With a mighty roar, I pushed back against the signaleech with all of the strength I could muster. My muscles screamed in effort with the massive force crushing me into the shelves, but all I could manage was one measly step forward. Oil rained over me in thin droplets as if I was standing at the base of a polluted waterfall, sapping away little chunks of my maximum battery that were devoured by the signaleech.

I shifted my hand out of my shield’s grip and pressed my shoulder harder into it, took a deep breath, and sacrificed the shield for the greater good. I dove to the side and let the signaleech carry my shield into the shelf behind it. The dull reverberation of metal on rock was suddenly extinguished by the all-consuming mass of oil that was the slyk, then replaced by a rain of heavy impacts like hailstones on the pavement as the slyk and shelf did some heavy damage to each other.

Or so I’d hoped. The slyk thrashed about for a handful of seconds before falling still, its sheared-off head sliding around its torn bubble of a body in a way no creature with bones or muscles ever could. I didn’t see if it had locked eyes on me before I started running like hell, diving for a space in the shelves while the shrieks and impacts of the slyk contorting itself to begin its chase anew played out in the slowly-decreasing distance.

“God damn it, why doesn’t my core make me anything that works for combat.” I muttered to myself, scouring through my interface as I ran for anything that might be able to help. As far as I could tell, the only seemingly weak part of the signaleech was its eyes. Which looked like they had enough electricity stored inside to kill an elephant, nevermind someone my size. Which meant I needed range or something to ground myself.

I flicked my wrist and shifted my weapon into a bow and arrow. Well, just a bow; I was a little short on arrows at the moment. I tried shifting it into a gun next, but for the first time in this life, my interface pushed back against me. It didn’t give me a notification or warning, it just simply didn’t work. I’d seen Okeria use a fucking gun, and I definitely knew what guns looked like, so why wouldn’t it morph?

I tried forcing some of what little battery I had left into the bow, but all that did was waste battery I couldn’t afford to lose. Was it limited only to pre-modern weapons? So no guns, no tasers, nothing with an internal system that clicked together to function properly? I shifted my weapon into a fairly modern-looking combat knife, then tried changing it into a taser. No dice. A thought crossed my mind that maybe it would shift into a flintlock pistol or a musket, and as quickly as that thought came, I had an ancient-looking pistol in my right hand.

Unfortunately, the flintlock had the exact same problem as the bow. I didn’t have any ammunition. My fingertips grazed the ground as I slowed slightly to pick up a few stones that the signaleech had kicked up when it dragged itself through the warehouse, feeling their weight against my hand even through my stats and gauntlets. If my weapon wouldn’t let me do anything even remotely complex, then I had one option for a ranged weapon that was so simple that I could’ve made one from a sheet of fabric and some rope.

Even though I’d never used one before, and I only vaguely knew what they looked like, my weapon transformed into a sling before my eyes. Not the slingshots that kids used to shoot pebbles at squirrels and tin cans, but the ancient weapon that I really, really hoped had actually helped David kill Goliath. Because if that was just a fable, I was pretty much fucked.

I hissed as the knowledge of how to use one of these things seeped into my very being, gently nudging my form and fingers until I had the sling ready to go. And with that knowledge came the ancillary knowledge that the broken stones I’d picked up wouldn’t fly very far or very straight thanks to their size and shapes. But that was something that could be remedied, or so I hoped.

//CREATION ACTIVATED: PRESENTED MATERIAL FOR //CORRUPTION: TRAWLER-STONE. INTENT DETECTED: TRAWLER-STONE WILL BE MOLDED INTO SLING AMMUNITION FOR ENDBOUND NULLSLING.

//COST PER PIECE OF AMMUNITION: 900g OF TRAWLER STONE AND 17 POTENTIAL.

//CURRENT STONE AVAILABLE: NEAR ENDLESS.

//INPUT AMOUNT OF AMMUNITION DESIRED TO BE //CORRUPTED.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I let out a breath of relief that was coupled with a tinge of confusion; I only had a trio of large rocks on me, so how did I have a near endless potential supply of trawler-stone? The only way that would’ve made sense was if //CREATION could pull the stone out from under my feet. I designated that I wanted five stones, just in case I wasn’t as accurate as I thought I was, and waited to see how it would extract enough stone to do its thing.

My left foot sunk a few inches into the floor. I stumbled mid step but didn’t look back as the sounds of the slyk grew uncomfortably close, but I had a feeling there was a chunk missing from the floor where my foot had just been. The edges of my visor shifted to display a vortex of petal-scales the colour of my armor, five notifications accompanying the shift that told me I now had ‘sling-bullets’ in reserve. They didn’t have the same // and all caps modifiers that every other piece of corrupted gear I’d made did, though.

A quick thought summoned one of them to my hand, and I found myself with a slightly heavier than normal oval of rock that looked exactly like everything that surrounded me. My core had shaped the rocks; nothing more, nothing less. So why had it still said the stones would be corrupted? Were these now corrupted rocks, but without any of the bonuses that come with the corrupted tag?

The signaleech’s leg slamming down over my shoulder politely informed me that that was a question for another time. I threw myself to the side with a grunt of effort as oil rained down on me, limiting my maximum battery to a measly 47%, and the rest of the leg followed. The damn thing skittered like a spider until it wanted to move like a snake, and was so close that I couldn’t safely build up enough force for the sling to be useful.

I needed space. //ENDLESS’ ribbon for the bloodcoral concoction burned away into the air once more as its effects coursed through my veins, giving me a boost to speed and power that just might help me make enough room for an attack. If I’d been a smarter man, I would’ve used //ENDLESS every moment that I had in the days leading up to our departure to level it up. Since I wasn’t a smart man, //ENDLESS was only at item mastery twelve; three levels away from another numbered upgrade that could’ve been an immense help.

With my blood pumping as fast as it could go, and The End’s buff long gone, I fitted one of the sling bullets into the pouch in the middle of the sling and tightened the stationary end around my wrist. My index finger and thumb closed around a bead of slightly malleable material on the end that I’d let go of to loose the projectile, and with every inch I took from the signaleech, I swung the sling faster and faster. It was a game of inches at the start, but with every second the bloodcoral concoction empowered me, I took more and more ground from the slyk. Inches turned to feet and feet turned to yards, giving me just enough room to be confident in my aim without being too close in fear of retaliation.

“Here goes.” I grunted, letting the bead go when I somehow knew the stone would fly true at one of the signaleech’s eyes. I was expecting something akin to a pebble barely cracking a windshield; a tiny impact that I’d have to repeat over and over again to whittle down the slyk over time.

A fulminous detonation wiped that possibility away. The sling bullet hit true, cracking into the slyk’s eye in adrenaline-filled slow motion. And then it kept going. The surface of the signaleech’s eye shattered into a dozen jagged glass-like shards, the lightning captured within roiling around in disbelief at being freed for a moment before it burst forth.

Bolts scoured long scars in the rock as they haphazardly spread, sending sprays of molten rock into the air that solidified before they slammed to the ground in long spears. The signaleech screeched in agony as its two legs scrabbled at its destroyed eye, the sudden evacuation of everything contained within putting the thing in far more distress than I’d even hoped. I suppose I had reduced this thing’s resilience to near zero, so I should’ve expected more from my attacks.

As the electricity in the air dispersed and the signaleech continued to mourn its lost eye, I noticed that there seemed to be a new oil spill forming from it. The massive bulb of a thorax it had been dragging around had ruptured in more places than my single stone could’ve hoped to reach. The slyk had taken a whole lot of damage before it split from the main body, almost certainly from Okeria’s efforts, and now that it wasn’t fully focused on keeping it at bay it was starting to leak out. The thing was still very much alive, but it wasn’t used to being hurt.

I could capitalize on that. I took a step back and whirled up another projectile, sending it straight at the slyk’s one good eye. Or at least that’s where I’d aimed it. The stone slammed against a leg that the signaleech raised in the blink of an eye to defend itself, chipping off a massive shard that careened off into the distance as my stone shattered into pebbles. I didn’t think I had that much of an arm on me, but there was a reason everyone used swords and hammers while guns existed.

When you could throw a rock that flew faster than a bullet or swing a hammer that could crush diamond, what use was a bullet? Maybe that was what my weapon was trying to remind me of by not transforming into any kind of firearm.

“A question for when this thing’s dead.” I muttered to myself, loading stone number three as the signaleech began to gather itself once more.