Tunnle Rat Chapter 163 (Patreon)

Milo had a very good understanding of what projectile weapons could do. Many dwarves had a fascination with them and would spend hours sipping beer and talking about their ideas for hand cannons while they tinkered with other projects. Some, like Boom-Boom, skipped the guns and went right to the heart of the matter by focusing on more powerful explosives.

From the sound, rate of fire, and how the large caliber rounds had destroyed the stone walls Milo knew that the miners had nothing that could stand up to the weapon. Shields and armor would be shredded and makeshift barricades would be useless. As the shots were fired into the wall he timed a leap ran up the shaking stone until he got to the ceiling and could grab hold of a stalactite. It was hazy at the top of the cavern. The fires from the burning lamp oil filled the area where Milo hid, and made breathing difficult. He took shallow breaths and used his hood as a filter.

Below him, the stone wall thrown up by the earth mages shattered into rubble, and the remaining large spiders picked their way over the pile of stone easily. Behind them came the Iron Spider. The heavily armored behemoth paused at the rubble and began to move around it. Even through the smoke, Milo could tell the leg assemblies were crap. They didn't match and had no synchronicity. He couldn't tell if there was a clumsy spider under the armor or just a badly made machine.
The twin-linked dwarven chain gun was pintle-mounted on the back of the spider. Only one gun was revolving. Goblin acting as a gunner tore loaded up another belt of ammunition and prepared to fire again. Milo moved across the ceiling, trying to catch up with them. Instead of shooting toward the miners behind the thick stone wall, the gunner started strafing back and forth across the makeshift barriers that had non-combatants hiding behind them. Milo heard cries of pain and screams.

The Iron Spider screamed at her mechanic. "Idiot! Why are you wasting ammo on worthless targets?! We need to outflank that wall and destroy the remaining warriors."

Grobit chewed on the remains of his cigar and sent a few more shots into the women and children. "Well, there's nothing else to shoot at, and I'm a little bored shooting rock walls. They give crap for experience. Those folks over there aren't worth a lot, but a goblin needs to get his experience where he can. I only need a little more and I can move up to level ...urk...."

Grobit would have said more, but there was a piece of jagged bone sticking out of his eye socket. Milo dropped onto the Iron Spiders’ back, and before the stunned goblin could do anything, clawed deep into his torso with both hands. The dying body of her mechanic slid off the back of the spider and she stepped on him without knowing it.

Milo grabbed the handles of the gun. It seemed simple enough. The Iron Spider was turning towards the side of the ratkins’ wall, just as her seven remaining troops started scaling it. The first spider to the top was met with a hail of bullets as Milo fired the chain gun. It fell more than leaped at the ratkin miners and Milo kept the stream of bullets flowing, hosing down spider after spider.

The miners heard the sound of the guns and saw the spiders at the top of the wall exploding into gore. They backed further away to avoid the rain of foul-smelling ichor. His ride was not happy.

"What are you doing!?!! Witless mammal! Traitorous piece of trash! Those were my loyal warriors! They loved me! Now I will have to kill all of these rats by myself."

Milo was wondering what the foot-pedals and levels did. As the Iron Spider advanced on the miners, and the miners wisely fled, he started to experiment. One level unlocked the foot pedals which controlled the direction in which the legs would move the spider. For a few minutes, Milo and the Spider fought over who got to move the legs until he found the override for her control. The dwarves who had built her robotic body didn't like having to constantly tell the stupid spider when to move or where to go. In the middle of a battle, they would take over and drive her like a walking tank.
The spider hated that. She'd demanded that Grobit take apart those controls and leave her in control. Unknown to her, Grobit liked having an ace in the hole in case she decided she didn't need him. The controls had stayed. Once again, the mighty Iron Spider found herself to in the passenger seat. Milo brought the spider to a halt and locked the controls, leaving her immobile. He jumped down and ran to where the miners were assisting the wounded.

Clawhammer was trying to assist one of the healers with a wounded child. Milo nodded at him and started pulling healing potions out of the storage in his ring. "Use these, they should be very potent."
Only two people had been killed by the chain gun, but several were wounded. With bandages, spells, and potions everyone worked to stabilize them and stop the bleeding. Two people had shattered bones which Milo was able to put back together while a healer saw to torn muscles and sinew.
With that done, Master Clawhammer pulled Master Tallsqueak aside. "Nice work doing whatever the hell you did. But what the hell is going on? And what is that thing?"

Milo didn't know more than the obvious. "Those are spider warriors, but only two are noble and not very large. Much smaller than the ones I fought before. Under all that metal is a huge Noble, but it's mostly mechanical. I killed the gunner and then turned the chain gun on the spiders rushing to fight you. It's a dwarven gun, but not well made. One side isn't even working or it would have fired twice as fast. I don't know how, but it has to be part of what is going on."

Clawhammer nodded as he looked at the monstrosity standing still in the middle of the cave. "Someone has given most of the Hollow bad cheese and now a spider attack."

"Rifkin is behind the cheese. He's been meeting with the merchants in the caravan. And the caravan brought Cheese Fiends with them. Why would anyone bring fiends to another hollow?"

Clawhammer smacked one big fist into his palm, angry. "Fiends? There's a reason, but not a good one. Larry's an exception. He didn't change in the middle of the battle, he just wanted to 'get big' like his brother and fight more. He could never tell us more than that after the change. But other fiends are bred for battle, they live for it."

Milo ran through scenarios in his head, it seemed obvious in retrospect. "Charlotte and Riftkin wanted to take over the Hollow. They poisoned Smiley and Bleusnout so Riftkin could give bad cheese to the hollow, making it easy for the caravan guards to take over. Charlotte attacked me and told me part of it before I...before I killed her. The rest I learned from my very excellent scouts who have been following Rifkin. But what do we do now?"

Clawhammer looked around. He had some miners who could fight a little, and some wounded he needed to protect. He could fight, but he wasn't a warrior. Tallsqueak was young, but Gilad spoke highly of him, he was a mage, and he'd killed more spiders than the rest of them. "I'm leaving that up to you. You know more about what's happening than I do, and you have scouts finding out more. If anyone asks, you have my support. I'm going to see if I can bring down the main tunnel and fortify this area. Send people this way if they need shelter."

Milo handed the master miner his pick. "This will help. It's made of a Tier 4 crystal that can cut through rock like butter."

Clawhammer felt the tip and tested it on the floor. "Damn, where did you get this?"

Milo shrugged. "Reward for killing a World Boss. Long story. I'm going to take my spider and go make s the warriors from the caravan can't get into the hollow."

Clawhammer watched as Tallsqueak ran back to the mechanical spider, adjusted the controls, and tightened some bolts. Then with the sound of screeching metal, they began walking slowly down the corridor to the Hollow. Before they could go far, the miner sent two whelps running ahead of them, spreading the word so that no one had a heart attack when they saw him coming.

The spider constantly complained to Milo until he found the switch that turned off the speaker she talked through.