“What did you do?” I asked.
‘In the past my primary function was strategic analysis. So I evaluated the target and added on health and level estimates,’ she said. ‘The red areas I’ve highlighted are weak points you can take advantage of.’
“So you have some use after all,” I said.
‘What do you mean after all? Was there ever any doubt?’ whined Mai.
The robot stopped to look down at my lamp for a few seconds and I took that opportunity to strike.
I focused on the sentinel’s weak points, thrusting my spear at them whenever I could. With the limp, the robot’s legs moved slow enough to give me the edge in foot speed, but its arms were an entirely different matter. They moved so fast the two swords looked more like eight and after taking a few hard blows to the chest, I determined a frontal approach was impossible. I groaned in pain as I pulled back. If the swords hadn’t been so dull, I would have been minced meat. Even so, the blunt force of the strikes bruised my ribs even through the armor.
I focused on attacking from behind. With my superior speed, I raced around the tin man and struck at the back of its legs. After a strike or two, the robot would turn around and chase me around the room knocking over tables, chairs and bookshelves until I could get around behind it and score a few more blows. This pattern repeated several times until my attacks on the robot’s legs finally paid off. The robot’s legs gave out. It tumbled to the ground, becoming a stationary target. From there I simply stood back and stabbed away until it died.
You gained 2432 EXP
You gained a level
‘So what do you think? Fighting is way easier with me isn’t it?’ Mai reappeared next to me.
“Not sure,” I replied trying to be more critical of Mai than she probably deserved. Her ego was big enough already. “The visual aids were helpful. But without combat skills the fight was a lot harder than it should have been.” When Mai attached herself, she’d deleted all the combat skills I’d painfully trained and prevented me from relearning. The level 9 Spear Mastery skill alone had boosted my spear attacks by 27%.
‘Stop whining. I know you like it. The extra damage you do when you target weak points can more than make up for some paltry skill bonus. Besides just you wait, when you start seeing the benefits of knowing so many different skills, I’ll expect not another word of complaint,’ said Mai.
“Oh… You think I’ll kneel and worship at the altar of the almighty Mai,” I said.
‘There’s no need for that.’ Mai waved me off. ‘Altars are for gods, but I won’t stop you from kneeling.’
I started looking around at the aftermath of the battle. The room was trashed. The fight had leveled the table, chairs, and bookshelves. Unfortunately, the books were a total loss. They were already ancient. Thousands of years exposed to the air had made the paper brittle and the violent overturning of bookshelves had proven to be too much, reducing them to little more than dust.
I moved over the defeated robot in the middle of the room. “Is there anything worth salvaging in this bucket of bolts?” I asked, kicking the robot’s head in repayment for the lost books. I hadn’t expected the neck breaking and the head flying across the room but it had been half-broken even before I’d wailed on it.
‘Most of the body is plain steel. I wouldn’t bother saving it. The inner frame, the bones, are also steel, but inlayed with exsilver. So you might want to salvage that,’ Mai answered.
“Exsilver?” I asked, never having heard of such a substance.
“It’s a form of silver that’s been imbued with holy magic, it’s corrosion resistant and stronger than steel, though that isn’t why it’s in the robot. Exsilver was used in the robot because it’s a perfect conductor, allowing for higher energy efficiency. I’d also salvage the soul gem. Its power is probably drained, but you might be able to recharge and re-encode it someday,” said Mai.
I followed Mai’s advice and worked on gradually breaking down the robot’s body so I could get to the innermost parts. The work was a precarious balancing act, the need to damage and remove the bot’s outer shell versus the unavoidable racket it generated. I worried about attracting more sentinels, but none came.
After four hours of work, I successfully extracted the robot’s soul gem, which looked a lot like Mai’s but smaller and a different shade of blue, and the exsilver inscribed rods than made up its innermost frame. I continued down the dark hallways of the ancient Traveler base, desperate to get out and continue my quest.
I spent the next week wandering dark hallways guided only by my lamp and Mai’s directions. The path she had me follow was constantly twisting and turning. She would have me go up a flight of stairs to another level and circle around up there for a while before dropping back down. The halls were identical and the chambers that they intersected were always vacant of anything of value, a table here, a couch there, nothing I could use.
The similarity of all the passages and Mai’s winding path made me wonder if she was leading me in circles. Mai insisted she wasn’t. That she had to take me in a circuitous route to avoid locked security doors and checkpoints where I was most likely to run into sentinels.
During my meandering path through the darkness, I ran into a dozen more sentinels. Most of them were in worse condition than the first and I never had to take on more than one at a time so I hadn’t had any problems dealing with them. I didn’t mind the fights. They broke up the monotony of winding tunnels nicely and let me collect more valuable materials. At the end of the week, Mai called me to a halt.
“What is it?” I asked. This was the first time Mai had called me to a stop. I think that after being trapped in here for so long, she was even more desperate to get outside than I was. As the only organic being, the only one who needed regular rest, I was usually the one to call for a stop.
‘We’re nearing the end,’ Mai answered.
“The end,” I smiled at her words. I was sick of the air made stale by millennia of non-use and the all-encompassing darkness of its passages.
‘The exit is just through there.’ She pointed down a passage to my left.
“Then let’s go,” I said, taking another step forward.
‘I need to warn you,’ interrupted Mai. I stopped again. ‘Large contingents of sentinels were stationed at each of the facility’s entrances. I’m not sure how many are still functional but…’ Mai shrugged as if not sure what else to say. She didn’t need to say anything.
“I’ll take it slow,” I assured her.
‘There’s more,’ said Mai. ‘The automatons ahead are different than the others. They were designed to blend in with the décor so as to not disturb authorized guests while still maintaining security. So, be on guard. They are transformers, robots in disguise. Look sharp, more than meets the eye.’
I smiled at that. “Now you’re quoting Transformers.”
Mai stared at me blankly.
“Never mind,” I said. I’d already tried to question Mai’s strange choices of words several times and it never led anywhere.
As I continued down the hall, it widened into an octagonal chamber. A ring of pillars encircled the center of the chamber and between them were several benches. The benches faced outward, each directly facing one of the eight walls. Each of the walls led to an open corridor that ran back into the darkness, except for the one directly opposite to me, which was instead filled by a pair of large elaborately decorated doors.
I heeded Mai’s warnings and used my plethora of gaming experience in planning my approach. The enemies were currently hidden and I knew it was best not to agro them all at once so I planned to coax them into attacking one at a time. When one of them came at me I would lead it down the hall quietly, trying not to disturb the others and once I was a fair distance away I would take care of the sentinel while it was alone before repeating the process.
It was all smooth sailing at the beginning. As I entered the chamber, the pillar to my right jostled and out popped a single sentinel.
As planned, I pulled it back down the hall I came from, killed it, and harvested the useful components before returning to the octagonal antechamber to find another.
It took six more rounds, three were in benches, two underneath the floor, and one had dangled from above, posing as a chandelier, but I eventually cleared out the room. Or at least I thought I had.
I was filled with glee. I was finally getting out of this dark, dank place filled with danger, finally getting some sun and some fresh air, finally getting to the other side of those mountains, finally making some progress on my quest to warn Xebrya of the threat posed by the savage beastmen. I headed to the large thick metal double doors and reached for the handles. The doors quivered.
I jumped back as two sentinels, one from each door, burst out from within. Scraps of the doors’ outer facade fell to the ground as the robots freed themselves from the wreckage and lumbered towards me. I turned tail and ran. I could hold my own against one but two seemed like too much. Most of my strategy in facing the sentinels revolved around circling behind and striking the weak points Mai identified. With two of them, this method was next to impossible. Even if I got behind one the other would still be able to attack.
“Mai, what can you tell me about these two?” So far, Mai’s analysis abilities had come in handy. She told me how strong they were, what condition they were in, and where their weak points were.
As for these two, they looked identical. Each one carried a large broad shield across their right wrists, while their left arms were empty. Behind the shield, I noticed their shoulders and legs were beefier than most of the other models, probably to support the heavy shields, and while time had deteriorated the metal men, it hadn’t yet worn through the thick metal plating around those arms and legs. On the other hand, the torso was decidedly exposed and at several locations, the outer coverings were completely gone, making parts of the exsilver frame and the soul gem plainly visible.
‘These two are defensive types. Since they were cocooned inside the door, it looks like they have faired the ravages of time better than most of the others. That’s why their levels are higher,’ said Mai.
“And how am I supposed to deal with two of them?” I asked.
‘Figure it out,’ Mai shrugged.
“I thought you were a strategist,” I said.
‘And my strategy is to have you prick the spots I made bright and red with your pointy stick,’ said Mai.
I retreated back down those lonely hallways, bots right on my tail as I thought about the best way to take them out, thinking the only way to deal with two was to be fast and kill one before the other could take me out. Then an idea hit me.
I turned to Mai and asked, “What happens if I disrupt the signal between the robot’s soul gem and the motors in its various joints?”
“They wouldn’t be able to move, I suppose,” Mai answered. “But you won’t be able to cut through the exsilver bars. It’s way too-.”
“And the ground, it’s conductive?” I interrupted Mai as I kept running. I didn’t have much time. I couldn’t keep this pace for long. My throat was already dry and my lungs were struggling to keep up with the demands of the rest of my body.
“It’s metal, so it’s conductive though not as…” said Mai.
“Heh, don’t worry. I got an idea, sort of.” I went into my inventory, pulled out two exsilver infused bars, and packed away my precious spear at least for the moment.
Few options available, with a sweaty brow and stuttering heart, I turned back and charged. The pair came at me, one behind the other, as the hallways were too narrow to accommodate them side by side. The first sentinel thrust its shield forward, trying to bash my face. I dove underneath, tumbling across the ground between the robot’s legs and out the other side.
I knew being surrounded was typically a strategic mistake but my plan depended on me taking them both out simultaneously. The first bot turned to face me while the second caught up. I was still sprawled across the ground armed with nothing but two long exsilver rods, one in each hand. The two sentinels’ momenta shifted, pulling back slightly in preparation for a pair of roundhouse punches. Before they made contact, I acted. I thrust one of the exsilver rods at each of the sentinels. The rods entered through the corroded holes in their armor and tapped the soul gem within. I then set the back ends of the rods against the cold metal floor beside me.
With that, I completed a new circuit within the sentinels, freezing them in place. All their internal workings stopped and their glowing eyes dimmed. I basked in the stillness for a moment, letting me catch my breath while I insured everything had worked. The exsilver poles connected the robots’ soul gems directly to the ground. This diverted all of the soul gem’s power away from their limbs through my new exsilver additions and into the ground. It worked. I survived.
“So Mai, what do you think of my strategy?” I smirked.
Mai gave a sarcastic grin. ‘Humph. I’ll give you a 9 on execution, but the strategy was a 2 at best. One false move and you’d have been done for. You should really be more careful with your life, it’s mine too now.’
“Since when does a stowaway have the right to complain about the ship,” I muttered. “By the way, how long do I have to hold it?”
I was still holding the exsilver rods steady to maintain the connection between the sentinels’ soul gems and the ground. I was afraid that if I let go before all the power in the soul gems drained away, the sentinels might turn back on. My arms started to burn in that uncomfortable position.
‘Oh, that’s why. I was wondering why you were still in that double penetration position,’ said Mai.
“You mean it’s already done?” I said.
‘Well… yeah,’ answered Mai. I released my arms in relief. Arm splayed to either side as I rested.
“You could have told me sooner,” I said.
‘Since when does a stowaway have to help man the ship,’ Mai fired back. ‘I told you exsilver is a perfect conductor, naturally the power drained almost instantly.’
I scrapped the final two sentinels for parts, returned to the large octagonal chamber, and stared in disbelief at where the outer doors had been.
“What?” My jaw dropped and I panicked a little when I noticed the doorway didn’t lead outside. It was blocked off. “What happened?”
‘Don’t worry, it’s just dirt,’ said Mai. ‘This isn’t entirely unexpected. It’s been thousands of years since this place was put here. Landslides and erosion have covered the entrance.’
“Great, so now I have to dig,” I sighed.
I picked up a slab of sentinel armor and tied it to the end of a stick, making a makeshift spade. Then I started hacking away at the sturdy earthen barrier, slowly tunneling my way out and up. I made the tunnel narrow since I didn’t want to risk cave-ins. Eventually, I had to crawl on all fours to continue forward. So in addition to feeling dark and dank, I started to feel claustrophobic. There never seemed to be enough room as I wiggled my way back and forth, up and down the tunnel, ferrying chunks of soil with me. While I worked, Mai continued to chat occasionally, dropping my name in favor of the situational ‘Moleman’ moniker.
After several hours of excavating, I finally breached the surface. Light poured in from the crack. It was the first sun I had seen in days. I placed my mouth over the opening, to savor my first breath of fresh air. I wanted more. I dropped the spade and clawed at the dirt with my bare hands, expanding the breach until it was man-sized and I could pull myself up and out. I was finally free.
Chapter 16: Juggernaut
I made it out. How I had missed it, the sweet smell of the forest, the cool relief spreading across my cheeks as the wind blew across my face and through my hair, the glorious light of the sun blanketing me in its warmth. It’s strange that despite a lack of any means to convert the sun’s rays directly into energy, we can still find the sun to be so reinvigorating.
I was finally on the other side of that precarious yeti infested mountain range. The
Traveler labyrinth had cut through the coldest, most dangerous heights of the mountains so I was already well below the snow covered summits, about two-thirds of the way down the slopes. The area around me was moderately forested, enough so that I was always around trees, but not so much that I couldn’t see my surroundings. Beyond the mountains was a vast green plain. I could see brown rows of earth separating wide, straight strips of green, clearly cultivated farmland.
Mai was beside me looking up towards the noonday sun. ‘Look at that,’ she said.
I looked up at the sun as she indicated. “What? Is the sky different now?” I asked.
‘No it’s the same,’ she said. ‘There’s just something reassuring about it being there.’
“Yeah, well,” I said, coming back to my senses. “Let’s get moving. We have a lot of work to do.”
‘We?’ asked Mai.
“Yes, I guess it’s we,” I answered. I think that was the first time I referred to us as a we. “Like it or not, you’re coming along.”
‘You said something about warning the humans of an impending invasion,’ said Mai.
“Yes, we’re going to Crystalpeak. It’s the largest city in these parts,” I said. “Any substantial defense would be mounted from there.”
‘A large city, huh. That’ll be perfect for Otheristry. A city means trade, which means goods, which means professionals, and Otheristry requires studying a wide variety of skills. You should also learn some magic. I know it makes you uncomfortable, going against your science centric home world, but you should at least try it.’ Mai leaned on me, both metaphorically and visually if not physically. Mai couldn’t touch me.
“There’s also a magic academy in Crystalpeak,” I mentioned.
Mai’s eyes brightened. ‘It’s perfect.’
I was sure she would have gone into another rambling spiel, but she was cut off by a loud blaring siren coming from the tunnel I’d just exited.
“What’s that?” I shouted to Mai.
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