Machine Mage: An Isekai LitRPG, page 14
“Well, that’s us fucked, then, isn’t it?” Bole said. I assumed the question was rhetorical.
I worked my tongue around the inside my mouth and spit out a mouthful of blood and a bit of something soft and chewy.
“Not if we kill thissh thing firssht,” I said. Damnit. Had I bitten my tongue?
Bole’s assessment did have merit, though. I didn’t know how to kill this thing without time we didn’t have. We couldn’t move, either—not with the Bray at our backs. If we tried to bring everyone down the alley while the hulking cow was still alive, we’d just be lining up bowling pins. Squishy bowling pins.
Another guard died as the Bray suddenly stopped bucking and charged forward blindly. The guard tried to dodge, but the edge of the creature’s armored shoulder clipped her trailing arm and its weird shockwave attack ripped the woman in half, along with the tablecloth blinder.
I reached around for my sword, finding it only a few feet away, my mind whirling for a solution.
Bole put a hand on my arm, stopping me.
“Don’t. Let them distract it.”
“We’re losing people,” I growled. “Sissa, Samila, and Geddon are still—”
Bole pulled on my arm, but I was heavy. He couldn’t budge me. Instead, he ended up just pulling himself forward until he was in my way. “Stop. Let them do their job,” he said, pointing to my right with his chin.
The stairs. The stairs that led to the top of the battlements were a popular place right now. A circle of goblin warriors were gathered around their base as people rushed upward to flee to high ground, two at a time. A few of the Scourge lay dead around there, ragged holes in their bodies from sharp goblin spears. The Church guards were getting personnel up there, too—mainly those with visible injuries, I noticed.
I had told Tiba to get her people to high ground, didn’t I? She worked fast.
There had to be a way I could help.
“Brays are tough bastards,” Bole said in my ear. “This one’s just under a Prince—only three or four of ‘em in a herd. Culling one of them usually means digging a spike pit or burying a blade trap, then running like hell. Unless you’ve got any of those in your magical mystery pockets, you’re just going to get in the way.”
“Brother Ryan, Brother Fidus, do you require healing?”
Suddenly, a hand clamped down on my shoulder. Three thick, black fingers stuck to my cloak. I gritted my teeth, preparing myself for anything, then spun to find Bishop Kolash there, his robes dirty, his face lined and wrinkled with exhaustion. His still-broken hand held his staff loosely while the one on my shoulder seemed whole. I glanced at the appendage twice to make sure there was no glow from a curse or some other attack. Nothing. Kolash saw me look, let me look, but kept staring at me and not letting go.
Bole had another knife out in a flash and held it between himself and the bishop like a crucifix warning away a vampire. “Don’t you call me that. You don’t get to fucking call me that,” he spat.
Kolash only had eyes for me, though. “We have no time for this. Am I required here, or shall I move on to assist others?” he asked. That was a strange way to phrase the question. Additionally, he wasn’t trying to kill me, despite having a free shot while my back was turned. He’d called me “Brother” just now.
Kolash, without saying as much, was proposing a truce.
“We’re fine for now, Your Holiness,” I replied tentatively.
Bole just spat at the bishop’s feet.
Nodding slowly to me, the bishop turned and began to limp away, working his way around the edge of the yard toward the next clump of soldiers.
Well, if Kolash was a problem I could put off until later, I was okay with that.
I looked up to the top of the city wall, fifty or so feet above our heads, at the line of people filing upward and disappearing onto the battlements.
“Corporal Bole?”
I had a plan formulating, something that would work with our current situation.
“What?!” he snapped. He spun to face me, only just now tearing his burning glare from the bishop’s back. His expression was one of white, hot rage.
“The stairs,” I began, picking up my sword and pointing toward the wall. “These can’t be the only stairs that lead up to the top of the wall, right?”
Bole’s face went slack as his brain switched gears. He blinked a couple of times, his mouth screwing up into an absent sneer. I was beginning to think that was his default look. “A—eh—a half-mile or … No. Every quarter of a mile or so,” he amended.
“How close is the next one to our basement door?”
Bole caught on quickly, but he didn’t like what I was proposing. “No way. The wall isn’t the road to your gran’s house. It’s even narrower than the side street, and it’s exposed.”
THOOM!
The Bray Knight laid waste to the entire bottom floor of the barracks. The structure sagged on its mutilated supports and collapsed, the first floor simply disappearing like it was never there.
“Better there than trapped in an oven with that,” I countered.
“Fuck,” was all Bole had to say.
“Make sure everyone gets up there!” I shouted over my shoulder as I took off at a jog, not waiting for more input from Bole. I circled wide around the Bray fight and bounded up the alley-side junk berm with more grace than I thought I had but not quite as much as one of the goat-legged folks. I’d need to find out what they were called.
I only fell once, the janky construction giving way under my weight and causing a minor avalanche of cabinet drawers and chairs.
The turret I’d been aiming for was still dispensing lead. The Scourge-Touched were bolder now that they had monsters on the inside of our defenses, streaming out from doorways and slinking behind cover to get closer to the gun’s position. A couple of bodies lay splayed just below the turret’s leading leg, a close call. Subsequent ones would get closer and closer as the enemy became more numerous. I wasn’t going to allow that to happen, though.
I disengaged the activation lever and detached the magazine, working quickly to disassemble the gun and get it stowed. The Scourge didn’t catch on right away that the gun wasn’t firing anymore, but once they did, they came in greater numbers, scrabbling from hidey holes and jumping from windows to go in for the kill.
The legs were the last to go, disappearing in a flash into my Spatial Storage, then I leaped down to the yard, the flamer already appearing in my hands again. The bravest of the Scourge was just poking its head above the berm when I triggered the activation sequence, dousing its face in fire.
I winced. Even though the Scourge wanted me dead, it looked like an awful way to go. The berm immediately around the dying monster went up like a tinderbox.
A good start.
I waved the decapitated turret around, catching the Scourge-Touched as they tried to climb over, and the berm’s fire problems soon got much, much worse. In no time, the entire mouth of the alley was ablaze.
Stowing the flamer again, I moved on to the next turret, running across the yard, through our beleaguered guardsmen. Every turret I could save from the oncoming fire was another I’d be able to use up on the wall.
“Sir, what are you doing?” Lieutenant Obvious called after me as I sprinted to the other alley approach.
“Get everyone onto the wall, Obvious! Do it quickly!” I didn’t have time to look at him. I just hoped he understood how urgent this was going to be.
“It’s Begdel, actually, sir!”
“Get them out now, Lieutenant!”
“Yes, sir! Very good, sir!”
The other alley approach worked the same way. Pack up the turret, wait for the Scourge, set the berm on fire. The temperature in our general area was sweltering now. The fire was closing in. Sweat beaded on my face and ran down the sleeves of my jacket and shirt.
One more.
Up onto the main approach. The fire was close to this one. I had to dance in and out of the heat while I worked, unable to stay more than a couple of seconds, and the gun was extremely hot to handle. I did the dismantling mostly with my prosthetic, slapping the component pieces in my fleshy hand and stowing them away before they could do real damage to me, but I still ended up with burns. Exotic Healing would have to carry me through.
I stowed the legs and leaped down into the yard again, not bothering to slide down the side. The flamer was already in my hand by the time I got back to my feet. I peered up through the smoke, waving my fire-spitting pain machine back and forth frantically to sweep over the much-more-extreme angle I was having to cover.
“Come on. Come on,” I whispered. I needed one to show its face so I could start the fire. Dammit, why didn’t I create a manual firing mechanism for one of these? Oh, yeah, because it would be super dangerous and stupid to hold one while operating it … like I was doing now.
“Look out!”
My cloak wrenched itself to the side, pulling the catch across my neck, choking me and making me stumble. A good thing, too, because something huge blew past me on my left, so fast and powerful it didn’t even register before it clipped the wrist of my prosthetic and—
BOOM! BOOM!
My world went white.
A few things probably happened at once. The Bray Knight, having just made contact with something it wanted dead (me … or, more specifically, my metal arm), unleashed its shockwave attack, disintegrating the junk berm, the cobblestones, and—most distressingly—my flamer turret.
Said magical shockwave tore through the payload of my flamer, making it go up in an angry, demonic fireball that blasted out from ground zero, propelled by the Bray’s magical force attack directly into an already-very-flammable pile of wood.
The shockwave turned said pile of wood into an aerosolized cloud of splinters and sawdust that mixed with the air and kicked off a secondary explosion, maybe a millisecond after the first, that washed over me and sent flaming wreckage hurtling in all directions, including mine.
A wave of burning junk blasted my front side. Something slammed into my stomach, punching the air out of my lungs.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. We are not catching fire today.
Whether it was the adrenaline or being more accustomed to life-threatening situations as my Exotic life went on, I was up on my feet before I had even gotten my breath back. My legs carried me, stumbling, away from the flaming wreckage and in the general direction of the gates.
Something clawed at my back, scrabbling through my cloak and wriggling its way up and out until we were sharing the same hood. A fuzzy brown head suddenly took up half of my field of view.
“Run, Ryan! Don’t stop!”
I let out a hollow moan as my diaphragm finally decided to work again, allowing oxygen back into my lungs. “Guh—Trix?” I gasped.
I spared a look over my shoulder, but I wished I hadn’t.
My theory about a Flaming Bray Knight being much worse than the vanilla kind was, sadly, correct. The Bray Knight was a lava-powered freight train. Its hooves pounded on the cobblestones, cracking them underfoot. Liquid fire dripped from the creature’s armored shoulders, head, and back, leaving a wake of nightmare fuel behind, and it was gaining on us. I could feel the heat on my back.
Trix clawed my face, forcing my gaze to lock onto the battlement stairs.
“Don’t look back! Run!” he shouted. He didn’t take his own advice, though. He wriggled until he was halfway out of the hood and contorting to look on, horrified, at the monster giving chase. The barrel of his slung carbine jammed itself into my eye.
“Trix! What the—Ow!” I sputtered.
“I’m sorry, Ryan. I would ride on your shoulder, but it’s on fire!”
“I promised myself I wasn’t going to be on fire today!”
I pumped my legs as fast as they would go. Breaths came to me in short, desperate puffs. My heart was humming, chugging, trying to keep my body from flagging. Being blown up did something to my nerves, though. My body felt loose, like I’d replaced key muscle tissues with gelatine.
The base of the stairs loomed in front of us. Guards and goblin spears, upon seeing what was coming, scrambled upward as we came on, their eyes wide, as they pushed each other to get the hell out of the way before impact.
We couldn’t go that way. If the Bray hit the staircase when we did, we’d all turn into bloody chunks.
I cornered to the right, making for the piled wreckage of the gatehouse instead, the Bray right on our heels.
CLACK! CLACK! CLICK!
Oh, no. Here it was. We were about to die.
I managed a burst of speed. My legs felt like they would give out any time.
“Hold on, Trix!” I puffed.
I shot forward at a full sprint, up the broken wreckage of the gatehouse, praying the footholds I chose were stable enough to support our weight.
Up. Away. Over. To the apex of the rubble.
I gathered all the strength I had, willing it all into my burning legs, and jumped.
I skipped the bottom of the battlement stairs, choosing, instead, to fly right up to the first landing where the stairs folded back upon themselves. It was a bold move—a fair distance to cross even if I had been fresh and not stupidly heavy thanks to being made partially of metal. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to work.
Too soon in my arc, the lip of the landing started to fall upward, away from us.
No. No. No. No!
My arms flailed in midair; my legs, too. I needed distance. Height.
Tension Step [4,000 MP/sec]
Leveling the Running Skill to 5 had given me this one. It was a choice between this and reduced energy usage while running, or increased inertia while sprinting. Of course I was going to choose a double jump. Every platformer I’d ever played taught me that it was awesome. For me, though, it was … not awesome.
Tension Step: User may treat any fluid as solid matter for the purpose of running. Limit: 1 step. MP/sec based on weight, fluid composition, and surface area used.
My mana bottomed out immediately. It hadn’t been full to begin with, but this … this was an instant descent into migraine hell. The light became too much for my eyes. Everything blurred, sound buzzed, and my head felt like it was about to explode.
Yeah, this was not how this Ability should have been used. Hell, of all the Abilities I’d picked since I Leveled Up in the past, this one was probably my only true dud. I was just too damned heavy, and the air was just too damned squishy.
The Ability failed almost immediately. My leading foot caught something not exactly solid—more like an ephemeral, feathery puddle that didn’t support more than a tiny fraction of my weight. I pushed down, sinking my leg into it, getting as much force under me as possible.
This wasn’t a jump, per se. More of a slight delay of falling, a change in our arc to something wider—wide enough to slam us into the wall just under the lip of the stairs. My fingers scraped over the stones, trying to get a grip, but I was, again, too heavy, and the ancient stone was too weathered and smooth.
Trix’s hands shot out to claw at the surface of the stone, as well, his back legs wrapping around my neck to help me. Good on him, trying to pull me up, but never in a million years would it actually work.
I felt the two of us slipping and beginning to fall. I had the fleeting thought of attempting to grab Trix and throw him up onto the landing, but I didn’t get a chance.
Strong, iron hands caught me around the wrists, arresting my fall.
BOOM!
A plume of dust shot up from underneath us, catching my cloak and making it billow up in front of my face. My mana migraine chose that moment to reassert itself, and I threw up a little in my mouth.
We were alive, though. The Bray had hit somewhere down beneath us, but the wall still stood. The Dark Lord had made it to last.
Trix shuddered, letting go of my neck, slumping down next to me in the hood of my cloak as we hung there. We looked down at the monster’s silhouette in the dust cloud as one and let out sighs of relief.
“Sorry I lied to you,” I said. I had meant to say something clever, but somehow, this was what came out.
“And I … am sorry for not … seeing things from your perspective,” Trix replied breathlessly. “It was selfish of me.”
“You really are a warrior, you know,” I said after swallowing to keep from throwing up again. Constance, my head hurt, and the world was too damned bright.
“You don’t need to do that. It’s—”
I couldn’t keep doing this. I needed to lie down. “Shut up, Trix. You killed so many monsters. More than anyone else. Saved people. That’s real.”
“That’s—” Trix paused to think. I could feel him do one of those vulpa shudders again. “That’s not inaccurate.”
“No one else I’d rather have watching my back.” There, that was it. I was done talking.
Trix reached up and gave the top of my head a tired scratch. “Thank you, Ryan,” he said, shakily.
“That is so beautiful! Finally!” Geddon sobbed from above us. I looked up, squinting, to find the giant Leori’s two massive shovel-hands gripping my wrists. Tears streamed down his face, and his bared teeth formed the tortured shape of an overwhelmed smile, the kind a mother would wear on her beloved child’s wedding day. “Now kiss already. Then maybe start climbing.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jump in Front
BOOM!
I watched the smoky silhouette of another building crumble and fall in the distance as I leaned on my vomit-covered crenelation. I’d Consumed some of the fuel in my Spatial Storage to top myself off again mana-wise, but this migraine was a stubborn one. I would have given anything to just be able to sleep it off, but that wasn’t in the cards today. Thankfully the nausea had gone down to a manageable level, at least.
Needless to say, sucking out my entire mana pool in less than a second was not something I’d be doing in the future if I could help it.
The Scourge-Touched Bray Knight, after a fruitless five minutes of pounding blindly at the base of the wall, had moved on to greener pastures. Right now, it was having a grand old time charging at and through every building in the vicinity, just in case we’d left someone behind. At least the stubborn monster wasn’t burning anymore. It was already scary enough without the dripping flamer fuel. The rest of the immediate area, however, was fully alight.
