The Way Ahead

Today was the day.

Edwin had a hard time falling asleep, even when activating his skill, but he managed it eventually, and he woke up well-rested. He didn’t have much of an appetite, but made sure to eat as much breakfast as possible to keep his energy up anyway. He’d taken a bath, shaved, and changed into clean clothes the night before, so he would start this trek into the wilderness off fresh. His boots, as comfortable as ever, were laced up tightly. His backpack was filled to the brim with food, knives, various heating plates, a pebble of Blackstone, a chisel, his notebook, and more. His gloves were concealing a miniature blowtorch hot enough to melt iron. His twin bags filled ammo and backpack were hidden behind piles of rock.

There was nothing else he could do to get ready, and Edwin’s heart was racing. He was not ready, but he had to appear calm and like nothing was unusual. He hefted his sledgehammer and brought it down on a chunk of limestone. This is going to fail, I’m going to die, what am I thinking, I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to­- he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He could do this. If he didn’t do it, he was dead anyway, so there was nothing to lose. He would survive. He had Science! to do. He was a proper alchemist, too! It even said so in his Status. He took another calming breath, and had to set down his hammer due to how much his hands were shaking. Another breath. In, and out. In. Hold. Out. Hold. In. Hold. Out….

Level Up!

Breathing Level 15→16

Oh, right. He should turn off his notifications now. Edwin didn’t want them distracting him during his escape run. Breathe in, breath out. Focus. Stay calm. Grab onto the edge of the counter, that should help keep his shaking hands steady. Breathe deeply. He closed his eyes and counted to one hundred. Another deep breath. He mentally multiplied three 3x3 matrices together. Another deep breath. Recite the alphabet. Now do it backwards. Another deep breath.

Edwin opened his eyes, hands barely trembling and breathing mostly under control. He picked up his hammer, and continued to crush limestone, careful to not put too much effort into the activity.

Some sixth sense alerted Edwin before he heard them enter, and he positioned himself near where his packs were located. The door swung open, and Edwin saw Rashin enter in his peripheral vision, followed closely by the two guards.

“Guess it’s time, then?” Edwin asked, of nobody in particular, trying to sound resigned. He sighed, heart racing, and before any of his foes could react, he threw his sledgehammer as hard as possible at Rashin’s head.

The heavy iron head connected with the scholar’s skull with a clang that sounded more like the hammer had struck a helmet rather than bare hair, and the dwarf collapsed. The two guards were stunned, too shocked to properly react at first, and by the time they were in motion, Edwin already had two grenades in hand and a third at the ready.

The first was M-N-M mortar, the super-adhesive, and it struck the base of the door, breaking open and sticking it in place. Edwin wasn’t about to let them just close the door on him, after all.

The second was N-M-M, slipstone, and it hit right in front of the two guards, spreading its payload in front of them. It wouldn’t do much in its wet state, but if cured… Edwin quickly threw the third bomb at the ceiling. It struck and exploded in a powerful flash of magical light, exposing the slipstone to just enough mana to initially cure it.

Just in time, too. The guards’ feet came down, found no purchase on the nearly frictionless material, and were thrown off-balance. By the time they recovered, shouting for help, Edwin already had his bags on, straining under the weight. It was going to get much lighter really quickly, though. He could already hear the sound of approaching footsteps, and the third guard outside his cell was blocking the doorway.

As all his enemies were so kind as to be right next to each other, though admittedly right in front of the door, so Edwin decided it was time to pull out the big guns. He primed a steam grenade and threw it directly at the third guard, ducking behind his lab bench and plugging his ears. After a resounding boom, he emerged from his hiding place to see all three dwarf guards mostly motionless, collapsed in various positions. The one he had struck with the grenade was bleeding from somewhere in his beard but they seemed otherwise fine, which was just unfair. Rashin didn’t look to be in a good shape, though, and Edwin moved on before he could get distracted.

All good so far, hopefully his luck would hold out.

As he made it out into the hall, Edwin grabbed a spear from the ground but discarded it immediately. It was too cumbersome to use with his massive bags of ammo slung around his shoulders. Speaking of which, there was a group of dwarves coming down the hallway at a decent clip. Perfect setup for a slipstone grenade. He quickly withdrew and threw one, which landed perfectly in front of the squad, almost perfectly where he aimed it…

The sphere broke open, and a marble of cured slipstone rolled down the hallway, easily avoided by his advancing foes. Edwin bit back a curse as he threw another three in an offhand toss. One more broke open to reveal a dud grenade, but the other two worked properly, spreading liquid slipstone across the ground. He didn’t have enough time to throw another flash-mana grenade, so he had to go with his backup plan.

Firestarter paired well with his favorite magitech blowtorch, and Edwin’s gloves worked just well enough to protect him from the magical lime, heated up to thousands of degrees centigrade and emitting a light which threatened to blind Edwin even through closed eyes. Most important, though, was the rate at which he could pump mana into the substance.

A barrage of curses got Edwin to cut the heat and mana, allowing the light to fade to ‘mostly bearable’ in brightness, and he was treated to the sight of a half-dozen dwarves covering their eyes and tripping over their own feet.

Unfortunately, the hallway was still covered in slipstone, and he’d fall on his back just as surely as the dwarves if he tried to cross it as he was, but he had at least thought about that in advance. He broke open a tiny plaster container and carefully applied a dot of super-adhesive mortar to the toe of his shoes as he prepared to walk onto the frictionless surface. Despite himself, Edwin felt the corners of his mouth twitch upwards, assume a spherical grenade on a frictionless surface....

By the time Edwin made it across the self-made hazard and managed to scrape off the mortar he had on his shoes (using a shard of slipstone made specifically for that purpose), it seemed as though the dwarves in his cell were starting to recover. Fortunately, they were on the wrong side of the slipstone, so he should be fine.

As Edwin continued forward, he broke open about half of his remaining slipstone grenades to coat massive patchwork areas of the hallway, curing them as he went. He couldn’t use all of them, they’d be too useful on the stairs for that, but any level of slowing down his enemies was welcome.

The mess hall was fairly empty again. There were a few dwarves milling around, but some of them somehow didn’t seem to notice what was happening, and most of those remaining were decidedly not looking at Edwin. There were a handful left, though, who seemed to take umbrage with his existence and charged at him, hefting various weapons. Okay, eight foes. Hopefully he could manage.

The first dwarf, right ahead of him, got entangled in a batch of super-adhesive, and tripped, gluing even more of himself to the floor. To Edwin’s right, he threw a primed steam grenade, which took care of one more but left the dwarf right next to him mostly unharmed, despite surely taking a few fragments of supermortar to the face- dang, these guys are hardy. Fortunately, the dwarf paused to check up on his fallen friend.

Two and a half down, five and a half to go.

The other dwarves were more wary now, having seen the sort of firepower he had at his disposal, though one hefted a bench as a shield -the thing had to be twice as long as he was tall- and continued his advance. Edwin backed up until his leg bumped against another bench, and the others seem to take that as encouragement and continued to approach slowly.

On the bright side, he now had a clear shot at the shield dwarf’s legs, as he had moved into the center aisle ahead of Edwin. Withdrawing two more slipstone grenades and an instant-cure bomb, he threw them all at Shield dwarf’s feet, then mentally changed targets.

To Edwin’s shock, despite both the slipstone spreading properly and the cure going off as it should, Shield just grunted and planted his feet solidly on the utterly frictionless surface, as though it were just another patch of Blackstone. Edwin grimaced and prepared to throw a different kind of bomb

Stupid cheating skills.

Edwin’s realization there were other skills in play was driven home when a dwarf seemed to materialize from thin air as he grabbed Edwin’s arm. Sneaky (or teleporting?) dwarf probably regretted his decision instantly, though, as he drew breath to speak just as Edwin jerked his grenade-holding arm in surprise, which broke the plaster directly on Sneaky’s forehead. Edwin looked in horror as the lime powder burst into the dwarf’s face, getting all over his skin, into his beard, in his eyes…

The screaming started a moment later, and made Edwin exceedingly glad he didn’t have any exposed skin and that his eyes were covered by his goggles, as Sneaky fell to the ground clutching his eyes even as the lime probably boiled them whole. That certainly got his assailants to pause for a moment, especially when Edwin withdrew a matching grenade from his bag, and he spoke up in dwarven for the first time, “Stay back, I pass. I don’t want to hurt.” Okay, so he didn’t really know the grammar yet, but he at least probably got the words right.

All but one of the remaining dwarves backed off at that, and when a solidly thrown grenade just bounced off the dwarf’s head before rolling onto the ground (it was supposed to be a super-adhesive, but apparently more than just slipstone had gotten cured), this dwarf only got more bold. Another steam grenade followed, but it was batted from the air by the dwarf’s axe, cut in half and un-exploded. Clearly more skill nonsense, and the stone crashed against the ground.

A quick barrage of different bombs- Edwin was frantically backpedalling, throwing whatever he could pull from his bag, his opponent blocking each throw with an impenetrable defense, falling more and more into a rhythm and blocking the attacks with more and more ease. Each clang of metal on stone rang out across the hall, but the dwarven cries for backup and help were barely overpowered, the elongated syllables of their tongue rarely drowned out by the sudden impact of steel on mortar.

Edwin was running out of bombs in his first bag, now, and while his second bag was almost full, it didn’t have many of his adhesive and slick bombs, focusing more on his steam grenades, and the axe dwarf was too close at this point to risk one. Then the dwarf blurred and appeared right next to Edwin with his axe mid-swing.

Edwin barely managed to duck out of the way to keep the strike from hitting his head, but it still cut a painful line across his shoulder and down his chest, leaving him bleeding from what was a thankfully superficial cut.

Edwin almost breathed a sigh of relief until he realized the strap on his mostly-full bag had been severed by the attack. He could only watch in horror as his bag stuffed to the brim with powerful explosives fell, seemingly in slow motion, dropping and cracking hard against the stone floor.