Viridian Gate Online: The Artificer: A litRPG Adventure (The Imperial Initiative Book 1)

by S. R. Witt

  Sandra darted at the monster’s good ankle and slashed her armor-piercing blades across an exposed bundle of pipes and heavy wires. Osmark offered a silent cheer as his assistant damaged the monster’s leg—knocking off a handful of HP in the process—though not enough to cripple the creature. It was still an impressive attack, though, and a damned fine start.

  But the clockwork monstrosity wasn’t going down that easily. It straightened the leg Robert had damaged; thick brass rods erupted from within its innards, locking its ankle in place and stabilizing the joint. It would be limping, but it was far from out of the fight.

  “Watch for an opening,” Osmark hollered as he pulled the Fire Spitter from his inventory and held it aloft.

  Then he charged straight at the limping golem.

  Sandra shouted wordlessly, her eyes wide in terror.

  Eldred uttered an arcane command and a rip in space pulsed over the golem’s head.

  A golden glow surged around Robert’s body, and Karzic’s chanting echoed in his ears like the voice of a priest standing in a holy sanctuary.

  Osmark knew it was going to be close, but he had to take the risk. He needed to get close enough to the Iron Goliath for his plan to work.

  The creature spotted Osmark and lashed out with the screaming saw blade, the weapon carving a vicious arc through the air, aimed at his head. He threw himself into the prone position, sliding across slick metal, barely avoiding the monster’s decapitating swipe by inches. His slide ended just short of the golem’s stiff left leg—which was exactly where Robert wanted to be.

  He dropped a caltrop grenade at the edge of the monster’s foot, then tossed out three more, placing them so they’d all activate in the same instant. Osmark rolled away from the automaton’s bad foot, then scrambled to his feet and sprinted away as an explosion erupted behind him—the sound of all four caltrops springing at once.

  Still, quick as he was, he wasn’t quite quick enough. The Goliath’s other leg lashed out in a mule kick, which caught Robert in the lower back, punting him high into the air. The blow slashed a full third off his HP, and the skull-rattling impact with the wall on the far side of the room took him down to half his total Health.

  Osmark’s vision swam unsteadily as he slid down to a seated position on the floor. Every inch of his body ached as though he’d just gone twelve rounds with a heavyweight champ. A second later a combat notification flashed in the corner of his vision:

  <<<>>>

  Debuff Added

  Blunt Trauma: You have sustained severe Blunt Trauma damage! Stamina Regeneration reduced by 30%; duration, 2 minutes.

  <<<>>>

  “Let’s hope this was worth it,” he groaned, tossing the Flame Spitter into the air with a flick of his arm.

  The fan blades on the weapon’s bottom extended and spread wide the instant it left Osmark’s hand. At the height of its arc, the Flame Spitter’s blades whirled into action, rotating so fast they became an almost invisible blur, flipping the Flame Spitter over as they carried it higher into the air. The steampunk drone rocked from side to side, then righted itself, swiveling left, then right, before locking onto the Goliath.

  “Oh,” Osmark muttered, inching his way up the wall until he managed to gain his feet. “That was the top, not the bottom.”

  The clockwork boss moved with glacial slowness now. Between its damaged legs and the caltrops carpeting the ground like fresh snowfall, it took more than five seconds just to turn and face Osmark. By that time, the Flame Spitter had risen to a position just below the ceiling and locked in on its target. With a roar, the Flame Spitter fired a flaming bolt straight at the golem’s steel-plated face. The projectile appeared tiny in comparison to the mechanical construct, but Osmark knew big things often came in small packages.

  Especially when those small packages doubled their damage for every 20% reduction in their target’s movement rate.

  The burning bullet careened into the Goliath’s head like a meteor. It wasn’t a critical hit, but it didn’t need to be, because the bullet did thirty-two times its normal damage against creatures with a 0% movement rate. Osmark grinned so wide his cheeks ached as the bullet sheared the armor plating away from the clockwork’s head and carved a wide swath of destruction through the delicate machinery inside. Springs and cogs flew in every direction like confetti, followed by sprays of hot oil and jolts of rogue electricity.

  Eldred’s summoning completed at that moment, and the thin rip in space became a gaping hole, throbbing with unearthly light. Viscous liquid poured through the hole between worlds and slopped over the golem’s head and shoulders like thick red syrup.

  [Acid Slime] appeared over the summoned beast.

  The golem staggered drunkenly, clawing at its face, but its blunt fingers couldn’t find purchase on the slippery, amorphous Acid Slime streaming into the gears inside its head. Its wounded left leg skidded on the floor and jutted from its hip at an awkward angle, and down the Goliath went, dropping to its right knee.

  “Now!” Osmark shouted, punctuating his command with a burst shot from his repeater. Two of the bullets in the burst ricocheted off the golem’s armor, but the third ripped through the mechanical construct’s right hip and exited in a spray of dirty fluid and splintered metal.

  The Fire Spitter attacked again, blasting through the armored plating covering the left side of the golem’s chest, revealing a massive set of brass gears surrounding a glowing orange coil and a pipe organ’s worth of steam tubes.

  Targ and Sandra took advantage of the clockwork’s awkward posture to hack at its bent right knee. Their attacks rained down on the exposed gears and pipes, sending sparks, slivers of metal, and jets of steam flying in every direction. The Bonecrusher’s electrified clubs smashed into brass rods as the Goliath’s healing mechanism fought to stabilize the knee, bending them out of true, so they ground to a halt when they were only half-extended. Sandra’s armor-piercing weapons carved jagged wounds into the knee’s infrastructure, crippling the joint in record time.

  Meanwhile, Karzic swept the Stream of Life from one ally to the next, patching up small injuries and restoring Stamina with smooth efficiency, even eliminating Osmark’s Blunt Trauma debuff. Robert shot the dwarf a shaky thumbs-up—the dwarf might’ve been a traitor, but any doubts he had about his efficiency as a healer evaporated.

  The automaton was down, but it was far from out. Its flamethrower belched a stream of burning death at Osmark, covering the floor with a sticky pool of fire that forced Robert to backpedal toward the elevator door. He dodged the actual blaze, but the hellish heat still clawed away 10% of his Health before he could get to a safe distance.

  The Goliath’s shoulder-mounted cannon whirled and rotated, unleashing a barrage of shells at Targ and Sandra. The fist-sized bullets screamed at Osmark’s allies, who realized the danger just before the shells landed.

  The Bonecrusher’s heavy armor stopped the first shot, but the impact drove him back on his heels and exposed his torso to the second shot. That attack burst under the Risi’s left arm, shredding the chainmail beneath his breastplate and peppering his flesh with corkscrews of scorching-hot metal.

  Sandra threw her body into a nimble cartwheel, dodging the first wave of incoming fire. Unfortunately, the shells exploded, and the resulting shrapnel punched through her leather armor like a butcher’s knife through a silk blouse. Blood splattered across the floor as her graceful evasion turned into an ungainly tumble. The short sword in her left hand slipped free and clattered across the slick metal as she crashed onto the floor.

  Bad luck.

  The Flame Spitter was still in play, though.

  The drone swung left, orbiting the boss like a moon around a small planet, then unleashed a fresh round of suppressive fire, destroying the Goliath’s damaged right knee in a spray of bullets and ruptured steel. The blaze lit by its previous attacks continued burning, softening the golem’s armor plates and deforming its infrastructure.

  Osmark realized they’
d only been battling the creature for a few minutes, and they’d already stripped away a third of its Health. The Flame Spitter had more than half of its marked shots remaining, and all of Osmark’s allies were still, miraculously, in the fight.

  They were going to crush this boss, and in record time.

  The Goliath groaned and lashed out at Targ with his gleaming saw blade. But the Bonecrusher danced away from the blade, staying just outside its reach as he struck the construct’s arm with both batons. Gears and screws popped from the golem’s wrist, and the whole limb shuddered as coruscating streams of jagged light shot out from between the plating.

  Steam gushed from the golem’s damaged body in thick clouds, and a ragged mechanical whine clawed its way free of a damaged system deep inside the construct’s armored frame. Sparks leaped from holes in the clockwork’s shattered torso, flickering through the steam clouds like bolts of lightning ahead of a thunderstorm.

  The Fire Spitter blasted away at the golem again, tearing the shoulder cannon loose from its mounting bracket and igniting an oil fire deep inside the boss monster’s metal body. Smoke boiled up in a thick black cloud that gathered on the ceiling.

  Eldred landed next to Robert and flicked her fingers at the gelatinous mass still surrounding the Goliath’s head. “Watch this,” she said with a smirk, hands clenching tight.

  The amorphous Slime she’d summoned pulsed and flexed its goopy body, clenching tighter and tighter around the automaton’s head. Then it wrenched itself side to side in a frenzied convulsion, damaging its own body with the ferocity of its attack. Splashes of thick red fluid mingled with oil spurting from the mechanical monster’s cracked lubrication systems and poured down the Goliath’s body to puddle on the floor.

  “Impressive,” Osmark said with a roll of his eyes. The summoned creature was doing as much damage to its own body as it was to the boss.

  “Wait for it,” Eldred said with a throaty chuckle. She threw her fingers wide, uttering an unintelligible word of power. A metallic shriek erupted from the golem’s body. Rivets and bolts popped free like coat buttons and bounced across the floor.

  With a warbling groan, the summoned monster tore the clockwork’s head from its shoulders. A geyser of gritty green fluid sprayed in every direction, and the summoned Slime—badly damaged from its efforts—dissolved in a cloud of crimson mist.

  The Goliath’s body went slack and collapsed to the floor, more oil, green liquid, and steam pulsing from the shredded stump of its mechanical neck.

  “There you go,” the winged woman remarked through a grin, brushing her hands together in satisfaction. “I killed it for you. Nice and easy.”

  Robert rubbed his chin and eyeballed the fallen construct. It certainly looked dead, but its Health bar wasn’t empty, and he hadn’t received any experience bonus for defeating the creature. “Something’s wrong,” he warned, hefting his repeater and quickly feeding rounds into the chamber.

  “What are you talking about?” Eldred demanded, folding her arms across her chest. “It’s down. Go collect your reward so I can get paid.”

  Osmark flipped the blue lens back over his eye and groaned. The sigils on the floor throbbed with barely constrained power. Bursts of energy pulsed away from the golem, racing along the lines scrawled into the floor, then coursing into the walls of the room. The flow of power shimmered and morphed, outlining a series of small doors scattered around the room’s perimeter. The doors snapped open with the whirl of gears and a series of metallic clicks, revealing a host of burning red eyes hidden in pools of inky darkness.

  “I hope you’ve still got something up your sleeve, Eldred,” Osmark said, nodding toward the new arrivals, “because I think things are about to get much, much harder for us.”

  TWENTY-NINE:

  Closing Gambit

  Red-eyed Scavlings poured through the open doorways set around the room’s perimeter in a chittering rush. The sharpened tips of their mechanical legs clinked against the metal floor as they emerged from their warrens and scurried to attack. Nervous sweat broke out along Robert’s forehead when he saw that this model of Scavling had a few extra features the first batch hadn’t. In addition to the snapping mandibles and viselike legs, these critters also sported a pair of heavy pincers and whipping tails.

  [Enhanced Combat Scavling]

  Scorpions, Robert thought as he read the tag.

  There were too many Scavlings to count, and they scuttled across the floor in an organized charge. Several of the mechanical creatures closed in on Targ and Sandra, a few headed toward Eldred and Osmark, and a double fistful charged Karzic, their barbed tails waving wildly. Most of them, however, zipped toward the downed Goliath in a madcap rush.

  Osmark instantly knew what they were up to, but he didn’t know how to stop them.

  “Get into the air,” he said to Eldred, his hand closing around her shoulder. “Summon something that can deal with the Scavlings while I figure out what to do with the boss.”

  The winged woman nodded and brushed his hand away with a flick of her wing as she launched into the air, her fingers already weaving strands of power. An empty gesture because Osmark knew in his gut she’d be too slow to stop the skittering bots from fulfilling their duty. The best he could hope for was that whatever Eldred summoned would be able to keep the Scavlings clear while Osmark and the rest of the team dealt with the clockwork Goliath.

  “Regroup!” Osmark shouted, feeding more rounds into his pistol. “Form up on Karzic!”

  The Fire Spitter launched its last attack at the golem, blasting a chunk of armor and a trio of unfortunate Scavlings from the clockwork’s back, before returning to Osmark. It floated alongside Robert as he ran, but as soon as Osmark reached out and grabbed it, the rotors folded up, and the steampunk drone went inert. A quick examination told Robert the Fire Spitter would need at least five minutes before it was ready to launch again.

  “I don’t know if we have five seconds, much less five minutes,” Osmark grumbled, stowing the Fire Spitter. He shouldn’t have used it so soon—a mistake he wasn’t going to make again.

  Targ carved a path through the Scavlings with a windmill of electrified cudgel attacks, which sent several of the creatures bowling back into their comrades. Sandra followed in his wake, dodging over and around the bots trying to intercept her and crippling those that came within range of her blades with lightning-fast, pinpoint precise attacks on their joints. Between the two of them, they’d disabled a dozen of the creatures, but there were far more.

  Too many more.

  Meanwhile, those Scavlings that had reached the golem were already hard at work restoring their master to fighting form. A small group had raised the shoulder cannon back into place and were securing it with welding flames that burst from between their mandibles. Others diligently reattached the Goliath’s severed head while the rest of the scorpion squad tore the armor from their own bodies, and the bodies of their comrades—literally cannibalizing themselves—to restore the golem’s protective plating.

  Robert scrambled around a swarm of arachnoid bots to reach Karzic, who was fending off a wave of minions with the golden aura emanating from his hammer. The Scavlings were piled up against it in anticipation of the spell’s failure. As soon as Karzic ran out of power, they’d swarm him in a battle of attrition he couldn’t win and tear him limb from limb.

  Osmark passed through the edge of the golden shield and a prickling sensation ran across his whole body, fluttering his hair in an unseen breeze. The dwarf nodded a greeting to Osmark, but he was too busy chanting to spare any words. Robert leveled his repeater in a flash, selected the automatic mode with a flick of his thumb, and drew a bead on a Scavling at the bottom of the pile, rudely smashed up against the shield.

  “This is going to get loud,” he warned the dwarf.

  The dwarf nodded vigorously, and his chanting grew more fevered.

  Osmark extended his arm, until the repeater’s barrel was only inches away from the glowing shield, an
d fired. He couldn’t miss at that range, and all ten of his shots plowed into the Scavling carapaces. The front rank had unwisely pressed their bodies up against the shield in a vain attempt to climb the glowing barrier. Each of Osmark’s bullets found its mark, punching through soft underbellies. Unlike the other Scavlings Robert had battled, these were all equipped with welding torches, and those welding torches required fuel tanks.

  Fuel tanks which were hidden inside their bellies.

  A series of muffled crunching noises resounded in the air as his shots tore through the mechanical guts, followed immediately by blasts of flame and violent explosions as the internal fuel chambers ruptured.

  The creatures detonated like living grenades.

  Bits of metal shrapnel snipped off legs and sheared off heads from neighboring bots, and the force of the blast hurled even more of the creatures away from the shield. Scavlings rolled across the floor, struggling to stay upright, their pincers and mandibles clacking together in confused agitation. For a moment, there was a clear path to Targ and Sandra, the machines momentarily parting like the Red Sea.

  “Go!” Osmark shouted to the dwarf, shoving him into motion. “Get to the others!”

  The chanting dwarf broke into a lumbering run, picking up speed slowly, like a freight train lurching to life. Robert scanned the battlefield as he followed, still protected by the golden half-dome. Eldred loitered uselessly overhead. Targ and Sandra were pinned down. Even worse, the Scavlings had finished the repairs on the golem, and it was back on its feet again. And to top it off, the mechanized repair squads hadn’t been happy with just repairing the damage, oh, no.

  They’d added something new to the Iron Goliath …

  The hoses dangling from the overhead steam pipes were now fastened to a series of ports on the golem’s back, which, in turn, led to a line of turbines mounted just below its shoulders. A red power core blazed with energy as more and more steam poured into the turbines, filling the Goliath with new power and deadly purpose.