CHAPTER 553: NECESSITIES

“Burn some mana! Get these cleared! We have a boss coming!”

It was time for pure aggression, and hard core demon death. Mason needed to get this horde of distraction down so they could focus on that lava whale.

The players who heard called out to the others, and the varied stink of mana in the air cranked to eleven.

Two Carls started warping, that awful dagger spraying ichor. Garet charged with an axe and a sword, flashing with some new power that looked like a moving blade in front of him.

Annie went flying over a pile of garbage into a pack of demons, axe somehow bigger than Mason remembered. At least she didn’t turn into a giant, flaming creature yet.

Becky took off on her own, shield held high, sprinting like some unstoppable juggernaut through a pack of demons. They all turned and went after her with glee, as if she’d made stupid mistake and now they finally had her. Mason expected an explosion shortly.

John was maybe the flashiest. He held up a fist and somehow got struck by lightning despite a lack of sky. Crackling with power, he walked out from the spears, zapping things without even looking, some aura just blasting the creatures apart if they attacked.

Mason stopped watching and did his part. First he focused on the flyers, dropping them like he was hunting pheasants at disturbing speed. They soon turned on him, but their spikes popped out of his flesh (if they even stuck), their fire doing little more than burning hair.

After the majority died or fled, he looked to the ground and raced from pack to pack with Streak at his side. They easily hacked and stabbed (and bit and clawed) anything that stood against him.

When the soldiers fell back he banished his swords and summoned his bow, swapping at faster and faster speeds to kill at any distance.

The remaining hounds caused some chaos. They’d smashed through the spear walls now, rampaging after players and chomping with their multiple heads.

Phuong and his melee players had seen how single-minded and stupid they were. With one player leading them around, the others quickly surrounded the creature and brought it down from the flanks.

In only a few minutes, the ‘junkyard battlefield’ was a killing field of demonic corpses. What was left of the enemy forces had fallen back, re-grouping behind the giant creature emerged from the lava.

It was time for the boss.

The thing looked no smaller on land, but at least it was slow. It only had two front legs, with a bulbous, worm-like body being dragged behind. The head was like a lizard’s, scaled and jutting forward, mouth opening just enough to shoot out a long, steaming tongue.

It was a good five hundred feet away, but that was close enough for Mason. He inspected it with Ranger’s Mark, at least seeing some organs under all those scales and flesh.

The ‘advice’ portion of the upgraded power needlessly said it was all but immune to fire. But it also said it was ‘weak to most other elements’ which was promising. Mason swapped to ice arrows, and started cycling through his shots.

He called out what he was seeing to the others, hearing a deflated sigh from the fire mage.

“Guess I’ll kill all its friends,” he called back. “Do any of you simple bastards even have ‘other elements’?”

It was a good question, actually—though Mason didn’t know what counted. John had his lightning. Phuong had some kind of ‘soul’ magic. Did that count? Carl and Becky were Arcane but they didn’t use ‘elemental’ magic as far as he knew. Did Demi?

Nobody answered, the melee players just spreading out and gathering across the open ground in front of the towers they’d used for defence. It was a daunting thing to hit in melee. Sure, it was slow, but it was also like attacking the side of a cruise ship. Could you even hurt it?

“I’ll shoot it and run it around,” Mason said. “Demi, see what you can do with spores, or whatever else. If you have ranged powers, use them. If you get close, be fucking careful. Be ready for a phase change or who knows what.”

With that he took off away from the others, loosing arrows like a mad man. He’d dealt with some pretty enormous creatures in the game, but this thing was ridiculous. It was like lava Godzilla. Which made him wonder if Godzilla had any well known weaknesses. Where was a nerd when you needed one?

His arrows were sticking, or making little icy splotches. But the creature didn’t look too worried. He was aiming for the head and eyes, but the thing’s head swayed and darted, and its eyes were nearly closed into slits.

He decided to go for the front arms instead. If they could ruin its claws, maybe joints, he doubted it could move on land at all. And unless things changed in a hurry, there was no way in hell it could catch him. If his players ran, it would just be a matter of time.

“Master Hunter! Master Hunter!”

Mason blinked and turned to see Lodie coming up behind him…on some kind of…motorized scooter. She had one hand on a steering stick, the other on a panel of buttons, and the multi-wheeled device was clearly propelling her forward on its own.

“What…” he shook his head, reminding himself that asking goblins questions was basically worthless. “This is too dangerous. Get back to the others.”

“We can make it boom! Er explode!” Lodie looked very enthusiastic, and not nearly frightened enough. “With junkyard! I specced a Cave Bomb. It’s…” she gestured with her hands, than nearly fell off her scooter and grabbed it again. “They left it. Stupid reds. Big boom. Very big. Just have to move, adjust. No problem.”

Mason forced himself to consider the idea. But some leftover goblin explosive in a junkyard? It would probably just blow up and kill all his goblins. Or not blow up and be totally useless. He had a lot of questions but none of them were worth it. And he couldn’t risk getting the king’s niece killed.

Also, he probably could have shot about ten arrows since Lodie distracted him.

“Fine. But get the other engineers to do it. Tell my people ‘Mason said to send the melee to help’, those exact words. And tell them to stay the hell back. And you get nowhere near. Understand?”

The girl deflated so fast and completely Mason decided she must have thought he said ‘no’. But he didn’t have time to sort out a miscommunication.

He turned back to his task: loosing freezing, sonic, planar arrows at inhuman speed at the biggest legs and claws he’d ever seen, and hoped it eventually worked.

**

All Lodie heard was ‘not you, you’re a female’.

It was like being back in Mechatown, fighting for a spot in engineering school. Fighting to be given the chance to at least touch the tools and gizmos and doodads. To show her work to teachers and even colleagues.

She’d made them listen with success. You could say what you liked, but when a female was hovering a few stacked anvils on a zoomer, all you could do was shut your ugly face. She’d make the human hunter lord listen, too.

She raced back towards the human warriors on her zoomer, doing her best to avoid demon corpses and broken bits of nasty all over the place.

Maybe her brothers could figure out how to fix and adjust the cave bomb. But it would take them way too much time, and they’d never have the courage to do it. She knew it would have to be her.

A few demon spikes and bits of fire hit the ground around her zoomer, but she trusted her Multi-Shield to keep her safe. It was clear the human ‘Fung’ was the second in command, so Lodie rode straight up to him and screeched to a stop, the man’s eyes wide as he took her in.

“Big Hunter Mason says Lodie is to get a bomb from the junkyard and boom big monster. And he says ‘melee is to help her, and do what she says’.”

The old warrior stared like she was crazy. Which she wasn’t. And when you thought about it, since they were gonna try and kill that giant super demon without a huge boom, weren’t they really the crazy ones?

‘Fung’ stared and stared. She was just about ready to try shouting and sounding like her uncle when he finally looked like he’d accepted it.

“Garet, Becky—with me. Everyone else stay and be ready to distract that thing or run. We’ll be right back with a weapon from the junkyard.”

Lodie could hardly believe it had worked. But of course it did! They had female warriors, didn’t they? At least two. Maybe they were even used to being bossed around by them!

Lodie did her best to keep the surprise and joy off her face, settling her goggles in place.

“This way,” she said, zipping her scooter out ahead of the human warriors. Now all she had to do was not set off the igniter, or fry the control panel. But she could do that. And then they could place the device, and use a timer to make it boom.

Probably.

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