Long story short, I failed to repair the armor completely.
Completely however meant that I had actually found a way to repair the armor now covering my body.
It still had little scratches on its surface, but it was better than just wearing cloth and allowing the undead to mercilessly tear at the soft flesh underneath.
Sure I could probably tear them apart with ease, but that just meant that they could do the same with similar ease.
Anyways, back to the main topic.
I found out a way to repair my armor with the blade, but not in the way that you may think.
At first my plan to use the broken blade to supplement the parts of the armor failed, it was probably a question of which was reinforcing which as they were both similarly broken.
It was only when it was merged with a piece of metal that couldn't be seen as a viable weapon did it repair itself.
It's also how it lead to me breaking down every single of the less than optimal weapons into metal shards so that I could reinforce my armor.
You would think since I broke so many weapons I would've fully repaired my armor but no, my other weapons deserved some love after all.
That bone was an exception, it was surprisingly sturdy and I found a use for them outside of just being something I would gift Guillian if given the time.
I could always rip apart more of those skeletons and actually retrieve the bones from their bodies instead of retrieving the most valuable parts of their body
It just goes to show how rotten those undead were however to only drop rotten flesh when killed though.
Anyways, I continued to admire the toxic sewers strange ambience
Flanked by curved walls covered in moss, a current of green mud ran straight through the sewers in several pre carved channels, emanating a greenish mist.
It was strangely idyllic in a disgusting sort of way
'It probably helps that I can't smell a thing here.'
But anyways
'The Sevallians knew what they were doing.'
As the forefathers of the Kingdom that had first settled here, the people definitely built things to last.
Even when the entire kingdom was overrun with a magical disease called the malaise, even when the sewers were infected with an incredibly acidic fluid, even when monsters started to inhabit the sewers
Even when a part of the sewers exploded now that I think about it.
This sewer was so structurally sound that the explosion that had sent me flying off of my feet had only created a small channel that the green mud slowly ebbed into.
'This place really is strONGGG?"
Thoughts leaking into reality through a startled shout from me, I nearly stumbled before performing the act of the man of steel again and blasted flames out of my hands.
It wasn't so fierce as to send me flying like last time though.
Just enough to get me back on balance so I could find out what had just unbalanced me.
And well, it was kind of hard to see things when a sharp object was flying towards my eyes.
"Eek!?"
Hurriedly twisting my head, the inferno rune on my hand instinctively burst out brighter releasing harsher flames.
Flipping to the side, I enjoyed the fast movement that the inferno rune provided as the sharp object barely grazed my face, leaving only thin markings.
Releasing the flames, my body flipped through the air like an acrobats as I hurriedly twisted and landed onto both of my feet, stabilising my core as I refocused my gaze onto the one who caused this to happen in the first place.
'A scorpion?' Tilting my head, no matter how I looked at it, at first glance, this being that had just poked out of the ground was definitely a scorpion.
But could it really be called that when it looked extremely different from the scorpions I had encountered before?
With a size that seemed only possible in Australia, the land of the upside down, a purple chitinous exoskeleton covered its upper body as its cyan body began to move.
Black and yellow striped clacking against the ground, I noted that the ends of its legs left behind shallow marks on the ground just from its hurried movements.
In other words, alongside that giant tail filled to the brim with poison, I had to make sure to not get caught amongst all four of its bee striped legs.
Four mandibles clacking together, a gaping maw revealed itself hungrily, drool leaking out of its mouth as the gigantic critter hurriedly ran towards me.
Opening its mouth wide, something green glowed at the back of its throat as I felt goosebumps run up the side of my arms.
Trusting the goosebumps and instincts that have become an integral part of my survival here, I hurriedly twisted my pathing and dived to the side.
And not a moment any sooner as a green concentrated glob of goo suddenly flew through the air at the speed of a shot arrow.
Arcing through the arrow with the speed of a normal arrow, it was much heavier than a normal arrow and soon collided against the ground.
Splattering against it, the green glob of goo sizzled loudly and released toxic green mist.
The very same mist that penetrated every crack and crevice in these sewers.
'It seems that living underground has caused them to eat this green sludge whether willingly or not.'
Noting that it was just as acidic as the green water if not even more so, the Scorpion soon reached my side and pulled back its tail in a move so obvious that even a child could notice it.
And safe to say I wasn't going to stick around to see if the poison in its stinger was more acidic or venomous than the goo that had just left its mouth.
Twisting my body to the side, I thanked the fact that they had no claws and pincers that they could've used to grab at my extended leg and whipped out the Blood Blade in that same instant the stinger jolted forwards.
Swinging the crimson red blade upwards, scarlet red flew through the air followed up by amber orange flames suddenly coating my hands and vblade.
Slightly surprised as evidenced by my widened eyes, I attributed this sudden growth of quantity to the fact that I had used the Inferno Rune.
But either way, even if my limbs weren't covered in flames, the results were the same.
Swinging upwards, I felt a brief resistance before the tail suddenly flew off of its tail.
'I don't think I hit the shell, was I lucky and hit the joint between the shell?'
Feeling the luck press down on me, I soon followed up the second time with a stomp to reorient myself and swing down the blade hanging in the air.
*SCRE-KreK!
Screech of pain ending abruptly, this bloodied blade of mine now coated in flames from the blaze rune dug deep into its exoskeleton, shutting its wide open mouth shut.
'Die.'
Tightening my grip on my sword, the flames coming from the blade suddenly surged upwards in ferocity as I started to apply the inferno rune to the flames coating the blade.
I had a vague intuition that this might work, and what would you know? it did, spectacularly at that.
Flames leaking out of its mouth, I slowly pulled out the blood blade now less blood and more blade and wiped the sweat off of my head.
"Hoo..."
Staring at the scorpion yet not scorpion, it was... a sorry sight to say the least.
Sure it wasn't any prettier before as it seemed to have mutated abnormally thanks to the influence of the malaise, but at the least back then you could understand what you were looking at.
Now though?
Well you could barely view that thing as something that had once been alive
Turned orange from the heat, parts of its shell had already melted from the heat while even more parts had been scorched black.
Just touching its legs and tail which weren't spared from the scorching caused them to crumble into ash.
Poking it some more, a thought inevitably wormed its way into my mind.
'And what did I even receive from this little critter?'
It was curiosity to put it bluntly.
The Disgusting worm had given me pink rocks that exploded when a kinetic force was applied to them, the rancid rats just their tails.
Sure those tails could be eaten due to the fact that they were full of proteins, but I wasn't that desperate.
To begin with, I never really felt hungry or thirsty ever since coming to this world.
Anyways, back to the topic at hand.
'Some shells, a poison gland? Even a blueprint, wow.'
I cast a surprised eye at the scorched black corpse.
'Where the hell does a scorpion even keep a blueprint?'
There was probably the more pressing question of where the hell those materials had come from since the corpse was in such a bad shape, but I wasn't paying attention to that.
"Anyways, I'm glad that there aren't anymore of those bastards."
I really was surprised when the Scorpion suddenly burst from the ground and nicked my cheek
'Now that I think about it, I should probably apply the tonic to it in case I was poisoned, calm your heart Slade.'
Patting my chest so that the poison wouldn't spread across my body swiftly, I turned away from the corpse and instantly paused when the ground in front of me slowly shook.
'...It can't be right?'
Turning to look at the sewer floor that still was damaged due to the scorpion climbing out so suddenly, I looked at the road ahead of me several dozens of these less then uniform spots.
'Right?'
I hadn't noticed it due to the grime, but didn't the scorpion I had just dealt with come from a similar looking spot?
It reminded me of the superstition that seemed incredibly prevalent in all forms of media.
I think those were called... death flags.
Never ever think that the worst was over, something worse could. always,. happen. no matter what.
'...'
Silently pulling out my bow and arrows, I simultaneously activated the inferno rune coating my hands and began to form small flaming balls in the air.
Making them circle behind them as I aimed the arrow at the dirt spots, it seemed like I was going to be the first player of the Sewer Series: Whack a mole;
Complete with the extremely violent fireball hammer and arrow hammer used to smack the heads of scorpions.
'Oh what the hell, let's just get done with this already.'
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