And that wasn’t the end of the bad news. Lesser Griala realized its snack wasn’t about to come traipsing into its maw, and so it attacked with the same incredible speed it had used to get out of the fire. Stalks flew forward toward the boy. Making their way around the wave of fire that was still burning away, they moved to surround him.
That was what bought Tailyn the time he needed to figure out what to do next. Encircled, he took a deep breath and blew onto his card as hard as he could. The enormous, hundred-meter circle of fire kept the boy safe from the monster, only Lesser Griala took just thirty seconds to grow enough stalks to get all the way around it. And its extraordinary intellect showed through once more as it refrained from attacking. Sooner or later, the boy’s resources were going to run out, and that was when he was going to be devoured. He also had to doubt that his level fourteen Vargot would stand up to the green shoots, so he had to hold the monster back. Running wasn’t an option. Lesser Griala had turned out to be faster than Valia’s lizard.
Glancing around frantically, Tailyn realized there was no escaping. At least, not on the ground. He took off into the air ten seconds before his wave of fire was set to die out, leaving a few dozen meters between himself and Griala. Almost as if sensing that its prey was getting away, the stalks jumped into the flames, but it was too late. Tailyn was gone.
Temporarily, at least.
Lesser Griala somehow managed to quickly figure out what was going on. A breeze caught Tailyn and began carrying him away from the mountains, though the herbage stayed right with him. Looking around, the boy noticed that the green sea was stretching out in the form of a large drop. Its slender end touched the mountains. Presumably, that was where its control center was, as a small transmission channel ran away from it to end in the circle two hundred meters in diameter directly below the boy. Raptor couldn’t even reach the edge. But the worst part was that a growth began creeping up from the ground, reaching ever higher toward the boy no matter where the wind took him. Tailyn flew higher. Griala just continued growing its tower—it wasn’t giving up on its attempt to reach the nimble human.
Apparently, that wasn’t enough for the god. The wind once more changed direction, that time pulling the boy toward his group. As his perception triggered, a timer popped up to show him that he would reach Ka-Do-Gir and Valrus in thirty seconds, his own finale coming a minute after that. Lesser Griala was going to reach him at 140 meters in the air.
Yet another wave of fire went flying downward only to lick harmlessly at the growth and melt away before it could even get to the ground. There was no minute to speak of—the flames died away in the air with nothing to take hold of. Even Griala didn’t count. With panic beginning to set in, Tailyn was out of answers. Dropping lower meant certain death. Speeding up wasn’t an option since the breeze wasn’t particularly strong, and the boy was already as high as he could go. Even warning Valrus and the lixes wasn’t a possibility. Frustrated and angry, the boy hadn’t thought to set up a group before attacking. The plant tower grew even higher, and the boy hit on the very last option he could think of to prolong his existence.
Attack!
On it!
The sparkling golden cape slipped off Tailyn’s neck and transformed into a dragon a meter and a half long. Tailyn’s messenger dove to meet the plant, cutting loose a stream of primordial fire as it did.
For a second time, Griala let the world know it had a voice. And while it was hurt the first time, it was more annoyed, while the second time sounded like someone being burned alive. Seven seconds—that was how long the fire lasted, though it was enough for the plants to recoil a good thirty meters. The dragon wagged its tail and flew over to Tailyn, its gaze lowered.
Sorry, I can’t do any more. Need to recharge.
The primordial fire was powerful, but a long time went by before it was ready for a repeat performance. At level seven, the companion took thirty-five seconds between attacks. That meant it was great as a one-time option while less so as a recurring feature. Still, regardless of the situation, Tailyn placed a comforting hand on the dragon.
Still, good job! You did everything you could. And...
That thought faded away when Tailyn realized what was going on. Li-Ho-Dun was ignoring the wind to stay in one place, and Tailyn, his hand grasping his companion, had stopped drifting toward the group. Swallowing hard and afraid to make any sudden moves to upset the fragile status quo, he found the strength to ask his next question.
Can you fly over to the mountains?
Of course! But I can only attack in thirty seconds.
Let’s head that way—it’s important. Do you see where the plants end? That’s where we need to go. You’ll be able to do some more burning there!
Let’s do it.
Tailyn jerked as soon as the dragon took off against the wind. Starting slow, they picked up speed with each passing second. Why hadn’t he thought of that option for getting around earlier? It had been right there in front of him. The plant growth, which had been regaining strength, tried to keep up, only the boy’s perception told him ten seconds later that his plan was a success. Griala was putting all its strength into moving the tower; there wasn’t anything left over to keep growing in any other directions.
Lesser Griala quickly realized it had something unpleasant coming for it. Especially for a plant, it had a terrifyingly powerful intellect, and Tailyn couldn’t get close to the mountain before it threw up a barrier. The lower slopes were covered in growths aimed right at him. Griala was moving to stage two of its plan. After failing to scoop its nimble prey off the ground, it was going to shoot him out of the air—each of the growths began spitting something long, green, and apparently sticky at him. The boy was too far away from the mountain for the shots to do anything but hit the ground harmlessly, but each passing meter brought him closer and closer. And when his perception told him exactly what the growths’ range was, he had to stop two hundred meters from the mountain.
Just then, the growth that had been hunting him from the ground began to change. No longer fighting to stretch higher, its tip morphed into something exactly like the growths on the mountain. The frighteningly intelligent monster was looking to fire some shots at Tailyn from below. The boy released his dragon and had him attack the new plant structure, unwilling as he was to give up the initiative.
Vargot kicked in just in time to keep the scream from deafening Tailyn. Outside, however, it shook the mountain, and while the growth below him shriveled away, Tailyn didn’t have time to rest on his laurels. His companion’s albeit named armor had proven unequal to the task.
Your companion received a Stunned debuff that will last for 60 seconds.
The breeze that had lost interest in Tailyn for a while picked back up. And it decided to make up for lost time, too. There by the mountain, the swirling gusts were incredibly powerful, and Tailyn was hurled toward the cliffs and into the waiting arms of the still-screaming Griala.
Something clicked in Tailyn’s head, and the world around him slowed down. His fear dissipated. His rage evaporated. Even his worry about the group getting devoured right after him left along with everything else as a peace fell over him. With the same calm that always saved him when the situation was most dire, he somehow managed to both read and even analyze the perception data that flew past him. His attack was lining up.
And yes, it was an attack. Experience had proven that running from Lesser Griala wasn’t an option.
Time broke down into chunks organized around actions. The first was to drop lower, as Tailyn left himself at around fifty meters in the air. Up at 140 meters, there were just too many plants. Second, he materialized the stone he’d dropped into his inventory back on his trip to Grivok. Third, he deactivated his dragon. While that didn’t get rid of the debuff, it secured his companion’s safety—stray shots of the green substance weren’t going to knock it out of the air. And fourth, the boy put his fate in the hands of his perception as he hurled the rock at the point Raptor
told him was Lesser Griala’s center. The point all the stalks were coming from. The point filled with wires and devices the likes of which Tailyn had only ever seen in One’s city. Lesser Griala wasn’t alive. Just like its compatriot in Tartila Mine, it was a machine—Valrus had been wrong. The experiment had somehow managed to rename itself and evade the protection.
The precipitous fall stopped. Despite the pain it was in, Griala managed to pull itself together and fire back, wrapping green threads around Tailyn to hold the boy twenty meters above the ground. Vargot began reporting on cracks at its seams. It wasn’t going to last much longer. Its impact blocker was counting down at an absurd rate, absorbing ten blows a second. But even as Tailyn’s position looked bleak, the boy maintained his calm. His attention was fixed on Raptor. As it scanned the area, the device told him the stone had zipped right past the obstacles thrown up in its path and landed exactly where it was supposed to—next to Lesser Griala’s source of growth. But the big plant didn’t pay the slightest mind. Apparently, it had its own analyzers, and it didn’t consider the simple rock a threat.
That was Griala’s undoing. Just when the rock touched the surface of the monster and right before it began rolling away, Tailyn triggered his teleportation. The newest growth the monster was sprouting found itself grasping at thin air. Nobody was home. Appearing a couple steps away from the machine’s holy of holies, its control center, the boy’s perception and monster knowledge gave him a 100% indicator as soon as he took aim with Valkyrie. The three-meter stone slab was no match for an armor-piercing bolt from the level fourteen crossbow. Just one shot later, a happy message popped up in front of Tailyn:
You destroyed Lesser Griala, one of 34 monstrous children spawned by Griala, Experiment 26.
Level +1 (99).
Named item level +1 (15).
Your companion reached level 8.
***
You used free attribute points.
Frankenstein +1 (58).
***
Your Marauder level: 51.
You can’t strip Lesser Griala down for parts (missing skills).
Loot received:
Lesser core. Would you like to place it in your dragon’s blood storage?
As soon as Tailyn accepted that offer, the core disappeared, another message appearing in its place:
Not enough material to complete the Dragon’s Blood mission. Mission progress: 5%.
The giant plant went soft and began to wither away. Not a minute later, there was nothing left of the creature that had once covered several square kilometers. But Tailyn wasn’t paying attention. Again and again, he read through the messages, trying to figure out what was bothering him. Was it that Lesser Griala was a spawn of the bigger experiment? That was odd, of course, but nothing out of the ordinary. Things like that happened. And while there were a lot of the little bastards, thirty-four in all, there was no telling what the ancient machines were capable of. What did seem funny was that there were almost as many of them as Tartila Mine had...
A cold sweat broke out as Tailyn realized what had happened. Pulling up his mission page, he stared at the description for Tartila Mine. It had changed. And the update had the boy howling at his own stupidity. Judging by the date, the changes had happened a week and a half before, only he’d been asleep and presumably swiped right past the messages when he’d woken up.
Mission update: Tartila Mine. Updated description: destroy 2 experiments in Tartila Mine. Note that Griala, Experiment 26, destroyed 34 experiments after the system balance was disrupted (player Tailyn Vlashich destroyed Rhinoceros, Experiment 118, which was the counterbalance). The destroyed experiments do not count toward the mission and will not be credited to the participants for a reward (Griala received the reward for freeing up system resources). Complete the mission for a hefty reward.
Thirty-four Lesser Grialas... At least, thirty-three... That certainly was a hefty reward for the machine pinned under the enormous dome, and it represented an equally hefty threat to the rest of the world. That went double for Mean Truk, which was just two days away from Tartila Mine. Where were the green bastards? And what was it going to take to kill them? Repeating the same trick a second time was presumably not going to work.
Chapter 7
“JUST DON’T EVEN TRY to tell me you’re going to head out and roam the steppe in search of those machines,” Valrus said as he turned an intrigued eye on the remains of Lesser Griala. The lixes had pulled away a few large boulders to reveal an impressive metal box with a neat little hole that had been left by Valkyrie. And while a few hundred wires and narrow pipes ran out of the box, they cut off almost immediately, hanging in midair. The plants they’d been connected to were no more.
Even then, the reptiloid refused to admit that Tailyn had been right. According to Valrus, Lesser Griala wasn’t an experiment, and that meant the lab protection was still holding strong. But it was certainly a disappointment that Griala had eaten nearly all its fellow experiments. From what Valrus said, there were a few monsters that could have been taken out without much trouble, and he’d been planning on getting the dragon’s blood from them. It was hard to say what their best course of action was.
“Pulling that trick again won’t work—they learn quickly.” Tailyn grabbed his lucky rock and slung it into his inventory. Sure, there were dozens of similar ones lying around, but he wanted that one in particular.
“You mean to tell me the Lesser Grialas are connected to each other?”
Tailyn just pointed at the thick cable leaving the back of the box. It was the only one leading into the mountain rather than away from it, though it, too, was cut. Still, level fifty-two perception wasn’t easily fooled—it pointed out the hole in the cliff.
“Griala was controlling its spawn,” Valrus said, his face drawn. “And that means—”
“It wasn’t able to pull its body out through the protection, though it did get its mind out,” Tailyn said. After his conversation with One, he’d begun looking at the world differently. One thing was for sure: body and mind didn’t have to be connected for someone to do something. Often times, it was only the mind that was needed.
“But the protection is still up and running...” the reptiloid responded, though his voice faded away when he realized who he was justifying himself to. An idiot village kid bereft of a regular education. He was the kind of person who should have been taking the reptiloid at his word, though Tailyn didn’t notice the inner struggle going on next to him. The boy was too busy thinking ahead.
“Ka-Do-Gir, take the lixes and head back to the city. We’ll take it from here.” Just in case, he dropped the remains of Lesser Griala into his virtual bag in the hopes of being able to melt them down or otherwise reuse them in the future. There was no sense throwing away good loot. With no argument from the lix, the six-legged creatures were marching away a few moments later.
“It opens when the sun goes down,” Tailyn said when he saw Valrus heading over to the tunnel. The reptiloid flashed a disparaging look at the boy, though he managed a neutral tone.
“That’s for everyone else. There are exemptions for anyone who helped build it, so follow me.”
Stepping over to the blank wall, Valrus tapped a few spots a good distance away from each other. Tailyn’s perception told him nothing no matter how closely he watched, the points on the wall no different from anywhere else. But the System knew what was going on. As the panel shuddered and eased its way up, the path forward into the twenty-kilometer tunnel opened.
“It’s been how many years? And I still remember,” the reptiloid said happily. It was the kind of small victory he hadn’t been getting enough of in recent times. After he’d had his falling out with Mark Derwin, the key architect behind the passageway, there was a risk the latter could have changed the access code. But he hadn’t. The Absorber had apparently had better things to do—what was the point of changing the code when the passageway opened once a day anyway? Even he couldn’t change that.
“Let’s go,” Valrus said. When he didn’t get a response, he turned toward Tailyn and jumped. There was a green ocean washing down over a hill a few kilometers away as another Lesser Griala rushed to meet the pair. And it wasn’t alone. Stalks were making their way up the mountain from the left and the right, and they certainly looked like they belonged to three different monsters. All of them were coming to avenge the death of their compatriot.
“Quick, into the tunnel!” he yelled, grabbing the hand of Tailyn, who was frozen in his tracks, and hauling him roughly toward the opening. The boy had gone limp. And since he was the only one of the two who could take on the monsters, that sent a chill through Valrus. The boy was suddenly looking very much like a boy, little and terrified of the onrushing dread.
Tartila Mine (The Alchemist Book #5): LitRPG Series Page 9