What Lies Below 8 (1/2)

The shapeshifter, along with Fizzy, Xera, and Jen, beat as expedient a retreat as a group of land-dwelling monsters in a flooded factory could manage. Thankfully Boxxy’s Legendary Intelligence gave it a perfect recollection of the last two days, so it had no problem navigating the confusing serpentine path they had taken to reach that deep into the compound. Unfortunately, it couldn’t exactly move at top speeds in these tight and twisting spaces, so reaching the main access shaft would still take a minute or two.

The deafening defrosting then repeated itself, this time causing huge chunks of the unnatural ice encasing everything to break away. The weird screech took several seconds to recharge itself before washing over Boxxy’s group again. This time it seemed to have been aimed at the intruders directly, as they all felt their muscles scream and bones creak underneath that frequency. It wasn’t enough to kill or seriously injure them, but the damage sustained still slowed them down. Well, except for Fizzy, whose metallic body resisted the vibrations effortlessly.

Seven more sonic blasts rang throughout the facility over the next forty seconds, alternating between the anti-ice and anti-meatbag frequencies. By the time they’d reached the hundred-meter-tall tube they’d all descended through, Boxxy, Jen, and Xera had started bleeding profusely out of various orifices. A few quick Holy Lights from Fizzy saw them restored to full health, after which they began swimming up towards the exit.

However, they were not fast enough. The facility had almost completely shaken off the ice by that point and was rapidly coming back to life. It wasn’t just assembly lines and conveyor belts that were being brought online, either. Dozens if not hundreds of humanoid constructs started emerging from the walls and floor. These seemed to be torpedo golems like Nora, only without the face, axe-tail, or personality.

This was precisely the sort of thing that Boxxy, Fizzy, and Jen were worried about. They had all experienced firsthand just how terrifying a squad of war golems could be. Not only was their Paladin one such a being, but they had fought her kind on several occasions inside the instant dungeons conjured by Regina’s Divine item. Sure, each of them would likely trounce one of these faceless drones in single combat, but there was no telling just how many lay dormant within these walls.

So, when faced with a potentially insurmountable obstacle, the group of monsters reacted as one would expect - by running away.

That was easier said than done, however. The first four torpedo golems easily caught up to them before they were even halfway up that shaft. A kick from Jen, a hammer blow from Fizzy, and a Spell from Boxxy and Xera each had sent them hurtling down towards the bottom. Those attacks alone were not enough to kill them, but they’d at least stall them. The show of force did little to dissuade the next eight golems, however, and the twenty-something below those seemed equally unimpressed.

Unfortunately for the sentient submarines, Boxxy knew how to take advantage of a choke point. True, this shaft was almost fifteen meters in diameter, but the shapeshifter had something that could clog this up and then some. It urged the others to go on ahead while it intentionally lagged behind. It allowed the next wave of golems to get nice and close to it, then used Cold Snap. The resulting instant glacier took only moments to immobilize the constructs while also completely sealing the bottleneck.

Admittedly Boxxy was stuck right in the middle of that frigid cork, but a coordinated Scorching Ray from Xera created just enough of a hole in it for the shapeshifter to crawl out of.

“That’s not going to hold for long!” Fizzy pointed out as her Assault Mode’s jets carried her upward.

She could easily see the flashes of the enemy golems’ own Magitech Cannons through the cloudy lump of ice. Though none of them seemed to be able to use fire Spells - or at least not at Xera’s level - they’d still need only seconds to break through.

“It’ll be long enough!”

Shifting its lower body into an organic propeller, Boxxy easily caught up with the others and grabbed the bustiest of its familiars from behind.

“Malefic Union!”

The djinn barely had a chance to react before her flesh began merging with her master’s. Five long and agonizing seconds later, the two had become one, and the shapeshifter cast off the Sandman’s cloak to reveal a twisted mockery of a succubus’s form. It was the same shape its body seemed to naturally adopt whenever it fused with Xera, complete with the jagged horns, third eye, and blade-tipped purple tentacles dangling from the head and waist.

It was just in time, too. The torpedo golems had forced their way through the instant glacier and were coming in fast, though not faster, than the djinntacle’s chanting.

“Massive Rejection!”

With a crackle of Power Overwhelming and a few words of arcane power, a wave of pure, unyielding force shot out of Boxxy’s hands. Everything below the creature was pushed away in an instant. There was a brief moment where not even water remained in the space Boxxy’s empowered Spell had travelled through. The liquid then collapsed in on itself with explosive force, kicking up a turbulent torrent that, unfortunately, did little to disturb the humanoid torpedos that were still coming in.

“Dark Explosion! Gravity Well! Reality Slash! Frostbite! Frostbite! Shadowbolt! Mass Hysteria! Massive Rejection! Dark Explosion!”

Boxxy’s follow up barrage of magic was another story entirely. The armored host underneath was ripped, cut, and torn apart in various ways as Spell after Spell hammered into the bulk of them. The shapeshifter wasn’t doing much damage, though. It had to employ a few tricks it had picked up from Nao to shorten the incantations in order to keep up this rate of casting, but doing that drastically cut the power behind each Spell. Power Overwhelming was making up for the difference, but was also rapidly draining the monster’s MP reserves. Not even Hylt Metabolism supercharging its natural recovery could keep up with the outrageous demand.

Or at least, not if there was only one of them. As Boxxy weaved the arcane while dodging plasma cannon fire from below, it also created Mirror Images as often as it could. Yes, these things appeared with a grand total of zero MP, but their own copy of the Hylt Metabolism Skill allowed them to rapidly fill up on enough magical energy to start slinging Spells as well. There was only so much ambient mana to go around, though. Boxxy and its clones were sucking up so much of the energy around them that the restorative bonus from Hylt Metabolism dropped from an impressive 400% increase to a relatively modest 150%.

Still, having ten admittedly inferior copies of itself as backup had earned the shapeshifter enough leeway to put the next phase of its plan into motion. It backed off and used one of its body doubles as a shield, then activated Xera’s Conjure Catalyst Skill to create the material component for its next Spell. A reactivation of Power Overwhelming and several intense seconds of full-blown chanting later, it dumped precisely two and a half thousand MP into a single incantation.

“Singularity!”

The super-dense mass of darkness appeared some thirty meters below, its pull so strong that not even war golems were able to resist it. They clumped together around it into one messy ball of metallic scraping, crunching, and screeching. Even the walls of the shaft seemed to groan ominously under the pull, despite their magical reinforcement.

“Huhuhuhu! AHAHAHAHAHA!”

Meanwhile Boxxy just floated there, cackling like a maniac at the mayhem it had unleashed.

*THOK*

You have suffered insignificant blunt trauma. HP -21.

It was then clonked on the head by a rather hefty piece of steel tubing.

“Hey!” Fizzy yelled from above. “Stop goofing around and get up here!”

“… Right.”

It had been a good while since Boxxy last performed the Malefic Union with Snack. It had forgotten how… easy it was to get almost literally drunk on power in this state. It might have wasted this prime opportunity if not for Fizzy’s well-timed intervention, so it made a mental note to show her some special attention later on. For now it swam up to the exit that its shiniest of shinies was standing next to and the two of them joined Jen on the outside.

Something had clearly changed since they were last here. The mecha-crab’s body was still there in the corner of the lava pit, but that sonic defrosting had disturbed the seismic stability of the area. Ominous rumblings echoed all around them, and new lava flows dripped down from the bell-shaped cavern’s walls and ceiling. Being in the center of a volcanic eruption was hardly desirable, but far from the group’s most pressing concern.

“Requesting urgent extraction,” Jen nervously chimed in.

The harpy Monk hadn’t been having a good day, to say the least. Her diving suit was damaged, she had nearly gotten golemified against her will, and, perhaps worst of all, had also been yelled at by Boxxy. Actually no, the worst part was that she couldn’t fight as well as she’d like underwater. Yes, she was fast and strong, but her diving suit prevented her from grasping her staff, and without that she’d struggle to make so much as a scratch on those metal soldiers. She briefly considered ripping off her other sleeve as well just so she could fight better, but had no idea if that might rupture the suit and turn her into dead weight.

Under the circumstances, it was entirely understandable why she’d want to get out of here, and her fellow follower of Finnigan was nodding furiously in agreement.

“I’ll get right on that.”

And now that they were free of the facility’s anti-teleportation wards, Boxxy seemed more than happy to oblige, though perhaps not in the exact way that Fizzy and Jen were expecting.

“Aperire portas inter regna. Nulla metus magna, pellentesque nec nulla in, fringilla tincidunt ex.”

For starters, the fact that it was chanting in that language was not what either of them would call a good idea. Neither was the way that its ten or so body doubles were performing what was undoubtedly a synchronous chant. But perhaps the worst part was how they seemed to be taking their sweet-ass time, carefully enunciating every single nonsensical syllable. This became an even more pressing issue when the magic Boxxy had used to ‘clog the drain’ seemed to have either expired or been forcibly dispersed. Fizzy and Jen could clearly hear the approaching angry screeches of hundreds of pissed off torpedo golems.

But, for better or for worse, both of them trusted Boxxy’s judgement and knew better than to interrupt a magic user’s concentration without good reason, so they silently agreed to cover it while it finished doing its thing. That was going to be more difficult than originally anticipated, however, as the platform that CR-4B had been using as a bed began to groan open after centuries of disuse and abuse. A veritable swarm of murderous machines poured out from inside and spread out, completely encircling the group as they prepared to assault them from every possible direction.

These golems were not mindless drones. Sure, they seemed to follow the same will and looked almost completely identical to one another, but each individual was capable of thinking for themselves. They could clearly see the enemy Casters preparing some giant incantation, so they didn’t just blindly rush towards them. Well, not all of them. Just ten to twenty. Enough to either put a stop to this or force the shapeshifter’s hand while the others remained well outside of the standard thirty meter range that most Spells had. Though while they were technically beyond the reach of the Spell Boxxy was preparing, they were all well within its grasp.

With a smirk of ‘just as planned,’ the shapeshifter and its copies uttered the same final word in unison.

“Portus!”

A massive spatial rift that rivaled Azurvale’s Forest Gates in sheer size flew open above and behind Boxxy. Both its companions and the confused torpedo golems were given a brief glimpse of a sunny blue sky before all of them were given an express one-way trip right to it. Water, lava, stone, metal, and flesh alike were hurled through the supercharged gateway. The force behind it was not quite as extreme as the explosive decompression when Boxxy had first tried this, but it was plenty to transfer everyone and everything in that submerged crevasse into the sky whether they liked it or not.

A special action has been performed. FTH -15.

The shapeshifter barely even registered the Attribute penalty for its actions amidst the flood of other messages, nor did it particularly care. It had a very specific reason for moving the battlefield from several kilometers under the ocean to several kilometers above it. Its biggest issue with the torpedo golems was that they clearly had the environmental advantage down there, but up here? Well, considering it and its companions could fly, float, hover, and glide while the hostile constructs were in an uncontrolled freefall, it was safe to say the tables had turned.

“Jen! Catch!”

The harpy, though still mildly disoriented from the violent transfer, perfectly caught the Artifact grade staff Boxxy had thrown at her. She also instantly grasped the monster’s intentions. With an utterance of the command word ‘aflac,’ the griffin-girl burst out of her constrictive ducky suit and slammed one end of her favorite weapon right into the nearest floundering golem. The gilded tip of her adamantite staff crushed its head like a bucket that had been stepped on by an elephant. It was still alive though, seeing as it took a blind swing at her, but another crushing blow to the torso area saw the construct mangled, killed, and flung to the side. A single beat of her powerful wings propelled the feathery Monk towards the next one, which was impaled right through its core as if that Ki-infused staff was a spear.

Fizzy, for her part, had needed a lot less prompting to recognize a good opportunity to wreak some havoc. She was already pummeling the life out of her fourth victim with her mechanized warhammer. When she was done with that, she employed her Jump Jets to dart over to the next one and repeated the process. It didn’t matter how numerous these things are when they were completely helpless. Okay, maybe ‘completely helpless’ was too strong a phrase, but their awkward slashes and horribly aimed Magitech Cannon shots were of no real threat.

As for Boxxy, it had given up on using magic for the moment. Merging with Xera might have massively magnified its mystic might, but that didn’t mean its overwhelming physical force and deadly precision had disappeared. In its currently feminine hands were a pair of Artifact-grade items. In its right was a lightforged orichalcum dagger called Daybreak, which was empowered with the sun’s scorching incandescence. In its left was its shadowed orichalcum counterpart, dubbed Nightfall, which was imbued with the cold shadows of the celestial void. Though their individual power waxed and waned with the time of day as their names would suggest, they were at their deadliest when wielded simultaneously.

And none demonstrated their full capabilities better than Boxxy T. Morningwood. As the shapeshifter descended onto a falling golem from the side, it plunged Daybreak into its back and Nightfall in its chest. Both the construct’s outer and inner layers of steel armor were violently punctured. Its core, located and targeted by the ex-mimic’s MLG, was pierced from opposite ends. The weapons then discharged their elemental properties, simultaneously melting and freezing either half of the vital component. The latter was especially effective since cold magic was a metal golem’s Bane, resulting in the hostile construct’s instant death.

It was thus that the trio of monsters on the side of Chaos proceeded to eliminate the opposition, each one needing only seconds to dispatch a torpedo golem before moving onto their next victim. Boxxy’s body doubles were also doing their part, but relied on Spell-slinging since they lacked the original’s enchanted arsenal. When they began to run out of what little MP they had left, they were ordered to start literally pulling apart the golems using nothing but brute strength and teamwork.

That said, there were still far too many targets to dispatch and not enough time. The endless expanse of the Shimmering Ocean drew ever-closer from below as everything either fell or flew at terminal velocity towards it. It seemed as though Boxxy’s group wouldn’t be able to dispatch all of the golems by the time they hit the water, at which point they’d be able to either fight back or retreat. The shapeshifter didn’t like either of these options, so it mentally instructed its Mirror Images to perform another synchronous chant with their last reserves of MP, though this time without resorting to the Divine language.

“Magnetic Tilt!”

Together, the ten clones conjured a radius of fifty or so meters where gravity worked in the opposite direction. As golems, both living and otherwise, fell into it, they rapidly slowed down and started ‘falling’ upwards, only for real gravity to reclaim them and see them plunge back down. The process would then repeat itself, trapping them in a seemingly endless loop of vertical movement. It wasn’t perfect and the Magnetic Tilt Spell could only influence a limited amount of mass before its power faded, but it still gave Boxxy, Fizzy, and Jen enough time to mop up the survivors. Not one of them were left functioning by the time the aerial battlefield was finally allowed to crash into the ocean.

“That was crazy!” Fizzy exclaimed as she hovered over the water. “I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun! I’m so excited I can almost feel my old heartbeat!”

Even with an unfeeling metallic body, there was just something deeply satisfying about crumpling those tin soldiers beneath her might. A few of them had managed to gain some measure of control over their descent and others were especially tough nuts to crack, but for the most part they had been nothing more than helpless bundles of XP. Quite bountiful ones, at that. Fizzy had already gained two Levels in both her Paladin and War Golem Jobs in just a few minutes. She could scarcely remember the last time she’d gained this much in such a short time frame, and with such relatively little effort to boot. Jen had likely experienced similarly explosive growth, judging by the way she was flying around and greedily looking for any leftovers.

Unfortunately the only ‘leftovers’ to be found was the black sludge that Boxxy was vomiting as the Malefic Union Skill reached its time limit. It was disappointing to be sure, but Jen didn’t complain. The sky was her domain, and she had clearly racked up the most kills during that freefall. The resulting confidence boost allowed her to speak up on a matter that had been nagging at her from the back of her mind since this frantic chase had started.

“Boxxy?” she called out while hovering above it.

“What?” it responded while floating atop the relatively calm waters.

“Back in the factory, the voice said something about detecting multiple hull breaches.”

“Yeah. And?”

The shapeshifter hadn’t had a chance to give that statement much thought, but that line probably referred to the lava-filled hole in the wall they’d encountered. It made sense there’d be more than one of those given that the place had stood idle for centuries, possibly even millenia.

“Why did it say ‘hull’ instead of ‘perimeter’ or ‘wall?’” Jen calmly asked.

“… Oh, crap.”

One would not use the word ‘hull’ specifically unless referring to a ship or vessel. This implied that the war golem factory was not, in fact, a structure built into the sea floor, but a vehicle that had been buried in it. It couldn’t be tallied up to a mistranslation either, seeing as how that place had somehow assimilated and adopted the language in a matter of seconds.

“Hold that thought,” it told Jen while it switched to telepathic communication. “Claws, are you still in the krymer city?”

“Yes, Master,” the stalker confirmed.

“How are things down there?”

Drea might not have had the full picture of what was going on, but had figured out that something unexpected had happened upon ‘overhearing’ communications between Boxxy and Xera. She had dialed the djinn’s soul-number after her departure from the mortal realm and had gotten the gist of the situation from her. And judging by how she felt her master’s presence was now somewhere above rather than below, she could hazard a guess as to how the shapeshifter had handled said situation.

She therefore made sure to keep her report brief and to the point.

“Nothing out of the ordinary, Master.”

“Nothing? Nothing at all?” Boxxy pressed.

“Not as far as I can tell.”

“No quakes or rumblings?”

“There was a bit of shaking about five minutes ago, but nobody seemed disturbed or surprised. It’s likely a common occurrence.”

“I see.”

“Uh, okay, scratch that. The ground beneath the city’s central square is now actively rising upwards. The buildings are falling over like humans with their heads cut off.”

“… Any chance that’s a common occurrence, too?”

“The lava bubbling out from between the cracks might be, but the torpedo golems that are now slaughtering the civilians most definitely aren’t.”

“Well,” Boxxy turned back to Jen, “bad news is your hunch seems to have been right. The thing seems to be rising from the ground and those war golems are now invading the krymer. Good news is that it’s not our problem.”

Sure, the shapeshifter’s actions may have doomed the city of Nautilin and possibly even the nation of Saphrina to golem-induced extermination, but that was happening all the way down there. There was nothing stopping Boxxy from simply ignoring this development and going back home. Admittedly it would be leaving behind that mechanized crab’s sonic cannons, but it hadn’t come out of this empty-handed. The golem eggs in its Storage went without saying, but it had also acquired a significant amount of precious metals as well. Though the majority of the torpedo golems had been silverite or steel, there were dozens of them that were made of shinier stuff. That number included constructs of mithril or various flavors of orichalcum, and Boxxy had killed and collected those ones in a manner similar to Nora during the freefall.

But… if this was just the vanguard, then wasn’t there a chance that there’d be even more shiny golems down there? Not to mention that the XP earned was quite tasty indeed. That magical standoff at the factory’s entrance had earned it a whole Warlock Level. Then there was the oddly religious nature of the war chant that Snack had translated. In retrospect, it seemed fairly obvious that this whole thing was the work of another old god from Eren’s generation. Which, in turn, meant that the God of Luck would definitely be grateful if Boxxy were to clean this up. Yes, it did already have a divine I. O. U. in its pocket, but a second one surely couldn’t hurt… right?

“On second thought, I’ve decided to go back and make it our problem.”

It was thus that Boxxy’s insatiable greed had once again triumphed over its caution.

“Count me in!” Fizzy eagerly joined in. “I need to show these obsolete rust-buckets what a real war golem is capable of!”

In her case, it was pride that was clouding her better judgement. Rather than cheap knockoffs, the radiant Paladin had started to consider these ancient constructs as inferior and outdated models. They were but remnants of a bygone age that no doubt wished to spread their laughably primitive methods to the surface. Fizzy felt it was her duty, as the clearly advanced and superior version, to put those uppity constructs in their place. True, their numbers were an issue, but they’d be much easier to deal with now that they were no doubt fighting the local krymer.

That final thought helped Fizzy realize that Boxxy’s opportunistic and profiteering nature had seemingly rubbed off on her. Not that she or her alter egos saw that as a bad thing. After all, as Claude himself liked to say, chances existed to be taken.

“Requesting that I be left out.”

Jen, on the other hand, seemed far less enthusiastic to go back under the water so soon after finally getting out of it. Well, that and she had ‘misplaced’ the yellow and orange hat that her diving suit had compacted into, so she wanted an opportunity to find it before Boxxy found out and yelled at her again. Whether she’d manage to do that was another point entirely, but Jen had faith that the Hide of the Great Yellow Beast was floating around somewhere nearby that would make it easy to spot and scoop out of the ocean without getting her feathers wet.

Thankfully for her, Boxxy either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the missing Artifact as it allowed Fizzy into its Storage and used Transfamiliar to swap places with Drea. The webstalker would be woefully ineffective against those heavily armored golems anyway, so taking her out of the emerging war zone was of little consequence. Upon arriving in Nautilin, the shapeshifter was met with the scene of carnage it had expected to see. The local guards and adventurers were putting up a fight, but were clearly outmatched by the seemingly endless stream of torpedo golems emerging from the ocean floor.

Being the exemplary Hero of Chaos that it was, Boxxy immediately hid in a relatively quiet ruined building and began making preparations. Its MP reserves were still somewhat exhausted, so it couldn’t use Summon Familiar normally. It still had its Voidcaller staff on hand, however, so it wasted no time in using its special ability to emergency-summon Kora and outfitted her with its last spare set of diving gear. The hoarder seemed surprisingly unaware of what was going on, as the Beyond’s ‘Boxxy Show’ had apparently been suffering from ‘technical difficulties’ for days now. Still, it wasn’t like her part in this was all that complicated.

“Smash as many golems as you can, but focus on the shiny ones and collect their bodies!” Boxxy ordered.

“CAAAN DOOO!” she declared with overflowing enthusiasm.

A few streets over, a couple of krymer adventurers were hiding in the ruins of a collapsed warehouse. The rubble hadn’t even settled yet, but these two were already at their wits’ end.

“What do you mean it does nothing?!” one of them shouted in their native tongue. “You’re a damned Hydromancer, aren’t you?!”

“I don’t know! It’s just not working!” his friend argued. “No matter what I try, those things just shrug it off like nothing!”

Though Hydromancers were relatively weak on dry land, their magic became exceptionally potent at the bottom of the ocean. The problem was that, unbeknownst to these two, all torpedo golems had the Water Affinity Skill, which rendered the latter one almost completely powerless against them. The other didn’t fare much better either, being a simple Warrior with a focus on spears. His choice of weapon alone put him at a significant disadvantage against those walking lumps of metal.

All in all, neither of them were willing to or capable of putting up a real fight. It was therefore rather unfortunate that their raised voices had caught the attention of a trio of golems, the first of which smashed straight through the wall they were hiding behind. Thrown back by the impact, the terrified Hydromancer could do little but watch as his friend was pinned to the ground beneath the metal monster. It raised its arm-blade, clearly intending to gut the krymer like the bipedal fish that he was while its comrades chuckled to themselves from above.