by Ros Per
Our routine clearing ended with us entering an irregular, much larger hall. It wasn’t pretty, but the local craftsmen had surely given their best, so I wouldn’t begrudge them for it. Having grouped up, we began to carefully advance into the hall. We must have stepped over some invisible line without realizing it because small plasma bursts started coming at us from various angles. Luckily, Tilorn was ready and placed his shield in the way; otherwise, we would’ve probably died on the spot.
- Back! - I screamed like mad.
“Seventy ... Sixty ... Forty-five ... Thirty ..." Tilorn, through clenched teeth, kept reporting the condition of the batteries that were powering the shield.
- “I see it ... I’m working on it!” Quartz snapped, changing the batteries in Tilorn’s shield on the go.
Moving back a little and retreating into the passage, we left the line of sight of most of the defenders. This made things a lot easier, allowing us to get to the nearest corner and hide behind it.
- Five meters. Barricade. Castra, at the base. Tilorn, buff her speed. Quartz, a report on our usage of resources. -
Immediately after, Castra crouched down near Tilorn's legs with her hands on the floor, taking up a pose similar to the one for a running start. Tilorn, after getting down on one knee, placed the shield at an angle, covering Castra with the lower edge, and the top edge was at the height of my chest, leaving me able to shoot. After that, he began to extract various pills from his hidden pockets, passing them to the girl. Finally, he gave her a couple of injections in the right shoulder.
- “Seven batteries have been consumed by the ***** barrage, if they do that again, I might not even have the time to reload the shield, or enough batteries.”
- Tilorn, reload him upside the head; I fear his vocabulary will begin to act up again if you don’t. - After I gave that command, I heard the sound of a good slap.
- “Okay, I get it.”
- Stop talking! - I roared. – I can already hear them coming. Sargos, get on your belly and provide covering fire. -
Switching to the armor-piercing cartridges and taking aim at where our enemy would appear from, I waited. The first to appear was a mechanism that walked on large spider legs, but had a swiveling torso mounted on that base, in the shape of a human body, and two mini-guns affixed to its sides. It would’ve been very interesting to see what combat abilities it had, but I didn’t stop to check, immediately opening fire, shooting almost a dozen or so cartridges into the base of it.
And then all sorts of security droids appeared. There was everything you could think of: moving on tracks, wheels… one small droid even rolled using its entire body. The same was true for their weapons; I managed to count about twenty varieties, with the only thing they had in common being that all the weapons were lasers, interspersed with plasma ones. We fought for about two minutes, maybe even three. While I was reloading, Quartz would empty his shotgun into them. As soon as the last droid was destroyed, after waiting another couple of seconds to make sure, I began to issue commands.
- Castra. How much time is left? -
- “The buff has another seven minutes.”
- Run! - And she immediately rushed forward. Tilorn barely deactivated the shield in time.
- Quartz? -
- “About ten percent of the ammunition is spent; about forty percent of the batteries were used by the shield.” Wow, he was actually capable of speaking normally if he tried.
- Sargos? -
I turned to our sapper, who was lying on his stomach, watching our six. In response, I received a thumbs up. So, while everything was alright for now, after throwing a glance at the clock in my neural interface, I noted that nine minutes had passed since we’d entered the dungeon. Ten seconds later, Castra reported that only various kinds of repair bots remained in the large hall. Moving ahead toward the entrance of the hall and making sure that no battle droids remained, I gave the go-ahead to warm up. Tilorn and Sargos got bored, practically not participating in the battles anymore. In the meantime, I tried to keep an eye on everyone, so that I could, if necessary, help them by laying down suppressive fire. At the 12-minute mark, we finished clearing the hall and gathered at the far wall, where another passage began.
- Okay, everyone, look through your logs and quickly figure out how many mobs you destroyed. -
“Fourteen,” Tilorn replied after ten seconds.
“Twenty-three,” Quartz reported.
“Nineteen,” Castra said.
- Sargos killed four, judging by his raised fingers, and I destroyed thirty-three. Bottom line: 93 mobs. Unfortunately, that’s a little less than a third of the mobs, and we’ve already used nearly half of the shield energy. The results are not in our favor. Any suggestions? -
“EMP,” Sargos said almost immediately.
I paused for a couple of seconds, thinking about it. We had recently purchased a pack of cartridges for Sargos’ revolvers with an EMP core, which, upon hitting the target, created a small electromagnetic pulse and burned out the electronics inside completely, provided, of course, that the target didn’t have protection against the EMP. We had just 50 with us. After all, they aren’t in demand: the opponents in this game are mostly living creatures, against whom such cartridges are useless.
I’d bought them only because we could use them in the laboratory, against the mechanized defenses there. Now I had a dilemma on my hands. Using the EMPs, we could possibly get rid of one mob per one hit, provided they weren’t shielded from it. But we might also want to save them for the queen. Or perhaps the lab? Time was running out, and I didn’t know what to do.
- No, let’s leave them for Martha, if we ever find it. If not, we will still find a use for them. Okay, listen up. We’re changing things up. Tilorn, give me the speed buff, I’ll use it to go in hard and fast. Castra comes in after me; she deals only with the ones I missed. Quartz and Sargos, you’re tasked with finishing off the injured and dying. Tilorn will cover us with his shield if we need it. If I die, Tilorn will be the boss and guide you. And Sargos, if worst comes to worst, make sure everything goes up in a huge ball of flame. Does everyone understand? -
“I don’t get anything,” Tilorn replied. “But, you’re the commander, we agreed to your rules, so we’ll execute your commands. I’ll wait until we get back to the base to tell you what I think.”
I nodded in response, recognizing his right to do so. But for now, I needed to focus and give it my all and then some. Either we would clear the dungeon before the clan fighters caught up to us, using the contract with Carefire and the hope they wouldn’t want to start a fight with him as a deterrent, or the clans would catch up to us beforehand. If that happened… it wouldn’t be pretty.
Taking the chemical substance given to me by Tilorn, I closed my eyes and detached myself from the world around me, breathing deeply. There was only me and the goal that I needed to achieve. After some more deep breathing, the last superfluous thoughts were gone. There is no death, which means there is no fear. As one of my ancestors once said: “Everything that can be, will be, and what cannot be, won’t happen!” I still didn’t quite understand him, but this phrase had always been a rock for me, supporting me in my most trying times. I took comfort in the fact that something was impossible only until you went and did it.
Opening my eyes, I darted off, immediately diving into the passage that lay ahead of me. I noticed movement on the ceiling, instinctively firing at it. I moved a little to the left, passing by one more mechanism. I fired a heavy caliber bullet into it as I passed, at almost point blank range. Without even pausing to check what damage I’d done to the mechanism, I continued onward. I had people to do that for me, after all. I fired at anything that seemed suspicious, without even considering whether it was actually hidden mobs or my mind playing tricks on me.
I moved practically without thinking, simply noting the approximate number of used cartridges, letting my instincts and experience guide me. In the upper left corner of my view, numerous buff time
rs were ticking down, distracting me so much that I had to make an effort to ignore them. Behind me, I could barely make out the distinctive noise of impulse gloves being used. It would seem that I had indeed missed a few of them, leaving them for Castra to deal with. A clicking noise informed me I was out of bullets in the magazine. I quickly swapped it out but still got hit once as I did so.
The wound was small but painful. I’d lost 7% life, leaving me at 93%. I didn’t pay attention to what had wounded me, trusting the others to take care of it. My immediate task was to inflict maximum damage to the enemy. The corridor widened again, leading me into a new room, and I immediately turned left and hid behind one of the columns that supported the ceiling. Fortunately, it was wide enough for now, but its width wouldn’t be able to cover me for long. With chips of concrete flying everywhere and plasma rounds coming close enough for me to feel the heat, I saw my temporary shelter wouldn’t protect me for long. I pulled a fragmentation grenade out of my pouch and, after activating the “Ricochet throw” ability, hurled it at the next column over, trusting that the bounce would direct it toward the enemy.
After the grenade exploded, they stopped firing for a second, which was enough for me to start preparing the “Position Change” skill, lean out of cover and fire at the foes to keep them distracted, then run to the nearest available, solid cover. I almost didn’t notice the two drones that had been angling to fire at me from a better angle. I activated the “Double Tap” skill and they were nothing more than slag.
I definitely liked my new weapon and its impressive damage. The old one would’ve used up half as much ammo, at least, to achieve the same results. I took out two more grenades, simultaneously activating the “Pendulum” skill, and two seconds before its activation, I threw a grenade on either side of the column behind which I’d taken refuge. After the skill triggered, I started running along an unpredictable trajectory, leaving the droids unable to follow my progress. A couple of times, my body even went over any obstacles it came across. When I ran past a more or less reliable piece of cover, consisting of some kind of metal device that looked very sturdy and was leaning against an even larger one, I canceled the “Pendulum” and took refuge behind it.
I had seventy percent health left. Looks like I got tagged again, in that last run. However, most importantly, I’d achieved my goal: almost all the enemies had turned their backs to the entrance. I couldn’t understand… Why had they stopped shooting? Wait, were they targeting the others? Damn ... damn ... damn ... I’d gone ahead on purpose, hoping to be the only one who took damage. Yes, that had been a stupid idea, but after Ruth… it was too hard for me to send the youth into a hopeless battle. I jumped up sharply, expecting the worst, and barely managed to duck down again as several plasma bolts flew overhead. What the hell was going on here? They’d all gone still in almost the center of the room, keeping my cover in their sights, but they weren’t shooting, despite the fact that they might’ve gotten through, after a couple volleys.
- Don’t enter the second hall! - I abruptly shouted the command into the headset. - I'm OK, no help needed, take up defensive positions in the corridor! -
Four single clicks told me that the group had received my command. And now I had to urgently figure out what was happening. I took a look at the timer: eighteen minutes had passed since we’d entered, and the clans should’ve started appearing any minute now. I didn’t have any time left. I’m an idiot; I took the group god knows where and fucked it up for all of us. Normally, you’d take at least an hour and a half to go through this dungeon. That was when you cleared it properly, without undue risk. Furthermore, we didn’t just have to rush, but rush through a dungeon intended for much higher level players. Goddammit, I didn’t have time for this. I needed to see what I could do to fix it! I took a look at my hiding place, curious to see if it might provide any answers. I carefully read the information and was shocked.
Production complex for mechanoid "Marta", level 30.
6 minutes and 32 seconds left before activation.
6 minutes and 31 seconds.
6 minutes and 30 seconds.
...
...
...
I couldn’t believe it. That’s why the droids weren’t shooting at me. They didn’t want to damage their queen! At the same time, that also explained how the queen always managed to escape. It would seem that after the attack began, the attackers had about 25 minutes before it activated. After that, it would be able to roll off to a new reserve base.
- Listen carefully! There are about a hundred and fifty different droids in here; approximately one third of them are combat models. We have six minutes to get rid of them. Get ready to rush in at my command. Tilorn, your task is to get Quartz to the opposite end of the hall, going along the left wall. Quartz, prepare your tools to try and open up the local boss. Sargos, charge up your EMP cartridges, we can’t afford to use them sparingly. Castra, adapt to the situation, but do your best to cover Sargos. Do you copy? -
In response, I heard 3 quick shouts of “Yes, sir!” and one click. I’d almost gotten used to the constant silence of Sargos. It’ll be necessary, after we return to the base, to ask Tilorn why he was so quiet all the time. Yes, I’d promised not to ask about their past, but I wanted to give Sargos a chance to have a normal life. Part of that meant he’d need to learn to communicate like everyone else. After taking out several plasma grenades, I quickly peeked out and instantly moved my head back after making sure that the battle droids were still practically in the same position. The spiders on the walls, however, had walked around me and seemed to want to flush me out from behind my cover.
“Get ready, 10 seconds to go.”
I took out the first plasma grenade and activated the skill "Lobbed throw", paying close attention to how my body moved as I did so. As soon as the first grenade landed where the skill had aimed it, I immediately threw three more, one after the other, trying to imitate my movements from when I’d used the skill. After hearing the fourth explosion go off, I immediately shouted into the radio:
- Go! -
I activated the "Rain of Bullets" skill right after, mentally counting down the seconds before the skill triggered. Five… in the darkness of the passage on the other side of the hall, the rainbow glow of Tilorn's force shield expanded. The surviving droids, meanwhile, were trying to get up after being knocked down by a shock wave. Four… the group rushed into the hall and split up into two pairs, moving in different directions along the walls. Each duo had a shooter and a short sword wielder: the shooter would clear the passage while the other fighter handled the drones trying to attack from the sides.
Three… Tilorn used his shield to protect Quartz from a volley fired by three combat droids at once. After the shield stopped the volley, he turned it off and, clutching his hammer with both hands, activated the “Earth Tremor” skill, which sent out a cone of kinetic energy that knocked down all opponents caught in it. It would’ve been a truly amazing skill if not for the fact it cost a quarter of the hammer’s durability to cast.
I looked over at Castra, who was being attacked by more than a dozen repair bots at the same time. Behind her, Sargos was shooting back at a pair of battle droids, firing his revolvers like a cowboy: from the hip, first the right, then the left gun, cocking the trigger with his fingers. Castra, on the other hand, had decided to activate the “Five Palm Strikes” skill, hitting the air in front of her five times with such speed that the discharges of her gloves overlapped and created a wave of devastating energy. The concrete wall on which we’d tested this skill had been over half a meter thick but still turned into fine rubble. The droid fared no better, scattering or getting blown up.
Two… Sargos and Castra dove in behind my cover. One… Quartz and Tilorn did the same. Zero. I began to rain down bullets on everything that moved in front of me, moving the barrel from side to side, forming a ninety-degree cone of fire, hitting every opponent that was in this zone. A good skill, but it takes way too long to act
ivate.
- Quartz, you try to deactivate the queen. Tilorn, you’re covering Quartz. Sargos, Castra, take up defensive positions and remain vigilant. I’ll cover the other side. Now let’s hope Quartz manages it! -
I’d barely had the time to finish giving orders before the automatic dodge skill dragged me down, forcing me to fall on one knee, cutting off the “Rain of Bullets " skill with a quarter of the cartridges still left to fire. A plasma bolt twice as thick as my fist flew over my head a moment later, so I wasn’t going to complain. Having traced the trajectory of the shot, I jumped up and took aim at the spot where the shot had most likely been fired from. It was a platform on rails, with a single cannon installed on it, and a large block of unknown equipment located behind it. I shot at it and almost immediately turned around to look for other foes. This nearly cost me my life.
It turned out that this droid had a force field. I had to duck down again, pop up to fire at it, then duck down once more... I did this five times, but the blue bar over its life, which seemed to indicate the state of its shield, was already fully restored by the time I would jump up to fire at it again. I had to time my shot so that it landed when it was firing as well since that was the only time it would deactivate its shield. I managed to do it on the third try because the timing was tricky and I was being cautious, afraid of taking a plasma charge to the head. After successfully landing a couple of bursts on the droid itself, I began to search for a new target, but the Castra’s loud warning distracted me, and I didn’t even notice it slam into my head, rattling my brain.