Only a madman would risk his life for no reason.
Zayn was not a madman; he needed a challenge to test his new skills. A real challenge, like this one. The cracks on its body had vanished. And its shield looked...perfectly capable of taking punishment.
It had constructed itself to be the perfect punching bag, and who was he to refuse its kindness?
Stone Knight, Lv 22
It took a booming step forward, holding its massive shield with ease. Then it turned to face him and…just stood there.
Zayn waited, muscles tight, posture ready to lunge.
But its attack never came.
Weird. He could feel its stare fixed on him. He shot a confused gaze back, and for a while, they just stared at each other.
Why did this turn into a staring contest?
After what felt like fourteen business days, he finally had a clue. This wanker of a golem was also waiting for him to attack! It wanted him to attack first!
No way I’m attacking first.
Among his skills, only one was purely meant for attack—‘Reinforced fist’. It made his punches pack some real weight.
After a while of awkward staring, it finally complied with an earth-shaking charge. The colossal shield whistled through the air, hurling towards him with the velocity of a freight train. He froze at its harrowing speed.
Was that shield hollow on the inside?
In no mood to test that, he leapt away just in the nick of time.
Thunderous cracks rang behind him. Trees came crashing down, sending tremors across the land. He scanned them, ripped and shredded out of their roots. His heart shuddered.
One hundred per cent fatal.
Meeting that head-on would’ve been suicide.
Before the golem repositioned, he retrieved a gravefruit and devoured it in one bite. The soothing mana traveled through him and pushed him into hyperfocus.
The golem bulleted towards him again. He leapt aside, assuming he’d dodge in time. But this time, he was proven wrong. With blinding speed, it caught him off guard, nicking at his side.
He was sent flying into the trees.
The world spun before he fell. His back burned from the impact. Thankfully, the energy from gravefruit allowed him to scramble back on his feet.
Though it couldn’t stop blood coating his throat.
‘I see you now’ active!
He swallowed it back, but internal bleeding seemed to fulfil the conditions just the same.
Colour faded out of his vision. Everything shifted to a shade of grey—like those pretentious arthouse films. Except for the golem. It had turned into a crimson, hostile lump of mana. Words rose in his vision as he peered into it.
Stone Knight, Lv 22
Skills : Hypersonic Charge - ?, Shield Up - ?, Final stance - ?
He sent it a gloomy gaze. Now, that charge earlier was certainly Hypersonic charge. He just had to figure out what other skills did…by himself!
How useful!
Shield up probably had to do with the big fuckoff shield it held. By now, cracks were running on it, akin to a broken eggshell. His eyes lit up in realisation.
Those dashes were hurting it too.
With that kind of velocity, it might kill itself. Might even bash itself to death if left alone, if things went in his favour.
No.
Far more likely it’d batter him to death if he allowed it to stack any more charges.
The golem charged at him again with a terrifying velocity, each step booming. The cracks running through the shield were like a broken maw lunging for him. No, he couldn’t fight this. He needed to move.
Now.
Just as the thought of retreating surfaced, his heart roared out in defiance. As though someone had gripped him by the neck and forced him to face it head on.
Ba-dump!
Red rushed out in a fury—as fast as lightning—blazing to his right arm, flooding it with an ancient, primal power.
What?
Scrambling, he punched forward, splitting the air as his fists met the golem’s charge. Head-on.
Perfect parry performed!
The impact cracked the air, a booming shockwave blasting outward, stripping the leaves from their branches. Zayn was hurled off his feet and slammed into a tree, breath torn out of his lungs.
His entire body gave off popping sounds, and he may have broken a rib or two.
Charges have been regained from damage taken!
Charges: 12/10! (Overload!)
Energy crackled across his body, threatening to lash out like whips. He forced himself to his knees, instinctively bracing for the next attack.
The golem, however, didn’t look much better than him.
Stolen story; please report.
Half of its shield had shattered and turned into rubble. Not only that, a single crack expanded from its hand, spreading into cracks across its entire body like a cobweb. Mana wafted out of the cracks and dissipated into the air.
Skills detected!
Hypersonic Charge (Initiate): With every uninterrupted charge, gain a 25% boost in dexterity. Stackable. If interrupted, the charges are reset to zero. (0/10)
Hypersonic Charge has been deactivated for the next 10 minutes...
Shield Up (Initiate): At any time, all the damage taken is redirected to the shield, up to 30% of maximum health. (0/30)
Shield has been destroyed!
It was once again staring at him, but now there was something else in its gaze—a hint of fear.
Zayn spat.
It felt weird…seeing monsters have this kind of vivid expression on their faces. The treants were the same yesterday.
“Monsters aren’t supposed to have consciousness.” He muttered.
Not this early. Those were for endgame bosses. Like lord of demons. Or mighty dragons. In what world does a lv 22 golem have consciousness?
He considered this a hell zone shenanigan and just let it go.
Too bad there was no health bar to check how much of its health he’d taken, but he could guess from the churning, hostile mana inside of it. The way it had dimmed told him everything.
Grinning bloodily, he stood in a fighting position once more. So this was what a Legacy Feat Fragment got you for a Class. He dashed forward. Called out another charge, towards his other hand. Sailed a wild, crimson punch at it, like a hammer.
The golem met the strike late, and its right arm crumbled apart too. It sniped at him desperately with its remaining arm, no longer holding that calm composure of before.
He ducked and drove his scraped, bloody knuckles into its stomach.
Charges regained!
Zayn went haywire, sending hooks, uppercuts and all other kinds of punches that he couldn’t name in a frenzy. Rocks shattered. Flesh tore apart. And his hands burned like hell.
But damn, it was a good burn!
Red mana streaked into his arms, into a tempest of rage. The golem tried to put up a fierce defence.
Hard to do with no limbs.
Just as he was about to give it the final blow, a burst of mana rushed out of it.
Skill detected!
Final stance (Adept): When under 20% health, restore up to 30% of maximum health.
Its flickering flames suddenly became a wildfire, mana rushed out of its crack, swiftly filling them.
"Fuck off!"
Heavy with mana, he sailed his fist and smacked its rocky head and, with a clean, cracking smack, tore through it.
Damn.
He sprawled down on his back, huffing, watching the last mana signals of the golem die out. His hands were bloodied, numb and scraped but he grinned all the same.
“That was fun. Let’s do that again.”
Warning! Health under 30%!
“Let’s do that again sometime later.”
All of a sudden, a strange sense of danger hit him.
Even when he was killing the easy ones, he’d receive some mana. He hadn’t received… any mana from that kill.
That could only mean one thing—
You’re shitting me!
Where the golem had fallen, mana made a storm in the air. The large mound of gravel was ballooning into an odd, ellipsoid-like shape.
A shape he was very familiar with.
??? — Lv 24
Speechless, Zayn stared at the egg-shaped mound of stones. Then he crabbed towards it. With ‘I see now’ active, he could see what happened in real time.
It was not pretty.
Just moments ago, the mana inside of it had extinguished; he’d seen it himself, it had dimmed to nothingness. Now it was once again a raging fire, and with every passing second… it burned brighter.
??? — Lv 26
“Not even bosses have three phases!”
How did the levelling system work for golems? For him, he had to kill monsters to gain growth mana and level up. He’d assumed it to be the same for monsters.
He was bad at assumptions.
These golems were unbound by the same rules that governed him.
??? — Lv 27
“Oh, fuck off.”
His heart bolted with red as he plunged his fist down with every bit of his force.
A crack. Then the stone mound froze. A long fracture appeared on its shell. It burst apart into a mess of unmoving debris.
Perfect kill performed!
Level up!
Just one level? He couldn’t hide his disappointment. Biting down on a bunch of gravefruits, he opened his quest log to confirm.
Titansfall (hidden)—Quest Objectives
Defeat Stone Turtles (1/5)
Yep. The system had scammed him. There was no way that was worth just one level.
Since yesterday, he had thought that the stone golems were a byproduct of the stone ape, borne out of its body. That theory made enough sense at that time, but it appeared he’d only considered one side of the coin.
As it appeared, it was a two-way thing. These stone golems could evolve continuously if they had rocks.
No. It shouldn’t be that simple.
But for the sake of it, he assumed it was. If the stone golems could evolve into stone turtles, wouldn’t that mean… the stone ape was an evolution of the stone turtle?
What about the dungeon boss?
“If the boss is one step stronger than the stone ape, I might as well prepare my coffin and lie down in it.” He spat to himself.
Then his muscles squirmed as he remembered something.
Something that has been following him around for a while.
He looked around.
Soon, he found it—a sneaky thing hiding behind the white-barked trees.
A black, rectangular box.
With the insignia of a scalpel and a hammer etched on it. In the forest where everything was nearly white and green, it stuck out like a sore thumb.
Clack!
Seeing him stare back, it clacked its lid open and closed like a happy child.
“As I said, I am not your owner, alright? Can you stop following me around?”
Clack!
The black coffin jumped out like it was embarrassed, and clacked its lid open and closed once more, trying to explain itself.
Zayn didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He’d seen it all now.
Everything else wasn’t weird enough; now he had a sentient, stalker coffin running behind his back.
“Fuck.”
Not a death flag at all. Certainly.
Turning back at the mound of fragments, he realized how he underestimated how useful ‘I see you now’ was. It didn’t merely allow him to look into the skills of his enemies; that was a gross oversimplification.
It did so much more.
Only about thirty per cent of mana had gone into him. The leftover mana—which hadn’t gone to him—got soaked up by the ground, driving in a predefined pathway, racing to a pulsating light on the horizon.
He’d recognise that pulse anywhere.
He relaxed. As though a stone was lifted off his shoulder. For the past few hours, he’d been losing his mind, and even though he’d not admitted it, he had nearly lost all hope.
Turns out the solution had been with him all the while.
***
A good constitution was not great for bleeding. Humans, the regular ones back on earth, bled for less than five minutes until the clotting factors lined up and patched injuries away. The same injury only lasted a minute or so on him.
Usually, that’d be great news.
Just not right now.
Grimacing, Zayn brought out the sword and slashed a cut under his forearm, forcing ‘I see you now’ active. Everything turned dark, leaving the mana trails glaringly visible.
The white woods, as he suspected, weren't alive the same way the stone golems were. Thin lines of energy concentrated on their pitted barks—most of which raced to the gravefruits, making them flash with a white glow.
White Mana for sustenance, healing. Crimson Mana for hostility, destruction. He made a crude distinction based on his few observations. But the charges inside of him were the same scarlet shade.
Would that mean he was his own enemy?
He snorted. That distinction worked fine; he’d worry about the specifics later. Even though he had quite a few points on him, he was still closer to a man than a superhuman. After hours of tireless movement, his lega screamed for rest. But he kept dragging his sore, pained feet, driven by an unwavering will.
Titansfall (hidden)—Quest Objectives
Defeat Stone golems II. (27/30)
He’d been hoping to finish the objective, but with the suns starting to hang low, it appeared he needed to be faster. He did meet a second stone turtle on the path, but avoided engaging it, lest he get injured again.
It had taken a while to heal from the last battle, and then gravefruit made him sleep for a couple more. Against a half-boiled turtle at that..
He’d not risk his life recklessly with Raka on the line.
This time, when the colours returned to his vision, he’d reached close enough to see the copse of trees.
The canopy overhead had grown thick enough that light barely pierced through it anymore, turning the shadows thick and swarming. The deathly stillness of the place stifled him. He clicked his tongue, smelling the ash and rot again.
“Real joy, this place.”
He dashed right in.
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