I took a quick look through Yasha who was far enough to see inside the cave really deep. I would have paled if I could. In the far back, I could see someone using magic. Since I knew only elves knew magic, there wasn’t a chance it was them since they had a peaceful relationship and only dark elves would do evil.
I looked closer and saw a demon race. Black skin, dense lean muscles and horns. Around him were black magic circles.
It was bad. I’d never seen a demon before so I didn't know how strong they were but I knew I couldn’t let that spell finish.
I quickly looked through Asura and found that he was too far off. I was only a third into the cave as were the others. Nova was jumping around but she had heavy fire centered on her.
It left me with only one thing to do. I made the ship lower and a bit further from the cave so I could have room and then I went to middle deck and retrieved something I made following the model I used for Yasha. Where I saw him, he used long spears in each hand. I didn’t have the skill for it so I took two and brought them up. I dropped one and held another in one arm and targeted the demon bastard. I was standing on the other side of the deck but I could still see him. The targeting system told me just how strong the throw should be as well as the trajectory and how I should throw it.
It looked similar to those Olympic athletes. I looked at the bastard one more time before I started the short run putting my own body behind the throw and sending the spear over the side of the ship flying fast towards the guy.
I turned to Asura’s point of view and looked. I could see the spear fly fast, real fast, over everyone and finally strike right into the bastard’s left leg.
At once the guy screamed in pain and the magic spell was interrupted. I grinned seeing that and began cutting the men around me up but I wasn’t about to stop. I controlled Asura but focused on Yasha and made it grab the second spear and I aimed again. I did everything again and quickly threw the spear but slightly to the right since that was where the bastard was lying and like that the spear impaled him in the chest and a lot of blood started to gush out.
You have killed to pirate leader. Because of this, the pirate crew has been disbanded. Kill all the remaining pirates and return to South Gate City with the leader's body for your reward.
After seeing that it was over their morale completely vanished and the clean-up went quickly with all the AoE spells from Brock and Beth, the grenades I launched, Nova’s constant jumping and sniping and Bulk and Victor’s constant charging through the crowd crushing all of them either with their hammers or being run over and stomped on.
It was a one-sided slaughter which could be compared to a war zone with no one knowing how to deal with this crew of grim reapers.
Finally, as the sun set, we finished exterminating all the rats and docked the ship there for the night. Searching a pirate’s base was likely give us a lot of stuff not to mention all the clockwork robots that were left there. There must have been some source of metal there so we would stay for a while before going back. But first the bastard demon needed to be preserved somehow.
I had Annabeth do some of the little ice magic she could and freeze the body and load it on the ship. After that we began to remove all the clothes and gear off the pirates and just tossed them over the cliff outside so the stink of rotting and blood would stay.
Fake PoV
Fuck what was going on? After I reached the ship, I told everyone to get ready and then jumped off so that I could grab some important items we had but when I came back the ship was already leaving and soon after, the robot flew back to the enemy ship and came out again before dropping a fucking bomb on our main ship. It continued doing that to all escaping ships while those on board shot at us to keep us inside and slowly circled around sniping at the other ships leaving until not a single one was left.
The boss came out after a bit and when he saw no ships, he had a fit.
But it got worse when the enemy landed. They moved close and dropped an earth magic user that sealed the cave and let them disembark and then they began the massacre.
Using weapons and robots like protectors and grenade launchers. They plowed through us. One was an animal knight and even had fucking mini-guns on his back.
I was about a third of the way in, near where the ship would have been and as I turned to run, a bomb fell about three meters in front of me killing those too close and causing me to fall back. When I was getting up someone grabbed me and lifted me by my head. I grabbed the arm and tried to get it off but then I was lifted into the air. Seriously who could do that to a 2.5 meter tall robot?
When I finally moved my head enough for an eye to look through the fingers, I almost cried. It was the guy I talked to.
I screamed once to let me go but it didn’t help and when I screamed louder my body moved by itself and I kicked to bastard but it took only 10 fucking HP from him. What kind of fucking metal was he made from?
He sighed before looking at me again.
“Any last words?"
The message came after a forced connection was made with this guy. I knew I was going to die so I didn’t care anymore.
“Gah! Fuck you all!”
“Then die.”
His tone was low and had a deadly murderous feel to it. It was then that he punched me with a knight’s pressure fist. With three fucking fists at the same time.
On contact, my visor shut off and the message saying I died and I couldn’t log in again for 24 hours showed up before I was ejected from my capsule.
I cursed screamed and shouted for a long time before I looked at the capsule’s monitor. The game was supposed to have a system where you could follow the person who killed you for an hour after being killed if it was a player.
I watched him but when I turned it on a split screen showed up and showed a six-armed demon clockwork and a four-armed one. It was then that I knew how bad the fight was. The guy had two main bodies. Seriously what kind of programmer was he to get something like that?
I watched as he killed the boss and then the rest of the guys.
I was completely pale at the spectacle that I started to tremble.
They weren't clockwork, they were more demon than the boss himself. There was no way something like that was possible for 14 people to do.
I didn’t know what to do but what I did do was download the entire fight from the ship fight to the raid on our base and uploaded it onto Etheria’s forum and a warning to never cross these demons because you would die facing them.
After that I took a bath to try to calm down before going to sleep hoping to forget that nightmare.
Brock PoV
That… place… was… awesome.
The entire base was made around a mineral jackpot. Iron, copper, tin, coal, aluminum and mana crystals. So many mineral veins and I already told everyone to get ready cause I was making my whale body from it. I would never find so much again so there was no arguing about it.
The only problem was that those idiots made it too spread out. Still, while I pulled along the mineral veins, I closed off a lot of the random mining corridors. When I reached a fork, I would go to the end and return, pulling all the minerals I could while closing it down until every last one was collapsed and a monster’s mish mash of different veins were bundled up where the corridors once were.
Next, we destroyed the pirate boss’s room and then pulled the big furnace room. Along the way we found a storage room full of clockwork motherboards. After examining them, we found the clockwork motherboards were the owners of the robots so our crafters began repairing the robots.
We weren't inhuman enough to leave so many robots without proper bodies so after they got a few operational they started putting the motherboards on and removing the receivers which we kept since they were convenient.
With more being repaired, the quicker the others were repaired and by the time I nearly linked the room with the huge furnace to the shrunken hanger there were at least 30 functioning clockworks all of t
hem thanking the guys for rescuing them.
I called the guys and told them I was about to activate my skill to make my whale body.
They told me to go ahead so with the mass of minerals surrounding the corridor between the room and hanger, I closed my eyes and touched the wall.
[Secondary Body]
My body glowed and it got pulled into the wall. I felt all the minerals start swirling. The mana crystals were swirling and the whole mass of minerals began concentrating around the base remains.
I also felt a whole bunch of regular rock get mixed in and then I felt the body take shape and more rock was absorbed until an outer shell of rock was formed. For some reason I felt like my mouth was open so I closed it and instantly the head of the whale formed in front of the cave entrance sealing us in.
Wait did my body encase the pirate’s base? Though I wanted the guys to take apart the furnaces, who thought it would end like that.
“Oi, did a rock fall or something?” Victor shouted.
My body was still stuck so I began to squirm and the rocks around me broke. I crawled out somehow and instantly the passive effect of magnetism took effect and my body lifted up a bit off the ground.
It was very little but I was moving so I focused on leaving inside the hollow body.
My golem body finally came out on the ceiling and fell down.
“Finally,” I said as I landed.
“Oi, Brock! What the fuck happened?” Bulk asked.
“Um well my whale body formed around the cave,” I said scratching my head.
It took a moment but they finally understood and stepped back. Techno came over and dropped my helmet on my head.
“Open the entrance," he said.
I nodded then with a thought the mouth split and opened completely like an aircraft carrier looking like a tunnel.
“So, we are in your stomach or something?” Ena asked.
“Like I would know. Maybe but I'm not eating or anything so I guess my body simply encases this place. My new core is built in the wall away from sight,” I replied.
“So in other words, if the cave stays the same then you are like a moving base now?” bulk said.
I took a moment to realize what was said. I looked around and realized it was like that. “Guess I am, heh. Maybe when I get big enough, I will have my own dungeons. Anyway, the body has its own stats so don't go breaking it so casually or mining me. I can you give some of these but not too many since they are now a mana holder for me,” I told them.
A large mana crystal broke out of the ground and made everyone’s eyes widen.
Mana crystals were rare and now that they are in a living elemental they might even grow in number and size the bigger I got. I wasn't going to show them until later so for the moment I would just give a few but I needed to be careful.
After that I went back inside my whale body and moved around the minerals and finally I concentrated them in three spots near my belly. They were concentrated cores of nickel and iron and through them I could focus my magnetism to greater degrees.
With it, I could get up higher in the air and finally start swimming back towards South Gate Outpost so we could get our reward from Gaia.
This was so awesome. I had definitely become one of the top players in the game.
Watch out world, I was just starting out and alongside the others, we were going to be the greatest.
CHAPTER 22 The Patch
Real world 3rd PoV
After the fake Techno edited the beginning where he spoke with Techno, he posted the video showing the mortars and the power and how his crew reacted.
Then further on, the video showed the base attack and soon the nightmarish air raid from the clockwork on the aircraft.
As the video progressed, it showed the ship leave and get bombed and then the raid inside until Techno completely crushed the fake before jumping to a third person point of view with a split screen showing both Asura and Yasha as they killed more and more using grenades, mini-guns, swords, spears, bullets. It was a completely one-sided mass murder.
The video lasted nearly 30 minutes and as soon as the viewers finished, they stayed nearly a minute in shock before scrolling down to find a wall of comments.
Viewer 1:
‘Ahahahaha you guys bit off more than you can chew. go kill them all!
Viewer 2:
‘My god what is this?! Is this really inside Etheria?! What the fuck is going on and who are those guys?!
Viewer 3:
‘I recognize them from when I saw them a few days ago. The big guy with the six arms downed an ogre who was a captain of the city guard with one punch. The clockwork and dwarves kept saying they were ‘the clockworks’ but I didn’t get it?’
Viewer 1:
‘fuck the Clockwork Crew! you don’t fucking know them?! They were the best players in the beta and some people say they are so far ahead of everyone that no one actually knows their real strength.
Viewer 4:
‘Wow to see the Clockwork Crew fight. But seriously where did they get all that weaponry? I haven’t seen a lot of that stuff. The grenade launcher and pressure punch and stuff are common for clockwork knights but the cannons, mortars, flying… whatever. I never once saw any of this!’
Viewer 5:
‘It’s kind of obvious. You can make all that stuff in the game you know. The world is open to restore and build so if you are good enough, even military grade weaponry can be built.’
Viewer 1:
‘seriously! I Don’t believe I’ve been satisfied with such weak weapons! fuck! I need to get working.
Viewer 1 leaves chat.
Viewer 2:
Like hell I will let that idiot get ahead of me.
Viewer 2 leaves chat.
The video caused a huge explosion of people search up schematics for real-world weapons from small rifles to full out land tanks and even airplanes. Seeing the massive movement of people searching such dangerous items and such a small part of the world explored, LIFE company had to move faster to keep the public order that could go straight down with so many people learning how to build weapons.
The announcement of a patch happening the next day had everyone in a frenzy that was even more outrageous than the weapon craze. They wanted to get the mind of the public off the weapon search to keep any kind of damage to a minimum.
In the office of the CEO was the main board of director. Among them was the main chief of the GM corp. They were watching the footage from the capsules of the two GMs traveling with Techno.
“My what a strange boy. What made him so cold and closed?” the CEO said.
“I don’t know. Since those girls were made to travel with them I tried to learn about his life and everything looked normal until three years ago when he was sent to the juvenile detention center but when I asked to see the case files, I was heavily barred from seeing it to the point of paranoia. I can’t get a single record on the boy besides his family being in an accident after he was imprisoned for 10 years. He is now serving time inside the game as a test subject for the feedback system,” the GM chief said
The CEO nodded a bit before sitting back in his chair. “Put the boy under heavy observation. He seems to experience heavy emotional fluctuations from one moment to another such as when he was laughing at his impersonator and turned that into anger and drive to destroy them. Also, change the amount of time the juvenile convicts stay in game from five game months to one. That’s six days so on Sunday they come out of the game and return on Monday. Give the boy and girl physiological treatment, the boy for his problems and the girl to make sure she wasn’t affected by the accident or anything else. Look into other children as well who might need that and provide it. An hour or two a day in a private office should do.”
With that the orders were given and a notification was sent to all those testing the feedback system.
Techno PoV
Because of a patch, Etheria: The Ruined World will undergo an update on S
unday of this week and will come back online the next day on Monday 1st of July 2034.
LIFE company.
To all the players participating in the feedback test. Due to scientists in LIFE company finding that a rest period is required for the mind. You will play one in game month and be logged off back to Virtual Town to rest.
Several test subjects have shown some mental trauma and will undergo physiological treatment during that time and will be monitored more vigorously in game in case of further mental trauma.
Oh, how grand. I had to do that as well. Well, I couldn’t say it wasn’t uncalled for. The video of my crew decimating the pirates would cause quite a commotion.
Anyway, we were still traveling and it was already nighttime but I wanted to finish my project quickly to make sure a chance like that didn’t escape me.
What I was building was a small metal ball. It was the size of a basketball and was built with simple iron and held together with several interior pressure activated pistons that could open the ball in half revealing the smaller inner ring that held the hardware of the little robot and the small engine that powered it.
This was, in all shape or form, my fake’s humiliation.
I remembered finding on Youtube an old French cartoon called Code Lyoko which was also about a VR world. One of the monsters was similar to this. It was called the Megatank and was one of the strongest monsters because of its outer shell. I made sure to make the toy for my fake as far from that as possible but with that model.
With it done, I stuck the motherboard into the spot and then made a simple program to warn me when he logged in. I didn’t think he would until after the patch but you can never be too careful.
I left it alone and walked outside. Brock was up, still not having logged off or gone to sleep like the others. His main concern was his whale body vanishing. We had told him that the body didn’t vanish and even showed him Bulk who we confirmed logging out by me holding him by the leg upside down, but he was still concerned so we let him guide the whale back to the city.
The Return Page 21
