AN: We are nearly done with this volume. :) I think one more chapter and a short epilogue will do it.

Enjoy

Chapter 9.3: Furious Road

Morning came, and with it came the sad reminder that Rhea would have to go back to work later that evening. After selling off their scrap from the day before, they decided to get a little breakfast and then spend a few hours hunting.

After breakfast they headed out to Crankshaft's shop to get their vehicle. Fully charged and primed for action their sweet ride was ready to roll. However, there was a pit stop to make first. On the outskirts of town, they sold off their collected scrap and picked up a pull trailer. They would not get to have as much fun riding around today because of it, but they could do a bit of actual work.

The primary goal today, was to train combat skills. So, the guns would not see as much use. The team cut a straight line through the wasteland and bypassed the weaker monsters in order to head directly toward the outskirts of Trinity Highcrowne itself.

The first true sight of Trinity Highcrowne was the broken road that led toward a dilapidated stone house. That stone house was a former access control point that was designed to keep people from entering and exiting the city without authorization. It marked the boundary between the wasteland, and the actual city. The monsters in the outer areas of the city proper would be much stronger than the ones outside, though still not at the same level as the monsters at the heart of the ruined metropolis.

In a bygone era, guards would have asked for paperwork at the checkpoint. Now, the only guard on duty was ramshackle conglomeration of buckets and power tools that slid by on power cable tentacles.

"Tentacles..." said Scott. He glanced at Rhea then eyed her up and down.

She shook her head then rolled her eyes. "Don't even think about it."

They had a good laugh then left the comfort of their vehicle. Shooting the monster down would probably be easier, but they did not need easier. What they needed was a decent combat challenge to improve their skills.

Battle with machine monsters was always a hectic affair. The beasts usually only had a few attacks and operated in a pattern. Until that pattern was known, and the attacks had all been shown, it would be a dangerous proposition to take on even the weakest of such creatures.

The moment the trio got into position and made their move, the creature noticed them. Several of its tentacles pulled away to reveal something that no other machine monster had used before, a minigun.

"Holy shit!" shouted Scott as he dived for cover. Dozens of tiny energy bolts tore through the area that he had only just evacuated.

Rhea slipped sideways and took up a position behind a large slab of stone that had once been part of a building. Herbert went with her.

The bullet barrage ended and the machine began to move toward them. Scott made a hand gesture toward Rhea and she nodded. He had a simple plan. It was time to test the monster to find its attack patterns.

Scott hopped out of his hiding hole and ran toward the monster. The moment it revealed its mini-gun he hurled himself to the side and kept rolling. However, the monster only fired directly in front of itself.

Emboldened by the possibility of a simplistic attack pattern, Scott rose up and rushed forward. The creature continued firing for several seconds. However, it finished just before Scott reached it.

Cables lashed toward him like tentacles, electricity sparking at the ends. He dodged one strike, and then another. The third tentacle stung his left leg, however. He immediately crumpled to the ground as he lost temporary control of himself due to the high volume of electricity running through his body.

"Scott!" cried Rhea. She rushed over to her fallen fiancé, desperation writ large on her face.

The sorcerer took several more hard strikes across his body before Rhea reached him. She attempted to bat away the cables with her sword, but ended up dropping it from nerveless fingers as the electricity flowed into her hand.

She cried out in pain, but the effect was not as strong since it was not a direct attack. Rhea kept the cable tentacles busy by dodging around until Scott regained his senses. They pulled back, after she reclaimed her sword, but were forced to dodge a minigun barrage once they were outside the range of the tentacles.

"You alright?" Scott asked Rhea, after they made it back to cover.

"Me? What about you?" she asked him while panting for air.

"Won't lie. That hurt like hell. A few more hits like that, and I would have been praying for someone to drag me to a priest." admitted Scott. Even now his body was stiff in several places and his heart beat felt strange.

"It seems simple, but..." said Rhea, as a change of subject. She did not want to think about Scott needing to visit a priest. Resurrection was a thing, but that did not mean that she wanted to see him go through it in person.

Scott fought to keep his eyes open for a moment, "Yeah. It might be trying to trick us, but it seems like it can only use one kind of attack at a time. Minigun at range, electric cables close-up."

"Right. So, if we can slip in close while it uses its minigun." said Rhea.

Scott nodded to her. "Yeah, that's what I just tried. My timing was a little off, though."

Rhea looked down to Herbert. "Think you can do you dance that makes us more agile?"

Herbert nodded to her and began to moonwalk like a pro. It was not long before the group felt lighter on their feet.

"Right. I'll play decoy." said Scott. "With the stiffness I have in my muscles, I'll probably have better luck surviving the barrage than the tentacles." They discussed the plan for a brief moment after that. The elf maiden agreed to his assessment then readied herself.

Herbert continued to moonwalk under the cover of the slab while the other party members split up. Scott drew minigun fire, and Rhea slipped around to flank the beast. However, she did not immediately attack. Scott dodged two more rounds of fire while she moved around behind the monster.

It was strong, but not particularly bright. The moment it began its fourth minigun assault, Rhea rushed in and leapt up into the air. Her sword blazed with elemental lightning just before she slashed the bucket head of the beast. A deep dent was carved in the side of the metal. Lightning surged into the beast from a location that it did not want electricity to enter.

She managed two more quick strikes before leaping away. The minigun barrage ended just as she got back out of range of its tentacles.

The beast tried to reorient on her, but Scott kept its attention by throwing rocks and shouting random robot obscenities. "Your mother was a toaster! Your father was a prison toilet!"

His obnoxious behavior might not have caused the machine monster any concern, but the rocks must have convinced it that it was under attack. It turned back to Scott and prepared to open fire.

Thus did the battle continue for quite some time. Scott would annoy the hell out of the beast. Herbert would dance. Rhea would rush in and perform damage dealing.

Some might think it strange to have the dedicated magic user as the team tank, but it worked. As it turned out, Scott made for a fairly decent agility based tank. At the very least he was annoying enough to keep the simple-minded beast's aggression focused on his position.

The best fell eventually, and the team cheered their victory. Scott said, "Now that was a better fight."

"I wouldn't try it without a party, or strong ranged attacks, though." said Rhea. She did not want him getting any silly ideas while she was away at work.

"No worries there. The weaker critters out in the wasteland are a good work out when it's just me and Herbert." said Scott.

Herbert joined them as they looked the beast. Rhea's eyes lit up as she checked the power cables. "Copper... So much copper."

There were several dozen of tentacles, and each of them were as thick as one of Scott's fingers. "Man there has to be over a hundred pounds of the stuff."

"Easily..." said Rhea. "Even if I don't bring out Amaryllis, the unprocessed copper alone will be worth a few silver."

Scott liked the sound of that. What he liked even more, however, was the minigun he pulled out of the junk pile. It was well worn with time, but Greelak would probably pay decently for it. He wanted guns to sell and would gladly refurbish anything found in the area in order to have more merchandise.

He checked the information that he had placed in his Crystacom after taking the job from Greelak then scanned the minigun. Greelak wanted a shipment of twenty guns, but had said that some weapons would count as more than one.

"Sweet. This thing counts as four guns." said Scott.

"Four guns?" asked Rhea curiously. She then blinked and said, "Oh, the job from Greelak?"

Scott nodded to her. "Yeah. He wants a new shipment of guns to work on while he sells his old stock."

"Great. We're off to a good start." said Rhea, a smile on her lips. "Though, I'm surprised that you don't want to keep it."

Keeping the minigun would be something Scott would love to do, but at the moment he had no firearm skill and a great need for money. Besides, now they knew where to go to get guns that could be rebuilt. "If we find a few more, I'll keep the best one. Until I can afford to get a firearm skill, I probably won't do much as damage with it anyway."

"Sounds good." said Rhea, before pulling the bucket head off to reveal the main components underneath. Her smile returned as she found a medium sized core and two smaller control cores. "This thing was profitable."

"What are you thinking it was worth to us?" asked Scott. He looked over to see Herbert pull an aluminum casing out of what was probably an engine block before the thing fell apart.

"As is? Easily twelve silver or more." said Rhea. "I mean, cores of this quality alone are probably worth about four or five."

Scott nodded to her. He had seen first-hand that some people were paid more for cores of the same size as the ones he had dug out of a scrap heap. "Makes me wish we could handle the monsters in the center of town."

Rhea laughed loudly then shook her head. "Don't even think about it. Sure, we would probably be talking gold instead of silver for each of the cores, but those things are on a whole other tier. We'd need to be nearly level two hundred without reincarnating just to survive there."

They stored the cores and copper in their vehicle storage due to the value of the materials. The random junk scrap was tossed into the cart.

Several more interesting battles were had before noon, none more dangerous than that first fight, but also none were quite as rewarding, either. After a while Scott began to feel a slight headache. The intensity of the fights had pushed his physical combat skills to the limit. Once again he was approaching his limit for combat and skill experience.

He suffered in silence, however. Rhea still needed to train, and who knew what Herbert needed.

By mid-afternoon the headache had become moderately severe. However, Rhea had finally reached a point where she felt like she should stop fighting. Herbert also seemed ready. The machine monsters in the area were much higher level than they were, but the stats that the team possessed were high enough to compensate as long as they fought as a party.

The difference in level was still quite extreme, and as such the experience acquired was much higher as well. Even the number of battles that they had fought over the course of the last few days, when combined with what they had dealt with today, was enough to push them to the point of their experience pools overflowing.

Scott and Herbert had gained only two levels over the course of the week that they had been training alone. In the last few days, the trio had banked enough experience to gain five levels once their social experience caught up.

They drove over to a spot close to where Amaryllis had logged out, and Rhea transferred to the overly sensual demoness avatar. After a few minutes of teasing Scott with her beautiful darkness, she set about improving the materials that they had collected.

There was less total material than last time, but it was all better quality. By the time she finished, and they sold their load at the scrap yard, they pulled in a beautiful haul of just over one gold coin. Purifying and upgrading the metal had nearly doubled the total value of everything.

The best part of their loot haul, however, was that they had managed to collect the weapons that Greelak needed. As it turned out, some of the monsters had multiple guns attached to their bodies. And at least two others had minigun attacks. None of the weapons worked at the moment, they would need to be refurbished first. The machine spirits could use them because of their unique abilities with machines.

Even though it was getting late, they decided to eat dinner and then head back to Valkovia. Using the road, they should be able to get there long before Greelak closed, or Rhea had to go back to work.

Not long after they cleaned themselves up a little and had dinner, they rolled out. Scott and Herbert planned to return in the morning, but Rhea would be leaving from the city.