“Tyler!” Hana screamed, rushing over to check on the fallen man. “Shit, this looks bad. It missed his heart, but there’s a huge hole in his lung. What about Anthony?”
I was only a few steps from our other fallen party member. I knelt to do a quick diagnostic, and winced. That chainsaw had chewed his intestines into hamburger, and severed countless blood vessels.
“That chainsaw nearly cut him in half. There’s so much internal damage I’m not sure I could fix this even if I had the mana.”
“I… maybe… heal might work, but it takes so much mana, and stasis isn’t cheap either. Only it’s not too late for Tyler, if I work fast. Oh my god. What do I do?”
Earl put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Triage. Both cases are critical. If you’re not sure you can save both of them, start with the one you’re more confident of treating.”
“I, but, I can’t just… what about the other one?”
“If you panic or split your mana between them you’ll just lose them both. Pick your patient and get to work, healer.”
Hana hesitated for a long second, casting a pleading look my way. But I was fresh out of miracles.
“I think he’s right,” I said. “It’s your call. You’re the real healer here, and you know your spells and their limits better than I do. My healing isn’t nearly as good, so I’m just the assistant for this.”
Hana cringed at that, and I regretted not making the decision for her. Her eyes went back and forth between Anthony and Tyler, and a look of horror stole across her face. For a moment, I wondered if she’d be able to make the call.
Finally she bit her lip, and put her hands back on Tyler’s chest.
“This one,” she said, choking back a sob. “Tom, can you help me? I don’t think I have enough mana to finish the job.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“I’ll check on everyone else, and apply first aid,” Earl said, patting Hana’s shoulder as he got up.
It took us a good ten minutes to heal Tyler’s punctured lung, clear out the blood that was flooding it and seal everything up well enough to be confident that he’d live. At one point Earl interrupted me to get a quick shot of healing for Mitsi, whose wound had nicked an artery and wouldn’t stop bleeding. That was such a small injury that it didn’t take much mana to do the job, but I was down to the last dregs by the time we were done with Tyler.
There were tears trailing down Hana’s cheeks the whole time.
When we were finally finished she looked hopefully over at Anthony, only for Earl to gravely shake his head. There wasn’t much that conventional first aid could do for a wound like that, and he’d bled out while we were working. Not that we could have done anything if he hadn’t, since neither of us had enough mana left to heal a papercut.
Hana curled up in a ball, and started to sob. Jason started to come over but hesitated, looking lost. Sheryl pushed past him, and knelt to hug her friend.
I remembered Earl’s analysis of the teenage relationship drama, and gave a mental sigh. Yeah, not getting in the middle of that. Instead I wearily pushed myself to my feet, and did a quick survey of the room.
Bob was sitting in a corner sulking. Someone probably called him out on his cowardice, or maybe he was butthurt about Sheryl being the one who did something useful with his gun. Either way, I didn’t have any sympathy for him. Let him deal with his own shit.
Dale was sitting by Anthony’s body with his head in his hands, while Earl stood next to him with a hand on his shoulder. Being an EMT this probably wasn’t a new situation for Earl, so I’d leave him to take his shot at the words of wisdom and comfort thing. But it was a reminder that the Dragonslayers would all be reeling from their losses, and I’d better keep an eye on their morale.
Shasa was up near the cave mouth, keeping watch. Someone had lent her a spear to replace her broken mace, and while her mood was subdued she seemed unhurt. Behind her, Mitsi was curled up in Jenny’s lap getting petted.
Jenny caught my eye, and motioned me over.
“That was really rough,” she said as I sat next to her. “I’m pushing it to stay in action girl mode right now. I don’t think I can keep it up if anything else goes wrong.”
I put my good arm around her. “I hear you, Jenny. I don’t think anyone is doing any better here. At the very least I want to stay put until the rain stops, and we all get some rest.”
We watched the rain in silence for a few minutes. I knew I should be thinking. Making contingency plans. Trying to figure out how we were going to make it back to town. But I was too tired to be brilliant.
“What are we going to do about your hand?” Jenny finally asked. “Can you heal that, when you have the mana?”
I shook my head. “Not with the spell I have now. It’s good for closing wounds and healing internal damage, but I’d need a regeneration spell to regrow missing body parts.”
“I don’t see a spell like that on my status screen.”
“You’re in easy mode, right? That spell list is just some examples, to get you started. The advanced UI has a spell designer that can build pretty much anything. But now that the Help system is turned off I’ll have to figure out how to use it on my own, and it’s pretty daunting. I’m sure I’ll have to waste a few magic points experimenting before I get it right, and those are in short supply.”
“We need to figure out how to bless your spells,” she said. “I got a couple of universal points off the bugs I killed with my spear, thanks to Shaylis’ blessing.”
“Yeah, I need to look into that. Or we could set up a shrine, and do the sacrifice thing to trade in a pile of physical points for something better. I can’t believe I’ve got twenty-five points sitting around waiting for me to decide what to do with them.”
“No kidding. The payoff from a fight like that is crazy. I could rework my whole fighting style. Which, um, I’m kind of thinking about. We’ve got Shasa to tank for us now, and the rest of the group, and being right in a monster’s face all the time is turning out to really not be my thing.”
I could hardly argue that one when I agreed with her. I was honestly amazed she’d toughed it out this long. Jenny was a geeky intellectual at heart. Yes, she could be surprisingly brave when the occasion demanded, but constant melees with giant monsters had to be testing her resolve.
“What would you do instead?” I asked.
“I’m liking Mitsi’s thing. I guess you noticed, I figured out how to get some ninja tricks with my magic points. If we can come up with a way to silence my guns I could make a good stealthy assassin type.”
Mitsi cracked one eye open. “If you can get me a gun that doesn’t make noise, and show me how to use it, I’ll show you all my tricks. Pouncing through the not-there place works really well.”
“I’ll take that deal. Unless you think it would cause problems, Tom?”
I considered it. Jenny was one of our most effective frontline fighters, and losing her there would hurt. Especially since she and Shasa were the only ones I could really count on to always be around. On the other hand, a magical sniper ninja would be a hell of an asset to the group. Not to mention the chance to lure Mitsi into a long-term collaboration. She was really impressing me, and not just with her fighting ability.
“I think that would work fine, Jenny. Obviously we need a core of tough front-line fighters to have a viable group, but flexibility is also important. Not to mention that if we’ve got two stealth specialists you can watch each other’s backs.”
“Human cooperation is serious magic,” Mitsi agreed. “It’s not fair that I had to spend points on it, but Shasa got it for free.”
“Yeah, but you’re a cat,” Jenny replied. “So obviously we should all be jealous of you.”
Mitsi managed to conjure up a weary smirk. “You’re funny when you talk about cats. Praise me more, Jenny. I may deign to groom you.”
“That’s pretty generous, considering that I’m covered in sweat, dried blood and monster guts. Ugh! I never thought adventuring would be so disgusting. When we get back I’m going to spend hours in the shower.”
Mitsi wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know how you humans can stand to get wet like that.”
“It feels good to us,” Jenny said. “Probably because we don’t have fur, and we’re kind of weirdly semi-amphibious.”
“You’re weird, alright,” Mitsi pronounced. “Also, I didn’t say you could stop petting me.”
Well, it was good to see those two getting along. Mitsi wasn’t nearly as standoffish as she seemed at first glance, and she was making an effort to fit in. Did she just want a group to hunt monsters with, or was she thinking more long-term?
Pamela would be a great addition to any group’s support team. I didn’t know much about Bitsy, but animal people in general seemed to have a lot of points and solid combat abilities. Recruiting them wouldn’t be a bad idea, if they were interested.
I was drawn from my thoughts when Earl came over.
“Hey, buddy, got a question for you,” he opened.
“Yes?”
“The door the bear thing came out of has a little alcove behind it, and then a stairway going down. Now, I know the System said we cleared the dungeon, but we don’t know what that means. Is another cyborg bear thing going to spawn if we wait long enough? Is there treasure we’re supposed to collect? Does it disappear if we wait too long? I’m not saying we should go looking for a fight, but maybe we’d better figure this out.”
“I hate it when you’re right, Earl,” Jenny groaned. “I really don’t want to move, but getting eaten in my sleep would be worse.”
Jason drifted over, obviously having been listening. “I’ve got enough juice for a lightning bolt, or some spark showers. Um, considering what the System has said about leaking hints to us before it kicks things off, I’m worried this is a dungeon core situation.”
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“A what, now?” Earl asked.
“It’s a weird little fantasy genre,” I explained. “A magic crystal with an intelligence in it is planted underground, and it has powers it uses to make the kind of dungeon you’d see in a computer game. Usually breaking the crystal destroys the dungeon, or you can take it and use it as a magical item. I don’t know, Jason. So far the other stuff the System has done doesn’t exactly match our fiction, it just sort of shares ideas with it.”
“True,” he conceded. “The animal people aren’t exactly nekomimi, and the monsters are animals instead of orcs and goblins. But the System called this place a dungeon, and that has a lot of dangerous implications. Even if it’s not exactly a dungeon core, I bet there’s something specific we have to do to keep it from reactivating.”
I sighed. We were in no shape to go poking our noses into anything dangerous, and who ever heard of a safe dungeon? But even so, he had a point. For all we knew killing someone had leveled up the dungeon, and it was going to spawn something worse than the cyber-bear when we least expected it.
“You’re right, we need to investigate. But someone needs to keep watch up here, too. Tyler can’t be moved, and I think Hana is asleep.”
“I’m going with you,” Shasa declared. “If there’s another monster I’m not going to let it get you.”
Sheryl gently shifted Hana out of her lap, and used Bob’s gun as a lever to get to her feet. She made her way over to us, and leaned on the massive rifle. “I’m up for it. But can we look at the cyborg thing first? If we might meet another one I want to know where its vitals are.”
“Good idea. Let’s see if we can figure out what we’re dealing with here. Earl, can I borrow your flashlight?”
Looking at the body, this thing was seriously weird. It was like the System had mutated a normal bear into a hulking monster, and then some mad scientist got ahold of it and turned it into a cyborg death machine. Only instead of installing guns like a sane engineer he’d gone with spikes and saw blades and that crazy chainsaw arm. The armor plates set into its skin mostly covered its vitals, but there was always an inch or two of fur between them, so they didn’t protect nearly as well as they could have. It was like the designer was more interested in style than functionality.
“Is it just me, or is this thing designed to be scary looking?” Jenny asked.
Jason knelt to examine the machinery set into its back. “I think you’re right. Hey, look. Some of these parts have writing on them.”
He was right. The machinery reminded me of old illustrations I’d seen of 19th century inventions. Lots of brass gears and pistons, and quite a bit of intricate clockwork. The labels were engraved into the metal, in that same minimalist style you saw in real equipment before the current craze for safety labels. Dimensions for replaceable parts, pressure and temperature requirements for steam lines, that sort of thing.
Steam lines?
Yeah. Good grief. I turned to the backpack module that had blown off, and confirmed my suspicions. Pressure vessels, steam pipe couplings and an incredibly intricate clockwork device that was now completely wrecked.
“Well, I can see why the lightning bolt didn’t short anything out,” I said.
“There’s nothing electrical,” Jason confirmed. “It’s some kind of wacky steampunk machine. Is that even possible?”
“Sort of,” I said. “It was powered by compressed steam, in these tanks. Sheryl, if we see more stuff like this that’s probably the easiest vital point to locate. Obviously a tank full of high-pressure steam is liable to blow up if you shoot it, but it will definitely take out the cyborg.”
“Along with anyone who gets too close,” Sheryl said. “What about the brain? Seems like it wasn’t using its head.”
I pointed at the clockwork machine. “This is a mechanical computer. I think maybe it was still using its brain, but this thing was acting as a battle computer and backup? Only there has to be some System magic involved in that. The tentacles have cameras on them, which must be how they were aiming at people when it was down, but there’s no way a mechanical computer could have the performance to do image processing.”
“Maybe the System knows something we don’t?” Bob suggested, wandering over to join us.
Jenny scoffed. “That’s like saying maybe the System uses different numbers that we do.”
I eye the broken difference engine, and shook my head. “I can’t tell exactly what the performance on this thing would be, but it’s probably a hundred million times slower than your phone. I’d believe the System knows some shortcuts we haven’t found, but not that many. My guess is these things have some kind of power that does most of the number crunching, and the computer is just running the program that tells it what to do.”
“Do the details matter?” Earl asked.
“It might. You can’t fit a very big program into a machine like this, so my guess would be these things get incredibly stupid if you take out the brain. The bear probably just had a reflex to stab anything that got within range. But we won’t know for sure unless we test it. So, bottom line is the brain is still a good target to aim for, but don’t make assumptions until we know for sure what they can do without one.”
“What about the heart?” Sheryl asked.
Earl pointed to a tangle of blood-filled tubing. “See that? Looks like a blood pump to me.”
“Yeah, I think they tried to give this thing redundant organs,” I agreed. “How effective they are will probably be a crapshoot. My guess would be a heart shot will make it bleed out eventually, but who knows how long it would take? A kidney might be a better target.”
“Like I know where a bear keeps its kidneys? Sounds like these things are going to be a hassle.”
“If the dungeon is cleared, we shouldn’t have to fight anything else,” I pointed out. “But yeah, dealing with something like this is always going to be tricky.”
I moved over to the secret door, which looked like it would be hard to spot even in daylight. Joy. Behind it was an alcove just big enough to hold the cyber-bear, with a system of hoses and mechanical couplings mounted high on the wall. Behind that was a steep stairway going down. Sure enough, a heavy steel pipe ran along the ceiling of the stairwell and connected to the couplings.
I pointed out the equipment. “See that? Steam tanks would only hold enough energy to run a monster for a short period of time. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, I’d guess. It was plugged in here, and that’s a steam pipe running down the stairwell. If that’s typical, this place is going to be crisscrossed with pipes full of live steam.”
“So we need to check our targets,” Sheryl said.
“I vote we leave Bob on sentry duty,” Jenny added.
“Hey!” Bob protested. “I’d like to see you do better.”
“I shot about a dozen mosquitoes out of the air in the big fight,” she retorted. “How many did you get?”
“Fine! You’re hot shit, and I’m just the useless loser. I’ll just stay here where it’s safe while you get yourself eaten.”
I put a hand on my girlfriend’s shoulder. “Chill out, Jenny. Save the arguments and recriminations for when we get back to base. Mitsi, you’re still hurt. Why don’t you stay up here, and keep an eye on the entrance?”
“Okay,” she said. “Is someone staying with me?”
I looked over the group, and realized there was one person who’d ignored the whole proceeding. “Dale?”
He started at his name, and finally looked up. “Huh?”
Damn, he looked like hell.
“We’re going to check out the rest of this place, and make sure it’s safe,” I said. “Why don’t you stay here, and keep an eye on Tyler and Hana?”
“Oh. Okay. Let me just… uh… get my rifle.”
Earl and I exchanged a look.
“I’ll stay here and hold down the fort,” he offered.
“Good idea,” I agreed. If Dale was that out of it I couldn’t count on him to protect the wounded, and I certainly didn’t trust Bob to get the job done.
That left Shasa, Jenny, Sheryl and Jason to investigate the dungeon with me. Not a bad group.
I checked my mana level. Good thing I’d invested so heavily in mana recovery. It was still dangerously low, but it was recovering at a good rate. I could squeeze out a decent explosive missile if I had to.
“Anyone have a talent for spotting mechanical traps?” I asked.
Everyone shook their heads.
“Then here’s hoping there aren’t any,” I said. “I guess I’ll go first, and check for recognizable machinery. Shasa, stick close. If we see anything dangerous I’m going to duck back behind you.”
“Close is good,” Shasa said. “My shield is kind of banged up, but it still works!”
The stairs were narrow enough that we had to go single file. At the bottom we found a heavy door made of bronze, with a locking mechanism like the hatches in a submarine. I examined it carefully before I let Shasa turn the wheel, and pull the door open.
Behind it was a wide passage carved out of bedrock, with a collection of pipes running along the ceiling. It was completely lightless, making even our night vision useless, and we had to fall back on a collection of flashlights to find our way. I was amused to note that Sheryl had one mounted on the end of her rifle, and another on her helmet. That girl really was crazy prepared, wasn’t she?
The tunnel seemed empty at first. It ran in straight segments, making a ninety degree turn every now and then for no apparent reason. But there weren’t any intersections, or rooms. There was only one way to go.
Unless there were secret doors behind us, or sliding walls to rearrange the layout.
I checked my System map, and noted with relief that it was recording the floorplan as we traveled. If something changed it would be obvious, and we’d be able to tell which wall was a fake we needed to break through. Which, now that I thought about it, probably meant the System didn’t use that kind of setup.
Some distance in, I started to hear a strange sound ahead. It reminded me of frying bacon, except that it kept stopping and starting again. It never seemed to last more than a minute or so, with breaks of maybe ten or fifteen seconds.
“What’s that sound?” Jenny whispered.
Shasa shrugged. “I don’t know, but something smells weird. Like rocks, only stronger somehow? There are machines, too, but nothing like the bear thing.”
A few minutes later we came to our first intersection. To the left, the winding corridor we’d been following continued on into the darkness. To the right was an identical passage that didn’t extend nearly as far. A few dozen feet away I could make out a dead end, illuminated by a faint violet glow that accompanied the sound of frying bacon. A bulky, mechanical-looking shape was outlined by the glow, obscured by billowing clouds of steam.
We all stood and stared for a moment.
“I’ve got to see this,” Jason said.
“Yeah, let’s check it out,” I agreed. “Everyone stay sharp, but don’t shoot unless it makes a move on us.”
As we approached, it became clear that we were looking at some sort of steam-powered tunneling robot. It was a clunky, crab-like thing that moved on six legs, with a bulky steam tank on its back and a hose connected to an outlet in the ceiling. A couple of arms on the machine’s back were obviously designed to manipulate the hose, so it could plug itself in when it needed a recharge. At the front, a boxy device projected a dim beam of violet light that swept over the stone face of the dead end.
Where the beam touched stone, it collapsed into a puff of dust with a sound like frying bacon.
I stopped, and put a hand out to keep Jason from wandering closer. “Everyone, back away slowly.”
“What? It’s just a tunneling robot?” Jason protested. “It’s obviously not a combat encounter. It’s not even reacting to us.”
“Yeah, and that’s a good thing. What do you think that beam would do to us?”
Jason turned to look at the disintegration ray, which was penetrating solid rock at a rate of several inches per second. It took him a moment to get it, but then he paled. “Um.”
We backed away, and left the machine to its task.
“So the dungeon is under construction?” Jenny said when we were a safe distance away.
“Looks like it,” I agreed.
“I bet it has a preset layout it’s trying to build, but it started by digging a path from the core to the entrance,” Jason theorized. “There must be a limit on how fast it can spawn monsters, and that’s why there was only one of them working. We got really lucky to find this place so early.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Let’s leave the worker bots alone, and see what’s at the end of the tunnel.”
After that we encountered the occasional side passage, and empty rooms began to appear. Once, we passed another mining robot. Twice we encountered teams of smaller robots, like long-legged spiders, that were busily installing new sections of piping. We ignored them, stepping aside as they passed, and they ignored us in turn.
Then we came around a corner, and found ourselves looking through an open door at a brightly lit room.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The first thing I could see clearly were the massive double doors of bronze, which were thick enough that if they’d been closed I didn’t see how we’d break through. Behind them was a raised platform overlooking a space the size of a sports stadium, filled with things straight out of a mad scientist’s dreams.
One section was an automated machine shop, where metal sheets and ingots were turned into piping, fixtures and mechanical parts. Another area was filled with tanks of liquid, with a daunting assortment of monstrous creatures growing in them. Towards the back was an automated surgical theater where something like a giant alligator was getting turned into a cyborg. Conveyor belts ran back and forth between the different sections, carrying raw materials and finished components. Clouds of steam belched from the machinery, forming a haze that rose to obscure the maze of wiring and bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling.
But my attention was quickly drawn to the area immediately in front of the platform, where a massive mechanical computer rose from the floor below us all the way to the ceiling high overhead. Serried banks of tiny gears and rods spun endlessly, behind a protective cover of perfectly transparent crystal. Directly in front of us, a bank of mechanical gauges presumably gave information about its operation, although puzzling out their meaning could be quite a project.
The rumble and clanking of distant machinery was loud, but not loud enough to cover the sound of a mechanism in the control panel bursting to life. Amid a staccato hammering sound, a slip of paper slowly extruded from a slot on the panel.
I checked the floor for traps before walking closer, and examining the paper. It was like one of those ancient ticker-tape machines, wasn’t it? Yes, there was writing on the paper. It read:
PREMATURE EXPLORERS STOP IRRITATION STOP LOOT QUICKLY AND LEAVE STOP NEXT FUNCTIONAL DEFENDER ETA 4 HOURS 17 MINUTES STOP SABOTEURS WILL BE PERSECUTED