We worked quickly to arm the ship and soon set off. This would be our first good fight since we arrived so we had to make it fun. The targets were 5-7 times our level so it was going to be much more of an interesting fight.
“Let’s go have fun” I simply said and started to unload.
CHAPTER 13 Sky War
Mission: Monster Mayhem
The princess of the draconian race has asked for help. A swarm of monsters is attacking their village. It's unknown where they come from or why they are attacking but it is best to beat them as they might come after you next.
Warning! Quest can't be denied. Rejecting will cause the extinction of the race and then further hunting of the tiger man race before your crew is hunted and killed.
Reward:
???
Difficulty:
D++
Success:
Kill all the monsters.
Failure:
All draconian and tiger men die.
Techno PoV
With the ship in the air we set off again towards the draconian village.
The princess was taken below and put in one of the beds of fur made from hunted animals from the forest.
Though I would have liked to simply let the tiger men go, they begged for us to teach them to fight using technology.
Like every other race they had their own techniques and skills.
They were a warrior race that had excellent fighting techniques but also had harvesting skills. Skinning, tailoring and some basic alchemy were known to them.
The alchemy was for making healing covers and bandages while the other two were self-explanatory.
They wouldn't last if the draconians attacked again so we started to teach them smithing for making parts.
We were going to make them basic dwarf battle suits and leave it at that. If they wanted better, they would need to take our techniques and improve.
We were making them develop their own technology.
In the time we had before the princess showed up, only about 25 tiger men were able to build complete suits with plates and so on.
The village chief and Greer's father were left alive because they could easily be used as a motivation to make ‘strays’ give up. The tiger people considered everyone a part of the family and not just those born from the same line.
Her father was among those who had a completed suit. As he was the strongest of the tiger men, he would undoubtedly be the first to get the armor.
Even at basic rank, the armor left the old tiger uncomfortably strong but because they had honor which was beaten into them from childhood, they wouldn't repay our gratitude with treachery.
Of course, if they did the race would vanish from this world because I don't take treachery and trickery towards me lightly.
With my Asura body was Bulk, Nova and her protector plus eight of our 20 clockwork robots, Brock and the 25 armored tiger men. We gathered at the lowest deck waiting for when we were over the village.
The tiger men were armed with several weapons like warhammers, great swords and metal claw gauntlets. Being close-range fighters and having high physical strength made them wield the weapons with the greatest ease.
On the top deck, I was using Yasha as my main body and we were setting up a large number of guns on the deck. Victor and the two fire elementals were helping lead everyone to set everything up. We were also setting up several mortars that we used before to blow up the mage draconians. We planned to do something similar but the first shots would be special.
The other guns were set up on all sides of the ship. Because flying monsters would be plentiful, we would need to cover all sides. Obviously, we didn't have enough weapons for every person on the ship, but it wasn't a problem. We needed supply men as well as close combat fighters to keep any monsters that landed from attacking the rest.
With the preparations underway, we gave helmets with visor screens to more than half the tigers so I could relay my orders faster we approached the village.
The place was already on fire from the magic of the draconians.
“Ready the flash shots!" I commanded.
Flash shots are like flares. They are mortar shots which, after being shot into the air, explode making a floating ball of light. They are made by grinding fire elemental cores and mixing with real gunpowder. It can be compared to a small temporary sun made during the night.
The robots set up the flare and after a moment three shots were fired.
Through my scanner, I could follow the fast flying shots because of the outline that surrounded them.
As they reached their peak height which was just over the village, I detonated them. Being built like bombs and grenades they activated on my signal which made them just as dangerous in the air as if they hit the ground.
The three rapid explosions attracted every monster's attention. There was a moment of delay as they looked up. It was called a flash shot because on the first use it worked exactly like flash bangs used by police forces.
As soon as the light balls formed, they released an intense white light which blinded everyone that looked up.
All the flying creatures screeched in pain and fell down when all of them moved their claws to block their eyes. I put the ship on its fastest speed and flew low before getting close.
I activated the hatch that slowly opened in the right side of the ship. At once I switched to my Asura body.
“Let's move out everyone!"
The two front arms released their swords while the middle pair released the mini-guns.
I led the way and jumped down. Below were hundreds of blinded monsters. I grinned and began shooting right below to hurt the monsters before I brutally dropped all my weight on them as I landed on my feet right on the monster.
My current body weighs a staggering 600 kgs with all the weapons, ammo and armor. Put that together while putting a good suspension system in my legs and I could turn my drop into a weapon on its own when going into a large scale battle like that.
The monster died as several of his organs ruptured and his bones were crushed from the weight. I turned around and did a spin with both arms stretched. The mini-gun was firing out while the sword was slashing through the monsters.
I then quickly jumped away as Bulk and the others landed with an even more terrifying crash which caused the area to tremble.
Following him was Nova blasting all the surrounding monsters with her mini-gun, with her were the eight clockwork robots that were armed with semi-automatic rifles.
The last to arrive were the tiger men who landed stealthily on the ground with ease.
“Nova you and half of the tigers stay around here. Bulk you and the rest follow me, we are heading inside."
“Yay! Kitties let's play!” Nova shouted.
I saw every one of them had strange expressions at being called kitties. That said, none of them would dare speak up against the girl with the highest fire power in the group.
A part of the group split up and followed the girl who, for some reason, could read where was best to attack.
I led my group which had the stronger of the tigers into the village.
The doors were already destroyed and inside were many stunned monsters who were starting to get used to the light that was slowly being left behind.
We arrived and I started to blast everything with grenades and mini-guns making sure to mind where the draconians were since the quest was to save them.
Bulk was swinging the warhammer we got from Victor back during the beta to crush the shells of several monsters that possessed them.
Soon I found the draconian leader and started to make my way to him.
I needed to cross a small plaza filled with at least 80 monsters to do so. Normally such strong enemies would discourage any attempt, but with a hardcore game like this that sticks closer to reality than most other games. Real-life weapons are almost cheating when made correctly.
My two back arms opened up and revealed the grenade
launchers inside. They aimed up and I began unloading the 16 grenades I had stored inside. I concentrated most of them to make a path to my target while dropping some of them around the outer area to cause some chaos and to make it easier to get in between them.
In one blow the village’s plaza was lit up like fireworks which sent a monstrously scary shock wave from the 16 grenades exploding all together. I think I have explained it once but when you do consecutive damage to one area, the damage for the second attack gets stronger. In an explosion like that, it was different. The damage for each creature was determined by how many explosions hit.
So in this case it hit all the monsters from below where they were more vulnerable. The unlucky ones that had the grenades right under them had their legs torn off.
This game had a really interesting, even high-level monsters could be crippled and left weaker than a level 30 and the best part about ammo and consumables was that anyone could use them.
The monsters in there were all 100+ and yet technology had proven over and over again. The more tech you had, the better your damage.
Monsters were literally thrown away like burnt trash and left paralyzed in pain.
“‘Quickly clean the living ones up. We can level faster that way.’ Bulk pass on these orders to the draconians. Start charging magic, we will cover them so they can use it.”
Bulk quickly ran off to the draconians and began giving out orders. I helped clean the trash remaining and switched to the body in the ship.
Focusing, I saw the place was swarming with monsters.
Using Yasha, my mechanic body, I pulled out all four of my swords and walked out onto the top deck. The place was filled with various bats flying all over the place. The 12 clockwork robots were being used by Victor who was using his mini-gun to shoot down the monsters in the air. As for the tiger men, they were all battling it out with the bats.
I took one of the poses I thought of in Virtual Town. Both bodies I needed to think of different ways to use if I wanted to fight with them. This body was lighter and quicker while the other was heavy and slow.
If I could develop dual wielding with these bodies the system would begin helping, or was it quad wielding?
Anyway, the pose was both a blocking and attacking one where the back arms were in a defensive position while I start attacking with the front ones.
The fighting style was to block with two at all times while attacking with whichever remained.
I started by slashing several bats closest to me that were fighting tigers. The pain from the back stab which did extra damage, caused it to flinch, making a small opening that the tigers took to claw at the bat’s faces and chests.
It ripped a lot of the strong skin from all of them.
“Victor! Where are those two fire elementals!” I asked.
“They flew down below. Have no idea what for!” he replied without stopping his own assault on the flying monsters. He was having a hard time because he needed to watch the robots as well.
Suddenly I saw the lights from the fire elementals.
They were flying off ship already and were being accompanied by some draconians. The females I saw, stopped in midair while the men continued on.
Under all the females, a red magic circle appeared, and they all began to chant together.
The men followed the two bird shaped elementals.
“on three! one! two! three!” Blaze shouted.
On the third count all of them stopped, and from all of their mouth’s a swirling flame was released. It went all above the ship but as the flames joined it gained power until it looked like a great dragon’s breath.
In droves, the bats began falling like flies burned to the inside while the skin was charred.
“I know this is the wrong moment but damn that smells nice. Those dragon guys cooked the bats just right,” Victor said.
Though no one showed it because of the situation, we all wanted to laugh at the stupid joke.
When I looked up, I noticed that there were many that didn't die though. From the light of the flares, I saw they had a blackish red coloration which probably meant they had fire resistance. Those that died were black or with a slight blue coloration, so it probably meant they had affinities.
It was then that the females finished.
Over each of them a condensed ball of flame had formed. They grabbed the balls and about half threw them up into the sky while the rest sent them down to the ground.
I warned Nova and the tigers on the ground.
All at once, they all burst and created a sea of flames. Those shot into the sky formed several meteors of molten rock that fell onto several of the surviving bats and impacted the ground making large pillars of fire and spreading the fires to all the nearby monsters that were unfortunate enough to be near.
Though it took much longer than using guns, magic was still a powerful weapon. Sacrifice firing speed for damage. Though considering guns are made to have fast reload and damage per second, it just meant we weren't armed well enough to keep up to a squadron of trained magicians.
With a huge number of bats dead, the robots could finally turn around and begin blasting those who landed.
In a short while we had the bats on the ship under control. They were a pain but with everyone attacking, the 11 bats that got on the ship were killed.
The confrontation took a huge amount of our ammo to get the bats down. With aerial support from the fire breathing draconians and the fire elementals we could focus on the ground.
“Victor. Get everyone to bring up more ammo and bombs. Have them set up the cannons in the lower deck as well,” I ordered.
At once he began shouting and getting them to move. I walked to the left side of the ship and looked down. I grinned when I heard a lot of gunfire from below.
Looking through Asura, I saw they were keeping the monsters at bay outside the village.
I started scanning around the ground and soon found her. Nova was using her protector to jump off the trees over the monsters while shooting at weak points.
I started to chuckle at how good she had gotten at using those suspensions. Before she would need both legs to jump, but the jump of the protector had become strong enough that a single leg was enough.
If I compared her right then to a ninja from Naruto, then it should be easier to understand just how good she had gotten with that robot.
While jumping all over the place, she was bombarding the monsters with bullets or, from the looks of it up here, relaying where weaker monsters were.
“Hey captain, the bombs and cannons are just about ready. It’s also getting dark since the flash bombs have moved too far back,” Victor said.
“Fire one flare and then start giving support to the village. Aim just before the wall within the woods and not in the clearing. There are fighters from our side there. The cannons on the side should aim for heavily dense areas of monsters.”
“Got it. All right, you newbies get ready. One more flare and then we start the bombardment!” he shouted.
Bulk PoV
It was some of the most fun I’d ever had. I was using that midget’s warhammer to crack the shell off all the monsters with shells. It was like cracking open a nut, most people would start getting nauseous from hearing the sound of bones cracking but it was like music to my ears. Following all the cracking there was always a ding here or there.
It was so much more fun than when we trashed the orc race since these monsters actually put up a fight. It’s only because of my heavy padding that I’d only lost 50% of my health.
I’d never felt so excited. Right then, I was just finishing off a rushing armadillo that came rolling at me and I killed it with a single well-placed crushing swing of the hammer. It seemed that if you broke the shell, it was like a death sentence to them. They can’t live without it, it’s like a turtle. Their spine is built right into the shell, so you crush the shell, you crush the spine.
As I pulled the warhammer from the dead carcas
s of the armadillo, my eyes fell on something I wouldn’t have expected to find up there.
On all fours and huffing with rage was a huge rock rhino. On all fours he was the same length and height as me.
It kept snorting and swinging its head from left to right as if challenging me. It made me grin seeing him like that so I stored my warhammer and activated my switch.
I dropped to all fours and the rhino head that was on my back dropped over my head. As soon as the head fell over, my own my vision changed to the rhino head.
A big huff came from me which released a stream of steam. I imitated the rock rhino which seemed to piss it off.
It suddenly rushed me and I, in the rush of the moment, began doing the same.
I opened my status window and looked at my level. It was already at level 50. I had gained four levels since the dungeon. We never put stats points on anything, at least I hadn’t. I had all 50 levels of stat points. That equaled 150 points since we gained three points every level. My strength and toughness were better than Techno’s at 115 and my strength was equal to his at 88. I changed that because of the stupid thing I was about to do. I put 80 points on toughness and the rest on strength.
As soon as I confirmed the change, I saw my durability shoot up and I could feel all the gears in my body work with even more power.
I even felt I was rushing faster. When we made contact, the sound of crushing metal could be heard but the rock rhino was completely stopped by my charge which stopped both of us.
We both began to push but slowly I started to push it back.
I slowly pushed my head down and he did the same to keep me from getting any leverage to flip him.
I grinned inside the rhino head. The reason was because from my back two small openings popped open and from both two mini-guns came out. They began to spin. As soon as they reach the max spinning speed I added the bullets.
dararararara!
The bullets began to carve into the rhino that reared back from the pain. I took the opportunity and rushed in and shoved my metal rhino horn through its chest and hit the core inside.
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