B3. Ch. 52 Smash and Grab.

Tilly careened through the air, whipping one way, then another as he followed the destructive path carved by Brokenridge’s fury. Tilly quickly stopped trying to actually participate in the battle and simply curled into his torso, attempting to protect as much of his vitals as possible.  Thankfully, he was largely being ignored in favor of the much larger target before him. 

Unfortunately, that did not mean he got to sip around behind the dragon, unscathed. Almost immediately after his initial impact through several half-melted metallic enemies, others charged in that had avoided the initial attack. An incredibly sharp lance, pierced his shoulder from the thorax of an insect-shaped attacker, even as his velocity ripped its body in half.

A sharp jerk to the side, following a particularly impressive maneuver by Brokenridge had his leg colliding with an incredibly dense floating cube.  His knee shattered as he knocked the thing from its place in the collapsing formation.  Adrenalyn rushed through Tilly’s system as his body endured one unexpected blow after another and his Health was shaved off one chunk at a time. 

What felt like minutes were revealed to be seconds as Flame’s Expulsion finished dying out all around him, revealing his surroundings just as Brokenridge pulled free of the mid-air scrum.  The automatons seemed sluggish next to the vicious grace of the aerial predator.  Brokenridge flug of several unwanted riders, with a coordinated whip-like extension of both wings before shooting up through the formation, climbing through the air faster than most of the aerial defense constructs could follow.  

Tilly’s numerous injuries screamed at the abuse even as Tilly allowed himself a feral grin. Whatever else this nightmare rollercoaster ride had been… It had netted him a significant amount of experience. As he soared up in the air following the Dragon while taking fire from a few stray small-arm projectiles, he pulled up his notification log, revealing at finally being able to reset his stat spread.

You have defeated a level 40 Enigma Cube automaton…

You have defeated a level 28 Wasp type A automaton…

You have defeated a level 56 Hunter Seeker automaton…

Congratulations! You are now Level 38. 7% Experience stored to next level.

You have earned 5 stat points to distribute plus 2 points in Endurance and 1 in Dexterity from the class Son of Flame.

Breckenridge continued to ascend in a physics-defying display of speed leaving behind the decemated defenders as he raced up the side of the spire. Tilly mentally assigned all of his free points into Endurance, promising himself to keep a cushion from now on, and saw the long-awaited notification return to his log. 

Congratulations! You have required the title [Resolute] 

[Resolute]: Your Endurance stat is higher than all of your other stats combined. As long as this remains true, you may completely negate one fatal blow per day.

Then the tinny voice returned, overlaying the wailing siren that had been playing non-stop since the Faction began responding to their presence. 

“INITIATING BOMBARDMENT” The voice announced in a monotone.  This time, hundreds of different openings appeared on the metallic face of the spire, releasing numerous explosive projectiles that suddenly crowded their path upward with a dizzying array of exploding flack. 

Still exultant from his regained superlative title cheat, Tilly barely had time to process the increased danger as Brokenridged entered the minefield of aerial explosions.  The dragon’s body flashed with a silvery glow as he tucked his wings and began slithering around the worst of the impacts mid-air.

Being jerked through impossible evasive maneuvers further exasperated Tilly’s recently earned injuries, but the dragon was somehow managing to keep them away from the worst of the bombardment with the use of another of his mysterious Abilities. Despite the explosive obstacles, they continued to gain more altitude. 

Still, like the melee below, dodging most of the enemy’s damage output did not mean moving through the defenses unscathed. Superheated shards of metal lodged themselves in the surface of Tilly’s super tough skin, shaving off more of his already depleted Health. A particularly close explosion ripped along his back, and he felt some of the muscles in his shoulders sever at the close impact. 

Tilly lost the ability to shield his face and was unable to lift his right arm.  He continued to be rag-dolled by Brokenridges extreme maneuvers, and his health dropped to below twenty percent.  He finally released a scream, as he felt his damaged shoulder pop free after a particular vicious horizontal jerk. Tilly didn’t know if it was frustration at having to use his only health potion before he even had the chance to fight or a release of his pent-up terror of taking damage from all vectors.  

But he Fought through the pull of the extreme aerial maneuvers and reached down to pull his Epic health potion free, gripping it for all he was worth as he brought it to his lips. With a mental thanks to Amelia, he popped the top and gulped the contents down.  More explosions ripped at his armor and flesh underneath as they rose, but despite the continued damage, the potion did its work, reknitting most of the damage even as his primitive leathers stitched themselves back together under the same onslaught.

His mana had just ticked back up to fifty percent and his Health ticked back up to full, even allowing him to soak up a little of the damage and instantly re-heal. Despite that, Tilly couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all just to soften them up before the real battle. As if to emphasize his suspicion, they suddenly broke free of the flack storm finally reaching the top of the spire.  Brokenridge roared in defiance, immediately bathing the top of the building in flames.  

The Spire’s top seemed completely unaffected by the attack, and a large set of hanger doors began to open before the river of flames.  Tilly’s eyes narrowed, and he drew both his hatchets.

“Analysis Complete.” the Tinny voice concluded, in a monotone that now sounded smug, despite the lack of inflection. 

Brokenridge’s Dark blue flames rushed into the new opening, before a thunderous explosion of air blew them back, completely clearing the open hanger door. This eruption of pressurized air was followed by several more as the doors finished opening revealing a humanoid made up of dark ropy flesh and chromed mechanical parts. 

It clapped its hands once more, releasing a final thunderous crack of displaced air.  

‘Was that a slow clap?’  Tilly thought erratically as Brokenridge cut off his breath attack and took in the new foe. 

“Welcome, interlopers.  You have the great honor to be the first to see the crowning achievement of our-”

“ROOOAAAARRR”  Brokenridge interrupted explosively, cutting off a classic villain monologue. Just behind the figure, Tilly spotted something that looked like a futuristic sarcophagus, surrounded by wires and components glowing with power.  Interspersed through the components were the familiar dark root-like growths, shoving their ends into the machinery and pumping the now empty pod with dark, viscous liquid. 

“Pity I have only a mindless beast to witness my grand entrance into the world.” Fantasy Terminator complained in that same emotionless tone. The Faction-wide disembodied quality of the voice had changed. While the tone and timber were the same, it was now coming from the figure in front of them instead of a disembodied defense system.  

Level 175 Corrupted Golem Prefect

Brokenridge’s eyes darted to the opening beyond the figure, and he slightly repositioned, fully blocking the Golem Prefect’s view of Tilly.  Then in a voice that was much more animalistic than Tilly was used to, the dragon answered, “You. Die. Now!” before opening his mouth and beginning to gather the threads of a new Ability between his jaws.

The automaton let out a robotic sigh, something Tilly found oddly dramatic for a machine. But before he could think any further on irony, the back of the Prefect erupted in fiery propulsion, launching it into Brokenridge’s chest almost instantaneously, successfully interrupting the dragon’s Ability.  Tilly barely had time to register the attack, just barely tensing his whole body for another set of extreme aerial maneuvers, when instead he was flung forward, opposite Brokenridges direction. 

To Tilly’s complete shock, he found himself soaring through the air in an easy arc toward the open hanger door. The statue-turned-trophy landed just inside of the opening, sliding to a stop. Tilly immediately snapped the twig in his mouth, trying to lose as little momentum as possible before the statue rolled to a stop. The spatial link tying him to the statue kept him about thirty feet back, and it was abundantly clear that the thing was not going to make it all thirty feet into the chamber.

He felt the link break immediately allowing him to continue moving forward at a decent pace. Unfortunately, the link’s sudden disappearance also caused him to drop far faster than the statue had with its greater mass.  So instead of soaring through the opening, he barely caught the bottom lip of the doorway with the head of one of his hatchets.

A hiss announced the rapid closing of the hanger doors, and the crash of clashing titans thundered behind him, followed by a roar of fury and a flurry of explosions. Buffited by the shockwaves of the battle behind him, quickly got his bearings, hauling himself over the side of the spire and rolling into the chamber just in time.  The door slammed shut inches away from his foot in a scene that would have been more at home in an Indiana Jones movie than Tilly’s hectic, half-baked maneuver.

Tilly came to his feet, looking around at the highest chamber in the Prefected Golem Faction,‘That sneaky bastard…he played them…’ Tilly thought ruefully. 

The large room glowed with an assortment of high-grade components, set up an orderly blend of technological logic and nightmarish appendages. One look at the roots told him that while the Corrupted Tree had certainly imparted something to the process of creating the Golem Prefect, many of the roots had also burrowed into the streams of valuable resources that the whole Faction seemed to have been built to refine, and were actively stealing them to fuel its own growth. Huge glass tubes rose up from the ground glowing with all sorts of arcane power, and much of the root growth in the room had twisted itself within those lines of power, siphoning off a significant amount.

Tilly spun one of his hatchets in his hands eagerly as he scanned the room, attempting to identify the main lines of growth that were pulling resources back down to the tree below, “It ain’t much… but it’s honest work.”  He quipped to himself with a smile, excited at the chance to finally wreak a little havoc of his own on the thing that had lived rent-free in his nightmares for months. He enflamed both of his weapons and threw them with deadly accuracy at the two biggest roots littering the chamber. 

His weapons were empowered with Origin’s Flame, its effects multiplied by the Dragons Glass upgrade and it showed as they impacted their targets.  Tilly had no clue how the System would classify the entity choking the life out of this Faction, but whatever its levels and stats were, when Tilly’s ax heads hit the thing’s bark-like outer skin, they almost immediately burned through, cleanly severing the large roots, and searing both halves of the cut.

The otherworldly screaming that had become a distant background noise to Tilly after the Doom Duckie had removed a healthy chuck of the main body, suddenly increased by several octaves, tearing through the chamber.  Roots began to pull themselves free from their gluttonous work, but Tilly was already in action, running forward with recalled hatchets and cutting through more of the organic lattice before the creature could zero in on the new source of damage. 

Time for a little cathartic payback.