Meg made sure they all took a moment to munch on some dragon jerky for the +4 Stamina buff it provided to go along with the +2 Constitution buff from their sandwiches earlier, which still had about 3 hours remaining.
The main entry stairs included a flight that led downward from ground level, so they began there. The descent was quick, the stairs wide enough for them to walk three at a time, side by side. When they reached the lower floor there was a metal door labeled ‘B1’.
Logan volunteered to take the lead, but Allistor refused. He cast Barrier in front of himself, and had Logan open the door. Shotgun leveled and holding his breath, Allistor pushed through, only to find an empty corridor that stretched maybe a hundred feet. There was a guard station with a bulletproof window immediately to his left, and a gate made of hardened steel bars directly ahead. The door leading to the guard station was metal with a small window at eye level and a key fob reader to one side.
“Without power, how do we get through?” Lars asked from a few paces behind Allistor.
“There’s probably some kind of manual release, or keys. Let’s check inside the guard room.” Sam suggested.
Unsurprisingly, the door to the guard station was locked as well. Logan kicked it a few times, to no avail. He tried his massive axe, but it only left some deep scratches in the metal. They were all huddled around the door discussing how they might get through, when Dawn called out.
“Umm… guys?” They turned as one to see her standing on the other side of the gate, which stood open. “It wasn’t locked.” The grin on her face stretched from ear to ear as the others groaned or laughed.
“Nice one!” Nathan gave her a fist-bump, as did several others when they passed through the gate. Allistor hung back, still staring at the guard station door.
“I still think we need to get in here. There are probably going to be more locked doors and gates, and our best option for finding keys is in there.” He pointed through the window.
“There’s another door on this side.” Helen moved to the left and tried the door, which opened easily. “Maybe when the power went off, the locks were disabled?”
Sam shook his head. “That doesn’t seem right? They wouldn’t have such an easily disabled system securing all this gold. My guess is the last guards who were down here abandoned this place and didn’t bother to lock up when they left. Maybe they were being chased by newly spawned monsters.”
Amanda added, “Don’t forget, Paul sent people down here. They may have found keys or something that let them get beyond this point. If we see any bodies remaining, we should search them.”
They took a minute while Helen, Dawn, and Meg searched the guard station. They did find a ring of keys, which Meg put into her inventory. They also found some stun guns, more radios, and the most important find of all, a poster-sized map of the underground levels Helen pulled down off the wall.
Allistor studied the map intently, and watched as his own interface map filled out. He had the others all take a look as well, so none of them would be lost down there. Helen took charge of the map after they were done, saying she might be able to use it to level her Cartography skill. The map showed that this first level was mostly offices, storage, and a large room labeled as, ‘Printing Floor’
They broke into their five groups, four of them each taking a room to clear, then leapfrogging past the others to clear the next in line while the fifth group remained in the corridor as lookouts, or backup if necessary. The offices, storage rooms, and a conference room were quickly cleared with no evidence of monsters. The desks and cabinets had clearly been rifled through, probably by the previous parties sent down here.
The last and largest room was filled with rows of machines. Meg said, “I took the tour here as a kid. This is where they mint coins.” She pointed to a pair of large machines to their right. “Those big suckers stamp the blanks with whatever design they’re supposed to have.”
Dawn drifted over to one of them, exploring the machine with her eyes. A glint of gold caught her attention, and she stepped closer. Reaching her hand inside an opening at the end of a conveyor, she pulled it back out filled with gold coins. “Wooohoo!” she shouted. “Those guys that came down here before were morons. Lookit all this gold just sittin’ here.”
Allistor shook his head. “We don’t have time for that now. Just leave it there, and we’ll make sure everyone gets a hefty bonus when we’re done. Remember, each ounce of gold, or each one of those coins, is worth about twelve hundred klax. We’ll make sure each of you will be able to buy yourselves something nice on the open market.”
Dawn dropped the coins back where she found them, a disappointed look on her face. Allistor didn’t blame her – it wasn’t easy to drop shiny loot once you had your hands on it.
They split up into their groups and spread out across the massive room, advancing toward the other end as they checked behind each machine, in every closet, and under work tables. Near the end they found a badly shredded body in jeans and a denim shirt. Whatever had killed it hadn’t had an opportunity to feed on it.
Sam ventured, “The last party must have run into something here. They killed it, but not before it got one of them.” Allistor and the others agreed it was the likely scenario. Amanda, not squeamish about rotting corpses, quickly searched the body for keys or other useful items. Finding nothing, she returned to her group and retraced their steps back to the main corridor.
From there, they took another staircase headed downward. This time, the staircase led to another steel gate, which also stood open. When they stepped through, they found another guard station, with a pair of elevators directly across. The elevator doors stood open, and there was another human corpse inside one of them. Again, Amanda searched the body, while a few others searched the guard station, both finding nothing useful.
This corridor was lined with vault doors. Per the map, they stored both silver and gold coins in these vaults, as well as bullion to be used in making more coins. None of the doors had been opened, and they took the time to try each of the keys Meg had found on each of the doors, but none of them worked. There was a sophisticated looking panel with a large screen, camera, and number pad next to each one, but with the power off there was no way to use them or even tell what was needed to unlock them. So, they moved on. There were signs of a battle here, scuff marks on the floor, bullet holes in the wall at the end of the corridor, and a couple of blast marks that looked like someone had set off dynamite or similar explosives. The end of the corridor ended in a T-intersection with another elevator to the right, and a larger, heavier vault door to the left. The massive door, ten feet high by six feet wide and weighing several tons, stood ajar. Several more bodies lay here, legs or arms removed, huge gash and bite marks in them. One was missing its head altogether.
Very quietly, one group went to check the elevator while Amanda’s group helped her search the gruesome corpses. They came up with a chain necklace that had six funky-shaped keys strung on it, as well as a few intact weapons, some ammo, and a bloody laminated card with several sets of numbers printed in columns.
While they did all this, Allistor quietly whispered into his radio, “This must be as far as they got. Nobody looted these corpses, which means the survivors ran from whatever killed these people. The only place it can be is behind that door.”
McCoy reported via radio from inside the elevator. “This is an old-school elevator, got the metal cage and everything. Gotta be part of the original construction. It’s a simple pulley system, operates off a crank. Looks like we can disengage the motor and crank it by hand.”
“Alright, come back here and let’s see what kind of monster is in this room.” Allistor answered, still in a whisper. He wished he knew what level the dead people were. It would give him an idea of how well his group might fare against whatever it was.
Turning to look toward the elevator and McCoy’s approaching group, he saw Fuzzy sniffing at the air, his eyes on the door. He let out a low growl, barely audible to Alli
stor who was only a few feet away, then carefully set his beloved Fibble doll on the ground. After patting it once with a paw as if to tell it to stay put, he moved to stand next to Allistor, his hackles up and bristling.
They used the same plan as previous doors. Allistor cast Barrier, Logan yanked the door open. The room beyond was a large storage area that had probably once had boxes of neatly stacked and packed coins. Now it was nothing but wreckage, coins strewn everywhere, covering the floor in a thin layer in some places, piled into huge mounds in others. The tallest of the mounds stretched nearly to the fifteen-foot high ceiling in the back, left corner of the room.
There was no monster of any kind.
As Allistor stepped into the room, the coins underfoot ground together, the metal on metal contact making a scraping sound that echoed off the walls. When he set his second foot down, the pressure flipped a coin into the air, tiddlywinks style. It landed on a nearby pile, causing a small cascade. The tinkling lasted for several seconds as Allistor and everyone behind him cringed.
Allistor exhaled long and slow, letting loose a breath he’d been holding without realizing it. He took a third step into the room, trying his best not to make more noise than necessary. Logan stepped in behind him, along with Sam, Meg, and Lars. Just as Allistor turned to look back and shrug at the others, the mound of coins in the back corner burst upward in a volcanic eruption of gold. A grating, screeching roar accompanied the sudden explosion, and the upper half of a vaguely humanoid creature was exposed.
Cobalus Magnus
Level 25
Health: 23,000/23,000
The monster was easily twelve feet tall, with a round head on a skinny neck. Its ears extended out two feet on either side of its head, which sported both a protruding forehead and severe underbite, from which sharp, broken teeth jutted upward. Its body was thin, with corded muscle on shoulders and arms, and a grotesquely rounded potbelly. Its skin was a greenish grey with matted hair, and it stared at them with malevolent red eyes.
“It’s a goblin, sort of.” Logan mused as the thing began to thrash its way free of the pile. Gold coins stuck to its skin in random places, and the flesh seemed to be growing around the coins, absorbing them into itself like a tree growing around a nail.
“Biggest damned goblin I ever heard of.” Sam mused, raising his machine gun. “Let’s see if it bleeds!”
He opened fire on the thing, stitching a pattern across its chest as it struggled to free its legs from the heavy pile of metal coins. Black blood spurted from the wounds, but the monster barely seemed to notice. Logan joined in, both men moving to the side to allow others into the room. Each of the groups followed suit until they were all spread out along the back wall, firing at the monster. Nearly free of its bed, it plunged its sharply clawed three-fingered hands into the pile and flung great handfuls at the humans with significant force. Coins blasted them, moving maybe sixty feet per second, stinging as they hit but not penetrating skin. Several of the party members stopped firing to protect their faces with their arms or turn their backs to the projectiles.
Cobalus Magnus
Level 25
Health: 20,200/23,000
Their initial volleys hadn’t taken much health off the thing. Allistor was used to goblins being small, weak creatures that attacked in large groups. Individual goblins were easily dispatched, but they piled on in numbers and killed with a hundred small bites, scratches, and stabs.
Not this one. This was the granddaddy of goblin tanks.
Finally free of its pile, it reached down and took hold of a spear that none of them had even seen behind yet another pile of coins. Stomping forward, it jabbed the spear at Sam, who barely moved aside quickly enough to avoid being skewered. The spear was easily twelve feet long, the same height as the monster. It had a wicked ebony stone tip with jagged edges and a barb along one side. The tip skittered off the metal wall behind Sam, making a scritching noise that set teeth on edge.
Allistor tried casting Restraint on the cobalus, but the spell failed. Its eyes glowed a brighter red, as if aware of the attempt and further angered by it. Mind Spike worked though, the pain inside the creature’s brain causing it to whirl around, the spear flying sideways and hooking Meg behind her thigh. The creature’s strength pulled her off her feet and flung her toward the back of the room, a big chunk of her leg ripped away and arterial blood spraying. Her scream ended when she bounced off a wall and landed behind a pile.
“We can’t see her!” Amanda screamed, already dashing forward with one eye on the creature, trying to get to Meg before she bled out. Dawn and Nathan followed, placing themselves between Amanda and the creature.
Sam screamed, “Meg!” and started to charge forward, but a flailing backhand from the cobalus knocked him down. A moment later one of its oversized feet stomped on his legs, and everyone heard the bones snap. Roaring in pain, Sam fired up into the thing’s loincloth, causing it to scream even louder and stumble backward, removing its weight from Sam.
Nancy and several others began casting heals on Sam, who had begun to scream as sweat poured down his face from the pain of the bones knitting themselves back together.
Allistor moved forward to grab Sam and pull him back toward the wall even as he cast Flame Shot at the monster’s face. It was still thrashing about from the mind spike, and the added pain sent it stumbling into one of the smaller piles of coin. Losing its balance, it fell backward, rending its own face with sharp nails as it tried to claw loose the Mind Spike.
With Sam safely pulled back, Allistor focused on the pile the giant goblin was now reclining on. He cast Erupt, and saw the pile shift, but the spike wasn’t long enough to push all the way through the pile into the beast. Changing his focus, he recast the spell and sent a spike up through one of its feet.
The monster roared, focusing on Allistor as the effect of the Mind Spike wore off. Allistor saw it searching for its spear, which it had dropped not far from where Sam had fallen. Allistor raced forward, picking up the weighty weapon using his increased Strength. Charging forward holding the long weapon at his hip like a knight’s jousting lance, he plunged the tip of the spear into the monster’s crotch with all the strength and momentum at his disposal.
This time the monster’s scream was more of a high-pitched yelp as the jagged spear tip sunk deep into its reproductive bits. Allistor twisted the shaft with both hands, even as he tried to pull it free. But the barb had apparently hooked into something, and he couldn’t remove the weapon. Instead, he raised his shotgun and fired at the monster’s face as he backpedaled toward the doorway and his people.
The massive goblin wasn’t about to let him retreat. It lurched forward, screaming as the spear point did terrible things to its insides, and shot a hand forward to grab Allistor. It led with its claws, one sinking into his shoulder and another scraping across his ribs, peeling back a huge slice of skin. The third claw sliced his leg as the thing tightened its grip, lifting Allistor toward its mouth. The maw, already wide open and screaming, was lined in the front with twin rows of a dozen sharp teeth both top and bottom, bracketed by jagged, elongated canines and lower incisors each almost a foot long. Its saliva was a sickly green color and as it brought Allistor’s head closer to its face, he could smell its fetid breath. There were bits of colored cloth and sinew stuck between its teeth, including what looked like what was left of a Broncos ball cap.
Allistor cast Mind Spike again, screaming as the pain caused the creature to squeeze him even harder. The claw through his shoulder penetrated deeper, but Allistor barely noticed as the thing swung its arm downward, violently slamming him into the floor. Both of his legs shattered, and he passed out for a moment. When he woke just a few seconds later, he was flying through the air, his mangled body crashing into a pile of coins.
Allistor’s pain-addled mind still registered that his health bar was below ten percent. He could hear gunfire and cursing, and the monster screaming. He knew he should cast a heal on himself, but his brain just w
ouldn’t bring up the spell. All he could think about was that he was going to die, and let his people down.
His health bar ticked down even further, and he could feel the blood pumping from his shoulder. A moment later he felt a heal spell wash over him, then another, and another. His health moved back above ten percent, and the bleeding stopped. Still, all he could do was lay there, panting from the pain.
He heard the twin machine guns begin firing again, and a roar from Fuzzy. Trying to lift his head, he called out for the bear cub to stay back. The monster’s claws would shred him with ease. “Fuzzy! No!”
His words came out as barely more than a wheeze, and he saw his cub rush in to grab hold of one of the monster’s wrists. He continued to run forward once he had it, stretching the goblin’s arm over its head at an angle that eventually dislocated the shoulder. Everyone in the room heard the pop as Fuzzy turned and began to use all four legs to push backward and pull at the arm like a dog playing tug of war with a rope.
Though he was still a cub, his level increase had caused his body to grow to weigh maybe three hundred pounds now. Add in the muscle in his four legs and neck, and the awkward angle at which he held the big goblin’s overextended arm up behind its head, Fuzzy’s attack effectively pinned the thing’s back to the pile while its foot was still held in place by Allistor’s spike.
Cobalus Magnus
Level 25
Health: 4,100/23,000
Gunfire continued to ring out as nearly two dozen party members fired at the monster. Nathan and Dawn appeared, carrying a still-breathing but rough looking Meg between them. Amanda was behind, her shotgun up and firing as she covered them.
Richard ran forward, jumping up and grabbing the shaft of the goblin’s spear which now angled upward toward the ceiling. He used his body weight to lever it down, further ripping into the goblin’s inner pelvic region. Ramon and Michael both dropped their shotguns and ran up to help. Richard yelled, “Twist and pull!”
Shadow Sun Expansion Page 22