‘Brutalize’. That’s a damn good word. It encapsulates Pearl’s desire for me to completely dismantle the robot, and it’s probably going to describe what I’m going to do to it. Parts strewn all over the floor, fluids leaking out as they solidify into useless chunks; that sort of thing. I shift the knife from one hand to the other, then settle on having it in my right hand.
I open my left hand and summon three skeletal coins. They’re the backup plan in case this one’s a little better at aiming than the shooters.
“You’re holding it wrong.”
Pearl’s voice cuts through my concentration. I look over at her perched on my shoulder with a flat expression, her entire focus on my right hand. “What?”
She gestures at the knife inside of the sword. “You’re pointing it upwards a little too much and holding it too close to your body. It’s really light, so if you start running or trip or something, you’re going to hurt yourself. Hold it out a little more, point the tip down the tunnel, and make a conscious effort to keep the sword as far away as possible from your body.”
I blink a few times, then nod in disbelief. “Alright. I’ll do that. I didn’t know you were a swordmaster.”
“Oh, I’m not. Definitely not.” Pearl giggles and pats my cheek. “I’m just really good at making sure people don’t accidentally kill themselves. It was, like, a third of my job before I got the big promotion. Then it was still a third, just through… really different circumstances. Are you going to change your grip?”
“Right, yes.” I say and straighten my arm a little, then twist my wrist so my sword points away from me. Well, more away from me–it’s not like I was holding it like an ice cream cone before this. “How’s this?”
Pearl studies my form for a second, then nods. “Really stiff and amateurish, but a hundred times safer. Oh, and watch out. The robot’s powering up with a really obvious teleport-thing.”
“Teleport thing?” I focus back on the awareness, narrowing my eyes to try and get a better look. There’s a small swirl of dark grey in the black, but nothing more. “Is it trying to run away? Or is it going to try a tele-strike?”
“Well, that depends on its programming. If it’s a scout, it’s definitely teleporting away. But if it's an assassin–or something programmed to kill–then it’s definitely going to try and teleport behind you.” Pearl summarizes as she leans in to get a better look. “The teleporter module is way, way weaker than the teleporter that tried to get you. Probably a thirty foot range at most, with a really steep power cost and a cooldown period to match. Oh, wow. Wow.”
I raise an eyebrow and wait for the continuation. Pearl doesn’t make me wait.
“That has to be one of the worst built teleporters I’ve ever seen. The spatial anchor is so shoddy that the robot can’t even move while it’s revving up, and it’s been charging for almost a minute now. It shouldn’t have been cleared for use at all, nevermind on a combat model. Oh, I figured out it’s a combat model, by the way–power is flowing into its left arm, which has a blade extending from just below its wrist.”
“Way to spoil the mystery.” I chuckle and connect myself to one of the coins. The second my awareness flares, a shield will be there to block the attack. But not a projectile. I want to try this sword-knife out. “How’s this one’s quality compared to the others? Is it scrappy?”
Pearl shrugs. “It’s hard to compare awful to awful. Because… you know, they’re both awful. Really awful. Like, ‘I can’t even imagine how anyone could make these things’ level of awful.”
That’s the start of a tirade if I’ve ever heard one. “I get it. I–”
My awareness flares. A dark stain appears over my left shoulder, and a shield pops into being between it and me. The robot appears in a flash of dull grey, bringing its sword down on my shield with enough force to shatter it. The sword, I mean. My shield holds strong with only a single crack.
The robot whirs loudly, stuff grinding against stuff, and springs away from me as flakes of deep blue light rain down from the shattered blade. It beeps multiple times in an alarmed fashion, and a bright white light flashes on in its ‘head’.
All in all, the thing looks like a metallic plated snail shell propped up on spindly metal toothpicks. Its ‘head’ is nothing but a sphere attached to the end of the shell, and the ‘body’ underneath is just as spindly as the legs. There’s no room on the arms for anything to be hidden, so the blades have to be some kind of magic. Which is proved immediately as the one it shattered on my shield starts to repair itself.
“That is one weird looking thing.” I note with a frown as I push my shield out of the way. “Pearl, you recognize anything on this thing?”
“I mean… if I try really hard, I can come up with some connections. But I don’t feel like trying hard for something this shoddily made.” Pearl waves at the thing’s head as the light starts to turn grey. “I mean, they put the teleportation mechanism in the one place literally anyone would try to attack. There’s all that space under the armor which could’ve been heavily plated to protect it, but apparently that’s too much work for the idiot that made this.”
She could’ve left that at a simple ‘no’. But the rambling rant–which is still continuing under her breath–did clue me in to something about these things. They blatantly display their weak points when they do their thing. The shooters, shielders, and signalers pretty much broadcasted their intentions when I fought them. Like video game enemies that are designed to be killed, not actual robots meant to kill things.
I tilt my head to the side and step forward with my left foot. The distance between me and the robot closes a little, and after I take another step, I don’t have enough room to get a good step-swing in with my sword. I raise it awkwardly and shuffle into a better position, then bring it down in a clumsy arc that the robot almost ducks out of.
‘Almost’ in this case means that I take its left arm off instead of splitting its head clean in two. The thing staggers back and whirrs menacingly, another blade sprouting from its remaining arm, and shifts unnaturally to swing it at my unshielded side.
“Block it with your sword!” Pearl cuts in before I can make a move.
The coin I was about to turn into a shield goes unused, and I raise my sword’s shield-blade into the path of the robot’s blade. The colourful edge clashes with fluorescent blue, sending sparks and shards of both into the air as the robot presses insistently forward. My muscles strain with effort less than a second into the clash, burning against the robot’s somehow superior strength.
Not so much as a scratch is put into my sword’s edge. But that doesn’t stop the robot from pressing it down closer and closer to me, whirring and scraping with effort as whatever’s keeping it going works overtime. I grit my teeth and stare at the knife as it hits me–I don’t want a sword right now. I haven’t learned to use it for shit, it can easily do just as much damage to me as whatever I’m fighting, and my coins are so much more powerful.
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I nod slightly and press the coin in my left hand against my palm. Projectile fills it, then fills the robot. The light in its eye goes out instantly, and it crumples to the ground in a lifeless lump. A thin grey liquid trickles out of the broken chunks of metal, staining the glass and my shoes as I sigh and take a step back.
“I thought you were going to sword it?”
“I thought so too.” I say with a flick of my wrist that dismisses the shield-blade on my sword. “Turns out I have no idea how to use this, and actually trying to sword fight with something even semi-competent is a really dumb idea.”
Pearl hums in understanding and leans down to get a good look at the robot. “That makes sense. I guess. But what’s the point of having a sword if you don’t want to cut things with it?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
I flip the knife around in my hand, feeling what remains of the shield spell inside slowly whittling away. It lost a whole lot of energy in that clash. Probably because that multicoloured edge was bleeding power like a kiddie pool with a hole in the bottom. I run my finger along the blade, just in case it had started to chip away in some kind of sympathy damage, but it looks like it’s still in perfect shape.
That shape just isn’t one I’m comfortable using. But I’ve been able to shape shields pretty convincingly up until now, so why not with the knife too? I flip it over once more, then press it to the outside of my left forearm. The dull flat of the blade presses against my arm, magic leaking ever so slightly out of it that snaps to my awareness. I flex my fingers a few times, then take a deep breath and send an image down my awareness.
The knife twitches against my skin. Deep black pours out of it like a waterfall, strapping the blade down with thin strings while the rest of the magic works its way up my shoulder. Save for a little that converges on the back of my palm, shimmering with colour as it forms into a simple projected shield. Then another sprouts free from that one. And another. And another. Until there’s a coating of rainbow-edged black plates protecting my hand like a gauntlet.
I raise my arm up to study the plates. They move with me whenever I flex my fingers, perfectly hovering away from my skin so I never actually touch the plates. No matter how much I try to touch them. I make a fist and spread my fingers a few dozen times just to make sure I’m not imagining things, then trail the plates up my arm until they reach my shoulder. They protect the outside of my arm–not the inside–and cover my shoulder in a slightly larger… thing. It continues a little onto my chest, neck, and back, but abruptly ends there.
“Is that armor? The knife can make armor for you?” Pearl scurries over my shoulders and bends down to tap her fingers on the plates. “They feel pretty strong, too. I bet they won’t give you much more raw power, but they’d definitely protect your fingers when you try to punch something.”
Swinging the plates around gives me a slightly different idea. The knife stays perfectly in place and the plates connect seamlessly to it, but there’s a sense of restriction when I flex my fingers. Not on my hand–on my brain. Like my mind would be taking the impact instead of my bones. Or, more accurately, my Soul.
“I dunno. Not having to worry about breaking any fingers will probably let me punch a whole lot harder.” I lower my hand and press the plates against the wall. The slightest pressure mounts in my brain, but it’s extremely easy to ignore. At least for now. “And there’s still magic in here to work with. Looks like there’s a maximum amount the knife can put out at one time, and this is it. Not a lot better than actually throwing out a shield, but if there’s a close range fight, it’ll probably save on some Worth.”
“Could be. How about projectile? Can you put that into the knife too?”
That… is a good question. I easily pull the knife free of the oily black restraints and flick it a few times to get the remaining shield out of it, then push a projectile into a regular ghost quarter and slot it into the knife. A sharp pang of rejection echoes through my mind, like a gong ringing in an abandoned building.
The coin spits out of the slot and clatters to the ground. Before I can even wonder what happened, the system answers my question.
Insufficient Soul for that action.
Required Soul: 4.
So Soul doesn’t just let me equip these mechanisms, it lets me use more powerful spells on them too. As if I needed any more reason to level it up as well. I shake my head to clear my mind from the ringing, then bend down and scoop up the coin between two fingers as I slide the knife back into its sheath.
“Guess I need to up my Soul. Just like I need to up all my other stats.” I sigh and palm the coin, then trade out the knife’s Soul connection for my personal amplifier. “Now let’s see what this one does.”
I press the projectile into the personal amplifier’s coin indentation, then rip my fingers away and hold it as far away from my face as I can. It shimmers a few times like a luminescent heart beating to a perfect rhythm, then slowly bleeds out an aura that seeps into my arm and starts to colour my veins oily black.
Shellbound Matrix: Coinbound Projectile activation.
When activated with Coinbound Projectile, the matrix emits a pulse that violently purges illnesses, poisons, and other negatives from the bearer.
The greater the Worth used for the spell, the greater the amount of magic this matrix has to work with.
Pearl reads the popup with obvious interest. All the while my muscles start to… tingle. They pulse and writhe a little at first, but slowly ramp up to a horrific combination of a cramp and the ache after a hard workout. I clench my teeth and ball my hands into fists, glancing down at my twitching body which feels like it’s trying to make me as uncomfortable as physically possible.
“Are you done reading?” I hiss through my teeth.
“Just about.” Pearl replies easily, then glances back at me and recoils at the sight. “OH! I’m so sorry! Um, I already got the gist of it, so just do whatever you need.”
I flush the magic out of the matrix with a sigh of relief. All the discomfort leaves at once, but the soreness it leaves behind is more than enough of a reminder. Pearl murmurs in worry at my state, so I wipe the sweat off my forehead and give her a reassuring smile.
“Guess I shouldn’t use that when I’m not sick, poisoned, or have any other ‘negative effects’.” I say with a sarcastic laugh and shake the rest of the spell from the matrix. “I wonder if that’d help for things like dehydration or blood loss. They are ‘negative effects’, after all.”
Pearl glances down at my arms. “Please don’t try it out now. Or… if you do, just give yourself a little tiny papercut.”
“Nah, I don’t feel like going through that again any time soon. Besides,” I push shield into a coin and slot in into the matrix as I speak, “If I get poisoned or whatever else, it’s probably going to come with some kind of injury. I’ll test it out then.”
The coin erupts from the matrix and smacks me in the forehead. I blink and recoil in surprise as I stare blankly at the thing on the ground, cracked in two and leaking what little magic I’d pushed into it. Probably shouldn't have used a skeletal coin for this one.
Insufficient Soul for that action.
Required Soul: 7
Projectile didn’t work on the knife, and shield didn’t work on the matrix. They don’t have the same required Soul, either, so it’s not the power of the spell that’s doing anything. It’s the power of the spell’s effect on the device. Or it’s some arbitrary thing and I’ll be seriously disappointed when I get a few more points into Soul.
A pool of shielding leaks out of the skeletal coin, coating the floor in a thin layer of magic. I step onto it without a second thought and make my way further down the tunnel. Pearl goes from chatty to serious in a split second, gesturing off into the darkness at blotches of awareness that scrape at the edge of my conscious mind.
“Three further down, with another two even further than them. One has the same drive as the one you just destroyed, but the other four don’t feel the same. Similar build quality, sure, but completely different parts. The three closest are one of the teleporters and two that feel like water crashing against a carved-out chunk of mountain.”
I raise an eyebrow and swap the matrix for the knife. “Does that mean anything?”
She shakes her head. “Not until we get a little closer.”