Chapter 383: Savage Cuddles |
“The Ironworks is several miles further down the tunnels,” Nuralie thought to us. “I have observed six more United, although I haven’t explored far . There are certainly more. The beetles are bringing them dark iron ingots, which they’re transporting out in chests. This group hasn’t reacted to us.”
“That’s good to know,” I replied. It was hardly enough for us to feel comfortable, but I didn’t voice my concern. Everyone here was experienced enough to expect surprises. “What happened with this first group? Any reason you couldn’t give us a heads up?”
She gave a mental shrug. “They were not in the tunnel when I passed through.”
“They came from below,”Shog added. “I became aware of them at the same time you did.”
I narrowed my eyes and studied the ground. If these things had avoided the notice of both our scouts for long enough to ambush us, that was worrying. I was also feeling trepidatious given my performance against the solo United we’d just fought. In the few seconds it had taken for the thing to twist me into a pretzel and take a bite, it tore my Shielding down by 1,700 points. Fighting several at once could get nasty for me, especially since I didn’t want to dump the 300 stamina it would take to get that value back up to 3,000. I had 872 stamina at full, but if spells were useless then I’d be relying entirely on techniques and elbow grease. I needed to stay as fresh as possible.
“How did you all handle the bugs?” I asked, looking between Varrin and Xim. The cleric had walked up and stopped a few feet behind the big guy. She was covered in what looked like her own blood, although she had no visible wounds. The mess was slowly fading as she held her cleaning marble and stared into its surface.
“The beetles posed little threat to me,” said Varrin. “My Spiritual attacks were effective while avoiding damage to the tunnel.”
Xim looked up from her marble with a grin. “I healed myself faster than they could flay my skin off. My offense wasn’t as great, though. The beetles aren’t profane to Sam’lia, and given that they’re made of molten metal or whatever on the inside, my fire is pretty much useless against them. I had to pry them off my body and squash ‘em. It wasn’t hard, but there sure were a lot.”
“What about this guy?” I asked, nudging the United corpse with my boot. “Could you have hurt him?”
“You can tell it’s Davahn?” I asked, looking at the mess of metal carapace, talons, and muscle.
“That’s what the System notification said.”
I blinked and brought up the kill notification I’d minimized on reflex. The thing had been categorized as an Unknown Dark Iron United: Davahn, Grade 25. I noted that Shog had received the Unity essence, which seemed appropriate. As for its grade, the System’s listed value had an asterisk. It was explained further down.
You got your ass kicked, but Shog dominated that thing! Those are literally the only two data points we have, so Grade 25 isn’t a total guess, but you probably shouldn’t rely on it. If you want a more accurate model, kill them slower next time. Be sure to make it hurt, too. Not because that’s helpful for our evaluation–every observation matters so it technically helps a little–but mainly just because fuck these guys.
They’re in our house.
We want them OUT.
That last line seemed a lot more serious than what I’d come to expect from SC1.
“So the Davahns are profane,” I said, dismissing the notification. “What about the foreign United?”
Xim waved a hand through the air. “Eh, it varies. Charl? Definitely profane. Savant? Not so much.”
Varrin knelt and rolled the United–the largest intact piece of it–onto its side. He inspected a fist-sized hole where Somncres Prime had hit. It went through the metal to the meat below, which was cooling to become nearly as hard as its dark iron exterior. It was a solid hit and more than I’d expected, but did a lot less than an eight-hammer salvo should have.
“If the United further in are also profane,” he said, “then fire resistance will not help them against your flames.”
“True enough,” said Xim. “Righteous damage is something else entirely, although it’ll still be spell damage.” She looked up in thought for a moment. “Although, if I transform and add it to my claws it wouldn’t be spell damage anymore. I’ve never really had to think about that before. Anyway, the dark iron will get in the way of my Judgment spell, but Righteous hits twice as hard so it should work well regardless.”
“Good,” I said. “Oblivion Orb didn’t do shit. I also think my hammer copies got neutered since they’re technically spells. They’re mana-based and can be affected by things like Reverse Card and Dispel, so the dark iron disrupts them.”
“I knew it was good at messing spells up,” said Etja, “but this is a lot.” She had her staff out, holding it tightly as she looked down at the monstrous fusion of Davahn, dark iron beetle, and who knew what else. “I’m surprised we don’t see people using it more often.”
“Dark iron interferes with your own spells while wearing it,” said Varrin. “It is also extremely heavy and the difficulty of imbuing it with mana weaves make it prohibitively expensive. For most, the trade-offs are not worth the cost.” He stood and gestured towards the beetle massacre further down the tunnel. “These things also appear to have dark iron throughout their entire bodies, rather than simply wearing it as armor. I expect it makes the spell nullification more potent.”
“It’s perfect for you, though,” I said. Varrin didn’t use mana at all, relying entirely on stamina.
“I have an armor set waiting for me, but I lack the attributes to wear it alongside my helm.”
“Ah. Well, moving on from your family dynasty of wealth and privilege, how confident are we that we can take on several of these things at once?”
“We will need to change our tactics, but I believe we can handle them easily enough.” He looked back down at the United, then up at my bedraggled state. “Perhaps we should try to limit ourselves to, say, six at a time?”
“Etja?” I asked, looking to our resident mage for her input.
“I can try supercharging my spells, but I think they’ll still be kind of bad compared to what we’re used to. I’m also worried about hitting the walls.”
“That should not be a problem further in,” Nuralie added psychically. “The entire area is made from dark iron.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“The entire area?” Varrin asked, sounding scandalized. “How large is it?”
“Geez, you guys made an entire palace out of it,” I said. “It can’t be that crazy.”
“I have no way of estimating the total size, but I believe I have passed enough to build the Dark Iron Palace several times over.”
“Well, nevermind then,” I added. “That does seem like a lot.”
“The Subcapras said it was common as rocks,” said Etja. “I thought they were exaggerating, but maybe there’s a lot more of it than anyone realized?”
“A whole lot more.”
“That also might be worse for me,” Etja continued. “Dark iron disrupts spell constructs really well on contact, but it also affects things from a small distance. Normally it’s not enough to matter if one person is wearing it, but if there’s that much of it then spells won’t just be weak, they might be really tough to cast in the first place.”
“The Palace was made to take advantage of such,” said Varrin. “It is a fortress as much as a testament to Hiward’s wealth.”
“So what’s Etja’s role become?” I asked.
“I can cast Haste and try to do more with Mesmerize,” she said. “Also, just because spells are super debuffed doesn’t mean mine will be useless. If I use my cooldowns and combos all together then I bet I can still put a hole through anything down here.” She floated in a twirl as she pondered. “But I might also put a hole through everything behind it and the wall as well.”
“Let’s avoid that. Try to stick to support. As for me, I can still tank, throw my hammer, and give everyone aura buffs and Shielding. Shog and Varrin are virtually unaffected, and Xim is the righteous fist of Sam’lia, unbothered by paltry things like spell resistance and fire immunity. Nuralie, how about you?”
“I have swapped all my poisons to Spectral versions. I will still be effective.” Pause. “I think.”
“Then let’s set up an ambush of our own and go kick some ass.”
*****
After resolving to move forward with our assault, we stood around and waited for an hour. This was to give Nuralie time to keep exploring the area up ahead, allowing her to get a better lock on the number of United present while also mapping out routes for both attack and retreat. The endeavor was proving frustrating for several reasons.
First, the environment wasn’t meant for people. There was a thin network of central corridors that seemed built to accommodate human-sized entities. The tall rectangular hallways even had fifteen-foot ceilings and room to walk two abreast, meaning our largest members, Varrin and Shog, wouldn’t have to crawl their way through. Those were still tight by combat standards–hardly enough room to swing a weapon around–but they were nothing compared to the passages made by the hive.
The beetles used burrowed tunnels in addition to the meld-into-stone-and-metal trick shown during our earlier fight. While we had ways to map those out to a certain degree, none of us could shrink down and wander through. The complex network carried on for as far as any of our senses could perceive, and even after spending a chunk of time reaching out for a teleport location, I found no cavities large enough for me to manifest within. It was a habitat we couldn’t traverse without some demolition, and none of us were willing to put that much stress on the weaves that were keeping the place from becoming a sea of high-pressure, molten metal. Then again, dark iron had supernaturally high heat tolerances, so it might not melt at this depth. It’d just smush us.
Our hesitance was compounded by the fact that the mana weaves were no longer visible. Our running theory was that they were placed farther out to keep the dark iron from interfering. It’s not that the metal couldn’t be mana-woven–there were some Delvers with dark iron gear enchanted to the hells–but it was a lot more efficient to mana weave something else, assuming the end result was the same. The weaves were probably affixed to a layer of stone that wrapped around the ironworks itself. This would even allow for the dark iron corridors to be the primary storage vessel for the material.
Regardless of the reasoning, we had no idea what our margin of error was. Those of us with decent mana senses couldn’t detect a thing through the walls, so it was better to be safe and avoid testing our ability to survive as pancakes. While I was somewhat confident I could make a good showing of that, there’d be nowhere for me to escape to. I would certainly succumb to the heat and pressure after a certain period of time, whatever that might have been.
As for the ambient heat, even our less resilient members were pretty well protected from non-magical sources. A Fortitude of 10 provided a 90% resistance to mundane damage. Given that an ordinary person had an average health pool somewhere around 5, even Etja and Nuralie were more than 200 times harder to kill than a mundane person before any defenses got involved. Combined with the 90% damage reduction, either of them could tolerate life inside of a literal smelter for a lengthy period. Someone like Varrin, on the other hand, could probably live inside of an actively erupting volcano indefinitely, if it weren’t for the lack of breathable air.
Magic cut through that resistance, of course, which made the heat emitted by the Dark Iron United a much greater threat to both flesh and undergarments alike.
While we couldn’t realistically track the beetle swarms, the United were still humanoids who stood a little taller and broader than your average Joe. Bigger than me, but smaller than Varrin, they had no chance of following the beetles through their tunnels without doing some floor diving. Even though we’d seen evidence that they could do this, they seemed to prefer hanging out in the wider tunnels built for people.
After the first hour, Nuralie was willing to signal us forward, and we made our way slowly and painstakingly through the areas she’d cleared. All of us were on high alert for any sub-terrestrial attacks, although none ever came. From what Nuralie could tell, it was the same group of twelve United doing most of the work, with anywhere from three to eight present at once. The facility was so huge, they may not have had the ability or desire to keep a vigilant watch.
We ran into our share of the beetles, but Nuralie had let us know they’d leave us alone, likely due to the absence of a nearby United. The creatures were meant to work peacefully alongside the underground inhabitants, so I doubted they were feral or territorial by nature, at least not in these larger communal hallways. The whole reason these larger tunnels existed was for System technicians to service some of the heavy machinery in the area. As for what kind, we ran into several groups of furnaces that spanned multiple floors. Each one was of a different type, from blasting to oxygen-blowing, and even a cluster of mana-powered electric arc furnaces.
There was also all manner of equipment for casting, shaping, and finishing, although I didn’t find anything for alloying. It seemed this facility was only concerned with raw dark iron, although I didn’t know whether there even were any useful dark iron alloys. I figured there had to be something, but it likely wouldn’t be found here. Alternatively, it could have been in a different section we hadn’t explored.
The tunnels were as winding as wet spaghetti, and a constant blast of hot, dry wind screamed through the majority of it. The place was dreadfully empty of life for long periods until a swarm of beetles would come careening out from their holes to scramble off somewhere else. The United roamed through the area, inspecting the machines and taking parts from them, then gathering ingots brought to them by the beetles and carting it all off somewhere else.
We had no idea why the beetles were helping them. I assumed it had to do with the United having become beetles themselves. Brae’ach’s people didn’t simply gain the properties of the thing they united with, they became it. That meant these things had, at minimum, the instincts and mentality of a dark iron beetle and the instincts and mentality of a Davahn. Each one probably had an entire group of Davahns rattling around inside them, in fact, in addition to any number of other things they’d found useful. That theory was supported by the mess I saw when scanning their souls.
Another few hours passed as we stalked the United and surveyed them from afar, eventually following them to the narrowest obelisk chamber I’d ever seen. Another United was already there, installing one of their odd devices into the pillar. There was also a small group of the Subcapras who’d looked to have been beaten into submission. They were alive, although I doubted they’d stay that way for long.
Seeing this, we decided we’d done enough recon. None of us wanted to wait around until one of the United got hungry. There were five of them in total here, just below Varrin’s suggested upper limit of six, and we felt capable of taking the group. Once these were dealt with, we’d ambush the rest as they returned from delivering their dark iron, then escort the Subcapra technicians back to their people.
There were a few nearby hallways on different levels, giving us some room to teleport out if things got messy, but the environment was still cramped, our spells were of limited use, and our other skills were restricted to the least destructive in our repertoires. The environment strongly favored the enemy’s close-range fighting style, assuming they were similar to the one from earlier, and they had what seemed like an endless swarm of armor-destroying insects to call upon for aid.
They could also swim through the terrain.
All of that had us concerned, but we were still confident, especially since we had the element of surprise.
Or so we thought.
