Chapter 118
524 1 20
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.

Chapter 118

 

Dream State...again...back where we’d left off.

The battle with that thing continues.

“While we have this piece of adversity scum to fuel your magic, we should exploit her,” Fox said jerking a thumb back at Doppel-chan. She is still chasing us in the arena.

“It’s not that easy to do that without getting killed,” Sunghee interjected.

Is that possible? She’s so freaking dangerous, it’s like trying to say rehabilitate a zombie right?

Sunghee and I are both running with her, but hearing Fox say that made me get my rhythm off and nearly stumble. Both of the girls are on either side of me and acting a bit protective in their own way though we’re still scared of the enemy behind us. With full buffs and equipment up we can run away without too much effort but that’s all we can do right now. A thirty percent difference in speed from the buffs also enables us to run five minutes and then rest two, and repeat while Doppel-chan just keeps losing all her stamina with no rest. Not only do we have more rest though, the speed buffs also help us feel lighter on our feet for some reason since it’s like we’re using less energy to go a certain distance.

We still have to be highly alert however.

“What do you mean by that?” Sunghee asked.

“I mean exactly what I mean. She’s strong isn’t she?” Fox asked.

“I’m thinking about that too, but she is pretty dangerous. I’m thinking closing to melee range would be bad, like suicide kind of bad,” I said.

“I don’t like suicide either Shun,” Sunghee said in follow up. She’s shaking her head.

“But don’t you guys have Fox’s lightning bolt spells? You could like use her for target practice,” Sunghee suggested.

“That’s an option, probably. Is it the best option though?” I noted. Sunghee smiles seeing as she thinks she just gained points with me.

“True, that’s an option,” Fox smiled maliciously, but wanting points for herself. “I’m getting so tired of the box trying to control us that I’d probably enjoy it.”

“Hey thanks for rescuing me. Man when she grabbed me and we were falling down that slide that scared me so bad,” Sunghee shivered.

I notice Sunghee’s boobs bounce a ton better than Fox’s do. Sorry Fox…and Sunghee noticed I was looking at that and has a big smirk on her face now. I didn’t think her emotions could change that fast. She did manage to have enough common sense to hide it from Fox though.

“I’d say don’t worry you’re safe now but we’re not safe yet,” Fox said smugly.

“That’s…um, wait a minute. She did make this room and the cage. Could we figure out a way to trap her in the cage? Those cages must have something different about them right?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Sunghee says. “That sounds like an idea on that Alien movie when they want to take the creature back to Earth take it apart and see how it works to sell it later. You know some things aren’t just meant to be. Maybe they just want mayhem and to screw with us. It doesn’t have to have more than that as their agenda.”

“What’s a movie?” Fox asked looking at me blankly.

“Movies are like…hmm…how do I explain that?” I said looking to Sunghee. This was awkward.

“They’re like a bardic tale told on street corners, except golems that eat wall static for fuel tell them,” Sunghee said.

The hell? What a weird explanation.

“Wall static?” I snickered. I’m sure she meant electricity but…that was an odd way of saying it. Sunghee shrugged at me.

“Oh, I see. That sounds interesting. I don’t understand the part about wall static but if you both said it’s true then. Or else maybe you should drink less often…,” Fox answered. Her face scrunches up.

But then Fox looked at me, “are you sure it’s wall static? And not like lightning?”

“Lightning probably is closer to the truth?” I looked at her funny. But how did she get that? Is there a version of electric powered golems somewhere else?

Sunghee shrugs.

“And they tell them using a special tapestry with a huge flat eye that covers the wall,” Sunghee concluded while we keep staying ahead of Doppel-chan.

“That’s not how I would have described it,” I said.

“That sounds like something from a monster tale,” Fox said, clearly puzzled. “Are there a lot of monsters where you came from?

“Yeah a lot of them,” I said, wanting this to end.

“You can tell me more about it later,” Fox chirps.

Sunghee gives me a weird look. “Monsters?”

“Nevermind,” I said.

“Well, she probably is too dangerous to take in alive,” I said referring back to Doppel-chan.

“But we can’t kill her. Don’t you see? The problem is that every time we dispatch her she gets upgraded by the demon box the next time it wants to eat us. So defeating her will eventually cause our defeat. We have to do something different than before,” Fox said.

“Dammit she might be right,” Sunghee swore.

Fox inadvertently has put us all in a state of high anxiety more than it was before.

“Shit, that’s a serious problem. She’s right we will be check mated next time if we kill her and then she’s like double strength again,” I said.

“Double her current strength now is hard to picture,” Fox admitted.

“I’m not sure it’s like double strength though, but something upgraded her that’s for sure,” Sunghee said.

“So… we’d have to be able to immobilize her and get her in the cage again,” Fox said.

“I don’t mean to be negative, but that cage is like thirty feet up and no ladder,” Sunghee groans.

“We have telekinesis and my flash step for that, if it gets really bad. There’s also Shun’s dimension door. What we don’t have is a way of easily incapacitating her,” Fox countered.

“The dimension door is for willing participants. I’m not sure what would happen if she wasn’t willing,” I said.

“That’s why they say work is painful Shun,” Sunghee said while patting me on the arm mercifully. Or was it pitifully? She doesn’t expect me to fix this does she? We went and got her out to help us…

“Probably it would have a chance she might try to deflect or block it. Which is why an incapacitation move first,” Fox hinted.

“That might work,” Sunghee said guardedly.

“If we damage her too much can she also like…suicide bomb or something?” I wondered.

“I…don’t think so? I’m not going to test it and with her anything is possible. But it’s not impossible for the box to try to invent something like that,” Fox reasoned.

“We’d still have to think of a way to get her in it, and we don’t have the key do we?” Sunghee said.

“Is there a door and a key?” Both of us asked her at once.

We’d not actually gotten a chance to see the cage up close. This is also news to us. But we have to verify it to be sure.

“You aren’t going to like this Shun, but you will have to teleport her in there under a stun. Then pull out there before she pulls out of it,” Fox suggested.

“Wow,” it slipped out because I realized how dangerous that was. Except the word I was thinking first wasn’t wow, it was something else.

“No way. No freaking way!” Sunghee seemed to snap. “She is freaking strong! Do you not get that? She’s not something you can just lock up that easy. Hell she might even be strong enough to bend the cage bars. And if she wakes up before the stun is up she probably is strong enough to crush your bones with her bare hands in the blink of an eye. Don’t do it,” she added.

“Hmm that’s a possibility too,” I noted.

“Shun, you can’t actually be listening to her on this? What if she resists your stun, but you can’t tell until she’s within reach? And what if she only half resists? How will you be sure it’s safe?” Sunghee asked.

We spent another half hour debating it in low tones. Occasionally we hear a rasping metallic voice behind us from Doppel-chan expressing something about getting revenge, when she catches us and shitting down our wind pipes when she tears our heads off. I’d laugh if she wasn’t the type of person who could figure out a way to do that.

Sunghee expressed right after that while she loves me, she is clearly against a suicide mission. Fox is trying to talk about it to see if there’s another option that we’ve missed. I’m trying to keep them both from getting upset.

We’re naturally worried she’ll hear us, but the arena is pretty big as she lags behind.

Actually its interesting that neither of the girls are swearing or cussing in spite of how much despair there could potentially be from having to retreat from an enemy stronger than we are. What makes them so mentally tough like that? Were they always like that? The pheromones helped deter that, but it couldn’t eliminate bad behavior entirely by itself.

So if I potentially had a slave crystal with someone who was deficient in character it wouldn’t stop them from being deficient in character still.

I’m suddenly aware that I need to be exceptionally careful who I pick up or add to the family. If I chose someone bad then they’d be stuck here bad forever and that they’d still be bad.

I snap out of it after the girls are ready to talk again after taking a breather where we’d all been silent while trying to save a bit of strength.

“Well let’s start with a test run. Check things out and at every step in the plan be safe and thorough. Shun, you have to dimension door to the cage and find out if there’s anything that needs to be addressed first,” Fox suggested.

“He hasn’t seen the cage up close or been up there and it’s in the air for hell’s sakes. Won’t that mess it up?” Sunghee said.

“It makes it tricky. He might fizzle a time or two but he can see up there for the most part,” Fox answered back.

Sure enough behind us Doppel-chan never quits.

“But do we even know the cage properties?” Sungee asked. “Like…she grabbed me first, but what if it wasn’t supposed to be that way? I was lucky in that she didn’t kill me and just wanted to put me in the cage. But what if she’d had Fox as the target first? The trap and hole were under her bed, so…does that mean that she would have originally made the cage for Fox but just grabbed the wrong person? And she knows Fox is a magic user. Think people.”

Somehow that idea sounded really important to check on. Sunghee … I hate it when she’s right about dangerous stuff but she has a good sense of things that are evil and vicious.

“Ah fudge. She’s right. If that cage was made by the box for a magic user then it’s probably a battery and energy converter of some kind. It will probably suck your juice out and nullify spells too,” Fox swore aloud in frustration.

“I should have realized this,” Fox is beating herself up mentally.

We almost fell over in shock.

So it was that bad of a trap?

“We’re so lucky she grabbed the first person she could get and that Fox wasn’t closest,” I said.

“Yeah,” Fox said. “I don’t react well to spirit battery cages.”

“None of us do,” Sunghee said darkly.

“Is that the technical term for them? Spirit battery cages?” I said.

“Yeah, and they are hella expensive to get too. Basically think like a soul tapping device using people as fuel. It’s about as evil as you can do to people since you are hurting people for free magic,” Sunghee confirmed quickly.

“But that also means she was probably going to put us all in cages as human batteries and not just one of us,” Fox said.

“Are you sure?” Sunghee asked.

“Well there were three cages she made in the ceiling remember,” Fox counted.

Sunghee and I both swore realizing the serious of it.

“So she would have trapped at least three of us since there are three cages. I’m afraid to know what would have happened to the fourth,” I said.

But we wanted to confirm it, even though the street smart sides of our brains were telling us we didn’t need proof.

During the next few minutes we test it. I did a dimension door spell up to the top of the cage and latched onto while nearly losing my balance and falling. Only because we talked about the danger of the cage I teleported to the outside of the cage to latch on when I landed instead of teleporting inside of it, which is what we’d have done if I hadn’t realized the danger. Now I’m hanging onto the bars of the cage from the outside while sliding down the almost half spherical cage similar to the kind of cages for parakeets and other birds. Finally I hit the lower lip while trying to not fall and my heart racing from accidentally looking down a few times.

“Cast a spell while hanging onto the bars,” Fox said calling up to me. “If it nullifies the spell while touching the bars, even if you are on the outside then we were right.”

Sure enough it pans out the way she said it would. When I cast a simple heal on my sore feet, while hanging from one hand from the bars it died out. Not only that, it felt like a mild electrical shock and numbing feeling in my hands when hanging from the bars when the spell should have been released.

This enemy can’t be underestimated.

I also notice there are places for two other cages here confirming what we knew from before and they look like they are ready to go at any second once someone were to put something in them.

Damn.

We need to do something about this. This is serious.

The box wanted us for mana batteries…so it’s clearly got some kind of brain activity too. I’m thinking maybe…is there a way to get rid of the box without losing the girls? That will take a lot of research to figure out. And I can’t just talk to anyone on the street about it.

Less than a minute later I’m resuming running with Fox and Sunghee while Doppel-chan chases us. She still won’t talk to us now. That probably means she’s really mad.

We decide to use her for training. But limit the effects and harm.

But we stop when we see there are other problems too.

Training didn’t work because she’s so strong she broke some of the salvaged weapons we had. After that we didn’t want to risk using the good dwarven weapons.

Using too much mana worries us too because what if she does that thing where she puts us in a dungeon again too?

What are we supposed to do with her?

And if she represents the box’s will, how do we know she can’t talk with people on the outside in the demon realm somehow? There is the fear at least, that the box might try to figure a way to communicate with other entities outside the box. Would it be able to team up or would it fight over the scraps?

I need to see if there’s a safe way to visit the demon realm again with Fox and Sunghee.

20