Starting from Zero

Chapter 30

Book 4, Chapter 30

Mutation

           On the other end of the battlefield, Pa.s.serbyis intercepted by several griffins, causing the cannon to fall and finallycrash on the ground. It shattered into several parts. A bullet went off andflew in the direction towards the G.o.ddess City!
  
      Wedidn"t give it much thought since we"re pretty far off from the city and therandom shot probably won"t do anything. However the sh.e.l.l precisely landed onthe city gate, pulverizing it, while causing dozens if not hundreds of peopleto get buried alive.

           Right. Innocent bystanders always get into trouble.
  
      "Ohs.h.i.t! Why me again??"

            My Evilness rose! It was Tank who caused thegriffins to drop the cannon but...do they have to count ALL the deaths on myhead??
  
      Jesuscakes. All those people must have received messages that I attacked them. Ijust made a second ma.s.s-kill accident! I didn"t mean it!!

           SinceI"m already the top criminal, the system didn"t announce my honorable deedagain. This won"t cause TOO much of an issue since I have my Masking Wheelbracelet, compared to last time.
  
      Thegriffins all retreated when the cannon is destroyed. They hurt Phiona badly beforethey leave, Rosa saved her from a fatal crash.   
    

           Webegan to wrap up the whole fight since the enemies are gone. Rose is the busiesone. She"s the only healer in the team. Yuri can heal people but she died justnow, which means Rose"s first task isto revive Yuri before she gets teleported back to the city by the system due totime limit.

           Rose used her skill three times at Yuri"s body before she can bringher back. Fortunately she only lost one level. Rose could really make a fortuneby selling her skill on the battlefield.
  
      Theysoon returned everyone to their full state. I looked at Zirai, who"s sulking atthe remains of the crystal cannon. I walked to her and patted her on theshoulder.

            "Don"t worry. We can always try again."

            I feel as if I"mcomforting myself. This is strange.
  
      "What"sthe plan now?" Razor asked me. "Do we do it again when the city is in amess, or wait and save up strength?"
  
      BeforeI can respond, Elfy yelled and startled everyone.

            "Ziri, your pet!! What"she doing?"
  
      "Hm?"

            I turned around and saw Tank munching on something. Oh good lord, he"scovered in griffin blood while tearing on a griffin corpse!
  
      "Ew.I don"t want to look at that." Gold Coin pointed at the griffin shreds."Where did you find this freak?"
  
      "He"snot a freak." I retorted. "You have no idea what he can do when hegrows up enough. He"s invincible!"
  
      Zirairecovered her spirit. "You don"t say?"
  
      "Yes.When he"s still an enemy he can knock Lucky away like he was nothing."
  
      "...Thebug can knock a dragon away?" 

           "You should check his status. Maybe eating corpse issomething he learned." Elfy suggested. "I know some monsters that canheal or strengthen themselves by doing this."
  
      "Goodpoint."

            I read through Tank"s description and my mouth instantly droppedopen.

            "He--he--"
           

            "What?" Rose finished her work and ran to me. "He can heal uplike that?"
  
      Ishook head. "He"s not healing."
  
      "Whatis it then?"   
     

            "It"sa special skill. He can learn the skill of whatever he eats!"   
     

            "Youserious??"  Gold Coin squeezed to my side. I opened the window for everyone tosee.

            "...[FireBullet](Griffin). Yeah that"s one of their skills. Good G.o.d, what happens if heeats a dragon? He can breath fire?"
  
      Mercilessanswered this one. "Oh he doesn"t need to. The bug can already breath fire.And it"s powerful."
  
      "Howdo you know that?" Gold Coin turned to Merciless.   
    

           "Iwas killed by it. I"d say that fire is just like dragon fire."   
    

           "Alittle less than that but close." I added. "Lucky was in a breathingcontest with it, and he lost. Though that was probably because Lucky"s levelwas too low."
  
      Tankhas finished his meal during our discussion. He slowly crawled away when no one"s noticing.
  
      "Wheredid it go Ziri?" Elfy is the first to notice the missing bug.

           She turnedaround and saw Tank just behind her, still biting on something.
  
      Iwent over to check. "Geez how many griffins do you--"

           Then I stopped, whichcaused all the others to look towards Tank as well.
  
      "Thesc.r.a.ps! I mean, the cannon--"

            Tank is munching on the remains of thecrystal cannon. There are only a few screws and springs left on the ground!

            But, buthe eats CANNONs??
  
      "Ziri,check his skill!"

            I didn"t close the window, Violet saw something new.
  
      "[CrystalCannon Shot]? Wait wait wait you"re not saying--"

            I told everyone to step aside andstarted to give orders to Tank. "Hey Tank, that hill over there, do yousee it? Use [Crystal Cannon Shot] on it!"
  
       Noresponse. 

            "What happened?" Iasked Phantom.
  
      "Giveme a moment." Phantom went silent for a while. "He says he can onlyuse that skill with full HP."
  
      "Rose,heal him up. Looks he needs a full HP bar to use the cannon skill."
  
      Rosefilled up his HP soon, when Tank turned towards the hill I mentioned. He fixed his six legs deep into the dirt and lay low.

           The wing-case on his back openedup. I thought he"s going to display his wings again. Instead, a pipe-likecavity organism stuck out from the middle of his back and pointed at the hill. Thealien object is obviously part of Tank"s body now.

           The long, light green barrelbegan to glow. Poom! It kicked back in the same manner when a cannon releases ash.e.l.l. A bullet like the ones we saw before went towards the hill. The onlynoticeable difference is that this one is green colored.
  
      Itlanded on the tip of the hill, causing a shock wave that can be seen by bareeyes. The tip part disappeared from our sight, silently. It was when the shockwave reached our position when we were finally met with the thunderousexplosion and terrible ground shake. We all had to crouch on the ground toavoid all the debris.
  
      Whenthe whole scene calmed down, Tank fell sideways and almost crashed on top of me,if not for my quick reflexes. I looked at his attribute again -- HP 1,MP 0. All skills are grayed out. A half transparent message is displayed on topof the window: 

           [Exhausted. Cannot act. 72,000 seconds left (online time)]

           Andthe time meter is slowly going down.
  
      Everyonegathered up with their bodies covered in dirt. Violet commented: "Weshould-cough! Should have picked something farther away! Cough! I wasn"texpecting that kind of power."
  
      Ishowed them the countdown. "Pity. It got a really long cooldown."
  
      Coin:"Totally legit. That was like a nuclear missile. If you can use it withoutany limit you might as well go fuc up j.a.pan on your own. You know, just standthere, and give five or six shots, that"s enough to blast a medium-sized cityinto plain ground."
  
      Elfy:"Nice. A portable cannon. Now we can really call it a "Tank"."   
     

           "I"dprefer "Self-propelled Howitzer", if that counts as a name." Pa.s.serbycommented.
  
      Mercilesslooked at the now strange-shaped Tank. "Apart from the speed...there"s anotherproblem."   
      

           "Whatis it?" We all looked at him.
  
      "Thecannon is actually a skill right? And using it means Ziri"s companion will haveto drop out of any actions for a while." Merciless paused a little. "Itmay be powerful but there are not many chances we can use it for real. Close combat isabsolutely a no. As you see, the attack doesn"t distinguish friendlies. If weshoot in the middle of a fight we"ll bring everyone down with it."
  
      Violetspoke: "We can use it during city siege. A shot like that on the city gateor among the city defenders will solve us a lot of problems."   
     

           "That"sright. But did you notice how long it took him to expand the cannon?" Mercilessgave us the cold water again. "He needs to be at top status, and a fullminute to prepare the shot. If anyone manages to touch him, the skill getsinterrupted. The skill is really impressive on the looks, but not verypractical, if you ask me."
  
      Welowered our heads. That made a lot of sense. As he said, the kill power isreally good. But I can only use it at somewhere really far away from the team.
  
      "Oh oops...sorry for that. It"s better than nothing at least."   
      

           "Agreed!"  
      

           "So...what"sthe plan? We go fetch another?"
  
      "Notnow." Hawk shook his head. 
  
      "Iagree with Hawk. We should wait for the night or wait till tomorrow. If we gonow we"ll run into their main force again."
  
     
       GoldCoin held her chin. "I have an idea but...It"s just a matter whether youguys got the guts to do it."   
      

           "Wellshoot. We tried to take a city defense cannon for real. Is there anything else wecan"t try?"
  
      "Doyou know how the three major system cities got their t.i.tle?" 

           She got ushanging. And I don"t think she"s going straight if we don"t play along.
  
      "Why?Cause they"re big?"
  
      "Nope!"She looks satisfied. "The major cities are not the biggest ones. I"ve seencities bigger than the G.o.ddess City but they"re still not major cities. Thereason is the three cities have imperial palaces in them."
  
      "Youmean, the inner city?" Hawk nodded. "I see what you meant. Only majorcities have those palaces in the center. But what"s important with that? Theynever allow players in there. Anything worth taking?"
  
      Coinwaved her index finger. "There are five crystal cannons in each city."
  
      "Duh,we all saw that."
  
      "Whatyou didn"t see is the biggest cannon is located inside the palace area." 
  
      "Canyou make it simple?"   
     

           "Okay,the simple question. Are you willing to lose a level to get that cannon?"
  
      "Howdo we do that?" I still don"t catch up with her.
  
      "It"s,well, maybe a minor system bug. The bug doesn"t mean anything to common playersbut we can use it."
  
      "Systembug huh?" I perked up. Never thought I"d encounter any bugs in [Zero]. Thisis big news, I"ll go tell my father later. 

           "Tell us already!"
  
      "It"sa strange system setup. I noticed it by accident. There"s one point when I stolesomething and was cornered. My only choice then was jumping into the inner cityarea. Guess what next?"
  
      "Yes?"  
      

           "TheNPC guards all retreated. They can"t get into the palace."   
      

           "Thatdoesn"t look "minor" to me!" I yelled.
  
      "Letme finish! City guards can"t get in, sure. But there are imperial guards insidethe palace, level 900, led by level 950 captains! These imperial troops willcome after you instead."
  
      Hawkshrugged. "No bug for us then. Those level 900 guards will be way harder to deal with."
  
      Coin:"Wrong again! I survived for a while thanks to my speed. The imperialguards only try to kill you, instead of taking you to prison. And I found aproblem: there are very few of them, and they don"t resp.a.w.n. In other words, they"reshort on hands. So what happens if we attack from several different locations?"
  
      "Eventhey don"t have enough men, they can still kill us before we can bring thecannon outside the palace."   
     

           "Wedon"t have to! Actually, we don"t do that in the first place."
  
      "Nowwe"re not going to steal the cannon at all?"   
     

           "Theordinary city guards left me alone after I was killed. I sneaked back into thepalace again, guess what I found? The items I lost were still there on theground. I tried several times more and this is my conclusion:

            First, the cityguards don"t care if someone enters the palace. They only go after thieves andcriminals. 

            Second, items left in the palace will not get cleared up. Theimperials don"t check what you dropped.

            (In [Zero], items don"t disappear on themselves but pa.s.sing monsters and NPCs will try to take them away. Remember how Hawk and Elfy witnessed a dragon s.n.a.t.c.hing a gem away from a group of fighting players?) 

            And third, when I went back for my items, the imperials came afterme but they stopped at the palace boundary. The outside city guards nevershowed up again either. So, the imperials either try to kill me because Itrespa.s.sed on forbidden ground, or because I have stolen items on me. Eitherway, they can"t go outside bounds. The city guards won"t care if I go backagain and retrieve the stolen items I lost. You see the bug now?"
  
      "Okay,so, for whatever reason, imperial guards only attack intruders inside thepalace, and city guards will stop pursuing anyone after they"re killed once. Neitherof them actually care about the stolen items." Elfy gave her own sum-up.
  
      "Close. The city guards do care about the items, but they don"t try totake them if they can"t. Normally they will take the items from the thief andgive them back to the owner, but since they can"t reach the items dropped insidethe palace, they"ll leave them there. Even if I take them out again they won"tdo anything."
  
      "Howdoes that help with our plan?" Pa.s.serby asked.
  
      Someonestill didn"t get it so I explained: "Coin wants to say that if we move thepalace cannon, the city guards will gather outside the palace and try to killus to retrieve the cannon. Here, we move the cannon near the gate and let theimperials kill us. Then all the NPCs will return to their original positions, werevive, go into the palace again and take the cannon. In thiscase, neither the imperials nor the city guards will come after us. We can justcarry the cannon through the city gate under broad daylight!"

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