Up until this moment, I had been able to see what the purpose of each of the rooms might have originally been intended to be. Ok, it’s a stretch, but the liquid-filled room with the balls arcing electricity could have been an industrial electroplating setup. But this room… I’m not sure what the room's original purpose was. There were workbenches, but they were all on one side, and they could have just been stored here. Same with the broken shelves. We possibly spent too long in there searching, but we found a crafting crystal for a Greatsword in a pile of debris where the skeleton had fallen and another for some boots in one of the drawers in the second row of desks, which did encourage us to be more extensive in our efforts.

  The room was strangely shaped as well, like a pair of fat H’s had been stuck together. When we left, I still had a sense we had missed something important, but it wasn’t something I could put my finger on.

  One of the more interesting rooms we found was a maze with a twist. In the first part of it, there was a power cable lying on the floor near four sockets between two doors. Plugging it into the right one opened one door, two didn’t appear to do anything, and the left one opened the other door. Inside both rooms was another door and a bunch more sockets with a cable. To open a door, we had to run a cable into the right socket, but to get the next one open, someone needed to be in the other room and move a cable from one socket to another. This closed their door, locking them in. Once four of us were in side-rooms, they could then open a passage through a maze which Peachy was able to use to get to the centre. We almost took the basic loot, but a chance stumble had her drop the crystal she had looted; her bending over let her see under the lip of the console.

  She saw the clue and had us change the cables into a different pattern. It opened up a secret door in what we had thought of as the final chamber, and also the doors between her and us.

  “This is what an autocrafter looks like,” Clark had said when we joined him in the room. “Well…after it has used up its charges.”

  It was a large grey box, maybe three metres wide, nearly two high, and one deep. To its left was a hopper with a conveyor belt heading into a hatch, the middle had a slot for a crystal and a screen, and the right side had another conveyor leading to another hopper. The screen was dead, but in the hopper were three belts.

  One of the belts was a personal shield. Clark told us it could take so much damage, but once it exceeded that, it would stop working. To Clark’s surprise, there was no disagreement when it went to Jacobs and not Peachy. He pulled me aside as the others discussed who would get the other two belts, which would increase strength. I’d ruled myself out as soon as the matching descriptions had been read out.

  “Would you mind explaining your reasoning in giving the shield belt to the one in your group who avoids fighting the most? It goes against all conventional wisdom.”

  “You guys don’t normally delve with your healers, right?” I asked back.

  “True, but surely it’s a better use of resources to reduce the damage taken by the tank?”

  “Sure, but from the description, it needs to be equipped, and then it takes time before it becomes effective. It’s not like Peachy could slap it on if she is taking more damage than Jacobs can heal. So it will break, even if the damage she is taking is manageable.”

  He nodded, “Yes, it allows people to take more damage before someone else has to take that role on, or the group heads back up.”

  “With Jacobs healing, though, Peachy would still be at full strength, and that would be with him just using the resources which are regenerating over time. So really, Peachy having it, with us, is kind of a waste,” I shrugged. “That leaves the rest of us. Ideally, we are all looking to not take damage at all. If one of us does, we have failed. So it turns into protection from the unexpected, and then that becomes a calculation on who is the most valuable to keep alive. One of us damage dealers goes down, the others might get out, Jacobs dies, well, the rest of us might get out, but the odds of it drop considerably.”

  “So you give it to the one who keeps the rest of you in the fight…” he was clearly in deep thought.

  “That’s how our maths on it works out…” I admitted.

  “So that’s why you all fight with her at the front, and why she wears the heaviest armour while the rest of you have chosen to increase your damage outputs over your own survivability, you are intending to stand behind her and take out the threats through overwhelming force… that seems like a very risky approach…”

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  “Works until it doesn’t…” I nod.

  “Which could be said for our normal approaches as well… and in fairness, it seems to work quite well for you in the fights I’ve seen. Well, we will have to see how long you all last to see if we should invest in something similar. Joining you in this delve has been enlightening.”

  I looked over to see G and Chango putting on a belt each. I nodded at the choices; they were both the ones whose builds benefit the most from a strength increase.

  The room's door slid open with a hiss. The hooves of a six-feet-tall, and just as wide, mechanical bull came down to slam on might have once been a snake, but was now little more than a long streak of pulp.

  “Ugggh…” someone sounded in disgust at the sight. The thing turned its head in our direction, turned, and with a thundering sound, each time its hooves struck the ground, it moved in our direction. Jacobs’ first response was to hit the close door button. It didn’t respond.

  Peachy raised her shield and charged in. I could hear her starting to talk about being invincible. That told me this one she was taking seriously. Jacobs joined her over the door’s threshold, in case it decided to close now someone had stepped in. I followed suit as I sent a at the mecha-moo-er, assuming it was going to be weak to Storm magic. I saw Jacobs send an at it, which visibly had no more effect upon it than my Spark had.

  There was a thunderous boom as the belligerent bovine tipped its head and bulldozed right into my armoured friend. Her boots made a scrapping noise as she was physically forced back three paces. Peachy’s shield then made a bashing movement and knocked the bull’s head to the side. She stepped towards the opposite side of it and swung her blade into its shoulder. Combining taunts, blows and shield bashes with the occasional dodge or sidestep, she slowly turned the mob to face away from the party.

  I tried and decided none of the schools seemed to have much of an advantage, and from what I could see, this was going to be the hardest fight yet. Time to up the ante… no… I’d hit the others with , same with and while was shorter in range, I hadn’t really confirmed arcs wouldn’t bounce to friendlies. This didn’t seem to be the time or place to find out. A six-foot-long Sabre-Toothed Ice Tiger appeared between me and the bull, ahead of the others as they came charging in from the doorway.

  I had my summons pounce on the back of the bull. G and Darksider hit it not long after. The other four, I realised, had paused momentarily at the sight of the large creature created by my Arctic spell. I focused on getting the creature to dig its claws into the bull’s shoulder plates and into any cracks in its armour that it could. The weight on its back slowed down the bull’s attacks on Peachy as it tried to dislodge the frozen mauler.

  The blow from G’s maul made a thunderous boom as it came around in a powerful two-handed blow. Fire erupted from the point of contact as it left a burning imprint from the weapon’s point deep into the robot’s chassis, having penetrated the plate and released his . Darksider, on the other hand, more elegantly penetrated a gap between two of the machine's armoured plates as he released a deep in its inner workings. One of the rear legs momentarily locked up. This caused a brief hesitation in its movements that Peachy capitalised on and drove her own blade into the gap near where its neck joined its body.

  I got my ice cat worrying at the bull’s long neck with its teeth, its claws seemingly well secured and started casting my ice weapon combination in preparation for joining the others in melee. Chango and Clark moved in and joined G and Darksider in attacking the creature's rear flank. Ant and Beatnik soon joined them. That is when I realised my problem… I had a choice of standing next to Peachy or directly behind our enemy… The sudden double kick to the rear, that just missed the two who I would have been standing between, made me decide that wasn’t the place to be… I took one look at hitting from the front, the large spiky horns that were doing a right job to Peachy’s shield, and decided that where I was presently was perfectly fine. to the bum it is.

  The fight became almost routine. Jacobs stayed on top of Peachy’s health like the good pocket healer he was. He sent to add a slow debuff and even threw the occasional HOT on the others when they did a bad job as DPS and let themselves get hit. No health bars on enemies, but I could see the physical damage building up. Then it happened, it looked like the damage was getting to a breaking point, and the bovine bugger let out a loud snorting moo and started lashing out with all its limbs, spinning on the spot. A glancing back kick knocked G off his feet and slid him across the ground, taking half his health. The others jumped back out of range.

  Peachy tried to taunt it to no effect. She tried bashing it with a strike, but that just meant she barely managed to get her shield in place for the thing’s kick as its rear end swung around. My kitty managed to keep its claws gripping the Bull’s chassis. Mostly, I think, down to the majority of the spin being centred on the torso.

  I hit it with a few more of my ranged spells, and noted that my friends also switched to them as getting close enough to melee seemed too risky. Then I heard a cracking noise, as the bull tossed its head particularly sharply, and my cat flew through the air, leaving its paws behind.