Too Stubborn to Die

Book 4: Chapter 49

Aaron’s antics quickly brought an end to the fight against the cluster of little people. It turned out that turning their little skirmish into a game and kicking them into the barrier had an incredible demoralizing effect, and soon they were throwing their hands up in surrender.

He hadn’t actually planned for that outcome. But since he had no appetite for killing those weaker than himself, Aaron embraced the outcome.

If the tiny rankers accepted they were beaten, that was good enough for him.

Unfortunately, their surrender could have come a little earlier, and a number of them had already fried against the barrier. But they probably should have thought about that before attacking him.

Aaron placed his hands on his hips like a disappointed parent, and the apologies for ambushing him came quickly and repetitively.

Experience rewarded for killing multiple enemies!

[ Precise Bombardier Pugilist ] has LEVELED UP!

115 → 117

“Okay, that’s enough of that.” Aaron waved his hands. This was the multiverse, and attacking someone stronger than oneself usually ended in one’s demise. But Aaron had never been one to rub somebody’s face in it.

However, as the fighting stopped, a dilemma arose. Lord Draxas, for all their detailed scheming, hadn’t considered what would happen after the fight. They had ordered everyone from their cluster through the barrier and into battle against Aaron, hoping numbers would overwhelm him. The problem was that Erdek and Ikran were decisively short on numbers to bring the barrier back down.

Aaron waved at them through the barrier and explained the situation. Luckily, his language Skill worked on lip reading, and Ikran and Erdek got the message and rushed off in search of allies to fill all of the pressure plates.

“You really didn’t think this through, did you?” Aaron turned to Lord Draxas. “If you had killed me, what would you have done? You’d have been stuck in here until the rest of the rankers from my world arrived to open the barrier. Then what?”

“We ahh…” Lord Draxas stammered. “We’d have fought them!”

“Yeah, you and the rest of these little guys,” Aaron said, looking across at the scolded little people.

They were still rankers and strong in their own right. He was sure any one of them would have been able to defeat the people from his world that dropped out at the earlier floors. But they weren’t quite at the top of the “elite scale,” at least not based on what he was used to.

“We’d have done it!” Lord Draxas waved a scaled fist, but when Aaron glared at the wannabe dragon, it shrank down and lowered its head.

“That’s better. In the future, if you don’t want to get your people killed, think things through a little further.”

In truth, Aaron felt a little bad lecturing them. He had run headlong into danger first one too many times to be lecturing anybody. Still, they had blood on their hands. And if his actions had led to his companion’s deaths, he wouldn’t want anybody sugarcoating it. Actions had consequences, and the multiverse was not a place of mercy.

“The tallest failed us,” muttered a couple of little people.

“Aye. What a failure.”

“We need a new tallest!”

Aaron tried not to pay too much attention to the little mutterings going on around him. He still had a quest objective to claim, and he knew his friend wouldn’t be wasting any time. If he wanted to win this thing, he’d have to be fast about it.

But the moment he took a step toward the cement factory, a mix of tiny people from multiple races stepped in his way, and a little bald gnome stepped forward.

“You! You are tallest!”

“Him?” An imp sneered. “He killed our brothers! He cannot be tallest!”

“Shh, you!” Hissed another gnome. “We’re sick of listening to you and those others. You gave us Lord Draxas. The failure and fake dragon. Aaron here is now tallest! He is a true hero!”

“Me? Mate, I dunno what you’re talking about with all this tallest stuff, but I’m kind of in a hurry.”

Aaron kept walking, but a small crowd of tiny people followed, despite the protests from the imps and kobolds. They were bouncing about and trying to get his attention.

“Please, listen!”

“Oh, great tallest!”

“Look, I’m flattered, really. But I need to get this objective done.”

“You spared us tallest! We’re in your debt. Lord Draxas no longer worthy of leading us. We help you! We help tallest take the objective!”

“Help me? We’re from different clusters. You know me winning this thing isn’t going to help you, right?”

“So? Before the dungeon, we were many tiny factions. Different people from different worlds. Now, we have an alliance that stretches across our cluster. Why stop there?” Said the gnome, and the other little people all nodded in agreement.

It had occurred to Aaron that the next floor would pit sector against sector, following the same pattern as the previous floors. And that would then make them allies. But until then, they still had to find their own path through this floor, and helping him achieve goals wasn’t going to do that.

“And so what if you don’t make it to the next floor? Shouldn’t you be regrouping or something?”

The little people looked at one another, and then the gnome cleared his throat soberly and looked Aaron in the eyes. “You have proven a painful point. Our descent into the dungeon ends here. If the lot of us couldn’t beat you, the next floor will certainly be too much.”

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He had to admit they had a point. There was no use getting oneself killed in a dungeon you had no chance of beating. Sometimes it was best just to admit defeat.

“I suppose. Okay, so, if I let you help me, what do you want in return?”

“Nothing! You’re the great tallest!”

Aaron raised a brow.

“Ahem, I mean. When the portals come online, and world travel is activated, then we would hope that our sector would fall under your protection, tallest.”

Lord Draxas snorted, clearly irritated that they were losing their hegemony over the little people, but said nothing. There were also several other little people who looked equally sour about the attention Aaron was getting. Clearly, not everyone was so eager to crown a new “tallest,” but they were outnumbered and kept their thoughts to themselves.

“I see. Fine, let’s do this.”

He wasn’t so sure allying himself with the little people was the best idea. But if they were going to help him win the floor, then why not? Besides, they were all doing these weird puppy dog eyes, and they were really getting to him.

“Give me a second to prepare. Then, we crush this objective.”

He dipped into his spatial storage and began to eat, restocking his adipose reserves, and then some. The upgraded version of his Skill [ Condensed Adipose Fusion ] reduced how much he ballooned up when eating, but it didn’t stop it entirely. And as Aaron ate, he got bigger. Chunkier, and grew a few inches, all to the awe and amazement of his new, tiny followers.

“Wow! Look!”

“Tallest is amazing!”

“Tallest is getting bigger!”

“You are strange little people,” Aaron said, and promptly led the march into the factory grounds as he threw the last couple of bites down his throat.

The walk into the factory grounds was… it was quiet. Too quiet. Unlike the timberyard, they found no army of monsters waiting for them. In fact, they found nothing. Just several very empty factory buildings.

“Hello?” Aaron shouted as he led the group.

The little people kept their heads low, creeping several meters back from him, and keeping to cover whenever possible.

“Hello? Anyone in here?”

No response came, and so Aaron kept moving, walking toward the objective. It didn’t feel right, but if nobody was going to stop him, he’d claim the resource.

However, he did notice one strange thing. There was a giant mound of rubble randomly placed in the middle of the main courtyard. The problem was, as out of place as it was, he didn’t sense anything from it, even with [ Gorgon’s Soul Vortex ]. Nor did the fate reading show him anything unusual.

Hmm… odd. Oh well.

Aaron cupped his mouth and shouted louder. “Hello?”

It wasn’t that he was necessarily looking for a fight, but he preferred to take it now rather than having it sprung on him later. But nothing happened. Just silence.

“Okay. Oh well. I guess we go claim the resource.”

Despite a little uneasiness, Aaron made his way to the console to claim the resource. But when Aaron placed his hand upon it, a powerful spike of energy burst out from behind.

“I fucking knew it,” he groaned and turned around.

The energy spike had come from the pile of rubble, and a second later, it started to shake.

It was weird, though. His senses and inspection window were all off when he looked at it. Whatever it was, it was remarkably good at hiding itself from him.

“Get back! Hide, everyone!” The gnome shouted, and the little people scuttered off into the surroundings, Lord Draxas amongst them.

It seemed a little cowardly, but the little people were very good at hiding. And he supposed that if ambushes were their bread and butter, there was little point in trying to change now.

Meanwhile, the rubble continued to rumble, and then it started to pick itself up, standing to a height of over twenty meters. Eyes flicked open on its massive head, and Aaron realized it was some kind of giant stone golem.

Rockus the Stone Titan [ Level 170 ]

Titles: [ Indestructible ] [ Celestial Blood ]

The imposing figure had a high level. But it was the titles and the powerful aura emanating from it that truly gave him cause for concern. But Aaron was Aaron, and he loved a challenge.

“Indestructible, you say? Well, I guess we’ll have to see about that.”

However, he immediately noticed something weird. His senses were messed up, and his fate reading was filled with static, and almost impossible to make any sense of. It wasn’t quite the same, but the interference somewhat reminded him of Yendal.

Because of celestial blood?

The titan was only D-grade, so it was clearly nowhere near godhood, but he had a feeling that celestial blood meant something. And it was screwing with him.

Huh, I wonder. What does happens when gods have children?

Every day, Aaron realized he had gaps in his knowledge about the multiverse. And it occurred to him that while the offspring of a god likely didn’t get to skip early levels, they probably did get something out of it. After all, how could having such incredibly powerful parents not impart some power on their children?

That being said, if it were the explanation for the stone titan, why was it stuck here in a dungeon?

“True blessing!” The titan roared, sniffing the air. “Holder of true blessing! Finally, my luck serves me!”

“Me?” Aaron said, thumbing his chest. “What do you want from me?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just your core, and your heart,” the stone golem smiled and took a thunderous step forward. “I’ve been trapped in here so long. Punishment for crimes I did not commit. But now you’re here. My salvation. For only the heart and core of one with a True Blessing can save me! I can be free.”

“Ookay, well that’s not going to happen.”

At Rockus, trampled forward, the ground shook, and vibrations cut cracks through the earth, spewing forth an army of tiny earth elementals. He then raised a hand and shot out a wave of stone bullets from it.

Aaron dodged and phased, closing the gap between them and powering up a cataclysmic haymaker, but when it struck, pain reverberated through him, and he was sent flying.

“BAHAHA! I am imperviable! Indestructible! Unkillable! I AM THE SPAWN OF AN ANCIENT GOT, AND YOU ARE BUT A MAN!”

Aaron looked up as he climbed back to his feet. His hand had already healed, but that hurt, and he couldn’t see a damn scratch on the stone titan.

“Blood hell, maybe this objective won’t be so easy.”

Back at the Tower

Erdek and Ikran had rushed back to the tower to collect a squad to open the barrier for Aaron.

While most had gone out to secure other quest objectives, there had been a few left behind to create a perimeter around the tower. Nobody really knew if there was any real risk to their base, but they figured it was best to defend it just in case. After all, it was almost guaranteed that some groups would be looking for ways to cheat their way through the dungeon floor.

“Come, you maggots! Pink skin needs help!” Erdek hissed as a few humans, elves, and basalaks approached.

“She means, Aaron,” Ikran said calmly, had her side, dragging the two kobolds with ropes made of his ink. “He’s stuck in a quest objective, and we need four of you to aid us in opening it.”

“Quest objective?” An elven warrior decked in chainmail said. “What quest objective?”

“The cement factory, I believe. Or mortar factory,” Ikran said.

“Let me see.” The elven warrior turned to the signpost and read through it. “Did you say, Cement factory?”

“I did,” Ikran confirmed.

“Has he gone mad? The other elites agreed to leave that until last.”

“What do you mean?” Ikran probed.

“Because it’s the only quest objective on here with the difficulty level impossible!”