Chapter 10 – Stone Foundations

The morning after meeting a literal god, kilometers fell away behind Matt as he followed the marker in his display. The terrain was getting even more rocky and hilly, with the trees thinning out a bit. He had spotted some smaller, low-level beasts but they bolted as the mech grew closer. Matt felt that both he and Tobias had to get some levels on them before they made it to the city. He wasn’t expecting trouble but at the same time wanted to be prepared in case they didn’t receive a warm welcome.

Tobias had agreed to the leveling idea, immediately pulling up his tablet and flipping through gods only knew what data he had on there. Matt kept his eyes open, so to speak, for anything that could provide levels for them. It was a fine balance to move quickly but also not so fast to spook any prey. After fording a small river, Matt ended up finding the end of the trees, well sort of the end.

The forest gave way to a series of low rolling hills, rocky outcroppings popping up along their slopes. Matt could see the breeze blowing causing the grass and rocks to sway along with it. Wait, rocks don’t sway. Using the extra magnification of his mech, Matt focused on one of the shifting rocks and was able to use identify. The thing was humanoid but made completely of stone, grass and rock sticking out from the seams in the rock.

Plains Stone Golem. Level: 20

He estimated that the nearest of them was at about 800 meters, he really needed to get active ranging capabilities. Lining up with his autocannon, he fired a single normal round. Boom, pop, 2 reports echoed through the hills. There was a bust from the explosive round hitting the golems shoulder and some of the rock crumbled off. A decent sized chunk from what Matt could guess since he didn’t quite know the size of the golems. After the round hit, the golem turned to look his way, every golem turned to look his way, all 23 golems turned to look his way.

“I’m noticing a pattern here.” Said Van.

“Yeah, I didn’t exactly think that one through.” Matt had to admit, he probably wouldn’t have engaged if he knew exactly how many piles of rocks golems were actually. “Gotta get some better sensors.” He mumbled as he lined up on the closest of the golems that had decided to come after him.

As it turns out the giant creatures made of stone were not all that fast on their feet. Matt fired 3 more rounds at the one he first engaged; slow fire able to keep all the shots on target. The first hitting it in the upper torso with the remaining 2 hitting in its waist. Each hit took varying sized chunks out of it but not enough to completely down it. 3 more shots and it finally broke apart, crumbling to the ground with a final step. He switched targets, the next closest had closed another 50 meters but was still a fair distance away.

Matt decided to try an imbued shot on this next one, having plenty of time with the lumbering stride of the golems. The shot went out, streaking across the field and smacking into the golem’s head. It crumbled on the spot, bits of rock forming a mound just high enough to stick up from the grass.

“That was much more effective. You should do that more.” Van said, getting a snort from Tobias.

Head shots became the order of the day. Matt crouched down gaining a little extra stability as he practiced switching from one golem head to the next, orange-yellow streaks crossing the distance in a fraction of a second. In the end he had to make up 2 shots that he had taken on some of the golems farther out, but not a terrible performance considering this was the first time he had engaged at what was considered mid-range for his autocannon.

After clearing all the golems, Matt opened his system messages, automatically skipping all the kill notices to get right to the good stuff.

Class Pilot – Skirmisher is level 10.

Stat points awarded.

Skill selection options available.

This is what Matt had been hoping for, he knew it was close after the fight with the dinosaurs. Without any pressing matters he dived into his skill selection options.

Outnumbered (Common)

Gain a minor additional boost to all physical stats when outnumbered by 3:1 or more.

Push Through (Uncommon)

Boost all attacks and regeneration by 10% in exchange for a period of increased fatigue. The length and severity of the fatigue period increases with amount of time skill is active.

First Strike (Uncommon)

Gain a bonus to attack damage when you are the first to engage an enemy. Bonus damage scales inversely to opponents’ awareness of you.

Passive Mana Sense (Rare)

Become more sensitive to the use and concentrations of mana around you. You become able to sense beings with mana, able to judge the volume and potency passively.

Construct Power Surge (Rare)

Gain significant additional strength and speed while in your construct and direct it at an enemy. This ability exchanges Armor Points for attack power and speed.

While Matt liked the idea of the First Strike and Push Through skills, the last 2 being of higher rarity drew his eye. Construct power surge would potentially be useful in one-on-one fights with tough opponents, he felt it could cause problems if the fight ended up dragging on. The Mana Sense on the other hand would be useful all the time and it was passive, so it didn’t use any resources. He wondered if that skill would have helped with the wolves, let him know they were lurking before he got lucky and spotted them.

With that decided, Matt picked the Passive Mana Sense skill. His mind was immediately flooded with sensations that he never knew existed and a new awareness grew in his mind. While he could vaguely sense the mana in Tobias, the big source was the core behind him and the battery under his seat. He didn’t need to look at them to be aware of where they were, instead feeling they were close and their direction in relation to him. It wasn’t just his surroundings that he could now sense.

Looking out at the field of broken rock, he could almost see the light brown smear of mana leaking from each pile of shattered golem. It dissipated as it wafted from the stones, mixing with the air. As he focused on a dead golem’s mana, it became more opaque, more tangible to his vision until he went back to looking at the scene as a whole.

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“Woah, that’s kinda trippy.” He said, Tobias immediately asking what was trippy. I picked the skill Passive Mana Sense and now I can see the mana in everything around me. It is also letting me know of concentrations of it closer to me.”

“Big plasma axe, check. Sensing the unifying force of the world, check. Only becoming a warrior monk left till you become a true Jedi.” Tobias snarked. “They probably wont grant you the rank of master however.”

Matt laughed “Probably a good thing since I have some issues with the whole monk thing.”

They ended up collecting some more cores from the golems and some metals as well. Not every golem had metal in them but they all had a shiny brown marble that emitted the same mana as Matt had seen. They ended up handrailing the tree line for a little while until Matt was able to sense something else. It was the same type of mana, earth he was assuming but much denser. They found out exactly what it was as they crested a low rise in the hills.

Plains Stone Colossus. Level: 30

This one was at least twice the size as the golems and only 500 meters out into the shallow valley. Matt had a quick conversation with Tobias and Van to come up with a plan. It was a very detailed plan that started with fire an imbued round and ended with at its head. Matt, firmly approved of this plan and lined up a shot, it wasn’t nearly as difficult as the golems since the head of the colossus was twice as big. Boom, Smack. The round hit the head, taking a large chunk off before arcing over the next hill. In a very slow and meaningful way, the monster turned to look at them before roaring and beginning a charge.

While the colossus was about as quick as the golems, its longer stride meant it closed the distance much faster. Matt fired 3 more rounds at it, 2 making contact with its face and staggering it. Still, it kept coming, perhaps a bit slower but no worse the wear for no longer having anything above its shoulders. Matt had a back up plan and decided now would be a good time to use it. He switched targets, moving almost all the way down its body and targeting it knee joint.

3 imbued rounds slammed into its knee in quick succession. Stone went flying from the back as the super-heated rounds ripped their way through. It was a successful play on Matt’s part as the colossus went to step forward again, leg crumbling before it pitched forward and smacked the ground with a thud. Matt could feel the impact from his seat, the reverberation shaking his vision. From its prone position he could see the remains of its head from the top, so he fired a few more times into what remained.

As the rest of the head broke away, Matt could see an increase in the mana density from the neck joint. He hoped that this meant there was a weak spot inside it so he made a slightly bigger hole, blasting away into the torso. These shots didn’t pass through, the body absorbing enough energy to catch the bullets. On a whim, Matt fired the remainder of his magazine as normal shots, no imbuement just explosive armor piercing. 9 of the 11 shots found their way inside the chest cavity, all of which exploded. The colossus was blasted apart from inside, the bulk of its torso remaining intact like a carapace, focusing the blast inward. Matt changed to a new magazine and fired 3 more times into the cavity he had made. The second shot must have hit something vital because it started to break apart as the last on was still in route.

Matt wasn’t sure what happened, one second, he was laying some hate on a 12-meter-tall stone giant, the next a wave of brown mana burst forth and knocked him flat on his ass. The colossus had been a little less than 300 meters away and the force of the blast still had the power to topple his several tons mech. He rolled over and got back to his feet, not really any damage but startled at the blast of power.

“Shit!” Tobias yelled.

“I know, that was a lot of power in-“ Matt began to respond.

“No, not the explosion, well kind of.” Tobias interrupted. “I got a sort of message from Hal. He said that was probably the core being damaged and rupturing. I didn’t know he could just message me like that.”

Matt thought about when Hal had told them about how blessings placed a mark on the ones being blessed. The mark would allow the god to know what they were doing but Matt didn’t know that it was instantaneous. He would have to keep that in mind, having another person at least aware of what they were doing felt like being spied on. In the end, he kept these thoughts to himself and moved to inspect the crater where the colossus had been.

The crater was a meter deep but at least 10 in radius, most of the blast had been directed up and out. Grass and sod had been ripped out in almost a perfect circle then scattered in every direction for a hundred meters from the center of the crater. There was no sign of the colossus, its rocky form having completely disappeared. Tobias wasn’t sure of where it had gone or what had happened, Hal was not exactly giving them any hints either. Matt did notice that there was no more of the mana hanging around either.

With nothing to loot or even inspect from the fight, Matt had to push onward. They briefly discussed if they should stop for the night or try to push through and gain some extra travel time. In the end they decided to stop again. They found no reason to tire themselves out when they didn’t know the distance left to go. There was still ample daylight left to keep moving for a few more hours and Matt was still looking to get some more levels under his belt. He wouldn’t have to wait long either.

A group of strange looking deer had wandered from the edge of the forest and into the grass lands. Deer might have been a bit of a poor initial assessment; they were quadrupeds and had antlers like deer but that was about where the similarities ended. As Matt focused on them, he saw the elongated snouts like that of an elephant, but they had leathery red skin instead of fur. The antlers looked strange, wide set and with a lot of straight tines sticking up from the nearly horizontal main beam. Each of the deer immediately started plucking tufts of grass and shoving them into their mouths, completely focused on eating rather than the head of a mech poking above a hill.

Trunked Red Ruminant. Level 18

Matt saw that the heard had an average level of 16 with only a couple outliers. They were perfect for him and Tobias to get some levels in since they were considered “Small”. So, Similar to the bird situation, they prepared a defensive position at the ridge of the hill. It was really just them finding a couple suitable rocks to hide behind, acting as cover and a place to brace their weapons. The creatures were spread out in one of the boulder fields, mixed in with the grass and rocks for some cover. Because Matt had the longer-range weapon, he initiated the attack.

He fired a shot and hit one of the creatures in the neck, dropping it on the spot with a gout of purple blood spraying from the wound. The remaining 2 dozen animals looked first to their fallen comrade then to Matt before tilting their antlers toward him. Matt was expecting them to charge but instead he heard an all too familiar snapping sound. The deer could shoot back, and they were very accurate given the noise of another one of the points smacking into the boulder he was behind. As he covered, he radioed to Tobias that he would take the heat for a minute before Tobias would take a shot, letting them switch back and forth.

Tobias popped out from behind his boulder and fired a couple rounds, hitting 2 deer. Sure enough, the heard switched fire to him, continuing their slow suppression of their new target. Matt popped back up and took a sight picture on the next highest ranked beast he could see. Before taking the shot, he planned out the next 3 that he would go for. He also saw that the fired antlers were slowly regrowing so waiting them out would not work. He told Tobias as much as he fired 6 rounds, 2 on each before the deer switched back to shotting at him.

This went on for a couple more rounds with Matt and Tobias switching back and forth, never having to move from their position. At one point Matt heard a sharp ping as a stray antler bounced off his rock and hit the mech in the side of the head. It didn’t even leave a scratch in the armor from where it hit. Matt’s turn came and as he popped back around his boulder, he saw a change in the heard. They had formed up into a line with a few meters between each one, trotting forward as they fired.

“Hey Toby, their advancing up the hill. Coming pretty quick too.” Matt radioed to Tobias. “Get a fresh mag and when I start firing, you start too. We can catch them in the open and on the move.”

Getting a thumbs up from Tobias, Matt changed mags and braced his rifle hard into the boulder. He started working his way from left to right, putting 3 rounds at each before just moving on to the next, not waiting to get any feedback from his target. Tobias popped out from behind his cover and started doing the same but working from right to left. The Heard became confused and tried to split their fire on both of them but, caught out in the open as they were, quickly fell to the combined fire. Less than a magazine later, the fight was over with the remaining deer never making it withing a hundred meters of Matt and Tobias.

As they inspected the corpses, they found that the antlers actually shed off rather easily, so they collected them up and then grabbed as many cores as possible. Matt decided to get the flavor text on the creatures and used identify on one of them.

Trunked Red Ruminant. Level 16

This variety of ruminant is naturally born with the skill to fire the tines of their antlers at high velocity. A heard animal by nature, they use a large volume of fire to defeat enemies.

Creatures using skills, Matt had suspected as much with the charge ability he saw the boar and tortoise use. Reading the description confirmed his suspicions about beasts and the ability to use skills, it made sense when they had mana. He would have to keep this in mind for their future fights, but he also wondered if the stone golems had used any skills, not that he could identify anyway. They picked up everything they could before moving off to go find a place to set up for the night.