. While my vocoder was iconic as I became famous, that incarnation is uncomfortable and cruel.”
“Of course, Stephen. Now did you learn anything about the runes?” Max asked.
“Ah…forgive me, but are you sure this is wise? There could be more monsters about?” Stephen asked.
“No worries, Stephen. I’ve split my consciousness and sped up my subjective time sense. You’ll get used to it. Now…the runes?” Max asked.
“Unfortunately, I must admit it was beyond me. It’s not Latin or any mathematical symbolism, and since we are not connected to the EarthNet, I couldn’t investigate further.” Hawking said hesitantly.
“Ahem…I have some familiarity with this. There is a passing similarity to the Nordic Runic language created by Elder Furtak, with some inclusions from Medieval Alchemy runes. Unfortunately, these appear to be significantly evolved from that system.” Sherlock began. With a wave of his hand, he pulled the runes from all the spheres and pedestals from Max’s visual records and sorted them onto a screen to organize them.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Hmmm, so the runes seem to line up. The Ice sphere and its pedestal match. So, what am I missing?” Max asked.
“Some of the other runes on the pedestal seem to indicate an action of some sort.” Sherlock said dryly.
“Alright, I’m going to try something.” Max said and faded from the virtual.
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Max rejoined the team as they surrounded the pedestal. Charlie was looking closer at the runes, while Leah and Xavier were communing with their daemons.
“Hey Charlie, I’m going to try something. Can you take the Fire Sphere and stand back.” Max said. Once Charlie took the glowing red ball and gave him some space, Max put both his hands on the icy sphere and activated his newest skill [Chilling Touch]. The runes on the pedestal lit up in progression and continued until the entire sphere had glowing runes. Once the sphere was fully lit, the pedestal runes started filling in. Max pushed more energy into the skill.
[Chill touch +1, Chill touch reaches level 2]
The runes descended the pedestal into the ground and flashed with a loud cracking noise. The ground shook, knocking more stalactites down. Max pulled his hands away; the sphere’s glow had brightened, and its freezing power had begun to hurt despite his capped resistance level.
[Quest: Elemental Alignment - the elemental spheres need to be arranged in their correct locations. Fix the misalignment. Carrying the spheres is a burden but must be done by hand. Iron will and fortitude are required to complete this trial.
Objective: Cold sphere returned. (1 of 11) complete.]
Leah and Xavier snapped out of their virtual fugue when the notification hit.
“Crap! Double time, people. We need to get out of here ASAP.” Charlie ordered. Everyone scrambled back to the rope. Max gave a prodigious leap and grabbed hold of the line a few meters shy of the hole’s edge. Leah took the sphere from Charlie and levitated up using her cloak.
Max cleared the hole with Leah right behind him and looked down. The pedestal was sunk into the ground and ice spikes were growing and pushing in waves around where it had been. He yelled down.
“Hurry! It’s going to get super uncomfortable down there soon!”
Xavier was scrambling up the rope with Charlie right behind him. Max eyed the advancing wave of ice. Not fast enough, he thought.
“Hold on!” he yelled, grabbing the taught rope. He activated his [Hulk] skill and pulled. The rope was super durable, woven from nanofactured diamondoid fibers, so Max wasn’t concerned about it fraying or breaking. The force of his enhanced strength pull shot the pair up into a powered ascent.
[Hulk +1, Hulk reaches level 7]
Xavier flew through the hole and shot past, arcing meters into the sky. Leah levitated quickly to catch him, the extra weight forcing the pair down to a gentle landing. Charlie had slammed into the edge and managed to grab on. Max pulled him over the edge as ice continued to fill the cavern below. Charlie rolled onto his back and spoke.
“Ouch. That could have gone better. Next time, we need to prepare for a fast exit.” He slowly crawled to his feet and held his ribs, wincing. “Ok, let’s get back to the rest zone. I need a break before we get this Sphere back to its home.”
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The team made excellent time getting back to the rest zone, trading the Fire Sphere back and forth during the trip. The artificial sky was darkening as they arrived at the crude shelter.
“Alright, let’s eat and figure out a plan for tomorrow, yeah?” Charlie said.
Xavier went over to the MC to dial up some food for everyone. Leah collapsed on the sofa and yelled.
“Green tea as well, Xavier!”
“What? No more Sake?” He asked back. Leah turned green thinking about it. She had not done well the morning after their party night.
“Never again. Learn from my mistakes. Alcohol is poison.” She spoke.
“Hey!” Charlie said, sitting down with one hand on the burning sphere. “We’re supposed to be building our resistance this level. Maybe there’s one for alcohol. Get me a beer, kid.”
Max shook out his arms. Holding the sphere for hours at a time had cramped him up. He regarding his white fur and then cycled his [Chameleon] skill off. His fur returned to its normal brown and black.
[Chameleon +1, Chameleon reaches level 7, Additional level adds the ability to suppress or mimic EM signals]
“Done playing snow bunny, Max?” Charlie teased, sweat on his forehead dripped down as he tried to push back against the heat coming off the sphere with his already well developed [Chill Touch] skill.
“Joke all you want. So, it didn’t work like I wanted in the Fire zone, but it was good concealment in the Glacier. Plus, I just gained a level. You can’t advance if you don’t use them.” Max said and then snorted as Xavier came back to the central table. The kid’s alien form was now colored a brilliant azure blue head to toe.
“This student harkens and learns, Sensei Max.” He said seriously. Leah was the first to crack, laughing out loudly. Soon everyone was sharing the moment, joking back and forth, and eating together after a very long day.
Leah took the leftovers and trays back to the MC to recycle, while Max cast out his OverLayer. Max peered at the level map, zooming in on different areas that could potentially hold clues.
“We need better info. Look here. The Fire domain, Poison Swamp, and Ice Glacier are all exactly thirty-six degrees apart…if we use the safe zone as an origin point. They’re not exactly the same distance, but they’re all in a rough band about 5-7 kilometers out.” Max said. Charlie looked closer at the map.
“I’m picking up what you’re laying down, buddy. We can send out our drones again. This time we keep them scouting until we ID the exact location of the other pedestals, we can chart a course to each without wasting time.” Charlie said.
“Maybe we can even split up. Two team’s out and back. With two spheres in hand, we can resistance train until at least one of us has an evolved skill to activate the spheres. Then we can plant the spheres and grab the next batch.” He commented.
“Hey, I’ve got my brother's speeder bike. It’ll be great for wide open spaces and even able to travel water. The Speeder bike can fit a passenger on the back, too. Heck, the whole team could ride in my Tesseract’s pocket space.” Max said, eager to use his tools.
“Hmm, my levitation cloak can help too,” Leah said. “Up and down at least…it’s a bit too slow traveling cross country.”
“Hey, yeah! I want to get some miles on my Rambler board. This is awesome! Leah, if you want I can tie a rope to you. A Leah kite, hah!” Xavier was bouncing in his cloud chair with excitement. Leah looked less excited.
“Ah, yeah…or maybe we can scale up one of those bigger drones of yours, Xavier,” Leah suggested.
“Shit! That’s even more awesome. Like a pod racer from Star Wars! I’ll scale a pair of drones up to be bigger like you said and then pair them together to drag you. Oh my god! I’ve got to get to work. This will be the best!” The kid’s alien face looked freaky as he rolled his dark eyes back in his head, turning inward into his virtual space.
“Son of a bitch. I used to ride a mech and make fun of the grunts on the ground. Now, I’m the only one pounding the dirt like a damned infantry. Damn these AI restrictions on the matter compiler. If we could copy our rewards, maybe I could get a ride.” Charlie complained.
“Don’t you worry, Charlie. I got you covered.” Max said, holding a finger up against his snout. He had told the team much earlier about his…acquisition of the dungeon matter compiler in a secure contact-sharing virtual. He had revealed his setting it up inside his tesseract and jailbreaking it. While the dungeon AI knew he had taken the MC, they had kept silent about the jailbreaking effort. He could make copies of anything…with sufficient energy, materials, and time.
The team got to work. Charlie and Leah set to corralling all the available drones with programmed flight plans. Xavier was in virtual designing an upgraded drone while Max had Tesla start the copying process for Bo’s Speeder bike.
Max clapped his clawed hands together. A couple more levels and maybe he could ditch Clotho’s bad regard. He hoped Lachesis wouldn’t be so tight with the rewards.
The team had gone through most of their stores of unique devices. If the Labyrinth continued to demand items for passage, they’d slow down even more. Max knew the AIs wanted his dad’s device. Every time he activated it, his Privacy skills engaged.
He clenched his fists. He wouldn’t let them have it. It wasn’t his to give. He regarded the AI phantoms deep in the walls with his decoding skill. He ground his teeth. If anyone was going to take secrets, it would be him and not the damn AI.
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