Chapter 52: 11- Disassembly Required

Corbin stared for a moment at the goblin then back at the fae and the orc. Then at the enemy, then back at his ‘allies’ once more.

“Seriously? One goblin?”

The green-skinned, big-nosed, beady-eyed thing was three and a half feet tall, wiry, with steampunk gear all over it. The complicated lenses of its goggles twiddled and twisted and puffed out little bursts of steam, as did its huge fist gauntlets. These, and the boots connected to a backpack via plenty of brassy tubing, along with some cool accordion tubing.

“They’re known as groblins,” Dvillandrin mumbled.

“I think we should get back in the cells,” Brosh mumbled.

“Seriously? What’s got you guys so worked… oh.” Inspect finally got up and running, and told him the following.

 

Groblin Steam Fister

Level 10

302/345 HP

Beware of pistons, flamethrowers, seeds used as bullets, suddenly appearing spinning blades of death and dismemberment, tangling garrote wires, and the automatic bubble blower. All this little bastard knows is pain.

All disassembly required.

 

“Well that’s a name,” he remarked.

That was also a lot of hit points. On the other hand, he noted the list of Prissy’s special abilities were back. She was in range. Either she was coming for backup or she wasn’t. Given that she was most likely still trapped behind the flaming wreckage, he was going to have to deal with this… fister fellow.

“Okay, follow my lead,” Corbin said, and hoped for the best. He then activated Enervating Strike and zipped down the stairs.

He definitely saw the groblin coming in with a long, and oh so slow roundhouse, ducked under it, and got Mr Fister on the leg for 22 damage. Nice! In addition, his opponent’s Strength dropped by 3, and Endurance by 6. He also had himself a nice Luck (Serendipity) check, which gave him the time needed to duck behind his enemy before a stream of flame jetted out of one of those huge gauntlets.

He danced around the groblin, growling and shifting, and waited for the tinkerer and sorcerer to come to his aid. He did see another opening after he dashed through the groblin’ s legs and got him solidly on the butt. It didn’t taste anywhere near as bad as expected, which was gross for its own set of reasons.

And his allies were still frozen at the top of the stairs.

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“What part of ‘follow my lead’ was unclear?” he asked.

“We have no will to get trussed up, sliced to bits, and roasted alive by that psychotic monstrosity,” the fae called down.

“Seriously? Aren’t you a ranged magic attacker? Bring that DPS down here and get to work.”

“Ah… that would be a negative.”

No? What did he mean, no? What was taking those two so long? Had he just allied himself with two useless cowards? Kyessy had plenty to say about useless, bitter wizards who just sat in their colonial style houses or their mansions and ruminated about how they were getting shafted because they weren’t intelligent enough to handle real magic. Was this Dvillandriin guy the same type of situation, where he only knew boot mending magic and nothing else? And what about this tinkerer? He was an orc, sure, but some big guys had big brains in their big thick skulls. This guy should’ve been able to help out in some way or another.

Meanwhile the pummeler was spinning around, cursing and spitting and hissing in whatever language groblins spoke. It shot a lasso down at the floor and missed, then blasted the wall with fire and shrieked in dismay when some of the flames splashed back in its face. A series of thoonk sounds emerged from the gauntlets after that, but whatever bullets it was shooting missed Corbin and instead bounced away in all directions.

He had enough MP for another Enervating Strike, but not for three. After this he’d be down to the really low level skills in Prissy’s equipped set. He really needed his enemy to slow down or lose a ridiculous amount of hit points.

He darted in again and activated Worry along with Enervating Strike, and latched onto the pummeler’s elbow. This time he was rewarded with 24 damage, 5 Strength lost, and another 4 Endurance lost. Mr. Pummeler shrieked in pain, and no rage this time, stumbled a step and leaned up against the wall of the stairwell landing. He was huffing and puffing like a smoker, Corbin noted with some satisfaction, while he hung from its arm.

Just you try to fist somebody with no fists, he thought.

Corbin felt a strong metallic grip settle into his fur and yank him off this upper arm here, but he was able to deal 9 and 12 damage before the Worry hold was broken. He wasn’t sure how much that was in total, but if the pummeler lost 10 Endurance, that was an automatic minus 50 HP, or it should’ve been.

He felt something crunch, and took 10 damage, then he was airborne. He didn’t have enough time to think or wonder anything before the stairs and wall met his body at the same time, and dealt him another 10 damage.

Clank! The fister’s steampunk boot hissed out some gas or another. Clank! The groblin took another unsteady and labored step up toward him. Corbin twisted around to see the infuriated, bloodied little bastard sneering at him and climbing the steps on all fours.

“Would you please end this guy?” he whined to his erstwhile companions.

Nothing doing. The two of them were still shaking in their boots at the top of the stairs.

Fine, he’d just have to do it himself. He rose to all four feet, dashed forward, received the notification that he had succeeded an Agility check but failed the Luck check following that (weird), and flanked the fister yet again.

This time he went for the hoses. This thing had a bunch of cables or hoses or wires running from the gauntlets to its whirring, hissing, steaming metal backpack. He had no wish to get stuck in the gears there, but these hoses would do just fine. He got Worry going again, and worried the shit out of those hoses in his jaws. He ran through damage like crazy: 8, 12, 9, 10, 13, 9 again. A series of Luck (Serendipity) checks followed along with each Strength check to hold on, all but one of them successes. Soon enough the groblin threw back its head and yelled in fury, turned, clearly intent on flattening him with its big steampunk gauntlet that was still connected to the power pack. Little buzzsaws were whirring like crazy, and more flame was belching out of its big fingertips. What happened instead was that Todd chose that moment to roar loudly in the distance, and the whole place shook. Dust from above rained down and got into the groblin’s nose at the same moment the ground was shaking. The weakened groblin sneezed, overbalanced, and instead of delivering a slicing, burning, shooting piston punch to the corgi of legend currently clamped onto its gear, it fell down the stairs.

Then the whirring, steaming metal backpack promptly exploded.

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