New System, Who Dis?

Tuesday, April 16th, 2069

“Charging a creature made of stone with a husking Pickaxe isn’t going to work,” Smegma shouted, as he sped past my ear. I heard him. I chose to ignore him. It wasn’t like I had other options. “Don’t ignore me! At least gang up on it!”

My feet slid multiple times as I passed over a carpet of sharded Crystals. Each footfall created a wind-chime like tinkle of the things as they cascaded into each other. It was a strange battle hymn, and I might have truly considered that further if I had time. I needed to strike the Golem before it fully formed—that was my one advantage.

I saw a somewhat clear space in the crystal carpet ahead, and planted my foot into it before leaping the remaining eight or nine feet toward the monster. Its head was just rounding enough to be considered an appendage as I bent my back and raised my Overcharged Pickaxe over my head.

Like sit ups in the gym, I started with my stomach and then shoulders before beginning to straighten my elbows, aiming a blow right at the center of the creature’s smooth, rocky head. As if I was watching a drowning puppy in slow motion, the Golem’s head moved. Did it just teleport?

“It’s allowed to dodge, you husking moron,” Smegma commented, which actually helped me in that moment. I saw the one leg it had left behind, trailing the rest of its body as it swayed back defensively. I changed my target, aiming the Pickaxe point at the place where the rock of the leg met the hip.

Hopefully, that was a weak point—

The Pickaxe slammed into the rock and drove through it. It was then that I realized I hadn’t considered landing from my leap. That and the contact of a swung Pickaxe with a rather dense rock changed my body’s trajectory.

All that to say, I was going to come down sideways.

Something hit my sternum, right upper chest, and arm simultaneously before my momentum changed. All those points bloomed instantly in traumatic pain. Then, instead of gravity alone being in control of my body—I suddenly had to deal with gravity and a backhand from a ton and a half of pure Rock Golem. Like a schooner in a crosswind I ‘sailed’ sideways and hit the ground with all the momentum of my jump and the Golem’s blow.

[Good thing this bed of razor sharp Crystals was here really.] I mentally joked.

I felt some of the Crystals shift, absorbing the impact as others sliced and cut sharp jagged lines into my forearms, shoulders, shins, knees and hands. I narrowly avoided my more sensitive areas by curling into a fetal position.

As soon as I came to a stop, I tried to pull in oxygen, but felt my chest fight me on the action I’d accomplished several billion times since birth. I heard shouting, but my ears felt like they were filled with cotton. Well, I guess this is the end—too bad I hadn’t gotten a chance to buy one of the cool Skills from Smegma.

My struggle against my own lungs suddenly shifted in my favor, allowing me to pull in some air. However, it felt like I was sucking it down a constricted straw. My brain screamed at me to move, and that if I didn’t a Golem was going to stomp me into a pancake. My body, sans oxygen, wasn’t complying. Again I felt the struggle against my own air supply shift in my favor, and the straw became a hose.

With some oxygen now, my body managed a roll, which I thought, in that moment, had saved my life. Turns out I was wrong. I couldn’t tell where the Golem was specifically because my eyes were filled with unshed tears of pain. But from noises that weren’t right on top of me, I did manage to ‘piece’ together that I wasn’t in desperate danger. Thankfully the rejuvenating oxygen also unfroze my brain enough to start hearing things. Was that the sound of Pickaxes at work?

“Get up you husking moron. The others are barely managing to keep it grounded.”

I blinked my eyes quickly allowing some of the water to leak down my cheeks as I tried to focus on the direction of the sound. Sure enough, Willa, Fat Gary, Dave and my father were all pummeling the creature as it lay on its back.

One of its legs was still ‘standing’ with my Pickaxe embedded through it. My strike must have severed the limb, causing it to fall. In any other battle that would have spelled the end. However, this was a Golem—and I could see the rocks gathering around its leg as well as each of the small ‘dings’ Fat Gary, Willa, Dave and my father were making.

Dings were the only word for them. My father and Willa, with the Enchanted Pickaxes, were managing to carve out bigger sections of rock from its arms and other leg, but I could tell they were all fighting a losing battle against its regeneration.

I croaked, “Grab my Pickaxe.”

No one in the group moved.

With an effort of will, I heaved in a breath and pushed myself up to my feet. Thanks to the return of feelings, I could sense the warm sticky sensation of my own blood covering my arms, and legs liberally. I ignored it and shuffle-walked to the Golem’s leg and my Pickaxe in the stone.

Heaving I managed to ‘King Arthur’ that shit out of its ‘sheath’, I continued toward the downed Golem. My legs didn’t have the strength to jump again, but I figured if I could take off another limb then we could go back to whittling it down. Of course, that was when it swung an arm defensively. Everyone managed to step back and out of the path of the blow, but Dave and Fat Gary’s Pickaxes didn’t have the sense to dodge with them.

They broke with a scream of splintering wood.

One head sailed away harmlessly. The other punched me in the face. Stars exploded in my vision as I fell on the ground. Again.

“Are you husking kidding me?” Smegma shouted. “I’m going to laugh about that later, but without those two chipping away—it will be on its feet soon. Get up!”

Bracing with one hand in the shards, I managed to get to my knees. Thankfully I still held my Pickaxe, but even from my knees I wobbled. I put one foot under me, and felt gravity shift to the left and then right. I shook my head and instantly regretted it, as a migraine almost worse than the original one-ton punch from Mega-Rock over there came back with a vengeance.

With the migraine, however, came some semblance of balance and I managed to get up onto unsteady feet. The leg I’d removed was only missing a ‘shin’ and foot now. I was two steps away and could tell it that my involvement against its regeneration would be a close thing.

Fat Gary and Dave were still swinging at the thing with the broken shafts of their Pickaxes, but it wasn’t doing much. I hesitated for the briefest of seconds before mentally commanding Smegma to purchase two more Miner’s Picks.

Sure, there were probably more effective weapons in the shop, and I’m sure if I had time, I’d be overjoyed to scour the husking thing and find them. Time and questions about where the sudden picks had come from, however, were not luxuries that I possessed at the moment. Two Miner’s picks fell at my feet, and I bent down to grab both in a somewhat unsteady grip. With a shouted “Dave!” I threw them in an underhand lob in the two miner’s general direction.

Dave looked up and snagged one from the air. The other landed on the flailing Golem and was quickly flung away as it waved its arms defensively from the continued barrage of Pickaxe blows. Thankfully, Fat Gary—a name I didn’t bother shouting, ‘cause it was simply too long for my addled brain, got the message and chased after the ‘weapon.’

All of that happened in the span of a couple of seconds, which also let me close the remaining distance to the fallen Golem. Grinning, I brought my Pickaxe down on its still whole leg. The pick turned slightly in my hand, but with my added Strength, it still bit in deeply. I had a short-lived and manic question of whether my Mining Skill was providing its own level of assistance, but pushed the thought aside. When I pulled back, I took the creature’s entire quad with me.

Then I struck again, and again. And again.

People began noticing that my Pickaxe, and my ‘Strength,’ was having the greatest effect and started shifting spots to allow me access to each limb. Fat Gary had rejoined the four of us at some point, but I just kept wailing down blows, until all four limbs became lifeless stone on the floor beside a wiggling torso.

Then I began turning its head and torso into stone chips. The chest was far harder than the limbs and repaired at an increased pace. Still, it was a losing battle against my quickly deforming Pickaxe. That was when I saw why its torso was harder and prioritized in the regeneration process of whatever mind or will that animated the Golem.

A large brown orb became visible after I pulled back from one of the strikes that ripped an impressive chunk of the creature away. It looked like a mix between a shiny rock and metal. I’d seen pictures of these in Portal Materials’ class. It was a Golem Core. The thing’s weakness!

With a new target I swung again and felt the Enchantments on the Pickaxe for precision guide the deformed point home. The sound of a ringing bell made my exhausted muscles tense, thinking that my tool had just been rebuffed from the rigidity of the Core. But that wasn’t the case. The sound acted like the epicenter of a stone dropped into a pond—only it was the room that rippled, like waves in water.

Sharded Crystals bounced into the air as the wave passed under it. The strange magical percussion caused me to stumble and then fall to a knee, as it passed under me.

Afterward, I had a front row seat, as the stone that made up the creature turned to dust—the relief from seeing that slackened my muscles and I fell to my ass, out of breath. I saw the ‘doors’ turn to dust as well before falling away as if they were simply an eddy in an unfelt wind.

The sound of coughing, shifting Crystals and an odd thumping reached my ears as the four others fell to their asses as well. Well I had assumed all four of the others. Until my father rushed to my side and shouted, “Are you okay? You’re bleeding from everywhere. We need to get you to a Healer.”

Others came into the room from the deeper caverns. They were covered in a layer of dirt that made the Hunters indistinguishable from the Miner’s unless you looked for the weapons. Well, that and their actions I supposed. A team of three rushed toward us with another five Banks in their wake.

“Is this everyone that was in this chamber? Is everyone okay? What happened?” A man, with a circular shield, rapid-fire shouted.

My dad looked like he was going to indicate me and my need for a Healer, but I grabbed his wrist. He looked at me and I shook my head.

Insistently I whispered, “I’m okay.”

As soon as I had the brain capacity to check. I’d run my hands over the ‘cuts’ on my body—only to find them already closed. Sure, they were scabbed and sensitive, but closed. If I went to a Healer, they might just discover my Recovery skill.

“Look at your Pickaxe, and all the Ores near the walls,” Smegma said.

I blinked meaningfully at my father and then turned slowly to look at the Pickaxe that was under the palm of my right hand. The shaft was now a dark-brown, polished wood. The head, which had been previously at risk of becoming nothing more than a hammer, was shining and sharp.

My father followed my gaze and his eyes widened. He lifted his own Pickaxe and found a similar sight. It was my turn to blink in surprise. I checked the other three Pickaxes and noticed that among them, only Willa’s had changed. Fat Gary and Dave’s literally looked like hammers—or maybe round maces?

They had clearly flipped them around at some point when the sharpened point of the pick became worthless to use the spade-side, because even it was nearly bent ninety degrees.

Without looking away from the nearly destroyed ‘new’’ Pickaxes, I said, “Everyone’s okay. A Golem formed in the middle of the cavern.”

“A what?” the hunter shouted and then shifted his gaze to the Monster Core and Golem Core that sat in a pile of stone dust. “And you defeated it?”

My dad took over explaining the group effort. He left out my ‘heroics’, thankfully.

Tired, I let the explanation fade into the background as I caught my breath.

“The wall!” Smegma demanded, reminding me of the second part of his earlier comment.

His insistence made me scan to the wall where this had all started. More specifically, the Red Copper I had been told to mine. As if I had done what I was told, the Red Copper was stacked neatly in a pile. While I had hit my head—multiple times—I was sure I hadn’t done that.

Scanning further, I found more stacks of Ores, in a whole range of colors. When I say a ‘whole range’, I mean every husking color of the rainbow. Almost every three or four feet there was a pile of something. I sucked in a breath and pointed at a small stack of vibrant purple Ore.

“What is that?”

My question made everyone in the room turn to look at my finger. I had been meaning the question for Smegma, but something in my tone had instantly drawn everyone. Even the miners who had been examining the piles of Ore nearer the hallway to the deeper caverns turned to look.

Everyone first stared at the purple Ore, which clearly hadn’t been visible in the cavern before the fight, but soon people began looking at the green, blue, and orange Ores in turn. Each one hadn’t been visible when we’d decided what valuable ones to tap.

“It’s not just this cavern,” Smegma said as he floated through the floor. “Every cavern in this place has been automatically tapped of all Ores.”

Coughing, I relayed that in a round-about way. “Is this the only cavern that this happened in?”

That sent the miners nearest the exit to the deeper caverns running. Thanks to Smegma, I knew what they’d find.

My father had finished his explanation or maybe I had interrupted him, because when I leaned back in satisfaction, I found his intense gaze locked on me— me and my bloody and ripped clothing.

I sat back up hurriedly and mouthed, “I’ll tell you later.”

His eyes bugged out, even as his mouth firmed.

But he nodded.

“You know what probably would have helped you find that Core faster?” Smegma said, into the silence. “Your Heat Sense Skill.”

[Super helpful tip, now that it’s all over.]

“You can’t help stupid. Idiot!” The imp just always had to get the last word in.