The Return
Page 15
“What happens when a golem takes in a part of you?” I asked.
He grinned. “They become like what you're standing on, a sky whale. It’s an ancient race of earth elementals and it’s a form of golem that by no means can be assumed by those who are evil. Anyone who has malice in their heart will be consumed but those who don’t hold it will gain power. For an awakened like you, it would destroy your body to the point where you can’t return to this body in our world,” he said.
My eyes grew wide hearing this. I gulped at the prospect. I wouldn’t lose in either case really. Me and the guys gave up the idea of getting away from Nova a long time ago, but in this case I could bet on either change. If I survived, I got power and if I didn’t, I was free.
“I’ll take my chances,” I said.
“I see, well I hope you’re ready for a world of hurt. The pain you will feel will never have an equal.” He put his right hand to his chest and then slowly raised it off his chest. In his chest I saw the core appearing. It was large, huge even. Bigger than a handball. He flicked the core and a crack appeared on it. Then he flicked it in two other spots and a triangular pyramid shaped piece with four triangular faces fell down. The cracks on the core completely closed up after that. The piece was as big as the pinky digit of my hand.
Menthol picked it up in his hand and walked over and placed his left hand on my shoulder. I suddenly felt something bad about to happen.
“Good luck boy. You will need it.” Before I could react, he smashed his hand into my chest but it didn’t penetrate because his palm was open. What did penetrate was the broken core piece and that flew straight into my body close to my core. From the impact, I flew halfway across the clearing and slid on the ground. The pain was already intense but the chest pain began subsiding after a bit. At least until a window appeared.
Mission: Sky Whale Evolution
Because you have requested Menthol give you a piece of his core, he has done so. Because of this you are undergoing the transformation into an ancient breed of earth elemental called the sky whales. A being consisting of two separate bodies, one which flies in the skies and one guardian to protect its main body.
Time until transformation is complete: 23:59:34
Difficulty:
C
Reward:
New sub-race.
Success:
You survive until the timer ends.
Failure:
You can’t survive until the timer ends.
Warning:
This quest will disable the pain limiter and you will feel 100% pain during the change. Should the system see that you are in danger you will be ejected and your quest will fail. Your character will be destroyed and you will have to start over.
As soon as I read the final word my body was wracked with pain like I had never felt before.
My vision went black and I couldn’t help squirming on the ground until I felt powerful hands hold me down.
From there it was a nightmare of pain.
Techno PoV
The morning after I was finally forced to accept those two as crew mates I was standing over Nova who was sitting down in a chair having a tantrum.
“no! I won’t do homework!” she shouted.
“Your punishment for not listening to me is that you won’t be allowed to play with any of your toys, the robots, Proto, any of the toys on the ship and you will be doing homework and studying for a whole month before I think about letting you use them. I will only make an exception if we really need to use them!” I said back to her after steeling myself the whole night.
I had absolutely no intention of going easy on her. The best part about clockwork is that we can’t cry or show blushing or any clear emotions that cause the face to change color. Her face did contort because of how it was built but it didn’t have the same effect.
She suddenly got up and tried to run only to be caught by Asura and placed back in the chair where I lectured her again about being rude and running when things weren’t going her way.
When I was done, I connected to the app that was attached to the bookshelves in Virtual Town. Two folders appeared, one had Nova’s real name under it and the other mine. I pressed on her folder and then a list of books appeared. I looked at the selection and pulled several textbooks ranging all grade school classes which she was missing. I force connected to her systems since she was blocking me and uploaded the textbooks.
“You will work on all of these. You can ask for help but you need to resolve them. Don’t try to be sneaky, I can see you all over the ship,” I said narrowing my eyes on both robots.
With that, I left in my Yasha body and sat the Asura down and had it go to standby but it could still hear things.
I had drones all over the place so I was watching Nova even without Asura being active.
I was up on the top deck thinking of something while looking at the open sails of our ship. What was going through my head was that the ship looked kind of bland. Just a basic ship taken from Gaia. Not much had been changed and I didn’t even think a name was given to the ship like those from pirate animes I watched.
As I thought a bit, our situation and the condition of the world came to mind. Even after the beta, it was still like a survival of the fittest because you never knew when something powerful would appear like Menthol.
With that in mind, I started searching for things to make paint with and after a while, with some plants and stuff found on top of Menthol, I was able to make some red paint. With it I wrote on the largest sail of our ship, K.O.D.
It stands for Kill or Die which is our situation. I guess if we were a mercenary group it would also work. But I felt we were more of the anti-social vigilantes.
Not like I wanted to be one. I would say fate makes things happen around us and had started to create that image.
Anyway, after drawing the three letters it felt much better. The ship gained a bit more of a personal touch.
It was then that the two fire golems came up on the top deck in their wisp forms. They looked around before coming to me.
“Hey Techno! Have you seen Brock?” Ena asked.
“We were with him in the morning but now he is gone,” Blaze said looking around the deck.
I tried to remember if I saw the golem. After a moment I shook my head but pulled out several drones and tossed them down below.
I took them to a monitor inside the control room so they could see my text since they couldn’t wear helmets.
“I’ll help look. I’ll call if I find him,” I told them.
“Thanks!” they said.
I nodded and the two flew off.
It was a bit strange. Besides, during a fight, I always saw those three together so for one of them to be gone was a bit strange.
Well I left that to the drones. I set them to alert me when they spotted the golem. I was already thinking of several upgrades. Because most of us were almost level 70 already so our gear and bodies could already be upgraded.
It was simple gear rearranging to work better.
I opened my status window to see my current stats.
Status
Name
Techno Gear (Yasha)
Race
Clockwork
Class
Mechanic
Level:
65
Free Stat Points
144
Durability
1,375/1,375
Energy
400/400
Strength
88
Agility
68
Toughness
115
Dexterity
115
Intelligence
200
Wisdom
200
Charisma
30
Leadership
20
Luck
50
Status
Name
Techno Gear (Asura)
Race
&n
bsp; Clockwork
Class
Chaos Knight
Level:
65
Free Stat Points
144
Durability
1,510/1,510
Energy
400/400
Strength
118
Agility
91
Toughness
132
Dexterity
106
Intelligence
200
Wisdom
200
Charisma
30
Leadership
20
Luck
50
With 144 extra points, I had a lot to work with. I thought about all the benefits of each one. Each body worked with different specifications. Yasha was much weaker and slower and not really built for combat. Instead for crafting. My stats were all linked so only the body stats changed.
I looked through the stats and did a lot of thinking trying to decide where to put the points. Agility was the lowest stat by far because of my size. Strength was important to lift stuff and for attack power in close combat but with ranged weapons that was less important. Dexterity worked both for crafting as well as using ranged weapons and toughness was self-explanatory, it increased my health and defense stats.
I started by adding 44 to agility. I did that in Yasha, I watched the Asura stat and sure enough it rose to 135 while Yasha went from 68 to 112.
With 100 points left, I went ahead and split the points in four and added them evenly to all four changeable body related stats. Charisma, leadership and luck can’t be altered by adding stats so only strength, agility, dexterity and toughness could be altered.
Both my stats ended up like this.
Status
Name
Techno Gear (Yasha)
Race
Clockwork
Class
Mechanic
Level:
65
Free Stat Points
0
Durability
1,500/1,500
Energy
400/400
Strength
113
Agility
137
Toughness
130
Dexterity
140
Intelligence
200
Wisdom
200
Charisma
30
Leadership
20
Luck
50
Status
Name
Techno Gear (Asura)
Race
Clockwork
Class
Chaos Knight
Level:
65
Free Stat Points
0
Durability
1,635/1,635
Energy
400/400
Strength
143
Agility
160
Toughness
157
Dexterity
131
Intelligence
200
Wisdom
200
Charisma
30
Leadership
20
Luck
50
I smiled looking at my stats. Though I went with the balanced distribution, it was still rather intimidating seeing all four stats in the three digits. Not only that, my stats would get even better when I upgraded my bodies. Clockworks really are an unbalanced race. Thinking closely what balanced us out was that we needed fuel to operate and we didn’t regain our health naturally. Eventually I could get rid of the fuel problem if I could become a synthoid, but the natural healing would probably never happen.
As I finished, the alarm from one of the drones went off and I pulled up the image in my left eye. What I see was the golem being held down by several other golems while he roared in pain. All over his body were black marks. The glowing green lights in his eyes and in the cracks that appeared on his body were glowing bright. Menthol was watching him intensely.
I got Asura up and sent him down to see what was going while some drones went to find the fire elementals.
That screaming was unnatural for a player. We have a limiter, so we don’t feel pain. Those screams were of someone being put through torture or a never-ending nightmare. A human’s mind can only take so much.
I jumped down with Asura and started running towards the clearing as fast as I could to see what was going on.
Menthol PoV
My, what strong will power the boy has. It also seems he doesn’t have malice in his heart because he wouldn’t have lasted 12 hours of nightmarish pain like this if he did. The glow around his body was still a natural green which is a good indicator that he is still sane to a certain degree.
I thought the boy should arrive soon. Those little robots had arrived a while back and they seemed to be of the kind that he used for scouting.
After a bit, the large six-armed boy appeared through the forest and walked over. In his hand was a small device with a screen. He turned it to me.
“What is going on?!”
“The boy asked for a piece of my core. Now his body is undergoing a change so he can handle it. His race will probably change to a subrace of the earth elemental race,” I explained.
His eyes grew wide and he nodded understanding what was going on. He looked at the golem boy on the ground.
“What is the success rate of this happening?” he asked.
Success rate? Never thought of it and until then he was the first to reach that point.
Not knowing what to say, I just explained the specifics of the process, “Well most of the others that found me to do this were filled with malice. Those who hold malice in their hearts will die 100% of the time, but if I remember correctly the one who made me a sky whale said there was a 90% chance of dying for a person who didn’t have malice. I believe willpower is a big factor. He needs to survive a full day like this before he successfully becomes my race.”
The boy frowned but nodded. He couldn’t do much about it then anyway. He turned around and started walking away. Moments later the two fire elementals appeared. They asked the same thing and were much more annoyed about hearing what was said. They both promised to beat him well after he woke up.
I could only laugh at the youngsters. Still it was for the best. Children should have fun so being like this was probably for the best.
Brock PoV
I never knew I could feel so much pain. My body was constantly wracked with waves of pain which slowly spread from my chest. The more time that passed, the more the pain grew.
A box was in front of my eyes, but the pain caused my vision to blur. I think it was a timer, but the more I forced myself to stay awake through the pain, the more I felt it and several times a new window would appear.
If I survived this, I knew that I would never fear pain from a beating that Techno might give. No to fear pain only if I had to go through this again.
As more time passed the pain grew to its peak, but then the pain in my chest stopped and moved to my arms and legs instead. As time passed, I began feeling less pain as the chest pain grew weaker but the arms and leg pain grew more intense as if to make sure I still felt the same intensity of pain as before.
Still, my vision somewhat cleared and I saw the timer for a few moments. It showed one hour remaining. Behind it was a wall of notifications but I couldn’t read them before a new more intense wave of pain wracked my body, again originating from my chest but it felt more like a shock wave.
It pulsed every two seconds from my chest to the ends of my crystal-like hairs. I felt it in every last fiber of my being.
Finally, when one minute remained the most intense wave hit and it remained for the whole minute which felt like an eternity. After the minute, my body became numb. The pain was gone and I couldn’t feel much of anything. My
ears were ringing and my eyes blurred.
As time passed, the ringing stopped and I lifted my head to look around. Holding me down were five large bulky golems. Each one was holding one of my arms or legs. The last was holding my head. They all looked tired but as they saw me calmly move around, they looked to Menthol. He nodded and they removed their hands.
Menthol walked over and crouched next to me.
“Good job boy. You’re the first golem that survived having my core pushed into him. You have a strong will to live, I will give you that,” Menthol said looking down at me.
I tried to speak but nothing came out.
“It’s best to rest for now. Living through 24 hours of so much pain isn’t something you can simply walk off. When you wake up, you will feel much better,” he said that and patted my shoulder. My head fell back on the ground and my eyes closed. Behind my closed eyelids I saw a series of windows open before I fell asleep.
Mission: Sky Whale Evolution (Complete)
You have lived through a near never-ending hell for a day and your body has been altered to support the core of a new core. Your will to live has earned you the respect of all elementals and you are now seen as a figure comparable to nobility among your race.
Reward:
Earth elemental subrace earth spirit (sky whale).
By surviving through continuous pain for a full day while forcing yourself to remain awake during the entire process you have unlocked the stat, willpower.