Chpt. 26) Tier six dungeon, level three

Ford and the rest walked through the next portal into the room. It looked like a gigantic missile silo, with metal walls and a grated floor. Three twenty-meter tall, ten-meter-wide forges were ablaze in three corners of the room, providing the only light source. Then they received a quest. Quest: know thy enemy: stop the forge and survive; If completed within five minutes, double the reward; reward: two-hundred EXP, loot bag.

A five-minute timer came into the bottom left corner of her vision, and Ford summoned her soul hammer, “Alright, Morgan, what do you think we should do in this case?”

Morgan looked at her with a scowl, “Why ask me? Are you asking because I’m a Dwarf, and this is a Forge?!” he asked, sounding offended.

Ford blinked and said, “Yup.”

Morgan stared her down, or up in this case, and said, “Well, that’s a good idea.”

“I know, right!”

Morgan walked forward and looked around the room, taking in the surroundings, before saying, “Spread out and look for some sort of leaver; that’s what controls the mana to the fires.”

Ford nodded, and everyone scattered, searching for a leaver. Then metal clanging resonated throughout the silo; Ford stopped and looked for the sound’s source. Steel bent and molded into cogs, armor, and weapons within the forges. Then they smashed together into mechanical bodies. They were no bigger than an average Dwarf and looked precisely like a Dwarf; they had an Ax, Hammer, or Pickaxe in their robotic hands. Then they ran out of the fires and attacked as another mechanical Dwarf was being built.

“Okay, change of plan. Farah, Gimble, help me hold these things off. Everyone else, keep looking,” Ford said over comms as she charged at the first mech and smashed it till it flattened. The next mech came at her, cut off her arm with an Ax, then swung up at her head; she quickly reacted and morphed her hat into a helmet. The Ax struck, and her helmet rang like a bell, dazing her. She regenerated her arm and created a fireball within the mech, which then exploded, destroying the gears within the mechanized Dwarf.

Ford didn’t have time to celebrate as she received a Hammer to the knee and a Pickax to her back. Ford looked at the forge and saw the mechs coming out faster; she looked down at the timer and saw three-minuets forty-five seconds left. She cursed and said, “Morgan, does it have to be a lever?!”

“Not necessarily, but these are tungsten steel forges. They won’t break easily. So, a leaver is the best choice.”

Ford sent a massive blast of pressurized air at the two mechs attacking her and sent them flying into the third one that emerged from the forge, “I don’t think we have a choice. Max, Lilly, get to smashing. Everyone else, defend them!”

“Heard!” everyone responded. Then Max and Lilly went to the forge closest to them on the right side of the room where Farah had been fighting off the mechs. Max and Lilly began pelting the forge with a volley of spears to no effect. Then they switched tactics, and Max tried breaking the forge down to the base materials, and again nothing happened.

“Nothing’s working!” Max said in frustration.

“I found something,” one of the Twins said. Then the forges shut off, and four more turned on that had been hidden in the darkness between the forges.

“It didn’t work!” the other Twin said.

“No, it did! It’s a puzzle! Kii, Mizu, where are you?!” Ford asked.

“Look up!” they said in unison.

Ford did and saw seven levers hidden in a blind spot above them; above each shone seven lights, three red and four green. The Twins stood next to them, sticking to the wall with their leather boots. “Cool boots,” Ford said as she batted aside a mechanical servant, “Anyways, you need to get them all to read by switching them in the right combination.”

“Alright, we’ll figure this out,” Kii and Mizu said in unison. Then started to stare at the levers. Kii had pulled the middle lever, which made it and the other two red and the other four green. Mizu pulled the far-right green lever; the light turned red, and the other three red levers turned green.

“Shit! Hurry!!” Ford yelled.

Kii hastily pulled the far-left lever, and all the lights turned red except for the far right, which turned back to green. Mizu pulled that lever again, and the original three turned green again. Kii pulled the left green lever, and the two red lights turned green while it turned red. Mizu then pulled the rightmost red lever, turning the remaining lights green. Then Kii pulled the far-left lever again, and they all went red. “We did it!” Kii and Mizu said excitedly, celebrating.

“Great, Now help us kill these things!” Ford said as a massive wave of mechanical servants swarmed her. She slashed and smashed using her swords and hammer to shred the machines till they stopped moving. Kii and Mizu pulled out their rifles in a hurry and started firing.

Ford spun and brought her hammer down on mechs that came up behind her while Farah and Benet struggled to avoid the mass of droids. Ford rushed to their side and used her swords to dismantle the mechs, and Gimble came up next to her, smashing one of the mechs in her blind spot. Ace ran around eating each of the mechs whole, their flaming parts passing through him and falling out of his chest cavity. Lilly and Max had been cornered with Morgan and were firing off spell after spell, destroying or slowing down the impending army.

Within moments they destroyed all the mechs, and with no serious injuries, Ford collapsed to the ground laying on her back, panting slightly when she received a notification. Quest complete: know thy enemy: stop the forge and survive; quest completion time five minutes one second; reward: two hundred exp, loot bag.

“WE WERE SO CLOSE!!” Ford screamed, slamming her feet on the ground like a child. Then a loot bag pelted her in the face. She ignored it and put it into her void space to open at a later date. “I hoped for double EXP. It would’ve been so good right now,” Ford complained.

“It would’ve,” Benet agreed, then he looked up, “When are you two going to come down?” asked Kii and Mizu.

“When we feel like it,” they said simultaneously.

“Alright. Camp here or go on to the boss fight?” Ford asked, cutting the banter short.

“Let’s do the boss fight,” Morgan answered, “It’s not good to sleep in a forge.”

“I agree,” Farah said, “Besides, I’m not that tired, even after the fight with those hunks of scrap.”

“Alright, looks like we go on,” Ford said, and everyone agreed. She stood, and a massive red dot appeared in the center of her radar. Quickly looking up, she saw a gigantic golden ball falling toward them. “KII, MIZU, LOOK OUT!!!” she yelled.

It was too late. The ball shot a massive arm out and grabbed the Twins mid-fall. Ford and everyone else got pulled back by a gravitational pull spell Ace made, evading the falling ball by a split second. Then the grated floor gave way, and they fell a dozen meters to the hidden surface below. Crystals along the wall lit up the space, and a health bar appeared with a name, the golden guard. The ball spun, and four massive legs shot out, raising it to a height of fifteen meters, and it threw Kii and Mizu against the far wall behind it as its other three arms came out, and its head with glowing jade eyes came out the top.

The Twins impacted the wall with a loud crack that resonated throughout the silo and hung in the air for what felt like an eternity. Ford quickly got her bearings, “Lilly, go to the Twins and heal them,” she said over comms.

“I…I…” Lilly couldn’t say anything and stumbled back away from the Twins.

Ford turned and snapped, “LILLY!!” Lilly stumbled and fell back, intense fear in her eyes transfixed on the Twins. “Shit! Benet, Gimble, get over there and help the Twins make sure they’re alright. Farah, you and I will keep its attention. Max, Lilly, Fire spells at the golden guard’s legs, aim for the joints. Morgan, keep those two safe. Now, go!”

“Heard,” everyone said, except for Lilly, who still looked terrified as she stared at the Twin’s crumpled bodies.

Ford de-summoned her hammer and pulled out Smite, sending one-thousand mana a second to it and charging with Farah at her side. The golden guard looked at them, and its eyes flashed. The top two arms went back and up next to its head, and the four-fingered hands of the droid fired blasts of mana that scorched the ground. Farah and Ford dodged the shots, seeing the attack coming from afar. Ford got close to the golden guard and swung her sword at the leg; the glowing blade barely cut into the golden plates of the droid. Then it lifted its leg, knocking Ford down, and tried stepping on her. She rolled to the right, and the foot fell onto her sword Smite, shattering the black and gold glowing blade.

Ford looked at the blade’s hilt in shock, still seeing the mechanism within tic and spin. Then the broken edge of the scraps of metal began to glow and grow as the auto repair kicked in and began repairs. She cursed and de-summoned the blade as she rolled again to avoid being stepped on again. She then re-summoned her hammer, activated her essence enforcement with earth and fire essences using five thousand stamina, and ran in front of the droid.

Farah jumped to attack the droid’s head, but the lower arms of the droid spun and struck her in the midsection sending her flying against the far wall, also hitting it with a loud crack. Then Ford’s holistic shield activated for the first time, and she felt her ribs and spine shattering into dust, and her organs turned to jelly. Her HP plummeted to twenty, then quickly refilled as her injuries healed. She fell to her knees and coughed up blood as Farah shook off the hit and ran up behind the droid to attack.

The lower arms spun again, and Farah managed to dodge this time and grabbed the spinning arm. Instead of stopping, the pair of arms spun faster and faster as she hung on for dear life before finally losing her grip and being thrown against another wall. In mid-air, she corrected herself and hit the wall feet first, her claws digging into the metal and holding her there. Ford got back to her feet and de-summoned her hammer again. After that last attack, it became clear the head is the weak spot and that they needed to attack from a distance.

Then Max’s stone spears struck the joints of the guardian’s legs to no effect, and the attacks couldn’t go at it fast enough. Ford looked to the HP bar and saw it had only gone down one percent. She cursed and spoke over comms, “Kii, Mizu, are you two still awake?”

“Barely,” one of them said weakly, “why?”

“I need to know what spell you use to infuse your shots with essence.”

“Essence shot… in the sniper class,” one answered.

Ford quickly retreated and said, “Farah, Morgan, keep its attention and stay out of reach. One hit is all it takes to kill any of you, and Farah used up my one-saving ability. Be careful!”

“Heard,” they responded, then sprang into action.

Ford stopped next to Max as she fired the spears, and she opened up her Yggdras system accessing her skill tree. She went straight into the sniper class and quickly found the skill essence shot and put five points into the skill. Skill: essence shot: fire essence combinations; can preset five essence combos; requirements: PER: thirty, INT: twenty, LCK: twenty; cost: one-thousand mana per preset, one-hundred mana per essence; level: five of five.

Ford quickly made a preset using fire, air, earth, and light essences, then summoned her MKII morphing it into a panzerbuchse thirty-nine and nearly fell forward it felt so heavy. “Max, can you make a low wall?!” she asked quickly. Max flicked her wrist, and a wall came up to Ford’s chest. She lifted the rifle and aimed down the scope at the guard’s head, trying to keep the head in the crosshairs. It became difficult as the head kept moving around as it adapted to the new strategy. She cursed and fired a shot at one of the leg joints; the bullet tore into the joint and exploded, causing the droid to fall forward and hit the ground with a hollow thud shaking the ground.

‘Hollow?’ Ford thought. She fired another shot into the body, creating a hole big enough for Morgan to fit through, then said, “Morgan, get into that hole and see what you can destroy!” Morgan didn’t hesitate, and he jumped onto the golden body, quickly climbing into the hole. Ford fired at one of the spinning arms destroying it and making it tumble toward her right. Then a blast struck her wall as the golden guard fired a blast of mana at her destroying her wall.

She fell to the ground with chunks of granite in her body, screaming in pain. She de-summoned her rifle and quickly pulled the granite out so she could heal. Then the guardian shifted its gaze to Max and Lilly. Ford pulled the last fragment of stone out of her body and jumped in front of them. The droid fired, and Ford activated her hard-shell ability. The mana beam struck her hardened body and pushed her back as she stood against it, destroying most of her clothes.

Her hardened skin began to glow red hot as she took the brunt of the attack. Then the mana stream stopped, and Ford sent mana into what scraps of clothes she had left to cloth herself. The massive guardian jumped and slid side to side as Morgan attacked it from within. The Guardian made a loud screeching noise like a scream as it struggled in vain to fight back. Soon after, the droid’s HP hit zero, and the massive body began to dissolve into golden dust.

Ford turned to look at Lilly, who still looked at Kii and Mizu. Instead of immediately addressing it, she used her skill copycat to copy Lilly’s healing abilities and ran over to the Twins to begin the long healing process.

***

With the massive golden corps gone and the Twins fully recovered, Ford seethed at the recollection of the fight, tapping her foot against the metal floor impatiently. Everyone had fallen silent, suddenly tired after the fights. Finally, Ford’s anger reached a boiling point, and she said in a calm voice that she could muster, “Everyone, go to the next room.”

“Can’t we stay here for the night? I’d rather not go to the next room,” Max complained.

“Me too. Keeping Kii and Mizu alive was difficult,” Benet agreed.

Ford whorled on them, “I wasn’t giving you an option. Go. Now,” she said, malice creeping into her voice. A portal built itself and activated, leading to the next level of the dungeon. Everyone reluctantly stood and made their way to the portal, “Not you,” Ford said, pointing at Lilly, making her stop in place.

“Why? Ford, you can’t blame her,” Max said.

“MAX!” Ford said, losing control of her volume, then catching herself, “Please, go through the portal now. I need to talk with Lilly. Alone.”

Max rushed up to Ford and said, “Ford, just let it slide. She’ll be okay after she rests.”

Ford took off her fedora, placed it on Max’s head, then pushed her aside, making her stumble and fall. “EVERYONE OUT!! NOW!!” she yelled.

Everyone continued through the portal more hesitantly, leaving Lilly alone with Ford, and Max looked up at Ford as though she was looking at a stranger, then walked through the portal herself. Then Ford turned on Lilly like a predator about to pounce on their prey. Lilly felt her heart race in her chest, and every instinct told her to run as far and as fast as possible.

“Ford, relax. The being mad is my thing Lilly doesn’t deserve to be yelled at,” Wrath said, standing between them.

“What was that back then?!” Ford said, barely containing the yell she yearned to let out, “Were you going to let Kii and Mizu die?! Slowly! Painfully!! What the FUCK was that back then!?”

“I’m-I’m sorry. I couldn’t- I-” Lilly fumbled with words, tears in her eyes as she walked backward away from Ford.

“Couldn’t what!? Use the fucking healing spell!?! Try again!! Why couldn’t you!!?”

Lilly tripped over her own feet and fell. She then crawled backward a few paces before hitting the wall. She panicked and screamed, “I DIDN’ WANT TO DIE!!!” she curled into a ball and buried her face in her knees and arms, crying.

Ford’s footsteps drew closer and closer, then Lilly felt a gentle hand on her head. She flinched but didn’t move after that. “Lilly, look at me,” Ford said calmly and kindly. Lilly slowly did as she was told and looked up into Ford’s kind, smiling face, and violet and golden eyes. “Why did saving Kii and Mizu make you think you’ll die?”

Lilly sniffed and said, “Tha’ damned Grimoire of mine. I still see I have it, jus’ none of the spells are there. But I feel them there. I feel like if I lose my concentration for a second, then I migh’ activa’e them.”

Ford sat next to Lilly and pulled her close to her chest, saying, “You don’t have to worry about dying or anything like that. So long as I am here, you’ll be safe. You’ll all be safe.”

“Ye can’t guarantee tha’!” Lilly said, still sobbing.

Ford untied her ponytail and scratched her head before running her fingers through Lilly’s hair. “I can do what I can to guarantee it,” Ford countered, “but I need everyone’s help. Yours especially. I can’t do any of this without you.”

“But I can’t. What if I heal them by replacin’ my eyes for their’s again? And the Grimoire isn’ even comple’e. I still have the ques’ to fulfill. I don’ wan’ to die for this, Ford. I don’.”

“Ford, get a skill in the Fox class called swap. It’s in the take route. It’ll help with this,” Greed suggested.

Ford did as she was asked and read the skill. Skill: Swap: steal another’s quest and get the rewards; requirement: LCK: twenty-five; cost: one-thousand mana; level: zero of one.

She put a skill point into the skill and cast the spell on Lilly, then received a quest notification. Quest: For those in need: sacrifice your life for a person you care deeply for to fill the Grimoire with spells and skills; rewards: an animal companion of your choice, ten thousand EXP.

Ford tapped Lilly on the head, “You will never have to worry about that quest again,” she whispered into Lilly’s pointed ears.

“Wha’?” Lilly sniffed and looked up at Ford. Ford leaned in, placed her forehead against Lilly’s, and stared into her beautiful blue eyes. Then she accessed her quest screen and showed Lilly the quest she had received. Lilly’s eyes widened, and she too opened up her quest screen, seeing that the skill had gone. “How?” Lilly asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ford said, “I need you to live a long life, and I’ll do everything to ensure that happens, even if it means giving my own. I’ll do it.”

“You can’t do tha’,” Lilly said, panic in her voice.

Ford closed out the quests to look Lilly in the eyes again and placed her hand on Lilly’s cheek, “I will do anything for you. I will fight the Gods themselves for you if it means you’re happy. To do that, I need you by my side to keep myself and everyone alive. Can you do that for me?”

Lilly finally smiled and said, “Of course, I can.”

“Good,” Ford whispered as she leaned in and gently kissed Lilly. She pulled away, but Lilly reached over and placed her hand behind Ford’s neck, stopping her. They stopped moving for a second, then Ford said, “We should go and make sure the others are okay.”

“We should,” Lilly said, still not moving.

“We should go,” Ford said, and Lilly finally relented and stood. Ford pulled herself up as well, then Lilly quickly turned and pulled Ford into another, longer kiss. Their tongues danced with the rhythm of their heartbeats.

Lilly pulled away and said, “Ye be’er keep yer promise, Ford.”

“It’s all I can do, Lilly,” Ford said, with a smile on her lips.