Starting from Zero

Book 4, Chapter 30

Mutation

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On the other end of the battlefield, Passerby is intercepted by several griffins, causing the cannon to fall and finally crash on the ground. It shattered into several parts. A bullet went off and flew in the direction towards the Goddess City!

We didn't give it much thought since we're pretty far off from the city and the random shot probably won't do anything. However the shell precisely landed on the city gate, pulverizing it, while causing dozens if not hundreds of people to get buried alive.

Right. Innocent bystanders always get into trouble.

"Oh shit! Why me again??"

My Evilness rose! It was Tank who caused the griffins to drop the cannon but...do they have to count ALL the deaths on my head??

Jesus cakes. All those people must have received messages that I attacked them. I just made a second mass-kill accident! I didn't mean it!!

Since I'm already the top criminal, the system didn't announce my honorable deed again. This won't cause TOO much of an issue since I have my Masking Wheel bracelet, compared to last time.

The griffins all retreated when the cannon is destroyed. They hurt Phiona badly before they leave, Rosa saved her from a fatal crash.

We began to wrap up the whole fight since the enemies are gone. Rose is the busies one. She's the only healer in the team. Yuri can heal people but she died just now, which means Rose's first task is to revive Yuri before she gets teleported back to the city by the system due to time limit.

Rose used her skill three times at Yuri's body before she can bring her back. Fortunately she only lost one level. Rose could really make a fortune by selling her skill on the battlefield.

They soon returned everyone to their full state. I looked at Zirai, who's sulking at the remains of the crystal cannon. I walked to her and patted her on the shoulder.

"Don't worry. We can always try again."

I feel as if I'm comforting myself. This is strange.

"What's the plan now?" Razor asked me. "Do we do it again when the city is in a mess, or wait and save up strength?"

Before I can respond, Elfy yelled and startled everyone.

"Ziri, your pet!! What's he doing?"

"Hm? "

I turned around and saw Tank munching on something. Oh good lord, he's covered 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's not a freak." I retorted. "You have no idea what he can do when he grows up enough. He's invincible!"

Zirai recovered her spirit. "You don't say?"

"Yes. When he's still an enemy he can knock Lucky away like he was nothing."

"...The bug can knock a dragon away?"

"You should check his status. Maybe eating corpse is something he learned." Elfy suggested. "I know some monsters that can heal or strengthen themselves by doing this."

"Good point."

I read through Tank's description and my mouth instantly dropped open.

"He--he--"

"What?" Rose finished her work and ran to me. "He can heal up like that?"

I shook head. "He's not healing."

"What is it then?"

"It's a special skill. He can learn the skill of whatever he eats!"

"You serious??" Gold Coin squeezed to my side. I opened the window for everyone to see.

"...[Fire Bullet](Griffin). Yeah that's one of their skills. Good god, what happens if he eats a dragon? He can breath fire?"

Merciless answered this one. "Oh he doesn't need to. The bug can already breath fire. And it's powerful."

"How do you know that?" Gold Coin turned to Merciless.

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

"A little less than that but close." I added. "Lucky was in a breathing contest with it, and he lost. Though that was probably because Lucky's level was too low."

Tank has finished his meal during our discussion. He slowly crawled away when no one's noticing.

"Where did it go Ziri?" Elfy is the first to notice the missing bug.

She turned around and saw Tank just behind her, still biting on something.

I went over to check. "Geez how many griffins do you--"

Then I stopped, which caused all the others to look towards Tank as well.

"The scraps! I mean, the cannon--"

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

But, but he eats CANNONs??

"Ziri, check his skill!"

I didn't close the window, Violet saw something new.

"[Crystal Cannon Shot]? Wait wait wait you're not saying--"

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

No response.

"What happened?" I asked Phantom.

"Give me a moment." Phantom went silent for a while. "He says he can only use that skill with full HP."

"Rose, heal him up. Looks he needs a full HP bar to use the cannon skill."

Rose filled 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 opened up. I thought he's going to display his wings again. Instead, a pipe-like cavity organism stuck out from the middle of his back and pointed at the hill. The alien object is obviously part of Tank's body now.

The long, light green barrel began to glow. Poom! It kicked back in the same manner when a cannon releases a shell. A bullet like the ones we saw before went towards the hill. The only noticeable difference is that this one is green colored.

It landed on the tip of the hill, causing a shock wave that can be seen by bare eyes. The tip part disappeared from our sight, silently. It was when the shock wave reached our position when we were finally met with the thunderous explosion and terrible ground shake. We all had to crouch on the ground to avoid all the debris.

When the 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 top of the window:

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

And the time meter is slowly going down.

Everyone gathered up with their bodies covered in dirt. Violet commented: "We should-cough! Should have picked something farther away! Cough! I wasn't expecting that kind of power."

I showed them the countdown. "Pity. It got a really long cooldown."

Coin: "Totally legit. That was like a nuclear missile. If you can use it without any limit you might as well go fuc up Japan on your own. You know, just stand there, and give five or six shots, that's enough to blast a medium-sized city into plain ground."

Elfy: "Nice. A portable cannon. Now we can really call it a 'Tank'."

"I'd prefer 'Self-propelled Howitzer', if that counts as a name." Passerby commented.

Merciless looked at the now strange-shaped Tank. "Apart from the speed...there's another problem."

"What is it?" We all looked at him.

"The cannon is actually a skill right? And using it means Ziri's companion will have to drop out of any actions for a while." Merciless paused a little. "It may be powerful but there are not many chances we can use it for real. Close combat is absolutely a no. As you see, the attack doesn't distinguish friendlies. If we shoot in the middle of a fight we'll bring everyone down with it."

Violet spoke: "We can use it during city siege. A shot like that on the city gate or among the city defenders will solve us a lot of problems."

"That's right. But did you notice how long it took him to expand the cannon?" Merciless gave us the cold water again. "He needs to be at top status, and a full minute to prepare the shot. If anyone manages to touch him, the skill gets interrupted. The skill is really impressive on the looks, but not very practical, if you ask me."

We lowered our heads. That made a lot of sense. As he said, the kill power is really 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's the plan? We go fetch another?"

"Not now." Hawk shook his head.

"I agree with Hawk. We should wait for the night or wait till tomorrow. If we go now we'll run into their main force again."

Gold Coin held her chin. "I have an idea but...It's just a matter whether you guys got the guts to do it."

"Well shoot. We tried to take a city defense cannon for real. Is there anything else we can't try?"

"Do you know how the three major system cities got their title?"

She got us hanging. 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 seen cities bigger than the Goddess City but they're still not major cities. The reason is the three cities have imperial palaces in them."

"You mean, the inner city?" Hawk nodded. "I see what you meant. Only major cities have those palaces in the center. But what's important with that? They never allow players in there. Anything worth taking?"

Coin waved her index finger. "There are five crystal cannons in each city."

"Duh, we all saw that."

"What you didn't see is the biggest cannon is located inside the palace area."

"Can you make it simple?"

"Okay, the simple question. Are you willing to lose a level to get that cannon?"

"How do 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 players but we can use it."

"System bug huh?" I perked up. Never thought I'd encounter any bugs in [Zero]. This is big news, I'll go tell my father later.

"Tell us already!"

"It's a strange system setup. I noticed it by accident. There's one point when I stole something and was cornered. My only choice then was jumping into the inner city area. Guess what next?"

"Yes?"

"The NPC guards all retreated. They can't get into the palace."

"That doesn't look 'minor' to me!" I yelled.

"Let me finish! City guards can't get in, sure. But there are imperial guards inside the palace, level 900, led by level 950 captains! These imperial troops will come after you instead."

Hawk shrugged. "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 imperial guards only try to kill you, instead of taking you to prison. And I found a problem: there are very few of them, and they don't respawn. In other words, they're short on hands. So what happens if we attack from several different locations?"

"Even they don't have enough men, they can still kill us before we can bring the cannon outside the palace."

"We don't have to! Actually, we don't do that in the first place."

"Now we're not going to steal the cannon at all?"

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

First, the city guards don't care if someone enters the palace. They only go after thieves and criminals.

Second, items left in the palace will not get cleared up. The imperials don't check what you dropped.

(In [Zero], items don't disappear on themselves but passing monsters and NPCs will try to take them away. Remember how Hawk and Elfy witnessed a dragon snatching a gem away from a group of fighting players?)

And third, when I went back for my items, the imperials came after me but they stopped at the palace boundary. The outside city guards never showed up again either. So, the imperials either try to kill me because I trespassed on forbidden ground, or because I have stolen items on me. Either way, they can't go outside bounds. The city guards won't care if I go back again and retrieve the stolen items I lost. You see the bug now?"

"Okay, so, for whatever reason, imperial guards only attack intruders inside the palace, and city guards will stop pursuing anyone after they're killed once. Neither of 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 to take them if they can't. Normally they will take the items from the thief and give them back to the owner, but since they can't reach the items dropped inside the palace, they'll leave them there. Even if I take them out again they won't do anything."

"How does that help with our plan?" Passerby asked.

Someone still didn't get it so I explained: "Coin wants to say that if we move the palace cannon, the city guards will gather outside the palace and try to kill us to retrieve the cannon. Here, we move the cannon near the gate and let the imperials kill us. Then all the NPCs will return to their original positions, we revive, go into the palace again and take the cannon. In this case, neither the imperials nor the city guards will come after us. We can just carry the cannon through the city gate under broad daylight!"