Zwei’s activation went without a hitch or interruption. It was here Alex began to feel mental strain. He had been spoiled by Eins. The cores were basically computers, with a dash of intelligence. Eins was a high-end late nineties computer while Zwei’s core was DOS, no it was the 0.9 version of DOS. It largely worked but there was no comparison to the Golem’s older brother. This prompted him to consider the frame Zwei rather than the core, unlike how he thought of Eins, the second frame would be designated as Zwei. Eins would likely be useful regardless of how skilled Alex became… Zwei on the other hand, needed a better core as soon as he could manage it.
Commanding Zwei was odd, like simultaneously playing on a console and VR at the same time with the same controller. He was both aware of the Golems senses and watching through his own. Eins was different, he needed the contrast to get his own head around it. Eins was like a smart AI companion in a video game, give him the order and he followed it adapting to circumstances. Zwei’s core on the other hand might just stand there and die if your micro sucked.
For all its failings Alex considered this a good thing, there was nothing he could do right now that would change with Eins. Zwei, however was a great training tool, and because he was alone it would allow him to practice coordination.
Zwei’s current core would likely never rise beyond whatever came before novice in skill. The materials couldn’t hold enough information to get there.
For the current time he controlled Zwei while Eins played bodyguard.
~ * ~
Alex had spotted prey, a doggo. Crunching though a downed beastling in the middle of the apartment complex lobby they were now in. Zwei charged not bothering to be stealthy as the dogs had exceptional senses. It turned, growling at the creature that challenged it. Leaping forward only to find the golem using inhuman flexibility and strength to crouch down and to the side letting the jumping dog move past its stabbing limbs punching through open air. Then it was impaled from the side, as the golem rotated its torso ninety degrees and thrust forward with its arm.
The spear arm had punched through the creature’s lungs and heart, like a kill shot on a deer. The golem stood up holding the doggo above the ground until it died. Not letting it get purchase with its claws and unable to twist around to attack the golem.
Alex lifted the face plate of his helmet and wiped the blood from his nose. He really did need to upgrade Eins at this point, he even had another golem ready to go, frame and core. Drei was ready to activate, but Alex’s control sucked. Like right now he had used a spell that linked his perception to the golem, and it had caused him injury. He had slowed his perception; it was the best description Alex had for what he was doing. Engaged bullet time, except it was only for the parts of his mind including the golem. Hence the nosebleed, his personal reality had stayed at the same speed.
Storing the bodies and clearing the place was getting extraordinarily tedious. Alex did so anyways, meticulously digging though rubble. Pulling out desk drawers usually just storing everything and letting the necklace sort it. Handy feature that. In many ways it acted like a game inventory, although far more complex.
Alex had also noted that his idle thoughts on grinding XP might not be as off the mark as he intended. He did feel his body changing, like the mana he was constantly cycling was making him better. He was pretty sure that he couldn’t have done the perception trick in the past, not in a ‘I don’t know how way’ more like my brain exploded way.
Mana backlash, the need to train the body with mana to cast more powerful spells or suffer the consequences. Mostly Alex ignored these things, he was ignoring a lot of things these days. Changes to his body and mind that he just refused to think about.
He was rushing again, and that annoyed him. He had gotten used to largely doing things at his pace since leaving the tower. Even when he ran away or hid from more powerful monsters. However, Eins needed that repair rune, more than once he had to send Eins into combat. To save Zwei or himself.
Too many hectic fights, too much damage that he couldn’t repair fast enough. Or repairs that required him to take one of them offline. He hadn’t disabled Eins ever. Zwei had to be repaired frequently including taking him offline, twice now he had to rebuild entire parts, but Alex didn’t mind that with Eins standing over him. A part of him was also grateful he had taken this long. Zwei’s design hadn’t changed much just gotten more refined as time went on, identify a minor problem and modify that problem until it went away. The mechanical version of debugging and equally frustrating, changing the blade angle for the talons as an example. Or giving the spear arms an edge or changing the joints for better range of movement. He adopted all these changes into Zwei and his new frame Drei. At the end of the day these were golems not humans so there wasn’t any need to restrict movement to human levels unless it was necessary for the function of the frame.
As Alex cleared out the rest of the floor, moving room to room. Drei would be a problem.
He just didn’t think he could control two right now, not with anything resembling the control he had on Zwei. However, Zwei had surpassed Eins when it came to actual combat at this point. Even with Eins’ skills and superior materials, the gap in potential for the frames was too much. Alex also felt like the city was becoming more dangerous. As a whole, not just he wondered his happy ass into a bad area.
So regardless he was going to upgrade Eins. Alex had found an isolated and easily defended room and pulled out Drei, he had the mana reserves, so he activated the golem on the spot. One of the few commands his bone golems could follow was to guard him. They didn’t do so with great efficiency, but they could recognize threats and attack. He slept.
The next day, Alex carefully pulled out Eins’ core, the golem body lying on the floor.
“Ok upgrade Eins then I’ve got a few thoughts to test out. Need him ready first.”
He had considered just switching Eins’ to a bone frame, but the potential of bone was too limited. The true value of his golems lay in their toughness. The speed, strength, and mechanical minds were quite potent, but it was their ability to unflinchingly take hits that made them a cut above the rest. Zwei had been broken repeatedly, Eins’ even with an inferior frame design had managed to keep up. If Eins had a frame equal in design? Well, that would be game changing.
Focusing on his task Alex added several repair runes to the frame. Eins had a vast excess of power. That this core had been considered limited due to not supporting the numbers or the power better models had, told Alex that he was seriously underutilizing his resources. He also didn’t have the runes for that level of golem, it wasn’t skill, he just didn’t have them in his library. Adding multiple copies of the same rune was a logarithmic power scaling. They drew more power, and they plateaued quickly five runes was the limit for repair, he had the equations to figure this out, however he went with the table in the book. One on each of the limbs, and another in the chest. Eins would be able to maintain himself quite well.
He also needed these due to the slow repair rate of metal. As the material got ‘harder/better’ it took longer for runes to do their thing.
Next Alex moved on to the big changes, and by now they were big. Smoothing out the frame and reshaping the metal, reinforcing weak points. A near total redo of all the joints. Adding both hardening and sharpening to the hands and feet as active runes. Adjusting the hands for the addition of a metal spear blade changes to the digits themselves.
Three days of brutal focus on the frames supporting enchantments alone. Adjustments to the sensory enchantments. Then he was finally done.
He plugged the core back in the frame retaining most of its charge it activated with a push of mana.
Eins had been reborn. Leaner and more lethal than ever. An additional six inches of height due to adjustments on the legs causing the metallic golem to positively loom over the room.
“Any problems with the frame or upgrades Eins?” Alex tiredly asked.
“Negative, I will need time to adjust. Approximately one hour.”
Nodding Alex collapsed back. “Nap, recover and move on.” He whispered to himself before falling asleep. The whole time wishing that the Golems had actual intelligence rather than the facsimile that allowed them to respond. He was in desperate need of a friend or someone to truly talk to rather than just an under developed Alexa.
~ * ~
The past couple of weeks hadn’t been very noteworthy, more of the same all blending together. Alex was studying a map, it was a magical hologram projected by a crystal on his bracer. He had meticulously updated it every day. Every building they looted was marked if he zoomed in, and he could see additional information about the location including any notable loot. He could see the path they had taken, each encounter was marked. When they ran or were driven off, was marked. The territories of each communal species were marked. Any noticeable wars between said species he had drawn up marking the lines and the battles he had seen, notations and estimates of losses.
The lairs he had cleaned out were marked, like that first trapdoor spider. Timestamps had been added. Starting with day one of him leaving the tower. For Alex that had been a rather cool bit of magical intent coding, getting the time to synch and update from his helmet. Another added the things he wanted as he moved about, waiting for confirmation before making them permanent. A bit of a bitch to figure out, but by testing it on a separate mapping jewel now sitting in storage he made it work. He had a highly detailed intelligence report sitting in front of him.
That bracer contained two further jewels that served largely the same purpose. He was compiling information into them. Into one he compiled everything he knew about the monsters he encountered including images, dissections, labels on organs, and his notes about each creature and any variants. He included what he knew about each creature activities to the list.
The other did the same thing for the city itself. Currently he was in a jewelry store having raided the shit of it for precious metals and the jewels he needed for projects like this. Jewels were magically valuable for him, but it hadn’t crossed his mind to look for places like this until he stumbled into one.
Back when he first upgraded Eins he thought the city was becoming more dangerous, and that was true but only partially. It cycled following a pattern he could now measure and predict using the information he compiled. The environment was a living breathing thing surrounding him. Some monsters lost territory, only to take it back. Others died off completely in an area. Some monsters had taken such serious losses to achieve victory only to die off to the next competitor with ease.
Many of these cycles corresponded to reproductive cycles, when overpopulation and hunting drove the monsters from their established territory. Obviously, the city got more dangerous.
By now Alex was brutally crushing any impatience on his part, he still hadn’t gotten anywhere. He was still slinking around picking up scraps. He was currently making a bit of a nuisance of himself just inside the beastling’s border. He had gone full asymmetric with wis warfare, picking off groups and vanishing. If they showed up in force he disappeared, if he could take the group they died. He would leave signs for them to follow into traps or other monsters. So far, he had to deal with mostly the dregs of monsters, beastlings, several varieties of land monster (doggos, rodents, and cats), and spider/insect analogues.
The spiders were why he currently was stopped. He had a plan to make them good farming. If it worked. He also had a burning desire to make the creatures useful to him beyond harvesting their cores.
He was waiting, of all things on water to boil. Not for food or to sanitize it, he was waiting for it to break down the webbing he put in the pot. He had discovered a book that described this procedure. The spiders hadn’t been unknown to the people of this land. They used the webbing as a kind of lacquer to strengthen materials, it should also make them rather slippery. He planned to paint in on his golems and toughen them up. Make it harder for edged weapons to bite. That was his idea anyways.
Zwei and Drei were busy harvesting the monsters he found in the store, separating the meat and viscera from the bones and core. He was ignoring any alchemy for now it was too much of a lateral move from his focus.
After the webbing trial if it worked, he planned on hunting the creatures for their exoskeletons stupidly tough even without extra mana pushed into them. Armor for his golems, webs for his paintbrush, cores for the core god.
“Ok too much 40k bleeding over there. Even for internal thoughts.”
His next plan was to find more metal. He needed a shit load for his, well his magnum opus. His personal project. The one that might mean he could actually make progress out of this shit hole. He could use it for other golems but, without the proper cores (and his ability to carve them). Changing from bone to metal didn’t really have a purpose. Bulk metal being something he had very little of.
While the number of golems gave him more flexibility it just wasn’t enough. He still had Eins guarding him at all times. Zwei and Drei were good and with two of them once he got the hang of the controls, they became far more dangerous. Force multiplier for the win.
He could take on larger groups and more dangerous prey, he was still super squishy. No amount of armor would change that. Hell, he almost went without as it wouldn’t save him from any direct attacks. That was never the point of his armor but still.
Sighing, he stopped moping around and got back to work.
~ * ~
Several days later, Alex found himself hunting through a low-income housing complex. One of the ones you see in poor city planning where they wanted to build a communal area and missed the mark. Surrounding the poorly designed courtyard were several multistory buildings and the courtyard itself had squat ugly structures breaking it up. It was the first time since he added the upgrade of lacquering, that he found test subjects.
A group of beastlings had wandered into his ambush. Alex was watching from the second story, waiting for them to get to the kill zone. The Beastlings, perhaps surprisingly were probably one of the most dangerous creatures in the city, species-wise. He tried to treat them as such, having gained a respect for their numbers and tenacity. It didn’t stop him from killing them every chance he got. The Beastlings had reached the ambush point.
He sent the signal, causing Zwei and Drei to launch themselves from cover behind the wandering patrol. There was no time to react. The beastlings were getting cut down rapidly.
The largest one of the bunch, the leader as the creatures followed a bigger is better approach to leadership. That bastard was swinging around a cleaver the size of a person. Right at Drei.
Drei ducked slightly and angled his forearm to take the hit, his hand seeming to be limp. The cleaver hit, turning on impact as the blade refused to catch the now glasslike surface of the golem’s arm. Sliding up and off. The momentum throwing the large one-off balance. That was all it took, Drei’s arm snapped forward and across nearly cutting the thing in half and leaving it to die as its guts fell out. Drei’s hand came back around punching through another beastlings face before he reengaged his spear to continue the one-sided slaughter he and his brother were perpetrating.
~ * ~
Alex was thinking, in yet another confining building, while his minions carved a bloody path through a dense crowd of beastlings. He had largely zoned out, when it came to the fight. Like driving a car, he still knew what was going on but had done the same thing so many times it was auto pilot. Too much time spent killing things to get this mechanical about it.
He had figured out the golem’s controls, they were like the best context sensitive games, fused with intent and skill. That block Drei had done against the beastling leader had been key. Not so long ago he would have attempted to stop the blow rather than redirect. Now the same command had him parrying, if a follow up command to strike was issued. He would parry in a way that let him strike afterwards.
The link he shared with them went two ways and somewhere along the way skills began to merge, his knowledge and commands and the Golems skill. Flowing together, he couldn’t have done what Drei did, Drei was too stupid programming wise to attack on his own. Together they managed to succeed.
For all the constant grind Alex wasn’t making progress on moving towards his goals. He was still in the same three block area he had started in, often he returned to cleared out building to spend the night just because it was convenient. The areas he needed to get to were just too dangerous. The enemy density began shooting way up, favorable fighting terrain for his golems had gotten more scarce.
While physical progress was slow he was tremendously pleased with the growth of his skills. He had gotten to the point could do real enchanting. Actually etching and inlaying the enchantments to give them a truly permanent form. Not that he really had the materials to make that worthwhile but still.
As the fight finished, he moved down the blood soaked hallway collecting corpses, he didn’t want to stick around here with that much meat in the open.
The Beastlings also tended to respond with overwhelming force if they got pushed too hard.
~ * ~
His modular golem designs allowed him to do partial upgrades a limb at a time he could work on the part, and at most need an hour to attach it to the golem sometimes not needing to shut them down.
This gave him the ability to remove the drain on the golems core, by using a separate core to power the enchantments and connecting the control to the golem. So far, he had only done this with the repair and hardening enchant on the bone golems. Eins had more than enough power to spare. The extra one or two cores acting as power sources for active abilities on each bone golem made them far more resilient.
He also had several more ready to deploy, he was waiting a bit longer to ensure he was comfortable before activation. He didn’t want to rush adding more to his party right now. Alex knew that each additional golem would strain his mind and control, making the others less efficient. Drei was his proof, it had taken quite a while to integrate without distracting him from Zwei. Both units suffered unnecessary damage in the meantime.
~ * ~
He really was caught in a nightmare, every single day dragged on with an agonizing slowness. Then it ended only for the next day to also drag on. The constant stress eating away… and all of this blurring together. It became harder and harder to keep practicing, keep studying and keep fighting. Long term planning was almost a complete wash at this point. Alex felt like he was procrastinating even while working when he thought of more than his next move.
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Vier and Fünf had joined his ranks. The five golems moving together, Eins keeping a watchful eye on the squishy human. With four attackers, his flexibility in fights had skyrocketed. He started posting an overwatch to look for enemies that might interfere with the fights he was getting into. Keeping a reserve beyond Eins, one he could throw in to change the balance of battle. A force to attack flanks or pursue enemies that fled before he was done.
This gave him a chance to integrate them relatively slowly without massively degrading performance, however he was beginning to think that his problems would not be solved with numbers. They were great force multipliers, but killing wasn’t the problem.
~ * ~
Today things would change he could finally start looking for a way forward rather than stalling. Because Alex had finished the design for his personal project, just the design mind you it would need a shit load of refinement when he started work. Still, he had something to work towards, other than grinding skills. If he completed it, he would be able to move forward with a lot more ease.
Otherwise, he may as well resign himself to making his home here. Honestly, he didn’t think it was possible for him to leave at this point, he had had too many close calls, regardless of his golems. Maybe he could get out of the city, maybe. If he only encountered dangers comparable to what he was dealing with right now, it was possible. Risky, but possible. He more or less knew that wasn’t the case. It also relied on the surrounding territory not being worse than the city. He was likely stuck, he had long since stopped checking the timestamps on his map, and his helmet HUD. It was depressing, aside from the pure relative information he wasn’t going to think about how long he had been here.
Unless he some managed to make golems comparable to the masters of old. Those guys at the peak of their profession had made some truly jaw dropping stuff.
Alex doubted he could get to that level in a normal human life time on his own. He lacked the resources, mostly other people, to accomplish that. No one to help solve problems, no easy access to materials physical or intellectual. No one to help with the design. No other experts to consult. Just him and whatever books or research he stumbled across. No purpose built workshop. No access to a power grid.
No sandal big enough to deal with… “No bad Alex don’t think about that.”
Alex had explored more during this time and well, it seemed even worse than he imagined. He was pretty sure that there were monsters in the city that could solo the Beastlings, without breaking a sweat. Like all of them. At once.
Here he was, hoping that they didn’t notice him while he just killed off as many spiders and Beastlings as he could. Even farming was becoming questionable. He had gotten so proficient that he spent most fights bored. Alex was in limbo strong enough to deal with the absolute weakest enemies, even if he might struggle with some encounters due to numbers. Or have issues with being jumped, his golems able to handle one problem, but if another force decided to intervene…. The materials he was collecting while looting were not worth it, literal tons of bone sitting in his necklace, a half dozen spare frames and crappy replacement cores for the four bone golems. Hundreds more able to be made from his relentless harvesting. The few cores that were even remotely comparable to Eins and the two generalist cores in his necklace were too valuable to grind through like he had he beastling ones. He had like five sitting around.
He had destroyed 100 times that amount to make the three that Zwei used. Right now, he was a crafter who had maxed the lowest level of his profession, and farmed the materials needed. Too weak to go into the higher level areas for better loot, unable to defeat stronger monsters.
Aside from the dubious benefit from his continued looting of the city under those conditions, Alex might as well just pick a spot and fortify. Settle in for his lifetime, give up on ever getting out. Or he could make a lateral move.
Lateral move it was. He needed protection for his plans to work. Already he had too many close calls. Had to use too many healing spells on himself. He had far too many times he was grateful for the protections he had for poisons and disease. If outside the city was worse than where he stood right now. It wasn’t a matter of getting more skilled.
Alex fully expected that he would need the resources in cities to survive in the wastelands. He simply didn’t have them. He could not adapt and overcome if he had nothing to work with.
He needed more than that. He was basically a level five in a level one hundred area. Grinding his way up to level twenty wouldn’t hurt but it also wouldn’t change anything. The first time something really nasty stumbled on him he was dead either way. Unless he wasn’t, was his current thought.
He had to risk those encounters. He had no illusions, at some point he would draw the attention of something he just couldn’t fight and couldn’t escape from. Planning otherwise was pointless. For this plan to work he needed to deliberately gather specific resources regardless of the risks of willy-nilly searching. He also needed to keep an eye out for a lair. A place he really could shack up. His creations would need more time to build than anything he had done outside the tower. It was not something he was going to risk working on while on the move.
To have everything he needed and still be running around rather than working on his solution. Nope, not happening.
Where to start though. The last time he had gotten all excited he raided the magical college, such a disappointment that. Alex found what he thought was some stunningly good booze in a few locked and enchanted cabinets and drawers. The remains of enchantments far beyond his ability to replicate. A few books, mostly just interesting not helpful, rare and kept in storage. That was it. No research notes, no partially complete projects or piles of materials. No scientific equipment, hell he was still looking for a proper set of enchanting tools. Any of the cool stuff in the building had been lost when enchantments failed, and the elements or monsters got inside. He wouldn’t put it past the place to never have had what he was looking for in the first place.
This place fucked with his head, on the one hand it was a fantasy world. On the other hand, it had the feel of a ‘modern’ society at about the WW2 era. Well-developed infrastructure and society, a military that simultaneously had tanks and self-propelled artillery, that also had motorized infantry using swords and spears.
Guns had no place, beyond the siege artillery aspect. Magic and magical abilities and technology had made certain things pointless. It was fucking with Alex’s head, he wished it was one or the other. A typical fantasy world would not deceive him the way this place constantly did. He was constantly getting a case of déjà vu, it was so familiar like older European towns that he forgot he was in a world of magic.
All of that left Alex staring at his map, at the holograms his bracers produced. Where could he find the metals he needed? The specific magical crystals/cores. Which buildings might have them, and how could he get there?
~ * ~
Eventually Alex’s stubbornness had paid off, yeah it took way longer than he would have liked. The hunt for materials was ongoing, collecting what he needed one piece at a time. Often, he had to manually process subpar shit into something he could maybe use.
The cost was killing him though. He had been crawling around in one of the few ‘park’ areas when his hand had hit the edge of a covered hole. The first thing he realized was that he was staring at the stump of his right hand followed by the agonizing rush of pain and spurting blood. He managed to apply a tourniquet to his arm and began to cast healing spells for the potent venom. Other enchantments on him had already begun driving it back but still. He spent the entire fight unaware of what was going on. He lost a hand to some centipede thing whose body was larger around than his torso.
Eins had killed the thing, then he spent several months growing his hand back using stupidly complex and draining healing spells. During that time, he had to shack up most of the day getting very little done aside from studying, he just didn’t have the magical capacity to do any actual work and the drain left him physically exhausted. Of course he had to spend a stupid amount of time learning those spells with one hand but, he was starting to chalk that up as the cost of doing business.
There was something seriously wrong about the city. Shit just didn’t make sense, some places had everything you would expect, like the people there had just disappeared. Others looked like they had been systematically evacuated, still others had shit he couldn’t figure out going on. Imagine Fallout with poor design, finding children’s toys in an armory for example, but with no reason behind it. No crazy raiders or religious cult placing them there, just toys in an armory. He had even tested them, figuring that absent other information if toys were in an armory, they must in fact be weapons. But no, they really were toys.
He had decided not to deploy more golems, the five he had were pushing his control, and the larger the group got the more trouble he was running into. The vary nature of a golem prevented him from throwing them in his storage item, as they were magically living things.
It was becoming more difficult to hide, more difficult to disengage from the fights. The city also seemed to hit some sort of critical mass, the swarming creatures had begun to fill up previously safe/ empty areas. This was more than the normal cycles, kind of like an eclipse, something that was both inevitable yet took too long to build towards for him to see an obvious pattern.
The Beastlings were expanding their numbers probably pushing into the hundreds of thousands maybe millions by now. That tended to draw out more of the stronger monsters. Solitary and colonial spiders had started to expand filling the streets with webbing, where none existed before. Dire doggos had been moving in unprecedented packs several dozen strong.
He suspected that it was the Beastlings behind this, albeit unintentionally. They were simply an expanding food source, removing the population restrictions on other species.
~ * ~
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” As Alex sprinted down a maintenance corridor in one of the skyscrapers, those back halls that let the buildings workers get access to the vital functions without interfering with the rest of operations. He was being chased, and he hadn’t even picked the fight he was just in the way a Beastling war party. The thousands strong group had caught him as he was sweeping through this building. Small mercy that only part of the horde was chasing him. Two golems held the rear withdrawing in the face of overwhelming numbers. Eins still stood next to him and the remaining two were pushing forward in the front.
Two enemies rounded the corner in front of him only to be pounced upon by the lead bone golems. The resistance didn’t last long. Only a few seconds, but the sounds coming from that end told Alex that he was surrounded. Looking around frantically for another path, he didn’t see any good options and the stone walls were not the type of thing he wanted to send a golem to tearing through.
Bad option it was then, he had Eins kick down a door to a storage closet. It was close to the corner the newcomers had come from, that gave them a chance to pile into the door. In any case he needed to get his squishy self out of the line of fire, he also needed to find somewhere suitable for his golems to hold. This was that place, not ideal but the best he could do. A quick check of the room showed it to be a solid defensive position, one he could tuck himself into and more or less let the golems run rampant.
He almost believed that until a thrown spear slammed directly thru his left hand into his shoulder, he had barely had time to raise his hand when the projectile arrived. It threw him into the storage room, the shaft banging on the door making his stumbling fall excruciatingly painful.
The protections he had for toxins and poisons kicked in immediately, the items containing the enchantments heating up until they were almost blisteringly hot. Alex had Eins rip the spear out, only being careful to avoid opening up the wound further. He activated other enchantments that began a passive regeneration on his wounds, all this while focusing inward to slowly knit the deep portions of the wound together with healing spells he cast. The loss of blood, and the pain was making him woozy and weak, so he sat out of the way alternatively focusing on healing his wounds and trying, mostly failing to rotate his golems in and out of combat.
The improvised strong point let him focus on the fight from relative safety. The corridor itself could only really hold two golems on either side leaving one free to guard him.
Once he got a handle on his injuries at least to the point where he wasn’t going to bleed out, as time went on Alex sent Eins out to replace the damaged golems so that they could return for repairs. The bone golems durability for such prolonged fights was lacking as he had to send Eins out more and more frequently as time went on. The steel golem was also accumulating damage at an uncomfortable rate.
As time passed Alex began collecting the bodies of the slain Beastlings they had been choking the corridors, which gave his golems some breathing room it also appeared to be drawing more of the creatures to his location.
Alex was pinned, even when there was a lull in the attack, he couldn’t move out. His injuries were still in need of more serious tending and the Golems were nearly wrecked from the constant battles. Straight up fights were their specialty, but they really needed maneuvering room too shine. Both materials and the design of the golems frames were less than ideal for the long term slugfest where they stood and fought toe to toe rather than the skirmish fights he had been in so far. Using a combination of mobility and durability to crush the opposition.
As he re-attached Zwei’s arm and still needed to reactivate Vier, who had taken a devastating chest blow destroying the core, he planned his next move. “Ok, I clearly need to be more careful about having a fallback position, and I need to hole up when I see the Beastlings getting riled like this. Too close for comfort this time. If I didn’t have this place I’d be overrun.”
Several hours of straight up fighting, followed by a three day period of laying low waiting for the tide of Beastlings to recede. “Well, nothing for it, just have to learn and move on.”
~ * ~
Crouched before an unassuming building that he hoped would have more of what he needed, Alex reviewed. On the one hand the squat structure seemed right at home on this street. It matched in almost every way. Almost. Small details didn’t, just off. Not the sort of thing Alex could quantifiably explain. Probably wouldn’t have noticed if the city wasn’t dead.
The security was bothering him, potted plants and decorative stone pillars waist high. “Make it difficult to drive a vehicle into the building.”. The ways that the windows and what he could see of the interior, would create killing fields. It might be a coincidence.
Except he was pretty sure it wasn’t. Neither the area nor the building matched that level of paranoia. He felt like a farmer staring at a farm holding a missile silo, a place that the unaware might not notice anything wrong. A trained eye might just think things were strange, or odd. Just a bit too much security. Odd people that don’t act the same way as the rest of the local farmers. That same wrongness filled the building.
Grumbling, he considered his options. “On the one hand that is sketchy as fuck… entirely possible I won’t be able to get here again if I pass it by, not with how things are going. Might miss the chance to hit my intended target for the same reasons… Hidden tax office or something more interesting… either way it’s not like any place is guaranteed to have the metals I am looking for. Probably would openly advertise if it was just a minor government office. Is it government? Or something else?”
Only one way to find out, and not one to pass over a chance encounter like this Alex and his golems broke cover for the building, slipping inside. The gloomy interior had a rundown feel, broken but not lifeless. Moving forward he began to clear the bottom floor. He wasn’t seeing anything that stood out, the same broken trash that hundreds of other buildings had. The top floor containing a mandatory safe with little of value. Becoming annoyed he rechecked the bottom floor. Something was off, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. He sat staring at one of the end offices.
His mind itching, telling him to put it together. He rechecked the room then the hall he stood in. A smile trying to creep upon his face. They were different sizes. The room was too small, it didn’t match the halls length. The window showed that office wall should be significantly further back.
He started to carefully examine it now noticing barely perceptible traces of mana drifting away from a damaged enchantment. He had Zwei tear the wall down, his fingers finding it difficult to gain purchase. They still did the trick and without making an obnoxious amount of noise.
Alex swore in his head at what was revealed. A steep set of stairs going down, more like what he would find on a ship than in a building going down into darkness. He doubted it was just a basement, or a maintenance ladder, not with an enchantment to hide it.
Alex quite rightly feared the underground, in fact he never went there. Rarely going into basements unless he was absolutely sure it was only a basement. Utterly unconnected to the rest of a cities underground infrastructure.
He didn’t fear the darkness, he feared what lived in it. His helmet allowed him to see in pitch black conditions. Important for living in a city with no power, and for searching without a light to give away your position. Important against things that could see in the black.
He had on the darkest of nights seen ‘creatures’ true horror movie monsters come out, on the darkest of nights. Sliding though the city, preying on any that got in their path. He never got close or challenged them. They were the rulers of the city on those nights, and then they slunk back with the coming of the dawn. Back underground.
No, he wouldn’t risk it, not when he had seen them exit buildings, or crawl from the street. He wouldn’t challenge them in their environment.
This stairway didn’t smell stale, it was connected to somewhere, an underground maintenance at the very least it had a method to vent. For Alex it was a bust, he had hoped that it would lead to… Well, he hoped for a basement or sealed warehouse. Basically, what he was looking at without the scary underground monsters.
He hesitated, only because the wall hadn’t been tough, the monsters hadn’t broken through it. Did he dare risk it or, was that too far, too much risk for too little gain? He would go down if he had a guarantee that it had what he wanted, Alex wasn’t a coward even if he hated every second, he would do what he deemed necessary for the completion of the mission.
“No fucking way, not doing it.” He began to turn away, then stopped. “Shit I can’t just walk away. At least poke my head down there. Might be everything I could ever want just stacked on pallets or some shit… Could be nothing. No reason I can’t quickly check and nope out if it looks shitty.”
“Fucking hell.”
He was going to do it, go down the stairs and see what was there. Make his decision when he can see the lay of the land. With three golems in front and two behind he descended. He pulled a stone from his necklace as they went down, one he enchanted to act like a flare. He might be able to blind creatures of darkness if they weren’t blind. If the books he inherited were correct, very few actually blind creatures lived in the dark, at least in these lands differing from back on earth. Most had some mostly magical way of seeing, meaning the eyes did function and might be highly susceptible to bright lights.
The room at the bottom of the stairs might best be described as a rotten storage room, toppled and rotten shelving and boxes. Scattered debris, piles of waste. Typical, even viewed through the cool green of his helmet. It was also cold, noticeably colder than the outside. He noticed this cold, while he largely ignored the climate in the city due to his enchantments.
Alex moved slowly having his golems sweep through the room with far more thoroughness than usual, only one way out. He had to keep the stairs secure. Getting cut off down here was a worst case scenario he wasn’t going to take that chance. Once the basic room was clear Vier and Fünf guarded the door at one end, while he searched for loot.
He took everything including parts that looked destroyed, leaving the shelves and other obvious debris. He would sort everything later, the stuff down here was hidden he had no idea what it might contain. Aside from the obvious loot like metals, tools and gems, he didn’t want to miss in gaming terms crafting recipes, maps, or research. He wasn’t going to waste time down here to sort either.
He moved to the door offsetting himself in case of traps and had the golems open and move in. He had gotten the hang of controlling his golems when they were out of his line of sight. He also found that basic room clearing tactics still applied in a magical world. Clearing the bottleneck and dominating the room, he and four of the golems did this while Eins guarded the rear. Eins was the only golem he trusted with that along with being his best combatant.
The four golems went in two checking the corners and two heading down the center at a diagonal, he followed a second later button hooking left towards the more secure side. Moving in to increase the combat capabilities of his troops by adding his direct sight to the situation. Eins holding the rear, and moving in once the room was secure or they pushed far enough in. Alex didn’t like it, and he knew some instructors would explode if he suggested it in other circumstances. He just didn’t have the numbers or quality to leave troops holding checkpoints. Truly securing a large position was impossible, he also refused to horror movie moment and split up.
[ Authors Note: There are two main ways to enter a room tactically button hook which is basically a roll towards the nearest wall, check the fatal front then move around the entrance staying by the wall, if you are on the left side of the door you move to the left side when you enter, the other method is a cross and that is where you go from the left side of the entrance to the right side]
This room was another supply room, functionally identical to the last, with two doors on the sides. The door on his left leading to the rest of the building and the street, the door on the right was more, both in design and placement. If his mental map was right that door had to lead out from under the building.
“Left first, then the obvious.” He whispered.
Alex gestured to the door on the left, his golems stacking up, and after he nodded, breaching the room. This room was filled with broken and looming machinery, a utility room.
It also had a broken wall with a large crack leading to the street sewers. That filled him with dread, and he slowly pulled back out of the room, not bothering to loot. Keeping two golems near the door he moved back towards the more interesting door.
Next to it was a security booth, which had been broken, it looked like structural damage and not like it had been assaulted. The door itself also had a central wheel like a ship door to seal it. Drei began to force that to rotate, magical strength barely able to turn it. Luckily it did turn quietly, just slowly. The booth had no obvious mechanical or magical controls in it.
“Early warning system, entrance in the basement. Guard or whoever wasn’t going into that place… definitely posted from this side, probably just a record keeper to prevent unauthorized access. The people who worked here were probably trusted, to enter and exit as needed.”
Alex had once more found himself thinking aloud just to hear a human voice. He avoided talking too much with the golems with limited success. He mostly figured that they would become his Wilson in not too long, he wasn’t there yet. Mostly. Just ignore his slip ups.
As the door opened releasing a blast of fetid air, from being hermetically sealed. As Zwei and Drei moved in to check, a rumble hit the building. One of the alpha predators boldly stomping the streets above, released an ear splitting howl. Followed by a charge and a tremendous ground shaking crash leading to terrible sounds of animal combat.
Alex largely ignored it until he heard the door to the utility room crash. Spinning to check he found the room being swarmed, his escape already cut off.
Fuuuuuuck. Passed through his mind as he fell into bullet time. Fight or flee.
Flee too many and too exposed. Take chances with the door or get topside. Door topside is not safe and too many between his current location and the stairs, more enemies rushing to the stairs. Current opposition in a panic. Won’t last. Will attack once a chance to regroup is gained, or prey is spotted.
Eins, Vier, and Fünf had already engaged some of the outliers. The managed to cut through them but he already noticed that it was no longer the effortless killing of Beastlings. The creatures were too fast, strong, and tough. He fell back into the unsecured room behind him, the rearguard following.
Eins grabbing the door and pulling it shut behind them. The force the golem used causing it to slam shut and deform jamming it in the frame. Ripping the inside wheel off the door.