Chapter 84 - Gollems!
“You can’t have your way this time,” despite knowing how valuable his contribution might be.
“I can keep my life intact,” he was smart enough to get my point without delving into details, “I’m a jumper!” Yet his last remark was really pointless.
Stop bragging boy, your jumper ability was just impressive if you decided to abandon us and save your neck!
“You can keep your life, but we will be in great danger,” I rolled up my eyes in response to his words, “don’t forget the angels of that city had the total blessing of the first quest without much loss yet.”
My words carried enough weight to stop him from boasting.
“Look! Something is going over there!”
All of sudden, Alex shouted and attracted my attention to the other side of the bridge.
It seemed out of being constantly facing threats she developed such a cautious nature. She was the first to notice the big shadows appearing at the other end of the bridge.
“They are from other races,” the jumper seemed to have a skill to see far away, like myself. “What are they trying to do? Intimidate us?” he snorted, taking this in a light way.
But the other group that appeared had real distinctive features. Their bodies were so big like small hills. Even if we put five elephants together, they would still be inferior to that race.
Dark silver skin, with bronzed lines covering almost every inch in a semi-circular fashion. Two curved long tusks came out from the back of their armpits, adding more ferocity to their saw like sharp three rows of teeth in their jaws.
But that wasn’t the main threat here, their two thick and giant arms ending with club like fists and not fingers were!
They arched their body, not thanks to their immense body weight but thanks to the very sturdy and very heavy arm muscles.
“Gollems!” I muttered in a deep voice, “this bridge… Damn those angels! They react really fast!”
“What are Gollems?” Alex asked.
“Like those mythical creatures in our legends?” Isabella added.
Yet before I could say anything in return, the group that was formed of a dozen of Gollems lined up fast, raised their giant fists high in the air and extended their backs before they slammed in one time at the bridge.
*Boom!* *Crack!* *Woosh!*
A gush of air erupted all of sudden coming from their direction before a loud booming sound accompanied by obvious cracking and terrifying noises from the entire bridge erupted afterwards!
The big bridge, the bridge with double decks, in just mere minutes broke and most of its parts fell into the river and got washed away.
All that remained were the two big towers, and the one at the opposite end seemed to have many obvious cracks on its surface.
“This…” even the spearhead was stupefied when he saw this! The only one who remained calm was the jumper.
“They are the Gollem race,” I said bitterly while turning my back to the river and walking away, “let’s go. That race has insane physical ability, enough to destroy two bridges of that size.”
“So we are abandoning going there?” Angelica jumped by my side, or literally by Alex’s side who was sticking her body with mine.
“We aren’t,” I couldn’t drop the mission of going to Jersey city, “we’ll go through the tunnels. What’s the biggest tunnel we have here?”
Isabella returned to her guiding role as she answered:
“It would be Lincoln,” she paused as if she was arranging her thoughts, “it’s at the south west from the park, just west of the famous empire state building.”
“That’s around ten to fifteen minutes from here running,” I said.
“Are we going to run?!” The jumper looked at me with his cold eyes behind his mask, but I didn’t care.
“Yeah, got a problem with that?” I said and before anyone else would say anything funny, I started to run, “let’s go. We need to fasten our moves.”
I knew the angels were ready at the tunnels. But if they managed to bring other races to Jersey city, then I would prefer to fight underground monsters than those races.
I didn’t dwindle a lot about the Gollems. In my fight against the combined hellish attacks of that star weapon, the angels brought the dragons to me.
So what would prevent the other city angels from doing the same?
The angels were a meticulous race, I could give them that credit. But if I managed to outrun their time schedule expected of my moves here, then I would be able to avoid some trouble.
That was on the condition of me getting past the tunnel faster than their forces would gather.
As we ran, I stored all my warriors inside my inventory. Using them was one of the deadliest weapons I had. But I knew that dealing with other races wouldn’t be smooth.
Take those Gollems for example, outside from my four dragons, other warriors of mine wouldn’t be able but to stop them.
Penetrating such armoured skin of theirs would become a challenge. But the big factor on my side would be their slow movement. And that was why I was running right now.
Facing even dragon races wouldn’t get on my nerves like those race games with their defence! I didn’t realise it before, but I was a type of an all out offence, zero defence guy.
“Will we have to fight wolves and hyenas again?” As we stood at the dark entrance of that tunnel, Alex couldn’t help asking in doubt and obvious fright.
“Don’t worry, I can handle the darkness in this tunnel,” the jumper finally did something useful. He took out a large number of diamond shaped crystals that were all sparkling and shimmered in strange bright gold light.
“These are the golden heart fire crystals,” he said before throwing them all at the entrance.
“Wait,” Alex said in fright, “shouldn’t we have one each?” ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
“You don’t get how these work,” I looked with envy at the jumper. Such an item wasn’t enough to be bought using coins! I once read one had to unlock a certain rank god blessing before obtaining these.
Thinking about gods, I couldn’t help but frown. I kept my channel notification open all the time, yet I didn’t receive a single message from them.
“Come on, your time is running short here… Tick tock… Tick tock…” I couldn’t help but look upwards, towards that gloomy looking dark sky.
“What are you talking about?” The jumper gave me a side glance in disgust, “are you still hoping for some help from those useless for nothing gods?”
I was surprised that he saw through my actions this clearly. “How did you know?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“How couldn’t I know and you went all the way blabbering about your quest,” he rolled up his eyes as if he saw through my deep secret or something.
“What’s going on?” Isabella couldn’t control her curiosity and asked in a girly way.
She wasn’t alone, everyone else was the same.
But I didn’t care about her question. I only frowned about something else.
“Do you have a god blessing already?”
If another survivor told me this, then I would accept it. But that jumper, as someone who lived through many apocalyptic runs before… How could he commit such a naive mistake?
“What? Don’t tell me you only think of the blessing sponsorship as the only method to contact with gods?” he spoke as if he knew something I didn’t. And he was right!
This thing he was talking about was a thing I was oblivious about.
“No time for such talk now,” yet he mysteriously stopped me from asking further, “you know your little video caused a stir up into many gods up there? Even I heard rumours that some big names are paying attention to you.”
Well, this came out of the blue. But I couldn’t deny how delighted I was. “So why aren’t they responding now?” Even if I was happy to hear that, the absurd silence in my channel and notifications made me frown.
“Come on, do you think a big name planning to join your offer will come without pressure and a threat?”
His words just confirmed my guess. Damn! Could I attract one of those big names? Really? Then take all the time you want, gods, I wouldn’t be in a hurry here.
The crystals the jumper threw just now didn’t fall, but floated midair. They didn’t even stand there but started to move, some returned, some stayed, and the rest delved deeply inside the tunnel, illuminating it.
This miraculous scene surprised everyone but me. Those golden heart fire crystals were originally connected with the jumper and fell totally under the whims of his thoughts.
So they weren’t just a typical kind of illuminating crystals. In addition to lightning such deep darkness, they had a fierce explosive offence ability.
Lucky him! What else would he have inside that inventory of his? For a moment there I really wanted to kill him and explore his inventory.
But I wasn’t that mad, luckily.
“Let’s go,” I summoned one third of my warriors and made them surround us. Inside such an underground environment, we were exposed to dangers from any direction.
The entrance was in the shape of a giant inverted U shape, twisting just after tens of metres ahead. And there were three of such entrances, but we took the left side entrance.
The logic was simple. If we chose the middle, then we would be exposed to attacks from all directions, monsters coming from other tunnels on the sides.
But taking the right or the left would make us slightly protected. Choosing the left was to increase the distance those Gollems needed to cross to reach us.
Hopefully we could bypass the tunnel before they would arrive.
The size of the inside of the tunnel wasn’t that big anyway. The curved cement ceiling was around ten metres high, not allowing for my precious dragons to exert their full strength indeed.
Not to mention the tunnel only had two paths inside, further limiting the mobility of my troops.
So I couldn’t take my full warriors out either. One third seemed a bit enough while the healers, the magicians, and the archers were scattered among us.
“Keep running!”
The tunnel was like the bridges I saw before, filled with many deserted cars and lots of destruction. However the more we ran inside that tunnel, the denser the stench of blood and rotted flesh.
“It seems there was a big massacre here!” As we ran for a few minutes, we already came to see the source of such a smell.
The tunnel was slightly over two kilometres in length. We just crossed half a kilometre when we saw a grand scene, and evidence of the monster’s brutality.
Lots and lots of corpses lied and filled the entire tunnel from where we stood.
“They seemed to try and hide inside the tunnel,” Angelica couldn’t take the scene and put her hand over her mouth, trying to prevent herself from vomiting.
It was bloody, brutal, and disgusting. The corpses weren’t intact, and we could see a large number of monsters still feeding on the corpses.
“No time for that,” I pulled her arm and made her stand erect. She was about to vomit, but she had to withstand that.
We had no time to lose here. The monsters already spotted us.
“Bronzed rats!” The jumper recognized those vicious types of monsters fast, “be aware, such monsters move in large packs, have very agile, very fast reactions, and have slightly tough skin.”
He nailed the main points of these rats to be honest! “Just use all your force while hitting them,” I added, “aim for their armpits, it’s their main weakness.”
*Screech!*
As the rats came closer, a few of them screeched in a loud way. I knew this was their way to call upon more of their kin, trying to overrun us with sheer numbers.
That was their biggest and most efficient tactic.
“Shield up front, Bulltors behind,” I didn’t sit idle in front of these rats.
Each rat was like a big cow, having a big bellowed abdomen with a pointy head and tapering long tail.. They were one and half metres in height, covered with bronzed shiny skin that gave the impression of its thickness and sturdiness.