by Jakob Tanner
“Well, after that speech, how could I say no?”
“Exactly,” he said, walking towards the door of the laboratory. “Now let’s go save our homies.”
32
Shade turned the door handle. It didn’t budge. Torches in the laboratory turned from orange to bright blue. Shade twisted the door knob again. Nothing. It was locked.
“Lockpick time?” I asked.
Shade pulled out a pick and went to work. “Hmm,” he said, puzzled. “The lock won’t—”
“Um, guys,” said Serena. “Take a look at this.”
A dollop of green sludge dripped from the vents. It splashed onto the floor, creating a puddle of thick ooze. The slimy liquid spread into the cracks on the stone floor. It reeked of bile. Another ball of slime slipped through the metal grating in the vent, splashing into the puddle below. More and more slime dripped until instead of drops falling from the vent, the green muck poured and seeped through the grating. Seconds passed and the puddle on the floor had amassed so much slime it had grown to a large gelatinous mound.
“What is this—”
We all leapt away as the green slime boiled and burped. One shiny bubble formed at the top of the slime, followed by an eyeball popping neatly into the membranous outer layer. The glassy white cornea rolled around the bubble-like exterior. The eye had a purple iris and a thick black pupil. Red veins squiggled from the back of the monster’s ocular organ. It rolled around and slid back into the main green body of the slime, only for another bubble to form on its left and for the eye to boil up there.
“What the heck is this thing?” said Serena, her face scrunched up in disgust. She held her sword in front of her, ready to take the slime monster out.
The creature inched forward towards us. The unshapely mass formed a mouth out of its own ooze, creating little rivets of slime teeth. Its details flickered above its head.
Experiment #13
Level 13
HP: 220
MP: 16
Experiment #13? Was it undead—time for healing mist?
“We need to slay this thing to open the door,” I said.
“Well, then let’s get to work,” said Serena. “The time is ticking.”
She ran towards the slime, swinging her arms from back to front, unleashing blade whirlwind. Bits of slime splattered all over across the room: landing in beakers and knocking over bones. Huffing and puffing over the slime she had chopped to bits, the creature’s name plate still indicated it remained at full health. The little pieces of slime inched and hobbled their way back to the main mass. The lone purple eyeball rolled and peered longingly at Serena. Its mouth opened wide, chomping down on Serena’s arm.
“Ack,” she said, jumping away.
She shook her arm, letting the muck fall off of her. Her HP had fallen by 5% but she’d been debuffed by poison. Kari gripped her staff and threw out a flicker of golden light towards Serena.
“Thanks Kari,” said Serena, the poison debuff disappearing from her status bar. She stepped backwards, the slime inching towards us. Its eye moved around, swimming through the ooze, popping up for air every now and again. “It’s immune to physical attacks.”
Shade fired his revolvers, letting out a barrage of bullets. They poked holes through the slime creature, blasting into the wall behind it. The monster wailed but the attack did zero damage; the bullet wounds were simply covered and replaced with more slime.
I pounded my staff to the floor, gripping it with all my might, seizing the excess mana floating through the air. A torrent of heat rushed through my arm until a swirling ball of molten flame sat in the palm of my hand. I cranked my arm back like a baseball pitcher and released the fiery sphere with all my strength.
The blast shot across the room, zooming towards the monster. The slime opened its mouth and swallowed the flame whole. It gurgled, absorbing the flames.
“Uh oh guys,” I said. “Everyone jump!”
The slime monster burped and shot my fireball back at us. Shade and I dived onto one side of the room while Serena and Kari ducked to the other. The fireblast smashed into the trapped door. Unfortunately, it didn’t burn or bash it open.
The slime swirled in place. It sucked in air until it was nothing but a ball of slime spikes. The pointed edges shot across the room.
I lifted my arms to block the blast. Shade ducked into the shadows. Serena took a barrage of hits while using sword shield in front of Kari. A debuff flickered in my HUD.
Poisoned (Debuff): You have been poisoned! You lose 2 HP per 3 seconds until poison wears off (Duration: 1 minute)
The poison throbbed through my body. Kari cast her antidote ability on Serena and hurried over to Shade to heal him from the debuff as well. I lifted my hands, casting status cure: glowing diamonds floated around my body, removing the poison curse.
It was time to try healing mist. Everything else so far hadn’t worked in killing this thing. It was time—gross as it was—to get messy.
I ran towards the slime creature, jumped, cannonballing into it like I was dunking into a swimming pool. Landing in the muck, my clothes and skin dampened against the gooey substance. The poison debuff returned on my list of statuses too. I lifted my chest to the ceiling and summoned healing mist, letting a curative vapor surround me and the slime.
I gave a few seconds to let the restorative mist unleash havoc upon the slime like it had done to the undead creatures but like everything else, the creature was immune.
I wasted no time getting back on my feet and away from the monster. As I stepped away, its mouth suctioned itself around my arm. I pulled away but it wouldn’t let go of its grip. Its slime pincers dug into my skin but did very little damage.
“Let go of me,” I groaned. I wrangled my hand but failed to lose the creature’s grip.
Its big purple eye stared at me. It was weirdly forlorn. Less creepy and angry and more sad. And its purple eye—it reminded me of—
Oh no.
Experiment #13. This must’ve been one of the vanished Aeri who had disappeared earlier in the week. The scientist or the woman from the casino or one of the orphans. Is this what happened when Bertwald’s experiments went wrong? Or was this slime monster one of his success stories? The quest timer in my HUD continued its descent. Is this what was going to happen to little Fen and Mari? Have their whole souls and bodies ripped away and transformed into this miserable awfulness? We had to act quick. We had to put a stop to this.
The slime continued to suck on my arm. Its eye stared at me, pleading. What did it want me to do? Wait. If this thing was once Aeri, it knew our innate racial abilities. Did it want me to use one of them? I didn’t see how power jump or energy ball would help here, but what about mana infusion? Would it be enough to destroy the individual particles of the slime? This thing didn’t want to eat or kill us. It wanted to die.
I gripped my staff, channeling mana to my body. I let it flow out of my arm and into the slime. The creature glowed and wriggled in pain, my mana coursing through it, burning its particles from the inside out. The HP of the creature drained, shaking and vibrating. It didn't let go of my arm but its eye bulged, warning me. My mana flowed through it, draining it further. 20%, then 15%. At 5%, the creature’s mouth let go and it cast a hot breath spell, shooting me backwards.
The residual mana burn from my infusion ate away at the creature’s remaining health points until at 1% the whole creature vibrated and exploded into a cloud of smoke.
+114 EXP!
The torches which had turned blue transformed back to normal orange flames. Moving gears and pulleys echoed throughout the room. Emerging from either wall were pointed spears with sharp metal spikes. The grind of gears and pulleys clanked away, pushing the spears ever closer to us. It was a trap within a trap.
33
Shade slammed a fist on the door. “It’s impossible to pick. It has magical runes written over it. It will only open with its actual key.”
“There must be a key inside here then,
” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was true, Bertwald may have left us here with no means of escape. But then, he was also the ever-cautious calculating scientist. He would have left a fail-safe key for any emergencies he found himself in. So where would he put it?
“Everyone look around,” I said. “Bertwald must’ve hidden the key somewhere!”
Shade kicked through a pile of bones while Kari scanned the bookshelves. Serena looked under the operating tables to see if the key was hanging on a hook. I peered through the cells where he took his kidnapped victims. The waiting area for his experiments. The first cell contained a bloated corpse of a man. The body laid in the corner, head resting against the prison walls. Its faded eyes stared outward to me.
He wouldn’t have.
No, it’s exactly what he would’ve done.
I opened the rusty creaking door and dragged the corpse into the hallway away from the encroaching spears. I scanned his body and saw he had the item “Laboratory Key (x1)” but as I dug through his pants and shirt it wasn’t there.
I shouldn’t be surprised by the psychotic nature of this guy anymore, but I was. I pinched my nose and pulled open the corpse’s mouth. Inside, a dirty white string rested on the dead man’s tongue, a silver key glinting from below. I pulled the key out and yelled to everyone, “I got the key.”
I rushed towards the door. We had twenty seconds before the spears ripped us to shreds.
I put the key into the door handle, shivering.
“C’mon, c’mon,” whispered Shade behind me, grabbing my shoulders.
I twisted it. It caught and wouldn’t move. Old lock. Old key. I jiggled it and twisted it, hearing the sweet relieving click of the door unlocking. I pulled the handle and pushed the door forward.
I face planted onto the floor outside, the rest of the party pushing and piling up on me to escape the incoming spears.
The quest timer kept descending.
We had forty-five minutes left.
34
The rest of the party rolled off of me until I was able to push myself up onto my feet. We were in a dark dingy hallway with moss growing on the stone walls. The sewers again. Water dripped through cracks in the ceiling and at the end of the hall was a stone stairwell, the faint shine of moonlight above. We hurried down the vestibule towards the starry luminescence. A metal roof canopy hung far above the staircase with a glass opening from which the night sky shone through. Metallic footsteps echoed from the top of the stairs.
“Guards?” I said, looking to the group.
Shade put a finger to his mouth and climbed the steps to observe. He came back and whispered, “You’re not going to like it.”
“Guards?” said Kari, her face full of concern.
“Worse,” said the Lirana thief, his whiskers twitching. “Guard dogs.”
Our faces fell.
“Actually, it’s worse than dogs, they’re more like wolves,” said Shade.
I rubbed my forehead in frustration.
“Actually, it’s worse than wolves, they’re Mecha-Wolvren,” said Shade. “Wolves with necromechanical enhancements. I’m sure they’re Bertwald’s pets.”
“You’re actually pissing me off,” said Serena. “Why aren’t you taking this seriously?”
Shade tilted his head. “But I am Ms. Serena. I’ve encountered them in the past. While Mecha-Wolvren are a pain to fight, I’m sure we can sneak past them. They don’t have very good night vision; in fact, they’re blind at night. They have special ocular implants called MDV: Movement Detective Vision. So long as we move when they aren’t looking directly at us we can avoid being noticed.”
It would be tough, but we didn’t have any other options.
“Lead the way,” I said.
We crept up the stairs. Shade, then me, then Kari, then Serena at the back. We were in a sewage maintenance facility, a place for city workers to check water pressure levels and observe sewage flow throughout the city. It was a city building, meaning it was owned by the royal family. And who essentially owned the royal family? Bertwald. So there you had it. This whole city was suffering under the corrupted control of the king and his advisor. This was how they were able to kidnap and take lives without any witnesses, because they controlled the city’s underground.
Shade stopped at the top of the stairs. The Mecha-Wolvren were so much louder up close. They panted, creeping along, sniffing and scratching at their metal plating. A light humming buzz whipped in and out of earshot, their pink laser tails wagging behind them.
Shade sprinted across the stairs to the side wall. From the shadows, he motioned for us to follow suit. We slinked across and hid behind a metal vent. The Lirana pointed across the building to a door. While it was easy to look at and point, getting there was another story. Between our current position and the door were three Mecha-Wolvren. The metal plated wolves with their pink laser tails prowled the corridors. Fortunately, they followed a pattern. Each one paced a full row then turned around and walked back the way it came.
“Stop moving when I stop,” whispered Shade. “And I mean, stop. Don’t even blink. Breathe only if you have to.”
We hugged the shadows at the side of the building. We moved a few meters and arrived at the corner. Now it was a mere straight path to the exit. But only the path was simple. This was the most difficult part of our escape.
Shade waited for the first Mecha-Wolvren to arrive in front of us, turn around, and pace towards the other end. Then he moved again. We scurried passed the back of the first Mecha-Wolvren and stopped once we were out of its corridor. The middle wolf prowled less than a meter from where we stood. The clink of the metal bone structure was sickening to listen to up close. The breaths of the real wolf underneath were distorted through the muffles of machinery and magitech enslaving it. Did it miss being a normal wolf? Were these Mecha-Wolvren like Experiment #13, craving for their mutated and bastardized existences to end?
The wolf spun around, its laser tail whipping inches away from Shade’s face. My whole body tensed. The wolf didn’t notice and continued to sleek down its pre-ordained security path.
I let out a quick sigh of relief and tip-toed behind Shade.
A stone on the ground rattled.
The Mecha-Wolvren noticed. Its eyes stared out towards our party. We froze. I held my breath. My lungs burned. I stared at the Mecha-Wolvren, right into its glowing red eyes. My eyes watered and strained. Don’t blink.
The guard wolf decided it was a false alarm and turned its head. I shut my eyes, taking in the sweet relief.
A ferocious growl echoed through the sewage facility.
The wolf wasn’t looking at me anymore. But a fourth Mecha-Wolvren on an upper layer had been.
Shit!
The Mecha-Wolvren from the upper layer pounced from its platform to our floor and galloped towards us, as did the one we’d been hiding from. The two behind us snarled and came for us as well. We were surrounded.
The ones from behind pounced towards Kari. Serena jumped between the healer and the attack. She held up her massive blade, shielding them from the incoming claws. The sharp nails screeched and clinked against her giant sword.
“Clay, we need to get a better position,” yelled Serena, behind gritted teeth, holding her sword up against the attacks of the two wolves.
“Working on it,” I said, casting ruptured ground, destroying the steel casing of the facility and crippling one of the beasts. The other was smart enough to jump over my attack and come straight at us. Shade fired off bullets from his revolvers, landing hits while others bounced off the metal plates.
My chest rose and my arms strained, tensing at my sides. My hands grabbed the air, pulling at the invisible chains holding the ground together, twisting them apart. The metal flooring shattered and broke, rocks jutting out all around us. The wolves tripped and kicked up dirt.
Serena ran past the coughing wolves towards where we had started. We backed ourselves to the beginning of the passageway. The wolves now had t
o face us head on.
“Okay guys,” I said, “Time to fight. Serena, get in there and draw as much aggro as you can from those wolves. Kari, stay on top of healing her. Buff her as well if you can. Shade, poison the wolves with your special bullets and then get into our favorite battle position. I’ll DPS and support back here with Kari. Let’s go!”
The four Mecha-Wolvren galloped towards us, their thick metal fangs barred and ready to tear our flesh apart.
Serena ran to meet them, drawing aggro from all four with a whirlwind blade attack. The blade cut through the wolves, clanking between the beast’s flesh and metal plating. Following her attack, the wolves took a chance to chomp at her, taking out 25% of her health.
Shade loaded his poison bullets into his revolvers, cocked them, and fired the glowing green bullets at each Mecha-Wolvren. The hits landed on three out of the four. Good enough. I cast ruptured ground, destroying the floor even more than I had moments ago. I landed cripple debuffs on two of them. Flying alongside our offensive projectiles, Kari shot off a golden light of energy surrounding Serena, giving her a bonus protection buff, then quickly switched back to her healing duties.
Serena unleashed her basic strike attack, comboing and increasing her damage with each hit. She swung her blade across the four wolves. Next she lunged, stabbing the one right in front of her. The wolf whelped at the pain from her giant blade. She stabbed it again and then for the fourth and final blow of her basic Blade Soldier combo, she lifted the sword above her head and slammed down on the Mecha-Wolvren, taking it down to 21% health.
Shade fell through the shadows with both of his daggers out, backstabbing the weakened wolf. It cried out in pain, its HP falling to 3%. It glowed with blue runes all across its body, entering a rage mode. Its claws ejected from its paw, shooting outward. One claw sliced across Shade’s ribs. Another hit Serena in the shoulder, blood spurting out from the attack. One flew right towards Kari.
