For a disgruntled house-sized toad, Hyacinth was still practical about this change in tactics. His heart was always ambushing from the shadows, but he was not above dominating prey who showed him disrespect as they moved forward, as he towered above any guards that would come after him.
Randy had one word for the scene, “Monsterous.”
Harmony preferred to think of it as practical.
Hyacinth held the shield they’d pressed into proper shape with strength and [Mend]. All that practice in her Material Manipulation class gave the mass of metal a stable foundation for her to add more pieces between each fight.
The guards would rush in, and the shadow toad would set down the wall of twisted bodies with a clanging thud as Harmony, Adric, and Bowe ripped them to pieces, soon adding them to the bulk of the shield.
There was a time for the tricks of Hyacinth, rapidly changing his size to smash the unsuspecting, and then there was the powerful anchor of having him define the battle from the start. Getting full use out of [Familiar Adaptation] by practicing having her partner be as large as he could be had always been part of the plan, and his willingness to use modified tools strengthened that. They’ll need his mass when they reach the floor guardiant… Harmony’s perfected diagonal cleave cut through the head and the space where the commanded crystal was sending the guard’s body to the floor… soon.
Harmony nudged the final fallen guard with her foot. It was almost too easy. If only she didn’t know where she could get quality rust for the potions test, she might have settled for selling all the loot and buying the best quality sample of the ingredient she could find. Fighting the first-floor guardian would be quicker than walking back the way they came, and wasn’t that always how they got you to do one more opponent? They’d also need to find a merchant this late at night. The reasons to move forward outweighed those of turning back. They also had a plan.
Harmony and Adric hauled the bodies to the shield. The simple [Disintegrate] to loosen some bonds and [Mend] to seal the metal together might work for the guards that focused more on speed than strength, but one punch from Clanker and the haphazard mobile wall would crumble. Attempting to reforge the whole thing would take hours that she didn’t want to waste. It’s not like she was a blacksmith; even if she did take it apart and put it together as a solid block of metal, she didn’t have the skill to guarantee it would stand up to what was coming. She had to do it her way.
Guards were alive. Or had been. And if there was one thing a necromancer could work with, it was a pile of corpses. They might look like golems or animated suits of armor, but the reality was strong, elastic tendons and a quick nervous system powering the movements and skills.
Harmony poked the shield full of holes to access the elastic tendons. That was where [Manipulate Dead] pulled, stretched, and added to the material, connecting them all like a knotted ball of yarn that ran through the cobbled-together metal structure like it was a three-dimensional maze before wrapping around the outside. That way, something would still hold it together when it inevitably broke into smaller pieces.
“That’s some interesting work, Eternal,” Randy commented.
And she’d almost forgotten about the man. If he noticed the necromantic magic, he was sworn to secrecy. “You make do with the resources you have available.”
“I’ve never seen a team push through quite the way yours does.. I suppose I expected those who’ve reached the higher tiers to simply wave a hand and be done with all of this. Not that you haven’t been efficient. Will you be going to the deeper floors? Are you investigating that strange alarm? Perhaps here to visit the Tomb?”
The man was digging for information. He shouldn’t even be here! Why couldn’t he try to stab her in the back or do something that would make it easy for her to deal with him?
“I’m only asking because I'd like to know how much longer I’ll be assisting you.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be leaving after defeating the floor guardian and collecting the rust. Then you may be on your way.” Harmony told him frostily, letting [Cold Touch] chill her voice
“Good. Good.” He said, backing away.
Adric threw an arm over Harm’s shoulder after he was out of earshot. “Nice guy.”
“Nice guys cause problems.” Harmony reminded him.
“He’s only here because his daughter took an unsanctioned trip here while at The Academy and died decades ago.” At Harmony’s look of warning, he continued, “I gave away nothing. I was merely slightly friendly while you were focused on your projects, and it spilled out of him.”
“That only makes it worse. Hyacinth will boost Bowe’s size for this battle. We’ll need it.”
The hallway opened up to a massive chamber, enough to accommodate Adric riding his long rainbow-feathered dragon and Hyacinth to be that small house, and a quarter of the way into that chamber, the metal floor transformed into a lake that covered the stairs needed to go down to the second floor or up to exit.
Stepping into that room, the gurgling of water being drained off started, and that was their clock as the water started to lower. It was time to turn a theoretical fight into a real one. The four of them dove into the water, leaving their porter at the surface.
The first floor guardian in Oorty’s Tomb was an anchored one, meaning there was no surprise to what it would be. As to why a giant metal crab would be the option in a country landlocked far away from any ocean or even any river bigger than a small stream, it was a bit perplexing.
Hyacinth had plenty of experience fighting its smaller hard-shelled cousins around Hazeldown’s docks. The shells were always another bit of biological material to force [Manipulate Dead] to work on, not that they’d be useful against this opponent. For an emergency meal, they were tasty enough.
Bowe’s ancestors still talked about how tasty the flesh inside this guardian was. The usually quiet dragon had talked about it exhaustively in previous planning sessions. But he wasn’t the only one chewing on this match-up.
Harmony had been gnawing on how to use the resource since she learned it would be required for her team to defeat it by the end of the first year here. That meant everyone who’d been here longer than a year had a story of successfully defeating the crab known as Clankers. More a rite of passage than a challenge. It seemed a shame to handle it the tried and true way.
The first hint had been in the Oorty’s Tomb seminar, which had only touched briefly on this guardian, being more focused on scaring away students, while focusing on how dangerous the guards could be. It was all projections of dead students and tales of gruesome deaths.
The second had been about how the guild’s guidebook listed what you could harvest from the corpse and didn’t focus on much more.
That was all because no one was worried about Clankers; all you had to do was outlast it, then strike it in a certain sequence, and it would die. The combined benefit of centuries of knowledge boiled down into an easy win once the water drained from the pool and his shell burst into flames. As Von Trell liked to call it, this dungeon was boring.
So, rather than treat this poor old guardian as an hourglass to wait out, bashing away its claws defensively once the water dropped, waiting for that pivotal moment for the fire's rage to send it spinning like a top ready for the secret knock that would crack it open, she wanted to see how far she could push it. An easy decision, with the risk-averse part of her was satisfied knowing she had a way out. It also allowed her to get more inventive the more she learned.
Vital body pushed her size, stretching her limbs for better swimming. Not fast enough to keep up with Hyacinth, even with him lugging about the shield or Bowe’s wings acting like fins in the water, while Adric held on. She could have held on to Hyacinth, but then that wouldn’t have been a test. [High Kick] lashed out, pushing quickly through the water in a race against time.
A normal match-up had teams waiting for five minutes until the water dropped low enough for the boss to do hit-and-run style attacks on their defensive formation. Five minutes after that, the water would be nearly drained, and then you had several minutes of land battles before the crab started to heat up, and then Clankers burst into flames.
The crab wasn't even the biggest guardian she'd faced. Hyacinth's current size matched it, which played into the plan.
Hyacinth crashed into Clanker first, using the shield as a ram. After that shock, he used his hands to try to keep its claws shut.
Bowe joined in to coil around the crab, restraining it further.
Harmony landed, ready to answer the question of how far she could punch above her evolution level.
Contending with those who were into their second evolution in a limited fashion seemed to come naturally. Whether it was fighting Brix in the dungeon club of Hazeldown, threatening the guards of The Warden’s Rest, or erasing some of Osmark’s memory, she was strong; even Von Trell said she was stronger than the tertiary ranking the school had her at. Here was a well-documented opponent. This crab was a challenge for students, but a grind for the workers trudging into the dungeon to harvest resources. History defined how strong a Clanker's armor was as measurable and reliable as their favorite equations.
“In five blows, I cracked his shell before I hit my third evolution. I just had to put my back into it.”
“In or out of the water?”
Bragging, stories shared over ale, and history mixed with the statistics of what it took to get the job done. While Harmony admitted she hadn’t had a lot of time to chase more than conjecture or rumors, the material toughness grades on the harvested plates or armor were on record.
For this first experiment, she didn't want to break the clanker's shell. She wanted to break its soul. Strikes that aimed to damage its skills crashed into it. The metal armor extending past the container was an impediment, so the armor had to go too.
[Disintegrate] could only soften the metal. Her sickle left deep gouges, but puncturing or blunt force was needed. Shrinking to her smaller, stronger, denser size, she pounded in a dent as it thrashed under the water. Once the water receded, it would get brittler and no longer have the regenerative skill supporting it, but she needed to get it now. She couldn't crack it; all she needed to do was get close enough.
In the divot she’d pounded down, she set the tip of her sickle and leaned in until it sank in against the magical and physical resistance and pushed… There! Soul strike punched in, not for the kill but something more subtle and sickening.
Hexologist Curie's bloody tables were a lesson in what could go wrong with skills. Primarily, it was curses living inside and manipulating them for self-harming effects. They simulated and fooled those nodules of soul in ways Harmony had seen flashes of happening inside monsters, human and dungeon born, as he broke them from the inside. The right kind of flaw applied to a skill was worse than a curse, like a broken mirror; it would flip the effects of a skill upside down with a spiderweb of consequences as long as you didn’t break it too much, and it was one that wouldn’t shut off. She got what she wanted, not a moment too soon.
Harmony’s head cracked the surface of the dropping water line, allowing her strained lungs to take a deep breath.
The crab underneath her trembled. “Off!” She yelled. Ordering both Adric and Hyacinth away as [High Kick] sent her flying back.
The skills Clanker had were well known. You might as well have the complete status of the guardian. The one skill Harmony spoiled was labeled as water regeneration, and the reason most waited for the water to drop before attacking. The extra toughness, resistance, and healing it granted made it almost impossible to get past. Harmony’s strongest blows couldn’t do much more than make dents and scratches.
Inverted under the curse Harmony imposed on it. The guardian’s metal frame twisted and rattled in the water. Hers wasn’t an infection like the kind she removed; the act, recorded by [Recall], was a lesson she wouldn’t forget. The damage would be repairable if it had time or a healer. For a passive skill like this one, it couldn’t turn it off, but if one subtly damaged a skill that an opponent chose to activate, the surprise could be fatal.
Clanker could barely do more than sway as the water drained away. Free of the water, the patches of red that had to be “rust” coated the shell in patches.
“Finish it cleanly,” Harmony told them.
Delegating the finishing blow was part of her personal practice. She’d need to do that a lot as one of the primary support members for the school delving group. What was important was that the soul strike variation of soul curse was successful. None of the guards had any strong passive abilities she could test on in the same way.
Bowe, Adric, and Hyacinth made short work of the crab, careful not to damage any of the red patches.
“Hungry,” Bowe complained. His deep voice grumbled. The change in size really did a number on his appetite, and the guards were a difficult meal they’d skipped. The crab meat was about as good as it got, full of extra nutritious skills. The fresher the better for the dragon.
The run was good enough that she could harvest skills later. “Go for it, let me get our porter to harvest the Rust.”
Harmony kicked off through the still draining water to fetch him.
The man looked spooked. “You beat it before the water drained.”
Harmony hid a smile. That meant that as a group, they were potentially upper-tier two in strength as long as they used all their strengths, which included plenty of cheating. Silly for him to be quite so open-jawed about it.
“Jobs not done, Porter. You volunteered to help harvest the crab. Get your gear.”
The way he stumbled forward. Less guild vouched for and more the bureaucrat's friend.
Bowe ate the insides clear to the chest inside the crab. Oorty’s Tomb had a system where the guardians had chests inside their bodies.
Adric was wiggling the small box out. “Hey, Randy.” He said with a wave. “Think maybe you can harvest the rust for us. We need it pretty pure.”
The porter waded through the waist-high water that had yet to drain, moving carefully. His eyes darted to the group. With a small knife, he started scraping off the dusty red crystals into a glass container.
Adric popped open the chest. “Aw, Harm. We didn’t get the soul-binding agent. It’s just a key.”
Harmony held off a swear word and walked over to the box.
“You didn’t tell me why this rust was so important?” Randy asked. The tone of his voice set off alarms in [Keen Investigative Awareness]. Not malicious, but something.
“Harmony needs it for her potions exam tomorrow.” Bowe lazily blabbed between bites of crab.
“You are dented STUDENTS!” Randy yelled! His face turned red, but thankfully not dropping what he’d just gathered. “Do you know what you just… And a Key!”
The man was having a fit.
Harmony peeked at the reward.
A Golden Prisoner’s Key
Disappointing.
“I’m not technically a student. I’m her pet.” Adric pointed out unhelpfully
“What are you, a third-year primus?” Randy demanded.
This is why nice men were a problem. “I’m this year's tertiary.”
Randy fell to his knees. “What demons has the headmaster let in? The key is gold, isn’t it?”
The goal was not to get into any new kinds of trouble. Get the goods. Pass the test. But now she had to know. “What does the bloody key mean?”
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