39 – Hollow Armor

The rushing soldiers died by the dozen, only to be replaced by others as they fell. Julian took aim and fired, one gun mowing down the guards that entered through the door he came in, the other eradicating the armored men entering from the other side. His shots all met their target in a shower of sparks and blue magic, as the runes ticked up with every kill.

+1250 Runes.

+885 Runes.

+1250 Runes.

+1250 Runes.

+1000 Runes.

+1250 Runes.

…

There was a ring of dead bodies around him, and the incoming guards had to climb up to reach him, only to be shot and fall back down on the waiting reinforcements, breaking their ranks. Soon they were standing at the doors, wary to approach. Julian, noticing the lull in the battle, gave the two guns to Methias and walked towards the energy field surrounding the throne all around the four highest steps of its platform.

“These two are more powerful, as you have seen. Shoot anybody who tries to enter.” He said. Methias nodded furiously and aimed the twin guns at the two apertures, and every time the soldiers moved too much he raised the barrels and threatened to shoot. He did shoot once, as a particularly brave guard had decided to tempt fate, and it didn’t matter that he missed, because the soldier retreated back immediately.

Julian kept count of the bullets left in his guns with his mind as he paced around the throne in a semicircle. 5 left in Timmy. 4 in Tammy.

“Alright mister King.” He said. He took out some crystals from his rings and began to set them down at the edges of the field at regular intervals. “Why don’t you just tell me? it’s easier.”

The king sat on his throne and said nothing. He stared down at the two attackers, Julian and the unwilling noble, with contempt.

“Whatever. I’ll just extract this information out of you, then.”

He placed five F+ crystals on the ground, and then fifteen F-rank crystal cores in-between them all around the field. Then he materialized a small container and began to pour a black and blue powder to connect all the crystals.

“You know, I don’t understand you all.” He lit a match and the powder began to burn, going over the crystals one by one. They started to glow faintly, and the field rippled in response. “I understand that you’re contractors, and you have to push a narrative.” The crystals eventually went dull, and Julian shrugged.

He began to take out a multitude of technological and mechanical pieces from his ring, all containing Crystal Cores in their makeup. He had prepared them exactly for this occasion while he was still at Methias’ palace, after having asked for a room to go to the Oasis in peace to fetch what he needed and empty the rings of anything he didn’t.

“But is the narrative worth your own life? It certainly wasn’t for the elf king.”

He began to assemble them. First a base, made of sturdy metal dotted with the blue streaks of magic. “However even he mentioned that he did it for his village.”

Then a ring, almost as tall as Julian himself, was built out of wiring, copper and a black superconductive core. “The system is either forcing you, keeping something you hold dear hostage…”

A coil of wire appeared, thick blue like a deep ocean wrapped tightly around a wooden log he made by cutting down the largest tree he found on the asteroid in the floor below. “…or it offers a deal you can’t refuse.”

He began to uncoil the wire. By this point his storage rings were empty of any technology and he had all he needed. “But then again, offering these deals is basically holding people hostage. Especially if you’re willing to sacrifice your life.”

If this worked here, he thought, then with enough preparation he could pull the very same trick anywhere in this tower. Even in a pinch. However, it was probably going to take much more energy on the higher floors, and the F+ crystals wouldn’t be enough anymore.

“Too bad my rings are too small to fit the mini Stargate. Only 4 cubic meters each, and the gate is too wide. I had to disassemble it, you see?”

The king only looked at him with a deep frown.

“Julian?” Methias cried out. “Someone is coming.”

Deep, powerful footsteps approached.

“I’m almost done!” Julian said in a sing-song voice.

He took out the last ingredient from his storage rings. Only a few potions, a shield, the radio and Irradiated Star still stood in a corner of the storage space, everything else was out.

The crystal shone in his hands. This is an abomination, he thought. And indeed, it was an amalgam of F+ cores, as many as he could force to fuse together, but it was the only way to provide power to something so absurdly powerful to open a rift in space-time through Tower floors. Again, he tried to think of how many E- Cores he would need to if he wanted to pull of the gate trick on floor 5. But he had other plans for it, anyway. He carefully placed the crystal abomination in the socket at the base of the ring.

“Julian!” Methias screamed, before his voice was drowned by eleven consecutive shots of the twin guns.

The footsteps grew closer. They were metallic, heavy, reverberating through the very stone of the palace. The royal knights at the door had moved out of the way to let someone enter the room, someone or something that did not stop when Methias fired upon it. Even with lower DEX than Julian, surely the damage from the bullets alone would have killed anyone. And yet. Julian finished up the last preparations to power up the machine in a flash. He heard the thing get closer, as it was now climbing over the wall of dead bodies that surrounded them on the steps. Methias was about to run away, the last of his nerve about to give. Only when the artificial crystal began to light up, and the light to travel up the components of the ring, did Julian allow himself to turn around.

“Give me back my guns and watch the king!” Julian shouted. “I reloaded your gun, here. Do not let anybody enter.”

Then Julian finally faced the new threat. Boss fight. Shit.

A huge, hollow armor so black not even light seemed to reflect off of it stood three meters tall in front of Julian. It immediately swung its oversized mace at the machine Julian had assembled, threatening to destroy all the work that had gone into building the prototype. But its attack was stopped early as a thin shield, made of the strongest metal Julian could make, appeared in his left hand and swung to meet it. The Parry went off without a hitch, and Julian made use of the time the giant armor spent stunned to check on the Minigate. The light had climbed a third of the way up.

Good. I only need to keep this shit distracted.

Before the amor could get up Julian dashed behind it. It spun on itself without effort, not bothering to turn its leg and swung its mace again, almost catching Julian unprepared with how quick its movements were. Irradiated Star materialized out of thin air and the two weapons met in a shower of sparks. As they were locked in place, two immensely strong forces going against each other, Julian stored the shield and materialized his guns. He saw, to his great annoyance, that the bullets barely dented the armor, while the mace was not even sizzling where it made contact with his own weapon. To make the matter worse, he was losing the battle of strength.

“This is why the king was so fucking cocky.” He muttered angrily before he slipped out of the way. The oversized black mace slammed against the floor, cracking the huge white bricks and pulverizing the marble that covered them. Spiderweb cracks spread through the whole floor. He spat and turned towards his machine.

50%

Julian redoubled his efforts to distract the castle’s automated defense. Two explosions rocked the buildings as just as many soldiers dropped dead at the door, shot dead by Methias.

Good.

The ringing of metal against metal went on for a good minute. Julian attacked with all the strength he had with his mace, fired with his guns against the armor and the guards who sometimes tried to sneak past the doors, and downed as many potions as he could. But he was losing. Not all Parry attempts went through, and he was accumulating damage to his body, and his HP bar was depleting faster than he could replenish it, even if he materialized the potions directly in his mouth. This boss was strong, and he had no way to tell how much more heath it had, or if it had even sustained any damage. He couldn’t tell by looking at it, because it only looked a bit battered but it didn’t even lose its luster or deep black color.

Julian had a plan for this. After a successful Parry, he took the time to create some distance, then looked at his mace and closed his eyes. “Seppuku.”

He plunged the spiked ball of rusted metal, faintly glowing in the sick green of radiation, into his stomach. Taking a good chunk of his HP with it, this skill was going to allow him to deal actual damage to the armor even if it didn’t have any blood in it. That was the plan.

Then the device, the Minigate Julian had built, beeped. It was fully charged. Two heads snapped to it almost simultaneously: Julian’s head and an empty armor without a brain inside. Then they both rushed towards it, their bodies exploding with power one to destroy, and one to use the machine. It seemed, however, that with its bigger stature the armor was going to get there first.

“Not so fast.”

The spiked ball of Irradiated Star, dripping with fresh, sizzling blood, landed on the hollow armor’s leg with crushing force. The metal crumpled, and the armor stumbled as bright blood, the liquid of an entrancing red deeper than dusk, spurted from the wound and covered the black metal. Then Julian swung again, this time hitting the thing in the head multiple times, and armor looked like it didn’t know how to react, what to do now that it had a weakness it never had before. It just tried to cover its head with its arms, but they were quickly crushed mercilessly before a final blow put an end to its inanimate life.

+12 000 Runes.

“Well,” Julian said after catching his breath. “No need to hurry anymore.”

He walked, slowly, towards the Minigate. Methias looked at him, only sometimes glancing at the doors but the soldiers seemed to have lost all will to fight, only standing there with their weapons low as if they knew they were completely impotent against this threat. And impotent they were, one single gunshot away from death each and all of them, their only hope at killing the mad traveler dead, bled out by some arcane evil.

The king gasped, losing his stoic face just as Julian was about to activate the gate.

“Stop. I will tell you.”

Julian inhaled loudly. “Nope.” He made a popping noise. “Not after all this you don’t. I’m going to use this shit on you, and you’re going to see what I can do to you and your kingdom.”

He pressed a button, and the ring came to life. From inside the pulsing veins of copper and exotic metal, a portal opened in a swirl of rippling space-time. Then Julian took out his trusted radio, the one he had used to activate the Speculorefractor in the floor below, and began to turn the dials. Unknown to the people present, a similar device to the one he built here also activated in a remote place on the asteroid, to receive the other end of the spatial tunnel that he had opened. The radio waves traveled through the space-time wormhole and left through the other portal, to reach the central machine of the asteroid and eventually the mirror in space. It reconfigured its many moving parts, redirecting the compounded output of a star into one single powerful ray.

“First test: one burst, 1/400 of a second.”

A beam of blinding light erupted from the gate and hit the force field. It was seemingly aimed at the king but before any of the people present could be aware of what actually was happening it disappeared leaving only an afterimage in their retinas, and pain. The king saw the ray of death aimed at him and shut his eyes, preparing himself to die but the shield protecting him seemed to hold. However, as the beam died so did the shield: it began to fall to pieces, disappearing and evaporating in the air leaving only the smell of burnt and of ozone to assail his nostrils. He blinked away the tears and kneeled. Behind him, the great statue crumbled to dust, its protection power spent.

“Please, I surrender. I understand now.” He pleaded.

Julian decided to mess with him. “Good because I was about to do the same thing, but with a five second burst and against the city, not you. You know… burn half of it or maybe more.” He laughed. “I actually thought you'd be a tougher nut to crack.”

The king’s body was shaking, emotions coursing through him one after the other. Then Julian gave him a look and pointed at the still-open gate. This calmed him down, and he faced the invader with a stone face.

“What do you want?”  he finally asked.

“I want the coordinates of the elevator, I want to be escorted there and I want all of your treasures.”

“Then you will go away peacefully?” he asked.

“I will.”

There was a pause. “Then I accept.”

Julian smiled. “Oh I also want something else. now that you remind me-“

“What is it?” The king’s voice was tired, words coming heavy from deep within him.

“I want your apology.”

The King stared in disbelief.

“My apology?”

“Yes. I want you to apologize for being a dickhead.”

“I... I apologize for being a dickhead.”

“Good then it's a deal!”