Axillon99
Page 26
“So, let’s give this thing a whirl huh?” Alton grinned and picked up the helmet.
Dakota paused. “That idiot’s going to put it on, isn’t he?”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked Hal.
Blake leaned over and peered at the screen.
“He’s standing up…” Dakota pulled the blender jug off the motor and dumped the contents into a giant plastic cup.
Alton Stirling put the helmet on, the blackout visor covering his eyes. “Okay, now I can’t see anything. The helmet’s going to talk to my brain soon. There it is okay. I gotta hit this button to finish logging in…” He reached up and pushed the small rubber button by his right temple. The man went limp and collapsed straight to the floor.
Dakota burst out laughing as the camera cut back to the two confused hosts.
“We seem to be experiencing some technical difficulties,” said the man.
“Here you go, ma’am.” Dakota handed over the strawberry-choco-coffee drink. There’s so much sugar in that I think I gained six pounds from touching the cup.
“Thank you sweetie.” The woman smiled and hurried outside.
“Oh, wow.” Alton stood back into view, the helmet in his hands. “This thing’s got quite the kick. Felt like I was really somewhere else. Maybe I’m supposed to be in a chair or something first.”
“Ya think?” muttered Dakota.
“Anyway… congrats to the three crews closing in on that prize. Best of luck!” said the hostess. “When we return from this break, we’ll be talking to celebrity chef Misty Simms who’s going to share her recipe for super fluffy Angel Food cake.”
“Yay,” muttered Dakota while jamming a scoop into the ice and closing the cooler hatch with a thump. “We’re famous.”
Fully Functional Robot of Doom
20
In the shadow of the abandoned starship plant’s left tower, Fawkes glanced down at the heavy ballistic handgun. Shiny lines of neon blue accented a frame of dark grey. She squeezed her fingers into the comfortable rubberized handgrip, admiring the perfect amount of squishiness.
At her belt, a box the size of a pack of cards offered the hope of a different outcome. A personal force field generator, or PFF, slotted with the Venom Shroud modification gave her 250 extra ‘health’ against poison damage plus ninety-five percent resistance to it. If the robot hit her for 1000 venom damage, she’d only lose fifty points. Alas, the resistance only applied to the shield’s points, not her health. But as long as she had shield points, the venom wouldn’t touch her.
She wore two spare magazines for the gun on her belt, but her inventory showed 4000 rounds of ammo. As soon as she pulled one of the fresh magazines from the holder, a new one would appear there as long as she still had more ammo in her possession, so she didn’t have to walk around ‘wearing’ ammo over every inch of her outfit. The game didn’t make a big deal of reloading time as much as requiring her to have ammunition.
Kavan hefted his new blade, a slightly oversized broadsword named Fury’s Edge. The steel had a dark blue sheen and a line of white around the cutting edge that almost glowed. He and Nighthawk spent most of the day working on that drop while she’d been pouring coffee. Evidently, William (Kavan’s player) had taken the day off work to farm that thing.
Rallek hadn’t had to do much prep beyond the shield mod. His technomancy had already been up to the task, though he did rearrange some microchip slots on his staff for a damage amp against robotics. Some of the higher-end items had slots where players could add different microchips to customize small bonuses. He’d also spent hours farming plants. He handed everyone elixirs that would boost any physical type damage they caused for twenty minutes.
Angel813 had also created serums that boosted max health by twenty percent and gave a base +15% boost to venom resistance, though that would only affect damage to health points. She walked down the line, hitting everyone with the booster shots.
“Okay.” Kavan faced them like a general before the charge. “Now that we know what we’re going in for, here’s the plan. I’ll rush the damn thing and get its attention. Give me a fifteen-second lead before you open up on it so I have a good threat cushion. We’re staying off the stairs. Everyone spread out, with Angel in the middle. I know we got those shield things, but that’s not an excuse to stand in the puddles. Do everything you can to stay clear.”
Everyone nodded.
“Potions are ticking down,” said Angel813. “Let’s get going.”
Kavan spun on his heel and marched into the channel between the two massive doors. The cavernous factory looked no different from the way it had the first time. Even the dust on the floor showed no sign of any prior footprints. He stormed straight over to the not-so-innocent stack of containers, where the twenty-foot robot boss concealed itself.
Fawkes dropped into stealth and scooted to the left. Angel813 took up a position about twenty feet behind Kavan. Nighthawk went to the right, stopping at a point roughly opposite Fawkes compared to the medic. Rallek stood at the rear, almost in line with Kavan, since his spells had the longest range of anything in the group. Only DPS soldiers using rifles could outrange a caster.
“Come on you heap o’ junk.” Kavan kicked the box. “What triggered it last time?”
“I think walking far enough into the room. I got it.” Nighthawk jogged off to the right, where the group had gone last time.
Sure enough, once he went another dozen or so steps, the robot woke up and pushed the cargo boxes out of its way. The ambient ‘creepy’ music slam-shifted to a racing battle anthem.
Kavan sprang into action, swinging Fury’s Edge at the enormous metal boot. The blade landed with a sharp clang and a shower of sparks. The robot’s car-sized fist came down on him, stalling when it struck the energy shield projecting from Kavan’s left forearm. The hit still took twenty-five percent of the tank’s life off, but Angel813 had her orbs in midair before the hit landed.
“Ten,” shouted Kavan, swinging twice more at the leg while ducking between them to get the titan to put its back to the group.
Again, it punched at him, and again, his health took a twenty-five percent hit.
Fawkes crouched in waiting, lining up an ambush shot at its back. Forty feet to her right, Nighthawk had two of the exact same pistols in his hands. They didn’t look quite so oversized on a male character, but she still wouldn’t want to try using two at once. Her hand barely made it around the grip.
“Five,” yelled Kavan, counting down the ‘give me a chance to establish aggro’ timer.
Her finger tensed on the trigger. Four. Three. Two.
The blast from her shot drowned out Kavan yelling, “Go!”
2040 appeared in bright red letters. She used Flicker to hide right away again and ambushed a second time, hitting for 2280. Somewhere to the right, Nighthawk fired so fast it sounded like he had a machinegun.
With a metallic groan of annoyance, the huge robot began to turn toward her.
“Dammit to hell, what did you do?” shouted Kavan. He roared and pounded his blade at the robot’s leg, while red flames appeared on his shoulders.
“Crap!” Fawkes reflexively tried to use stealth, but it didn’t work while in combat with a raid boss. She did, however, stop shooting.
Kavan’s desperate assault on the robot’s boot managed to get its attention back before it took a step to attack Fawkes. It pounded him again, knocking his health down to seventy percent. Angel813 kept a steady stream of medi-bots flying at him. Each hit did roughly twenty-five percent of his health points, and she managed to heal back twenty-two percent or so before the next one, so he steadily declined. She’d already discussed this with the group. Once he hit thirty percent, she’d run in and jab him with the full heal cooldown. This strategy relied on no one else taking spike damage and distracting her with the need for big heals.
Fawkes resumed shooting, landing hits a hair shy of a full 1,000 points from flanking multipliers. Nighthawk fired his pistols empty
, reloaded, emptied them again, reloaded, and so on, keeping up a continuous barrage except for when he used his Sharpshooter cooldown. For two seconds, he’d take on a dramatic pose, raise one handgun, and squeeze off a single shot. She figured it had to do a lot of damage for him to use it, since it stopped his normal attacks for the time it took the fancy animation to play.
At thirty seconds in, the first wave of green goo missiles fired.
“Shields!” shouted Kavan.
Fawkes started running before the missile came down on her head, mashing the button attached to the box on her hip. A green energy field winked on around her, flickering for an instant as the edge of the poison disc clipped the bubble, doing two points of damage.
“Stand close to the edge of the venom patches,” yelled Angel813. “That way they overlap and we have more floor space for a longer time.”
“Got it,” yelled Nighthawk. “Hey look. I didn’t stand in bad.”
“You want an award or something?” yelled Angel813.
“That would be cool, yeah.” Nighthawk reloaded. “I think I deserve one for being this awesome.”
Angel813 rolled her eyes.
Fawkes snickered, and emptied the rest of her current magazine into the robot’s back.
Rallek spammed his techno-bolt, adding a steady stream of damage with the occasional pause to mend Kavan’s armor bar or throw a spell at Angel813 to replenish her ‘medical supply’ meter. Once Flicker came off cooldown, Fawkes hit it and lit off another 2200-point ambush crit. That got her daydreaming about Master of Shadows when she could ambush over and over again.
Reloading a bullet-eating gun proved to be highly annoying. Every twenty shots, she had to grab a magazine off her belt and stuff it in the gun. Admittedly, she had to reload the CL32 the same way with power packs, but only once per 250 shots.
Another barrage of goo missiles rained down. Fawkes had been standing within inches of the first green disc. A little less than half of the new circular patch overlapped area already made toxic by the first one. She scooted left, enough to not stand in damage, and kept firing.
Inch by inch, the huge robot’s life bar shrank.
When it hit fifty percent, it stopped punching at Kavan and clenched its fist in front of its chest while shuddering.
“Is it trying to take a dump?” asked Nighthawk.
“That’s probably not a bad metaphor,” said Rallek. “It’s about to take a dump all over us I think.”
Kavan kept swinging in an endless clang, clang, clang of enchanted steel striking ordinary armored boot.
Three seconds later, vents all over the robot body opened up, spewing green gas. The noxious cloud spread over the whole room in an instant, causing a steady stream of damage ticks on everyone. Fawkes glanced up at the storm of numbers ranging from five to fifteen. After twenty seconds, the cloud dispersed.
“That was a shitload of damage,” said Rallek. “Average ten points a second for twenty seconds to a ninety-five percent resistance? Ballpark it would’ve done maybe ten grand without that mod.”
Fawkes jaw dropped. “How the hell do they expect players to survive an attack that does ten grand over twenty seconds? I’ve only got 1,844 health!”
“We’re still standing, aren’t we?” asked Angel813, patting the shield box.
She couldn’t argue that, and kept on firing.
Rallek summoned an android.
“No! Nothing in melee. Kavan will take more damage,” yelled Angel813.
“Oh. I thought it was venom. He doesn’t have to worry about standing in goo, so it should be okay, right?”
Angel813 thought about it. “Okay fine.”
The summoned android wobbled up behind the big robot and began punching at its leg. Sure enough, the ‘screw-the-melee’ poison cloud appeared, the same one Fawkes had worked out the timing to avoid. Kavan, having no choice but to be close to the robot, stood there and ate it. It did a little damage to the venom shield, but nothing alarming. The summoned android, being a machine, ignored poison.
At twenty-five percent life, the giant robot arched its back and opened two panels on its shoulders.
A bright red shaft of laser light fell down from above on Fawkes, but didn’t do damage. The robot fired a barrage of missiles straight up.
“What the…?” She gazed at the rising warheads.
“Targeting unit. Run like hell!” shouted Angel813.
Fawkes sprinted to the side, darting around venom patches. Deafening whistles went off behind her as a rain of rockets slammed into the ground at her heels, one every second. The red beam tracked her for eight seconds before disappearing. The last missile came close enough to fling her off her feet onto her chest and do thirty-three percent damage to her health, ignoring the shield since the PFF only stopped venom damage.
“Ow,” she muttered, not that it really hurt.
The targeting beam reappeared on Rallek. He sprinted, but wound up getting cornered by venom patches and going across one to avoid getting trapped under the barrage. His shield withered down to about twenty-five percent by the time he reached clear ground.
Fawkes picked herself up and resumed shooting at the robot as medi-bots swarmed her. After Rallek’s eight seconds, the missile beam came back for her.
“Dammit!” screamed Fawkes, while sprinting hard. “Go after Nighthawk!”
“Hell to the no!” shouted Nighthawk.
Fawkes hauled ass, waving her arms to keep balance as she tiptoed along a one-foot-wide section of clean floor between glowing green patches. That time, she ran fast enough to avoid the splash damage from the eighth warhead.
“Oh, screw you!” Nighthawk wailed in annoyance and sprinted away from the targeting laser.
“It’s random,” yelled Rallek, hurling a techno-bolt into the robot’s back. “It didn’t listen to her.”
“I was talking to the robot, not Fawkes,” shouted Nighthawk.
When the robot’s health bar hit ten percent, the aerial bombardment stopped and the two launch bay doors motored closed. Armor plates exploded off its back and chest, amid a ridiculous amount of goo missiles flying in all directions, splattering every scrap of floor space with the inch-deep deadly slime. The whole room turned toxic green with nowhere to go to avoid it.
“Burn phase!” yelled Angel813. “Hit it with everything you got!” She, too, pulled a Warhawk pistol and fired.
The robot had stopped punching at Kavan and simply spewed poison in all directions. The energy shield projecting from his left forearm collapsed, and a second, smaller sword appeared in his off hand. Fawkes clicked the trigger as fast as she could move her finger, cursing the mechanism that limited her to twenty shots before reloading.
Nighthawk sprang into the air, his body covered in white fire. Hanging six feet off the ground, he pirouetted around in a fancy maneuver, then floated motionless while both of his pistols spat bullets. After four seconds, he dropped back to the ground and reloaded. The barrage knocked the robot forward a step and took four percent of its life away.
“What the hell was that?” shouted Fawkes.
“Blaze of Glory,” yelled Nighthawk. “Sixty shots per weapon that can’t miss… but they can’t crit either.”
“Those guns don’t even hold sixty shots,” said Rallek.
“They do when I use BoG.” Nighthawk laughed.
Right as the venom shield collapsed and the ground started ticking Fawkes for 100 poison damage a second, the giant robot teetered and fell over to the side, dead. She cheered, but stopped when her health kept going down.
“Umm, is this gonna stop?”
The venom got in a few ‘cheap shots’ after the boss died, but faded before any player went below half health. A faint pale-green fog hovered over the floor for a little while where toxic gel had been.
“Woo!” Fawkes leapt into the air waving her gun around. “We did it!”
“Sweet!” yelled Nighthawk.
“So, umm, what did that do?” asked Rallek.
“Wow, that was almost easy that time,” said Nighthawk.
“Being prepared for a fight makes a world of difference.” Kavan clapped him on the back. “Why do you think I read so much?”
The loot box contained a heavy weapon for a DPS soldier that spewed poison. (Essentially a green flamethrower). Since no one wanted (or could use) it, Kavan sent it to the ship’s hold for sale. He picked up a better tank shield, and it also dropped a golden staff that looked like it belonged in a sword & sorcery game. Only the winged medallion at the top having a circuitry pattern broke the fantasy illusion.
“Hmm. Auramancer item. To the hold it goes,” said Kavan.
“Wait. Would anyone mind if I nab that for my alt?” asked Fawkes. She could stick it in her ‘account storage area,’ which any of her characters (if she ever made more than two) could access.
“You have an alt?” asked Rallek.
“Yeah, she’s been messing around with a Niath auramancer,” said Nighthawk. “It’s only level seven though.”
“Be a while before you can even equip this.” Kavan examined it. “Minimum level is thirty-six.”
“Oh. Well, I guess go ahead and sell it then. I still don’t know if I’ll ever play her that high.”
Kavan tossed her the staff. “Go for it. It’s a purple drop. Would be nice to have a backup healer around.”
Angel813 glanced at her, a hint of a lift to her chin.
“Oh, I dunno. I’m nowhere near as good as Angel.”
“Hah,” said Angel813.
“I’m serious. I did this rando instance with another medic… holy cow they sucked. If the tank wasn’t over-geared, we would’ve been so dead.”
Angel813 smiled. “Okay… I’ll accept your sincerity.”
“We should get going. With that thing dead, the other crew could get in here.” Fawkes jogged around the robot toward the rest of the building.
“Nah.” Nighthawk shook his head. “They’ll get an instance with a fully functional robot of doom.”