Gacha Harem System

Chapter 225: The Pinnacle

As Lukas watched the Turtle work, he understood something he hadn’t fully appreciated when he’d been on the receiving end of its attacks back in the desert.

The fact that even among C-ranks, there was still a chasm of strength.

The Spiked Turtle wasn’t simply a powerful beast. It was the pinnacle of offense and defense unified in a single system, with its shell serving both purposes simultaneously.

Every spike it fired was both an attack and a replenishment of its armor, with new growth replacing what was spent in real time.

But even with its rapid fire attacks, the six remaining Automatons were not slow.

They moved through the street with a fluid, scrambling agility that the D-ranks had never shown, bouncing from wall to pavement and back again, their long arms absorbing the impact and redirecting momentum in ways that looked too acrobatic to come from machines.

The Turtle’s spikes buried themselves into the walls and street, each one cracking the ground and leaving a crater where it landed, and the Automatons moved around them with unnatural grace.

But the Turtle kept firing.

Lukas tracked the battle, his eyes moving between the shell and the six shapes darting through the narrow street.

At this range, he wasn’t sure he could dodge those spikes himself. The speed the C-ranks were displaying wouldn’t be easy to take on if they had to fight them.

One of the Automatons broke from the pattern entirely. It launched itself upwards, pushing off the wall at full height and rising above the Turtle’s shell, intent on dropping directly onto it from above.

However, a spike grew in the middle of its shell and the Turtle fired it straight up.

The spike slammed into the Automaton before it even had a chance to reach the peak of its jump.

The impact scattered its pieces across the ceiling and upper walls, the spike burying itself into the stone above with a crack that dust fell from.

Lukas couldn’t help but laugh at the sight.

If only the Automaton had known that the Turtle could cover every angle around it with its spikes, except maybe the ground beneath it. But that still wasn’t an issue, because not many beasts could even get under it in the first place.

A spike slammed into one of the dodging Automatons as it leapt into the air, and it was simply gone, the pieces of it skidding across the street. freewebnøvel.coɱ

Then three of the Automatons dashed towards each other. The two on the outside grabbed the one between them, their powerful arms pulling it back like it was a bow, then threw it.

The Automaton at the center became a projectile, hurtling forward at a speed its legs could never have generated.

An instant later, the Turtle’s spikes blew the two that had thrown it apart at the same time, their pieces scattering in all directions.

The center Automaton continued forward on the momentum of the throw, inadvertently dodging the spikes, and landed on the shell.

Lukas’ eyes immediately went wide in surprise.

That was when a spike was thrusted up from the shell directly beneath the Automaton’s feet, erupting through it from below before Lukas had finished drawing breath, blasting it to smithereens.

The last Automaton was already moving when a single spike blurred across the street and punched through its torso, pinning it flat against the wall.

It hung there, its ticking fading to silence.

Karrakas was still staring at the street when Lukas shut the door.

"I thought you killed it," he said. His voice had lost its usual composure entirely. "In the desert. We watched from the dune. You were alone and it was a C-rank Spiked Turtle and you—" He stopped. Then started again. "I thought you killed it."

"I captured it," Lukas grinned at him.

Karrakas stared at him, unable to find the words to respond to that.

Akira and Melody were looking at Lukas with a mix of being impressed and mildly unsettled, which was a difficult combination to pull off.

"How?" Melody asked. "How did you survive that thing in the desert, let alone bring it back in a ball?"

Lukas grinned, tapping his temple with a finger. "I fought smart, not hard."

He turned away from the door as if the street outside currently did not contain a giant C-rank beast that had just dismantled eight C-rank Automatons.

"We should eat," he said. "And sleep, if we can."

Karrakas looked out the window, then at Lukas. "Sleep," he repeated. "You want us to sleep?"

"The Turtle will keep the streets safe for us as we rest, so there’s no reason why we can’t catch up on our sleep," Lukas said. "After all, nothing’s getting past that beast tonight."

There was a moment of silence as Karrakas looked out the window one more time, watching the Turtle’s bulk visible through the glass, then exhaled and sat down.

They all looked at the beast for a few seconds in collective silence, then Akira picked up her rations.

The others did the same and they continued eating. They finished their food without much conversation, everyone thinking about the fight they’d just witnessed. frёeωebɳovel.com

When the rations were done, they found spaces on the floor, arranged their sleeping bags and laid down in them. Before long, they were asleep.

Lukas dozed, waking periodically to give the Turtle a few commands where necessary and check the street through the window.

The Turtle did its work, efficiently, launching its spikes whenever the patrols arrived and destroying them.

But as their rest period was winding down, he noticed when a group of C-rank Automatons came down from above, dropping directly onto the Turtle’s shell before it had a chance to notice them.

They landed in a cluster and began attacking immediately, their gleaming nails working at the existing cracks in the shell as their bodies twisted to avoid the spikes that erupted around them.

Of course, they didn’t last long, but the damage had been done.

When Lukas checked the shell through the window, the cracks were wider, and blood was already seeping from the deepest ones.

Everyone was awake by then.

Akira crouched beside the window, studying the Turtle. "It fought hard," she said. "It deserves rest."

She paused. "Also, there are no beasts on the street right now."

Lukas nodded, opened the door, and held out the [Monster Ball].

The suction pulled the Turtle in, the enormous body compressing and streaming into the ball until the street was empty.

He lowered the ball, then looked up.

Directly above the door frame, pressed flat against the wall, was a C-rank Automaton.

Its luminous glass eyes were already looking down at him.