The Hundred Reigns 275: King of Spiders (17)

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He shredded everything in his path with his bare hands.

One advantage of his newfound speed and agility was that he could afford to put on items that boosted his other stats. The Mechanical Tower’s walls were built to withstand great destruction, but his new Spell for Strength ring gave him the might to rival the greatest of dragons. His claws shredded everything in his path as if it were paper, and not a single electrified door stopped his advance. His allies struggled to keep up with him. 

Odette’s Pay-to-Win boosted your stats! Odette’s Hedge Fund shall halve the damage you take, with the other half of the amount being subtracted from her purse!

He eventually pulverized a path into some kind of mechanical antechamber darkened by the power outage, where they were immediately greeted by a volley of elemental beams. Three dog-shaped golems with manalith cannons on their backs fired at them, with Xenophon and Simon moving to the front to shield their allies. The shots all but bounced off their armor. 

Weak Fire, Frost, and Lightning damage!

“Weaklings,” Simon said as he crossed the gap between the golems and him in a flash before smashing two of them into scrap, while Xenophon tore apart the third. He swiftly coordinated with his allies across the tower. “Elsa, Renal, what’s the situation?” 

“They deployed a huge golem against us,” Renal warned him through telepathy. “Dragon-sized. Our mummy is taking care of it.”

“They’re deploying a lot of bots to keep us from rising further,” Elsa added. “My Treasure-Sense tells me we’re close.”

“Try to slip past their blockade or distract them. We’ll take a shortcut.” Simon glanced at Bert, who had ripped off a metal panel keeping some manalith cables hidden. “So?”

“The powerlines should go to our left,” Bert replied through telepathy, to ensure the tower’s systems couldn’t pick up on their conversation. “The structure is reinforced there. It could withstand a manalith cannon volley.” 

“Is it heatproof?” 

Bert shifted uneasily. “I don’t think so?”

“Then move out of my way.” Simon activated Hellfire Gaze, and it pleased him to see that the eye in the middle of his chest glowed with furious flames as well. “My lidless glare shall incinerate all in its way.”

His two eyes and the third on his chest unleashed streams of abyssal flames that melted a hole in the structure. The shielding there was indeed much thicker than anywhere else, which suggested they were approaching their prize. 

“I hear reinforcements coming our way,” Xenophon warned them, his weapons pointed at the path of destruction they had left in their wake. “Lots of them, not all metal.”

Simon took it as a sign they were indeed close and ordered him to cover their rear while he entered the tunnel he had just created, using his wings to protect Odette and Bert from molten metal rain. It didn’t take long for him to hear the clash of Xenophon’s blades alongside bestial snarls and grinding gears. 

His molten tunnel opened up into a forest of brains.

Simon wasn’t sure how else to describe whatever… whatever biomechanical hell they had crawled into. It resembled a vast, spherical cathedral that likely occupied a large chunk of the floor, with black metal walls kept alight by web-like manalith strands fizzling from an uneven flow of mana. It was bone-chillingly cold in here, so much that their breaths turned to mist. 

The ceiling arched over a hundred feet overhead, with a massive manalith pillar dominating the center of the room. A flow of phantom equations, magical numbers, and runes floated inside it in a stream too complex for a human mind to fully comprehend. Dense barriers similar to those protecting the Earth Megalith shielded it from harm.

However, this structure’s eerie majesty paled compared to the horror of seeing over fifty human brains kept in glass jars all across the room. Each of them floated in a tank of bubbling blue fluid and chemicals, with their spines connected by wires to biomechanical pedestals. Sparks jolted from their neurons and coursed through machines.  

“What is this abomination?” Odette said, her hand covering her mouth in horror. The stench of chemicals was almost as nauseating as the sight. 

“The missing inventors, I would wager,” Simon guessed, the echo of explosions and battle reached through thick, reinforced doors. His allies were fighting heavy resistance through the ‘main’ entrances. “Maybe some of Jym Coil’s siblings are in the mix, too.”

However, none of that mattered in the face of the small, spherical crystal embedded in the manalith pillar. The object of their quest pulsated inside this prison, waiting for the power to return and breathe life into it once more.

The Crafter Crestone was within reach.

However, Simon’s heightened Perception immediately picked up on the noise of grinding gears coming from the leftmost corner of this mechanical cathedral, and he swiftly grabbed his allies to fly to the side. A fiery beam hit the spot where they stood a moment ago, with Simon swiftly taking cover behind one of the brain jars. 

Hidden panels in the walls opened up to reveal eight mechanical, manalith cannon-turrets in each corner of the cathedral. Two more unleashed additional guardians: a lithe, four-armed mechanical golem plated with an unknown greenish material and with mounted mana cannons on its shoulders; and a monstrous, quicksilver ooze whose surface shifted into multiple faces. Simon immediately recognized the latter as a mutagenic ichor, one of the worst kinds of slimes.

However, the true threat was all too human. 

“Step away from my boy!” a familiar, partly mechanized voice called out from the ceiling. Simon looked up to see the outline of a steely arachnid crawling there. “You brutal swines!” 

The machine resembled the same horrific contraption in which the tower’s Godmind had put Jym Coil in at the end of Simon’s previous reign, though bigger and better armored. The device resembled an enormous mechanical spider with a cylindrical tank in its midst, where a limbless torso floated bound by wires and other contraptions.

However, the figure inside was much older and bloated than Jym Coil; an old man with an abnormally large brain partly replaced with gears, glass eyes closer to pictobox lenses than anything organic, and a creasy visage Simon had seen worn by puppets in his previous reign. 

Carlo of Muse endured in this world, though ‘living’ might not have been the best term to describe his current state. 

“Hello, Father,” Bert said with glee upon seeing him, his two puppet-golems readying their weapons. “Your prodigal son has returned.”

“You are no son of mine, Project 731,” the strange creature replied dismissively, its mechanical chassis coursing with electricity and blasting the group with thunderbolts.

Simon quickly put on a Ring of Cursed Lightning and then flew in the way of the attack, his ring shielding him from the damage. He took flight towards the ceiling while leaving his groundbound allies to deal with the reinforcements. Bert’s golems immediately engaged the security automaton, while Odette used her Gold Rush Perk to summon a flood of precious metals to swallow the ichor ooze. 

No sooner did Simon move than the turrets fired at him from multiple directions. He deftly dodged the beams thanks to his Haste buff and then countered with a Darkflare spell. His spell began to engulf Carlo of Muse in darkness, only for his miasma to fizzle out. The very same anti-magic technology the Crafter had outfitted its creations with also shielded its maker. 

Simon swiftly switched strategies by summoning Deathmace to his hand, but the antimagic field didn’t seem to cancel out Carlo’s own abilities. His oversized brain soon unleashed a pulse of telekinetic power that struck Simon head-on, wrenching his morning star out of his hand and flung it hundreds of feet across the room. 

Medium Mind damage!

Simon grunted in annoyance and quickly adjusted by summoning a sheathed sword and crossing the distance between them in an instant with Quickdraw. He slashed the vat holding Carlo within, only for his blade to find itself stopped by a barrier. The strike caused the barrier to fizzle and shine on impact, yet failed to penetrate it. 

“Predictable,” Carlo commented as two of its claws lunged at Simon with surprising speed. Simon easily dodged them, only for a hail of turret beams to strike at him. Seven of them missed, while the eighth grazed his wing. He shrugged off the minor fire damage and countered with another slash. 

“Magic Eraser.”

The strike annihilated Carlo’s barrier and smashed into his vat, cracking it. The blow cast the machine onto the ground and caused it to crash into some brain jars on its way down. Chemicals and brain matter were spilled all over the floor. The spider quickly recovered its footing.

Bert’s golems lay destroyed on the ground, but the Puppeteer had taken over the green one in response with his strings. The controlled machine turned its cannons towards its creator and opened fire. 

Mana bursts struck the reinforced vat and smashed through its glass, causing the liquid within to spill out. Carlo raised two mechanical arms to shield his vulnerable body, while panels on the sides of its chassis opened up to fire metal darts at his creations. Bert and his creator swiftly engaged in a long-distance duel. 

“Mine!” Bert snarled at both his old maker and new master. “Mine!”

Meanwhile, Odette had summoned Auric Knights—a trio of pricey golden automatons a high-level Merchant could call upon in return for money—to shield her from the ooze. The three constructs hacked at the ichor with golden sabers wreathed in flames, but the creature swiftly reformed around each blow and slammed its attackers with its acidic surface. 

With all defenders occupied, Simon flew towards the manalith pillar and smashed its first barrier layer with Magic Eraser. The blow caused it to fizzle out, and while turrets continued to bombard him in an attempt to stop him, Simon swiftly negated their damage by putting on a Ring of Cursed Flame and renewed his assault. 

“No!” Carlo shouted in horror, his mechanical voice filled with panic. “Ego Protocol!” 

His words rang into the cathedral, and the brains screamed. 

A jolt of lightning coursed through them as a desperate mechanism activated. The brains resonated together like a vast interconnected web of neurons, a psychic vibration spreading through their ranks and increasing in power until it became overwhelming. 

Odette was the first to be hit, her wail of agony echoing into the halls as blood poured down her nose, ears, and eyes. The pulse then struck Simon and fried his nerves from within. A torrent of screams and a maelstrom of violent thoughts struck him head on with violent force. A droning noise rang inside his head, raw like a storm of blades upon naked skin. 

Massive Mind damage! Madness negated by Indomitable Crown!

Indomitable Crown shielded him from mind-affecting effects, but it didn’t protect his neurons from boiling inside his skull. Perhaps that was why Bert remained mostly unaffected and continued to have his captive golem fire at his creator until it blasted off one of its mechanical arms. 

Fortunately for Simon, it wasn’t the first psychic attack he had suffered in his career, and he swiftly replaced his Ring of Cursed Flame with his Amulet of Soul-Turning. This particular device had been crafted to redirect mental and spiritual attacks conveyed through his Brands straight at the sender, but it worked on this assault all the same. His item reflected the pulse back to its source. 

The attack rippled back to its senders and melted the brains inside their jars. The liquid holding them boiled and destroyed their contents, causing malfunctions across the entire cathedral. 

However, he felt Odette’s death ripple through his Devil Brands as the ichor ooze exploited her comatose state to engulf her whole and cleanse the flesh of her bones. Her Auric Knights collapsed into gold powder with their contract cancelled, and Xenophon would no doubt suffer the same fate.

Worse, power coursed through the room’s manalith leylines and breathed life into its machinery again. The manalith pillar lit up, and the equations swirled into a holographic shape; that of an inhuman being akin to an eye with a gear crown. 

The Crafter had recovered from the power outage. 

Simon immediately attempted to blast the pillar with Darkflare, but the machine used its Instant Crafting to instantly repair the forcefields shielding it from harm. The turrets struck him again, but this time their beams were light rather than plasma fire.

Resisted Light damage!

Becoming a Wicked Angel did have certain elemental benefits. 

“Threat identified: archfiend, subversive experiment…” The Crafter’s otherworldly visage turned its baleful eye upon him. “Assuming direct control.”

Power coursed from the pillar, traveled through the floor, and then moved into Bert. The Puppeteer shook in place as the Crafter tried to take him over like it did with other constructs. 

Simon powered through and attempted to undo the forcefield with Magic Eraser again, but Carlo of Muse used another telekinetic push to shatter his blade. The ichor ooze lunged at him from below, and though he annihilated it with Darkflare before it came anywhere close, it gave Carlo of Muse an opening to strike at him with his metal darts. 

“You’ve ruined so much brainpower,” Carlo rasped from inside his chassis, his darts flying at Simon with telekinetic power. “So many ideas, wasted… you monster.”

“Some of your children were in there!” Simon snarled back at him with pure disgust as he moved around the pillar. “I sensed their presence in the maelstrom of thoughts! How could you do this to them?!”

“They’re not my children! I have only one boy!” 

While Simon dodged most projectiles with his heightened agility, one shredded his left wing enough to leave a hole in it. 

Medium Metal damage! 

“Don’t you see how beautiful it is?” Carlo asked with delusional reverence. “A son of my own mind, a silicone soul born of my mind, untainted by the chaos of life and natural selection… a being of intellect that will serve our people without deviation… Muse’s perfect servant!” 

A glorified Dungeon so bereft of creativity that it must steal it from humans! Simon switched tactics and flew around the cathedral to avoid the beams, retaliating with Chaos Wave to destroy turrets one after another. I have to force another opening! 

“No… want to kill Father, not him…” he heard Bert rage through telepathy, his loathing for his creator granting him the strength to fight back the Godmind. “Must… ah!”

“Destroy your creator!” Simon commanded Bert through their telepathic connection and called upon the Brand of Pride. His orders cut through the mental noise like a sword through butter. “Obey!” 

His Devil Brand flared on Bert’s artificial body, the Overlord’s will seizing control of its wood and porcelain parts along with its soul. Simon’s control overpowered the Crafter’s and gave Bert the nudge he needed to focus back on his patricidal ambitions. His enthralled golem lunged at Carlo with renewed vigor, quicker than the machine’s damaged appendages could react. The automaton punched the old man with its four arms, pulverizing what remained of his ribs and ripping wires out of his brain. The spidermech immediately began to thrash around in response. 

“Protect the creator!” the Crafter ordered. Although its voice carried no emotion nor hint of filial affection, half the turrets immediately targeted Bert and his thrall golem rather than Simon himself, shooting the former in the back and blasting the latter to pieces. “Instant Cra—”

The pillar shut down all of a sudden.

Its core went dark, its visage and the equations forming it vanishing into the ether. The forcefields fizzled out, and all remaining turrets became inactive. The entire cathedral appeared to grow quiet, its would-be god uncabled. 

“Sorry.” Elsa smugly stepped out of the pillar’s shadow, the Crafter Crestone in her gloved hand. “Was that important?”

Simon had found the right partner. 

“No…” Carlo of Muse crawled helplessly on the ground. His mouth appeared to work well enough in his current state to form words, but he couldn’t move his bleeding carcass without the wires connecting him to his machinery. “Put it back…. put it bac—”

Blade-fingers struck at him from behind, shredding his organs and spilling his chemically-modified bile onto the floor.

“Yes, yes… what a wonderful feeling, Father’s blood on my claws!” Bert rejoiced as he tore his creator’s remains apart and flayed off his ripped skin. “I will wear you… I will be you…”

I should have killed him and harvested his soul myself, Simon thought as he went to check on Odette’s bones, which he collected into his Inventory alongside her Crestone and the many treasures that had dropped from her own private collection upon death. He would offer her a proper burial. A Merchant for a Crafter and his workshop. Is that an even trade?

Unfortunately, Simon’s hopes of exploiting the Crafter’s technology for himself soured when a tremor shook the building. The manalith leylines coursing through the cathedral began to flare up with red light, and the heat began to increase all of a sudden. Something had gone wrong with the Mechanical Tower’s systems; likely intentionally. 

“A self-destruct sequence,” Simon grumbled in annoyance as he rejoined his lover. “And the barrier is still up. The system must have triggered the moment you removed the Crafter Crestone from its pillar.”

“Let’s leave before this place turns into our grave,” Elsa decided, as she grabbed a teleportation gem. Her next words, however, came in the form of a telepathic message. “Thank you for everything, love. It was a pleasure.”

Simon tensed up. “What do you mea—”

Elsa teleported away with her treasure, leaving Simon alone with Bert.

The sheer casualness of the betrayal left Simon stunned for a second, and then his heart quickened with burning rage. His blood boiled in his veins, and he swore revenge on that treacherous, two-faced whore for all his remaining reigns. 

“That little…” Simon hissed in rage and opened his Inventory to use his backup plan. Thank the Light he never fully trusted her. “I swear when I catch her, I’m going to tear her to pie—”

A flash of light illuminated the room, and a familiar face showed up again. 

“Relax, Simon, I was messing with you,” Elsa said with a smirk, before tossing her lover the Crafter Crestone. She was proud of her little joke. “Now that I’ve confirmed no timebox can stop us, let’s pick up the others and make our getaway. Hurry, or I’m stranding you for real.”

Simon was going to strangle her, in more ways than one.

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