Well if ever the system was telling him to run, Andrei pondered. Then two bolts of lightning shot out of its fangs and Andrei barely had time to get his shield out. The shot put his shield at full energy. Andrei thought to himself hey I can be invincible for 30 seconds but then thought nope I probably cant do shit against this guy so I better use the invincibility to help me escape if anything.
Two more shots came and the shield automatically reflected both back at the beast and it stopped from doing that again in the fight. The beast started to charge but it was so large and had sent Andrei far enough to where Andrei was easily able to outpace it on his escape. A tree in front of Andrei suddenly exploded, hit by an invisible force. Andrei knew it must have been a wind attack and he continued to hold his shield between him and the legendary beast.
"What the hell was that?" Henry said over the earpieces. Their drones had been supporting the three groups and they did not have a fourth drone to follow Andrei but shortly after the massive beast emerged all three drones could see it. The attacks came out before anyone could comprehend what they were seeing.
"Fall back if you can hear me fall back!" Henry was shouting into his communication device Goombi was looking frantically trying to see where Andrei went. "Guys I will be back at the base, if he continues to chase after any of you immediately retreat to the portal and return to base." with that the attacks had stopped and the ground had stopped rumbling as the beast stood there not sure what just happened.
It slowly turned around as if it was in no hurry then returned to the hole it made and went back and buried itself into the ground. The ground shook during this process and all three teams just stood still hoping not to gain the attention of the beast.
The rumbling went on for a long time but they all felt like it was getting further away. They figured it must have burrowed into the planet and moved away to some other part. All 3 units were happy to have not been noticed but now were all worried about their leader.
They continued on with their mission of getting as many advanced tier beast cores as they could so that they could ensure having the best gear possible. Meanwhile Andrei had ported back to the Commanders Quarters of Goliath.
[Quest Complete: Escape]
[Congratulations you're still alive!]
[Level 6 now achieved: +1 Skill stat allotted +1 HP +5 Spirit]
[Level 7 now achieved: +1 Skill stat allotted +1 HP +5 Spirit]
Killing all those creatures on the back of the legendary beast allowed him to level twice. The numbers he was looking at from his base compared to his gear was staggering. He felt like it was just simply nonexistent increases but he never knew if his gear would be faulty or suppressed by something unknown to him. He added to his stamina this time seeing the base number being so small at 5.
Andrei decided he was going to take a look at the Goliath roster that had automatically invited Mini to her position. He knew already that Henry and Jayson would be both a part of the Forgers and put them in both under the Commander line and it auto gave them co-commander status.
From Henry's perspective, getting the communication to join Andrei's Goliath project told him that Andrei was fine and he communicated to all three squads that he received a message that Andrei was good.
Andrei continued to look at the roster as he was now assuming at minimum this was his base of operations for everything to come. Communications Commander was simple "Lauren Ierdna" and remembering Natalie was learning forging at university he added her to the commander line and it made the three of them commanders. He thought about it and then the information displayed 3 of 5 next to the commander's names. He then remembered Goombi was all about mechs so he added him next to Mini.
He then added Charles Hood to Chief Officer of Goliath which was second in command. Elemental advisor he placed Edwin Jarvis and Flen Dingle as they were both attuned to 4 elements. Master of Infiltration was given to Mark "Hook" Sanders. Head of Infirmary he placed Sophia Vegas.
There was a line for Platoon Sergeants that he placed the rest of Death Squad into so that they would get the invite. He had also seen that he could have the invite sent out to be here on a specific date which he put for the moment they are to return to base from the excursion.
He then took a look at his own setup, his abilities, his weapons, gear, inventory. Taking it all in he noticed he was wearing the same shoulder guards he bought at the very beginning. He never took the time to buy shoulder pads from Jayson, he must have been distracted by the boots.
He told himself that is what he needed to buy when he saw Jayson's stall next. What Andrei didn't know was that Jayson was going to bring his stall on-board Goliath and would be available to him through his system once Jayson arrived. Andrei was hoping that between their three abilities of forging they could make some incredible gear from the cores that were already being collected.
Having decided he wasn't needed anywhere there was the mission of going to the planets that Sam referred to in the welcome to Goliath video so Andrei pulled up those five dormant locations and saw that they weren't on the known Galaxy portal network. He looked at the closest one to where he was and it was labeled "Dracula". Andrei chuckled, this can't be where vampires are could it? Andrei pondered whether to go and check this out knowing he had 2+ days till everyone arrived at Goliath.
The four other options were "Pythonia" "Lycaonia" "Hades" and "Paladonia". Dracula and Lycaonia were close together while Pythonia was completely by itself on the other side of the Galaxy. Paladonia and Hades were closer to each other but still a bit away from anything else in another quadrant of the Galaxy.
Andrei figured Dracula was as good as any of them so he clicked on the galaxy map and was teleported to a dark room that seemed to struggle to come to life. He pulled out his longsword to give himself a flashlight and the room finally started to come to life blinking lights slowly holding solid. Seeing he was alone he put his longsword back and moved around to check out the facility. He had gone around a corner and came across an "Interact" at a console which his hand was already stretched out trying to activate as soon as possible.
His hand lit up and on his interface the mini map became active and he had been thinking of an exit so the yellow marker showed to the south west of his current position. He thought about the best route to take and the mini map started showing a line to take. He made it to a door that was locked but on the keypad hovering above it was "84571245457" so he put those numbers into the keypad and the door opened.
Andrei smiled thinking about how incredible all of this was. He lost the smile though as he was no longer alone. Across the room hunched over in a weird ball position when Andrei had first entered the room, the ball started moving and becoming larger. Then it expanded its upper body and massive set of arms that had a webbed arm pit as if it could glide. The hands were 5 long claws that appeared to be razor sharp. The head was large and had 2 long fangs coming out of the mouth and pointed ears on top of its heads.
"Identify" Andrei needed to know what this crazy beast was in front of him and doing "Identify" did not help. "Vampiric Beast of Dracula" not standard, not intermediate, Andrei was quickly trying to figure out what he should do and so he decided to test out how his opponent reacts. He grabbed his slingshot and thought "Wind" let go of the pouch and a "Wind Pellet" accelerated and pierced the heart of the beast, so Andrei thought, as the beast looked down at the hole in its chest and it closed up within a few seconds. It screeched with a rattle in its throat that made it quite unique sounding to Andrei.
He shot out "Fire" "Lightning" "Nature" "Water" and all of them did damage to the beast but it just kept screeching and slowly making its way forward. Andrei hit five different spots to compare wounds and the fire element was still not fully healed so Andrei figured that Fire might be a weakness. However the beast only seemed to be getting annoyed with the fact it was getting damaged slightly.
Andrei summoned Ice Axes seeing how slow the beast was he figured he could out maneuver the beast. The beast swung at Andrei's head and he deflected the attack, with the Ice Axe in his left hand lighting up after doing so. He then remembered "Wolf's Bite" and a large wolf appeared out of the Ice Axe and latched onto the leg of the vampiric beast. The beast swung down with both claws at the wolf but it did not seem to do any damage to it as the wolf held on to the leg.
The bent over action from the downward swing at the wolf left the head exposed perfectly in front of Andrei who quickly swung down on the neck and chopped the head clean off. He thought "Fluffy fetch beast core" and the clone jumped out and made a quizzical sound. Then the clone attacked the head and ate it and then Andrei received a message that baffled him.
[+1 Blood Core]
He opened his inventory and took a look at what was in his system listed as a "Blood Core". The system did not give any explanation and Andrei was starting to think there was lots the system did not know when the voice of Prince popped into his head. "It is what you think it is, similar to the beast cores, blood cores come from the powers of consuming blood. Vampiric powers is the common general category of these abilities."
"How we call lightning an element, blood is an element but the practice of it is considered barbaric to most advanced cultures. Blood rituals can recreate life even from death but the element death is the opposite of element blood, to know the two is your destiny as you are to know all and ensure the survival of life in the Galaxy."
"Where do you get this from?" Andrei responded to Prince in his brain. "From the fact that it's what we have done for millions and millions of your cycles. There becomes an imbalance of power in the universe and that power has to be leveled out. The only way to level out that power is to bring those with the most power back down to the rest or exterminate them for the greater good."
"Sam did not know that he actually was about to manifest computerkensis powers that would rival any of Mini's most powerful ancestors. We still don't know how the manifestation of the original powers cycle through the Galaxy but we do know that when someone dies that had it we originals feel it. Yes I mean we as in you as well, you have an original spirit in you that you were born with. It is what drew LaLa to you in the first place, as well as myself, I sensed LaLa first but then when exiting the shelter I knew why."
"Fate/Luck/Destiny are all the creations of your essence and when your essence is born it means the galaxy is out of balance. Have you ever noticed that you are learning more than anyone else and how quickly it's happening?" Prince didn't even give him time to respond to the question.
"There are powers that shape the galaxy that are far beyond your comprehension but know this, one of the failsafes is you and the quicker we get you up to dominating the galaxy the easier it will be to get it done. The longer it takes or if we fail to protect you and your essence has to be reincarnated the 9 cycles from now might not have a Galaxy to defend." Prince finished up his spiel and Andrei was now left dumbfounded.