What Lies Below 6 (2/2)

The dynamo golem swung the shield on her left arm in a sweeping motion, producing a loud gong as she repelled the magical attack. The cavern walls above and to her side exploded simultaneously as the wayward shots collided with the sheer rocks. The cannon-crab still had a fourth gun trained on her, but by then the golem was just close enough to launch her own counter-attack. She momentarily let go of her weapon and made a grasping motion with her right hand. The fourth cannon groaned and bent under the force of her Geomagnetic Grip. Not a lot, but just enough to make it explode when its owner tried to fire it a fraction of a second later.

“KHRRRAAHNN!”

CR-4B let out a grating metallic screech as its massive body lurched from the force of the violent malfunction. Its discomfort was only amplified when Fizzy landed on one of its other guns and slammed her weapon into it hard enough to crack its barrel open. The DILDO then immediately discharged its payload into its unwilling recipient. The creature clearly wasn’t lightning-proof, seeing as how several bursts of sparks flew out from between its armored plating. It also wasn’t an idiot, as it immediately recognized that it couldn’t attack the intruder while she was on its back.

The castle-on-legs leapt backwards abruptly, shaking Fizzy off and dropping her onto the circular platform. Her heavyset frame wasn’t the most acrobatic, hence why she landed on her back with a heavy thunk. The crab landed in the surrounding lava pit, its pointy legs scraping along something extremely solid just underneath the relatively shallow pool of magma. It brought its six remaining guns to bear, all of them aimed squarely at the dynamo golem. Fizzy stood up just in time for her Champion of Chaos Skill to warn her that she was moments away from being flattened.

However, CR-4B did not fire on her then and there. It instead chose to hop to the side with speed and agility one wouldn’t expect from such a massive construct, narrowly avoiding the world’s duckiest dive-bomb. Though Jen had somehow managed to pull off her Air Raid ability underwater, it hadn’t been nearly as fast as she had hoped. The rest of the group followed close behind, with Kora landing in front of the golem as if to shield her, and Boxxy and Xera firing off a Reality Slash and Scorching Ray respectively. The silver-plated torpedo golem remained firmly inside the tunnel above, both unwilling to participate and genuinely amazed at her shorter counterpart’s performance.

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

The problem was that this particular ‘wall’ had legs, and it wasn’t afraid to use them. It ran wide circles around the edge of the cavern’s magma-covered floor while firing shot after shot in rapid succession. Thankfully it seemed that it’s usual pinpoint accuracy suffered greatly if it wasn’t standing still, but it compensated for this by changing up its ammunition. Rather than giant sonic cannonballs, it instead fired bursts of superheated shrapnel, piercing jets of boiling water, and metallic bubbles that burst in the open to release lethal hydraulic shocks in a wide area. These weren’t as devastating as its primary firing mode, but were much more difficult to dodge and required a lot less precision.

The monster-demon coalition, on the other hand, had a tough time nailing the thing. Boxxy’s repeated Reality Slashes failed to penetrate its armor even with Power Overwhelming supercharging its magic. Xera’s Scorching Ray seemed to be doing an okay job at melting through it, but she couldn’t stand still and focus on the Spell without being targeted by one of those multifunctional cannons. Kora was almost completely useless, as she was incapable of catching up to the sheer speed the crab was moving at. Jen was more than capable of keeping up with it and was repeatedly slamming into its side while avoiding those massive pincers. Unfortunately her suit made it impossible to properly grasp her favorite staff, so she wasn’t doing nearly as much damage as she would’ve liked. As for Fizzy, she remained in the center platform and returned fire with her Magitech Cannon as often as possible. She had also activated Parallel Plot, allowing Plus to keep the others healthy with Holy Light while Minus poured a stream of Lightning Bolts into the crab.

On the whole the invaders were most definitely standing their ground, though Boxxy did not like the way this was going. Straight up face-to-face combat was not how it did things. Sure, its team was doing an admirable job fighting that highly mobile artillery platform, but they weren’t doing a very good job of lowering its HP. The agonizingly slow rate with which they were chipping away at it was akin to trying to dig a tunnel through a mountain with a needle. Or at least it would be, if said mountain had giant magical guns and was gradually reinforcing itself. CR-4B would continuously shed the cracked, dented and melted parts of its armored shell, which were swiftly replaced by pristine steel plates that slid into place from somewhere within its body. The only upside was that the guns Fizzy had disabled remained firmly out of commission, but the other six continued to fire tirelessly.

So, all things considered, Boxxy decided to get serious before this turned into the battle of attrition this mechanized crab was clearly aiming for. The shapeshifter had a whole bunch of tricks, gadgets, and Skills at its disposal, but it couldn’t just unleash them thoughtlessly. Not because it was trying to keep its cover in front of Nora, though. She was going to become a lifeless trophy regardless of what she witnessed. Boxxy’s concern was that it wanted to dismantle those tasty-looking cannons to study and possibly reverse-engineer them, and it couldn’t do that if it obliterated CR-4B with the ‘Realm Scar’ it used back on Velos.

The call was therefore to immobilize, disable, and dismantle the stupid metal crab. Those legs were an obvious place to start, and Boxxy knew just how to get at them.

“Momentum Anomaly!”

Boxxy unleashed the same Spell that had once rendered the similarly-sized Crystal Maiden completely immobile. Unfortunately, this particular walking fortress seemed to be put together a lot better. Though one of its legs did get caught in the Spell’s effects and instantly slammed into the magma pit as its velocity was converted into weight, the other five hoisted it free of the magical snare with relative ease. The shapeshifter tried a few more times, even overlapping Momentum Anomaly with Gravity Well, but the only thing it managed to do was slightly break its stride. Worse still, the giant enemy crab was clearly learning, as it began gingerly avoiding the areas of augmented gravity Boxxy put in its path.

Well, it looked like Plan A wasn’t going to work, so Plan B was put into motion. The monstrous Warlock ceased its magical barrage and dove into the relatively shallow lake of lava, its Fire Affinity protecting it from any damage it might have taken. Its enchanted diving gear had no such protection, however, and melted off as it burrowed through the molten rock. It had a feeling that would happen, but it could probably last a few hours even without those items, and it only needed a few seconds to carry out its plan.

The shapeshifter, now thoroughly stripped of all the trappings of civilization, burst out of the lava directly underneath the crab and slammed shoulder-first into its underbelly. CR-4B had been caught completely unawares by this maneuver and was unable to move away from Boxxy in time. The crafty creature blasted it with a point-blank Cold Snap, intending to take advantage of the colossal crab-golem’s Bane to freeze its legs in place. And while this did happen, it wasn’t in quite the way that Boxxy was expecting.

In the next instant, the entirety of CR-4B’s body was trapped in a perfectly spherical glacier precisely twenty-two meters in diameter, with only the tips of its legs and cannons poking out of the ice. Boxxy had failed to consider that water tended to turn solid when it was subjected to extreme cold, and was currently stuck in its center, its body pressing against the crab’s. It made the best of it though, same as it always did. It shrunk its body down as much as possible and used what movement it could in that tight space to retrieve Fizzy’s latest creation from its Storage.

The Arclight Artificer had spent most of the land-based part of this trip tinkering inside the airless void of Boxxy’s pocket dimension. She had realized she had no powered tools that functioned underwater, and had used that time to rectify this issue. The result was something she called an arc cutter, a handheld cylindrical device that produced a tiny stream of plasma capable of melting through almost anything. It was completely waterproof by design, though it could only be assembled properly within a vacuum.

Fizzy had no idea what Boxxy was doing at this point, however, and neither did the rest of the group. At present, they were just staring at the crabcicle as it slowly rolled around on that bed of lava, unsure of what to do. They were just as surprised by this turn of events as CR-4B, as their devious leader had neglected to inform them of its Plan B. Or Plan A. Or Plans C, D, and E, for that matter. Regardless, it was obvious the shapeshifter was up to something, and they didn’t want to compromise its plans by thoughtlessly breaking the ice.

The crab had no such qualms, of course. It set off one of its magical depth charge bubbles, causing the ice to instantly shake apart. It had sacrificed one of its cannons to do that, but was now free and probably a bit pissed off.

“GHHHRRRROOOOHNNNN!”

Okay, it was very pissed off.

With a roar and a vengeance, CR-4B dug in its heels and opened its pincers for the first time in the fight, revealing another cannon inside each one. It then started sucking up the magma through its legs, causing parts of its body to flare red as it was pumped through its body and into its claws.

“I think we should duck,” Fizzy suggested.

“Good plan,” Jen agreed.

“Who-the-what-now?”

Kora was a bit slow on the uptake, however. She looked on with a puzzled expression as the Paladin and the Monk ducked behind the only piece of cover available - her. She turned her attention back towards the crab-thing just in time to see it discharge some kind of beam from one of its pincer-cannons. The bright red burst of energy engulfed the trio in an instant, with the distracted demon taking the brunt of it.

To her credit, she was still standing when the energy stream subsided, but only barely. Her body had been charred black and her front half had been melted off nearly to the bone. Kora let off a muffled gurgle that sounded vaguely like ‘fuck this’ just before she collapsed and expired from the grevious wound. Behind her, part of Fizzy’s frame had grown red-hot and the left sleeve of Jen’s diving suit had been stripped away along with part of her skin, but they were mostly unharmed. Luckily for the Monk the suit’s rubbery material sealed itself around her arm, but it was clear that engaging this thing on its home turf had been a terrible idea.

There was an upside, at least. Whatever that attack was had melted through the crab’s right claw, disabling both the limb and the cannon within. The bad news was it still had one more of those, which was already in the process of spooling up. It used its other weapons to disrupt Xera’s attempts to cripple one of its legs with repeated Magma Missiles while it took aim at the faithful duo with its remaining lava-powered laser cannon. Neither the Monk nor the Paladin had any illusions of being able to dodge an attack that traveled at the speed of light, so the only thing they could do was brace themselves. Luckily Fizzy was still in her Fortress Mode and was charging up her Static Shield, which was better at deflecting heat energy than kinetic energy. Whether it could absorb enough of that energy was another point entirely.

What came next wasn’t a high-temperature beam, but an ear-splitting explosion, followed immediately by a deluge of smoke and scrap that poured out of a hole in CR-4B’s underbelly. The castle-crab shook and sputtered for a few seconds while various parts of it blew up in succession, then collapsed into a heap. Several heartbeats later Xera disappeared in a puff of green smoke and a rather haggard-looking Boxxy took her place. It immediately opened its Storage and dove into it, emerging shortly afterwards with a fresh set of diving equipment and a replacement Sandman cloak.

“Well, that was unpleasant,” it grumbled.

“What was?” Fizzy asked. “Actually, where did you even go?”

“Cut myself into that thing’s belly while the ice held. Thanks, by the way. This was a huge help.”

It tossed something to the golem, which she caught and immediately recognized as the mangled remains of her arc cutter.

“Really?! I barely even finished this and you already broke it?!” she couldn’t help but complain.

“Sorry. Seems my plan to cut away the thing’s core from the inside wasn’t as, uh, clean as I would’ve liked.”

Navigating the thing’s interior alone had taken a huge toll on Boxxy. Its spine was nearly crushed a number of times as it had to squeeze through some really tight spaces. Not to mention that everything was in motion. Gears, pistons, levers, belts - it would’ve been impossible to make it through all of that if it hadn’t been an MLG-equipped shapeshifter, especially not in under ten seconds. Having reached the crab-golem’s core, Boxxy immediately attempted to remove it with Fizzy’s arc cutter. It had barely even started when the object flashed red and then promptly blew up in its face.

All things considered, the shapeshifter had gotten out of there with about half its HP remaining and the rest rapidly regenerating, so it wasn’t complaining.

“I really wanted to keep that thing as whole as possible, too.”

Not much, anyway. The self-destruct sequence had clearly been designed as some kind of failsafe or security feature with the sole intent of preventing anyone from capturing that mechanism intact. It looked significantly more robust and advanced than either Fizzy or Nora’s, too. At least most of the cannons that the shapeshifter was initially after appeared to be intact for the moment. It was likely that they’d remain salvageable for a while longer since the cannon-crab wasn’t sinking into the lava it had collapsed into.

This was decidedly a good thing, as those things were far too large to fit through its Storage portal. Removing the cannons and transporting them all the way back to its lair would be a logistical challenge to say the least, but Boxxy would tackle it a bit later. Its highest priority right now was to satiate its curiosity regarding what it was, exactly, that CR-4B had been sitting on all this time.

“Sacrebleu!” Nora’s voice echoed from above. “You actually did it?!”

The krymer golem darted down and swam around the toppled crab with a look of wonderment on her face. It’s unclear how much of the fight she actually saw, but she clearly hadn’t witnessed anything that demanded immediate termination.

“Doesn’t feel like we did much,” Fizzy grumbled. “I only got one solid whack on it.”

She also hadn’t gotten nearly as much XP as she would’ve expected, but she assumed it was mostly because Boxxy had earned most of the credit by attacking its weak point for massive damage. In truth the shapeshifter hadn’t gotten much either since CR-4B had effectively killed itself, but it didn’t care too much about that right now. It was far too busy studying this weird metal platform that the mobile artillery platform had been presumably guarding. Its attempts to pierce the surface with its MLG proved futile, as whatever lay on the other side had been warded against magical observation. However, a solid stomp on it released a distinctly hollow-sounding din, making it clear that there was most certainly something to be found.

The problem was how to get through it. Cutting it open with high heat certainly wasn’t going to be easy considering it was oddly cool to the touch despite being right next to a pool of lava. It was very likely that the material was highly fortified, so any brute force approach would probably be met with futile frustration. Boxxy considered misusing its Storage Skill to cut a hole right through it, but that wasn’t going to work. The platform was too flat and wide for the portal to opened while overlapping with the solid surface. Teleporting through it was also not going to happen since there were wards against that, too.

“Fizzy, can you figure out how to get this thing open?”

Long story short, it couldn’t think of an easy way in, so it asked for a second opinion.

“Hm? Oh, right.”

The dynamo golem reverted to her usual Skirmisher Mode and knelt down to place her hand on the platform.

“What are you doing?” Nora inquired.

The torpedo golem had noticed the pair’s oddly non-celebratory behavior and had come over to see what they were up to.

“I’m channeling my Metallopathy, what does it look like?” the radiant construct grumbled in response. “Now shut up and let me focus.”

Nora was confused for a moment since she had no idea what the anchor-with-legs was talking about, but she kept her remarks to herself. Even her over-inflated ego couldn’t object after witnessing the smaller one’s might firsthand. As for Jen, she was currently kicking the crab’s remains with a vaguely dissatisfied mini-scowl, as if demanding it get back up and keep fighting. Xera was still trapped inside the thing with no way out and the debris slowly crushing the life out of her, but she had no complaints on the matter. Sadly Boxxy sent her a mental command to stop screwing around and get out of there with her Mist Form, which she did with surprisingly little difficulty.

“Okay, there’s a mechanism of some sort just on the other side,” Fizzy reported after a minute. “I think it’s a motorized hinge.”

“So, this whole platform is a giant door?” Boxxy asked, surprised.

Boxxy’s surprised tone was understandable since there didn’t seem to be any seams or markings to suggest that.

“Seems so, but there’s also a smaller one just over here.”

Fizzy stood up and walked to the far edge of the circular platform and, not wishing to tread actual molten lava, hung off the edge with one hand while clenching the other into a fist.

“Right here, it’s caked underneath all the soot and slag.”

She punched the side of it several times, causing untold centuries of volcanic residue to peel off and reveal the faint outlines of a two-by-one-meter rectangular door.

“Huh, how about that?” the shapeshifter remarked. “Can you get it open without breaking it down?”

“I suppose I could try a few things.”

“Then do them.”

“… Are you sure that’s a good idea, though?” Fizzy hesitatingly questioned.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be.”

“Let’s just say the last time I broke into an underground high-tech vault… didn’t go so well.”

“Either you get that door open, or I will,” Boxxy stated firmly.

“Fine, fine. You might wanna stand back a bit, though.”

Fizzy waited for the shapeshifter and the other golem to back away, then began trying to manipulate the locking mechanism with her magnetic abilities. They couldn’t get past the anti-magic enchantments on the walls, though. Her Metallopathy didn’t pierce all that deep, either, just surface-level stuff. She did notice what seemed to be electrical wiring, so she tried to jolt the thing to life. She gradually increased the output of her personal power generator, causing blue arcs of electricity to leap between her fingers and the door.

And then, with a clang, a hiss, and a rush of bubbles, the entrance sprang ajar.

“Nice! Great work, Fizzy! Now come on, let’s see what that stupid crab was guarding!”

“C-can I come, too?” Nora asked hopefully.

“Why, yes, of course! In fact, you should do the honors and go first.”

“Wow! Are you sure?”

“We wouldn’t be here without your excellent guidance, after all.”

“Well, when you put it like that, I’d be more than happy to!”

The excited krymer happily surged forward, but as she passed the shapeshifter it suddenly leapt from its cloak and coiled around her in a very unenlightened way. Nora immediately began to struggle in a panic, but the creature had completely locked her down. It then applied the Warlock Job’s Siphon Soul ability to her, which was only possible because of its recently acquired Legendary Mentality. The golem could do little but move her eyes and let out muffled screams as both her HP and MP were steadily drained from her until all that was left was a perfectly pristine and completely lifeless husk.

Level Up!

You are now a Level 86 Warlock. INT +2. MNT +2. END +2.

Wasn’t this a nice surprise? Boxxy hadn’t been expecting to gain any Levels during this trip, but it would appear that battling CR-4B and the XP bonus from Siphon Soul had given it a bit of a boost.

“Master, if you really wanted to choke the life out of someone-”

“Not now, Snack,” it interrupted her. “I’ll do you later, okay?”

“I shall await your embrace eagerly,” she nodded with a smile.

“Ugh… You’re going to keep that, aren’t you?” Fizzy grumbled.

Neither she nor the djinn had really considered that Boxxy wanted to expand its collection with Nora’s frame until it started merrily stuffing her into its Storage just now.

“Obviously,” it replied. “She’s not very shiny, but a unique specimen like that deserves a spot in my hoard. Now then- Jen! Stop kicking the stupid crab and come on! We have exploring to do!”

The Hero of Chaos then pushed open the metal door and, after briefly stopping to check for any booby traps, went inside. Xera and Jen followed closely behind, though Fizzy kept hesitating.

“I swear to Jumblebee, if I find another power-mad gearhead down there that tries to dissect me, I am going to quit following that stupid box around.”

I support this decision, Null spoke up from a corner of her mind. Unit Boxxy T. Morningwood has displayed highly inconsistent behavior with subpar efficiency over the past one hundred and ninety five hours.

Throw statistics around all you want, we’re stuck with that moron, Minus scoffed.

Yeah! We like Boxxy way too much to just walk out on it! Plus chimed in.

“I suppose it does give rather extraordinary shine-jobs,” Fizzy conceded.

It was probably a good thing golems were physically incapable of blushing, otherwise her cheeks would probably be red-hot right about now.