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| Gloria Vadis Healing Axe-Staff - External Reference Image Source | reference image from this external source |
Andreas chooses to defend himself and
concentrate on finding the way across. Using his long axe-healing staff Gloria Vadis, he is still not quick or
strong enough to put any damage on the robotic scorpions and dragonflies.
The fat priest swings his staff once, horizontally
and hits a dragonfly when it swoops down to sting him, sending it crashing on a
platform, broken in pieces. Andreas moves his elbow from the front of his belly
to his side, saying, ‘Yesss!!!’ spiritedly but silently, and immediately
readies himself for another attack. Suddenly he hears someone shouts,
‘I’ve made it! I’m at the other side!’
Andreas looks at the talker just ahead of
him. It’s a weremouse (mouse-man, that is) hunter standing on the other side of
the pool to the exit. Andreas thinks, I’m
in the right path. I’ll let him stay there and I’ll tell Robert and the others…
‘GYAAAAHHH… HHKKK!!!’
The weremouse screams. It looks like
something hit him on the back, and he is struggling to get it off. But it’s too
late. He falls to the front, and lies spread-eagled there – dead. A mechanical
scorpion stands on his back, its sting went deep into its victim’s body, and it
stays there, as though the scorpion is injecting something.
The injection process is finished when
Andreas sees a strange, silvery liquid comes out from the dead weremouse’s
eyes, nostrils, ears and mouth.
It’s
quicksilver! The Galatea’s Force Field cannot protect from inside destruction!
These Parthenian scientists really have thought of everything!
The mechanical scorpion takes out its sting
from the dead weremouse, and looks at Andreas who arrives at the pool side too.
A red light glares on its tiny eyes and the scorpion attacks Andreas with great
speed. Andreas tries to block its attack by swinging his healing staff, and the
scorpion grabs the staff and holds it with one of its pincers, and quickly
attacks Andreas with the other pincer.
When the pincer is already opening on the fat
priest and is a split-second away from cutting his neck off, suddenly the
pincer drops. Andreas also falls because the other pincer holding his staff
also falls and dragging him down.
By
Vadis, what happened…
 | ||||
| The Great Axe Il Khatl J'nadh - Reference from External Source |
Andreas looks up, and he sees Dar’gum
there, holding his legendary great axe. It seems that the axe has split the
robotic scorpion in two, right on the slot between its head and body – a
convincing display of why the axe became legend. Il Khatl J’nadh was made from adamantium, a kind of metal extracted
in liquid form from the shells of the hyper-rare 1,000-year old giant adaman
turtles (without killing them or breaking their shells, of course).
It can be made into weapons of extraordinary
sharpness – the perfect rival for mythril – and it can cut through any kind of
metal except itself, mythril and the rarest metal of all, eternium. In the
continent of Aurelia, giant adaman turtles only live on the cold northern Adaman Sea
and shores of Bjordan and Val’shka.
‘Thank you, Dar’gum,’ says Andreas.
Dargum lifts his axe, rests it on his
shoulder and walks out, saying with a calm, deep voice, ‘The same with the
protection field. We’re even now.’
Andreas can’t help but smiles and follows
Dar’gum to a safer ground. He takes out a torch, lights it and waves it around
to inform Robert and the others the right path across. Dar’gum stands guard
near him to anticipate any more attacks from the security probes.
Soon hereafter, Iris and Carolyn arrive,
followed by Robert and Dar’gum’s two companions, and finally all other
surviving hunters too. They have wiped out the security probes. Fourteen out of
thirty-seven in Robert’s group fell victim to the probes, no matter how tough
the Galatea Protection Field is. Some got knocked over and drowned in the
boiling hot water, some got too many wounds or got wounds on fatal points on
their bodies, the same way of death as the poor weremouse, or a few other ways.
Robert kisses his ring as the final salute
for his fallen comrades, looks at the way ahead and shouts, ‘My friends! The
exit is just ahead! Let’s make a rush for it, there’s no time to lose!’
The hunters can’t afford another wave of
security probes attack, so they rush to the exit, through an open doorway. Of
course the champions are the last ones to get out of the engine room, and
Carolyn is having funny thoughts when she sees a glimpse of the room ahead.
It seems
as though hell is in the next room.
Navigation: (code 300/354 may08 rev)
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