Automata Prime

1.11: My first quest

I thought it was kind of strange that the Guild would let a newbie rank E take on a rank C quest right out of the gate, but I guess with the deposit it became a quick and easy money maker for them and weeded out the weaker Adventurers.  I was running at, what felt to me, the speed of a galloping horse.  By the time that most predators or beasts were aware of my presence, I was already past them, so the trip was rather uneventful.

The Adventurer tag included some extra functions in addition to tracking stats and identification.  It seemed to have a calculator and exchange rate function to help with finances and trading money across borders, a member’s guide to various taverns and inns across the country where you could get Guild member discounts, a simple compass, and even a basic distance tracker to your target quest start point.  I really needed to figure out some sort of mapping software. If I could combine the two functions via some sort of API—or Application Program Interface—calls, that would be really useful.  An API basically lets two different computer systems talk to each other so that you could pull in the data from one system into your own system.  It was possible that higher ranked Guild cards had better functions, but I would still be sure to investigate and copy the programs on it when I had the time.

According to the tracker function I was only a couple kilometers away from my quest start point, so I put away the tag and kept an eye out for my target.  I didn’t know anything about the beast I was supposed to be hunting other than it was attacking travelers on the road here.  Was it attacking single travelers, caravans, knights? Was it a small creature?  I had no idea, so I slowed down to a walk in hopes of making myself a good target.  If the creature was attacking people, then it was possible that its nest was nearby and it had eggs it was protecting... or feeding.  As I looked around, I started seeing signs of fire damage around.  Nothing forest fire level, but the occasional burned area or side of a tree could be seen.

I could see smoke from something burning up ahead, so I picked my pace back up and drew my swords as I raced onward.  I crested a hill and below me I could see a carriage that had been overturned and was on fire, the horses were panicking while still attached, and the sounds of coughing and crying could be heard from inside.  A man holding a flaming branch and a simple sword was trying to keep the centipede back and away from the flaming carriage.  The centipede was way bigger than I was expecting.  If I had to guess, it was at least three car lengths long and each segment was the size of a car tire with a little jet of fire shooting up out of each shoulder where a leg was attached.  Its carapace was a deep blood red with a golden underside that I could see as it reared up to snap at the defending man.

It lunged at the man like a viper with its mandibles open wide.  At my body speed, swords wouldn’t be as effective as blunt force to change the Centipede’s attack direction, so I threw my shoulder into it, sending it crashing into the ground.  I tumbled over it, coming up on my feet with my swords ready.  The beast shook its head and looked at the man then at me.  I hoped that I appeared to be the bigger threat.

“Get the people still in the carriage to safety!” I yelled.

The man nodded and threw down his branch and rushed off to help the people that were trapped inside.  I wanted to end this quickly so that I could see to the others as well rather than draw the fight out and test Carnivac’s abilities.  I cast shadowCloud around the creature’s eyes to blind it and slashed at it.  Its shell was as thick as steel and my swords didn’t make so much as a scratch.  Blinded, the centipede began thrashing around violently in an attempt to dispel the blindness.

I was trying to keep an eye on its head to make sure that those nasty chompers didn’t find me, but instead I got smashed from behind by the tail end of it.  The force of the blow wasn’t terrible, but it did send me face first into the dirt.  I pulled myself back up to my feet as the centipede flowed in my direction.  It brushed against me, spinning me around as I was knocked back to the ground.  Rather than attempt another attack, it looked like it was going to try and flee and was heading for the tree line.  Luckily for me, its long body continued to flow past me, giving me plenty of time to hop on.

I grabbed a spot between the segments and tried to avoid the little fire jets.  This thing was surprisingly fast, but it was still blind and kept crashing into trees and over things.  With my free sword-hand I slid the blade through the space between the segments and pushed down as hard as I could.  Suddenly the segments I was on stopped as my blade went through its body and into the ground like a big push pin.  The sudden brakes caused the segments to nearly rip apart where my blade had gone through, and the portion of its body ahead of me flung backward like a rubber band.

Its head smacked into me, knocking me loose and back onto the ground, though this time with one less sword.  It must have figured out where I was and smashed its forward body down on top of me.  I managed to get my free arm up and under it to hold it off, but its snapping mandibles were just inches from my face.  One of its dagger-like limbs had punctured my shoulder and I was grateful that it didn’t hit my main body; and that I didn’t feel pain like organic beings did.

The drool from its pincers was glowing like magma and I could feel intense heat coming from it.  When it pulled back to attempt another biting attack, I got my legs up under it to push it a little further up and create enough space for me to shove my remaining sword between the head segment and the rest of the body.  I hit something on the other end, so the tip was somewhere inside the head.  I pushed hard to the side, partially severing the head and rolling out from under it.

It continued thrashing around, but I managed to take the rest of the head off.  The rest of the body was still thrashing around and would likely take a while to fully realize it was dead, but with my other sword pinning it to the ground, it wasn’t going anywhere.  I noticed the man from before along with a Feline beastkin woman and two kitten children looking at me, so I made a show of appearing to be out of breath and resting my hands on my knees.

“Everybody okay?” I asked.

I walked over to them and motioned for the others to stay back as the centipede’s body flailed around.

“You must be an Adventurer from Urd, right? We sure are lucky that you came along when you did. I thought we were all going to be goners for sure!” the man said.  He appeared to be a slightly heavy-set human with sun-darkened skin.  The woman was a Catkin with patchy white and gray fur, and the children matched her.

“I’m Carnivac. I have a quest to deal with this thing,” I said, thumbing over my shoulder.  “There might be a nest nearby.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.  My name’s George, I was giving this family a ride to Trone when that thing jumped out at us.”

“Thank you, Mister Carnivac, my name is Lily and this is Joshua and Jacob.  I heard that there are employment opportunities at the Automata factories in Trone, so my kittens and I are moving there to find new work.”

I looked at her and the kittens for a bit; I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I took the coward’s way out and changed the subject.

“I need to look around and see if I can find that nest.”

“Yes! Of course! Would you like any help?” George asked.

“No,” I said, as I walked back to the centipede body and pulled free my other sword. 

“Right... Maybe I can salvage something from the carriage before we figure out what the next step is.”

The fires had already gone out for the most part and the horses had calmed down.  Hopefully they would be able to get by.  I followed the direction that the centipede had been heading and looked around.  I really wasn’t finding anything useful and didn’t know much of anything about tracking.  Once I was out of view of the family and George, I brought up my [Console] and switched to the [Area Network] tab.  With this, I was able to see signatures of anything that was running any magic in the area.  Thankfully magic beasts were running magic all the time, and I got a hit for a cluster of somethings that were using a fire-based signature.  Chances were good that this was a bunch of eggs or babies, but trying to determine where they were was pretty difficult, so I would need to keep checking the signal strength as I walked around.  Sort of like playing hotter-or-colder.

Eventually I found a hole at the base of a large tree.  This would be the entrance to the nest, but it was too small for Carnivac to fit so I’d have to go without him.  I opened up the hatch and hopped out but stayed connected via proxy.  I shifted my arm into cannon mode and double-checked my ammo; 5 explosive magma rounds, 10 ice shards, and 10 rock bullets.  I had upgraded a bit so that I could now swap out my ammo types and reload via my [Inventory].  I looked at Carnivac and readied his swords, then crawled into the mouth of the nest.

The tunnel went downwards for a while before opening into a larger rain trap chamber then back upwards a bit.  There was zero light at this point, however Automata eyes were able to see the full spectrum of light frequency and filter it as desired.  So I shifted from normal visible light to InfraRed.  This allowed me to see in a sort of Predator vision.  The heat given off by Flame Centipedes lit up the tunnels pretty well and I was easily able to find my way along.  Eventually I came to a larger chamber and found the entire floor covered in softball-sized eggs with another Flame Centipede coiled up on top of them.

The mama, I guessed, saw me and hissed, clacking its jaws.  It then reared its head back and spat out a stream of liquid fire at me.  I had to switch out to a different light spectrum to keep from being blinded by the heat as I dodged out of the way.  I fired a couple of ice shards at it, but they really didn’t do anything.  I don’t know what I had expected, in video games that usually seemed to be the counter, but they were mostly water by the time they got to their target.  I switched to the rock bullets and hit her a couple times in the side of the head.  I could see a small crack in her shell where I’d hit and tried to keep hitting the same spot, but she decided to come after me instead.

I scrambled as quickly as I could back out the way I’d come with her close on my heels.  As soon as I saw the fading daylight, I dove out of the tunnel and rolled out of the way.  Carnivac was ready and waiting, just above the opening.  As soon as the centipede’s head popped out of the tunnel, the swords scissored neatly, slicing it right off of the body.  The momentum of the body carried half of it out of the tunnel anyway, and it writhed around a bit before admitting defeat.  Via Carnivac, I gave myself a high five and put the big bug carcass into [Inventory]; I’d get the mana crystal from it later or ask Najii to do it.  With the body out of the way, I went back into the tunnels and found another chamber that seemed to be a food store that was full of previous travelers as well as local animals.  I put everything I found into my [Inventory] and would let the Guild determine who these people were so that their families could be contacted.  I then went into the egg chamber and carefully looked around.  It was really hot in that room, so I guessed that the temperature was a requirement to incubate the Flame Centipede eggs.  I had no idea if living things could go into my [Inventory] or not but decided these would be perfect test subjects.  I put one inside and then took it back out.  Via thermal, I could see the baby inside, still radiating heat, but it wasn’t moving around.  Maybe I had killed it? Maybe it was asleep, or just not moving? Well, I’d let the Guild worry about that, so I put the entire clutch into [Inventory].  According to my status screen, I now had three hundred and forty two of them in storage.

I had just stepped out of the tunnel when George came walking up and saw me outside of Carnivac.