NOVEL NEXT 2.37 Boiler of the Beast
Phanya grunted with annoyance as she kicked off the wall for another swipe. The thing kept dodging away at the last instant, and Phanya was almost certain there was a physical thing in the shadows, except that it could move on the walls and ceiling like an animal did on the ground. She kept hopping around to throw punches at half strength and a few times Phanya connected with a hard mass in the darkest core of the shadows, but it bounced off her metal gloves and Phanya was definitely certain that the shadows somehow laughed at her. The thing was clever, and after mounting frustration it managed to feint Phanya by throwing a lob of shadow, only to lunge at her the instant after she dodged its projectile.
Needle teeth dug into Phanya's arm and she cried out, but instead of thrashing her the shadow monster instantly let go with its own yelp of pain. Because she yelled? On second thought Phanya could feel the teeth marks stinging like frostburn, an uncomfortable sensory contrast to the wet sauna heat filling the generator room, but it only stung her "normal" skin. The glowing turquoise lines of her numan markings didn't hurt at all. When Phanya looked up she saw a wide snout snarling at her just on the edge of her light's range, right as the dark shadow mass covered it once again. Phanya cranked her Elven Glamour to max and dropped all restrictions, catching the monster by surprise when her bioluminescence suddenly doubled its reach.
Her light boiled away the shadow, revealing the monster beneath as it yowled in pain. It looked like an emaciated gremlin, little more than skin stretched thin over jagged bones, and Phanya gaped as it continuously generated more shadowy mass from any part of its body that her light wasn't directly touching. The monster lunged away from Phanya, searching for any pipe or shelf it could duck behind for precious shade, and Phanya gave chase with renewed vigor. But even without its shadow shell the monster beneath was still supernaturally strong, and Phanya couldn't put enough power behind her midair punches to knock it loose.
"Stand still, you bastard!" Phanya shouted, but unlike Ricky her words couldn't stun the monster in place. She looked down at her gloves, their metal dulled in comparison to her glowing arms, and Phanya groaned. Another few seconds spent chasing the monster let her study its movement patterns, and once she worked out a tactical plan Phanya leapt off a desk in a complicated twist. Her own feint caught the monster in a bear hug that finally knocked it off the ceiling, and as they fell Phanya pivoted into a choke hold with her glowing arms wrapped around its scrawny neck.
Phanya wasn't sure what she hated more — the countless scratches from the monster's frantic scrabbling, or the oily fluid of its shadow flesh boiling away as quickly as it could generate. But it couldn't break free, and Phanya squeezed with all her might until she felt a sickening pop and the monster burst into formless wisps.
[Shade Slinger lvl 7 defeated! +10 XP for participation]
Phanya took a second to catch her breath, struggling to gulp down the heavy air. When did it get so steamy? By now her light only glared in the thick steam and hindered more than helped her see, so Phanya dropped the glamour just in time to watch Ricky in action.
Scrapped remains of sealed pipes littered the floor, some even twisted into knots, and Ricky stood triumphantly over them as he twisted the key on his gizmo. The ball of prismatic light popped into existence at the end, Ricky braced himself behind his shield, and Phanya felt a faint pulse. Too faint for her to put any form to the energy, like a whisper from the next room over, but for the briefest moment Ricky's shield looked more real than reality. Just like the magical loot the mall dungeon had generated for her. Then it returned to normal and he charged forward in a blur, faster than Phanya had ever seen him run before, and Ricky struck the boiler with his gizmo.
The resulting impact banged loud as a gunshot in the cramped room and Phanya flinched away on reflex. By the time she looked up Ricky had landed on his backside just a few paces away from her and Phanya rushed over to help, but he looked mostly unharmed. Just shaken, and still transfixed on the boiler.
"Well that's a first," Ricky said to himself, and Phanya followed his gaze.
The Split gizmo had damaged the boiler, but not enough to disintegrate a fist-sized chunk like every other time. Now it barely cracked the possessed boiler and high-pressure steam whistled out of the wound, until the fire beneath suddenly roared to life and enveloped the entire boiler. Even from across the room Phanya needed to shield herself from the heat, and when the flames died down the crack had sealed itself. The boiler looked good as new, and the heat waves played tricks on Phanya's eyes to look like it was pulsing. Or breathing.
"Damn, it heals? It's alright Ricky, we'll figure something out," Phanya started, but caught herself when she realized that Ricky didn't need consoling. He was silently mouthing a conversation with himself, brow furrowed and eyes darting around the room. Ricky wasn't despondent, he was calculating.
"It's the fire," Ricky eventually muttered. "And the fire extinguishers are expired, obviously. Skrat, I wish I had Chain set up." Suddenly he stood and pulled the monkey wrench from his bag, slamming it down on a valve release lever still mounted to the wall. "Phanya, when I give the word you need to pull this counter-clockwise and hold it. Okay?"
Phanya got into position, despite the worry gnawing at her stomach and exhaustion weighing down her bones. "And what are you going to do?"
"I'm gonna… test a theory," Ricky huffed. If he said anything more he might psych himself out, so he grabbed one of the larger pipes off the floor and dragged the open end towards the boiler. It responded as Ricky neared, the fire preemptively raging back to full force and in seconds the room started to bake. Ricky held his shield up over his face and shouted, "Hit it, Phanya!"
Phanya threw her full weight into the lever and barely managed to pull it down. Ricky fought just as hard to hold down the pipe slung under his arm, as all the bottled steam exploded out of the one opening and into the torrent of fire.
The poltergeist in the boiler fought back, but by a paradox of physics the harder it raged the more it built up steam pressure in a feedback loop. Even a fire fueled by the Phase Shift can't beat the physics of water forever, and after a few long seconds of unbearable heat the flames snuffed out. Once that cycle cut the boiler returned to normal, same as the piping. Just like Ricky expected, but he did not expect for that to include the minor crack he made in the boiler. The mundane, and exceedingly over-pressurized, boiler.
[Pot-bellied Poltergeist lvl 9 defeated! +19 XP for participation]
[Status effects gained: Stunned, deafened]
[Equipment damaged: Bug Iron Targe, P-1000 Powered Work Loader
Usability lost until equipment is repaired]
[Injury: Blown Eardrums
Perpetual deafened debuff until injury is healed]
[Wounds: ⬤⭘⭘]
Ricky needed some time before he worked through that mess. First off, his head felt like scrambled eggs and his ears kept ringing. Thirdly, he couldn't move. His suit wasn't fully dead, thankfully, and after some struggling he managed to trigger the emergency release sequence, only for it to drop him nearly half a meter to the ground. Because his suit was currently embedded spread-eagle into the far wall, opposite from the boiler.
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The bottom half of the boiler that still remained in the steaming wreckage, anyways. The top half waited for Ricky to notice before it fell from the ceiling and clattered to the ground. Right, that made sense. Ricky managed to put all the pieces together, even if it felt like he could only think at half speed, before hands suddenly grabbed his shoulders and spun Ricky around to face Phanya. She looked pretty silly with her mouth hanging open, until Ricky's lagging mind realized she was yelling something out of concern for his safety.
"WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" Ricky shouted back, pointing at his ears. Phanya rolled her eyes and pressed a plastic bottle full of murky red liquid into his hands, one of the regeneration potions that Tapper had brewed for everyone. Would it work better if Ricky poured it in his ears? After a second of hesitation Ricky downed the regeneration potion instead, and quickly regretted it. "Eugh! That is way worse than his stew." The eternally curious part of Ricky's mind wondered why the concoctions would taste so different when the ingredients were essentially the same, but then he felt a warm tingling spread throughout his body.
[Status effect gained: Regeneration (minor)
Heals 1 HP per round for the next (8) rounds, or until one injury heals]
Even through his concussion Ricky couldn't help but wonder why this potion gave eight rounds of healing, and after some focus the number expanded into an equation: Base 1d6 + Crafter Logic + Recipient Constitution. Good to know, he'll need to write that down later.
"Okay, I'll be good in a bit!" Ricky said, still a little too loudly. "I'm gonna try and fix my gear while I heal!" Phanya shot him a thumbs-up and flopped to the ground for a much-needed break, while Ricky took stock of his gear. The heat warped his shield and the blast shredded his breastplate, and Ricky shuddered to think what would've happened to him if the armor hadn't absorbed most of the damage. Better to focus on fixing his gear so he doesn't find out, and luckily there was a utility closet full of tools just waiting for him to loot!
As a bonus stroke of luck, Tapper wasn't here to talk about "serendipity."
Ricky stepped up to the utility closet and sucked air through his teeth. The small room sparkled with green wireframe highlights as his Blacksmith and Clockmaker professions both identified scores of tools and materials, filling him with knowledge and questions. Did he not notice them before due to the adrenaline, or did the system not identify loot until after a fight ends? Just one more thing for Ricky to add to the list of system functions to test, but that thought fell away when the skeletal corpse drew his attention again. The system didn't highlight Lamry, but something called to his external instincts and a tiny shock arced when Ricky touched the jumpsuit. Just like how Phanya described after fighting the creepy mannequins! All he needed to do was mentally claim the loot and then —
[Equipment: Maintenance Uniform
And then Ricky held the Maintenance Uniform in his hands. The instant he chose to loot the jumpsuit it responded by removing and then neatly folding itself, plopping down in Ricky's hand too quickly for his eyes to follow. Best of all, it looked clean! Even for someone born and raised in the wastes, wearing clothes that had soaked in human remains for years was a step too far and Ricky wasn't sure he could ever wash the Lamry out of his uniform. But if the system handled that vile concept for him then Ricky wasn't going to question it, for once, and Ricky swapped out the layers of scraps he normally wore.
"Whoa. Thank you, Lamry!" Ricky breathed. Not only did the Maintenance Uniform fit him like a glove, for the first time in his life Ricky felt good about wearing something that didn't obscure his features. He'd have to check with Phanya and see if the system was influencing their perception, or if he was overthinking things again. He turned to ask Phanya, but stopped in his tracks when he glanced at the blown boiler. He double-checked his system messages to ensure that his injuries had truly healed, and that his mind wasn't playing tricks on him.
Some of Fableton's elders liked to whittle figures from plastic compressed into solid blocks, and they often talked about "revealing the form" that already lived in the material. Ricky never understood what they meant, but as he passed by Ricky looked at the boiler at just the right angle to see something else. Something about how the intact portion bowed out in the middle, and how the metal brackets holding it bent slightly to look like clawed feet, and how steam curled around the wavering heat shimmers…
Realization smacked him and Ricky grabbed his shield, slamming it over the boiler's gaping top like a warped lid. The dark iron wasn't merely red hot, he could sense residual magic pouring out through the heat waves! Most of it had evaporated while Ricky played dress-up, and he doubted that the shield lid would actually contain anything, but instead of chastising himself Ricky focused on the external instincts screaming in the back of his mind. Knowledge form his Blacksmithing profession and Artificer class mixed together to say that something still remained here, Ricky could still reveal the form living in the scrapped material. But he needed to work fast before the magic completely evaporated, and inspiration on how to reveal the hidden form struck him like lightning.
Rushing too fast for second thoughts, Ricky grabbed every loose tool in his arms and dumped them before the boiler. If he stopped to plan then Ricky would lose his chance so he tried to let the instincts take over, swinging a hammer at the boiler with no forethought and just feeling it out as he went. Most of his work focused on the shredded edge of the boiler that bloomed out from the explosion, using his hammer and the intact part of his shield to shape the jagged edge into a curved lip that ran all along the circumference. Ricky shaped the rim with unnatural ease and quickly moved onto the rest of the boiler, hammering around the interior and exterior until the entire structure morphed into a somewhat smooth and nearly spherical bowl.
Then, it clicked. Ricky isn't sure what parameters he satisfied for the system to consider his project finished, but he stopped his hammer in mid-swing when he felt the residual magic coalesce into a more stable form. As if the magic accepted Ricky's craftwork as its new home, without any further risk of evaporating into nothingness or attacking them. New messages broke Ricky out of his smithing trance, replacing his dissociation with a manic grin.
[Critical success on crafting a magic item! Bonus +5 XP (Blacksmithing)]
[Equipment: Bubbling Cauldron
Years of heat have darkened the iron, leaving a permanent imprint of Fire. Any liquid placed in the cauldron will start boiling within 1 minute, no fuel needed, and continue boiling until all liquid empties.]
[Bug Iron Targe repair check: Success]
He stammered for a second, unsure of where to begin. Every individual message offered a different rabbit hole and Ricky wanted, needed, to explore them all. He hadn't even noticed that he also repaired the shield in his hammering haze! "Phanya, come check this out!"
No answer. Where was Phanya?
Ricky's searching quickly turned from confused to anxious. The generator room felt distinctly less dangerous after defeating its monsters, but surely Phanya wouldn't just leave without talking to him first. Instead, Ricky almost tripped over her prone form, napping on a pile of scrapped piping. Napping so peacefully and so deeply that she didn't stir until Ricky started to violently jostle her, and that only earned him a weak grumble in response.
"Mmm, whaddya want? I'm trying to sleep…"
"Is that pile of metal really comfortable, Phanya? Phanya! At least turn up the glamour some, I can barely see you." More grumblings, but the pale turquoise light flickered to life before Phanya suddenly sat up with a start. She winced and hugged herself, and in the growing light Ricky balked at the tiny wisps of black smoke evaporating from numerous superficial cuts on Phanya's arms and torso.
[Hidden ailment Shadow Curse lifted!]
"What the fuck? That shadow monster, it… it cursed me!" Phanya's mind raced through past events, only now realizing how deeply exhausted she felt after fighting the shade slinger. Some of its oily shadow flesh must have soaked into her body and cursed her, because all memories between then and now were clouded by an intense desire to just curl up and sleep forever.
"A curse? Oh that's a new one," Ricky murmured as he pulled out his notebook.
Phanya slapped it away. "Not now, Ricky! We don't have time for that, we — " She suddenly stopped, mouth pressed into a thin line as she stared into the middle distance. "Ricky. How long have we been down here?"
Ricky tracked her gaze across the room and over the cauldron, right at the untouched fuse panel.
"Oh… whoops."