'Of course the giant snake monster in the dungeon is a freaking nightmare machine made of fire, brass and presumably hatred. Whoop-dee-fucking-do,' Zhen Liu mentally griped as he watched the mechanical snake-centipede beast roar in fury, various segments on it's body spinning like circular saw blades.
Zhen Liu honestly thought that the mechanical snake monster was kinda cool, but he also didn't want to die by it's many, many, brass claws... blades... legs? Whatever the term was, he didn't want to be impaled by them!
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"Are you freaking kidding me?!," Zhen Hai yelled, "Sullivan why the hell didn't you tell us that this monster was actually a machine!"
"Because I didn't! Last time I was here, that thing swallowed my friend Rose after Donovan tried to leave us for dead!," Sullivan shouted back.
"Uhh...was Rose by any chance a mildly chubby short girl with black curly hair and a pair of oversized gauntlets?," Zhen Yue suddenly asked out of nowhere. This question had caused everyone to turn and stare at Zhen Yue out of sheer weirdness.
"Ye-how did you know any of that?"
"I think I see her floating inside of that mechanical monstrosity."
"What?!"
It took them a bit of staring, but upon closer inspection of the snake machine's body, the group could make out what appeared to be several human bodies floating in suspension up and down the internals. They could faintly make out the forms of the previous warriors that had come before them alongside several others they have never met before. As they stared on at this horrifying sight, they suddenly felt the aether around starting to become agitated, accompanied by the sight of the bodies suspended inside beginning to twitch and slightly scream in pain.
"Is it just me or is that thing glowing?!"
"It's getting ready to attack, scatter now!"
The warriors leaped to the left and right in order to avoid the incoming attack, some quietly wishing the monster would focus their ire on the other, but everyone was thrown for a loop when the machine beast's head suddenly went ablaze and it had slammed it into the exit that the Wolfe Family team left through.
The force of the impact caused cracks to form on the surrounding wall and release a powerful booming sound that echoed throughout the room, causing everyone to flinch. The mechanical monstrosity repeated this action a few more times, the cracks on the wall getting bigger and bigger.
If the warriors weren't caught up in the monster's unusual action, they would've noticed that the room had grown considerably cooler.
Everyone was a bit confused at this turn of events, until it finally dawned on them why it was slamming it's head against the doorway.
"It's trying to get the crystal ore back...haha! Well I guess that means it's gonna ignore us while we can go chase down Donovan!," Zhen stated with a confident laugh.
"Think again genius," Gianna chastised, "That exit is the only way out of here. And if that thing is occupied with attacking that doorway-"
"We have no way of getting out without drawing that thing's ire," Zhen Yue answered before Gianna could finish. "How are we going to get out of here then?
Gianna shrugged at Zhen Yue's inquiry.
"Short of a miracle, I don't know how we're going to get pass this thi-"
But before Gianna could finish her sentence, Sullivan had suddenly flared up his aether circulation and launched himself at the mechanical snake beast, his fists glowing with power.
"YOU SERPENTINE MOTHER FUCKER!"
"Click?"
Caught completely by surprise at Sullivan's unexpected attack,the digger was free to smash a pair of heavy [Rock Breaker] attacks into the mechanical beast's "back".
A loud, grinding roar filled the room as the mechanical centipede-snake cried out in what sounded like pain. With the opening blow dealt, Sullivan proceeded to mount the snake and smash his fists repeatedly in the back of it's head. The snake began to thrash in annoyance, bucking about in an attempt to throw Sullivan off and incidentally, leaving the doorway wide open.
"Or that," Gianna commented, "that works too."
"Wait, how can something made out of metal feel pain?"
"Don't care, it's distracted, MOVE IT THROUGH THE DOOR, NOW!"
Gianna grabbed her injured teammate and quickly made her way to the exit, the rest of her team following closely behind her. Not ones to be ditched, the Zhen Clan team proceeded to make moves to the door as well...two out of three of them anyways.
The Corrada family was already pass the threshold by the time the Zhen Clan team made it to the door themselves, and it is then that they noticed that Zhen Liu wasn't with them.
"Huh? Where'd Zhen Liu go?"
"Over there!"
Zhen Hai and Zhen Yue looked back to see that not only had Zhen Liu not followed behind them, but that he was instead rushing towards the mechanical snake monster with his aether puppet in tow. The two were rather stunned at Zhen Liu's reckless action.
"Zhen Liu, what the hell are you doing?!," Zhen Yue shouted at her cousin. Zhen Hai was normally the battle hungry one, so the fact that he wasn't rushing in to fight while Zhen Liu was threw her for a loop.
"Someone's gotta make sure our digger doesn't die fighting an impossible fight," Zhen Liu shouted back while maintaining his pace, "Just go kick in Wolfe's head and take back the loot! We got this!"
With his piece said, Zhen Liu refocused on to the mechanical snake.
Zhen Yue was about to go after Zhen Liu, but Zhen Hai stopped her by grabbing her by the shoulder.
"What are you doing?!"
"Didn't you see that look in his eyes?," Zhen Hai asked. "Those were the eyes of a warrior. He has a plan and it doesn't involve him dying. We need to respect his wishes and do as he asks."
Zhen Yue was about to argue, but the look in Zhen Hai's eyes told her that he was dead serious. As she turned her gaze towards Zhen Liu, she couldn't help but think that his back looked a bit broader than before.
"Gghh...Fine. Zhen Liu, you better not die."
Zhen Hai and Zhen Yue proceeded to make their way through the door, a newfound respect for Zhen Liu growing.
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The actual reason Zhen Liu was acting heroic:
Zhen Liu was all set to get out of this volcanic hellhole, especially since Nepherage couldn't go back to bracelet form while chunks of obsidian was stuck inside her body, until...
'What?! The crystal ore is gone, what possible material could-'
*Bang!*
"DIE!"
Sullivan had managed to rodeo slam the snake machine into a nearby wall, causing a huge chunk of stone to fall away and revealing a rainbow blue metallic wall underneath that caught Zhen Liu's eye.
As he stared, a sudden blast of freezing cold air hit him in the face and before his eyes, the lava immediately beneath the metal spot turned into solid and cold stone.
This didn't last long though, as the rainbow blue metal disappeared under a new layer of blackened stone.
'Huh...that explains the heat...and that definitely works.'