Lifestealer: Cursed Healer [A LITRPG Isekai Survival]

Whatever magical intelligence drove the suits of armour, Symon found it lacking. Physically, they were strong. He was pretty sure they could punch through the solid stone walls, given a few minutes to work, but their attacks were predictable. Granted, their raw strength translated into explosive power, which made avoiding the attacks harder than it should have been. After all, just because you knew someone was about to shoot you didn't mean you could just dodge the bullet.

Part of him wanted to think of them as a futuristic AI, but that was being too generous. They were simple programs, executing certain actions when certain parameters were met. They reminded him of the revenant gharzoth he'd recently defeated: all brawns, no brain.

This realisation was nice and all, but it didn't do much to help him win. How was he supposed to beat them when he couldn't even hurt them? Entisse's claws succeeded where his weapons had failed, but even that was slow going. Still, she'd already managed to disable one of her opponent's arms, the entire limb locked stiffly at its side. She was winning, it would just take some time. Their plan for him to distract them would still work, it just wouldn't be a pleasant experience.

He needed to delay and give Entisse time to work, and if there was one thing he was good at, it was surviving things stronger than him.

He cracked his neck, feeling the slight stiffness down his spine from where he'd healed his wall-induced injury, then charged back in. The stupid thing was still struggling to pull its sword out of the ground where it had been impaled sword-in-the-stone style, giving Symon an idea for his next strategy.

The living armour prioritised wielding its sword, using its fists as weapons only when it had no other option. Currently, its simple thought process was locked onto retrieving its weapon. If Symon could get it stuck like this…

He wouldn't be able to pull the sword out and run away with it, not when the physically superior armour struggled to free it, but he could take his plan in the opposite direction. His feet pounded onto the stone floor as he rapidly accelerated forward, directly for his foe. Once he got close, he jumped into the air, flying feet first towards the still struggling knight like a missile.

It felt like he'd dropped kicked a brick wall, which wasn't far off from reality. Despite the protestations of his ankles, the hollow shell still went flying backwards, landing with a screeching crash reminiscent of cymbals. He noticed something strange as he thudded to the ground.

The main body of the armour had gone flying back the moment he'd struck it, but its arms had stayed attached to the blade for slightly longer than should have been possible. For the slightest moment, a tiny gap had appeared where the top of the arm met the torso before the limb flew back and rejoined the body.

He frowned in realisation as he pushed himself upright. When people wore armour, they needed the help of dozens of buckles, clasps, and knots to keep the metal in place. The living armour had none of this, it was pure metal and mana shaped in the form of a human. How did it stay in one piece, then? Naturally, the answer was magic, but it wasn't a perfect solution. It couldn't be a completely solid piece of metal, otherwise it could never move. Allowances had to be made.

Symon watched as the armour stiffly stood up. Now that he was paying attention, he saw the slight gaps between the pieces of its armour expand and contract as its joints articulated.

That was it, the weakness Symon could use to win, and he needed to do it fast. Closer to the start of the hallway, Entisse and the shieldbearing armour were still engaged in combat, and she was clearly slowing down. Try as she might, a day of eating as much as she could wasn't enough to completely reverse the effects of starvation, and she was beginning to show the signs of this.

She'd disabled one of its arms and left a mess of scratch marks across its breastplate, but it didn't seem like he would be able to rely on her to handle them both. It was down to him.

Right as the armour stood up, Symon once more impacted it feet first, sending it sprawling. Then, half crawling and half running, he scrambled back into the bedroom, making a beeline for the bed.

<Good idea, leave her behind and come back with your pals. That big axe could probably do good work,> Keelgrave said.

Even with the adrenaline flowing through his veins, Symon struggled to resist the urge to roll his eyes. He needed to be quick, and use the weakness he'd just learned immediately, before the armour reclaimed its sword.

He skidded to a stop next to his bed, where he yanked the sheets off and sprinted back to the hallway, the linens dangling behind him. The armour didn't react to his return, instead entirely focused on pulling the sword out. It didn't react when he walked right up behind it, nor did it react when he twisted the sheets together and wrapped them around its neck.

Feeling a bit like a certain bald assassin, Symon grabbed onto both ends of his makeshift garotte and pulled — though not with much force. He wasn't trying to choke the thing, or even to tie it up. He'd considered trying to blind it with them, but he saw nothing through the empty slits in its face plate. However it perceived the world, it was different to how Symon did.

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He slid the coiled sheets side to side, up and down, all across the armour's neck until it finally caught on something: a tiny seam between the bottom of the segmented neckplates and the top of the chestplate. It was then that he started pulling harder on his new weapon, trying to force open the gap as far as he could. As soon as the sheet started to rip, he shoved the tips of his fingers into the now slightly opened seam instead.

Now that the gap had been wedged open slightly, he had the leverage for a proper grip. The metal tried to reclose, crushing his fingers in the process, but it wasn't sharp enough to sever them.

He grunted at the pain while he slowly forced its helmet to tilt back.

It only barely worked, the gap widening by an almost imperceptible difference, but his fingers filled in this empty space as soon as it appeared, preventing it from closing. Even the minuscule increases added up, so its head was tilted back nearly ninety degrees in rapid order. However, the sword stabbed into the floor was slowly grinding its way out and was almost free.

It looked as if someone had been partially decapitated, their head hanging on by a thread. The large 'wound' in its neck would have been fatal to someone living, but was barely an inconvenience to the magic armour. Despite its faceplate being pointed directly up, it seemed to have no problem operating as normal, still glacially freeing its weapon.

His attack might not have done any direct damage, but now his opponent was vulnerable. There might not have been a squishy person under the armour, but there was something just as important: the core that powered its enchantments.

Now, he just had to find a way to get his sword or even his arm down the opening and destroy it without being stabbed.

Hmm, I guess a little stabbing is fine. My vessel is still mostly full… still, how the hell am I going to manage this?

The armour finally drew its sword fully from the ground and assumed the same wide stance it always used, apparently seeing no need to bother attempting to fix its head.

Think, Symon, think. It's too strong to wrestle with, but it'll keep trying to use the sword first. He glanced back at Entisse and her foe: she was managing well, but she really wasn't in any shape to be fighting yet. It was only a matter of time until she lost the upper hand. Hmm, maybe I could—

A tiny, high-pitched cheep-cheep was the only warning the sword-wielding armour had before a blur of blue feathers flew out of the bedroom and shot down its opened throat.

"Stitch!" Symon called out, equal parts impressed and nervous. He'd never had a pet before, but he was fond of the little bird. One wrong move, and it would get turned into paste. He could feel the bond he had with Stitch moving around slightly as he moved around inside the metal shell, the living armour's own body protecting Stitch from any reprisal.

The living armour seemed to hesitate for the first time, its simple intelligence telling it something was wrong, but not how to fix it.

Then, it turned off.

Symon blinked. "Huh." The armour had just collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Stitch flew back out the same way he went in before alighting on Symon's shoulder. He slowly turned his head to look at his undead minion, finding it casually preening at one of his forewings. "You're the best, little buddy," he said, giving a quick pet before returning his attention to Entisse.

Cheep.

<Hey, it couldn't have done it unless I told you there was a core!>

Brushing off the ghost with a practised hand, Symon rushed over to help Entisse finish off her opponent. She seemed tired but uninjured, although she'd given up on making any further attacks and was playing a defensive game. The armour's shield arm was hanging stiffly at its side, but the blade-wielding one was still working. As he ran up, he saw her barely avoid one of its brutally efficient swings, a sheen of sweat visible on her greyer than usual skin, even in the low lighting.

If this were a movie, he would have said something dramatic like "Need a hand?" before decapitating the armour with a single blow. As he was beginning to learn, magical fantasy worlds were a lot less glamorous when you were actually living in them.

He ended up wrestling it to the ground, where Entisse disabled its limbs one by one, scratching her claws into the joints until they stopped working. Then, when it was helpless on the ground, they prised open its faceplate, reached down into its metallic chest cavity, and ripped out the core.

Unlike all the spherical cores he'd seen in the past — which admittedly weren't many — this one was a mess of geometric shapes, with a convex side where it had been attached to the inside of the curved armour.

"You ever seen a core like this?" he asked aloud, directing his question to Entisse and Keelgrave.

She made a 'gimmie' motion with her long fingers, but seemed to lose interest in it after a little time tapping it and holding it up to her ear. "No, but it seems weak."

<Yeah, what she said. Sometimes, cores get cut and shaped for a specific purpose, but never like this. It almost looks grown.>

Symon took it back from Entisse after giving her a little vitality — she hadn't taken any real injuries, but had apparently been consuming her blood to strengthen herself. His Anatomy told him she was missing some, at least. It was a useful trick of hers, as they might have lacked the strength to wrestle the armour into submission without it, even with the numbers advantage.

"I get what you mean," he mentally projected, "it reminds me of bismuth or something like that.."

<I guess. I dunno rocks, kid. I'm an ocean guy.>

"Sure, I've just seen pictures. The internet, remember?"

<Right, right, with the moving paintings.>

Symon nodded and returned his attention to the loot. The core was interesting, but he didn't know if its strange form made it more or less valuable. Either way, it went into his pack, along with the one from the first one that Stitch had managed to deactivate. The core from that one was undamaged, but the bird had chewed through the tiny metal filigree that connected it to the armour.

Now that the cores had been removed, nothing was holding the separate armour pieces together. Both of them had been laid out in the hallway, with plenty of space between each part just in case they tried to reconnect. Everyone doubted they could do so without the cores, but it was better to be safe than sorry, especially if they were going to sleep nearby. Keelgrave attempted to analyse the enchantments, but he begrudgingly admitted that they were above him. Despite the leadership and sailing focus to his Ledger, he had been a Warrior at first, so such intricate magical technologies were well out of his wheelhouse.

Before they could waste any more time trying to figure out how they worked, they first had to find where they came from, and Symon was pretty sure he only needed one guess.