Chapter 31: Chapter 31 Repercussions

A lot of things happened very quickly. The turrets on top of the bunkers fired with a faint wuff, and a projectile blurred in Nathan’s direction. He dodged to the side - but it had been aimed at his center mass and was moving fast. The spike of metal impacted the right side of his chest and went through his entire body, snapping ribs and coring a lung before impacting the street behind him.

Nathan spun and fell, struggling to breathe as air bubbled from the wounds in his chest and back. Stella cried out in pain behind him. Nathan looked back for a second and saw her sprawled against a wall, another bolt sticking out of her chest. Khachi was moving to cover her with his big shield, but Nathan had no time.

The sound of metal on stone was growing louder, and Nathan pushed himself up as he grit his teeth and focused on the lung wound, trying to burn stamina to heal his lungs before too much air escaped into his chest cavity.

My [Regeneration] needs to be faster. My lung will collapse at this rate, and I don’t know if [Regeneration] can fix that.

He advanced towards the metal constructs as they skittered across the street. They were tall, with four thin metal legs holding a central body about five feet in the air. A tube-like head was fused to the top of the body and they were all pointed towards Nathan. More concerning were the two arms protruding up from the central body, tipped with long cutting blades. Overall they looked like bugs from the movie Starship Troopers - but in steel and chrome.

That movie was good satire, but bad at engaging with Heinlein’s original.

Nathan shook the distraction aside and snarled as he ran forward. He could feel his lung starting to operate again, his ribs re-knitting. What the hell was going on here? The classes in the Adventurer’s Guild had never described whatever the fuck these foes were.

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