Reborn as a Baron Lord 2: A Steampunk LITRPG Light Novel (The Steampunk World of Gearnix)

by Han Yang

  Burst: 350

  Luck: 42

  Reflex: 21

  Charisma: 32

  Charge: 5%

  Healing: 5

  Intelligence: 31

  Melee Combat: 21

  Crafting: 32.2

  Aim: 24

  Dexterity: 16

  Steam-bot Mastery: 299

  Leadership: 69

  Construction: 36

  Farming: 17

  Tree harvesting: 24

  Gathering: 15

  Fishing: 9

  Skinning: 16

  “Five percent charge? You greedy little-” I caught myself before I gave the now shining box a kick. Though I wouldn’t technically be touching the cursed thing, I still didn’t know if being near it would absorb the last few bits of energy I had left.

  As I watched on in stunned amazement, the charge percentage started to creep back up again.

  It was steady, constant, and very noticeable. I imagined that it wouldn’t take too long for the levels of energy within my body to reach a level way too high for me to control, even after my burst skill had shot up by another one hundred and fifty levels.

  But those issues could wait for a later date.

  The explosion had cleaved a huge hole in the floor along one edge of the arena and, after checking through the gap it had created, I could barely believe my eyes as to what I saw.

  It was the entrance hall, the very same one through which we had broken through not so long ago.

  The wave of monsters and steam powered murder machines had ceased from what I could tell, but there wasn’t any movement. The area looked like it had been cleaned, though, so that gave me a little hope about the fate of my expeditionary crew, Leon, and Duke in particular.

  “Hey!” I called out through the hole as I leaned down as far as I could to look around. “Anyone around!? You still alive down there!?”

  “Through no fault of yours!” Leon’s yell rang back up as he strode forward and looked up toward me. “What the hell did you do this time!?”

  “It was… Never mind, I’ll tell you later!” I glanced around for any way to make my way down safely. The statues and carvings along the edge of the hall had been demolished by the falling debris, but a support column was close to the edge of the opening. “Fancy giving me a hand!? I think I left my rope with you!”

  “Never adventure without a rope! Amateurs!” Leon waved his hand to call some members of the team over. Together they used their equipment to scale up the pillar and, after I cautiously lowered myself down, we slid back to the ground with ease.

  Everyone seemed fine, and the massive bags stacked up near the exit tunnel clearly showed how fruitful our journey had been. Even without finding the so-called ‘vaults’, we had still received far more than enough to make up for the difficulty of coming down to the temple.

  Then again, maybe that was the point. Gearnix hated giving things out for free, so the fact it made you work for the reward did make sense, in a twisted sort of way.

  But we couldn’t take it all back, not as we were at least.

  Duke needed to return to Norn before his condition deteriorated and, worse still, his remote escalator pack would need weeks of work back at the underground lair before it was even barely usable again.

  But I did have an idea on how to get around that issue, not that I expected anyone else to like it. I spoke to the team after they had gathered around me for a debriefing session. Leon stood off to one side, clearly showing his irritation via his stance, expression, and the low rumbling growl coming from his throat almost constantly.

  “So, here’s the deal,” I began.

  I needed to speak fast before the last thread of his patience snapped.

  “We can’t take the loot with us.” Several members of the squad seemed disappointed by my announcement, but most didn’t look all that surprised. “We can come back to pick it up later, though. The main guardian of this place has been defeated, so I’ll arrange a second trip back to fully loot this place now that we’ve cleared it.”

  The gang cheered at my announcement. Each one had been promised a small cut of our earnings, so knowing they weren’t going to lose out on that forever probably softened the blow a little.

  “So, here’s my plan for how we all get back to the Moonlit Goddess.” I looked over at Duke, who had been carefully propped up in a seated position against the wall beside the exit tunnel. “You know our remote escalators have some wiggle room for bringing up cargo?”

  “Yeah, not much though.” Leon finally spoke up as an actual problem he could solve distracted him from glaring in my direction. “Even at their maximum power, our injured friend wouldn’t be able to travel up alone, never mind with the pack’s user in tow.”

  “Very true, but that’s part of the beauty of the whole thing, isn’t it?” I grinned as everyone stared at me in confusion and bewilderment. “Teamwork! That’s what we need. Teamwork!”

  “What do you- No, that can’t be right.” Leon’s gravelly growl returned as he rubbed a hand across his weathered face. “You’re insane, you know? I’m never going anywhere with you ever again!”

  Chapter 32

  While the rest of the group clearly didn’t like my plan, they all went along with it after I explained the complicated mathematics behind how it would work.

  Of course, I neglected to mention that I was only around ninety five percent certain of my findings, but that was beside the point.

  After we secured the loot in a hard-to-find spot within the temple and made the arduous trip back to the lakeshore, we were finally ready to be picked up by the Moonlit Goddess, though using the words ‘picked up’ was a little bit of a misnomer.

  The truth was, we were planning to fly into the cabin and hope we could close the bay before we lost thrust but after we cleared its doors.

  Duke had been settled down in the center of his slow-fall cube. After bypassing the safety release catches, I activated the air resistance canvas section to release and roll outward. A quick check confirmed there were no rips or tears from its prior usage when we had landed in the forest not so long ago.

  So far, so good.

  Once that was completed, each member of the team clipped themselves onto the edge of the canvas at equal distances until we had the entire thing covered.

  And then we were ready to go.

  “On my mark!” I lifted my hand up to the activator for my remote escalator pack. The water tanks had been primed with Hydrox ready for our ascent, but I still had to fight the urge to double check it as I glanced around at the rest of the team. “Three! Two! One! Go!”

  We all slammed our buttons at the exact same moment as we activated our packs simultaneously. Dust, dirt, and even loose vegetation were blasted away as the thrusters blasted out a concentrated jet of steam powerful enough to lift each of us from the ground.

  The remote escalators weren’t only taking their users and a little bit of extra loot.

  The slow-fall cube’s canvas sheet creaked as we lifted off, but that settled down as the bottom of the huge box on which Duke had been set was pulled from the ground.

  And then the second stage of the packs activated.

  Air resistance pushed back against us as the world itself fought against our rise, but the overcharged thrusters broke through that barrier with ease. We climbed faster and higher with every passing moment as we shot up toward the distant speck high in the sky.

  Our target destination: The Moonlit Goddess.

  I lifted a hand to motion to the others as we drew closer and closer to our target. The timing was crucial, especially as it wouldn’t be possible to reignite the thruster packs easily if we turned them off too soon.

  Too late, though, and we might end up shooting through the roof of the Moonlit Goddess into the relatively fragile balloon above.

  So, I gave everyone another countdown as the speck turned into a vague shadow, then a noticeable square above our heads.

  Three.

&
nbsp; Two.

  One.

  I slammed my fist down on the thrust pack switch a moment later.

  This was it. If the calculations were off, I had just killed everyone with one order.

  Our speed, while significantly slowed, still carried us upward toward the open hatch of the Moonlit Goddess. Bit by bit we drew closer, but the distance between us and the goal started to shrink less and less as gravity fought to pull us back down to Gearnix’s surface.

  Come on! We’re so close!

  Moments before it felt like we were about to come to a complete stop, we drifted up into the cabin of the Moonlit Goddess. It took a split second longer for the slow fall cube carrying Duke to lift upward before we reached the inevitable peak of our ascent.

  “Now!”

  The venturebot who sat at the command console slammed a fist down on the hatch button, bringing the doors beneath our feet slamming shut in less than a second.

  And then, as though I had merely taken a step forward, my feet touched down on the solid floor of the cabin.

  “Never again!” Leon ripped his pack off and shoved it into the hold before anyone else could recover from what they had just been through. “Never, ever again! That’s the last time I listen to one of your insane schemes! The last time, you hear me!”

  “Oh, I’m fine too, thanks for asking.” I chuckled as I slipped my own pack and turned to the venturebot worker, who had already pried itself from the command station seat to sit instead in the copilot’s seat.

  Clearly, it knew I would be better suited for the trip home.

  I took over the controls as Leon checked over the team and made sure Duke’s unmoving body was securely tucked away. We needed to fly all the way back to Norn, and I was the only one skilled enough to pilot the Moonlit Goddess without sending it into a potentially fatal nosedive.

  Without many other options, I decided to just do what I could.

  Every night I grabbed a few hours of sleep while the venturebot worker held the Moonlit Goddess in a hover. Though it could complete some limited maneuvers, the chance of us running into some turbulence or a flock of wild flying monsters was too high to roll the dice.

  So, the journey back took significantly longer than our trip to the temple.

  But eventually, after one too many nights stuck in a tin can with a bunch of bored, irritable adventurers, Norn’s walls finally appeared in the distance.

  Unfortunately, I knew my skill was too low to land the Moonlit Goddess in the underground lair using the main flight tunnel, so instead I had to go for a more conventional route when it came to getting us back onto solid ground.

  I decided to land her in the manor gardens.

  “We’re going to crash?” Leon’s muttering didn’t do much for my confidence as he double and triple checked his belts and buckles behind me. “All this way and you’re going to end it like you started.”

  “It’s a controlled descent with potential turbulence.” I flicked a few switches as the Moonlit Goddess swept over the now bustling trade hub and on to the manor. Luckily, everyone could tell who it was as we flew in, or a few of the guards might have taken it upon themselves to shoot down the ‘intruder’ in their air space.

  “Sounds about the same to me.” Leon finally grumbled himself into silence as I took a firm hold of the wheel and, after one last check of the dials in front of me, started our descent.

  The cabin rattled and shook as we skimmed low over the city. Citizens put whatever they were doing on hold to point and stare up at us as we drifted down toward our target landing point.

  “Hold on!” I yelled as we neared the point of no return. Blimps didn’t work too well when they neared Gearnix’s surface, which was the reason for blimp towers in the first place, and here I was landing in a garden.

  SSSKKKKRREEEE!

  The high-pitched whine of metal scraping against stone rang out for a few seconds before we skidded to a halt. Though the cabin was slightly tilted upon the ridge we had dug out of the garden, everyone seemed safe and well behind me.

  “I did it.” I slowly released my tense grip on the wheel as I looked out at the flourishing gardens around us. “I actually did it.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised with yourself, Baron Lord.” Leon strode up beside me and unclipped the shoulder harness with a huff. “I had full confidence in you. Well, two thirds. Maybe a half at least.”

  “Thanks.” I undid the rest of the clasps and moved past the group. It took a few shoves to open the door but after that, it was only a step before I was once more standing atop solid ground.

  But I didn’t have time to appreciate that as a short figure ran out of the manor toward the Moonlit Goddess. It took me a moment to recognize the girl as Becky, the one who looked after our arctic cubs and helped Delila out at the animal husbandry farms.

  “You need to follow- Baron Lord!” She corrected herself as she gave me a quick bow after she spotted the other members of the expeditionary force filing out of the ‘perfectly landed’ blimp behind me. “Please come with me!”

  I could tell from her expression that she was serious, so I followed a beat behind her as she turned and raced back into the manor. Leon followed suit a moment later after he called out for the others to check in with Corvo before they turned in for a well-earned rest.

  Though I had expected Becky to lead me back to the office, she instead took me to my room where several of the town’s doctors waited in nervous anticipation. Before I could ask what had happened, an elderly, warbling voice rang out from the room.

  “You got here just in time!”

  I recognized the speaker as the elderly old doctor who had diagnosed Ginli, so I dashed into the room expecting the worst.

  Did Ginli relapse? Was there another attack? Is Joanna okay-

  The questions buzzing around my head were blasted away by what I saw as I barged into the room.

  Joanna lay back on the bed, her face reddened and sweaty, though she did manage to give me a brief smile as she saw me walk up to the side of the bed.

  “It’s- Here!” She took my proffered hand in hers and gripped down on it like a steel clamp. It still didn’t feel real, but I couldn’t ignore the truth before my eyes.

  Joanna was giving birth. To her child. To my child.

  To our child.

  The next hour or so passed in a blur as I helped her through the pain, but eventually, her persistence was rewarded as the telltale cry of a newborn infant filled the room.

  “It’s a girl!” The elderly doctor smiled as she passed me the carefully wrapped up little baby who had just been born into the world. Though the woman’s face looked old and her body shook, the way she held the babe gave me no worries that she might slip and drop it.

  Clearly, she saw it as a precious gift, as did I.

  I brought the girl over to see her mother. Joanna breathed a sigh of contented relief as she reached out and stroked out her daughter’s chubby cheek. Once she saw our faces, the babe’s little face lit up as she gave us a cheeky little smile.

  Of course, it could have just been a coincidence.

  But then she turned her attention back to the elderly doctor whose expression rapidly shifted from surprise to shock and finally on to joy.

  “You aren’t done yet, young madam!” She waved me back as Joanna slowly caught on to what the old woman meant. “Another set of pushes! We’re almost there.”

  It took a little while longer, but eventually, a second cry rang out through the room. Two children, a boy and a girl, lay on Joanna’s chest as she stared down lovingly at the pair’s cute, pudgy little faces.

  “I- Didn’t have time to ask.” Joanna turned to me as her eyes threatened to shut as the impact of what she had just been through finally hit her. “Did you find it? Is- Ginli -”

  Joanna’s voice faded away as she finally drifted off into a calm, contented rest. I took the babies from her and, after double checking that the elderly doctor would be able to keep an eye on them, I left th
e room and walked down the corridor to the guest bedrooms.

  It felt weird to be walking back into Ginli’s room. She still lay where I had last seen her, though someone had made sure to make her comfortable. The sheets and pillows had been changed and a calm scent drifted through the room from a set of flowers placed upon the windowsill.

  Overall, if you didn’t know the truth of the situation, it might have seemed like a pleasant scene at a glance.

  I carefully lifted the absorption cube I had taken from the giant steam automaton back in the temple. After my close encounter, I had taken some time to investigate its usage and found that it could be used to charge other Hydrox containers, but it had the opposite effect when used on living beings, either natural or steam powered in nature.

  Fortunately, it needed direct contact with the skin or an augmented body part for its effects to take place, so merely handling it with a glove was enough to ensure your safety.

  Still, I wasn’t quite ready to trust that just yet.

  But Ginli wouldn’t wake up without it.

  I connected my checker to see if I could see anything, but her statistics page was still garbled as all hell, and that included her charge percentage.

  So, without any better options, I carefully set the cube in her palm.

  The process started almost instantly as the overwhelming Hydrox energy with Ginli’s system was pulled out by the cube, which quickly gained new size as the number of its increased dramatically.

  Just in case I kept removing it intermittently as I checked on Ginli, but there was no result, so I just decided to place it down again each time.

  Once the absorption device had reached way past ten sides, I finally gave up as I lifted it from her palm and placed it back into the storage container once more. The amount of Hydrox taken from Ginli’s system would be worth an immense fortune, but that fact didn’t help cover the truth.

  It seemed like whatever was feeding her energy was doing so at a rate the absorption device couldn’t match.

  “Damn it.” I fought back the urge to slam my fist into the wall as I pushed myself to my feet. “All that for nothing.”

  “Not exactly nothing, Bradley.”