Machine Mage: An Isekai LitRPG, page 49
Samila was the first to spot me way up on Kuul’s shoulder. I couldn’t see her expression from this far, but I imagined some kind of stoic frown there as she shook her head ever so slightly at me. She was telling me to let them be. Don’t risk myself. I wasn’t behind the walls anymore.
She wanted me to live.
I shifted my armor’s weight on my shoulders and turned myself until I caught Tiba’s eye to give her a nod.
Then I turned back to Nali. Her stare was blank, but she tilted her head to an extreme angle like no human being would do, listening intently, as if she were ready to hear the terms of my surrender.
And I would have, if I trusted for a second that the Scourge would keep its word, or if it hadn’t just told me my death would just result in them getting better treatment than assimilation. Then there was the woman standing in front of me. No way was she getting away after my death.
“If you can hear me, Nali, hold on,” I told her. “I’m coming.”
Just then a hot, crushing weight settled on my back and squeezed. The armor popped and squealed as Kuul’s hand wrapped around me none-too-gently. Then Kuul did what he had probably been wanting to do for quite some time now.
He threw me. Hard.
In a storm of sickening motion and ridiculous G-forces, I was airborne, hurtling toward the little clearing the Scourge had made for the others.
The ground rushed up to meet me, and I tucked my legs and rolled until I was flying roughly feet first. Then I activated the bracing pistons on my new armor’s joints.
I hit the ground like a crashing satellite, roughly fifty yards off target, just in front of where my friends were held—though I lost sight of them as soon as the impressive wave of pulverized monsters, dirt, and debris blasted away from the new crater I’d made. My bones rattled in my body, and something inside of my stomach gave the distinct feeling of tearing as I went from terminal velocity to zero instantly. However, once I drew my first breath and checked my HP, I knew I was in business.
You take 30 Impact Damage. (15 mitigated)
HP 271/301]
Deactivating the bracing pistons, I rolled onto my side and groaned as I crawled. Chunks of the creatures I’d landed on peeled away and sloughed off the armor plating to land with wet plops atop their kin. I got up slowly. The armor was heavy, close to the weight of a full-grown man even without the rest of the components. I’d made it that way purposefully. Thick, cumbersome …
Loaded with terrific firepower.
With a clunk!, I put one plated boot up on the lip of my little crater and braced myself as best I could. My mind flicked to the Triggers I’d kept active on my back.
The Scourge wasted no time now that I was down amongst them. They pounced and surged into my pocket of emptiness from all sides, all teeth and claws and evil.
Now.
The two stripped-down auto-turrets on my back unfolded from the recessed holes I’d built for them and slid up their tracks until they clanked into place just above my shoulders like wings. A Trigger in the boxy compartment on my upper back activated its piston ammo feeders, slapping the first rounds of the day into place.
“You want me dead?! Come do it yourself, Scourge!”
Then the world became fire, blood, and fury.
“Come on! Come on, you little shits!”
CHAPTER FORTY
Machine Mage
Come on! Come on!”
The turrets on my shoulders spewed hot-lead hate, sweeping their muzzles over the oncoming horde and spraying them with metal death. Their stub barrels belched purple Volatility mana as their overcharged propulsion cubes sent rounds screaming into the mob of Scourge.
THOOM! THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!
They moved in swift, jerking motions as they detected and engaged with targets from closest to farthest, almost too fast to track … and there was no shortage of targets. The recoil was gigantic, made even more dramatic by how high above my center of gravity the turrets were operating. Every round fired wrenched my body in a new direction and threatened to send me down to the ground, and I got to experience life for a few seconds at a time as my tripods did. It wasn’t pleasant.
The only thing keeping me from being blasted off my feet was the prodigious weight of my body and my new suit of armor. With the exception of my prosthetic arm, it was a hodgepodge, full-plate setup that was overbuilt and thickly reinforced, angular where there should have been curves. Then there were the pistons. I hadn’t gotten them working well enough to have them help me run, but I’d certainly gotten them to take a position and stay there. Once I’d activated my turrets, I fed power into the activation Triggers of the stabilizers, and the requisite joints on my armor all locked in unison while steel anchor spikes shot out of the boots and into the ground.
Kuul and Tiba did their parts, too. Kuul sprang forward with a mighty leap and landed directly into the middle of the horde to my left, crushing dozens underfoot. Then came the fire geysering from Kuul’s mouth and blasting Scourge to ashes. Tiba directed from atop Kuul’s shoulder, pointing him toward targets of opportunity and, hopefully, keeping him a safe distance from me.
I stood as tall as I could, but I couldn’t see the others anymore. The Scourge had moved in as soon as I was on the ground. I knew my people were in front of me, though, right where I needed to be. The magazines on my back went dry, and I deactivated the joint stabilizers with a metallic CLACK. The anchor spikes in my boots retracted into their housings, and I was free to move again as the backup mags on my lower back whirred into place.
I moved forward, my heavy boots making THUP! THUP!s in the dirt. All I could manage was a fast jog—or as fast as I dared at least. I couldn’t sprint in the armor without falling on my face. However, I needed to cover ground before I had to reengage with the anchors. I raised my prosthetic arm—the only part of myself that I hadn’t bothered to armor—and fired my arm cannon.
FOOP!
The wall of flesh directly in front of me burst into a plasma-induced inferno.
Go. Go. Don’t think about it. Just go.
I lowered my head, tucked my shoulder, and covered my eyes as I barreled through the flames. The air crackled. Flames licked at my armor, and my flesh sizzled as hot became scorching. I made the mistake of taking a reflexive breath when the pain got to be too much, and it nearly killed me. I got a lungful of greasy, superheated air, and I nearly doubled over in pain. The only thing that saved me was momentum. I stumbled forward, my armor clanking against itself. Crisped bodies crumpled underfoot as my legs wobbled, and my momentum carried me forward until I finally smacked into something that arrested my movement.
Said something was soft—softer than me, at least. I heaved before it could stop me entirely. It gave way with a surprised grunt and went down under my feet. Then there were more, soft, squishy things laying there, piled high. I plowed through those too.
Then the world went weird. My stomach got that feeling again where gravity wasn’t working as it should, and then everything felt lighter.
It’s Anchor. I’m climbing!
PANG!
I took my gauntleted hand from my face just in time to smash into a gaggle of Returned that had chosen to brave the flames to get at me as my Climbing Ability told the fundamental laws of force and inertia to sit down and shut up for a moment. Under the influence of Anchor I was effectively 30 percent less affected by everything, including the weight and force of a bunch of monsters trying to bring me down. I smashed through them like they were made of paper, one of them even going airborne as I gave it a hard smack with my prosthetic.
Then I was out. The air was suddenly cool and crisp. It had moisture and life. I took a big, desperate gulp of air.
Except I was among them now. Hands reached out to grasp me. Claws slashed at my face. Teeth gnawed on my legs. The Scourge, yet again, pressed in from all sides.
Grunting, I flexed until I was standing tall again. I pulled my feet apart and set my hips, then I activated the stabilizers and the anchors, followed swiftly by the turrets.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRAP!
Full-auto. Non-stop. The monsters practically disintegrated under the close-range barrage. I lashed out with my prosthetic, caving in a monster’s face, then summoned another round into the arm cannon.
A Baned hung from it, frantically trying to use it as a handhold to climb up to my face, but I smashed it into another Scourge-Touched that had taken hold of my shoulder.
FOOP!
BOOM!
The explosion was close. Very close. The round hadn’t even made it the minimum safe distance away from me before detonating this time. However, I didn’t use the plasma. My brain was still somewhat functioning. The Scourge in front of me were reduced to bloody chunks as the shrapnel from the grenade round did its grim work. I felt the force of the blast generally in my chest and acutely in several spots of my body where it felt like being punched by a Leori, but my stabilizers kept me up while my armor kept me safe.
The ringing of metal-on-metal echoed in my helmet a full second after the grenade went off.
Still too close.
They were climbing over each other now. Monsters scrambled over the dead, over the injured, standing on others’ shoulders to leap at me. A horned humanoid of some kind—missing its legs ever since my grenade—climbed up my chest to claw at my face. I headbutted him again and again until he fell away. Others grabbed for the barrels of the turrets, despite their tips being red-hot.
Another Trigger, this time next to my wrist. I had to concentrate to get the mana to flow that way instead of through my hand, costing me precious seconds, but I was able to manage. A pair of curved blades sprouted from my wrist quicker than the eye could follow. Even quicker, they began to spin. The Returned that had been gnawing on my wrist at the time lost the better part of the front of his skull, the Willing-Edge-enchanted blades cutting through flesh and bone like butter.
“Auuuuuuuuuugghhhh!” I yelled in their faces as I swept the spinning blades from side to side. The small monsters died instantly. Then a Leori with the flesh missing from half of its face got hold of my helmet and pulled me close to go in for a bite with its broken, rotted teeth.
I pushed against it, gaining a minuscule amount of space, then jammed my wrist blade into the monster’s open mouth. Black blood gushed over my arm and down to my shoulder where I could feel it seeping through the joints and soaking into my shirt.
The Leori let go of me when I got to his brain stem, his expression, such as it was, going slack as he slid down to the ground. Then I was left with a little space.
The turrets had gone dry sometime in the melee, so I retracted them and kept moving forward.
FOOP!
Another shrapnel round to the fore. This time I didn’t even stop to aim.
I ran through the bloody mist, shoulder-checking the pulverized Scourge that were cognizant enough to get in my way.
Forward.
Forward.
BOOM!
A giant fist slammed down on the Scourge in front of me, then went back up into the sky, stringy giblets and blood stuck between its fingers.
Forward.
Forward.
I extended my fist and led with the spinning wrist blades, charging through the ranks of the Scourge and wreaking havoc on their numbers. Yet there were always more. More faces to cut. More to get through.
I stopped once more to anchor and let the turrets drain their last mags as I heaved for breath and tried to—
There. There they were. Sissa, Samila, Geddon, Trix, Bole, Beedy, Kelub, Grorg … they were all there together, their backs against the crumbled concrete wall, bleeding, weak, a pile of dead things around them, felled by hand-to-hand combat.
CLANK!
I disengaged the anchors and plodded forward even as my turrets bucked and boomed from my back. I staggered drunkenly, at the mercy of physics as my turrets did their best to lay waste to my enemies while I concentrated on moving forward. I went down on one knee as something hit me in the back, but it dropped away once I brought my spinning blade around in a blind sweep. My machine pistol appeared from my Spatial Storage and barked, splitting another Baned’s head down the middle.
My ragged breath echoed in my helm.
BOOM!
Another massive impact somewhere to my side. Tiba shouted something I couldn’t understand.
I was close. One last push.
I summoned and let a charged flamer bulb drop at my feet.
Now move! Move!
“AAAAAAAAUUUUGGH!” I roared as I charged through, battering the Scourge aside, guns blazing on my shoulders. The flamer bulb I’d just dropped went off with a FWOOSH! and my back was on fire again as I gave my last to get airborne.
Then, I was amongst friends, or at least in front of them, just as the turrets went dry once more. I landed, going down on one knee, my head drooping down as spots danced in my vision. My lungs burned, and my legs felt like someone had removed their bones.
But I was here.
I’d given everything just to reach this point.
Quest Complete: Tutorial
You have learned the basics of your Class and are ready to begin your new life as one of the Chosen. May you go on to do great things, Ryan Kotes.
Rewards:
+1 Level
ERROR: Rwrd_failed:Max_Level_ttrl=exceeded
Resolving …
Rewards:
+10% to all Stats
Return to point of Integration? Y/N
“Not yet,” I grunted.
I wasn’t done yet. The Stat increase did make me feel a bit better, however. It took the edge off the exhaustion.
Organ Grinder appeared in my hand, summoned from my Spatial Storage. I tossed it in the general direction I’d last seen Geddon.
Two swords. Shields. A rifle.
Hands helped me to my feet, and my swimming vision landed on Samila through the narrow slit of my visor.
She was breathing hard, bleeding from a cut on her cheek, her top lip was split, and she had blood in her teeth.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Ryan!” she yelled. “What are you—”
I put both hands on her shoulders to steady myself and panted as the world stopped tilting on its axis: “I need two minutes.”
I turned to regard the rest of my friends. “Give me two minutes to set up. Then we’re killing them all. Together.”
“Hell, yeah, we are!” Geddon whooped.
Leadership is now Level 2.
“RARGH! Thirty seconds is the best we’re gonna do here!” Samila shouted, suddenly letting go of me and cleaving through a Baned’s chest. The strike itself was powerful, but Samila staggered afterward as if it had taken a lot out of her. She shook her head and widened her stance drunkenly. “Trix, no offense, but I’m asking the goblins to do my healing next time!”
“I keep saying that I am not a healer, but no one listens!” Trix shouted shrilly from halfway up the pile of rubble to our rear. He spun and shot a gangly troll-type creature through the eye just as it crested the top in an attempt to flank us from behind. Spinning, he let off another expertly aimed shot at another Scourge at his feet. Then another. Every round from his weapon was a kill.
Geddon’s chain-sword roared. Blood and viscera soaked his entire body and the ground around him, but gone was the joviality of before, his face now a picture of pure, single-minded focus. His posture, outside of his armor, was lithe and dangerous, and he moved with a dancer’s grace, performing the duty of three capable fighters at once.
Sissa and the goblin royal guard were on the left flank, with Sissa performing the shield function of a rudimentary phalanx while the goblins did the stabbing. They were taking on the Scourge-Touched ten at a time, and they’d racked up as many bodies in the handful of seconds I’d been among them.
My armor popped its seals with a series of clanks, and I fell out of the metal shell onto the ground, my helmet landing in the dirt with a thump! I felt the stinging, ripping sensation of burned skin peeling away as I left the armor behind. The pain was distracting but not something I hadn’t experienced before. But even if my mind didn’t register it, my body certainly did. The world swam in front of me, and darkness pressed at the edges of my vision.
Stay awake. Stay awake. They need you.
Samila paused to look back at me with concern. “You set yourself on fire again?!”
My Spatial Storage called, and I got to summoning.
A rounded ball of nickel osmium plopped down to the ground followed by another. Then another.
“Not exactly!” I shouted. Talking was good. Talking kept my brain engaged and not focused on the pain. “I set them on fire, and then they set me on fire! It was a mutual thing!” I wasn’t sure if she could hear me over the din, but I was too distracted to really put much effort into projecting my voice.
One mental command later, the metal balls sprouted their legs and instantly took off in different directions, putting distance between them and me and from each other, as I’d programmed them to do.
Next were the guns. Piece by piece I summoned the reclaimed parts of some of the turrets. I’d stripped them down, made them smaller and easier to assemble, fattened the barrels and given the action some play. The Scourge had done a good job destroying a lot of the carefully crafted efficiency of the last model, so we were down to a boomstick-level of sophistication. That was all right. We weren’t going for long-range precision today.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Kuul was having a grand time. He stomped and kicked at the mob of gathered Scourge-Touched like a hyperactive kid with a toy train set. A very angry hyperactive kid. Dozens of bodies went flying off into the woods at a time, their arms and legs pinwheeling, some so far into the distance that I almost immediately lost sight of them. Others smacked into trees and practically popped like water balloons.
Focus.
Right. Barrel one. Barrel two. Piping. Hopper. Bulb. Legs. Dammit … please clamp. Come on. Come on. Clamp! Done!
My first turret was assembled, and it was ugly even by my standards.
