(Y7, March 19th)
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Dawn and breakfast had never been so filled with expectations. A pair of raiders cooked a fast and light meal for everyone, then people sorted themselves into teams as Arnoldo Fontana started stretching before addressing the forty-plus two-thousanders.
“We had a few people keeping track of the internal activity during the night. Nothing has changed. Most of the constructs move in pairs, save for four of them, which stay static inside of the Pyramid. It looks like there is one per ‘floor’. In most circumstances, I would say they’d probably be some kind of boss-type area guardian like we’d find on those types of dungeons, except their levels and types don’t seem to be exceptional, so who knows. We discussed strategy, so Vormacinus will open up the assault.”
The wolf-headed man nodded at the First Gater and started.
“Four of us. We’ll camp the Pyramid exit, as every construct pair seems to come up there at one point of their patrol. We’ll fight them out, and then once everything is clear, we will start moving in and deal with the static ones. Volksung and Walangbuto will keep monitoring remotely. We still don’t know if that’s the whole contingent of constructs or not since we don’t know where they came from.”
Vantegaard and Birkathane had been debriefed again late in the evening yesterday. They did their best to retrace, step by step, the chronology of the entire descent, activation, and escape, with each encounter along the climb. The raid leaders had already read their account, but you never knew if there were not some details missed that could hint at potential difficulties.
“If it is all there is, that will be quick. But I doubt it. While many parts of Northworld seem unfinished or broken at times, this one seems relatively functional, even if we have no idea how they wanted to design this station – or its purpose. So, let’s probe this anthill.”
Three raiders joined him, the other two members of the World Wreckers and a tiny woman of South Asian ethnicity who had come with the Alpha contingent. The entire raid then followed, leaving the edge of the forest where the encampment had been made and making their way across the clearing toward the Pyramid.
A pair of chromed constructs had been standing atop the Pyramid when the raid moved into the open but had wholly ignored the mass of Gaters walking toward their base. The two figures even turned and headed back inside right at the moment when the raid reached the bottom of the stairs.
Vormacinus and his team wasted no time and started climbing the stairs leading up two steps at a time. Two additional four-people teams joined the leading group, following just behind, probably to provide backup “just in case”.
Vantegaard and Birkathane stayed to the side at the bottom of the stairs, next to the rest of the raid. For this, they were strictly spectators. Ramon Palacio joined them.
“They never pursued you, you said.”
“I don’t think they care about anything outside of the Pyramid. Or its interior spaces, even. Either they couldn’t detect us in the hollows, or they were not… programmed to deal with that.”
Palacio nodded. At the same exact moment, a loud boom came from up, and Van looked up. The angle meant he couldn’t see much, but he saw metallic limbs moving aside, twisting and righting themselves just before falling off the top platform. A brief flash of light came.
“Storm caster Lesser Elite, sword slasher Elite. Dual attacks,” the voice of Vormacinus’s companion, Miscagenous, came from up, announcing flatly.
A grunt from Vormacinus answered him as the skeleton Vantegaard had seen moved back unhurriedly to attack again. It had the same ponderous gait that all the constructs they’d faced had. Vormacinus’s hammer slammed it back, dislodging a shiny bone arm from its shoulder.
The sword that the skeleton held in that arm moved out on its own, flying back. When the metallic skeleton raised its last arm, the sword was firmly lodged in it. Van spotted another raider raising his own sword, deflecting it from its strike toward Vormacinus as the man swept his hammer back.
A clatter of metallic bones fell down the stairs to the ground, the backup raiders dodging the skeletal remains. But the metal was no longer animated, and even Vantegaard could feel the Aether pervading the construct abruptly drop to zero in less than a second.
“Pack one done. Ready?”
At that moment, a faint gong started to sound.
“That’s the alarm,” Vantegaard told Palacio.
“Strange. It should have started when Vormacinus attacked, not when it ‘killed’ them.”
“All patrols have reversed and are heading out,” a bushy-bearded red-haired man – Volksung – announced.
“The statics are on the move, too,” the other tracker added.
“So far, so good,” Palacio said.
Vantegaard had to smile. Only a raid like this could talk about fourteen elite-type 100-rank coming at them as “good”.
At that moment, a flash of reflected morning light came atop the Pyramid. It looked like the second pair of skeletons had emerged from their lair.
“Pair of 100, caster and… fucking range. Heal!” Miscagenous yelled.
Vantegaard looked as the team atop the Pyramid dispatched the second pair.
“It looks easy,” Birkathane said.
“If that’s all there is, it will be. Stamina is going to drop, but the Wreckers and Sutabuhr can deal with it. Probably the entire pyramid. Meditation for any support is a massive cheat,” Palacio said, speculating, “I wonder how it will change how you do high-end content.”
“We always… ran dungeons fast,” Vantegaard said, remembering the incredulous looks from the guilders at the keep. Those who had said they usually needed an entire day clearing the keep. Even without the shortcuts from Mind over Matter, Vantegaard doubted the three of them, lower level and all, would have taken more than a couple of hours to clear the entire keep.
However, as if to contradict Palacio, the second tracker yelled, “New construct registering… correction two new constructs. 95 Elite and Greater Elite. Looks like they’re in the middle of the structure.”
“Well, there you have. Reinforcements, after all. I wonder how they’re made,” Palacio said.
He left the two to join with Fontana, who was discussing things with another Gater. Even from there, Vantegaard could feel thousands of Aether. An Archmage, a great one, probably another from Alpha Sector since he knew most of the Beta and Gamma contingents by now.
“So that’s why we never saw anything when we explored it,” Birkathane said. “They weren’t hidden; they’re made on demand.”
“That’s going to be a bigger problem,” Vantegaard noted.
“And I think the gong sound isn’t actually an alarm. It’s the ‘spawner’ system running and making noise. That’s why it started only after they demolished the first ones, and it started making new ones.”
“You could be right,” Vantegaard nodded.
Fontana was running up the stairs. Up there, he dodged a skeletal form, a kind of twisted inverted humanoid with a pair of scimitar-looking swords, and waited ten seconds as the foursome dispatched the two Pyramid guardians before addressing Vormacinus.
Vantegaard could see the wolf-headed man make a face, then nod back. He turned toward the Pyramid entrance and swung his hammer at the new guardian who emerged from the depths. Fontana ran down the stairs.
“Move back to camp. We’re stopping there. For now.”
A few seconds later, the fighting team started running down too, with the two backups jumping from stone to stone along the stairs. A pack of three skeletons came up and began to follow down the stairs.
“Fuck,” someone said.
The trio of skeletons didn’t go far. A team moved to intercept, covering the return of Vormacinus and his own group, and two other teams separated the constructs, dispatching them. Vantegaard was backing up already but peered back at the Pyramid.
A pair of constructs emerged. They did not pause as their previous incarnations had done but immediately stepped out and started moving down the stairs at the ponderous pace each construct had used so far.
Vantegaard was reminded again of the comparison made to “terminators” from the movies and TV series. The same unhurried, mechanical, uncaring feeling.
Ranged attackers picked at the descending pairs. This new pair looked far more exotic than the previous one. Vantegaard recognized the type of skeletal construct that had killed Mastabasta back then, a long caterpillar-style creature with seven pairs of legs and no apparent arms. Its companion was a six-limbed humanoid that matched his memories of the Geigene hologram shape.
Fireballs and arrows pummeled the skeletons and broke them down before making it down to the stairs, but another pair of metallic guardians was already starting down.
“Fuck,” was the sporadic but only exclamation from the raid.
They made it close to the encampment as more guardians poured from the pyramid and made it down the stairs, now that they were too far from the retreating raid.
“Look,” Birkathane said.
“What?”
Vantegaard realized what she was saying. A pair of skeletons had emerged but stopped atop the pyramid. As the single guardian stepped down the stairs and started to ponderously follow the tracks left by the Gaters, the constructs on top started to make a round of the edges of the flat platform.
“Reset!” a voice called out.
Vantegaard sighed in relief.
Most of the raiders were clustered around the command tent, where the leadership was conferring. Vormacinus, in particular, was arguing against Fontana.
“That’s too early. We had it in hand. Nothing dangerous so far, and we didn’t see all the variations. With regenerations for all of the raid, we can do this all day. Surge Meditation let me unload.”
“And then? If the Pyramid has an endless supply of them, we’re not progressing. That’s not a Shelob scenario, Vormacinus. First, we figure out the respawn conditions.”
A pair of Aetherists approached.
“What have you got?” Fontana asked.
“Lots of Aether sources,” one started. “We noticed massive Aether stores last night, but it looks like they’re located where the new constructs form.”
“We know the Pyramid includes some Aether-related machinery from the map room. So… related?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Possibly,” the other said before dropping a weapon on the table.
It looked like a scimitar, Vantegaard thought. It was fairly obviously one of the weapons from the skeletal guardians, as it looked to be made of the same metal they appeared to be built from. However, it seemed to be corroded or pitted. Rather than the shiny, brand-new chrome look the constructs had, this one looked old.
He realized what the Aetherist was aiming for before he said it.
“We grabbed this from one of the last constructs. It is interesting because it has an Aether base, like most Northworld items, except this one is at zero.”
“May I?” Vantegaard said before he stopped himself.
The Aetherist frowned as he looked at him. Vantegaard did a quick Absolute Meditation to top his Aether reserves, then lay his hand and tried to inject Aether. Aether Link allowed him to do so without relying on the balance of energies, and the energy flowed easily, the base climbing until 94 before its flow slowed.
He let it stop at 130 and kept track. The Aether immediately dropped, way faster than anything, and kept dropping until the weapon was entirely empty again.
“Nice catch. I’d say it’s level… 94?”
“Zarakan!”
A man wearing chainmail and a two-thousand Aether base came around. He put his finger on the scimitar to check its descriptor.
“Level 94. And… no stats at all.”
Vormacinus shrugged.
“Looks like it is decaying in any case.”
Vantegaard turned his head, surveying the moss-covered expanse that separated the camp from the Pyramid. He spotted what looked like a few metal bones, leftovers from the fight, but most of the skeletal remains were nowhere to be seen.
“The constructs, too. I noticed they had very few Aether, and they zeroed immediately when destroyed.”
Fontana chuckled.
“Looks like we’ve got part of the puzzle. Aether storages and constructs that seem to be Aether-powered, leaking and decaying to nothing when broken up.”
“What next?” Vormacinus asked.
“We go at it, seriously this time, while we monitor the spawner mechanic. The fact that there are Aether ‘batteries’ implies a finite supply of those,” Fontana said. “Empty them, and we win.”
That’s how you do high-rank raiding, Vantegaard noted, just as Birkathane echoed the sentiment as they followed the raid back toward the Pyramid.
What Vantegaard and Birkathane hadn’t noticed before was very obvious as the second assault began. All of the raid had split into very obvious teams of four people. Each team was undergoing its routine of preparations. There were a few people not grouped into some team, but he recognized them as the remote sensors and the two high-level Aetherists, who were there obviously as watchdogs, not frontline fighters.
The team that climbed up was Fontana’s. He was with Palacio and the legendary pair that Birkathane’s guild leader had namedropped, Gigantea and Salvador Berrocal.
It made sense. Most of the oldest Silvergaters were people Arnoldo Fontana knew well. The circle of Gaters had started to expand during the second year before spreading all over, but most of Fontana’s friends were there.
That’s probably the first time he can adventure with those friends, Vantegaard realized. Northworld would split people all over the place, all the time. The Valkyries had been lucky; save for Birkathane, all of them had spawned in Gamma.
Vormacinus was in the backup this time, along with another team. Vantegaard spotted his boss near the stairs, teaming with three others from the Beta contingent, as she was warming her muscles for a fight. The dagger pair she was using flashed in formalized katas that looked incredible, at least for someone not used to how Skills drove your moves.
Fontana immediately engaged the pair of chromed skeletons that were patrolling the top. Vantegaard didn’t see anything, but the constructs he saw at the edge stumbled and turned on the raider. Swords slashed. Berrocal had a pike, but it was not as good as a sword when facing a thing of smooth rounded parts with holes, something the Gamma legend immediately realized. Vantegaard could hear a swear from the bottom of the Pyramid.
Despite the weapon mismatch, the two melee-oriented constructs went down in fifteen seconds, and Berrocal threw his pike down the stairs, where another raider caught it and threw it further down. He drew a pair of small swords or large daggers and readied himself.
Birkathane rushed, grabbed the pike left at the bottom of the stairs and returned.
“We might as well serve as gophers,” she said, half-laughing.
As she said that, the gong sound started again.
“And here the spawner starts,” she added.
The confirmation immediately came.
“Two fresh, lesser elite 90 and 105.”
“Lesser elite 135, elite 125…” Volksung announced.
“Is it me, or is the rank rising?” Birkathane asked.
“Definitively,” Vantegaard replied. “We haven’t seen a new construct at 100 or lower for the last twelve respawns, I’d say.”
Fontana and his team were descending the stairs as raiders rotated. The watchers, all four of them moved in to debrief him, and Vantegaard and Birkathane went along.
“What’ve you got for me?” the First Gater started.
“The aether storages are draining slowly but steadily,” one Aetherist announced, with the other nodding for confirmation.
Fontana smiled.
“Good news, then. Any idea on when they’ll run empty?”
“Not soon. The amount is too big to have a fine measure, so we get orders of magnitudes, but we’re not at 90% yet. Close, I’d say, but not.”
Fontana looked up at the sun and thought quickly.
“Fuck. Night combat it is, then. I don’t see us finishing this before sunset.”
“You’re going all the way?” Vantegaard asked.
“We’re committed. I noticed the growing ranks. If we stop and let those stores refill, the progression might eventually overwhelm us. We can deal with elite 200 with multiple teams together, but even with Meditations, we have to take breaks at one point. If we had, say, theee-thousanders or the like, that’d be doable. Especially with the Cartographer’s new ‘Build Maps’, to optimize our builds. But now? It’s all or nothing.”
Vantegaard looked up. Vormacinus was in full swing, in the literal sense, as his hammer moved back and forth, clanging and sometimes breaking apart chrome bones. The little lighted wires that seemed to tie all the parts of the constructs together were deceptively frail-looking, but with enough force or the right Skills, they came apart. Right now, the World Wrecker leader was smashing a single tall, six-fingered construct that used a hammer as well, but its weapon trailed red and blue fog-like effects. Another team was engaging a pair that had just emerged from the depth of the Pyramid.
“Hey, take care of my Formal Pike,” Berrocal called Birkathane, as he finally noticed she was holding it.
“Can’t even see its level, although Van says it is 61. Besides, it didn’t look useful.”
“Don’t dismiss it. Pikes and spears are still the best weapons ever invented. Always useful… well, except on some special cases on Northworld.”
“Next up, greater elite 185,” one of the spotters announced.
At that point, fights lasted longer and were a lot harder. Fighting on the top of the Pyramid was not very practical, and teams were fighting the chrome skeletons next to the structure on the flat. This allowed everyone to spread and avoid running into each other. Two-thirds of the raid were fighting simultaneously, with six to nine constructs being engaged on the mossy field.
The spotters called when one respawn stopped coming, and one or two raiders rushed up, taking a shot at the first guardian coming up and retreating down. This caused every construct there to head up and down the stairs, just like during the first probe. If you engaged or destroyed a construct below the top third of the Pyramid, the rest didn’t twitch, even after a new one was created. You had to re-trigger the guardian attack.
The Aether stores had depleted, the Aetherists reported. They were down to under a half as the sun was coming down and evening neared.
“That’s insane,” Birkathane whispered.
That was not the first time she’d said that. Vantegaard had to admit it was. He could remember when he’d been toughened up by the expedition after they picked the three of them from Fanduk, and how those had seemed overly powerful. Now, he was seeing the top end of power on Northworld, and he could measure the difference.
In a way, he could even understand how people back on Earth were freaking out. Even without Skills, the mere stats increase that seemed to translate without the Silvergate to provide was a game changer. The Marbella riots that had prompted the Gater Act back in the USA had been from high veterans, but those raiders? They had double the stats. Strength where you’d pick one of those strongman championship stone balls with one hand and throw it. Reflexes that might even be able to dodge bullets. Perception that lets you expand your peripheral vision. And endurance to do day-long marathons.
They both had Olympic competitor levels of physicality, but those original Gaters? They put others to shame.
The greater elite appeared atop the pyramid and started down, and Vantegaard stared.
Most of the skeletal constructs were humanoids, and he was now pretty sure they represented the five Gater species. There were some slight differences in baseline, but at least the six-fingered Devas and the six-limbed Geigene were easily differentiated. But at times, you had a very different model coming up. They’d seen twice the fourteen-limbed creature they’d defeated at the cost of one of them during their expedition and other strange forms.
This one looked like an armored centaur. Four legs with long “toes” ending in bony bulbs, an upper “torso” that supported two arms. Instead of ribs and others, plates of chrome covered most of the interior, which, like the rest of the constructs, remained empty. It was half skeletal, half exoskeletal. And worse, the spherical orb that replaced the cranium that all of the constructs seemed to have indicated a caster.
Two teams moved simultaneously to engage. At that rank, a greater elite was the Northworld equivalent of a boss mob in a video game. Not something you deal with on your own.
The fireball launched at the guardian splashed harmlessly against a green translucent hexagon that had briefly flashed in existence before disappearing. The guardian didn’t even change its ponderous descent, moving perfectly smoothly on its four limbs with an incredibly arched back. Both arms, Vantegaard could now see, held whip-like chains similar to the weapons he’d seen on the Deva expeditions and some of the constructs from the Pyramid.
Light flashed over the “head” sphere, and a whooshing sound accompanied a jet of fire, looking pretty much like a flamethrower. The teams ducked, but one of the fighters, already engaged with another guardian, was with her back on the stairs, and despite a last moment of intuition making her try to dodge, she was caught by the edge of the fire. One of her teammates intercepted the skeleton as she rolled on the moss, extinguishing the fire, before jumping back up. She’d probably been already healed. The health pool was not like hit points in a game, anyway, more like a likelihood of dying. Things that would almost certainly kill you at 300 health were completely unlikely to kill you immediately if you were at 3000.
The centauroid construct ponderously followed the eight fighters to the side of the Pyramid, but as he did so, a booming sound came, and Vantegaard saw a visible wave propagating around the mossy expanse on which the raid was fighting. The wave caused everyone it passed over to stumble, disrupting combat. Another flamethrower jet launched at an angle and splashed another team.
“Fuck,” Birkathane swore, and Vantegaard breath took as the two people catching fire tried to extinguish it. An abrupt jet of water came from the ground, and they both stumbled into it, pursued by their current target. The skeletal construct slashed at the back of one of the half-burning combatants, causing him to fall to the ground.
“RESERVES,” Vormacinus voice came across the battlefield.
All the raiders that were taking breaks, waiting for Meditations to recycle, rushed back toward the battles and the greater elite monster.
To add to the threat, the spotter team yelled, “New pair… greater elites 175 times two!!!”
Both Vantegaard and Birkathane looked at each other and started backing up further. They’d left plenty of room between them and the real raid, but the risks were starting to be way too high.
More flamethrower jets started in all directions, raiders trying to dodge. Vantegaard saw the wicked-looking Deva whips flashing as another wave of disruption washed over the field.
“That’s not good.”
Someone was stumbling toward them, and Vantegaard realized it was two people, one having another thrown over his shoulders. The two men reached them, and he saw that one of the man’s legs was torn up, the foot missing. There was no blood, and crusted skin closed over the wound, with a shape that might be a bone shard covered.
“Health pool halfway back, but he’s out. Can you?” the man said, lowering his companion to the ground beside them.
“On it,” Birkathane immediately said, starting to chain cast Infuse Vitality. She might be very low-level compared to the raid, with a Skill level half of what one of the raiders would have, but she could top the man.
“How will be the leg?” Vantegaard asked, feeling slightly nauseous for one of the rarest times while on Northworld.
“It will be fine. Once he’s topped, the normal health regeneration will start to regrow everything, but that takes time, and Infuse doesn’t do anything on that aspect,” she explained.
The other raider had already left, running back toward the mayhem. As he watched, the pair announced by the spotters emerged from the Pyramid, and his breath caught.
Two Geigene-looking constructs with different weapons in their multiple arms. While none of the two had the caster telltale, they both had what looked like a classic crossbow, and one even had what looked like a longbow.
As a confirmation, the pair stopped after descending five steps and started aiming and launching projectiles. The left one threw bolts covered in writhing black smoke, while the right one launched crossbow bolts covered in fire and started firing in parallel arrows that glowed a dark green that, in other circumstances, would have looked healthy, but in this context, was sure to be anything but.
Some of the reserves called up by Vormacinus reached the bottom of the stairs and started firing back spells and arrows, while the two ranged attackers ignored everything and fired back, even if one was slightly thrown off by the kinetic impacts of one raider’s incredibly accelerated arrows each time they connected.
Two additional constructs emerged behind them and started descending, passing between the two static ranged skeletons and coming at the fighters at the bottom. The spotters had probably called for a new set of constructs, but Vantegaard had missed the announcement.
There was almost like a lull in the fight, and a voice covered the battlefield.
“ABORT! RETREAT!” boomed as Fontana ordered the end of the raid.
The teams at the bottom of the stairs instantly broke off and started running as the fighting around them changed, the fighters slowly backing up as carefully as they could. Unlike the first assault, retreating would not be easy, with enemy ranks double that of the first probe’s enemies.
Vantegaard and Birkathane bent, grabbed the one-footed still only half-conscious, and started to drag him back toward the forest edge.
The skeletal archers started to come down, launching more missiles that still managed to catch anyone not paying attention. One woman was thrown to the ground before being pulled up and dragged by another raider. The centauroid who’d started unraveling the raid dynamic followed the retreating teams before one of its legs was broken up by a ranged shot of incredible power, and a pair turned back to break it down with hammers, dodging the jets of flame.
The fastest raiders overtook them, ignoring them, as the two plodded on.
At the forest’s edge, as Vantegaard and Birkathane aimed at one of the biggest tents designated as a hospital, most of the raiders turned and waited for the constructs. The two lowered the amputee on a cot and turned back.
As they emerged, the fighting was winding down. A dozen raiders had rushed back into the clearing surrounding the Pyramid to deal with the two ranged attackers who had refused to follow them all the way, but the retreat was done. A pair of raiders passed them. One had an arm that was completely broken in five different pieces, held together with shining leather and probably skin. Another was horrifyingly burned blackened charcoal skin but just swore continuously, “I had it. I had it.”
Then, the raid was over.