Magical Engineering [Progression Fantasy, LitRPG] (Book 3 Complete)

"Let's get the hell out of here!" I said loudly the moment we were back in the bus.

"That was quick, I mean, I heard the prophecy and all, but kind of figured you'd all stick around for more," Timon replied, squinting an eye at me.

"Dave is a little unnerved by the husk they use as a doorman, but I do share the sentiment. We need to head out. They're a little culty for my tastes," Pryte explained.

"Oh, don't blame you, Dave. I hate the husks, especially the older ones, once the rot starts to set in, disgusting. And yeah, I heard that prophecy, cult wouldn't surprise me. Let's get our asses back home." Timon reversed the bus, spinning his head entirely around as he looked out the rear window in the back.

The thing from before reappeared and seemed to be giving us signals toward the gate. It was possible we were judging these people a bit harder than needed, as they didn't actually seem to be trying to stop us, but if Corey was uncomfortable, I wasn't willing to take the chance. The bus came to a hard stop in front of the gate. The vortex that it had previously held was missing. Okay, maybe they were trying to stop us.

"Dammit, I take it this means they aren't letting us leave?" I asked in frustration. I very much did not want to be here right now.

"I'm not sure this is them," Pryte said, standing up from his seat and pointing at the thing giving us directions. It was hovering in front of the gate now, turning its head back and forth between us and the gate. It looked confused.

"Yeah, no one is coming out of the building to stop us either. Maybe see if they can turn it back on the other side?" Timon questioned, some of my earlier fears infecting his voice.

I pulled up my chat window, trying not to let the fact that Timon was worried set off any more of my anxiety.

After a minute with no reply, I let the others know I hadn't heard back yet and sent another message.

I closed the message window before explaining to Pryte and Timon the new issue. Neither of them looked thrilled at the development. The Gnome had started muttering a string of curses.

"I don't think anyone or thing went through from this side. I've been keeping an eye on the gate since we arrived in case we had to make a quick getaway. No one else even came through after us. So whatever is going on back there probably isn't from here," Timon replied.

"What if they attacked from another gate once we arrived?" I asked. I had no idea how possible that was.

"We have no way to confirm if they did or not at the moment. Right now we have to just get the gates back up and figure out what's going on after that." There was a rage in Pryte's words that didn't at all match what I was used to from him.

"Alright, I'll see what the Antarctic base can do," I replied as I pulled the message window up again.

"I don't know exactly what this means, but Apollyon said there was a brief outside mana flare from near the city. They can't get a hold of anyone, so while they work on ideas, any idea what we can do?" I asked, looking between Timon and Pryte.

Glorp

He and Trolke had been working on an idea for self-healing walls when the screams first broke out. He nodded to Trolke and raced from the outer edge of the city just in time to see several large flying transports landing near the city center. He had no idea how they had gotten so close without being noticed.

He raced toward their landing point, planning to fight whatever emerged. That was when he realized two of the craft had already landed, and the first jester came into view. Several people were already standing motionless in the street in front of it. Rabyn and Connie, among them.

He triggered his mana orb to help brake himself, before he reached them. The damn soul knots had finally come back to bite them in the ass. That meant Cecile and Elicec were out for potential help as well. He needed to find Elody, or any of the Olkerfins, really. No, he needed to find Maud. Someone had to tell Dave and let the Antarctic group know before it was too late.

Just as he turned, with his new plan in mind, a shimmering in the air caught him as two humanish figures on all fours appeared. With a sickening cracking sound, one of them forced itself to stand up straight, its hands still planted on the ground. As they started to speak, he catapulted himself over their heads, knowing the danger of their words. Glorp ran as fast as he could, toward the only person he knew for sure was safe at the moment.

"Trolke, it's Jesters, there must be dozens of them. I have no idea what to do! They already have Rabyn and Connie!" he screamed as he crashed into a tree, having gone too fast to stop in time.

"You're sure?" the giant asked, his voice cracking with the question.

"Two of them tried to stop me. I'm sure. I don't know what to do. We need to find Elody or Maud!" Glorp's voice was more desperation than assurance. He wasn't built for something like this. The others were supposed to be the ones in charge.

"Okay, okay, we just…" Trolke started to say as three more jesters walked out from behind a nearby tree. "Glorp, run now. I'll hold them as long as I can!" His voice lost the earlier fear as he charged forward, a giant hammer held above his head, ready to swing.

Not waiting to see the fight play out, Glorp did as he was told. Where he was running to, he had no idea yet. He ran into the woods, forcing himself to think. Elody was probably in the sublevels working on the archival retrieval. That was where she spent most of her free time. He could access that from any of the towers, the city hall, or a dozen other places likely to already attract the jesters.

"Dammit!" he yelled as he ran. He changed his course for the nearest tower. In theory, he was fast enough to get below ground before they could grab him. In the future, he was going to test himself on things like this. But first, he needed to get the city through this one.

Seven jesters were in front of the tower. He zigzagged through them before they could react. The force of his built-up energy turned his body into a battering ram as the wooden door exploded around him. His ribs hurt, but he couldn't stop to check the damage. Down the stairs he went, into the tunnels. His destination was now the spot under Dave's workshop.

Again, the jesters had beaten him to the place. Elody was standing over an unconscious Maud, fighting back-to-back with Yorela. Glorp joined the battle with a dozen rapid-fire punches to the head of the nearest jester. It turned and snapped at him with menacingly sharp teeth. All it caught was the dust of his passing.

"Glorp, I am incredibly glad to see you. How bad is it topside?" Elody yelled between narrations of her book. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps. She sounded exhausted.

"Bad, very bad, multiple ships, most of our fighters are already down!" he called back, hitting another jester in between each of his words.

"Get out of here and find a way to contact Dave. I couldn't get to Maud in time, and I won't be able to stand against a horde of them much longer!" Elody shrieked out these words as a horrifying image of a jester manifested. Its teeth snapped her silvery sword to pieces in one giant, menacing bite.

He felt the blood running down his chest now as he turned and fled again. This time coming up to the city hall itself. Just as he had expected, there were jesters everywhere, but he needed to get a good view of just how hopeless it actually was. He was going to have to find a way to Karlinovo. Could he run that far? He wasn't sure, especially with how bad his chest hurt.

"Glorp help!" It was his sister's voice. She was surrounded. There was something he couldn't bring himself to run from.

"Orglina duck!" he yelled as he grabbed one leg of a nearby table, triggered his gotta go faster ability, spinning and releasing the table at the jesters with all the strength and force he could muster.

Two of them exploded as the table crushed them against the wall. The others scattered long enough for Glorp to get to his youngest sibling, scoop her up, and leap through an already broken window. His chest screamed all the louder.

The extra burst of speed had tripled the pain running through his body. But he had to make it to the edge of the city. From there, he could slow down a bit, find a way to the Antarctic dungeon. Karlinovo or Apollyon could call Dave. He just had to keep going.

Something hit him from behind. Knocking him off his feet, accompanied by a loud snap from one of his legs. They were so close to the woods. He had to get back up. He spun his head, pushing the pain down, and saw the jesters approaching.

There were five of them. And each of their faces was covered in a grin that made his blood run cold. The laughter coming from their mouths was worming its way into his mind. He forced himself to his feet. He would die like a man. He would see his parents soon.

"Little Glorp, what can you possibly do? Why not just surrender? It will hurt much less this way. Most of your friends already have," one of their horribly sweet voices said.

"No!" he yelled, even as his leg threatened to give out under him.

The sound of heavy stamping hooves came from the woods behind him. A white bear charged past him on one side as something huge with antlers came on the other. It was the last thing he saw as the blood loss finally caught up to him, and he slumped to the ground, his vision going dark.

Orglina

"We have to get Glorp out of here! He's still breathing, but he's bleeding a lot!" the youngest of the Chlropians yelled at the primal mana beasts as they tore through the jesters.

"Yes, you are right. Get him on my back. And you get on the moose, we must flee and regroup. The city is lost for now!" Red replied, licking some of the dark yellowish blood off her paws. All five of the jesters lay dead around the animals.

The young girl managed to get her badly wounded brother onto the polar bear's back. She used her own hair ties to hold in place. She then hopped onto the lowered head of the moose, grabbing onto his antlers as both animals ran into the woods, not stopping until deeply within the forest, much further than she had ever gone before.

Orglina carefully closed as many of Glorp's wounds as she could. She didn't have a core of her own yet, so any healing magic was beyond her, but he was still breathing, and the bleeding was stopped. She took that as a good sign. The first she had had since this horrible mess had started.

The tears hit hard then. She had been holding them in for as long as she could, but everyone was gone again. All her new friends, and most of her family; this time too. All she had left was Glorp and the animals. How could she possibly do anything? Her big brother was so much stronger than her, and even he couldn't.

"Red, I don't know what to do!" she mumbled through the tears, lost in a deep terror of what she had seen.

"I don't either. But I will not allow anyone to suffer as my cubs did. We will find a way. Dave was not here when this happened. How can we find him? What about the paladins that visited? I liked them," the bear asked, trying her best to cuddle the sobbing girl.

Orglina sniffled several times before finally being able to get the words out. "Yes, Dave wasn't here. He, Pryte, and Timon had left. I remember seeing them. We need to warn them. They could help!"

Glorp moaned loudly as she said these words. He coughed several times, opening his eyes slightly just as he spoke in a whisper. "Antarctic base." Those were the only words he managed to get out before his eyes closed again.

The moose reared up as a small portal opened in front of the group. "Get behind me!" Red ordered. But before Orglina could move, a familiar dark green cloud floated out of it, humming a tune to himself.

He was a man nearly without peer. The day Melhelm VI entered the arena was a day nearly everyone will remember. Many thought they had seen the like of Sanquar again. It was an exaggeration, but not one without merit. Mel, as he preferred to be called, was one of the fiercest contenders the Arena had ever seen.

On the very first floor, Melhelm of the Halberd was born. He entered as a free agent. He was one of the last Cloudforms to fight in the Arena, and with how long their forests had been gone, no one expected he would be able to put on the performance he did. He finished the first floor as the solo champion, taking down every single other competitor. Melhelm of the Halberd is the reason for the rule changes to that floor.

By the time he was ready for the second floor, he had only picked up three more people to his squad. It didn't matter. The floor was not a challenge for him. In fact, nothing seemed capable of challenging him until the fiftieth floor. This is where the comparisons to Sanquar to anyone who had studied the man should have become obvious in their flawed examination. While Mel did complete the floor, he struggled.

Later, we learned much of his struggle had come from a letter he received before the match, and while the details of that letter have still never been revealed, whatever it said changed the fighter forever. He resigned as an Arena fighter immediately. And while he would one day return to his roots, it wasn't as a contender. It was a manager.

Whatever Melhelm of the Halberd had discovered had changed him. He was angrier. But that anger helped mold his new squads into their own legends. Mel's fame in Arena only grew with the new phase of his life. Sadly, the years finally caught up to the man, and his retirement is much more permanent this time around.

Jimbob's Manual for Arena Managers Volume 7