Valrus glanced at Fang, a twinge of annoyance flashing across his face. The reptiloid was starting to think the whole world had turned against him—that was just one more bit of proof. First, the experiments had broken loose to make the ancient laboratory impossible to get into. Then, there was Lesser Griala, who had somehow gotten out from under the protection dome. The empty corridors in the underground storage. Mark Derwin in the flesh. Fang, damn it. And then, the worst part, his machines were blocked. Valrus had known they were there, the kilometers of stone unable to hide the positioning signal. But even there, he had a problem: the signal had been coming from the main entrance, telling him they were there, and that had been why he’d headed in that direction. He’d been looking to get his weapons back. Unfortunately, finally standing next to them, he was forced to admit defeat. The machines needed a password, and he didn’t have it.
“With this.” The ancient pulled a useless control stick out of his inventory.
“Can you show him how to use it?” Tailyn’s eyes glinted, though Valrus didn’t suspect anything. Next to him was an ordinary human kid, stupid and naïve. He was lucky, of course, but not lucky enough to get his hands on the machines’ activation codes. And since the security system would reduce anyone who climbed inside to black dust, Valrus wouldn’t have recommended anyone give that a try.
“As soon as we get back to Mean Truk,” Valrus said as he returned the remote control to his inventory and sighed deeply. Still shaking next to Fang, talking with Tailyn was helping him relax. It was getting easier to think.
The boy wanted to mention something about how right then was the perfect time, only that was when he got the message from Valia. Eyes downcast, the girl was standing in the middle of the virtual smithy.
Tailyn, we have a problem... Li-Do-Ga is gone...
Where did she go? Why? She’s our carpenter! Tailyn replied, so surprised he instantly forgot about the technical bots.
She... She didn’t leave Mean Truk. She leaped head-first off the wall, taking out all her shields... I told her about Ka-Do-Gir, that we won’t be able to get him back for another ten years, and she announced that there was no point in her living that long. She’s resurrected noa, too, so the god won’t let me get the idiot back.
Valia!
She really is an idiot! We invested so much in her, trained her, had such high hopes for her. There’s even the recipes and materials we bought her! The workshop is being built, and she goes and lets us down like this just two months before the siege. You don’t call that being an idiot? Look what she did to the city! Forian is furious, yelling at everyone. Even Valanil is staying away from him—she doesn’t want to catch it.
What can we do now?
Motar assigned one of his guards for us to train. We really need a carpenter—there’s no building the city without one. But we’re back to square one, investing yet again thanks to that idiot... Are you sure you don’t have anything you can sell? Some coins would be great.
Mean Truk still had more than six million coins in the coffers, though Tailyn knew all too well how long they weren’t going to last. With commitments totaling ten million, not to mention salaries and city maintenance, unplanned expenses of even three thousand coins represented a critical problem. The only issue was that the city head had nothing to sell. The lab was completely empty, two machines excepted.
Okay, I’ll think of something. Maybe, I’ll send you Valrus so he can work—he’s useless here. Tailyn checked Raptor. The door that had so dependably protected the laboratory from prying eyes had been torn off its hinges and thrown aside. And while it was impossible to say if that was Less Griala’s doing or the Absorber’s, it didn’t much matter. Anyone interested in the ancients or hunting for the wonders of the world would be showing up to explore. The crowds of riff-raff who were definitely going to come had Tailyn worried, what with how close Mean Truk was. If they were able to beat off the attack, that was yet another problem to worry about...
If.
“You should head back to Mean Truk then,” Tailyn announced as he wrapped up his conversation with the ancient.
“What, you figured out a workaround for the blocker system? Cards don’t work in the lab.” Valrus waved the portal card in the air and demonstratively blew on it. As could have been expected, nothing happened.
“The lab ends a hundred meters from here,” the boy replied unperturbedly. “Head out into the tunnel and jump back to the city.”
“Wouldn’t it be simpler to just kill me here and now? Did you forget about the monsters?” Valrus was doing his best to hide his frustration with the foolish child. All he needed was for the latter to turn Fang on him—he wasn’t going to survive a repeat of that instance.
“I’ll walk you out. We don’t have to worry about monsters when we have Fang.”
“No, I’m coming with you,” Valrus replied, the emotions not enough to quell the voice of reason. With Fang in hand, they really had nothing to fear from any of the monsters on the planet—not even the black slime. His rage ebbing, options began taking form in his head. Both machines were unavailable, at least, for the time being, and that meant he had to find a different way to prove his value to his new tribe. To take one example, he could get Tailyn to the control center—there was definitely going to be something stored there. The doors were much tougher to get through than the outside ones, and the control center itself should have been a match for any game weapon. That meant they could find something to sell. No, heading back to Mean Truk was out of the question.
Tailyn wanted to tell the reptiloid how he was going to slow them down, though he ended up saying nothing. While it wasn’t something he wanted to admit, he didn’t want to find himself alone in the ancient lab. It was scary. Valrus wasn’t helping, but he was a living soul, at least.
“Okay, then let’s go. I only have twelve more hours to get the dragon’s blood.” Tailyn turned around to head back into the lab, though Valrus stopped him.
“Not that way. We’re going to head through the tunnel.”
“But...” The boy was going to mention Griala, though he’d already answered that question. They had Fang. And covering ten kilometers outside was going to be much faster than moving through the trap-filled labyrinth with all its traps.
“The Cleaner should have killed a couple of those things out there,” Valrus said. “There isn’t enough noa on the planet to immediately gobble up even the little bit of dragon’s blood that they will have left behind.”
“Why don’t you think the monster ate everything?”
“Because the machines are still whole and intact. When I bought them, I integrated a few units of dragon’s blood into their armor, and you can see for yourself that that was enough to keep them safe from the experiment. I’m not sure why else they’d still be here. Okay, let’s go. We need to check the corridors. If I’m right, you’ll be able to get as much blood as you need, and we’ll go find the main Griala if you can’t. The passageways will be opening soon, so we should be in time.”
The reptiloid’s arguments had the boy convinced, though they had to put off heading out. With the next lab update coming up, they didn’t have much time left, though Tailyn still found something to occupy it. His eyes fixed on the chilling information he was getting from Raptor, he turned to the reptiloid.
“Show me how to use the joystick. You promised.”
“It’s useless,” Valrus started, though he stopped and sighed. He had already realized what kind of person he was going to be guarding for the next fifty years—the kid was persistent. When something got into his head, he didn’t let it go, and it was simpler to hand it over than explain why he couldn’t. The ancient spun the useless joystick around in his hand and held it out to Tailyn.
“Here, my gift to you. You can reconfigure it for other devices if you can find them, though you have to connect it first. Here’s how you do that...”
The explanation didn’t take long, particularly because the reptiloid found a
short instruction manual in his logs. Once upon a time, someone else had explained to him how to use the remote control. After digging around for a while, he found the recording, headed back out into the real world, and just about screamed in horror. Lesser Griala’s stalks were dissolving into black dust a few meters away.
“It works,” Tailyn said happily, his excited gaze fixed on Fang. Unlike the Cleaner, the grassy monsters didn’t turn out to have particularly big brains, rushing in no matter their losses. Their programming set just one objective for them: destroy all things living. First, that had been Tailyn and Valrus, and then they’d been replaced by the Cleaner. The monsters had rushed in to fill the space, making things easy enough for the boy—their stalks had destroyed the traps as soon as he had taken out Experiment 1. That was what he’d been watching, ready to release his dragon to burn down the stalks at any moment. Fang had needed a test run. Having destroyed itself, the Cleaner wasn’t proof enough, and the boy wanted to make sure his dagger worked. And there was no better target than Lesser Griala. The creature had come charging in to meet its death head on, too.
The test had gone perfectly. After just touching the stalks, Fang hadn’t even needed to use the black strands, instead leveraging the communication channels the monster itself laid. The charge of necrotic energy rushed forward with superhuman speed, turning the monster to dust. And while Raptor had a hard time believing such an enormous creature could be dispatched that fast, it caught on quickly. Tailyn didn’t even have to bend over or touch Lesser Griala’s remains.
You destroyed Lesser Griala, one of 33 monstrous children spawned by Griala, Experiment 26 (32 remaining).
Loot received:
Lesser core. Would you like to place it in your dragon’s blood storage?
A glimmer of disappointment appeared on the boy’s face. The last time, he’d been promoted to level ninety-nine, his named item level had jumped up, and he’d even gotten a free parameter point. There was nothing but the loot that time. The bit of dragon’s blood dropped into his storage, bumping the mission meter up another five percent. Two Cleaner embodiments and two Lesser Grialas had gotten him to 60% of what he needed, and that had him trying to figure out if he was better off spending the remaining twelve hours hunting down another eight of the grass monsters or heading deeper into the laboratory to find the two remaining Cleaner embodiments. In the first case, the monsters would come running on their own; in the second, he was going to have to dodge all the traps in the ancient laboratory. Of course, there was also a third option, and Tailyn liked that one most of all: find Griala, Experiment 26, who was holed up in Tartila Mine. It definitely had enough to modify Fang, and then he could get to work finding the rest of the monsters.
The laboratory clicked into action, the way out turning into a direct hundred-meter corridor. That was the final straw. If the labyrinth itself was going to tell him to leave, that was what was going to happen. The dragon flew off, though it suddenly stopped in expectation of its master’s next order. It had just occurred to Tailyn what the message he’d just received meant.
“The Cleaner didn’t kill a single one of those monsters. It just ate their stalks and left their control centers intact!”
“So?” Valrus wasn’t getting it.
“The Lesser Grialas aren’t trying to find us. Raptor doesn’t show them in the passageway, and there isn’t anything in the tunnel.”
“What difference does that make for us heading outside?” The reptiloid suddenly realized he no longer had any desire to stay in the enclosed space that kept his portal cards from working.
“It sure looks like a trap.”
“You have Fang. No monsters can stand up to it.”
“What if it isn’t a monster? What if it’s—”
Just then, the mountain shuddered. Dust dropped from the ceiling, appearing from what seemed like out of nowhere, but more important was what happened in the tunnel. It disappeared, at least, for as far as Raptor could see. Pushed by some kind of sixth sense, Tailyn sent his dragon off to where the entrance to the laboratory had once been and teleported over as soon as his rock was in place. The door had been crushed; the tunnel had been buried in boulders so tightly packed that would have taken a mouse or snake to get around them. Or Lesser Griala. Only the boy’s scanner wasn’t picking up any movement.
Crestfallen, Tailyn sat down on the ground, unsure what to do next. His hand rested on his stone, and it was right then that the god suddenly deigned to explain what had happened.
The Underground Passage location was destroyed by Lesser Grialas.
12 monsters destroyed (20 remaining).
***
12 lesser cores were coopted by the System.
The ban on mining and using crystals was reduced by 30 days (reason: new source of noa generation).
Tailyn’s jaw dropped when it hit him that the main Griala had sacrificed its spawn to plug the passageway. So long as it kept Tailyn and his new weapon away, it was happy to cut itself off. The boy had been mistaken—the grass monster’s intelligence was far beyond the Cleaner’s. Still, that wasn’t the important part. The more dragon’s blood was confiscated by the System, the faster the planet regenerated. If the boy could find the lot the troops had stolen and return it to the god... But there was no point thinking about that right then.
“You head out—your card should work, and I’m going to take it from here.” It had taken a few seconds for Tailyn to get Valrus and bring him back to the way out of the lab.
“I already told you I—” the reptiloid started, though Tailyn cut him off when motion appeared at the edge of Raptor’s scanning radius. It wasn’t Griala—the boulders were disappearing one after another, almost as though someone was clearing them away. A few seconds later, the accessory showed what was causing the disturbance: a human-like figure. And while there was no description, Tailyn knew exactly who had the power to clear a path for himself like that.
Valia, I need a portal! Now! the boy yelled in his head, after which he began speaking out loud. “Valrus, activate the portal! The Absorber is going to be here in ten seconds. I’m serious!”
The reptiloid only paused for a moment.
“Ready!” The card was in his hand.
Ready! Valia chimed in, unsure of what was going on but not about to argue.
“On the count of three—one, two, three. Blow!” Tailyn yelled in both spaces at once. His eyes fixed on Raptor, he was stunned by how fast Mark Derwin was moving through what seemed like an impassable space. What was he doing there so soon? It had been just a tad more than twelve hours since their last meeting, and the System had promised the boy seven days.
Almost as though hearing Tailyn, a message popped up:
The Absorber’s arrival time was adjusted due to his new abilities.
Approximate arrival: 15 seconds!
“Faster!” Tailyn screamed frantically, and that was when the shimmering, life-saving circle appeared.
“Go—I’m right behind you!” Valrus yelled as he kept the portal active. He wasn’t prepared for what Tailyn did next, however. Jumping over to the ancient, the boy grabbed him by the scruff of his neck like some kind of kitten and tossed him through the circle. The portal closed instantly as the card holding it open disappeared inside along with Valrus.
“Okay, I’m alone now.” Tailyn picked up his rock, turned on his binoculars, and zoomed in on the far end of the corridor, after which he hugged his companion and used his teleportation. Suddenly, a hundred meters stood between him and the entrance.
What are you doing?! Valia screamed, just about deafening the boy.
Completing my mission, the boy shot back shortly before deactivating his virtual copy. Of course, that didn’t keep his betrothed’s nagging voice out of his head, but he was able to ignore it there. Without dragon’s blood, Tailyn was lost in the world, and he had nothing to fear from Mark Derwin for another day. He had two more blocks keeping back mortal blows, each of which was going to buy him twelve
hours. And that was a veritable eternity.
But Tailyn wasn’t about to hang around that hall, instead bending over and picking up another stone that would let him teleport. As he and Valrus had been moving toward the entrance, the boy had left stones lying around, almost as if he’d sensed he would need to make a quick getaway. Leap, bend over, pick up the next stone, drink some mana, and do it again to move forward another thirty or forty meters. Of course, it wasn’t all a walk in the park, and he sometimes had to avail himself of his dragon’s help. The updated labyrinth sometimes moved the stones to the other side of walls, though that didn’t slow the boy down much. He jumped around like a grasshopper with the terrifying ancient monster behind him.
The latter was certainly able to keep up, too. The Absorber’s Raptor covered 12.4 kilometers, so Mark knew exactly where his target was. And the ancient was so surprised by how quickly the boy could move around that he decided to take some time for a conversation, one that would, needless to say, be followed by the boy’s destruction. Still, Mark wanted to find out how he was teleporting first. He knew all too well about the ability, including about its limitations—you could only jump to something you were familiar with. Did Tailyn have the dynamic labyrinth memorized? That was impossible—the last update had been less than ten minutes before. Mark was intrigued, a feeling he hadn’t felt in a long time. Forgotten, strange, and blood-sucking, it infuriated him.
Tartila Mine (The Alchemist Book #5): LitRPG Series Page 17