It was the last cavern. I sighed in relief as we leaned against the end of the tunnel, looking into the cavern and studying the large Crawler. It was definitely the one that had made the rounded tunnels in its quest for Ember Copper Crystals. The whole cavern was littered with them, but they looked a little different from the others we’d found.

  I didn’t think the ones in the boss cavern were harvestable.

  The Ironback Crawler was aptly named. It was twenty feet long and ten wide, just the right diameter for the tunnels. It’s back was covered in hard looking plates, which had a shine to them like metal not bone. There was also a secretion covering the thing's body, some dripping to the floor. Which was the origin of the weird pockmarks we’d seen in all the caverns. The thing dripped acid. Unlike the other caverns where the pockmarks followed the path of the Ironback Crawler, this cavern they were everywhere, turning the floor into swiss cheese. The big guy moved around. The plates were kind of segmented to allow it to bend, laying front over back so it could move through the tunnels.

  “The crystals and the acid marks on the floor..,” I started.

  “Yep,” Sunie agreed.

  They were going to be involved in the boss fight somehow.

  I figured the first few floors of the Infinite Tower were going to be fairly basic with the Dungeons. They’d be similar to what was found on the planets and the higher an Adventurer got, the more unique the Tower would go. It made sense. The first few floors would be like the tutorials, helping us get used to how the Tower operated.

  They were the Infinite Tower’s noob zone and even though all the Adventurer’s in Crossroads were over Level One Hundred, we were technically noobs again. Fun times.

  We watched the Ironback Crawler for a couple of minutes. There was really nothing to be learned. It moved from crystal growth to crystal growth. We’d hear that strange rock grating noise as the Crawler’s thousand teeth went to town, and then it would move on and the growth would be gone and there’d be a decent sized hole in the cavern.

  There were a lot of holes already, but still a lot of crystals to go. The cavern was huge, the same size as the entrance cavern. I couldn’t see a way out, but figured one would be revealed once we’d killed the thing.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Sunie replied standing up.

  He held out his staff, channeling Arcanum through it. The tip glowed an icy blue and a spear shot out. It slammed into the plating on the rear of the Crawler, exploding into small shards. The Crawler turned, mouth open revealing the maw filled with teeth and an apparently bottomless throat. It charged at us.

  I threw a Force Lance down its throat. That made the Ironback Crawler stop. The mouth closed and the body seemed to spasm. Maybe the one shot had killed it. False hope, I knew, but it happened sometimes. A one-shot kill would have earned us some bonus MC and TP.

  Before the Ironback Crawler could recover, I leapt out of the tunnel. I canceled the inertia between me and the floor not wanting to find out what the acid-made holes were going to do. I figured it was safe enough to float above them. No weight was being put down. They didn’t bother the Crawler, which kept making new ones as the acid dripped off the armored plates, falling to the ground.

  I tossed another Force Lance at the Crawler, aiming for a joint in the plates. The lance slid past the plate, piercing the skin, making the Crawler’s body ripple, but it didn’t seem to slow it down or hurt it. Ice formed under the massive body, making the thing slip but the acid dripping from the body quickly melted the ice.

  I reached the crawler, making sure I surrounded my fist in force and the kinetic field. Not to augment the punch, but to protect it from the acid. I’d moved to the side of the thing, not wanting to be directly in the way of that mouth that was bigger than I was. It could swallow me whole.

  Punching the side, my fist slammed into the armor plating. I could see ice balls slamming into it on the other side. The Crawler didn’t know which way to turn. Small cracks formed on the iron plates, but the things were tough. I added some Force to the punch, making the cracks a little deeper.

  The body surged, bending at the strangest angle, the rear folding in on itself, to slam into me. I grunted as the weight of the thing hit my kinetic field. I stumbled a couple feet, gaining a lot of energy. The Crawler seemed to shake a bit, probably confused why I wasn’t flat on the ground where it could then eat me.

  Recovering, I punched at it again. A piece of iron plate fell to the ground, clattering across the cavern floor. Still nothing from the holes. I was expecting something. Not sure what, but there had to be a reason they were here.

  The acid sizzled against the force shield I had around my hands, splashes of it hitting the rest of my body, which the field protected. The goop still tried to burn through, making sizzling noises and turning to smoke.

  I kept punching the same plate, trying to break through. Ice balls and shards kept peppering the other side of the Crawler. It squirmed back and forth, trying to figure out who to attack. The squirming kept messing up my timing. I had to step back to avoid the thrashing body and couldn’t keep up the attacks.

  Maybe instead of the Destruction Essence I got a Time or Speed Essence and used it to speed up my attacks? Or maybe a Sound Essence and add a sonic component? So many options and I had to pick one soon. I had over a hundred Essences I had to gather or that third spot would fall way behind and start holding me back from advancing up the Tower Floors.

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  I focused back on the fight and not on the wistful thinking. But I kept going back to the Speed Essence. My Path was called Blitzstriker, but I really didn’t have a Blitz component aside from what I could gain from kinetic energy and my Motion Essence.

  The plate finally fell off the creature, landing hard, making me have to step to the side to avoid stepping on it. The thing had a bit of a curve to it, allowing it to fit on the Crawler’s body, and it wouldn’t be great footing.

  With the plate off, I punched at the thing’s flesh, seeing it covered in a light green sheen. Thankfully my field protected me from the acid. I heard a clatter on the other side, Sunie knocking a plate off. The Crawler’s body stiffened, and started thrashing as I punched its flesh and Sunie launched an ice spike into it. The fight wasn’t that bad, but the Crawler was tough.

  That went on for a couple minutes. More plates falling, the Crawler bucking and forcing me to jump out of the way. It turned to bite at me, forcing me to block with my arm. The teeth were sharp and I could feel them through the field. Then they started to rotate, literally moving inside the thing’s mouth like a drill. I grunted in pain as they managed to cut their way through my field. Blood started to fall. Couldn’t have that, so I punched it in the side of the mouth with my other hand, using all the kinetic energy I’d stored up.

  Teeth went flying and the body jerked away. I stepped back, shaking my wounded arm, blood splattering across the ground and the stupid Crawler.

  “You okay?” Sunie called out.

  “Yeah, will be in a minute.”

  I could already feel my Regeneration Essence working on closing up the wound and fixing the muscle that had been torn. I still stepped back from the thrashing body. It really didn’t like losing teeth. Taking advantage of the lull in my attacks, it turned away from Sunies and charged at the wall.

  The wide open mouth suctioned onto the rock wall, right over a cluster of the crystals. We could hear the grinding noise as it dug into the rock. I watched as armor plates started to reform along the body.

  So that was the purpose of the unharvestable crystals.

  “It can heal itself?” I shouted out. “That’s not fair.”

  “You can heal yourself. Why can’t it?” Sunie shouted, peppering the thing with ice balls.

  They shattered and exploded across its body, spreading frost across the armored plates.

  “Whose side are you on?”

  Sunie laughed, sending an ice spike right at the thing's mouth as it turned away from the wall, now fully healed. The Ironback Crawler reared up, protecting the soft innards from another ice spike that slammed into its belly. This was the first time it had exposed its underside, which didn’t have any armor plating.

  I sent a Force Lance right into the belly. It speared through the flesh, causing blood and acid to burst out. Both splattered against my field. I shook my arms and body, getting as much off as I could. The distraction didn’t work in my favor. The heavy body slammed into me, knocking me to the ground. I crawled backwards, getting out of the way of the thrashing Crawler.

  It actually rolled, the iron plates striking the ground, twisting its body and belly away from Sunie’s ice spikes. It kept rolling, trying to squish me under its bulk. I backed up against the cavern wall, not able to go any further. The bulk kept coming toward me, the head a weird angle now that it had closed its mouth.

  I held out my hand, pushing my kinetic field out as far as I could get it.

  The Crawler rolled and came to a stop. No sudden jarring or twisting. No little movement front or back. It just stopped. All motion taken from it.

  I could feel the energy building up in my body. It was a lot of energy. The thing had built up a bit of momentum over a short distance and it was heavy, much heavier than I would have thought. The Crawler might have been trying to move but it couldn’t.

  I stood up, moving around to the front. Now the Crawler started quivering a bit as I wasn’t fully concentrating on stealing its kinetic energy. I really didn’t know how the science behind what I did worked, and really didn’t care. It just worked.

  I could feel the headache starting to build up. It was going to be a fun one.

  Taking a couple steps back, away from the mouth that was shaking as the Crawler tried to open it, I moved around to the exposed belly. There were numerous piercing wounds from Sunie’s ice spikes and the big one from my Force Lance.

  “You stole all its energy?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  I shrugged. During fights I stole a lot of kinetic energy. Most of it came from impacts against my field, punches, rams, that kind of thing. But I could take and use the energy generated from movements. I used it to speed up my attacks, which made me rule out getting a Speed Essence. I used it to slow down the movements of my opponents. I rarely used it to freeze the enemy.

  It took a lot out of me. Already, besides the building headache that was going to be painful, it sapped a lot of my Arcanum and drained my body. To pull off the trick, I had to use multiple of my Essence, weaving them together. I could feel my body starting to shake as it wanted to release all that energy. I had to release it or start doing damage to myself.

  Lining up with the Crawler’s exposed belly, the thing starting to squirm a bit, I took a couple steps back. This was going to be very messy. Taking all that stored kinetic energy I shaped it into a large Force Lance.

  Normally I kept them thin and pointed. This one I kept pointed, and adjusted the angle, widening it out down the length. Satisfied, I launched it at the Crawler.

  The tip pierced the flesh and it was messy.