System Break

Blood covered the glaive. I bent down and ripped a cloak from a dead body and used it to clean my new favourite weapon. I made it look easy, but I'd burned through quite a bit of qi in my anger. The wounds they managed to inflict upon me started to hurt now it was over.

Gisael appeared by my side. I hadn't killed them all alone, her arrows were strewn amongst the corpses.

"Angry bear," she said. "Stop. I will patch you."

I twisted to look at the wound on my back, but it was a mistake it opened up more and pain shot through my side. "Ouch."

"Idiot," she said and patched the wound with stinky much from her pouch. I closed my eyes and began to qi stitch. "Hurry," she said.

The Gargscarab was a lumbering train of death and it was headed our way. It looked like it walked slowly but because it was so huge it was relatively fast.

Sakaala followed with bow in hand and she kept an eye on the other two guilds. We ran to the south where the whitecloaks were circling the giant arachnida. She called to the guilds who watched us warily.

"Why don't you team up and give it a go?" Her tone was sweet but barbed with sarcasm.

Dangerous and Wreckoning were already in conference and Sakaala chuckled when they spread out to take on the Gargscarab together. They had fifty adventurers combined but both guilds had a large number of brawlers.

But if anything adventurers were adaptive. They wielded spears, nets and large hammers. Half a dozen rogues move to flank the monster with crossbows.

"Hail," Ying said. I guessed he picked the greeting up from Barrin. 

"Hey," I said.

"What is Gisael doing?" Trik asked.

"Arrows," I said. "She'll pick them up before they get trampled by the giant beetle thingy."

"Gargscarab apparently," Ying said. "The city has been receiving emergency requests for aid all day." He pointed behind to the south. "The city is not far, ten miles at most."

"Where are the protectors?" Sakaala asked as Gisael joined us.

Ying grimaced. "They will come if we fail. We asked for the chance to get its core."

Behind us the other two guilds attacked the Gargscarab hammer and tong. We turned to watch. Fifty adventures against the monster were like mosquitoes taking on a man. They successfully bit, but the damage the did was negligible. 

"They need better qi strikes; they'll never take it down."

"This system is broken," Trik said. "How are you so powerful?"

"Cover your ears Gisael," I said.

"I do not care," she said. "Say what you want."

"The quickbar is a crutch. The trick is not to use the system." They stared at me open mouthed. "Do you think the protectors have a system? They do everything manually."

While we chatted about systems the two guilds slowly died to the Gargscarab. "Thirty four still standing," Sandor said.

"Sixteen dead already?" I asked Demon Bird to scout between us and the city. I wanted to know if the cities protectors were on their way.

As we watched them one died to the pincers and another to the tail. The crossbowmen were effectively out of range, but they loaded far too slowly, and the bolts did no visible damage.

I turned back to Ying. "How many adventurers do you have left?" I cast my eye across the guild. "Is this it?"

Ying frowned. "There will be a few who ran north and hopefully they're circling behind it now. Otherwise, the nine here is all that's left."

Trik was making strange faces and his cheeks flushed red. "How do I move my qi?"

I laughed. "Practise." His reserves were low, but I could not tell him without giving my secret away. Too many already knew it.

"Twenty five," Sandor said. He sounded like an announcer at a sports game.

Trik peered at the two guilds. "Wonder where they'll end up when they reset."

"There goes a leg. They got one, only seven to go." Mal the brawler chuckled at their distress.

The Gargscarab screeched and the sound was deafening even at this distance. We held our hands to our ears until the screeching finished when it gulped down one of the leaders.

"Twenty three," Sandor said.

"What happens to their equipment if they wipe?"

"It's ours," Ying said. "Assuming we don't wipe also. Then it will probably be a lucky farmer." He looked at us. "Unless you want it of course."

"That shit? No thanks," I said. "But what about the core? It's going to be massive." I knew exactly how large it was. It was going to be almost as big as me. It would weigh a hundred pounds at least.

"If you can kill it, its yours. There is no way we could, even at full force. But the Duke will want to tax you."

I laughed. "Of course he will. But what is ours is ours. He can try and tax us, but we will refuse."

"Nineteen," Sandor said. He never took his eyes from the battle. 

I turned to watch the Gargscarab. From its core near its head qi flowed to its tail, legs and pincers. There was nothing special happening and the only thing I could think of was its qi simply helped it move. The monstrosity was probably impossible without qi to power it. And if dragons existed it would be the same qi power which helped them fly.

I touched Gisael's arm. "Do dragons exist?"

Everyone laughed.

"Yes," she said.

Everyone stopped laughing.

"Eleven," Sandor said.

They were dying very quickly now. Six of those eleven were the crossbowman who were safely out of range. The other five were desperately trying to escape but the Gargscarab was so huge it took them time to run out of its reach.

"Ten, no, nine," Sandor said. "Finished."

The monster stopped and was happily gulping down adventurers. I could see their qi seeping into its own as it swallowed them whole. Not only was qi power and currency. It was also an ecosystem. We all fed on qi from monsters who in turn fed on qi from us. The land cores were fed qi directly, but they also harvested qi from the land itself.

It was a new mystery for me to ponder.

Demon Bird spied the protectors they were on their way.

"Are you going to fight it?" Ying asked. 

Sakaala shrugged and Gisael gave me a single nod. Two things pulled at me. I could watch the protectors fight and learn techniques or we could take the core. I knew what the strategic answer was, but I said, "Fuck it. Let's kill the bastard."