What Lies Below 6 (1/2)

“Well. That was exciting,” Boxxy commented cheerfully. “Not often you get to see something that big.”

“Wish I could say I’ve seen bigger, but it was indeed quite massive,” Xera chimed in.

“That’s what she said!” Kora added quickly.

“Yes. She did,” Fizzy stated bluntly. “Blockhead.”

“Why are you people this fucking calm?!” Nora screamed. “We nearly got crushed into ooze!”

“So?” the entire group responded in unison.

The krymer golem opened and closed her mouth a few times, but she had no idea where to start with them. Merely seeing Khar-Shargurk’ithlag, otherwise known as ‘Big Smoke,’ was usually enough to strike even the most hardened of adventurers speechless. And that was assuming they’d caught a glimpse of its mountainous shadow moving through the depths. Yet this bunch treated coming literally face-to-face with the worst leviathan in existence as if it were a minor footnote of their day.

As one might infer from the weight of their name alone, leviathans were the undisputed largest monsters in the Shimmering Ocean, often times reaching lengths of several hundred meters. People sometimes confused them for supersized krakens, which was understandable considering both species had an array of squid-like tentacles as their limbs. However, that was where the similarities ended. Leviathans were closer to serpents than mollusks, their long and relatively thin bodies separated into three distinct parts.

At the front stood a massive head that was vaguely draconic in its appearance, complete with an elongated set of terrifying jaws and a pair of yellow eyes that glowed like searchlights. Numerous spines grew out of the sides, top, and back of the skull, giving the vague impression of horns. An elongated neck attached the head to the torso region, which was twice as thick as the rest of the creature and had the aforementioned tentacles growing out of its upper back. These limbs were long and dextrous enough to serve a leviathan as arms and hands, allowing the creature to capture its prey and then hold it up to its face so it could feed on it. The snake-like tail that followed the torso region made up two thirds of the creature’s impressive length and ended in a serrated spear-like bone. Dozens of long and flexible fins that looked like underwater wings ran the length of the body below the neck, providing ample speed and maneuverability in spite of a leviathan’s bulk.

The one called Big Smoke was not massively different from the rest of its kind. In fact, it was considered a perfect specimen of leviathan biology. Especially the part where leviathans continuously grew larger as they grew older, like orcs. It was also assumed that they did not die of old age, but instead perished when their bodies became so large that they required more energy than they could take in. It still took many centuries for that to happen, but this much was known to be true among the krymer’s scientific circles. Big Smoke in particular was considered at the end of its natural lifespan, as its body was over two kilometers in length. It was so enormous that it was practically impossible for a single person to observe it in its entirety in the ocean’s murky depths.

It wasn’t just size, either. Big Smoke was also fast, powerful, cunning, and intelligent. It even knew a number of Spells in addition to the species’ innate magical abilities. Many krymer believed its combat abilities to be on near-equal terms with Miphelyr, the Ruinous Serpent. The elder dragon in question had made her lair in the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean, nearly ten kilometers below the surface. Old krymer legends spoke of how she and Big Smoke used to butt heads over territory disputes ages ago. Their conflicts were said to have left deep chasms in the ocean floor and had drowned much of Atica and Velos with the resulting tidal waves.

For better or for worse, the leviathan seemed to have lost that particular contest and had migrated to this part of the Shimmering Ocean about four hundred years ago. Thankfully for the locals, Big Smoke had no interest in lording over civilizations or demanding tributes of gold and gems like dragons did. Both the krymer and their cities were so far beneath its notice that it completely ignored them, even in the extremely rare occasions when it happened to swim overhead. The creature seemed utterly content in its role as the biggest fish in these waters. The only thing it seemed to care about was getting ‘baked’ off of the unique blend of chemicals the Trenches gave off during massive eruptions. The leviathan gobbled up these toxic clouds before they could dilute, hence its nickname.

Nora knew all of this, as did any other adventurer that frequented this volcanic area. So while one might argue that she should’ve seen Big Smoke’s arrival coming, she had no way of predicting it would turn hostile against her and her clients. They were practically plankton from that thing’s perspective, and yet it had very clearly attacked them. The sight of it coming into view from the darkness above had been like that of a meteorite with teeth. The way its street-sized tentacles shot down at the group made it clear it was targeting them specifically, too.

Thankfully Hugh’s early warning had given them just enough time to make it into the tunnel systems beneath the Trenches, though Big Smoke’s attack had thoroughly collapsed the entrance. Getting out would be much more difficult than getting in, but Nora wasn’t worried about that. Or at least not at this moment, as she was still trying to comprehend how and why a creature her ancestors had once worshipped as a god would ever bother with a bunch of lowly demons and monsters. Unless…

“Uh, silly question,” Nora approached the cloaked Warlock, “but you wouldn’t happen to be a Priest or something, non?”

“Who, me? Of course not,” Boxxy replied. “Jen’s a Monk and Fizzy’s a Paladin, though.”

“… What?”

“What?”

“You’re telling me the fat war golem and the yellow bird-thing are servants of the gods?!”

“Affirmative,” the harpy nodded.

“Damn right!” Fizzy puffed her chest out. “Also, who you calling fat, rustbucket?!”

“… Merde,” Nora cursed quietly

“What’s this all about?” Boxxy stepped in.

“Big Smoke ‘ates the faithful,” she explained. “I don’t know why or ‘ow, but it senses them and squishes them on sight.”

This quirk was partly why this leviathan was considered ‘the meanest,’ and was no doubt a contributing factor to the ongoing godlessness of the local culture, though not a major one. And considering that Fizzy and Jen had over five hundred and three hundred Faith (FTH) respectively, they likely shone like beacons down here. It was a good thing Big Smoke hadn’t decided to randomly swim over Nautilin, otherwise a neighborhood or two might’ve been swept away.

“And you didn’t think to mention this sooner?” Boxxy asked demandingly.

“It never occurred to me why it would be an issue with this group!”

The thought that monsters might be religious hadn’t even crossed her mind. Sure, it made sense in theory, but in practice the need to believe in something greater than oneself was an entirely enlightened problem. It would have almost been better if the demon-loving shady mercenary had been a Priest. At least that unlikely possibility was one that she had considered.

“You could’ve asked what our general Job layout was,” the shapeshifter countered.

“Would you ‘ave told me?”

“Probably not,” it shrugged. “I guess we can point fingers later. Right now we should get a move on before Khar-Shargurk’ithlag decides it wants to try digging us out.”

Incidentally, though that name seemed like a demon’s, it most assuredly wasn’t. Demon names were made up of symbols from the divine language, but this one seemed like someone had vomited onto a dictionary page and written down the few letters that were left legible.

“Agreed,” Nora nodded. “We will need another way out, but we can figure that out later.”

The mechanized krymer then proceeded to perform the second half of the task she’d been hired for and led the group deeper into the tunnels. The area seemed remarkably stable considering it was in a hotbed of volcanic activity. There were a few pools of molten magma here and there that provided light, but they seemed mostly dormant. The heat was by far the biggest concern, though every member of the group dealt with it in their own way.

Boxxy and Xera were unharmed since they had Fire Affinity, but the shapeshifter still found it uncomfortable. Jen was equally unperturbed since her Diamond Soul, a high Level Monk Skill, protected her from environmental hazards like extreme temperatures. The two golems didn’t even feel the scalding water, which wasn’t nearly hot enough to affect their metal bodies. Kora had no such protection, so she was forced to grit her teeth and endure the heat. She was continuously taking damage, but it was more or less counteracted by her conjured body’s natural HP recovery.

As for Drea, she dealt with the unbearable heat by simply not being there. It had taken Boxxy a short while to realize it, but the webstalker hadn’t made it into the caverns. Apparently the sheer volume of water being displaced by the leviathan’s tentacle attack had sent her light body spiraling away from the entrance just before it collapsed. Xera would’ve probably gotten caught up in it too if she hadn’t been clinging to Kora’s back for dear life.

In any event, the webstalker was mostly unharmed and doing her best to follow the others from above. She could vaguely feel where her master was through the summoner-familiar thought link, so while she wasn’t directly on top of them, she was close enough to serve as Boxxy’s eyes and ears on the ‘surface.’ Which was how the doppelganger knew that Big Smoke had already left the Trenches, at least as far as a spider-demon with mana-sensitive eyesight could determine.

Down below the ocean floor, Nora was doing pretty much all of the work, just as she had said back in town. The monsters in the tunnels had very little variety to them. They were either crustaceans with stone-like shells that had adapted to the constant heat, or various magically animated lumps of molten rock. The torpedo golem handled these by darting around at high speeds, zipping from wall to wall as she cleaved them in half with her arm-blade-fins. She effortlessly maneuvered herself so she’d approach from the monsters’ blind spots, making her Assassinate Skill trigger on each attack.

Boxxy had been rather skeptical of how well a metallic Rogue would perform, especially underwater, but it was pleasantly surprised with Nora’s take on the Job. She was fast, precise, silent, and completely familiar with her environment. Her actions and motions were so smooth and fluid that it was an actual joy to watch her work, though the shapeshifter didn’t say that out loud so as not to injure the other golem’s pride. The mithril dynamo golem was by far shinier and more powerful, but she was out of her element here.

Putting it bluntly, if Nora was a scalpel, then Fizzy was a sledgehammer, and only one of those tools was suitable for surgical strikes.

Whatever whimsy Nora’s efficient killing methods garnered faded rapidly. She hadn’t been kidding when she said reaching the deepest part of the trenches would take a few days. It wasn’t a great distance, but the way these tunnels snaked and twisted around was something else entirely. It reminded Boxxy of the hedge maze it had challenged years ago, albeit in three dimensions and without being able to see its layout in its entirety. It really went to show just how much time Nora had spent exploring this place considering the confidence with which she navigated it.

She still had no idea how these tunnels actually came to be, nor did she seem to care. Boxxy was of the same opinion, as the sickeningly good mood it had been in since curing its demonic corruption was now well and truly gone. It began to realize how idiotic of an idea this expedition had been, but it was too stubborn to call it off after it put so much time and effort into getting this far. At least getting out would be easy since it could just open a Gate to where Claws was, hopefully without explosive pressure shenanigans.

Speaking of which, it would appear the group was going largely in circles from Drea’s perspective. Quite wide circles with a lot of vertical movement, but circles nonetheless. This did little to bring back Boxxy’s good mood, though there was some good news. Apparently Nora’s three day estimate had been the ‘pathetic meatbag standard,’ so this monstrous group and their seemingly bottomless stamina made some remarkably good time. They went even faster once Boxxy, Fizzy, and Jen started helping their guide clear up the volcanic vermin. Yes, she was capable of eliminating them in one shot, but it still took time to line up her angle of attack and there were a lot of the buggers.

All in all, the group travelled fast enough to reach their destination a mere twenty-six hours after their departure from Nautilin.

“We’re almost there,” Nora reported. “Should be a few more minutes.”

“Hmm… that’s interesting,” Boxxy noted as it swam after her.

“What is?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Did you know the city’s directly overhead?”

“Is that so?”

“Indeed. My familiar has been tracking us from above, and she’s currently in one of the residential districts.”

It wasn’t the most precise estimate and there was no way of knowing exactly how deep they were, but Boxxy was certain that Nautilin was somewhere overhead.

“Huh. That’s… worrying.”

“How so?”

“I do not think the citizens would like to know what lies below their ‘omes.”

The group turned a corner just as Nora said that, revealing a massive hollowed-out cavern shaped vaguely like the inside of a bell. It was at least a hundred meters tall and seventy or so wide at its lowest part. Dozens of holes dotted the walls, each of them resembling the one Boxxy’s group was currently peeking out of, though only a few of them were more than a meter or two deep. Looking down at the bottom, they saw a vaguely circular pool of bubbling magma, and poking out of the middle of it was the thing they had all come here to see.

Standing atop a perfectly circular metal platform that was clearly made by someone or something intelligent was a creature that could be described as a literal walking fortress. Its appearance was, at its base, similar to the stone-shelled crustaceans in the tunnels, but this crab was clearly different. For starters, it was about twenty meters wide and almost as tall, covering almost the entire platform it was sitting on. Secondly, its shell was a mix of masonry and machinery. It was as if someone had found a giant crab, built a small castle on its back, then outfitted it with armored plating, pistons, vents, and other miscellaneous parts.

Including, of course, suitably heavy siege weaponry.

“Are those… cannons?” Fizzy’s eyes widened. “Why in Joseph’s holy fruit-basket does a giant crab have cannons?!”

Judging by the shape, length, and thickness of the metal tubes poking out of its fortified back, the thing was carrying eight giant guns that were two-to-three meters in diameter at the tip of the barrel.

“Probably the same reason we do,” Nora pointed out. “Us golems get pretty troublesome when we get ranged attacks.”

“… Point taken.”

“Also, please warn me when you go kill yourselves so I can back away first,” the krymer construct said bluntly. “The mech-beast does not play around.”

She then pointed at one of the holes in the far wall.

“See that? That is what’s left of the last fool that ‘ired me to bring them ‘ere.”

Boxxy peered into it, noting that there was definitely something metal buried in the rock, most likely body armor given Nora’s words.

“So you’ve never seen it fight?” the shapeshifter asked.

“I’ve seen it shoot at things, can’t really call that fighting,” the golem shrugged.

“You said you challenged it a few times.”

“I did. I lost miserably and only survived because of this body. I gave up after the last time when I lost my legs and tail.”

“… But you still have your legs and tail,” Fizzy commented.

“I got new ones.”

“How?”

The radiant Paladin was pretty sure not even Horkensaft’s top smiths and engineers could replicate war golem parts accurately enough for them to be attached. Even she couldn’t do it. The best she could do was recycle war golem bits retrieved from Hubert’s Divine-class dungeon generator.

“Assimilate Skill, of course.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh… Do you not ‘ave it?” Nora smirked smugly. “‘Ow very… primitive.”

“Primitive?!” the smaller golem shrieked. “I’ll have you know I’m an expert in multiple scientific fields!”

“Yeah, right,” the other one scoffed. “And I’m the Queen of Saphrina.”

“Looks like someone needs a practical demonstration in physics!”

Fizzy gripped her hammer with both hands and started charging the DILDO in its head with a loud crackle. Nora responded by snapping her arm-blades forward and invoking some Skill or another that made the water around her swirl in a miniature whirlpool. This was when Boxxy decided to step in, clonking its shiniest companion in the back of the head with a heavy punch. It got a rather painful zap from Fizzy’s electrified frame in return, but the blow had done the trick of snapping the golems out of their respective ego-trips.

“Cut it out you two,” it demanded. “This is neither the time nor place for this.”

Boxxy intended to eventually kill the krymer golem and add her frame to its collection, but right now it still needed information from her.

“Nora, focus,” it spoke sternly. “You still haven’t told me what that thing actually fires.”

“Right. Mmm, some kind of sonic projectile, I think?” was her uncertain reply.

“You think?”

“It is invisible, mostly silent, and passes through water without disturbing it. But, when it hits something solid, it smashes into them like a drunken whale. No barriers or armor will protect your meatbag insides from being turned into goo. Your only defense is to avoid it, but doing so is practically impossible.”

Boxxy had to try extra hard to hide its enthusiasm. This definitely sounded like the terrible weapon hinted at in Tol-Saroth’s journal. It probably wasn’t, given how absurdly difficult it must have been to find, but the shapeshifter didn’t care. Its ill-conceived expedition would definitely be worth it if it managed to secure, study, and replicate one of these sonic cannons. Its enthusiasm was only slightly curbed when it remembered that water conducted vibrations much better than air did. There was a good chance that this weapon wouldn’t be nearly as powerful on dry land, but it was certainly worth a shot if nothing else.

Having decided to dismantle the castle-crab, Boxxy immediately began planning on how to take it down. A brief glimpse with its Eyes of the Dead God revealed the creature’s HP was ‘only’ thirty thousand, though it might as well have been five times that given how notoriously difficult it was to damage a golem. Its name, which was revealed to be ‘CR-4B,’ seemed like a serial number that implied this was neither the first nor the last of its kind. This would normally have been the point where Boxxy stopped to question who would have the technology to make this sort of thing, especially if it was more than four centuries old.

“Impossible, huh? Watch this.”

However, Fizzy’s freshly bruised ego had driven her to make a decidedly rash decision before the shapeshifter’s train of thought had even left the station. Now in her heavily-armored Fortress Mode, she leapt from the group’s hidey-hole before anyone could stop her. Novaspike hammer in-hand and crackling electrical barrier around her, she sank headfirst towards the cannon-crab. The thing immediately reacted by angling four of its guns upwards. It fired an invisible shot with a heavy thumping sound. Moments later something ripped clean through Fizzy’s Static Shield and slammed into her chest with a dull ringing sound.

You have suffered moderate blunt force trauma. HP -935.

It would appear Nora hadn’t been exaggerating when she claimed that trying to take that blast head-on was a bad idea. The mithril golem’s barrier and Shock Absorption Skill had cushioned the impact, yet she still got chunked for about a sixth of her total HP. The hit was also forceful enough to momentarily halt her anchor-like descent and make her a sitting duck for the crab’s second shot, which it fired immediately after the first one hit.

Fizzy was ready for its attack this time, though. With timing only a skilled Artificer and a Champion of Chaos could achieve, she used her Lightning Warp to disappear into a burst of arcing electricity just before the sonic projectile hit her. She reappeared several meters below her previous position, right on time for a third blast.

“Rebound!”