Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Five - The Queen of the Buglings

The door into the boss room didn't exactly have a handle, so after gingerly poking at it from a few angles, I decided to say fuck it, and kicked the door in. It held from the first blow, but a few extra kicks sent it crashing down where it kicked up a wash of dust on landing.

The boss room was a large space, filled with pillars that rose from the floor to the ceiling. The light I carried could only go so far, but it was more than enough to see the boss.

The boss was a large monster, three times longer than I was tall. It was, superficially, similar to the buglings, only this thing looked obese and longer, with legs too small for its massive girth. Its stomach and rear abdominal region was swollen up and distended. It glowed from within, and I was suspicious that it was filled to the brim with unborn monsters.

A queen? Or something like that.

The boss spun around, turning to face me and the direction I was coming in from. Then it opened its mouth and I found myself jumping to the side on reflex. It was only barely enough to dodge a squirt of something goopy and green, shot out with the velocity of a fastball.

I landed a little wrong, shoulder scraping on the ground. Some speckles of the goop the queen had spat landed on my pant legs and I started to scramble and hiss as it burned through the material of my pants and started to burn me.

It wasn't the hottest thing I'd ever touched, but just feeling a few spots turn very hot was panic-inducing.

Then the boss started to swell up, and I imagined that it was about to spit again.

I flung a Shadow Bolt at it, the quickest thing I could do from my prone position while fishing for my revolver. It was enough to make it flinch a little, and that split second was all the time I needed to pull out my revolver and fire it from the hip.

My first shot went wide, but I reached over and two-handed the gun, then aimed a little better. I kept firing until I clicked on empty.

The boss had taken five rounds to the torso and face, each one punching through the relatively thick plating that covered its body with ease. The exit wounds out the back were large enough to fit a fist through.

The boss gasped, and instead of a powerful spray of acid, it simply vomited down its front while it deflated.

I reloaded while climbing back to my feet, then shot the boss again, just to be sure.

An exit portal ripped into existence near the back of the room, right next to a conveniently placed chest.

If this were a normal portal, and I had the backing of a corp, then I suspect that they'd want that boss' body. It was large, acidic, and probably had lots of low-level magical properties. Hell, the other monsters too. Their weird cement goop was probably good for something.

But I didn't have a corp at my back, so too bad.

I hissed as the acidic goop continued to burn. Pulling out a fresh water bottle and dumping it onto the burnt out holes in my pants helped, a little. It mostly spread the acid out and made it burn in more places and ruined my pants even more.

Getting hit full-on by that goop might just be lethal.

Then again, it wasn't like I expected any portal boss to not be lethal in the first place. It's just that they usually tried to gore me, or crush me, or maybe use some magic? Acid was new, and kind of high on the 'horrible ways to die' list.

Once the burning stopped, I found myself pinching my calf and thigh to inspect the damage. I had large, red burns on my skin, and it looked like I'd been assaulted by a toddler with an exfoliating scrub. Nasty, but not so bad. I suspected that it was going to turn to welts, though.

Well, whatever. I could endure for now.

I walked over to the chest and kicked it open. Within were two... three-ish objects. A small buckler-type shield, and next to that a pair of... greaves?

I plucked the latter out and turned them this way and that. Yeah, these were greaves. They were made from the hollowed-out legs of a larger bugling, with leather staps to keep them in place, and some sort of padding on the inside. These were well-made. Better than I might have expected, really.

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The buckler was about a foot and a half wide, with more leather straps on the rear and a small wooden handle too. It was the face of a bugling, or most of its face? The smaller mandibles were missing and it was clear that it had been carved up a little to make it fit as a shield a little better.

I didn't sense anything magical from either object, though I was hardly an expert with that kind of thing. Still, I could feel the magic on my sword and it wasn't exactly top-tier, so I gave myself even odds of being able to tell if something was magical, especially if I could handle it.

Well, whatever. I left the loot behind before hopping out of the portal.

Now, to wait... I wanted to see who would show up post-portal clearing, in case the girls and I were ambushed on exit again. Meeting with NetherGain after that dino portal had been frustrating.

This one seemed so low on the totem pole of portals that I wasn't sure if it would even rate a company like that heading out to nab it. Though... no, they would. It was an easy clear, and would give a small team one or two points of potential each.

In the short term, that was nothing, but if corporations were good at one thing, it was hedging their bets on medium-term gambles.

I waited around, scratching at the side of my leg while looking at memes on my phone. When an hour passed with nothing, I decided that it was good enough, and Reloaded.

Back to the day before, this time without the painful leg and the cuts on my arm. Going back to a pre-injury state was always such a relief.

That night, I tossed and turned before finally falling asleep, and when morning rolled around, my alarm had to go on its third loop past snooze before I actually rolled out of bed.

Stupid brain wouldn't shut up.

Mostly I was worried about Fran and Becky not handling the portal well, but that didn't make sense. I'd done it solo. They were gonna be fine. We weren't going to trip into a pitfall or have anyone be eaten. This was a milkrun.

And yet, I still woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, vividly recalling seeing Fran dead.

"Dammit," I muttered as I sat on the edge of my bed.

Maybe I could Reload and try to sleep again? Only I wasn't sure it would help any. And more time... wasn't always the solution. I stood, waddled over to the shower, did my morning routine and freshened up while pressing some pop-tarts into the toaster, then I got dressed in some casual but tough clothes. Stuff I could wear in a portal and not have any trouble with it.

No armoured leotard for this one. We weren't playing heroes, just knocking out an easy portal for a bit of advancement and growth.

I slid into my leather jacket, made sure I had water, a first aid kid, my guns, and a few extras all tucked into my backpack, and then I was off.

We were going to meet at a little dinner just off one of the main roads not too far from where the portal was located. It was a nice, centralized meeting spot, and the kind of place that had enough traffic that bumping into someone wouldn't be too suspicious.

I got there, fully expecting to be first.

I wasn't as surprised as I might have been to discover that I wasn't. Becky being first... did strike me as odd. Seeing her with a full plate of bacon and eggs and pseudo-ham at one of the diner's tables, a smug grin on her face as she chowed down... yeah, that just fit.

"Heya," I said as I slid into the seat across from her. "You know, we're not gonna be staying here for long."

"I paid already," Becky said. She stuffed a forkful of potato cubes into her mouth, then chewed. "Want some?"

"I'm good," I said. Though I did steal a strip of bacon a moment later. "Ready for the big day?"

"Big?" Becky asked. "We didn't talk about paying for big."

"Small, then," I replied.

"Cool, small I can do. Also, you're paying for lunch still, right?"

"I am. Are you even going to have room for it?"

Becky flashed me a confident smile and gave me a thumb's up. "You bet I will!"

***