45_Enemy at the gates

"Herman, you are a sentimental idiot…" Staple said as she hopped atop the man’s head and pecked him.

The stunned human ignored the insult and the peck, as he helplessly watched the building sized toad and its legion of minions clash with the army of adventurers, genady rushing behind Larry prime and futilely trying to calm him down.

"Yes, yes Staple, I believe you are right… I really am an idiot…"

"I just…"

"Sigh…"

The man said, not sure what else to add, the chaotic scene before them spoke enough for itself.

"Yup, now that we have the quest settled, can we go and finally save my husband from certain doom?"

_________

Quest:

Description: Save Topo from certain doom and a fate worse than death.

Rarity: Uncommon.

Location, Generica border guard station.

Time remaining: 20 minutes.

Penalties for failure:

- Topo gets infected by nanoid virus.

- Lost reputation with Staple.

Rewards for success:

- Topo is saved.

- Staple will make her special strawberry pancakes for you, free, for life.

_________

"Wragh!" Herman slammed the final warefrog cultist with the business end of a fresh trout.

The cultist was instantly slammed through the barricaded guard station door, disintegrating into pixels before it even reached the far wall.

___

Quest complete.

Description: Save Topo from assimilation and fate worse than death.

Time remaining: 19 minutes 25 seconds.

___

"Wow that didn’t take much whatsoever…" Polya said from behind Herman, sort of disappointed that the grand quest they were on was completed in more or less 30 seconds…

"Oh I am not kidding around anymore, not after that fucking disaster with Larry…" Herman said as he kicked the remains of the barricades away with one foot, instantly shattering them against his System enhanced body.

BANG BANG!

CRASH!

A few lead bullet's ricocheted off Herman’s skin.

Using the full power of his cheat-like abilities and overpowered stats, Herman threw the trout at the first attacker, then summoned a swordfish and hurled it at the second.

With a loud crashing noise the weapons of the mechanoid guards got destroyed, while their owners looked startled at their hands and then at the overpowered human who they just shot at.

"STAND DOWN! Stand down everyone!" A somewhat familiar voice boomed from behind the toppled down interrogation table at the end of the room.

"Topo is that you, TOPO!" Staple shouted from atop Herman's head.

"Staple? Staple you are here, thank Cthulhu you are safe."

"Herman, find him, I can't walk properly wit this body." The dark feathered chicken demanded.

The bald human lifted the bossy chicken from his head, holding it to his chest with both hands as he strode past the makeshift barricades inside the guard station, ignoring the two young mechanoid guards who had tried to stop him.

Moving past the barricades, he saw rows of fallen guard bots, injured and groaning in pain, the place resembling more a scrap yard rather than the orderly guard station he remembered.

At a raised footstool at the center of the graveyard of parts stood Topo… or at least what was left of him.

A disembodied head which was also half merged with remains of a rusted old fashioned toaster, greeted them back. The bot still had his signature bushy mustache, but it was singed and burning from the protruding heating coil of the toaster.

In addition, as with the last two walking mechanoid guards, he wore a howdy kitty themed tactical headphones, the two protruding pink cat ears jutting from the top of his head. Which was presumably the reason why the guards haven't been infected by the amphibian ribbiting chant yet.

"Oh my god, TOPO!" Staple shrieked. She wriggled off Hermans grip and plopped on the floor, then she quickly dragged and flopped herself as a drowning fish to where her husband head stood.

"Oh my god are you okay, how did this happen, I knew I should have came sooner, god dammit I never should have left you alone…." The bot stammered, crying at the disembodied half destroyed head of her soulmate.

"There there Staple, it’s all fine, we are together now. We are alive and safe…" Topo said, his voice unsteady and with a distinct metallic distortion tone. As if the mere act of talking was a struggle for him.

___

The following few hours were a chaotic jumble of fighting, shouting, and hasty improvisation.

Topo and the rest of his subordinates were alive, but barely distinguishable from the kitchen and office appliances they were now half-merged with. The repair job meant to stabilize their injuries had much to be desired, but it was the best they could do at the time.

Outside the guard station the battle between the forces of Larry and the Mayor raged with full force. So the party decided to hunker down at the guard station and try to outlast the storm. That however was easier said than done considering the guard station was right in the middle of the fighting.

A towering minotaur swung his great double edged axe, slicing a Larry clone in half. The two parts of the chubby toad split apart and reformed into two identical but smaller toads, then they both leaped at their bovine attackers snout. He was shoved to the ground, mooing in horror as the tiny critters continued to infect him with nanoids.

After a while the screams and frantic pleads of the minotaur stopped, his body going limp. Then the muscular being stood up, blinked with his now amphibian eyes, picked his massive axe and charged at the rest of his adventuring party, who had abandoned him in order to save themselves.

This and many more similar scenes unfolded themselves all across the battlefield, the arrogant cocky adventurers were completely unprepared for Larry’s unique style of fighting.

One by one the adventurers fell, only to rise again as parts of Larry’s rapidly increasing army of abominations.

While that was happening, Herman and Polya stood in front the entrance of the guard station door, fighting with all their might to protect the station and their friends within.

Herman for once didn’t care about the unfair advantage he had over his enemies and summoned all sorts of exotic fish in order to efficiently and brutally slay amphibian and adventurer alike.

Polya kept hurling necromantic energy at whoever was stupid enough to approach their little corner of the battle.

Heartsun and the two young mechanoid guards were providing cover fire from behind, but quickly ran out of ammunition and were forced to pull back.

Polya lasted much longer, but even her super legendary status wasn’t enough to help her in a sustained prolonged battle.

Finally her armor began to crack and chip under the persistent nanoid swarm covering it, the tiny critters doing their damnedest to chew through her protective shell and infect the woman beneath.

Instead of retreating though, she instead activated the incineration enchantment of her armor. In an instant her entire body burst out in green necromantic fire, burning the persistent nanoids to ashes. As well as having the added benefit of making her look as some sort of necromantic elemental, risen from the pits of hell to seek vengeance on the mortals around her.

Eventually, as the power reserves in her armor began to deplete, she too was forced to retreat, lest be infected by the nanoid attacks of Larry’s minions.

That finally left Herman as their only protector.

The old man never faltered, despite the exhaustion and hours of fighting. In all honesty the battle, or maybe it should be called the slaughter, should have ended long ago. But the Mayor, in all his wisdom, had closed the gate behind his mercenary army. Thus leaving them boxed in between the heavily enchanted sturdy gate of Generica and the mutated nanoid infested army of Larry Prime.

It quickly became clear that the adventurers were outmatched and they desperately began to shout and slam their fists against the gate, but the Mayor was unmoved by their plight.

So the battle continued, the nanoid minions taking their time in order to assimilate each and every adventurer, while the Mayor just watched from atop the wall, smirking as if that was his plan all along.

At the same time Larry Prime was screaming murder and bashing himself at the magical wall defences, trying to devour the smug Mayor.

And finally Herman, who was in the middle of all that, fended off the attacks of the adventurers and the nanoid minions alike.

In all honesty he would have let some of the adventurers back at the guard station and to safety, but pretty much none of them even considered talking or communicating with him in any manner rather than:

"DIE old man, you are in my way." Or various equivalents… And then proceeding to try and stab him out of the way rather than to attempt to converse.

The only notable exception being a pair of goblins and a half elf girl who didn't immediately try to murderise him, but instead asked if he would let them through.

He stepped to the side and let them pass, but didn’t trust them enough to let them in with the rest of the group, so the two young mechanoids had them settled in the opposite corner from their group and pointed their guns at the unusual trio at all times.

They were the first and last people from the entire adventurer army that eveen attempted negotiating.

The rest kept attacking him…

So Herman fought.

Frog or not it didn’t matter. As soon as they charged him, he bashed them with the business end of his inexhaustible supply of fish.

With time, the flow of level up notifications and number chanting had became just a dull ringing in his ears. Slippy concentrated on clearing a small space in the middle of his vision clear of popups, but was unable to keep up with the rest, so each time an enemy was slain a barrage of notifications and congratulation messages kept droning on inside his mind.

At the end everyone had learned to stay the fuck away from his little corner of the battle. The pile of bodies around him also serving as improvised wall and also as a clear deterrent of not going there. The old man absentmindedly wondered if some trickery was going of with the bodies, since they didn't disappear into pixels, but eventually put it out of his mind as yet another quirk of the digital world.

Eventually the slaughter came to an end, the adventurers were all converted into mutated minions, and the bodies of the dead were being eaten and converted to more troops by the swarm of nanoids.

Herman still stood in front the guard station entrance, covered in blood, nanoids and fish guts, but nevertheless he kept standing.

Congratulations nanoid immunity gained.

Congratulations nanoid immunity evolves into new skill, super duper Legendary! Nanoid dispersal.

And with that convenient skill, all the nanoids in a 10 meter radius around him instantly burst into flames, then perishing into pixelated oblivion.

That finally made the frogs and various other amphibian abominations around him to pause and form a semi circle around the guard station, just at the edge of his new skill. They just stood there, unmoving and unblinking, staring at him akin to zombies.

The only sound echoing though the battlefield now was the screams of rage coming out from Larry Prime.

The albino toad was still in his two story building sized form and continued to bash himself against the magical force field around the wall.

"Sigh… You are nothing more than a mindless beast… And here I thought that you might have had potential…" The Mayor who stood at the opposite end of the barrier said. Completely unbothered by the furious toad snarling at him with murderous intent.

"I suppose it is my fault for raising my hopes…"

As the Mayor turned to leave, he suddenly stopped mid motion, only now noticing the green robed human at the base of the toad’s feet. He seemed to be pleading with the beast and trying to calm him down, and to the Mayor’s surprise it was actually working.

The rage in Larry’s eyes was visibly subsiding and his body slowly began to shrink down.

"Hmm… Perhaps I wasn't wrong after all…" The Mayor mumbled to himself as an idea formed in his head.

___

"There there Larry, don’t listen to that bastard, he doesn’t know you at all. We don’t have to deal with any of his nonsense. let's just get back to our swamp in peace and quiet. Say what, I will prepare your favorite treat, choko-bees! Yes that will do nicely!" The man said, continuing to pat the leg of his familiar and talking in a calming manner.

Larry wanted nothing more than to devour the monstrous body of the Mayor. He wanted revenge, he wanted to eliminate the treat he… he… he also wanted choko-bees….

Perhaps revenge could wait a few more hours… Larry wasn't doing much progress against the wall force field anyway. He had to have a think about the best way to breach the defenses. Then, THEN, he would have his revenge, but before that… Choko bees!

WHOOSH!

Larry heard a projectile whip past him. He ignored it as usual. There wasn't anything anyone could do to permanently hurt him. He would just regenerate whatever damage was inflicted on him. To his surprise though, the magical projectile missed him, flying past him and striking…

Striking his beloved master!

Genady absorbed the force of the mysterious attack, though he looked more confused than anything else. Ever since Larry had went on to subjugate his feral cousins, the man had been rapidly leveling along with his familiar, to the point that he no longer had to worry about anything or anyone harming him.

Then the screams began.

Genady’s body twisted violently as dark veins pulsed beneath his skin, spreading like ink through water. His flesh withered, turning gray and brittle, patches flaking away as if burned from within. His eyes bulged, capillaries bursting in red webs as he screamed in torment, agony overtaking him while a foul, dark fluid seeped from his wounds as the necrotic corruption devoured him cell by cell.

Finally with a final agonizing moan, Genady’s torment came to an end as he burst out into a cloud of pixels…

…

Larry watched the pile of pixels which used to be his master in stunned silence.

He, he was gone… Larry had failed again.

His master died because of him, AGAIN!

The stunned toad tilted its head at the THING responsible for all this.

The Mayor, in all his glory, stood atop the wall, gazing down at Larry with a self-satisfied smirk plastered across his monstrous face.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" The half crab half beast said with an expectant tone.

"Show me I was right for choosing you!"