Chương 16

"That's a lot fucking higher than level 60." Wade hissed out to the other two. Illy elbowed him lightly, "I said lowest golem we saw was level 60, I didn't say jack shite about that being the average level." Level 122. Right. So far he'd been able to somewhat survive down here, even with the zone considered 'lethal difficulty'. Turns out, he'd just run into the mooks. The easy to kill chaff enemies that swarmed players.

Wade thumped the back of his head against the wall, feeling a nervous chuckle eek out of his throat. The boss skeleton he'd beat up had been chump change compared to this.

"Sure, it not looking good." Leon agreed, also having poked his head over, likely done the same as Wade with his own identify.

"We still safe for now."

"It's not spotted us yet," Illy whispered.

"Wade, trust me, you'll know when they do. We stick here, and wait it out, it'll be fine." It came to a stop in the middle of the road. Right over the manhole lid. Wade went right back to hiding behind the wall, heart hammering.

"ORIGIN SOURCE LOCATED." Wade continued to translate for the crew, and then they heard something worse than angry Nathir: The sound of metal scraping on metal. Like say... a manhole being lifted off its lip.

"For fecks sake, I want off this wild ride." Illy hissed. His curiosity got the better of him, he looked out the window again, right next to the others. All of them crouched down behind the wall, only foreheads lifted over. Even the elf's ears were pressed down to her side as if trying to make her head the smallest it could be. The machine had extended some kind of small four-fingered arm, connected to the center chassis with one of those glowing blue lights.

That had zipped down like it belonged in a demented claw machine game, grabbed the top of the lid and lifted. Without the cover even being completely off, the skeletons were already rushing, squeezing under to get out, struggling against one another. One skull turned around, seeking where their targets had run off to. Another noticed the golem looming above them.

It climbed out of the manhole properly and then started to charge forward, half-racing on all fours, acting as feral as they had this entire time - directly for the golem. Was… was the universe finally going to give them all a freebie? Or were the skeletons going to link up with the golem somehow, climb up its legs and then whisper secrets such as where the juicy half-limping human's location was? The golem's top spinning sphere stopped spinning.

It rotated only once more and locked gaze with the skeletons pouring out of the manhole. If it could frown, Wade had a feeling it was doing exactly that. The skeletons started clawing and attacking the sides of the golem's legs, pickaxes slamming into the armored plates, digging a half inch before halting. But that was it. Its massive health bar flashed red, and the percentage remained exactly where it'd been prior. The golem raised the afflicted leg and stomped down.

Press gang ganged: 27/62"WORKER DISTURBANCE LOCATED. ELIMINATING."

"Ach well, that answers that then. Been wonderin' if the golems would have a go at the skeletons or not." Illy said to the side, eyes glued on the carnage.

"City was clean, only ran into more of the bony blighters round the edges. So never got to see if they were working together or not." Two massive metal hands detached from its side, then floated in the air without arms. No glowing lines of blue connected these, they simply flew through the air with controlled precision, far larger than the little claw hand had been. This pair of hands rotated to the rear of the golem and sunk into something by the abdomen section.

When they pulled back out, the ends were no longer hands but instead dug into some kind of giant stone slab? Wade recognized them the very next second - those were the stone slabs that he'd seen at the very start of all this, from the quarry outside the tunnel he'd woken up in. Leon put both his hands over his ears, "Would recommend covering ears now. Hearing damage." Wade followed through. Selena seemed to be the most nervous about this, going to lengths to cover her long ears.

It made him real nervous to see the level 25 seem afraid. The hands leveled those giant slabs at the charging skeletons, floating high above for a good angle. Blue glowing runes lit up on the sides. Then he heard the crack of gunfire, several dozens per second. Pale glowing lines rained out from the center of the slab, as if it were unleashing a torrent of machine gun fire from those two giant glowing slabs.

One moment the skeletons were piling out, running, and the next they were being peppered with a dozen traces of light. A lot of hits clearly sent the skeletons reeling away, melting holes through the metal helmets, spinning them on their feet. Notifications started climbing up his side, showing the skeletons getting whittled down. Wade stared.

"Are those magic machine guns? What the fuck." Illy shook her head, still holding her ears.

"No chance, machine guns have a higher rate of fire than that, but this bastard's doing way more damage per hit. More like a magical M2HB setup. Some weapon's gone and made the military industrial complex look like a bloody fairy tale. And the bastard's got two of 'em."

"I didn't know you were a military nutcase." Wade said, watching as the destruction rained down on the mob of skeletons.

"Says the fecking yank. Whit kind of American are you anyway?"

"The kind that doesn't know anything about guns." Wade hissed. But after all this... maybe that'd be a good idea to get involved in. Actually, given his skyviper archer ability and how it triggered on ranged hits with a clear link to how hard that hit dealt damage, a rifle or pistol might be the single most optimal weapon he could bring with him. Sky's the limit. Play did mention he'd be sent back into this world, and Wade was all about the idea of adapt or die. How hard could it be to get a gun in LA?

Or a grenade launcher? Just what did the system include in its calculation as the initial damage it based the follow-up debuff on? If the entire explosive charge of a tossed dynamite stick was part of it, could that be combined with Illy's daggers to get even more oomph? Most shots just went through skeletal ribcage or ripped apart bones if they hit, knocking Wade out of his daydreams. Still quite loud, but not as bad. Selena on his side had her feathers puffed out all the way in a way that meant discomfort.

Wade felt an odd whisper of a suggestion to reach a hand out to her shoulderpad and knock it twice. It would mean something, like a hug? Or some kind of acknowledgement of shared pain. More something like'I feel you, we're all in this together.' shared among comrades? He decided to listen to the whispered advice of his blessing, and reached out a hand. Two knocks on the metal exactly, while his head faced an angle that felt right.

He didn't have face feathers to move, but he somehow had the feeling it would be fine without. Selena turned to him, Feathers slowly flattening back down. He could tell some kind of message had correctly passed between them, and the elf was slightly consoled given the ear twitches? This felt like something more specific to moonwing elves, but also somewhat generally known in the world? The information was rapidly vanishing away from his mind.

The golem took their attention back the very next second as something changed. It wasn't moving its fire to cover more ground, it would focus one skeleton per magical slab, raining them down until they were shredded up, and then remained shooting them for another full second to verify they were truly dead. That extra second was the real bottleneck. It wasn't fast enough to stem the full tide of skeletons crawling or bounding after it. The golem seemed to realize this at the same time.

Two more hands detached from the side and started to float forward, like giant open palms. They rotated around on what felt like an invisible circular rail above until they were at the very front of the golem, now looking like giant phalanx shields for the magic slab-guns floating behind. Then it got to slapping the undead with those palms. However strong the skeletons had been against the group, they weren't surviving the one-hit kills that this golem was delivering. Squash. Squash. Squash.

Press gang ganged: 39/62 And then he got the most blessed notification of them all: Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Level up!

"Holy shit." Wade said, watching the notification as his level went from three to four. Opening up his stats showed him the best news ever - he now had two free stat points floating around to put down.

"I got a level from that. How? Partial damage?" He had hit a lot of these skeletons from rocks bouncing off after hitting their original targets, and not all these extra attacks had ended up lethal.

"We're fair certain that's how it works," Illy said.

"Last hits likely get you the lion's share of the experience, but any wee bit of damage seems to get counted."

"Either of you level up yet?" Leon shrugged.

"I hit most skeletons at the ladder, but not doing much damage. No level ups for me." The golem continued to shoot the entire time as well, all four floating hands moving independently from one another. It's legs shuffled around, making the entire golem look like it was sliding around the area, trying to get a better angle to squash rats at its feet. Almost looked comical, spraying down an unhinged amount of firepower just to break down an already half-destroyed single target.

But the rate the skeletons were crawling out of the manhole outpaced the speed the golem was destroying them, mostly due to the giant taking its sweet time moving around to rain down death on individual skeletons rather than being effective. Wade wasn't sure if the golem was just dumb - or if it considered the skeletons so far below its threat threshold, it didn't see any reason to put effort into this. They surrounded it now, attacking from all angles.

A few started hurling their pickaxes at the stone slabs raining down fire on them. That's when the golem actually began to take this seriously. Hands immediately redirected from smashing the insects to protecting the slabs, palm blocking the flying pickaxes. The sheer number grew as the golem's most effective weapon was redirected to protecting its armaments. They actually knocked a single percentage point off from attacking the legs with such numbers.

The golem's hands were fast, flying to intercept hits left and right, and its feet were taking out more with each stomp - but too many were surrounding it. One pick got past and slammed into one of the slabs, creating a deep crack in the otherwise smooth surface. The entire slab's runes flashed white and the weapon halted function.

"Oh, it's right mad now." Illy whispered, as the group watched the golem freeze for a moment, then start moving with far more mobility.

"See what I mean though? That's what I was on about when I said the parts could be damaged with a proper enough plan." Press gang ganged: 49/62 Leon froze for a second, then grinned.

"Oh, now I get level. Is nice surprise. You level yet Illy?"

"Naw, don't expect to either. Daggers did hardly any damage, so me contribution to that fight was all support. Plus I was higher level than ya." Soon the skeletons had no more pickaxes to throw at the golem's remaining weapons, leaving it free to start crushing the rest of them with its hands again. Any searching for a discarded pickaxe would be focused on, the golem clearly aware of where weapons were and was going for asset denial.

It even slammed the broken slab down on a further away target that was out of reach for the legs. The kill count drastically increased as the golem put in the work and cleaned up the streets. It hardly took a minute after that. One percent and some change in the total health pool had gone down. And the skeletons were wiped out to the very last one. Press gang ganged: 62/62 Press gang ganged complete! One storefront coin added to inventory. You feel more confident in your ability to survive.

That was it for Wade's first pursuers. No skeleton remained that knew he existed. Only the weasel lurking out there somewhere would know Wade was in town. The golem froze, the remaining magical machine gun abruptly halting fire, while the golem's palm remained flat on the ground where the last skeleton had once been.

The quest hadn't been lying, Wade certainly felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders and now he had another coin to work with - whenever he figured out how to really use the storefront, he was already on the way to amassing a small war chest. There was nothing left to snitch on him, he had three others that could help him survive, and it felt like the danger was reset now. So long as the golem didn't find the four of them. Which Illy and Leon would be freaking out far more if that were possible.

The sphere eye detached from the inner section of the golem, floated upwards still tethered by the glowing blue lines, then scanned around the road. Satisfied, all four hands withdrew back to some default position, floating above it in formation.

"WORKER DISTURBANCE ELIMINATED. ALL HUMANS, RETURN TO WORK IMMEDIATELY. STREET CLEANING REQUEST SENT." All four hands sunk back to their openings, stone slabs being returned to the rear of the spider-golem's equipment storage. It then turned on all six legs and lumbered off.

"I thinking we off hook then." Leon said as Wade relayed what the golem spoke about.

"Not entirely. You know it'll be makin' its rounds round back," Illy turned to Wade, giving him a very slight nudge.

"Happened last time, that's how we got away. Made a right racket on another street and drew the patrol off."

"It work good, big mudak is predictable." Leon patted his shoulder, before turning his back to the wall and taking it easy again.

"Take break, do breathing exercises." Feeling all the panic flood out of him from those simple reassurances, Wade slumped against the wall as well, allowing his tense body to go slack. He felt just happy to be breathing. Illy and the elf were still watching through the window, following the steps of the golem as it lumbered away back on whatever patrol path it was set to.

"So, we're… safe now?" Wade asked. Illy shrugged, eyes glued on the walking behemoth.

"Aye, I say we head back down to the sewers, stick to the original plan. Just wait here 'til we know what the golem's new patrol route's like, and slip back through the manhole. Daft bugger didn't even put the lid back on."

"Is waiting for cleaning golem." Leon said.

"Likely that will be putting lid and road back together."

"All right, so all in favor for hiding here for an hour until we're sure we got the golem's patrol path figured out, and then sneak back through the sewer?" Wade asked.

"Aye."

"Da."

"The votes have it." Wade said, nodding. Frankly, he just wanted to stay here and hide for a bit, until he felt safe again. They withdrew back deeper into the room, and Selena seemed almost relieved the group wasn't doing anything dumb. The elf and Illy seemed to share a look at each other, and Illy pointed out the window and then made an exaggerated 'no' gesture. Selena seemed to understand, feathers and ears twitching in complete agreement. So that's how they've been communicating to one another till now.

Wade filed that in the back of his head, adding more data points to work with. So far he was somewhat certain he could understand body language and act on that in a way, the earlier shoulder knocking proved it. But actually saying words in elvish was still something that wasn't coming to mind, unlike the body language. That blessing was starting to really frustrate him. He felt so close to figuring it out, and it just wasn't quite coalescing yet. Like something on the tip of his tongue.

"You're no civilian, are you Wade?" Illy asked in the new silence as she turned to Wade, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"Most of the others I was around were too panicked to even speak proper. Are you a fighter or summat?"

"Him? No." Leon chuckled.

"He too lanky and malnourished. Maybe military reserve?"

"Can't be military. He's a yank that don't know jack shite about guns."

"I'm a retail worker." Wade clarified.

"Just that, nothing else. I already had my freaking out moment a while back, thank you." Leon nodded with a hum.

"Then, is just shock and dissociation." The phone buzzed in his pocket. You should tell them your list of debuffs buddy (¬‿¬)"Fuck off Play." Wade hissed back at the screen.

"You got something in your debuffs?" Illy asked, now looking him over.

"Mostly just regular leg and back pains, and I need glasses. There's one that says I'm manic, but you all see I'm perfectly functioning." She raised an eyebrow at that, "Would you mind reading it word for word for us? Just to be sure." Wade rolled his eyes but opened up the debuffs, finding the mania one. And then he froze as he found there was another debuff listed right under it. A new one. He hadn't thought about it for a while, because his arm had felt fine.

More than fine, it was the one thing in his entire body that wasn't hurting. It moved without issue, felt strong and healthy. There was a reason for that, and the System clearly listed it out. Blackrot - Anti-mana entity expanding within host tissues. Causes enhanced biological functions and loss of control as total mass increases. 7% of total mass infected. What. The. Fuck.