Chapter 41 Break

I thought I understood why three of us were needed. Once inside, the place was like a dungeon, filled with mobs. These ones were altered however, variations on the ones I’d fought thus far in the Stone Epoch. Wolves, sabretooths, vandals. Even human opponents. All of them slightly…off. It was hard to put my finger on exactly what it was. Like they weren’t quite programmed correctly, the system not quite finished. The wolves completely mute. The vandals who leaped like frogs.

To be honest, it was completely fucked up. Didn’t stop them from being extremely powerful. They were level eight, and there were a lot of them. I readied myself for a real fight…

But Ironclad simply carved through them. Leaping vandals? Blown from the sky with precision arrows. Sabretooths purple and twice the size of Larry? Torn apart with his bare hands. Wolves that cast strange, frozen magic? Ironclad producing shaman shields that glowed with magic cast upon them, and then forcing them all back.

He was doing things I’d never seen before. Things I could barely comprehend. At first I wondered if he was doing this for my benefit. Showing off, or some kind of intimidation tactic for some future battle he anticipated with me. But I was wrong. He was…bored. Going through the motions.

For me, this would have been the most thrilling dungeon. Dangerous too, but I’d hardly had to raise my weapon once. My experience bar was filling slowly and steadily with each mob, though the experience granted was wildly inconsistent. 100xp for a souped-up sabretooth, 2000xp for a vandal the size of a monkey.

Finally, we’d arrived in the area that had been marked by Kaleo. A nondescript obsidian chamber. Along one side was what looked like a computer screen that took up the entire wall, with a console beneath it. I hadn’t the faintest idea how it might work, but Ironclad approached it with a practiced familiarity and began typing.

“What are you doing?”

He ignored me. Whatever. I looked further around the chamber, when I saw a little glowing alert icon coming from my inventory. Curious, I opened it up, and saw it was coming from the original Reaver’s stash. My eyes widened. His…object. It was reacting to something here. A new notification appeared.

[Developer tools detected. Redacted epoch technology tree. Redacted options available. Would you like to proceed?]

Fingers snapped before me, and I closed down the HUD. Ironclad stood there. “Err, so I guess this is when we start smashing things?” I said.

“If we’re going to buy him maximum time, we’ll fight a boss,” he said. Totally nonchalant. Like this was the plan all along and not that this was the first fucking time this was mentioned. “I’ve summoned it. We have three minutes.”

My mind whirred. Boss. Developer zone. hotbar-

He put a hand on my chest. “You stay here. I don’t need your help.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “Listen, I know you’re powerful, but Kaleo brought me here for a reason. Let me help and-“

He glared at me. “I. Don’t. Need. You. Understand?” I glared back, slapping his hand away from my chest.

“This isn’t what he wanted.”

“I don’t give a fuck what that old bastard wants. Whilst we’re partied up I can’t hurt you, but if you interfere, you’re on your own. I’ll let that thing carve the flesh from your bones, and I’ll watch. Believe me, I would be more than happy with that.”

It was completely insane, but…there was no insanity in those eyes. Only….ah, I got it. Suddenly I understood.

“You’ve fought this boss before haven’t you?” No answer. That was my answer. “How many times?”

A vein throbbed visibly in his forehead. “Twice.”

“And let me guess, you almost got him last time, didn’t you?”

“I’ll beat him this time,” he said, “I’ve got his timing down.”

A tale as old as gaming itself. The madness, the doubling down when a boss beat you. The so close, one more go, feeling.

I knew now why Kaleo had brought me here. And I knew too why Ironclad had to do this alone.

“Fine,” I said. I took some steps back, and leaned back against the obsidian wall, arms folded.

He looked suspicious. “Just like that? I thought you’d be more annoying about it.”

“Then you don’t know me very well.”

He gave a hmph again. “Fine. Stay here. When Kaleo comes back, you tell him we fought it together.” I nodded. What else was there to say, as he walked down the corridor and out of the little chamber. I heard something, a mixture of a growl and roar. It was so loud, the ground seemed to shake.

The notification appeared again. The object.

[Would you like to use developer access?]

Yes. I think I would.

The obsidian ziggurat disappeared. I took a deep breath, as I looked around at…nothing. This looked like…space, or at least the system’s version of it. All around nothing but blackness and stars. In the very distance, a burning star. Red. Dying.

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I didn’t know what I was standing on. I looked down and saw nothing at all.

[Error. Avatars have breached the developer tools. Access to be revoked. Error. Error.]

It knew we were in the system. It wasn’t happy. I could only guess that the errors were due to us splitting its focus. Kaleo doing whatever he was, Ironclad fighting that boss. Me here.

[Two minutes until time out.]

Two minutes. Fuck. Okay, I needed to work fast. I opened my inventory, producing the strange object.

[You do not meet the required level to examine this object. Would you like to enchant it?]

Seemed like a roll of the dice. I clicked yes.

[Three avatars detected, foreign to this zone. Two from redacted epoch, one from redacted epoch. You have two available enchantments. Shield. Summon. Which enchantment would you like to grant?]

Fuck again. So it wouldn’t tell me what this thing did or even where it was from. I took a breath. What did I know? That it reacted to those metal gods, so I had to guess that wherever they were from, this thing was from there too.

Shield what? Summon what?