The eldritch artisan fat.., p.27
The Eldritch Artisan: Father of Constructs: Book 3 (LitRPG), page 27
“Good enough,” Harvey said, merriment in his voice. All the dour warnings in the world couldn’t stop the joy he felt. Addressing Reacher, he said, “I had a dream. We’re going to build a few new toys. Are you excited?”
Thumbs-up.
The next few weeks went by in a blur of creation. He repaired the damaged cannons while Reacher and Concierge produced the vast amount of metal they’d need. Once they were done, he gave Concierge new commands, and a new shape.
After that, he and Reacher created a multitude of small, simple constructs-based on Fire Chaser beetles. He called them Drop Drones.
ESOTERIC CONSTRUCTION SCHEMATIC ACQUIRED: CENTIPEDE FORM
Details: Using Delve Coins, you may now produce a Centipede Form Construct without using schematics or other aids. This may cost you more material value in coins than it would take to construct it by hand.
Tool Type: Epic
Hit Points: 65
Attributes: It’s Concierge, with a wide array of commands available. Each of his centipede units includes a Drop Drone that he can remotely pilot and aim.
ESOTERIC CONSTRUCTION SCHEMATIC ACQUIRED: DROP DRONES
Details: Using Delve Coins, you may now produce a Drop Drone without using schematics or other aids. This may cost you more material value in coins than it would take to construct it by hand. You have also gained insight into how to craft this item yourself.
Tool Type: Standard
Hit Points: 15
Attributes: A Drop Drone is a pod-shaped device with a simple navigation system that allows them to target high-concentrations of esoterica or monsters. They cannot fly, but they can adjust course as they fall. The base of each drone includes a steel spike that will deal 3-5 damage (or more, depending on distance). Drones include a simple Draining Converter. This Converter will cause the Drone to adhere to magical targets, making removal difficult. As there is no Battery attached, they combust almost immediately upon impact, dealing between 15 and 30 points of damage.
Finally, with what little time he had left, he produced ten titanium spike beds.
ESOTERIC CONSTRUCTION SCHEMATIC ACQUIRED: Titanium Spike Bed
Details: Using Delve Coins, you may now produce a Titanium Spike Bed without using schematics or other aids. This may cost you more material value in coins than it would take to construct it by hand. You have also gained insight into how to craft this item yourself.
Tool Type: Standard
Hit Points: 15
Attributes: Spike Beds are platforms made of spikes. Their damage is proportional to the amount of force and area applied to a target.
The last were quite simple and took mere hours to create. They were just four-by-four squares of titanium, with foot-long spikes etched in the esoterica draining symbols.
Base Name: Delve Base 1
Base Type: Augmented Shelter
Hit Points
· Walls: 375
· Reinforced Doors (Main Entry): 250
Defensive Enhancements
· Draining Converter Towers (Ground)
· Draining Towers (Air)
Offensive Enhancements
· Draining Converter Towers
· Draining Towers (Air)
· Remote-Controlled Cannons (8)
Final Wave Three Pre-Build Tally
Remaining Coins: 900
Base Repairs: Complete
Manual Cannons (8): Complete
Esoteric Battery Core: 57%
Esoteric Battery Core Containment Repairs: Complete
1 Centipede Construct: Complete
426 Drop Drones: Complete
Titanium Spike Traps (10): Complete
New Ore Extracted: 1,500 tons
Chapter 22: Wave Three (Boss)
Wave Details: Up to 2,000 coins as a reward. Monroe’s Pocket expansion for Harvey and Tabitha. You have 28 minutes to prepare.
“Harvey, what are those?” Lyssandra asked as soon as she came out of stasis. She pointed at the ceiling, which was covered in a grid of glistening metal shapes.
The devices were beetle-shaped ovals of metal, with long spikes protruding downward.
“I call them Drop Drones,” Harvey explained eagerly. “Super simple to craft, once I had the idea. There’s a heat sensor and a basic guidance mechanism inside. The hard part was getting the anchors in the roof. We had to build them heavy enough to penetrate, so the latch and release mechanisms were quite tricky to anchor deeply. Thankfully, Reacher exists.”
Enthusiastic thumbs-up!
“Reacher does exist,” Tabitha said helpfully.
“Drop Drones?” Lucas asked, craning his head to take in the cavern ceiling. “There’s got to be hundreds of them.”
Practically vibrating with frantic energy, Harvey bobbed an enthusiastic nod. In a single, continuous sentence, he said, “A swarm, yes! And there’s four-hundred and twenty-six of them. Also, I’ve repaired your cannons. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to do much else. My plan to upgrade Reacher got derailed. I had a dream, you see. Anyway, same rules as last time. You won’t have any new weapons, I’m afraid. But we’re going to do so well! Felodin, come with me!”
Bemused, the mage followed Harvey up onto the parapets overlooking the cave. From their vantage, three of the gleaming titanium spike beds were visible. Harvey pointed at one. “When the boss is in range, get one of those under it. Or smack it with it. Please?”
“Is this for your Battery Core?”
“Mhm!” Harvey bobbed a nod. “Running out of time. Almost there. A little help should get me where I need to be. Plus, they make good weapons. Agree?”
“Uh. Sure.” Felodin leaned back, uncertain how to handle Harvey with the energy of a teenager. “What’s going on with you?”
The old man yanked his shirt up, revealing the mark on his chest. “Had to balance out the temporal effects. Whee! I feel good!”
Tabitha, who had followed them up, gasped at the sight. The complex symbol, now turned into scar tissue, glistened with active magical energy against Harvey’s chest. “What did you do? This can’t be safe.”
“It’s not.” Felodin put a hand on the symbol and narrowed his eyes. “Harvey, you’ve got four distinct types of magic flooding into your body. I can’t believe your heart hasn’t exploded yet.” He cut his eyes to the side, at Reacher. “The same for him. What’s going on?”
“It’s fine, totally fine.” Harvey tried to sound reassuring and brush the questions aside. For whatever reason, it only made Felodin and Tabitha look more worried. “Don’t give me that look! Just give me a few weeks and I’ll get used to this feeling. Okay, maybe a few months. Whatever. It’ll be fine. I’m nowhere near as energized as when Reacher first branded me.”
“Reacher branded him?” Lyssandra called from below.
“The man conducted dangerous magical experiments on himself,” Felodin replied, clearly displeased.
“It’s fine!” Harvey reiterated. “Besides, the Boss spawns in like eight minutes. Shouldn’t you all be getting into position? Anyway, yes. Smack them with the traps. Thanks Felly!” With those last frantic statements, Harvey leaped off the side of the catwalk and into the interior of the base, where he rushed over to his table.
“Did he just call me ‘Felly’?” Felodin asked, tone bewildered.
Harvey started speaking to himself loudly. “Eight minutes? That’s plenty of time. I can work on the Devour matrix. Ooh! Maybe that’s what I’ll call it. ‘The Devour Matrix’ – Reacher, does that sound neat or scary? What? Are you telling me it sounds like a cautionary tale? Where did you even learn that phrase?”
***
Milly stood atop the railing, her cannon at the ready. Part of her felt a thrill of anticipation for what would come next. Harvey’s enthusiasm and creativity seemed to know no bounds. Given time and material, the legendary crafter had become a juggernaut beyond all her expectations.
Another part of her felt deeply worried. This boss battle was worth up to two thousand coins. Even if the DM wanted to lure them into continuing to the higher waves, based on the challenges so far, she had her doubts about this boss battle being a cake walk.
“When the boss spawns, everyone use their cannons to focus fire,” Lucas said. “We’re going to trust Reacher to repeat what he did last time. If we can blast the boss down quickly, this might not be too bad.”
TIME IS UP! WAVE THREE – BLOOD WYRM (SPAWNER) INCOMING!
“Oh, great. A spawner,” Felodin said, not sounding enthusiastic.
Lucas called, “Reacher and Harvey, the spawner will reproduce lesser versions of itself. Those versions will absorb magic and rapidly grow. Once they mature, they will begin spawning too. In bosses, this means we’ll have about ten or fifteen seconds between generations.”
“Be glad it doesn’t have the Adaptive or Evolving adjectives.” The mage shook his head. “Those are damn near unkillable with anything short of a de-spawn timer or an apocalypse.”
The air thirty feet away from the camp shimmered and bulged. Lightning arced from the floor as pure energy from the ley lines beneath the Delve fed the material to create the Boss. Bombastic music with electronic rhythms swelled. Quick, tinny cymbals rose within the beats, as if to suggest the spawning nature of the creature.
An outline of flesh, like a writhing serpent covered in boils, hazed into existence. The teardrop shape of a mountainous hit point bar appeared in the air next to it, starting to elongate and shift into position.
Three cannon blasts struck the mass. At maximum range, they didn’t do much damage, and Reacher was pulsating them, so it wouldn’t overload the cannons. Still, chunks of semi-permeable flesh flew off.
They had maybe four seconds before the boss completely manifested.
“Ah, why not.” Felodin gestured, whispering, “Shirrazan Hunok.” One of the titanium spike traps flew into the air, rotated, and slammed down on top of the monster.
At the same time, Lucas shouted, “Might as well, FIRE!”
Two more cannon blasts joined the three.
The Boss’s hit point bar reached its zenith and elongated. An outline of its final size appeared to shadow the air, easily twenty times the length of anything they’d faced so far.
Then the titanium trap with its dozens of spikes penetrated its flesh.
A blast of light ripped through the Boss. Its hit point bar fuzzed as it stopped growing. The bar jerked, as if trying to finish manifesting and failing.
Inside the camp, Harvey screamed in exaltation. The sound quickly became concern. “That’s one hot monster!”
With a twitching, writhing motion, the Wyrm jerked around. It had become substantial enough to take hits, which meant it could respond. A pseudopod of semi-transparent flesh knocked the trap away. It flew to the wall, rebounded, then fell to the ground with a loud clank.
No longer being drained by the trap, the monster finished spawning. Only it hadn’t gathered a proper amount of magic to complete its manifestation. What should have been a twenty-foot-long nightmare of snapping teeth and twisted limbs looked instead like a warped worm with a split stomach. Its hit point bar, barely a fifth of what it should have been, popped into place.
“How did that work?” Tabitha asked Milly. The girl had taken up a vantage point near the access stairs a few feet away,
Popping off a cannon blast, she replied, “Tactical advantage. Until someone has a hit point bar, they are vulnerable. We timed that just right.”
Thousands of little, fist-sized green blobs popped out of the Boss’s half-formed stomach. The music swelled, becoming almost resentful as the blobs writhed. A few began to grow, suggesting they were on the verge of the same growth as their parent.
A hundred Drop Drones unlatched from the ceiling. The constructs were painfully simple. Against foes that were small and highly mobile, they would have had dubious value.
Against blobs, they had every advantage.
The metal fssst sound of wings opening and adjusting trajectory momentarily filled the cavern. Their heat-sensing symbols ignited, giving them a half second of maneuverability. Not all of the Drop Drones hit, but those that did drove a foot-long spike into their victims. Magic glowed from each of the drones as they drained the blobs of their power.
As soon as they fell, Reacher resumed pulsing his cannons, this time targeting the growing monsters. With his vantage, coupled with his unique minds, the construct exercised unparalleled precision. He mowed dozens down by the second. As fast as the boss could spawn them, he tore through their delicate, unprotected bodies.
Not to be outdone, Felodin gestured, shouting the command for telekinesis again. The titanium spike trap flew back across the room, directly into the malformed stomach of the spawning boss. A semi-transparent aura appeared around his head, showing that the second casting was taking its cost out on him. He’d be Bent after the fight.
Seizing the opportunity, Milly adjusted her cannon and shot the back of the platform as it sank into the boss’s guts. To her great surprise, the impact sent the platform halfway through the monster’s innards, as if there was almost no resistance.
Light burst from the inside of the Boss as Harvey screamed. “I have to disconnect the Core! It’s overheating! The traps won’t work anymore in three…two…”
“Fire! Everyone fire!” Lucas commanded, just as the light inside the Boss’s stomach went out.
The Boss shuddered. It rolled, revealing a boney, half-formed appendage. Stretchy tendons, exposed since the flesh hadn’t finished manifesting, flexed as it tried reaching for the spiked device lodged inside it.
It died before it could remove the platform.
None of the eggs got a chance to spawn another boss. The music made a rapid, bleating sound like a tongue blowing a raspberry before petering out.
Wave 3 Complete. Final Reward: 1200 Coins and 15,000 Experience Each
Total Coins in Play: 2,100
Monroe Pockets for Harvey and Tabitha extended by 10X and 3X respectively.
You have 45 minutes to decide whether to continue the delve or not. Based on your previous successes, we strongly advise you to continue. The ultimate rewards are nice.
***
When the group came together again, it was with expressions of bafflement. Lyssandra looked at the beaming, giggling Harvey and said, “What did you do?”
“Got the Battery Core to ninety percent,” he replied, bouncing on his feet. “It’s enough to make you all new weapons and give Reacher what he needs. I believe. Probably. Depending on factors.”
“New weapons?” Milly looked over at their discarded cannons. “What about those? I, for one, would enjoy not hitting things with my face ever again.”
He beamed at her. “The cannons can’t leave this room. Not them, and not the esoteric draining tech. But I should be able to make each of you a couple of solid plus-two or plus-three weapons now.”
Felodin made a rolling motion with his fingers. “Back that train up. Harvey, why can’t we bring any of these weapons you’ve made from here?”
Lucas answered. “Harvey’s designs are replicable. If anyone gets a hold of these weapons, it’ll change the world. And not for the better. It’ll be worse than recycled magic, since this tech can be used directly in combat. Folks will tear each other apart.”
“How is that different than anything else?” Felodin pointed at Lyssandra’s bow. “Her bow has more range and, technically, more ammunition than these cannons. We can kill bosses with these, Lucas. If we can, others can. We could even the playing field with this tech.”
“Even the playing field?” Lucas shook his head. “You know how the Transit Authority works. You know how the adventuring guilds work. The people in power, the ones with the resources to make these devices will control them. They can’t bring anything but tyranny.”
Harvey waved. “One thing to add.”
“What’s that?” Felodin said.
“They are mine.” The old man pointed at himself. “I designed them. If I could magically prevent anyone from making them without my express consent, I would. But for now, they belong to me. Entirely. And I say they aren’t leaving this place. What we can leave with is traditional magic items and equipment. Things that are relatively fair, in terms of adventuring.”
The air above them boiled as words appeared. This time, despite being within range of the draining towers, the letters did not waver.
Your idea is excellent, Father of Constructs. We lack the power to copyright your innovations in this contested space. Upon accessing your next Oasis, we will magically seal these designs to you. You and your party will be rewarded for their discretion, rather than punished for its opposite.
“The Oases have an opinion on the matter?” Felodin said, looking up. “I guess that pretty much settles things.”
Harvey beamed at him. “If I get my designs magically copywritten, guess what?”
“What?”
“I can make stuff just for us. You know, for the World Boss and such.”
That brightened Felodin’s mood considerably.
Lucas cleared his throat. “Harvey, I take it you’re suggesting that you need another wave to build things for us? Equipment we’ll need to fight the Continuum and get home safely?”
He bobbed his head. “Two waves, minimum. We have to get to the fifth. That quest is key, I’m certain of it.”
Lucas closed his eyes, trying to ignore his intuition. It told him to listen to Harvey. In Delves, his intuition always led to the most dangerous path, even if it was the most direct. “I can’t help but think we’ve been lucky every wave so far. There has to be a turning point, and it’s going to come soon.”
“I agree,” Lyssandra said. “If the DM kills us all, it can ensure Harvey’s innovations never leave this place.”
