Chapter 82

Menseio Station, orbiting Veria
Menseio Station
13:41 Ship Time
September 18, 2019

[What is it?] I asked, recognizing the ghouls that began running along the ceiling, but not the two monsters that looked like a mix of a triceratops and porcupine, but made out of jagged bone.

“Bone horrors ... they can launch the quills or whatever you want to call them like arrows and they’re very hard to kill. The dark mana matrix that keeps them going is located deep within their bodies too, making it very hard to get at.”

[Alright, I’ll take this one, Mace, you see if you can manage the other one. Ben, girls, do your best to deal with the draugr!]

If there was one thing I knew about bone, that is that it is a lot lighter than one might think. Putting my weapons away, I began walking up to the bone horror even as it lowered its head and charged towards me. Standing my ground, I reached out and grabbed onto its top two horns. The force of its push forced me back a few meters, but it didn’t take much effort to halt all of its momentum, and then it was my turn.

Making sure I had a tight grip, I spun in place, pulling the bone horror along with me. More than one draugr was unfortunate enough to be in the bone horror’s path, and each one of them was impaled on its many spikes. After spinning for a few seconds, I let go, sending the bone horror crashing into the nearest wall, exposing the area where its stomach would be, which wasn’t protected nearly as well.

Grabbing onto two of its spikes even as it launched some of the others in an attempt to impale me, I held it to the wall as I took in a deep breath of air. It wasn’t fire that I breathed this time, but was instead the frigid cold, all directed at one spot on its underbelly. The extreme cold spread out from there, and after my breath weapon had ended, I let go of one of the spikes which was immediately launched and bounced off my shield. Drawing my fist back, I punched the coldest spot, shattering the frozen bone.

Pulling my hand out of the hole I had made, it was easy to see the dark mana matrix that Ben was talking about, and this time I used [Arcane Bolt] 4 times, one after another. My little [Arcane Familiar] helped as well, and soon that matrix was no more. Spinning back around, I grabbed the two shield bearing draugr that had been trying to impale me and threw them onto the now dead bone horror, before turning back around and drawing my gauss pistols.

It was extremely nice not having to reload very often, and when I did it only took a second. As soon as that was taken care of, I began walking across the room to where Mason was dealing with the second bone horror. I took out as many of the draugr as I could as I walked, and that was when I realized that I was being an idiot. The gun-wielding draugr were wearing armor, but it was leather and not metal like the shield bearing draugr.

Reaching out with my mind while looking at one of the draugr, I tried lifting it up using telekinesis, and celebrated internally when it worked. From there, I focused on lifting it from its feet, and then repeatedly smashed it into the wall behind it. The first two hits didn’t do much, but soon little pieces of bone became big pieces of bone, and half of its body was strewn all over the place.

Trying something different, I picked up two of the lever action rifles that the draugr used and proceeded to fire at some of the other ranged draugr. My aim was absolutely awful, but I was able to cycle the rifle without any issue, and fire until both were empty. After that, I just used them as bludgeons to beat another draugr to death, and then turned back towards Mason.

He was doing a good job, but he was still having a bit of trouble with it. One of its horns was almost completely sheared off and over half of its spikes were gone, but he hadn’t managed to break through its armored body yet. Spotting a pair of bone spikes that were laying on the ground, I used telekinesis to pick them up and then launched them at the bone horror without so much as a gesture. It turns out that not wanting to get hit by small metal balls is a very good motivator in getting someone to not rely on their hands.

The bone spikes themselves weren’t enough to kill the bone horror, but one of them was enough to put a big crack in its underside, making it much easier to get at the matrix within. Holding it in place, I let Mason finish it off with a nicely placed [Earth Spike]. Rising up from the ground, a sharp piece of stone broke through the now weakened armor killing the second of the two bone horrors.

After that, the fight was as simple as killing the rest of the draugr and then dealing with the boss. He came out with his shield up again, but the next time we brought it down and he was drawn back into his phylactery, its protective shield didn’t activate. The phylactery was much weaker than we would have thought, taking only one shot from Sonja’s railgun before shattering into hundreds of little pieces. Not having time to recuperate its strength, the boss died for the final time a moment later.

Once again we were disappointed at not seeing a legendary or mythical item, but they were extremely rare, and for good reason. Since none of us could wear any of the gear we had earned and weren’t in any hurry to learn any of the skill gems that had dropped, we had no idea what to do with everything. We were already on our second pouch to store skill gems in and we probably would have filled our dimensional storages full of mana crystals, mana gems and mana crystal shards, that I was very glad to have the Beacon on hand.

Once we had everything gathered and stored, we headed down to the next floor to see exactly what we would be facing next. That turned out to be pretty much the exact same things that we had seen in the boss fight. The majority were draugr of both varieties, but there was also a new one with heavy armor and a long two-handed broadsword. Aside from that, there was the odd smattering of ghouls here and there, as well as the occasional bone horror. We didn’t see any liches, though it was absolutely possible that there were some present as well.

Ben once again summoned his fire elemental since it was off cooldown, and then we followed behind it as it cleared a path for us. We all had our guns out and trained outwards, so all we needed to do was not trip and we were good to go. While the heat produced by the fire elemental wasn’t felt much by my friends or by me at all, it certainly had an effect on the undead. It was enough to crack their bones at the very least, but few made it through without being a pile of ash and heated metal.

You can imagine our surprise when suddenly Ben’s fire elemental dissipated, but our plan was going too well for the dungeon to not throw a wrench into it. Looking the way we were going, it was easy to see the lich up ahead, even if it was less than half the size of the boss we had fought. Reaching out with my mind, I picked it up with my telekinesis and then smashed it into the ground, laughing when a trail of bone and cloth could be seen traveling away from us. It would be back, but we had a little bit of time.

After taking the lead and giving my friends plenty of warning, I breathed in and exhaled another wave of intense cold. Spread over such a large area it wasn’t nearly as effective, but a half dozen or so draugr were frozen solid and easily dealt with. One of those was one of the new ones wielding a broadsword, so I picked it up with telekinesis and began using it. Getting a ping from [Precognition, ] I moved the sword and neatly cut the ghoul in two, before proceeding to swing it around by the handle almost like a lawnmower, cutting the heads off any draugr that got in its way.

Not even a minute after I had picked up the sword was my fun ruined once again, this time when the sword disintegrated entirely, but I had another idea. While sending a message to Abi and her telling me to wait a minute, I retrieved my pistols and once again began firing at every draugr that got close. I prioritized the ones with rifles first, but was indiscriminate as I sent rounds down range.

We had been fighting our way towards one of the bone horrors for a few minutes, and I finally decided that we were close enough so I put away a pistol and retrieved a sword. Making sure that my [Arcane Familiar] friend was still with me, I gestured towards the bone horror and began channeling [Disintegration Beam].

It crossed the distance at a speed slower than the speed of light, but still extremely fast, and crashed into the bone horror before it began boring a hole right through it. Each time the beam’s damage and mana cost increased, my [Arcane Familiar] did some damage on its own, but it was only really active to increase the damage of [Disintegration Beam], not that I could tell.

The bone horror had died in seconds, and anything that managed to enter its path was almost instantly vaporized. I attempted to rake it across the approaching undead, but they seemed cognizant of its destructive power so they stayed away. The mana cost was getting a little extreme anyways, so I stopped channeling just in time for Abi to get back to me.

[They’re ready, ] she said, causing me to smile and take my Beacon out of my storage.

A second later, there were a half dozen marble-like metal spheres resting in my opposite hand, and I put the Beacon back in my storage. These spheres weren’t made out of any old metal, either. The inner core was tungsten to increase the weight, while the outside was warvynium to hold it all together. After picking two of them up with my telekinesis and storing the other two, I retrieved my pistols and went to work.

Every time I saw a ghoul rushing towards us, I would send one of the spheres rocketing towards it. In the blink of an eye, it would crack open its skull in a shower of dark red mist, and then I would draw it back in preparation for the next one.

“That’s it, as soon as we’re done here, I’m locking myself in my room until I figure out how to do that!” Mason yelled after witnessing what I could do with a little bit of practice, causing me to chuckle.

It was a real mental exercise, but one that wasn’t nearly as strenuous as manipulating several more spheres that were many times heavier. Still, I could make the small spheres go wherever I wanted them to go. The next time a lich popped up and began casting a spell, one of the spheres zipped between us and another lich was sent back to its phylactery.

About five minutes after we had entered the floor, most of the dvergr were dead and we were just dealing with the occasional ghoul. The only thing they really had going for them was their speed, but if one focused, then Precognition made it extremely easy to hit them in the head and send them crashing down to the floor. The phylacteries were another matter, and they actually took some effort to find. A lot of them were buried within collapsed buildings, which sucked, while others were hidden on top of the few buildings that actually had roofs. Surprising us was the fact that all three phylacteries we had destroyed left behind a mana gem, which was a nice plus.

The floor boss itself was something different, and that was a skeletal mage. Just as physically weak as a regular skeleton, but they had powerful shields and spells. If there was a word that described them perfectly, it was glass cannon. As long as their shield was up they were pretty formidable, but the moment it fell, they were done for.

Just like floors two through four, floors six through nine paved the way in showing what we should expect for the boss fight. The dvergr actually began employing tactics as the liches behind them got more powerful, the ghouls were even faster, the bone horrors were armored up, and the skeletal mages caused havoc.

Compared to the lich fight which was basically just completing the phases until we could destroy the phylactery, the second boss fight was actually interesting, and was similar to the four horsemen fight from a few weeks beforehand. The room itself was hexagon shaped and was divided into six different sections. The first section was the one we entered on, but each of the other sections had a different undead monster on it. The one to our immediate left had a longsword-wielding draugr, the one next to it had a ghoul, the one opposite us had an armored bone horror, the far right had a lich, and the immediate right had a skeletal mage. It was clear that we would each need to take on one of the bosses by ourselves, so we got started on figuring out who would take what.

“I’ll take the draugr,” Sonja said. “I don’t just need to rely on [Ride the Lightning] anymore, so it shouldn’t be able to get close.”

I nodded and looked over to Anja.

“The ghoul, I guess? If the ones we just fought are any indication then this one is probably a hell of a lot faster, and I’m the only one really suited to go up against it. I mean you could probably just stand and then grab onto it, but I think you’d be better against the bone horror,” she said before looking at Ben and Mason “Even with Precognition, you two would probably have a hard time hitting it.”

“That’s fine, I wanted one of the other two anyways,” Mason replied. “What about you, what do you want, Ben?”

“I’ll take the lich, it should be easier for me to deal with since I can drain its mana with [Chaos Bolt], and my mana regen is a lot higher in case it can drain mana like the last one could.”

“Fine with me,” Mason said.

[Alright, let’s get to it then, ] I said, walking across the thin walkway to the section the bone horror was in.

The moment all of us were in position and ready, I used [Blink] and then crashed into the bone horror before it could even react. Aside from the holes that held its bone spikes, the rest of its body was almost entirely covered in metal plates, including its underside which was no longer a weak point. After retrieving my swords and casting [Curse of Pain], I chopped at the join on its front left joint. It took three chops before I was able to get all the way through and cut off half of its leg, so I moved around and did the same thing to the other side.