Allistor nodded. “It blasted through my Barrier spell like it wasn’t even there. This is gonna suck.”
Logan switched out his shotgun for the LMG, and nodded at Sam who was doing the same. The two men stood next to each other, looking at Allistor.
“Okay, boss.” Sam began. “This is where you earn the hero pay. You just scoot on in there and distract that big bug, and we’ll be right behind ya. Try to keep off to one side of it so we don’t hit ya by mistake. Maybe light it on fire so we can see better?”
Allistor took a deep breath. Even knowing it wouldn’t help, he re-cast Barrier on himself. While he waited for the small amount of mana to regenerate, he said, “I’m gonna try something. That thing’s been living down here in the dark for who knows how long. So I’m gonna send in a light globe right before I go through. Might distract it enough for me to get past the ambush.”
The two men raised their weapons and adjusted the feeder belts so that they draped cleanly over an arm without any snags. Allistor cast Light and the globe appeared in front of him. He was about to push it through the doorway, when it occurred to him to try something. Staring at the globe, he re-cast Light toward it while picturing a larger, brighter globe. There was a wave of whispers behind him as a stream of light flowed from Allistor’s chest to the globe. It only increased in size slightly, but the light globe grew bright enough that several people blinked or held up a hand to shield their eyes.
Allistor mentally shoved the globe through the door, waited one heartbeat, then rushed through behind it. As he reached the doorway he dove forward, anticipated a massive claw sniping at him from one side or the other. That choice nearly proved disastrous as the expected claw came from an unexpected angle, shooting down from above the door even as the monster squealed in pain from the light.
Which was all that saved Allistor from having his horizontally angled body snipped in half as he dove past. Instead the monster’s aim was disrupted, and the claw slammed down onto his back after having already snapped shut. He was driven to the floor, his breath knocked out of him and his jaw slamming against the stone hard enough to crack bone.
Momentarily disoriented, he scrambled forward on his belly, losing hold of his shotgun as he frantically worked his elbows and knees to push himself along, scrabbling with his fingers for some kind of rough spot to latch on to and pull himself forward. He heard the two light machine guns open up behind him, and he rolled onto his back.
The first thing he noticed was that he’d crawled off to one side instead of straight into the room as he’d thought. The giant scorpion boss had dropped off the wall above the doorway and was facing him, both of the deadly foreclaws snapping in his direction. But the damage from the two LMGs quickly forced it to turn and deal with that threat. Sam and Logan stood on either side of the door, backs against the wall. The others were firing through the opening.
Allistor cast Flame Shot on it in the form of a column of fire descending directly onto its face. Eyes bubbled and burst as the thing screamed and began to thrash. Its curved, segmented tail shot forward, snaking just past Sam’s head to slam into the wall where the tip embedded itself into the stone. Shrapnel from the impact struck Sam’s head and neck, drawing tiny blooms of blood. And a spatter of venom from the stinger splashed over him. When it penetrated his skin via the small wounds, Sam’s face turned a sickly green and he began to wobble. Leaning his back against the wall for support, he continued to fire. He paused for a moment to projectile vomit, then spit, before resuming fire even as his health bar ticked downward.
“Healers! Get in here!” Allistor cast a heal on Sam but it didn’t stop the venom, and the creature was quickly moving his direction. “Sam’s been poisoned. Nancy!”
He cast Restraint on the monster, and it actually paused for about two seconds. Logan stopped firing and reached across the doorway to grab Sam and shove him ahead of himself through the door. Seconds later the half-blind beast crashed into the wall, only one claw shooting through the door to try and snag some prey. It shuddered under the impacts of a concentrated volley of shotgun blasts from outside.
Allistor realized he was now alone in the room with the scorpion.
Emperor Scairp
Level 28
Elite
Health: 19,700/31,000
His first instinct as a gamer was to try and tank the thing, get its attention and draw it away from the doorway so that the others could join him inside and blast the thing. But good sense overrode instinct. He was in no immediate danger himself, and the monster couldn’t get through the door to his people. They could blast away at it for a little while, whittle it down while he healed up and regained his mana.
With that thought in mind, he cast Restore on himself and moved a bit farther away from the chittering, squealing boss. Its head was still afire, and most of its eyes were either scorched or punctured by gunfire. Its right forearm was extended through the door, trying to catch a human in its razor-sharp claws.
Allistor took a moment to survey the rest of the room. He hadn’t noticed before, but the light from the bright globe hovering several feet inside the door was being reflected back to him in muted hues by thousands of bricks of gold. They were stacked on pallet after pallet, as far back as the light extended. A few had been knocked loose onto the floor, presumably by a hungry and annoyed giant scorpion.
Allistor looked at the nearest pile, then at the monster, and a plan began to form. Pulling a mana potion from his inventory ring, he held it in his left hand, cork popped. Stepping behind the pile for a little bit of cover, he lifted a brick in his right hand. His best guess, it weighed about twenty-five pounds. Too heavy to throw at the boss monster from his position, even with his improved strength. But he could toss it in the air a short ways.
He did just that, tossing the brick up and casting Levitate on it. The brick froze in midair, and he made a flinging motion toward the scorpion. The heavy hunk of metal took off like a shot, speeding toward the target, but passing right over its back and smashing into the wall.
Frowning, Allistor contemplated the failure while his people continued to pump rounds into the aggravated creature from a safe distance, slowly whittling away at its health. Lifting another brick, he tossed it up and caught it with the spell again. This time, when he made the swift hand motion, he focused his eyes on a spot on the creature’s torso. The gold bar shot forward, light glinting off of it as it sped toward the monster and slammed into its side precisely where Allistor had planned. There was a loud crack as what was effectively a twenty-five pound golden cannonball smashed into the chitin exoskeleton, cracks spiderwebbing out from the point of impact.
“Yes!” He pumped a fist in the air. Quickly checking his interface, he saw that the spell had cost him thirty mana each time. He had some attribute points to assign, but with his current mana pool of eighteen hundred, minus what he’d already used in this fight and not yet regenerated, he could throw about fifty gold missiles at the bug boss. As an experiment, he tried simply casting Levitate on a stationary bar atop the pile. The bar lifted, and he flung it at the boss mob, striking its torso very close to the previous hit. The network of cracks in its armor expanded. A quick check showed that lifting the bar with magic rather than catching it mid-air cost an extra ten mana.
Allistor got to work. One after another, he tossed gold brick after gold brick up into the air, using Levitate to grab and hurl it toward the boss’ left side. Each impact sent a web of cracks spidering outward, and shaved a decent bit of health off the scorpion.
After the tenth or twelfth bar, the creature turned toward him unexpectedly, indicating he’d drawn aggro with the damage he was doing. It spun just in time to catch a brick to the face, snapping one of its two mandibles and crushing one of the few remaining eyes.
As the creature rushed toward him, Allistor moved farther behind the stack of gold bullion and flung one more brick. It followed right behind the first, smashing into the giant arachnid’s face and stunning it for a
moment.
The others took advantage of its absence from the door and poured through. With Allistor crouched behind the gold, they fired round after round at the beast’s left flank. The weakened chitin offered little resistance, and soon both Allistor and the pile of gold bars were showered in blood splatter.
Emperor Scairp
Level 28
Elite
Health: 9,300/31,000
The elite scorpion recovered its senses and continued its charge toward Allistor. He ducked farther behind the gold stack as one of the massive claws swung across at his head. It knocked several of the heavy bars off the top couple layers as if they were as light as spongecake, trying to get to Allistor. As the heavy things hit the ground around him, one crushing the toes on his right foot, he got another idea.
Picking up a brick in each hand, he shouted, “Hold fire!” When the gunshots ceased, he picked a spot atop the giant bug’s head and activated Dimensional Step. In an instant he was standing atop the monster even as it seemed to be searching the spot he’d just vacated. Dropping to his knees, he adjusted his grip so that he held each brick by its end, then slammed them one at a time like sledgehammers striking the top of its skull. As quickly as he could, he alternated left, right, and left again, smashing at the chitin and spreading a wider and wider network of cracks.
He heard Amanda shout “Duck!” but didn’t react fast enough. The monster’s wickedly sharp barbed tail pierced the back of his shoulder, emerging from the front covered in his blood. It effortlessly lifted him off its back, the segmented tail curving as it pulled itself and him backward. Then it shot forward again, this time slamming him into another pallet of bullion. Bricks shifted, but not enough to save him from being badly broken in several places even as the tail spike pushed farther through him.
With not enough air left in his lungs to scream, he sort of moaned and tried in vain to inhale. A heal spell washed over him, raising his health bar a solid chunk. But it was still below fifty percent, and the heal focused on his bones first, so the pain increased rather than being eased. His increased Luck attribute seemed to have kicked in, as he didn’t see a poison debuff on his interface despite the stinger tip having pushed all the way through him.
He cast a heal on himself, then a Mind Spike on the monster, berating himself for not using it sooner. He’d distracted himself with the gold-flinging and pride at how clever he was.
The scorpion retracted its tail, but Allistor grabbed onto the corner of the pallet and held on. The resulting rending of his flesh as the sharp, barbed point ripped its way out of him somehow gave him the breath to scream.
Now out of sight of the healers, he used some of his dwindling mana to heal himself. When the bleeding stopped and his health bar hovered at just over twenty five percent, he rolled farther behind the gold pile to hide from the scorpion. He registered the continued sound of gunfire, hoping with all his might that his people wouldn’t draw aggro.
To make sure, he stuck his head out and cast Erupt under the base of the creature’s tail, which was the part of the monster that hovered closest to the ground. The stone spike shot upward, smashing through the softer underside of the monster and driving upward into its flesh. The scairp let out a shrill scream as its tail with that nasty diamond-hard stinger went limp.
The spike had the added advantage of holding the monster in place. It could shuffle to one side or the other in a rough arc around the spike, but could not move forward or back. “It’s trapped, take it down!” Allistor’s shout was hoarse, filled with pain and not enough air. But his people heard through the radio, and charged forward with guns blazing. They spread out along its left side and poured lead slugs into it as fast as they could.
Looking to his left hand, Allistor saw that he’d crushed the mana vial at some point, and the liquid had all leaked to the floor. Grabbing another, and a health potion, from his ring, he gulped down both. Reaching into his inventory one more time, he removed his trusty rebar spear. Climbing on top of the gold stack in front of him, he leapt back atop the monster’s head.
He immediately realized he’d forgotten to warn his people this time, and just as he landed a slug hit his left thigh. Off balance, he thrust his weight forward and stabbed down with the spear, penetrating the weak spot he’d created with the gold bars.
The tip of the spear sunk deep into the monster’s flesh, then even deeper as Allistor finished falling forward and added his weight to it. The scorpion boss’ keening stopped abruptly, and its legs simply gave out. The front part of its body hit the floor, while the rear end was still propped up slightly on the spike. Everyone in the room leveled up as experience points and a significant number of Fame Points drifted across their interfaces, earned both from the kill and from clearing the dungeon.
Allistor just lay there, breathing in the stench of the creature’s nasty purple blood. His health bar was full again, but he was still suffering weakness and nausea from the extensive blood loss of internal bleeding due to crush damage, and external bleeding from his shoulder wound and the slug in his leg. Not to mention the pain of his broken bones knitting back together.
Since he was already atop the beast, he laid a hand on it and looted. Another set of notifications flashed across his interface, but he ignored them. Rolling onto his side, he saw Sam collapse near the door. His face was still that sickly green shade, and his health bar was ticking downward in small increments every second. Nancy hovered over him, a worried look on her face.
Groaning in pain, Allistor rolled off the creature’s head. He’d intended to land on his feet, but that didn’t happen. He face-planted on the stone floor, and a few of his people rushed over to help him up.
“Damn, boss. That was brutal. Cool idea with the gold hammers though!” Dawn’s smile was full of mischief. Allistor barely registered the words as he pushed toward Sam, his people holding him up as he staggered forward.
Nancy turned to him, desperation in her eyes. “I can’t stop the poison! Whatever it is, it’s eating away at his insides. I keep healing him, but the damage is getting to be too much for me to keep up with!”
Instantly, Sam was buried in more than a dozen heal spells. His health bar zoomed up to full, then began declining again. Nancy was right, Allistor saw it was dropping faster. Sam squeezed Meg’s hand so hard she grimaced in pain.
Amanda shouted, “Stop that! All of you just wasted mana. Don’t do it again! We may need to heal Sam all the way back up out of here and to the Stronghold until we find a way to fix this! We’ll tell you when we need you to heal.” Her sharp words and severe look had many of their people blushing in shame or staring down at their feet.
She softened a bit. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried about Sam. All of you go loot the boss while Nancy and I try to stabilize him. Nancy, what potions do you have?” She squatted down beside Sam and activated her Internal Analysis.
While they worked and the others looted, Allistor took a moment to review his notifications. There were the usual experience and Fame Points notifications, as well as his level going up to fifteen. He brushed those away, getting to the good stuff.
You have cleared this structure of all inhabitants. Do you wish to claim this structure?
Yes/No
When Allistor selected Yes, another, even more interesting notification appeared.
You have sufficient population, resources, and title to enable you to declare this structure as a Bastion. Do you wish to create a Bastion at this time? Yes/No
His pulse quickening, Allistor waved away that message again without choosing, quickly opening the tab he’d used to construct Strongholds and Citadels. Sure enough, right there below Citadel was a new bright shiny green entry labeled Bastion. A quick read-through showed it to be an intermediate stage between a Citadel and an actual City. A little bit of further exploration led him to an aerial map that showed the mint glowing a pulsing blue, with a dotted blue line running around an area that encompassed both the mint and the Capitol Stronghold
and all the blocks in between.
Experimenting, he lifted a hand and used his fingers to move the line, expanding it a single block north, south, east, and west. When that worked, he tried pushing it farther. The limit was a six by ten block square area. If he claimed all of that, he’d have more space than he’d have people to defend it. So he shrunk it back down to its original size, which included the Capitol, the parklands, the courthouse, and the mint.
Going back to pull up the last notification, he selected Yes then confirmed the area within the blue line. Once again, the whole area lit up with a golden glow. Allistor quickly selected a thirty-foot wall around the entire perimeter, with north and south gates that were set in the middle of the park area. He added in the power, water, and sensors, and left the rest for later. When he executed that, and the light had faded away, yet another notification popped up. This one was accompanied by similar fanfare, horns, and fireworks as to when he’d created the Citadel.
Congratulations! You are the first native of UCP 382 to construct a Bastion!
Your efforts in conquering territory and accumulating wealth are unmatched on your world. You have earned the Title of Earl, along with commensurate Fame and Infamy Points from the interested factions. Your Bastion will receive complimentary upgrades to its perimeter defense, communication, and morale bonuses.
In addition, as you have achieved yet another First for your world, you have been awarded your choice of either a yacht-class interstellar vessel to be delivered upon expiration of the Stabilization Period, or the equivalent value in System Tech of your choosing, available immediately upon demand.
His elation at receiving such potentially valuable gifts was quickly deflated when another message appeared. And this one, again just like when he constructed the Citadel, was seen by everyone, everywhere.
World First! Earl Allistor has constructed the first Bastion on UCP 382!
Shadow Sun Expansion Page 24