章節 10: Raiding the Queen
The first thing Barda noticed was that this new threat was huge. It was almost a meter long, its appendages stretching to more than that height. It rose to the height of a calf, and it had the size of a full-grown ram.
What was even more amazing about this particular bug was the fact that it seemed to glow. Unlike the others that blended with the surrounding, this one seemed to stand out, giving off a faint light from its body. Not enough to illuminate the surroundings but enough to be seen from afar.
That, coupled with the sinister look on its face was enough to make any man's blood cuddle, but Barda was not just any man.
With his bow raised, he loosed his arrow at the new enemy. One of the biggest advantages of the bronze bow was the power it carried. Bending the bow was hard work, However, if you could shoot an arrow with it, the power and speed in the arrow were like nothing ever made in this world. The arrow may not be as fast as a bullet, but it was almost 3 times the speed of a regular arrow, and it bore double the penetrative power.
Despite that, the arrow came to a halt just a mere inch away from the bug, and it couldn't go any further. All its momentum seemed to dissipate, and it fell harmlessly.
For not the first time, Barda realized that these bugs were not quite following the rules of physics. First, it had been the wield bugs that had been undetectable by his scans until they moved. Despite all the technology at his disposal, Barda had not detected the insects until they were inches away.
Then came this, a bug that could absorb the momentum. This was not entirely strange to Barda, as there were spaceships and other kinds of armor that were designed with this effect. What was strange was seeing it here, in this world and with this bug.
Barda was not an ignoramus. He knew magic existed in the universe, and he had encountered quite a few mages in his time. Some were humans, but the vast majority were the elves, as they were known as the favored child of magic. What Barda didn't expect was magic to be found in such a rural planet inhabited predominantly by humans.
The concept of magic existed on this planet. However, this whole time Barda had not thought that they were referring to actual magic, the mystic power. Many civilizations had the concept of magic, but for most, it was make-believe. Few had the real magical powers, and fewer still could awaken the powers within them.
Having realized that his opponent was magical, this changed many things. For starters, it was widely believed that the bane of technology was magic. In the face of these unrecordable powers, technology was extremely useless as it sort to detect the forces behind a spell.
There were some magical drives and mods one could add to their system, but that was extremely advanced and it could only work for elemental magic. Other more mystic magic would not be detected at all. This was Barda's greatest undoing at this time.
Suddenly, the bug moved. It raised its front legs them brought them down fast in a stomping action. Given its small body, Barda wasn't sure what it was trying to achieve, but he couldn't be careless at the face of such a foe.
Just above him, a stalactite that had been hanging, and had been unnoticed until now, came tumbling down towards him. From Barda's viewport, he noticed that it was moving rather fast, faster than what was physically possible. It was being accelerated by a force other than gravity.
Barda was about to jump away but he realized he couldn't. It wasn't that he was unable to, but the falling rock became his whole world. It was as though the 2, man and rock, ceased to exist in the real world and made it to another reality. In this new one, the rock was everything to the man, coming at him with destructive purposes.
Such an attack would have worked on anyone else, but not Barda. He was not a man, he was a machine. His senses were not those of a living being. The numbers and the metrics were there to show him all the data on the approaching rock, and there were still simulations being formulated and ran on how to deal with the incoming threat.
Most importantly, Barda's brain was not human, nor was it carbon-based. As such, the illusory attack could not affect the ones and zeroes bit code running in his brain. With a powerful swing, Barda used his bronze bow as a club and shattered the falling stalactite.
After the rock was shattered, Barda didn't want to give the bug time to launch another attack. He charged at it with his bronze bow raised. The bug continued to stomp on the ground. Every stomp was followed by a falling rock. Luckily, these rocks did nothing more than slow down Barda, who would smash them with one hit.
As he drew closer, the bug seemed to get agitated. It did not want Barda getting any closer than he had, and it began to retreat into the cave.
Seeing this, Barda worked even harder to catch up to it, but every time he made some ground, a rock would come tumbling down at him. Now, it wasn't just stalactites falling, all manner of rocks were falling at him, breaking then falling from the top.
In the rest of the mines, many of the miners were busy running out, afraid that this was a cave-in. Even the guides that had been waiting for Barda to emerge had no choice but to quickly rush out before the entire mine buried them underneath.
Barda realized that if this went on, he would be in the loss. He had the advantage in terms of attributes. His speed and strength were off the charts. Despite that, he still couldn't make up any ground between him and his opponent, who was rushing back to their cave.
Barda didn't want to let the bug go. It looked like a Queen, and if that was the case, then she could repopulate the nest once more, rendering his work useless.
Secondly, such a difficult foe had been labeled as Threat Level 2. Most humans and other animals he had encountered were at level 1, the most basic. They couldn't intentionally harm the android by themselves. The bug may not have been able to put him down, but it was not something he could easily subdue, which made it quite threatening.
When the bug was barely a foot away from the hole it had come out from, Barda identified a weakness. He had been so preoccupied with finding a weakness or some way of dealing with the falling rocks he had not taken the time to look at the beast properly.
Every time it stomped, its lower mandibles would open for a split second. Given the time it would take to deal with the falling rock following the stomp, and how quickly it closed its mouth after the stomp, this could barely be considered a weakness, but a dying man clutches on straws.
In a fluid motion, the bug got to where it was supposed to be. Barda could tell that after this next stomp, the bug would disappear down the hole, and it would be out of reach.
As expected, the Queen raised its forelimbs to stomp. At the same time, an arrow was nocked and the cable pulled back. Complex calculations were running through Barda's mind.
To get the bug, the shot had to be perfect. Any slight deviation from the target, even by millimeters, the shot would miss. Barda wasn't worried though, for his android was using the same software used in targetting by spaceships.
Tang!
The sound of the bow-string rang in Barda's ear like a guitar string that had been plucked. However, he didn't have time to waste, he could hear the sound of a rock hurtling towards him. He spun around and whacked at it, causing it to shatter in the wake of his blow.
Tentatively, he turned around to look at his opponent. He wasn't very sure if he had hit it. Looking at where it should have been, Barda didn't see either the bug or the arrow he had used. He cursed at his slowness, for failing to recognize the weakness earlier.
Now, he had to draw near the hole. Part of Barda didn't want to go down that hole. The bug was magical, and that meant that he would subject to magical attacks.
Barda realized that ever since he had taken on his android body, this was the first real threat he had encountered, and it wasn't much of a threat. While he had been human, any number of threats could have torn him apart at any time, yet he had been fearless in his approach.
Shaking his head at his momentary cowardice, Barda proceeded to head for the bug hole, an arrow nocked in place.
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