Continue Online (Part 4, Crash) (23 page)

How many did we need? We might find out in the boss room, or we might find ourselves walking into a dead end with dozens of these creatures cornering us.

[Blink]
let me catch up with one of the monsters. I risked using
[Morrigu’s Gift]
as a dagger and plunged it into exposed spine on one
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s. It fell forward and clawed at the air while its legs stiffened. There was no time to finish it off, and my single ball of fire was too clunky to wield with a weapon. Two handed combat was hard enough to do as a layman.

“More of thesse thingss!” Viper hissed.

Dusk was rapidly dodging through ginormous legs and around grasping hands, but the new size seemed to be throwing him off. He missed more corners than normal. His health lost a few small slivers as we tore through the hallways. More monsters piled up behind us. They could have been drawn to any one of us.

“Are you ssure!?” Viper yelled in front.

“Worst case, we die!” I shouted back happily. For once, I was able to play the game as a game. Not as some man running to deliver letters in a rush.

“We can’t lose pointss! If I losse too many pointss I’ll kill you!”

“Dusk?” I yelled back while ignoring Viper’s threats. “Are we on course?”

The
[Messenger’s Pet]
managed to ripple with a shrug and nod while we ran. Either that or Dusk was jumping over a bunch of legless creatures. I kept running after them, trusting the game and my stats to keep my feet moving in the right direction.
[Awareness Heightening]
hadn’t kicked into effect, and for that I was glad. The boss fight would probably hurt my mind enough once we got there. Temporarily kicking up the compression rate from four times reality’s speed to eight hurt when I was
[Blink]
ing everywhere.

“I don’t know if I can keep thiss pace!” Viper sounded winded already.

He was just running down the hallway. Of the two of us, I would be suffering more. Maybe part of me enjoyed it. This virtual reality often seemed to be the only place that felt real. Everything else was almost an intangible dream.

“No choice! You wanted the loot.” Even now, running for his life, the man didn’t drop any items. He could have easily shed an untold amount of dead bodies. Honestly I was surprised he still ran with all the weight, and outdid my
[Dipped in Starlight]
effect.

Holding this fireball was like trying to balance a bowl in my hands while running. It threatened to slip with each corner.
[Morrigu’s Gift]
caught a few monsters, and some grasped at my skin with their beady hands. I stumbled and shook my foot loose.

“Keep going, we’ve got to be close!” I yelled at him.

We had to be. Dusk’s chirps of excitement were nearly lost under the barking noises these monsters made. At least two dozen were trailing behind us. A few were moving slowly or outright missing a limb from my interference. All were intent upon getting to Viper and his extensive stash of goods.

Our passageway widened. The echoes of noise, our feet stomping, the monsters shuffling, and spiders squealing a pleasing death cry grew more intense. Dusk looked around at the walls as we ran. I too glanced as we kept going. There looked to be deep grooves dug out, all of which grew in size and frequency as we traveled.

“This lookss dangerouss.” Viper slowed down a bit. The monsters chasing him appeared hesitant to come into this passageway. Their jerking pauses indicated uncertainty. A few would catch up from further away and bump the crowd forward.

Our corridor went on for another fifty feet before the cavern grew huge. There was a ceiling way up above but far out of reach. I briefly missed the wings of my
[Red Imp]
, but not the stubbly legs. Both of my thighs ached from sprinting twice through this dungeon. Cheeks ached from a smile despite the situation.

I liked this. This was what William Carver had lived for. This type of reckless disregard for self in favor of a rush of combat was infectious. If I saw Voices based on what was in my head, then perhaps I had desired this kind of event all along, why else would I see Leeroy? That probably meant my longing for Xin might be why Selena showed up, or that part of me wasn’t a
[Prude]
at all because of a certain red skinned temptress.

We kept crossing the room and the floor narrowed to a single causeway. There was a giant pit on either side, but our platform was solid. A few single bits of starlight hung on the ceiling. They looked like stalactites that had formed and been completely frozen.

“There’s nothing here,” Viper said. The bridge ended against another wall, small alcoves were dug into the wall as if someone had been trying to find treasure.

My back tingled, and it wasn’t from being
[Dipped in Starlight]
. Dusk looked around, his eyes wide and his ears perked forward. Something was rumbling the dirt and reminded me of my first few days as Hermes. Viper was the last person who noticed.

“Careful!” I shouted mere seconds before a giant hand slammed over the walkway’s edge. The memory of
[Barricobbler]
tossing SheHulk, Elane, into the distance flashed through my mind. Being tossed here would put me face to face with a wall.

The creature lifted itself while Dusk and Viper hissed in unison. This was not a baby-faced giant, but it certainly was huge. Both hands were larger than I was. Bone shone through on one hand. Muscles wiggled around distorted gaps. The main body itself was almost proportionally correct for its limbs. This thing looked like a fully functioning version of the first giant monster I had found.

It came up barking with deep angry noises. Its other broken looking fist swung for a few
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s trying to creep across the walkway after our party. His hand picked up two of the creatures in one swing and promptly brought them up to its face.

I looked around rapidly and felt the world start to slow down. My heartbeat thudded loudly twice as I tried to understand the mechanics being presented.

“Dusk! Watch for little creatures!” I settled on killing spiders and those undead
[Coo-Coo Rill]
s first. They were down in this dungeon for a reason.

Dusk expanded his wings and leapt off into the abyss on the opposite side our new enemy. The giant lifted itself over the edge, not content to hang there. It moved faster than
[Barricobbler]
by a wide margin. What Rank was this boss at, twenty? Twenty-five maybe?

It ate another straggling
[Heavenly Body Clone]
and light flooded through the creature. Bones and skin flushed with pure whiteness like the barrels had. My feet shuffled to the side slightly, trying to get myself ready for the next stage.

“Viper, it’ll come after you soon!” I shouted.

“No sshit, Ssherlock,” he said dryly.

“Keep digging, Watson,” I muttered while doing an
[Identification]
. The results nearly caused me to laugh. Clearly the Voices thought my idle commentary was funny.

His legs straddled the walkway like a bicycle.
[Charge]
, the giant creature who was a few ranks above the
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s, reached out and bashed one of the far walls. Loud noise drowned out barking echoes from lesser enemies. A mass of them had piled up in the doorway. Some in the back pushed those in front like lemmings over a cliff.

He turned and looked at me. I stared back and readied
[Morrigu’s Gift]
in the two-handed form. The second blade stayed hooked in my belt, ready to be pulled out and used.

The throng at the doorway tried to grasp at the bigger one, attempting to tear out chunks for their own hunger. These zombie creatures didn’t discriminate.
[Charge]
blinked his eyes and backed up.

“Disssgussting,” Viper said with his nose wiggling.

Dusk was already hard at work setting smaller creatures alight. There was one thing that might make this insanely darkened scene feel better. I regripped the blade in one hand and tried to figure out what to do with the ball of fire. My planning went on for too long as
[Charge]
slowly turned around, half a
[Heavenly Body Clone]
sat broken in its mouth.

“Leeeeroyy!” I shouted while charging toward the monster’s back.

One giant arm hung onto the walkway as an anchor. Small bits of rock shook from above but nothing major came down. My legs bunched at the last second as I leapt toward the giant’s back.
[Charge]
reacted instantly and twisted around. His free arm batted into my side deflecting the leap toward a mass of
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s.

Half fleshed faces and giant limbs reached out for me. My arm pumped wildly throwing the ball of fire into the crowd. Monsters growled and barked in pain. One fell down then was immediately set upon by its former peers. My feet touched down as I fell. Shin bumped against rock and gave me a small wave of pain that I tried to suppress. Limbs grasped at me, desiring my
[Dipped in Starlight]
body. I quickly looked up and used
[Blink]
near a wall. Barking noises followed me in the wake of a disorienting spin.

[Charge]
walked across the pathway looking like a glowing assed baboon. Chunks of our path crunched under its powerful and over-sized palms. My new position made me victim to gravity and I fell.
[Blink]
couldn’t trigger again fast enough and I tried to dig into the wall with a large blade. The motion only stalled my fall a little bit as I hung on.
[Morrigu’s Gift]
was the wrong shape for such an action.

“Sscrew thiss!” Viper shouted. He threw blades toward the boss but they sunk in without doing any damage to the creature’s health bar.

I took a breath and tried to steady myself.
[Awareness Heightening]
was in effect but it didn’t change cooldowns on my abilities. My fingers tightened their hold and I once again
[Blink]
ed, this time above the enemy
[Charge]
.
[Morrigu’s Gift]
slid across flesh but failed to find purchase. My legs locked around an arm and I spun the blade to hack again. As we tangled I ended upside down banging into its chest with my forehead.

“Throw the bodies over the edge!” I shouted to Viper. “Distract the lesser ones!”

Dusk flew overhead and kept flinging fire around, illuminating enough of the scene. Small spiders clung to a burning web up above. I would have been happy were there time to appreciate the death of so many bugs.

[Charge]
went crazy and beat me, the ground, anything within reach. I shifted
[Morrigu’s Gift]
to one hand while the other anchored into the creature’s broken flesh. Dizziness swept through my head as we banged around.

Viper was tossing legless
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s over the edge. Barks echoed through the cavern as some of the more complete monsters tried to dive after fresh sources of food. Dusk sent small balls of fire after them. Heat seared through the room as the player hissed.

The walkway was taking a huge beating. Formerly smooth paths were now jagged or outright missing in places. Cracking could be heard from above. Monsters of various shapes all flooded over the edge in their mindless dives.

[Charge]
grabbed me with its hands. My free foot struggled but found a solid platform to activate
[Power Armor]
. Metal banging preceded a sudden expansion of my toga. It hardened under the monster’s grip. Portions slid out in stages as
[Charge]
tried to squeeze me to death and lift my body toward its face. A final chunk slammed tight over my head just in time.

“Sshit!” Viper hissed in surprise.

[Charge]
grunted from the effort of chewing on my head. He was like a giant child gnawing on a jawbreaker a size too big. My vision narrowed down to one small sliver that drool and bad breath could still make it through. The pressure around my chest loosened. Deep barking noises rattled my eardrums. I tried to see a location to
[Blink]
to but nothing was visible but glowing nasty teeth and bits of white blood from the dead
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s.