Chương 23: Chapter 22 – Intensely Vengeful Shield

The centaur bolted at me. The horse body of fused corroded steel moved really damn fast. He was at me in a second, swinging the massive scythe. I readied my shields. Sarah threw herself into its path. Ah, great. The scythe hit her shield. White flame erupted upon impact. Sarah flew away, and the scythe bounced off. She stabilized on her feet, not even hitting the wall. I glanced at her.

"You didn't need to do that." She reset her stance without looking at me. Her armor still had the cracks from Peace's crystal. The crusader cross on her chestplate was held together by nothing but faith and structural optimism. Seven globes of crimson flame streaked overhead, each one trailing a comet tail of sparks. They hit the centaur in a staggered spread, face, gut, face, throat, face, flanks, and face. They exploded into massive shockwaves. Those tore the centaur's shell apart.

Corroded plating blew off in sheets, exposing the dark machinery underneath. The force threw it backward, hooves scrabbling for purchase on the ruined floor, chunks of its armor clattering across the arena like shrapnel. Astarielle, at the room's edge, was already forming more crimson globes. The centaur staggered, trying to right itself. Its torso was exposed, inner workings visible, servos and cables, and something that pulsed with a sickly green bioluminescence. Ashy descended from above in the sword form.

"Haa!" She slashed at its face, her blade tearing through the steel, destroying the sensors that served as eyes. She got half of the face. The centaur turned, trying to hit her with his shoulder. She instantly changed direction, flying over it.

"Whoosh!" She floated over the shoulder and stabbed through the torso's side, tearing out pieces of inner machinery.

"Chaa!" I had to gag her. Astarielle's fireballs got ready. She unleashed them, five more orbs hitting the centaur. All in the chest. The exposed sections where Astarielle's fireballs had torn the plating away were already changing. The metal underneath was shifting, darkening, thickening. Like scar tissue forming in real time, except the scar was denser than the original. The spell exploded. Each explosion as large as before, but they tore out much less material from the centaur.

Half of the destroyed face sensors had been repaired on its face. Ashy flew over it, slashing. The blade cut the plates, but not so deeply, only getting one scanner. I glared at the monster. It had some form of adaptive defense. The centaur charged at me, swinging the massive scythe. Sarah jumped in its way, planting her feet on the floor. The scythe clashed with the shield, knocking it back in a burst of white flame. She didn't get pushed that far back. Adaptive defense, usual offense, I noted in my mind.

Sarah fell to one knee, coughing out blood. She wasn't as healed as I thought.

"Stop getting in its way," I shouted at her.

"Warriors of faith never falter!" she shouted back. Ah, how wonderful. Get yourself zeroed out for no reason. That's going to help. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Astarielle shifted her energy. Crimson lightning crackled from both her hands, forking into the centaur's torso. The electricity lit up its frame, arcing between joints, seizing its motor functions. The centaur locked up mid-step, trembling in place, servos grinding.

For about three seconds. Then it moved through it, shrugging the paralysis off like a minor inconvenience. And it roared. The sound was mechanical and organic at once, a grinding, screeching howl that vibrated in my chest. The walls answered. Panels burst open at every height, and corroded sentinels dropped from them, car-sized, chitin and metal, glowing mandibles. At least twenty of them. Ashy descended on the closest one. She cut it, damaging it along its length, but not cleaving it in two.

Astarielle flung her arms to the sides, firing two crimson fireballs. They hit the sentinels, exploding. Parts tore from the sentinels, but they weren't destroyed. They shared the adaptability with the centaur. All right. I had to end this in a single move.

"Sarah!" I shouted.

"Extract yourself, or you're getting zeroed out."

"There is no retreat for the devout!" She shouted back, hitting a sentinel, exploding it with a burst of white flame.

"No surrender!" Great, she was practically unconscious, running on zealous fervor alone. But fine. Whatever. Suit yourself. I pulled on my power, and through it, on my storage. From its depths, I pulled all the tentacle worms I had. Seventeen years of digging to Hell to get new demons got me about six thousand tentacle worms. Thousands of tiny portals flashed through the room, tentacle worms falling out, wiggling in excitement. Sarah's mouth gaped open, staring at the biblical-style rain of tentacle worms.

Even the centaur took a second to look at them. The worms started covering him, biting and lashing and stabbing at his shell. With no effect, but they tried. He charged at me. Instead of rushing in, Sarah knocked a tentacle worm off her head. I exhaled. I hated using Elsha's tricks. But I did it anyway, pushing another five layers to my shields, the ones Elsha taught me to make. The centaur stomped in front of me and swung, the scythe whistling through the air. My shields caught a pink fade from the extra layers.

Yeah, I really hated that. Not my style at all. But I needed to confuse its adaptive defense. Intensely Vengeful Shield. The scythe hit my shield. The crystalline blade exploded, shards flying around, leaving only the long handle in the centaur's hands. With a smirk, I pushed a jolt into every demon I had summoned. Detonate. The world went white. The explosion strained even the reinforced shields.

Six thousand simultaneous detonations thundered through the room, blinding and deafening me, filling the entire chamber. The explosion finished. The sentinels, the centaur, the room's side walls, Sarah, they all ceased to exist, deleted out of this reality within a split second. I told her to extract. While dusting off my suit, I stepped toward the room's other side.

[ENEMIES DEFEATED — CORRODED CENTAUR REAPER (with minions) (1)] [Drops: Reaper Core (Rare), Crystalline Scythe Fragment (Rare) (x4), Adaptive Plating (Uncommon) (x12), Sentinel Plating (Uncommon) (x6), Heavy Servo Core (Uncommon) (x4), Resonance Shard (Uncommon) (x3), Charged Mandible (Uncommon) (x2), Corroded Chitin (Common) (x48), 8 silver 64 copper, Centaur Schema (Rare)] Ha, would you look at that. A smile spread over my face. Multiple rare drops. The loot materialized in a pile near the center of the room.

I walked to it, boots crunching on debris. The Reaper Core sat on top, a sphere of dark metal the size of a fist, pulsing with faint green light. The schema next to it was a flat, rectangular plate, covered in engravings too fine to read with the naked eye. Astarielle. Ashy. They both appeared, Ashy straight in the sword form. They looked around. Ashy shifted to human form. She jumped up with both arms raised.

"Woo hoo! This was so awesome! I can't believe I was part of that. I was really scared when you detonated me, but I didn't even feel anything. That was so cool. Squee!" I rolled my eyes, catching the glare from Astarielle. Yeah, she was going to take some getting used to. I motioned at the loot pile.

"Get the core, blade fragments, schema, and resonance shards. I'm unsummoning you with them to get them to Earth."

"Nice!" Ashy shouted, skipping to the pile, jumping over the rare loot, touching everything she could at once. Astarielle stepped to the pile, grabbing the parts Ashy couldn't reach. I unsummoned them. All the loot they touched vanished with them. Nice. At the far end of the arena, past the rubble, a staircase still stood. Partially collapsed, but navigable. I climbed it, each step sending small avalanches of dust and debris down behind me. I reached the top. The waystone stood in the middle of a small chamber.

The overseer's massive head hung in the air above, observing me. Completely still, the steel snake looked even bigger up close, but I knew he was watching me. I walked to the center, but stopped in front of the waystone. I looked up.

"Why did you help Peace?" The overseer's eyes didn't blink. Didn't shift. Its massive eyes fixed on me. I held its gaze for another few seconds. Waiting. Nothing. Whatever. I pressed my palm to the waystone. The stone surface lit up. Energy surged through me, scanning, cataloging, assigning. White text appeared. [FLOOR CLEARED — FLOOR 11] [Next floor: 18] [3/3] I triggered extraction.