Relentless in motion, thus is time.

  A choir singing on repeat on and on,

  That endless and ceaseless rhyme.

  Immortal rot and decay, your souls withers within.

  One can only wonder, what is it to which you truly aspire?

  By coming here; by trying to save and rescue…

  I have to ask, what is it for which you truly desire?

  In this moment.

  For all the power is in your hand, left sheathed and unwielded.

  As if your true motivations are less than saint.

  As if being drive much the same…

  Like that which you face.

  Debris came tumbling down as if a small avalanche of crystalline glitter and rock. A silent dread filled the air, suffocating their choking breaths.

  The foreigner just stared up at what had once been the wagoneer’s overwatching position; that entry point now collapsed shut and closed, with not even a mist of blood to be seen, let alone a corpse. He was just gone; her…subordinate whom she had dragged here.

  Yet for whatever reason, she remained awfully unreactive; neither a response from her mind nor body; neither her soul nor heart. She just stared…as everything within…flatlined; emptying and numbing, as everything around began to feel so…unreal and detached, as if reality no longer truly existed… Yet she was there, in the moment.

  The foreigner’s mask-obscured ignited eyes only brightened, as if that inhibiting coldness merely tightened its clenching squeeze ever-more.

  Everything had happened in such a quick succession of events; it was difficult to process even if they were all well aware.

  The crystalline colossus, its now thicker and spikier translucent armor steaming, in effect, with glimmering snow-dusty wisps, was morphing reddish along with the chamber around; its veins of exotic radiance glowed and ignited further, pulsating and throbbing as if synapsing nerves threading all over. Its single glowing eye and lens, brighter, started into them as it began to slowly march, dragging its sword along.

  The priestess’s teeth chattered as she fell down to her legs, trembling with cramping breaths… “No… No, no, no! No…” Her widened eyes broke with clogging tears as she gazed up at the mage’s impaled corpse, dangling yet slowly being pulled down by gravity’s tug; “Heaven’s mercy! Heaven’s mercy! You too??” her breaths squeezed out from her fracturing mind.

  The shield adventurer remained frozen and silent, staring that marching colossus down… His breaths tensed even though he focused as much as he could… “Forget Sapphire, that thing’s fucking Onyx…” he audibly muttered to himself.

  However, stunned their battered minds might be, they were afforded little respite nor room for breathing pause, for only but a few dozen seconds after all such had befallen…so resumed that that the torrential onslaught.

  “SHIT!” The shield adventurer clenched his shield’s grip, eyes reigniting into partial activation as that exotic barrier immediately stretched and extended, the shield’s heart once again pulsing.

  The shatter-bursting crystalline projectiles came lancing, smashing into the barrier, beating and battering at both it and him whilst so many struck the surrounding ground around…as if the colossus was intentionally missing. These projectiles were smaller and more volatile, overwhelming with such a rate and passion that the barrier was already on the brink; its hexagonic patterns palpitated, the barrier’s coloring reddening and twisting.

  “FUCK FUCK!” he screamed and shouted, the shield’s core pulsating with increasing instability.

  “Trinity’s damnation over us, we are…going to die… We… I am actually going to die… This is it… So soon… This is it… Father in Heaven…” The shattered priestess remained paralyzed and frozen, her mind simply unable to keep up.

  Yet as fast as the barrage abruptly flared, it so abruptly ended as the colossus took one halting step, its armored foot being firmly bashed in place forward with the other more back. It took its stance and adjusted its posture, raising its sword’s blade off the ground as it held it with two both crystalline hands… Before, all so abruptly, it began a tremoring charge.

  “FERTILITY’S STILLBORN BASTARD!! SHIT! SHIT!!” the shield adventurer screamed aloud in panic, the barrage swiftly resuming now joined by those rapidly increasing tremoring stomps.

  The priestess remained frozen, teeth, jaws, and limbs trembling even more; her mind frantically screamed prayer after prayer, yet her voice remained paralyzed.

  The foreigner, frigidly silent, had resumed her painstaking reload of her revolver; having been moving faster than as fast as possible, she was in the middle of placing each shots’ primer-caps… She was readying herself to countercharge in hopes of distracting it…However, by this point, she was no longer thinking; she was operating with a total deference to automaticity.

  The shield adventurer’s mind was frantically thinking and cogitating his options, the barrage slowing down yet keeping a constant slam on both the ever-destabilizing barrier and his fragile thoughts…

  Seconds… Seconds… The shield adventurer’s breaths escalated, panting and panting… He had only seconds to decide and act… No time… There was literally no time. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” His head snapped back, gazing straight into foreigner; “Y-Y-YOU! COPPERSLINGER!” he called with such panic.

  The foreigner immediately halted her doings, having placed all of the primer-caps anyway; closing the pistol’s revolving canister, she simply stared at him with flat affect.

  “YOU’RE AGILE AND FAST! FASTER THAN ANYONE OF US! STRONGER THAN I THOUGHT! I SEE THAT!” he thus so continued his shouts, as if pleading; “YOU CAN CLIMB! YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN ESCAPE! SHE’S ALMOST YOUR HEIGHT! SO, GRAB HER AND PREPARE TO RUN!”

  Yet the priestess’s shattered eyes looked at him, widening… “H-huh? W-w-w-w-what are you—What are you s-s-s-s-s-suggest—” she was frantically replying, yet the foreigner had immediately responded to his pleading commands.

  Holstering her revolver, the foreigner yanked and grabbed the slightly taller priestess, effectively forcing her onto her back, figure squishing against her backpack. With the weakly priestess on her back holding tightly, she silently stood by.

  “DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE SPIKES! IF IT WANTED TO KILL US, IT WOULD HAVE! IT’S PINNING US!” the shield adventurer shouted, those tremoring stomps rapidly closing in. “SHIT! JUST RUN! NOW! NOW! NOW! RUN! GET OUT OF HERE!”

  With a silent nod, the foreigner immediately turned herself around and dashed, lance-striding faster and faster in a dim snow-dusty cyanic trail. She initially moved vertically, staying within the energized barrier’s shielding shadow until she was far enough away from the shattering barrage before making a sharp turn; she was attempting to distance herself as much as possible before diverting to the walls.

  The priestess held on tightly, her holy staff dangling from its connected strap… Silent and without protest, she was nevertheless unable to withdraw her sight from the other left behind…

  Interim

  With those two on their way, the shield adventurer focused with all his might, face dripping with sweat. His hand clenched the grip of his sheathed magical sword that complimented his shield, unsheathing it; his lips and tongue followed in synchrony with activating phrases uttered not in voice but in mind…his partial ignited eyes brightening more. “…Skill activate: Kinetic Absorption Five; Skill activate: Leap-Jump Five; Special Talent activate: Sword Channeling…” Though, he…certainly rapidly mumbled away some of them.

  The exotic core of his magical sword began to glow and energize, grooves and engravings being filled with dull radiance that threaded thither, wisp-dusty essence neither awake nor asleep; the blade ignited into an exotic glow, as if becoming so hot and so sharp.

  Glitter flaked off his skin and muscles, which twitched somewhat as if mutating and being rebuilt, becoming even stronger and more durable…even if the cramping was painful. His lungs felt stronger; his heart more efficient; his strength, dexterity, stamina, and all such things felt augmented and enhanced…

  The barrage stopped as he had hoped and predicted… The colossus did not want to kill them that way; it wanted to do the work itself. And with that towering golem right ahead of him, preparing to smash through itself, he in took the deepest of breaths…

  “Alrightly! COME GET ME YOU DEMON ASS-RAPED GOLEM!” With these words, he charged forth with incredible momentum, his shield and barrier still raised as he prepared to meet that golem head-on. Adventure-green flakes wisped from his body, flaring and waning yet he still persisted onwards.

  The colossus immediately reacted, its armored legs grinding to a skidding halt as the accumulated charging speed terminated, chunks and shards of crystalline ground scattering. It was caught by some surprise, but it was by no means complaining.

  For, indeed, where was the stimulation; where was the feeling; if he had just stood there and let himself be squished?

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  No. Its feet planted firm and stood in place; it lifted its giant crystalline sword, preparing for a strike.

  Hurling such a crying shout of righteous anger, the shield adventurer charged forth before taking a single energetic planting step; hunching in motion, he abruptly lunged up in a pulsing jump that hurled him forth and high, leaping towards the colossus.

  Time slowed in this moment as the core of his energized shield brightened intensely, the barrier overdriving and hardening as it changed type, no longer absorbing as much as reflecting; the core of his sword radiated in kind, that glowing blade raised and pointed forward as if being readied to pierce straight into that colossus’s unbeating heart.

  Yet… The colossus’s reflexive processing was far superior, beaten only by that one particular annoying fly. While things moved swiftly for the shield adventurer, for it time had actually perceptually slowed. And as soon as his leap was made, the crystalline blade came swinging down at him mid-jump with such weight and force.

  Immediately, the crystalline blade smashed right into that shield’s energized barrier, which flared and sparked extremely. The kinetic force and energy exerted were so intense in both directions that, for a moment, the force pushing the shield adventurer down was equal to the force reflected back against the golem, practically holding him in place mid-air.

  However, this moment was very short.

  The shield’s heart pumped and brightened intensely, overloading…before shattering, the magical shield cracking from the overwhelming energy that spread into his arm, breaking it too; the barrier collapsed. The momentum of the shield adventurer’s super-leap was canceled, and the residual energy unabsorbed by his shield transferred to him himself. He went shooting back, falling down at quite the terrible speed; his figure rolled against the crystalline ground, surviving only because of the adventurer skills flowing through his being…

  However, reactions equal and opposite, the crystalline blade too had cracked before shattering into shards and pieces that came raining down; the reflected force was strong enough to not only make the colossus drop the handle, but also push it back slightly.

  Yet with the shield adventurer’s bones left fractured, his arm left mangled, he struggled to push himself up and grab his dropped sword… All the while, the colossus was the one left standing. And, indeed, its lens stared him down.

  Interim

  The foreigner lanced and strode, cyanic wisps of snow-dusty glimmer trailing ever-faintly, as she finally arrived to the chamber wall farthest and backest. Breaths panting though remaining hyper-focused, she came to a steady halt and immediately eyed it up…

  Hm… This wall, there were entry crevices and holes above, edges protruding… The path up seemed ostensibly unclimbable, but… She could probably pull it off she was careful enough.

  “Hold tightly.” she flatly said.

  “Huh?!” The priestess had little time to react before the foreigner abruptly began to climb, whose own hands no longer supported her as she find herself hanging on for dear life.

  The weight of the denizen on back pushed against on the foreigner’s climb, but she nevertheless endured; being cautious but swift enough, she carefully selected which gap, which distortion, which crack, to grip onto. As she climbed, her ears could hear those further back sounds of what was…most certainly a physics-bending nonsense of a fight, paying it little mind.

  Yet as the priestess held tightly around the foreigner’s shoulders, her own uneasy…drained and teary…eyes remained locked to the fight far behind. Abruptly, her grip tightened as her breaths let out a squeaking gasp; “Oh no…”

  The foreigner took a short glance, only seeing that the shield adventurer was on the ground, the stomps of that colossus approaching him…

  She simply started to climb faster.

  The priestess gasped again in an almost wail; “No, no, no… Oh no…” Her teeth chattered, as tears began to drip… “It has him…” Her grip was trembling, the foreigner could feel.

  For, indeed…

  “Heh…” The shield adventurer could feel the tight squeeze of the colossus’s grip, holding him as if a doll.

  The towering reddened golem brought him up to its sight, its eye’s synthetic lens contracting as if focusing.

  The shield adventure coughed out blood. “What… What’s wrong, huh?” He still had the energy to taunt; to wiggle and squirm, resisting in vain without relent; as he glared into that gazing lens.

  As it stared, however, the colossus’s radiant nerve-like veins of essence imbued…brightened yet in a way strange and different, as if it was…experiencing something deeper.

  The shield adventure began to punch at its gripped hand, squirming more intensely; “COME ON! LET ME GO AND FIGHT ME!” he shouted with bleeding voice; “FIGHT ME LIKE A REAL KNIGHT YOU ELVISH HORROR!” He punched and he punched, wiggling as if trying to break free defiantly; “DON’T YOU WANT REVENGE?! HUH? YOU STUPID GOLEM! DIDN’T WE KILL ALL OF YOUR CRYSTALISH GIRLS, HUH?!” He was trying to provoke.

  Yet the colossus golem simply stared, blankly… As if baffled, confused even, by this adventurer. Its squeeze loosened…as if it were observing whether he would ever give up…

  But the adventurer never did. He kept taunting; he kept shouting and screaming; he kept punching and even biting.

  In a way so strange, so bizarre, the colossus was perhaps reminded in this moment… Reminded of that which it was not supposed to remember… In some ways, this adventurer reminded it of…what it itself had once been; reminded of all that which was stolen from it all those ages ago.

  Reminded, it was indeed, of how tormenting of a fate it was so condemned…

  Memories mangled and twisted; heroes and gods and betrayals… All vague yet still there…

  The crystalline composites reddened deeper, fascination…becoming such bitter envy and utter contempt. Reminded, indeed, it was…for why it despised; its hatred for him, for them, and for everything above…ruled by those rotting gods.

  “QUIT STARING AT ME AND JUST FINISH IT! OR DUEL ME! ONE TO ONE! RIGHT NOW! YOU DICKLESS FAKE!”

  The colossus’s lens expanded as its attention withdrew… Turning its sight, it began to look around, screening and scanning… Before…

  Ah. Its lens contracted, spotting. There she was; that little fly. So that was the strange sensation it was feeling from over there, it must have thought. That fly had run all the way to the backest end of this chamber; it was amazed by how far she had managed to climb…

  Its veiny nerves brightened…as if stimulated; as if…eager.

  The colossus relooked at the still squirming and shouting adventurer, its grip…loosening before opening. It gently picked up the squirming adventurer with two fingers, stretching its armored palm wide. Suddenly, a pulsating crystalline rod came protruding out. Using a small spike to strike off his bottom plate, it firmly sat the adventurer atop the rod’s pointed tip, who so shouted and wiggled and tried to resist… Before…

  “Trinity’s salvation!” The priestess, watching all of this unfold, so gasped aloud, utterly horrified… “Father in Heaven, guard his soul… Such cruelty…” Tears dripped and dropped, yet her eyes remained locked.

  Twitching and gagging, he made all manners of abhorrent groans and chokes as the rod had lunged bottom in; its blood organ piercing tip protruded out from his mouth, his jaw broken. The impaling rod, however, then twisted downwards as if…building up, locking into the colossus’s palm…

  For, indeed, it was hardly finished; that fly was too close to escaping.

  The priestess’s watching eyes widened… Dread and horror filled her as she immediately realizing…

  “…v…v-v-v-VIGILANCE! IT’S GOING TO SHOOT!”

  The foreigner, so very close to her targeted opening crevice, immediately let go and dashed off, flipping herself and firmly gripping the priestess on her back as she came sliding back down, boots skidding against the wall.

  Instantaneously, a firing pop pierced the air as that same crystalline rod, freshly impaled with that shield adventure, lanced their way at quite the launching speed. The rod smashed right above that opening crevice with such force alone yet it still detonated, nevertheless, into shattering shards and pieces.

  The kinetic impact and explosive wave unleashed a bloody cloud of debris as the opening collapsed, the foreigner losing her already tenuous bearing as the two came so tumbling down. Their figures rolled and landed harshly, the cloud of debris raining down onto them with crystalline shards, rock, and the pieces of the shield adventurer.

  Having landed further than the priestess, the foreigner was sparred the brunt. Nevertheless, she was left staggered and disoriented, aching and bruised; however, she rebounded swiftly and hopped right back up onto her boots, for she could still stand and move, and such was all that mattered.

  Raspy coughs and painful groans, she could hear. The priestess was bruised and scraped with cuts clearly evident; vision blurry, she was aching everywhere, mind struggling to process anything… However, she was still alive; she had survived.

  The foreigner quickly went to her and helped her sit herself up…

  “Thanks…” the priestess simply thanked, voice cloudy and confused… Her breaths sizzled with so much pain… But then clarity sharply returned as her eyes widened, her body numbing and freezing…

  Step after tremoring step, becoming louder and louder… She saw…

  It.

  The colossus was close, towering ahead of them in effect; it was only becoming closer.

  The foreigner immediately swung her attention, standing herself directly in front of the priestess, defensively…

  The priestess, however, trembled with such cramping breaths, her jaws jittery as cruel tears streamed down her cheeks… “I… I…” She would have soiled herself had she not already.

  Yet the colossus, as if in reaction to the stench of her terror, abruptly sped up.

  The priestess so yeeped in a whelp as she frantically slid herself backwards, crawling on her bottom until her back slammed into the chamber wall behind. “I… I… I-I-don’t-don’t want to die-I don’t want to die!” she wept, hyperventilating; “Not yet! Trinity! Father! Please! I don’t want to die!!”

  Her pleading clamors and choking weeps tremored the foreigner’s ears as she stood there, cyanic wisps flaking off as if her bruised skin…was repairing. Such terrible…retched noises, those horrible sounds. Truly, she hated those denizen squeals… Those cries of realization of impending death; that they were prey being toyed with by an overwhelming predator…

  As if flashing on repeat like song, such sounds played over and over in her mind from past’s rhymes buried in time…long forgotten yet still in essence.

  The ignited sigil engraved within her mask-obscured eyes brightened, hollowing her shell… If she could at least get one—just one—out of here alive, then maybe—just maybe—…this would have all been worth it.

  Yet the pinkish nervy veins of essence, stretching all over and throughout, grew, expanded, and brightened as wispy dust steamed; all connected to that unbeating pulsing heart… The whole chamber was changing; the crystalline walls were smoothing out completely, becoming so slippery and glossy.

  Ah… Now those walls were utterly unclimbable, even for her… There was nothing to grip. She could grab the priestess and lance-sprint to that large corridor; however, while she could outrun the colossus, she could not evade a total barrage.

  Indeed. There was no way out of this.

  The colossus stampeded forth, the roots of its threading essence expanding and growing furthermore throughout the morphing chamber, crystalline composites becoming more red-tinted—filled with malevolence and vindictiveness. The foreigner simply unholstered her revolver…and stared the colossus down, as it glared too…into one particular fly, lens locked.

  All she could do was stand firm against the descending inevitable; to delay and delay for as long as she could…until the end.

  After all, such was all you had ever done

  Only to fail in even that in the end…

  The rhythm so continues, on and on towards infinity…

  Neverending, everlasting.

  Yet even you have long known deep within…

  The utter absurdity.