Tunnel Rat

Chapter 67: Breaking Bad

Milo was in trouble. Most of him didn't know it yet and was having a good time. But somewhere in his brain a small alarm was going off and a few neurons were hoping someone would notice. Until then, Milo was going to keep trying to find ways to kill a World Boss, or at least slow it up. Little rats should not challenge such huge creatures on their own. Milo was used to punching well above his weight class and it was making him foolhardy. Or maybe that was all the cheese in his system? Only that small, scared part of his brain really knew.

Uthneragrubban was huge and slow. A moving fortress that now and again sent troops to battle. Those troops mostly ignored him, moving forward into the mines. If they moved to attack him, he would move away from the Brood Mother, kill the immature Stone Lurkers, and then come back in to try to find her weak points. So far, he hadn't found any.

He'd started by attacking a rear leg. They rarely moved and were easy to hit. And with every hit his weapon did more and more damage. After 10 hits he was taking off chunks of stone the size of his head. At twenty hits a large slab loosened and fell off. Then formed into a small stone lurker that attacked him. Three moved in from other areas. He was forced to back away from Uthneragrubban and deal with them. When he returned to hitting the monster, the leg armor had reformed. As he watched, she bent her head down and began to eat more of the loose stone in front of her. Her large claws shoveling it into her maw. Even as he watched, the stone was thickening on the thinner areas of its armor.

He backed away and observed again. Shifty moved up beside him. "I think there is something under all that stone. I got a glimpse of it as you were getting mobbed by that last batch. There was another layer. Blue and sparkly looking. I also got a good look at her from the front. Her teeth inside that huge mouth have the same appearance, and I can see some blue on the tips of its legs. They narrow down and get sharp, with the last couple of inches showing that blue crystal."

Milo had Shifty take him in closer and show him what he'd noticed. With the skilled 'scout' pointing things out, he could finally see all the areas where just a hint of the crystal poked out of the heavy stone armor. Shifty brought up the information he had gotten from inspecting Uthneragrubban. "One of her abilities is 'Crystalline', I'm guessing it's a hard structure underneath the stone."

Milo nodded, that fit with the failure of his Brittle Bones spell from doing anything. It seemed to affect the little ones, but not the World Boss with a crystalline core. "Next plan. We wait for her to slough off a big lot, then you lead them off a bit, and I'll attack one spot and see if I can't uncover the core, and see what it takes to hurt it."

Shifty didn't like that plan, but he smiled at Milo and gave him a thumb's up. "Sure thing. No beastie made of rock can catch me. I'll lead them around a bit and then double back to here. You be careful now." He ran off to get in position to the front of Uthneragrubban.

The plan worked as far as drawing off the next group, and having just dropped a dozen, Milo felt he had some time to work on that back leg. He tried to chip away head sized chunks, and not let a big slab fall that might form another Stone Lurker. As more and more stone flew, he saw the crystalline core, under over two feet of heavy stone armor. Not pausing, he brought his weapon down on the crystal. There was a small bell-like chime, but nothing else. He hit again and again and again. He was making small cracks in the crystal, but they fused shut faster than he could do damage. Eventually he had to stop. The stone was regenerating, the crystal wasn't taking enough damage, and he was panting hard.

He sat down and gnawed on a chunk of cheese. At the rate this was going, he might need to send Vary for more. He could be chipping away at this thing for a month...or until it collapsed the caverns and destroyed the city. He felt like he was getting nowhere. Even as he watched, the huge head scooped up more raw stone and chewed it. Uthneragrubban seemed to be able to process the stone to armor and then turn it into more lurkers amazingly fast. She was almost done with the pile of debris. Milo assumed she'd move on looking for more. There was no shortage of rock piles in the mines.

Maybe that was Uthneragrubban's weak point? Those front claws didn't seem to be jointed to reach behind, and the legs certainly couldn't. Maybe it was time to work from the top? He ran behind the monster and then sprinted and leaped, grabbing hold of her stony armor with his claws and pulling himself up. The top of the World Boss was stable and he could easily move around. A ridge of stony spikes started at where the back of the neck would be on a human, ran down the back of its torso, then back along the center of the main body. He decided to start in the mid-point.

It took over two dozen blows to get down to the crystal. Rather than attack the core, he concentrated on clearing stone. Each hit was revealing more and more of the inner monster. The crystal glowed brightly, showing strange energies moving inside. Like lightning! Like a nervous system!

Milo studied the revealed workings of the creature, comparing the flaring energies to the electrical pulses of nerve cells along a human’s spine. Milo had spent thousands of hours studying his own body, and how it differed from a normal human. He'd had to in able to understand enough about himself to stay alive. Here was another strange creature. Rocky epidermis protected a solid crystal body with no bones, blood, or soft tissues. Some sort of magical lightning carried commands through-out its body. Beautiful in many ways. Milo had to remind himself that this creature was also going to kill him, his friends, and an entire city if it wasn't stopped.

Milo knew his weapon wasn't going to hurt the crystal, but what about his claws. Concentrating hard on his hands, he made the bone claws as hard and sharp as he could, pouring mana into his Bone Shaping ability. One claw scratched across the crystalline surface, cutting it. He cut deeper on the same line. Then went faster and faster, the claw going deeper and deeper until the thin furrow was two-inches deep and there was a small pile of crystal shavings. Then his claw was deep enough that he touched the lightning inside the crystal, with interesting results.

Uthneragrubban jerked back a step, and its head swiveled, as if noticing Milo for the first time. The crystal furrow tightened, trapping his bone clad finger. The crystal area he had exposed glowed, and rock was rapidly forming over the area, erasing the damage he had done. Now his entire hand was trapped, and two toes on his left foot. He started to claw at the rock to free himself.

The World Boss needed rock for food to regenerate her armor, and heal the damage to its crystal core. After noticing the small attacker and healing the miniscule damage, she bent to scoop up more of the loose rock, but the pile was gone. But Uthneragrubban didn't need loose rock to feed. Milo had made a bad assumption.

Shifty was watching from a safe distance away. He'd quickly ditched the throng of immature lurkers and let them head to where ever they thought they were going. Then he'd come back to see what the crazy Engineer was going to do next. Frankly, Shifty was thinking he wasn't going to have to do a damn thing to get rid of him for Burnock. The guy was going to get himself killed on his own. He felt a bit guilty at the thought, then better that he still felt guilty, then far worse. Was that the best he could say of himself? That he felt guilty after killing someone? No wonder no one liked him. Of course, no one really liked Burnock either. But he had the family name, and fortune. You could be an asshole when you were rich and from a good family.

While he was griping about his life, Shifty realized something was happening. The big critter reared back a bit, and Milo cursed from his spot riding on top of her. Then cursed a lot more. Uthneragrubban lifted two legs and drove them into the ground, then the next set and the next, until all twelve legs were firmly anchored. The huge claws with their heavy forearms raised up in the air, and their tips began to glow.

Blue light leaked out of cracks in the stone armor.

The huge claws came down and slammed into the ground.

**RUMBLE**

The ground around Uthneragrubban was pulverized and turned into loose rock in a fifty-foot radius circle and twenty feet deep. Rocks fell from the ceiling and small fissures radiated out from the impact site. Far above, in the city, the buildings shook and waves appeared on the normally quiet harbor.

Milo wasn't aware of this. All he knew was his world exploded as the energies in the core found their way to the spot where he was standing without the thick rock to contain them. Stone shattered, a small piece of crystal broke and was fused to his bony claw. The explosion of force shot him up to the ceiling, very, very fast.

You have been RUMBLED!

Few creatures have been so close to Uthneragrubban when it releases its rock shattering might. And far fewer have survived! (Well, for now. Who knows what happens in the next few seconds? )

You have taken 200 points of damage. Only your Hard Bones keep you from dying.

Your nervous system is in shock. Pudding based regeneration is starting to repair your shot nerves. You will be able to move again on your own in 1 minute.

Then he hit the ceiling.

You have taken 125 damage from impact with the hard stone. This is reduced because of your mitigation and Hard Bones.

And the ground.

Yes, Gravity sucks, but it’s not a law you can repeal. You take 50 points of damage as you fall to the rocky ground.

Uthneragrubban looked at the first of what it knew would be many adversaries. This one would be ground to death in her jaws along with the rock he was laying on. The huge jaws came down towards the stunned rat.

Shifty had no recollection of making a decision, but suddenly he was running. Maybe he'd realized with his twisted, clever brain that this creature wasn't something he could run away from. Or maybe it was realizing that the only person who'd treated him with any respect lately was about to die. But he found himself running forward, his fast-moving feet finding the places on the loose scree to give him good footing. He got to Milo just as Uthneragrubban bore down on him, and pulled him free. The huge maw missed them by scant feet and they tumbled a few feet to lie in a heap.

Shifty got to his feet, got Milo in his arms, and raced to get away.

He didn't make it.

A massive stone claw targeted him and the blow sent both Shifty and Milo flying through the air to land fifty feet away.

Milo didn't feel it, he was knocked out cold.

Shifty didn't feel it either. The blow shattered all of his ribs and turned most of his spine into shattered bone. More damage was done as he landed.

=*=

Uthneragrubban ignored the broken bodies and chewed three more mouthfuls of stone to replenish herself. And then she began slowly walking towards the city.

She had lain sleeping below for ages, until the shockwaves of an earth tremor had disturbed her. She awoke knowing that her time had come. Her purpose drove her to the surface.

Now the little defenders would come in droves. These gnats were just the first of many more. They didn't matter. They could no more stop her than they could stop the great machine below from spinning the world on its axis. When she laid claim to her portion of the surface, her siblings would ascend to claim theirs as well. And then they would war for control of the world, and whose children would inherit it.