Chapter 10 The Queen's Carapace
Chapter 10 The Queen's Carapace
The world was ending, and Alex woke up.
His teeth were clicking together as he shook. The server room was a frozen tomb, with a temperature of about negative twenty. Each breath was like swallowing glass.
"Alex!"
The face of Steve swam into sight. The eyebrows of the man were frosted white. He was holding Alex by the shoulders and shaking him.
"Wake up! The floor-- the floor is melting!
Alex moaned and opened his eyes. The headache had disappeared, and in its place was a deep ache that was in his bones. He verified his condition.
\[HP: 30/100\]
\[MANA: 10/30 (PARTIAL RESTORE)\]
\[STATUS: HYPOTHERMIA (STAGE 1)\]
"Melting?" he rasped.
He looked past Steve.
The main aisle was missing. In its place was a crater, the steel grating dissolved and eaten away by bubbling neon-green acid. And rising from the hole was something that made the Silicon Termites look small.
It was as large as a delivery van. It was covered with jagged crystal armor that throbbed with purple light. The legs were six, and were as thick as tree trunks, and clawed at the edge of the pit, and pulled a huge bloated belly up on the platform.
\[BOSS ENTITY DETECTED.\]
\[MONSTER: TERMite QUEEN (LVL 5)\]
\[STATUS: ENRAGED / HUNGRY\]
It ate the Sentinel! Jason screamed, on the other side of the room, with the shotgun in his frozen hands, his back against the far wall. "I saw it! The molten metal - she drank it!
Alex's stomach dropped.
The Sentinel was S-Rank. Immune to physical damage. But had she swallowed it whole--
"Sentinel!" Alex croaked. "Report!"
Nothing. His connection was dead, as in a radio with a broken antenna.
SCREEEE.
The Queen shrieked. The nearest server racks were glass panels that broke. She unleashed her mandibles and a jet of green acid shot through the room.
"Move!" Steve shoved Mrs. Adesina behind a console.
The acid struck a row of servers. HISS. The metal was folded and turned to grey sludge in a few seconds.
Alex scrambled to his feet, falling on the ice. He took his rusted cleaver, which could do nothing with that crystal shell, but took it.
\[CODE VISION: ACTIVE\]
The huge body of the Queen was covered with green wireframes.
\[ENTITY: TERMITE_QUEEN\]
\[HP: 2000/2000\]
\[ARMOR: CRYSTALLine LATTICE (MAGIC REFLECT)\]
Weakness: Internal organs (soft).
Magic Reflect, Alex said to himself. The reason why the Sentinel is not fighting. When it gives her lightning the crystal stomach gives it straight back. It is stuck.
"Shoot it!" Jason picked up the shotgun.
BOOM.
The slug hit the Queen on the head. PING. Shaken off, as a paint-job.
Jason was looked at by the Queen. She did not resemble so much an animal in distress, but, one somewhat irritated. She put up one leg and stumped it.
CRASH.
The floor buckled. Jason was thrown off his feet by the shockwave. The shot gun slid on the ice.
"It's invincible!" Behind a box Sarah cried.
No. The mind of Alex was already a-moving. It is hardware, all hardware has a bug.
He looked at Bug. The Cyber-Rat was lying on a stack of servers, its copper-wire body glistening, single camera eye looking at the Queen.
"Bug. Come here."
The rat scampered away.
Alex wheeled and returned to the Queen. Arguing at cross purposes. But down-- every time she raised her belly up over the side of the pit her belly was naked. A split second. That was all.
He looked into his stock. Nothing useful. No explosives.
Except.
The additional Lithium Battery. Repair of the generator saved. A small lump of condensed energy.
In a low voice, so that the rat alone could hear, said Bug. I desire you to take me something.
He removed duct tape on the fabrication table and duct taped the battery to the rear of Bug.
"Steve!" he shouted. "Distract her! Make her rear up!"
Steve stared at him as though he were crazy. Then he turned to the Queen, who was again turning to Jason with acid in her throat.
"Hey!" Steve grabbed a big server panel and threw it. It dropped down on her leg and clanked. "You ugly bug!"
The Queen hissed, and reared up, her pale soft underbelly naked.
"Now!" Alex pointed. "Bug! Protocol: KAMIKAZE!"
COMMAND ACCEPTED.
TARGET: UNDERBELLY.
OVERCLOCK: MAX.
Bug went. No hesitation. There was a blur of copper that scampered over the frozen floor, without breaking a leg, crawling beneath her body, leaping up and plunging its metal claws into the soft white flesh of her stomach.
The Queen screamed, and tried to beat it. Too close.
Blast, Alex thought, and close his eyes.
OVERLOADING BATTERY CORE...
KA-BOOM.
No gigantic blast. A focused one. The bang was muffled, and shook the Queen at the core. Smoke was out of her. This time she screamed--it was actually pain--and hopelessly fell on her side, twitching her legs.
Her stomach gave green blood which melted down onto the ice on the floor.
"Is she dead?" Jason pulled himself up off the ground.
No, no, No, replied Alex, and was already moving, cleaver in hand. "Just open."
He ran. He drove through the cold and the pangs of his aching legs and ran over the ice, sliding to avoid a swinging leg that reached out so far as to sever his head.
The explosion had created a hole in her armor, with a circumference of manhole size. Throbbing green organs By it. And there, in the transparent stomach bag, a ball of molten silver rubbing against the walls.
The Sentinel.
The Queen swung around and had her mandibles open.
open wide, said Alex.
He jumped and down the hole.
Hot. Wet. The smell was like that of a wall-- rotting garbage in acid. His flesh burned at the slime when he set his foot in the slime. He choked, bile crept up his throat, yet he continued.
\[ACID DAMAGE DETected.
\[HP: 28... 25... 22...\]
He found the heart. It wasn't flesh. It was a fist-sized rough crystal, aching purple.
\[TARGET: QUEEN'S HEART\]
The cleaver was raised by Alex.
"Delete," he screamed.
THWACK. THWACK. THWACK.
He hacked at it. Crystal chips, purple in color, flew into his face. The Queen trembled round him, curves of flesh, surging in, choking the breath out of his lungs.
CRACK.
The heart was torn asunder.
The Queen stiffened up. Her limbs contracted towards her simultaneously. There was a long, wet, gurgling hiss out of her and then nothing.
\[BOSS lost: TERMite QUEEN\]
\[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 2000\]
\[LEVEL UP! (LEVEL 4 -> LEVEL 5)\]
Alex fell in the slime. The body was still.
The Sentinel crept through the broken stomach-sac, and lay on the floor next him, humming.
He was there lying there in green gore, merely breathing. A fragment of the broken heart was in his hand. It was glowing yet.
\[OBJECT: FRAGMENT of CRYSTAL heart\].
\[TYPE: CONSUMABLE (GENE)\]
\[|human|>\[|human|>\[|human|>\[|human|\]
His fingers were fiddling with it. Sharp edges. Seemed it would slice him right in picking it up, much less swallowing it.
But his stomach desired it. Hunger which contained nothing to the human.
Admin privilege, he said.
He put the crystal in his mouth and swallowed.
On its way down it tore his throat. He sputum on the floor that was covered with slime. But as it reached his stomach something cold and hard coursed through his veins like ice water running plunge into his heart.
He began to itch on the skin. He examined his arm. The pink burnt tissue was becoming grey. Minnie hexagonal forms were protruded slightly below the surface.
\[GENE CONSUMED.\]
Sub-dermal plating (LVL 1) is a new trait.
\[DEFENSE: +10\]
He wiped his face with the slime, and got out of the carcass.
He was being stared at by Steve and Jason. His flesh was steeped in acid, his mouth bled, his flesh grew pale where the acid struck. He resembled something that crawled t the outside of a nightmare.
"Alex?" Steve whispered.
The cleaver dripped with green and Alex straightened up.
Begin cleaning up, he said, in a gravel-gravel voice. We have a kingdom to raise.