Max shouldered his crossbow and yelled, “Don’t get bit!” as Gus ran forward in his troll form.
Despite Gus being two feet taller than normal, the six legged Poison Bear was still taller. That meant that Max and James were able to attack without worrying about hitting Gus.
James threw out a decay attack and then peppered the monster’s face with glass shards. The leggy bear turned its head to avoid the spray of shards. It slowed down, but kept coming. Max lined up his shot and fired.
The drill’s magic activated as it fired, a bright yellow light piercing through the air. It hit the monster on its left shoulder and sank deep inside. The Poison Bear stumbled and opened its mouth wide in a roar.
Gus slammed his hammer down atop its head as it was still reeling from the hit. The magic effect activated and sent the monster tumbling to the ground. Gus kept slamming his hammer into the monster, but the repeated strikes were having less effect than the first one. The copper hammer bent out of shape from his troll-like strength.
The monster struck out with a hoof and caught Gus in the stomach, knocking him back several feet. His stomach was torn open, a gash wide enough for intestines to spill out. The troll magic held him together, stitching the wound closed within moments.
Just as the leggy bear was trying to get back up, a blue shape fell from the sky. It was Lily's drop bear summons. Max thought it looked like an evil koala.
It hit with all four paws at once, the impact popping two eyes. The leggy bear roared again, this time a plaintive cry. The summon’s magic ran out after the single attack and it faded away.
Max dropped his crossbow after the single shot, knowing that he wouldn’t have time to reload it. Instead he raced forward with his hammer. He reached the monster just as it was standing back up from the drop bear attack. Both hands held the copper hammer tight and swung down atop its head. The super strike slammed the monster’s head back down, cracking its skull open.
Yang appeared then and stabbed deep into its neck. Max was pretty sure it was already dead at that point, but appreciated the double tap.
Medium amount of essence gathered
Medium. Not even great. Medium. It had taken the whole team to take this monster down, when they had time to plan an ambush, and it wasn't even Major. An orb appeared over the body, white with veins of brown throughout.
“Nice! Level up,” Lily said as she stared into the air.
Gus garbled something, probably saying the same thing. Max didn’t level up, presumably because he had just done so after killing the guards. It put into perspective how lucky they had been to kill high level guards like that.
Max thought of something. “Hey Gus? Don’t forget to use your Warped Mirror card next time, ok? You probably wouldn’t have gotten hit if you had a summoned monster distracting it.”
Gus grumbled his assent.
Yang walked over and said, “Max, can you please carry my pack? It slowed me down there when it got caught on a branch. If I’m going to keep scouting, I need to be agile.”
Max nodded. “Sound’s fair. Hand it over. And anyone else that has something really heavy you want me to carry, I have some space in my dimensional belt. There is only a small risk that we would lose it all.”
Yang handed over her pack, but no one took Max up on his offer. He shrugged and shouldered the bag. Despite just mentioning the space in his belt, Yang's bag was too big to fit inside. Thankfully, it wasn’t as heavy as his own. He went to check on Gus. He had taken a pretty heavy hit from the monster.
Gus stood and stretched. He grumbled and fingered the hole in his shirt. The troll skin underneath was unblemished. He walked over to the leggy bear corpse and kicked it. The body rocked a bit, but didn’t move. It was at least three times as heavy as his troll form. He reached down and picked up the monster core. He stared at it for a second and then popped it into his mouth.
“Gus, what the hell?” Max said and spread his arms wide.
“What happened?” James asked.
Max gestured and said, “He ate the monster core! It was a big one too.”
“Dude, not cool. Spit it out,” James said and put his hands on his hips.
Gus opened his mouth to show it was empty. He said, “Það leit svo vel út, ég borðaði það.”
Max ran his hand through his hair. “Can you turn back to human so we can talk about this?”
Gus clenched his fists and closed his eyes. Nothing happened. After a few moments, he opened his eyes and shrugged.
“Fine, we’ll play charades until the potion wears off. I’ll ask my question again. What the hell?”
Gus slowly moved his hands about and then shrugged.
Lily stared at him and said, “I think he doesn’t know why he did it either.”
“I guess it’s some kind of magic bullshit,” Max said with a sigh. “In the future, Gus doesn’t get near the monster cores.”
Gus nodded and stepped away from the monster corpse. Max shook his head and retrieved his drill arrow from the body. He tucked it away in his belt and got out a new one. He loaded up a charged bolt into the crossbow and they set off again.
They didn’t make it far before they were attacked. Yang had just sent Crabby out on patrol when a Quill Cat dropped down from above. Max cried out, just in time for her to roll out of the way. The monster’s long claws dug into the dirt instead of her flesh.
Max snapped off a shot, activating the drill’s magic almost on instinct. The bright yellow pierce shot out and drilled through the Quill Cat’s head. Yang jumped back, but it was already dead.
Minor amount of essence gathered
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When the white orb appeared, Max snatched it up and tucked it away. He gave Gus a look. Gus stepped back and raised his hands. He didn’t seem angry about the suspicion, but it was hard to tell with his pebbly gray skin and bulbous features.
Gus pointed at Max’s hammer hanging from his belt and made the gimme motion. Max sighed and handed it over. Gus’s copper hammer hadn’t held up to the strength of a troll. Max would have to create a stronger hammer for him.
He pulled out his kindle and looked up the strongest element on Wikipedia. It actually took a little while to decide on one. There were many different definitions of what strong meant. Diamond was strong, but when it broke it shattered. Plus, he could only create metal hammers.
Tungsten won out as the element of choice and he slowly memorized its details. Atomic weight of 184, 74 protons, 110 neutrons. 74 electrons arranged in shells at 2, 8, 18, 32, 12, 2. It was a hefty metal. He made a note to write down all of the details on the periodic table before his e-ink reader finally died. He already had all of the details for metals written down, but the info for the other elements could be very valuable to other Citadel card users.
When his mana was finally full enough, Max picked up a large branch. He focused on exactly what he wanted and pressed that mental button. He could feel the magic fighting against him, but he pushed back. When the swarm of lights finished, he was holding a war hammer fit for a troll. Five feet long with a large head and a nasty spike on the back. It was heavy too, much heavier than he had been expecting. He almost dropped it.
His system tried to tell him something, but he hid the notification for now. “Gus, I made you a better hammer. This one shouldn’t break or bend.”
Gus took the tungsten hammer in his huge hands and handed the copper one back. He gave it a few test swings, and grunted in approval. He stalked forward, looking for a monster to test it out on.
Max was finally able to turn his attention to the message he got a moment after he created the hammer.
Citadel Evolution Quest Complete!
Fabricate a hammer with a different material. [✔]
Change the shape of the default hammer. [✔]
Create two hammers within 32.5 minutes. [✔]
You have completed all parts of your Hammer evolution quest and may now select one of the following evolutions.
Mutable Hammers- unlock an additional twelve different alloys
Manifold Hammers - six different hammer models as the default
Multiple Hammers - halve the mana cost of a hammer
Max rubbed his hands together. He had a choice to make and all of them sounded good. He hadn’t figured out alloys yet, so getting Mutable would be good. He was very curious about what alien designs Manifold would give him. And of course Multiple would be immediately useful when arming his squad.
In the end, there was really only one choice. He had to choose the Multiple Hammers upgrade. The other two options just made it easier on Max to change the hammer, but he was already good at that. Plus, he had Wikipedia on his kindle for extra learning. No matter how much he practiced though, he wouldn’t be able to lower the mana cost without the evolution.
He selected the Multiple Hammers and pulled up the description to read it over.
Advanced
Multiple Hammers
Citadel
Transmutes mana neutral matter within aura into hammers of the cardholder’s design.
Mana Cost: 14
Refresh: 0.4 Hours
Card Level: 6
Fourteen mana. That’s all it cost now. He could make three hammers with a full mana pool, instead of one. The refresh rate hadn’t changed, but getting a super strike every half hour was pretty good. This card was pretty powerful now.
He looked down at the copper hammer on his belt. Copper produced a strong magical effect, but as Gus showed, it was too weak for regular use. He pulled out Wikipedia to research metals again.
His current theory was that materials that were electrically conductive would also conduct mana. That’s why copper created a stronger super strike. He just needed to find a metal that was strong and conductive. He researched titanium first because that was the go-to expensive metal. Sadly it wasn’t conductive. Funnily enough, tungsten was conductive.
His musings were interrupted when they were attacked again. This time feathered monsters swooped in from both sides with a screech. They looked like large colorful velociraptors with a snake tail. Max had kept an eye out and was able to fire off a drill bolt before they hit Lily and James. His drill hit a feather and bounced off.
The drill’s magical effect hadn't been triggered because it had been less than two hours since it was used last. Max swore and ran forward. He pulled out his copper hammer, it had a charge at least.
Moments before the two raptors hit, the humans attacked. Gus swung his hammer out, connecting with the right raptor’s head. In that instant, the super strike activated with a flash, darker blue than normal. The titanium hammer absolutely obliterated the monster’s head. A spray of blood and bone painted the underbrush.
James used his Sonic Bolt card for the first time. He got his hand up and fired off a thick distortion of air. Rumbling thunder buffeted the monster, but didn’t stop it. The monster came down atop Lily, slightly slowed from the attack.
Both feet hit her chest, knocking her to the ground. The claws would have eviscerated her if it wasn’t for her chitin armor. The raptor clearly didn’t like that and raked its claws across her belly. It used its wings to keep its balance so both feet went to town on her armor. It was quickly broken and torn off.
Yang arrived then, ducking under the monster’s wings to stab it in the chest. Her sword scraped across the feathers and was deflected away. The raptor squawked and knocked Yang back with a wing beat.
Max was almost there with his hammer, but he didn’t want to knock the monster onto either of the women. Instead, he mentally activated Levitate and reduced his effective mass by half. He leapt into the air, spinning around so the raptor was underneath him. At the apex of his jump he swung the hammer sideways, activating the super strike on contact. A wave of blue knocked the monster up and back, five feet away. The strike shattered the monster’s skull and almost ripped it off its neck.
Max saw the raptor collapse into a heap as he landed. He fell and rolled across the ground, his agility not up to sticking the landing. Luckily, his clumsiness didn’t cost him. The monster was dead.
Gus pulped the corpse to be sure.
Minor amount of essence gathered
James fell to his knees and checked Lily over, making sure she didn’t get up before he knew she was ok. Her stomach plates were torn off and her shirt was cut to ribbons. Fortunately, the scratches underneath were superficial. She got up without help, but a small smile showed she liked the attention. Yang helped her clean and bandage her wounds.
Max slowly caught his breath. He told everyone to stay put and set up an ambush. If any nearby monsters heard that sonic bolt, they were going to come running. Time passed and nothing new attacked. Everyone else relaxed, but not Max.
They hadn’t even made it twenty miles and they had come close to dying several times. It was only luck that kept them all alive. He really missed Ebba right now. He collected the monster's cores while he thought about it.
He needed to get more powerful before they moved on. Thankfully, he had a few avenues to explore. He could transmute a few new drills so he always had one that was charged up. He could use his Augment card now, to make a few stronger weapons. Or he could use his points from leveling up to slot in two new Citadel cards and try out a new weapon.
With only 25 points of mana out of 42 in his pool, Max couldn’t afford to do everything right now. He could slot in the new cards though, that didn’t cost him anything. He pulled out all of the Citadel cards to see if he wanted to make a permanent decision to add one or more to his deck.
There were more of them than he remembered. Adjust, Circular Saw, Glue Gun, Actuator, and Denuder. He decided to add at least one of them to his merged deck. Based on past experience, he could count on the card increasing from common to advanced quality. He would have to make his decision based on what he guessed the better version of the card would be like.