Chapter 25 - 24 — The Gold Burrow II
She charged, and she was faster than a thing that size has any right to be.
Androphagos does not draw me a map. It tells me what is about to come at me, and from which direction.
So every time one of those legs committed to a strike, the pull arrived at the back of my skull before the leg did, pointing along the line it was going to travel, even when her own bulk hid the limb from my eyes.
Aten put fire under my heels and took me out of the mandible line in directions my legs alone could not have managed.
My first real punch went into the joint of her front left leg, and the fire went into it with the fist.
> **[Myrmekes Matriarch — Level 18]**
>
> **[HP: 2,400/2,400 → 2,196/2,400.]**
The joint blackened. It did not break.
Then she reared and sprayed acid in a wide arc across the whole chamber, and I had to break off and go backward, which put me out of position and away from the leg I had just spent mana on.
She drove both forelegs into the ground and went under.
The floor swallowed her, and the whole chamber shook, and then I had nothing.
No shape moving under the soil, and no sense of which direction she was travelling. Androphagos has never worked like that.
It answers one question only, and it answers it late.
So I waited for it to answer that one.
It came about six seconds later, and it came hard, a pull that did not point at anything in front of me or behind me.
It pointed straight down, through the soles of my boots.
I threw myself sideways with a burst off one heel, and half a second after that she came up through the floor where I had been standing, close enough that the soil she displaced went over my back.
Then I went up her.
I got onto the plating of her back while she was still coming out of the floor, ran the length of her, and dropped onto the damaged joint with fire in both fists.
Three times. The fourth one went through.
> **[Myrmekes Matriarch — Level 18]**
>
> **[HP: 2,196/2,400 → 1,608/2,400.]**
The leg folded under her and she screamed through her spiracles, a sound like air being forced through wet gravel, and then she threw her whole body sideways and I went off her back into a support pillar.
The pillar cracked. My ribs did something similar.
> **[Health: 310/310 → 214/310.]**
And the impact went into the egg cavities beside it.
Several ruptured, and what came out of them was already moving, pale and wet and about the size of a cat, and there were more of them coming out of the ones further along.
I burned them.
A wide low sweep of fire across the floor, which cost me more mana than anything else in the fight so far, and it was still the right call, because letting twenty of those get behind me would have ended this.
> **[Mana: 96/200.]**
But it took my attention off her for two seconds, and she used both of them.
Her mandibles closed on my right forearm.
The gauntlet held.
That is the entire reason I still have the arm, because the fitted plating did not shift under the edge the way the armoury pair would have, and the blade of her jaw bit into metal instead of bone.
I could feel it beginning to give.
So I stopped trying to pull out and pushed Aten through the trapped fist instead, all of it, straight up into her open mouth.
Fire went off inside her head.
She let go, and the base of her left mandible came away scorched and cracked at the joint.
> **[Myrmekes Matriarch — Level 18]**
>
> **[HP: 1,608/2,400 → 1,042/2,400.]**
>
> **[Androphagos Duration: 00:11.]**
Eleven seconds.
I used them to get her lined up on the cracked pillar.
She came after me with her one good foreleg raised to bring down on my skull, and the warning gave me the line of the strike before she threw it, so I let her commit and then I was not there any more.
The leg went through the pillar.
The roof above her came down in one slab and then in pieces, and a few tons of hardened soil and stone landed across her abdomen and buried the back half of her where she stood.
> **[Movement severely restricted.]**
>
> **[Androphagos ended.]**
>
> **[Cooldown initiated: 05:00.]**
She was still alive and still digging, and I did not have five minutes.
I went for the cracked mandible.
Both gauntlets around it, boot braced against her head plate, and then I fired Aten backward out of my heels and used the thrust to tear the whole thing out of her face.
It came free with a sound I am not going to describe.
Underneath where it had been anchored, the plating did not close over properly. There was a gap there, wet and unarmoured, going somewhere important.
I put everything I had left into the right gauntlet.
> **[Mana: 96/200 → 38/200.]**
Then I drove that fist into the gap, all the way to the wrist, and let the fire go inside her head.
Her remaining legs went out from under her all at once.
> **[Myrmekes Matriarch — Level 18]**
>
> **[HP: 1,042/2,400 → 0/2,400.]**
>
> **[Yellow Gate Boss defeated: Myrmekes Matriarch.]**
>
> **[Experience acquired: 360.]**
> **[Level increased: 6 → 7.]**
>
> **[All attributes increased by 1.]**
>
> **[Maximum Health: 310 → 320.]**
>
> **[Maximum Mana: 200 → 210.]**
>
> **[Three Attribute Points acquired.]**
>
> **[EXP: 140/700.]**
> **[Yellow Gate cleared.]**
---
I sat down on the rubble for a while, because my ribs had opinions about standing.
Six unassigned points now, and still no intention of spending them in this room.
The Matriarch’s stone was buried deep, and it took me a long time with the extraction tools to reach it, working around plating that was still hot where I had burned through.
> **[Myrmekes Matriarch Mana Stone]**
>
> **[Rank: Yellow]**
>
> **[A concentrated mana stone formed inside the ruler of a Myrmekes colony. Its high purity makes it valuable as an energy source and as a core material for enchanted equipment.]**
It went into the bag with the rest.
The mound she had been standing on collapsed inward once her weight came off it, and something in the loose soil caught my light.
A short sword, dark gold, with a blade built out of overlapping segments that looked exactly like the carapace it had been made from.
> **[Gilded Fang]**
>
> **[Type: Short Sword]**
>
> **[Grade: Rare]**
>
> **[A weapon formed from the hardened carapace of a Myrmekes Matriarch. Channelling mana through the grip locks the segmented blade together, increasing its hardness and cutting power until the mana supply is withdrawn.]**
I turned it over once and put it in the bag.
I fight with my hands. A short sword does nothing for me that a gauntlet does not do better, and I was not going to start carrying a blade because the System put a Rare tag on it.
The Bureau could appraise it. Then I would decide whether to sell it or keep it in a case, and either answer was fine.
Not every good thing you find has to become part of you.
---
The exit had formed near the tunnel mouth by the time I got back up there.
I came out into the PSB enclosure with acid holes through one shoulder plate, dried Myrmekes fluid over both gauntlets, and gold dust in every seam of my armour.
The official at the desk looked past me at the barrier.
He held it for a second, waiting for the rest of the party, and then remembered there had never been one and brought his eyes back to me.
I took the Matriarch’s stone out of the bag and put it on the inspection table.
He picked it up with both hands, looked at the grade reading, and started calling people over.
My licence updated while they were still crowding around the table.
> **[PLAYER LICENCE]**
>
> **Registered Clears:** 2 (Orange, Yellow)
That was all of it. No title, no solo commendation, no special notation, and nothing anywhere on the card about the Tower.
The Bureau does not care how many people walked in with you. It cares that a Yellow Gate went in as active and came out as cleared, and that is one line on a record.
While they were arguing over the purity reading, I went out past the barrier and looked north.
The Tower stood over the city the way it has stood over every city since before I was born, going up past where the eye stops following it.
Two clears. Level seven. Two Abilities I can use while I am alive and one that only works after I stop being.
Not yet.
But soon.