Dungeon Robotics 10-13

Good Morning folks!

Chapter 13

Not hesitating, I accelerated as fast as I could before I slammed into the statue. I wasn’t keeping track, but I was sure I broke at least the first and second sound barrier. There was a boom as I impacted but there was little more. The statue moved a few meters but that was about it. My foot smoking from the intense heat it just generated, I jumped back.

“Aren’t you a hard one,” I commented as I took a stance.

The statue turned its head to look down at me before a gravely roar exploded from him. He lurched forward much faster than something that size should be able to move. I parried with my staff. The impact had enough force to push me a few centimeters into the ground. I was reluctant to say it, but I felt it was stronger than the two demon generals I had fought so far.

The golem lifted its arm and looked at me with piercing yellow glowing eyes. “Threat level confirmed. Enemy measured at the Aserto Prime level. Designation set to A1. Increasing energy output accordingly.”

“So, you can speak,” I said with a laugh that rapidly dried up. The mana density of the golem increased by over a hundredfold in an instance. “That’s interesting. I want to take you apart to find out how you did it.” I spun my staff with a new grin. “I’m betting you’re the last boss.”

The golem lifted its arms and brought them down causing the wind to break around us. I braced myself and put my staff into the ground to receive the blow. The weapon sank into the ground and even bent ever so slightly from the force in the impact. That was some seriously dangerous level kinetic energy.

I morphed the staff into a chain and managed to wrap it around the golem’s arms before it could move away. Moving with the same level of speed, I pulled myself from the new crater. I used the giant golem as a gym and manevuered until the golem’s head was in front of me. I brought my fist up. There was a solid boom, but other than a single chip of stone falling from its chin, it barely moved from the impact.

This wasn’t getting me anywhere. If brute force wasn’t going to do it then it was time to try something else. I flooded my hand with heat until it was close to that of the sun. I made sure it was contained so that the air of the cavern didn’t burn. I brought my fist back down with the same kinetic energy as before.

“Thermal levels exceeding safe levels. Responding.” Runes on the golem shone brightly as the very molecules around us came to a stop. My body was affected but I was able to respond in time to stop from becoming an immoveable mass of metal. I decided to play the same game and started lowering the golem’s heat level. A layer of ice formed into a sphere around us as the mater froze from our actions.

“How’s that, you pile of rocks?” I taunted before bringing both my fists down on its head.

“Responding to enemy verbal assault. This unit barely felt it,” the golem said as it swiped at me. I jumped back doing my best not to lose my balance as I laughed at the ridiculous comment. I guess whoever built this thing understood trash talk.

I crashed through the ice sphere that had formed and took in the situation with the others. The nanites were less effective then in the beginning as the zombies were making it all the way through though they were severely degraded. The brutes were the real problem as they only lost about a fourth of their mass before they made it through the nanite cloud.

A small forest had formed around Alara. There were traces of zombies on the branches and trunks of the trees. She appeared to be the least pressed of the group and was using her forest as a protection against being overly rushed by the zombies. Anubis and Nova were working together and were the next best off of the group.

That was all I got before the fist of the golem came down in front of me. I kicked off the ground and barely managed to avoid it. The pressure still managed to throw me a few meters off my directory. I condensed some mana into super dense spikes and sent them at the golem at Mach ten. There was a boom as the nano-sized points of the spikes drove into the golem. It was the first real damage since the battle began. Even if it amounted to just a few centimeter long scratches on its surface.

It responded by raising its arms and firing a barrage of similar mana bullets. The ground was torn apart as I dodged the assault, cutting around the golem. There wouldn’t be much left of the courtyard if the battle continued much longer. I accessed what I had at my disposal before I pulled one of the nanite clouds back to me.

Redirecting it at the golem, it failed to react and the cloud wrapped itself around the golem. “Lethal threat detected. Anti-magic field activating.” There was a spark of mana from the surface of the golem before an aura washed out flooding the area of about twenty meters. I was flung back as my mind suffered the most pain I had felt in a very long time. It was almost as bad as when the necromancers attacked the valley and used their improv anti-mana on me.

I got to my feet sure I would be hacking up blood if I had a flesh and blood body. Various parts of my body were smoking from the attack. “I felt that,” I said rubbing my jaw as if I had just been punched. I wanted to spit out a tooth for effect, but I wasn’t that hurt. That didn’t change the fact that the nanites were rendered inactive. I needed to fix that before the demons got here.

Holding out my hand, I pulled my staff back to my hand from where the golem nailed it into the ground. I checked my mana source and ground my teeth as the anti-magic barrier appeared to have burned off almost a third of my mana. “Time to get serious,” I mumbled before transforming the staff into a sword.

I placed my hand on the sword and chanted at a speed that was only possible for a mechanical being. I leapt out of the way of a barrage of fists as the golem tried to stop me. A full thirty seconds of the chanting which after being decompressed would equal close to three hours’ worth of chanting, I was ready. A time stop spell that would literally stop the existence of the golem it if barely touched it.

The golem took one look at the sword then started to float into the air. “WARNING! Threat level exceeded! Extra Actions authorized!”

“What?” I asked. I would be annoyed if it got even stronger. The fact it was able to identify my time spell, something that took nearly half of my reserved mana was annoying enough.

“Hellia Access Granted!”

I narrowed my eyes at that word. I remembered hearing it only once before from Duilin. From what he knew it was similar to Celestia, but he didn’t have any actual information on the place. A ripple formed in the space between the golem and me before a sphere that was pure black with a crimson border appeared. I had to wonder if the concept of Hell might have been conceptualized across the universes in some way due to the color scheme.

A type of mana, no, I wasn’t even sure I could call it mana poured out of the portal much like a tidal wave. A pitch-black hand with brilliant white claws burst from inside the sphere then another before they grabbed the sides of the crack it made. The entity pulled more of its body out of the sphere slowly. There was an almost solid darkness that was preventing me from seeing more of the creature.

“That’s a no go,” I said before I launched myself at the sphere and the being coming out of it.

I only had a split-second warning before the golem slammed down in front of me. I kicked to the side, but the golem followed me with a speed that just shouldn’t be possible for something that was in the middle of summoning. I growled then aimed to stab my sword into the golem. If it ceased to exist, then the portal should close as well.

This time the golem dodged me but kept itself in between me and the portal. The damn thing was getting on my nerves with how adaptive it was. A normal machine wouldn’t be able to anticipate my goals so easily. There was a smell of ozone before a blast threw both me and the golem several dozen meters out of the way. I landed on my back digging a small furrow in the ground. I sat up and looked toward where the portal had been.

What looked like a woman stood with her hands on her hips. Her limbs were pitch black, but her torso and shoulders were nearly clear. I could make out the bones and organs through it. Her face was probably one of the most beautiful I had ever seen even as it possessed a forlorn, and almost deranged look to it.

Looking over, the golem had been damaged heavily by whatever she had just thrown at us. It was attempting to move but struggled to stand. I wrote it off from the moment and turned back to the woman. She was looking at her hands as if curious to have them. Blue smoke rose from her hands up along her body to form tight fighting leather jumpsuit like clothing.

Combined with the bright white spikes that ran up her arm, the tail, and four leather like wings, she struck quite the image. She looked to be around a solid two meter or so, with sliver hair that had golden strands in it. She looked around before settling her gaze on me. “Guo euous loete?” she seemed to ask. It was rare to find a language that my dungeon magic couldn’t understand.

I stood and dusted myself off. “Sorry. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Maybe this could work out for the better. If she turned out to be… was as far as I thought before I found my self flying through the air, then through several buildings. I crashed to a landing halfway buried in the floor of a random building. I pulled myself out of the ground and looked down. Part of my stomach was caved in.

I rushed out of the building, worried that she might attack the others. If it caused me with much damage, then it could easily kill the others. The sound barrier broke as I flew back toward the tower. When I arrived, I found Anubis with a hole through his stomach as if he had received the same attack as me laying off in the partially collapsed remains of a building. His lighter form likely kept him from crashing any further, though it didn’t help him much being plastered on a wall. His hand was moving, so I had to hope he would be alright until I dealt with our new opponent. If I could deal with her.

Next, I found Nova through another building or at least his foot that was sticking out of a pile of debris. I detected signs of life, so I turned back to the battlefield hating have to turn away from helping him like that. The Hellian was attacking the zombies and brutes without appearing to care about friend or foe. I spotted the others rushing into a building at the edge of the courtyard. It looked like they had regrouped and were trying to stay out her line of sight. I was thankful that Alara was helping the others rather than rushing to try and help me.

I wanted to know what the hell her body was made of to have caused this much damage to me. I was supposed to be made from the strongest material know to man. Even Lelune had been surprised to see it and she was a high-ranking celestial in Celestia, the highest from what little information I had of the place. What on Murgin was Hellia then?

The Hellian spotted me, and her forlorn look transformed into a look of pure joy. I managed to brace myself just in time as another blow came to my stomach. Everything behind me exploded as the force of her blow was transferred through me via some robs, I had formed from my legs and feet into the ground. The Hellian appeared almost like an afterimage with her fist firmly embedded in my stomach. It couldn’t fully take the second blow and she had managed to breakthrough. I was internally relieved that I didn’t have anything inside my stomach for her to crush.

A insane grin split her face. “Lou heor kiliy doeu!” she exclaimed clearly happy that I was able to take her blow.

I grunted and cupped my fists before bringing them down on her head. It felt like I had hit a mountain. It was even worse than the golem. She didn’t even budge. She wound back her arm slowly almost as if doing it on purpose then punched forward. My eyes failed to register the forward motion until it was completed. This time she aimed for my chest. I only barely got my hand in the path of the blow, but my hand exploded from the impact.

I was glad I could turn off my sense of feeling and pain at that moment. Everything below from just above the wrist was gone. I kneed her in the stomach using a sizable chunk of my mana converted to kinetic energy. I barely managed to get a grunt as I jumped away. Calling my staff back to me, I used some of its structure to repair my hand. Flexing it, I turned back to the woman with a glare.

I pointed at myself. “Regan.”

She tilted her head then nodded. “Kala!” she said proudly. I had no way of knowing if that was her name, but I decided to assume it was.

I sighed as I tried to think of what to do about this. I doubted anything was going to make a scratch on her and now that I looked at her again, her mana or whatever was the source of her strength was even stronger than before. It wouldn’t be long before there were manifestations around her even down here in the Beneath. I just had no idea what form they could possibly take with that energy.

I blinked and found myself flying toward the ceiling of the cavern. I saw my arm flying off into the distance torn off at the socket, but there was little I could do about it. She was right in front of me again and used her foot to send me back toward the floor. I slammed into the ground with considerable force and cracks formed all over my body.

Not wanting to just take a beating, I condensed as much of my remaining mana as I could and sent beams of anti-matter toward Kala. She could have probably dodged it, but as if to show me who was boss, she reached out and stopped the rays with the palm of her hand. I kept it up until most of my mana was gone. When I was out, she looked at her hand then blew off some dust that was on it.

I laid there staring into the air unable to believe that I would be defeated like this. It was the first time since I came to this world that I saw the battle of the other side. I was usually the one doing the overpowering bit after all. “Regan!” Alara shouted as she rushed into the crater.

I sat up and tried to smile, but the bottom of my jaw crumbled to pieces. I mentally groaned. More parts of my body started chipping. It looked like it wasn’t going to hold out much longer. I never really expected this body would actually fail me. Kala appeared in an instant floating above the crater.

She looked upset as she gazed down at me. She shook her head before dropping down in a blink of an eye. Her foot slammed into my chest and burst through my back. Alara swung her sword but it bounced off her without leaving a scratch. Kala looked at her like someone might look at a bug. She backhanded her and formed a large hole as Alara was sent flying. Dust and debris rained down between us.

I tried to move, but Kala’s leg was still embedded through my chest. I reached up and grabbed her, but with most of my mana depleted, I was weaker than most mortals at this point. She put her other foot on my head. “Auso vue lou. Erosle veo meou. Surru Kala!” She seemed to cheer before I felt a large force explode down a moment before the crater reached the size of a small town. I momentarily considered that she might be the cause of the other crater on the edge of the city. Before I could do anything about it, I found my mind back in my dungeon.

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