Chemical Weapons (2)

"Oh?"

I had been browsing through the shop for quite some time, casually checking if there was anything worth picking up. Consistently munching on dango must have finally paid dividends, because the level-up chime chimed when I least expected it.

"Now that's what I call a legendary development!"

I bounced right up from the mattress, reflexively throwing my arms into the air in triumph.

"Juddak-yaaaahooo!"

Leveling up had never steered me wrong. Not once.

"A delivery function?"

"Wait, what good does that do me?" I muttered, tilting my head as I scrutinized the system description.

Seriously, what was the point? If it was just sending stuff to people, I had already been making full use of the barter trade feature. In fact, that allowed me to transfer goods directly to another party without paying an extra dime, and I was even the one collecting the commission fees on top of it. But this? This was literally charging me cash just to mail a package somewhere.

"Well, there's still hope."

The Inventory Function. If utilized properly, an inventory was practically a cheat code. Clinging tight to my dwindling expectations, I opened up the interface, and—

"Ah."

My giddy anticipation evaporated on the spot, replaced by cold, hard disappointment.

Chemical weapons were far more diverse than I had initially imagined. Depending on their classification, there were blood agents, choking agents, blister agents, nerve agents, and endless variations in between.

"The hell is (Cl-CH2CH2)2S supposed to mean, you gigantic nerd?"

Despite how boldly I had declared my intention to gas the rift, I was utterly lost when it came to picking an actual product. The only chemical agent I had ever encountered in my life was the CS tear gas pellet burned during military chemical defense drills. How was I supposed to know what half these formulas did?

Furthermore, logistics posed a massive hurdle. Even if I bought the damn thing, how was I going to store it, and how was I going to haul it anywhere? If a lethal cloud or drum of toxic liquid materialized right in the center of my living room bunker, that would be an immediate, permanent service shutdown for my life.

Fortunately, as was almost always the case, the system had already anticipated the problem.

At the very least, the risk of receiving an uncontained cloud of toxic vapors and getting instantly dissolved into soup had been neatly eliminated. Penny had warned me that the wave would begin in roughly two and a half hours.

"Still got plenty of time."

I had already spotted a few particularly vicious candidates in the catalog. I was just mulling over which Gallum I could hire to carry the canister and chuck it into the fissure, when suddenly—

"What?"

Kellierton was already under assault by a variant beast.

A wave never disgorged its horrors with clockwork precision. At the end of the day, all anyone could do was make an educated guess by monitoring the instability and atmospheric omens around a rift.

Among those incursions, there were occasional aberrations where a vanguard entity dragged itself out long before the main tide. The monstrous juggernaut currently battering down the Kellierton outer wall was precisely such a case.

"GROOOAAAR!"

The ridiculously overpowered Steel Golem let out an ear-splitting howl, and under the sheer momentum of its forward lurch, Kellierton's grand defensive rampart collapsed into a shower of fractured stone.

"Fuck!"

xXStormMageXx, Derek, threw himself flat against the dirt, ducking just beneath a barrage of flying masonry. He had received reports earlier that an ominous rift had manifested across the northern plains, but this invasion was far too premature. It had crashed through their perimeter before they could muster any coordinated defense.

"Our attacks aren't leaving a scratch!"

"We've cleared out the common beasts, but that thing...!"

"GROOOAAAR!"

With a single sweep of its massive arm, the golem shattered a two-story roadside inn into matchsticks. Archery divisions had poured hundreds of arrows into its hide, but they couldn't carve so much as a nick into its surface. Mages gathered and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hurled high-tier spells, but raw elemental attacks couldn't dissolve or smash solid steel the way they shattered ordinary stone. Annihilating the standard beasts that had swarmed through the breach alongside it meant nothing; the variant golem remained completely pristine, rampaging through the inner ward without taking a single point of damage.

"If only we had a little more time!"

As the interim master of Jusaek Magic Tower, Derek cried out in agonizing regret. The tower was an institution founded specifically to reverse-engineer and decode Head Mod's divine high magic. Had they been granted just a little more leeway, they might have deployed combat-ready artificial lifeforms to intercept it.

"Sir Mage, is there no other way?!" roared Lloyd, barking orders to coordinate the perimeter guard. If this momentum held, the heart of the city would become an abattoir within minutes. They had to fell the beast right here at the shattered wall, before it pushed deeper.

"I can bind it for a brief moment, but..."

"That is more than enough!"

At Lloyd's cry, Derek took a deep breath, forcing his galloping pulse into absolute focus.

Crack!

A cluster ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of premium mana crystals clutched in Derek's hands shattered into pale, lifeless dust, their condensed energy drawn entirely into his meridians. He might clown around under the alias xXStormMageXx on an anonymous board, but beneath the gamer handle, he was a genuine High-Rank Mage.

"Now!"

Creeeeak—crunch!

The moment Derek snapped his eyes wide open, the rampaging juggernaut's limbs seized violently. Channelling the scattered boulders and shattered wall masonry with pure gravitational force, he had locked the Steel Golem's feet dead to the ground.

"GROOOGH!"

The golem thrashed with cataclysmic fury, making it obvious the makeshift earthen clamp would shatter in seconds. Yet those few seconds were all that was required.

"Swarm it!" Lloyd bellowed.

In a blur of polished steel, Kellierton's most elite knights scaled the golem's towering chassis. Binding thick, braided mooring ropes around its arms and legs, they threw their weight backward, pulling from four opposing angles.

"HUUURGH!"

Dozens of knights piled onto each line, their veins bulging and muscles tearing under the agony of holding against a living mountain.

THUD!

The moment the unbalanced colossus lost its footing and crashed flat on its back, Derek vaulted onto its chest plating. Thrusting his staff directly down into its gaping ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠metal maw, he channeled every scrap of lingering mana into an explosive incantation.

"Die, you bastard!"

Unlike its invulnerable steel shell, the interior of the golem possessed distinct, fleshy organic organs. Aiming straight down into that fatal flaw, Derek detonated an overwhelming blast of concussive fire, completely draining his mana core in a single blinding burst.

Kellierton had diligently cultivated its image as a proud Kingdom of Knights by actively raising a knightly order ever since I started supplying modern steel. And when a golem actually invaded, they managed to conquer it through the batshit insane tactic of anchoring it with raw muscle and blasting it apart from the inside out.

Yet that encounter was merely a precursor. There were still four more Steel Golems waiting in the wings.

A suffocating dread enveloped the gallery far faster than any fleeting joy of victory. With their outer wall collapsed into rubble, this narrow triumph carried damages that were utterly catastrophic. On top of everything, the Steel Golem was fundamentally different from the prey they had hunted before.

Internally, society was thrown into turmoil by the lingering terror of the Black Death; externally, increasingly mutated and hyper-evolved variant beasts were launching coordinated sieges. If a custom Starcraft defense map were balanced with this kind of sadistic difficulty curve, the creator would get roasted to ashes in the forums and the map would be deleted from existence.

Fortunately, this lobby happened to feature a host running cheat codes.

"I finally see it."

The true purpose of the inventory and delivery features suddenly clicked into place.

The chemical weapon I had purchased and stored within the pocket dimension: VX Gas. An agent far more notorious than sarin, the infamous killer gas. An insane neurotoxin capable of causing rapid, agonizing respiratory paralysis and neurological collapse through mere skin contact or a single breath. That very weapon of mass destruction sat safely preserved in its pure, pristine state inside my inventory.

"Normally, I wouldn't have even entertained the idea of using this..."

To be honest, whenever I handed out conventional firearms, if even a single bullet went missing, it left a foul taste in my mouth. It was born of that nagging paranoia that someone might turn that barrel back toward my head when I least expected it. Under that logic, introducing chemical weapons into the world was something I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

Yet through the delivery function unlocked by leveling up, and through the existence of the dimensional rifts, enlightenment struck. I hadn't just acquired a mailing system. I had acquired an infinite, remote proving ground that I could operate from the comfort of my bedroom with a single mouse click.

"One click. Hard carry."

"Obviously."

With a single, effortless press of an administrative prompt, the entire 10-kilogram payload of VX gas vanished from my inventory.

"Did we get 'em?"

At first, there was no noticeable upheaval. Naturally, there was no way to peer through the tear into the space beyond. Resting quietly as I counted down toward the wave's appointed arrival, the breach finally began to destabilize and split wide open.

And yet—

The catastrophic ripple effect was far more devastating than anything I could have ever imagined.