Smashing End

“While calling it quits sounds appealing,” Vivian replied, her tone resolute, “I’d rather lose because we took out less golems than just quit because of a little miscalculation. At least there’s some accomplishment in trying and falling short.”

John smiled at her resolve, recalling how she’d wavered before Aeolia gave her a pep talk yesterday.

‘Aeolia might want to consider being some kind of motivational speaker,’ he idly thought before addressing Vivian. “So, we keep knocking down golems. I think we’ll be fine if I face them one-on-one with you keeping things unseen.”

His eyes flicked up to her nearly depleted mana bar. “How fast can you recover your mana?”

“Not too quickly,” the redhead answered, her voice distant as she reflected on her status. “If we take a five minute break, I should gain enough to be useful.”

John nodded, then jerked his head towards a small outcrop. “Let’s hide out over there. No point in leaving ourselves open while we recover.”

Vivian nodded and the pair retreated to the rocky outcropping. Vivian settled down, back against the wall, and drifted into a meditative state. John willed his sword away and leaned on the wall near the entrance, closing his eyes as he allowed the local mana to flow into him.

It was a dry feeling, like he had been coated in dust, and he almost immediately wanted to take a long sip of water. He pushed that thought down and continued to recharge himself. Once he reached Bask’s limit, he opened his eyes and was greeted with a popup.

Skill Level Up: Thaumaturgy Lv. 3.

John quickly pulled up the skill info.

‘Every bit of mana helps,’ John thought as he saw the extra five points of mana he now had. ‘And that’ll boost magic regen ever so slightly. I really need to figure out which skills go to leveling this. Last level up was from Instant Barrer and this one was from Bask. And I got it alongside of Amplify so that likely contributes.’

He quieted his thoughts and turned his attention to Vivian. Her deep but steady breaths caused her chest to rise and fall and John watched her boobs move for a moment before he focused on her mana bar.

It climbed slowly and John frowned as he mulled over their predicament.

‘We’ve got about ninety minutes left. Heading in the direction Aeolia went off in sounds like it’d be a good idea. Fight our way to her so when the face off ends, we’re already close by. Vivian won’t have too much mana, so we have to play things smart. Pick golems off one by one and keep her abilities as an emergency backup.’

Vivian let out a hum as she broke her reverie, stretching out her arms over her head.

“Well, that’s about all I can take,” she announced, her tone slightly reserved. “Only recovered up to about a quarter.”

“I’d say you're a bit closer to a third,” John remarked, offering her a hand. She took it and John helped her to her feet. “Been thinking about our next steps. I think we should head towards Aeolia and conserve our mana for emergency usage. Taking out the golems one at a time should be no problem, even if it takes a while.”

Vivian nodded, eyes drifting up to John’s status bars. “That’s probably the smart option. Your fire blasts use around twenty percent of your mana, yes? That’s only three more shots with your current reserve. We’ll have to be careful and use the terrain to keep groups of golems from seeing us.”

“Yeah, that’s going to be the hard part,” John admitted, frowning as he replayed the earlier fights. “We weren’t exactly quiet with the first golem, but none of the nearby golems reacted to the sound. You reckon they’re deaf and only react to things they see?”

Vivian toyed with a strand of her hair as she mulled over John’s hypothesis. “That makes sense. All I did with the first golem was blur the space between us and the rest of them. And none of them reacted until they were actually attacked. I wish I had more info on the script used to program them. Then I could see just what stimuli they react to.”

“Well,” John said with a sigh, summoning his sword, “guess we’ll need to test things the old fashioned way. By hitting things until we get some results.”

---

Aeolia’s slightly glowing glaive cut through her tenth golem and it collapsed to the ground in two pieces before fading away. She took a deep breath, and rested the spine of her blade on her shoulder as she added one to her tally.

“Might not be too hard to beat one,” she groused, “but boy do they like to swarm once one gets hit. Kind of wish we brought some water.”

While lamenting her thirst, her thoughts drifted to the relative ease with which she was able to defeat the golems.

“I figured golems would have needed a little more effort to actually take down. I wouldn’t have been able to take Clay down this easily. Would have made him a pretty lousy guard.”

She shook off a twinge of sadness at the thought of the lost golem and resumed her musings.

“These guys are way weaker than they would be if someone actually made them,” she concluded. “I can’t see a purpose for something as weak as John is currently, not something meant for hard work or fighting. Hell, that tree climbing bitch could probably beat one of these guys eventually. Guess John’s ability is making them all wimpy.”

She let out a sigh and flapped her wings, taking to the air.

“Doesn’t really matter why these guys are pushovers,” she said, angling her flight towards another group of golems toiling away at the quarry wall. “Just means I’ve got an easy smashing job. Time to break some more rocks.”

---

John let out a huff and jumped out of the way of a golem’s heavy shovel as the stone creature swung it like a baseball bat. It had been slow going over the last hour; needing to engage the golems one-on-one meant having to catch one a fair ways away from any others and needing to keep the fight out of sight.

The golem John was currently trading blows with was only the third he had managed to isolate, and keeping a pile of crates between the fight and the nearby golems was proving harder than the previous methods of using the geography to break line of sight.

“John,” Vivian spoke up from where she was keeping an eye on the nearby workers. “The golems are heading this way!”

“Fuck!” John cursed, before quickly pulling away from his opponent. “Going to use Fiery Pursuit and end this now. Nearly topped off anyway.”

Skill Level Up: Evocation Lv. 3

John ignored the notification as the fireball manifested above his palm and shot towards the slightly cracked golem, aimed squarely at where two intersected.

28 DMG

27(3) EXP Gained

The golem faded away, leaving two clumps of ore though John ignored the loot as his eyes snapped towards the three approaching golems, body tense as he readied himself in case they had aggroed on him.

He let out a sigh and relaxed as they meandered past, not even paying him a glance. He kept an eye on them as he collected the ore, not even checking what type they were.

“How much time do we have left?” John asked Vivian as she slid next to him. The redhead checked her array.

“Ten minutes,” she announced. “You’re not thinking of attacking them?”

“I think two fire enhanced Pursuits could take them out,” he reasoned. “Might as well end this competition with a bang.”

Vivian looked to the golems then back to John, the brief concern in her eyes dying as she met John’s confident gaze. She nodded, and John tore his eyes from hers and readied his plan. He made the mana conversion as he hurried after the golems, funneling the correct mix of mana to produce the Evocation.

The fireball sparked to life and John willed it into the group, the recent level up for Evocation letting him do so with three more meters of distance between him and his target. And once it was in place, he let it explode.

41 DMG
40 DMG
43 DMG

The blast echoed through the air and fire consumed the golems, all three pushed away from the center. Before the smoke could clear, John cast the second fireball, though he left it to hover around halfway between him and the now smoldering trio. The blackened golems twisted around for a moment, each trying to determine what had attacked them.

When one turned towards them and began its lumbering charge, inciting its brothers to follow, John flung the orb of fire right at them, letting the golems run right into its explosion.

42 DMG
41 DMG
40 DMG

81(9) EXP Gained
399(21) EXP Gained

All hostile entities defeated. Barrier will repopulate in five minutes.

John blinked at the double experience, then Aeolia’s voice cut through the faint echo of the explosion.

“Finishing things with a bang, huh?” she asked as she floated down from above in her natural size, landing on John's shoulder.

"Is there any better way?" John jested back, willing his greatsword away. "I'm a little surprised you came to see our finale. Thought you'd have gone down to the last second killing golems."

"I would have," Aeolia remarked with a disappointed sigh. "But you lucked out and tagged the last group. I was hoping to make my lead a bit bigger."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," John said. “I won’t say we did amazingly, but I think Vivian and I racked up a good kill count.”

“Eleven with these last three,” the redhead reported, “though most of that’s your efforts. Can’t really take credit for standing around, playing lookout.”

John eyed her for a moment then pulled Vivian into a sideways hug, her surprised face quickly growing red.

“If I didn’t screw it up,” John consoled her softly, his cheek pressed into her hair, “your displacement technique would have been the MVP of this fight. I keep slipping into ‘I have a big sword, let’s go smash’ instead of using my head. We could have taken out closer to twenty with it.”

A comfortable silence lapsed over the trio for a moment before Aeolia remarked, “Don’t know about you guys taking out that high of a number. There were only twenty-five golems.”

Quick math ran though John’s head and he groaned playfully.

“So you took out fourteen,” he remarked with a flat voice.

“Yep,” Aeolia answered, flying off John’s shoulder so she could grow to full height as John and Vivian separated, though they remained only inches apart. “Could have taken out all of them if I had more mana though. Still took me two good hits to cut one down without using wind to enhance the strike.”

“Which puts your weakest attack on par with my strongest,” John muttered, looking at his gloved hand before shaking his head. “At least this should put me near the next level. Let’s collect the loot and get out.”

The loot sat in a pile at the still smoking epicenter of John’s last explosion and he willed the assortment of ores and Glyph Stones into his Inventory, counting as he did.

“Well, that brings our total loot to twelve iron ore, nine copper ore and a whopping thirteen Glyph Stones,” John rattled off. “Well, we’ll have plenty of those to work with. Still need to go over what its Attributes and Evocation do, but we should do that outside. Running low on mana and we’ll have to carry some of this stuff out.”

A light rumble sounded from his stomach.

“And on nourishment,” he added, a tinge of pink coloring his face.

“Which is perfect, for me,” Aeolia remarked with a wide smile. “Time for you to pay up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” John halfheartedly said, waving his hand before bringing it up, the mana to exit the barrier surging towards his fingertips.

“And where would the lady like to dine?”

---

“Well, well,” Mason’s booming, cheery voice filled the nearly empty diner as John held the door open for Vivian and Aeolia to enter. “I thought you were going to limit coming here to once a week. Pity Cammie’s out running some errands.”

The bear of a man slipped out of the kitchen to properly greet them, pulling all three into a bone breaking hug. When he let them go, Aeolia hooked her thumb over her shoulder at John and Vivian.

“We had a little bet going and I won,” she smugly said. “So they’re treating me to lunch.”

Mason let out a deep laugh. “I'm honored you’d choose our humble establishment to claim your prize. I’ll be sure to produce only the highest quality meal for your victory feast.”

Aeolia let out her own short laugh. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Well, let’s get the victorious to her table and sort out what kind of feast it will be,” Mason announced with a grin at John and Vivian and gestured to a booth on the opposite end of the room, far from the sole other customer, a thin older looking woman who picked at her plate of eggs.

“Playing it up a little, aren’t you?” Vivian halfheartedly grumbled as she slid into the booth.

“I’ll try to be a bit more, ya know, humble,” Aeolia shot back as she took her seat next to the redhead. “After I enjoy some of Mason’s cooking. Think I’ll go for some steak.”

John lamented his wallet for a second as he sat opposite the girls before reminding himself that he had more money than ever before and even an expensive lunch wasn’t going to put that much of a dent in their funds.

’Still, not going to order anything super fancy,’ he thought as he regarded the menu.

It didn’t take them long to decide their order, and while they waited, John pulled out one of the Glyph Spheres, placing the drop on the table.

“Time to give this thing a proper look,” he said, hitting it with an Observe.

He read out the text for Aeolia’s benefit, getting a hum of thought from the winged woman.

“So this is like its command center?” she asked, eyeing the symbol covered orb.

“Most likely,” Vivian replied. “Can’t be sure, since I can’t read it, but it follows that it should at least play a part in how it runs.”

“From the looks of things, the Attributes won’t really shed any light on whether it was running the golems,” John added. “But we still need to check them. First up, ‘Fluid Surface’.”

Fluid Surface: This object’s surface can become as malleable as clay with the application of mana, allowing changes to the runes and symbols etched into it.

Vivian picked up the sphere after John read out the effect. She traced a finger over one of the symbols, then pressed in, a look of mild concentration on her face. The surface distorted and became pliable.

“Interesting,” she said, moving her finger to examine the now blank space. “I don’t think I need to physically do anything beyond providing mana. Look.”

In the cleared area, the smoothed stone rippled as it shifted from solid to semi-liquid and began to flow as if a thin instrument was manipulating the surface. Under Vivian’s careful touch, the symbol was recreated perfectly and she smiled at her work.

“Not hard to do at all,” she reported, excitement creeping into her voice. “Doesn’t even need a lot of mana. I could rewrite all the spheres we got today and likely only use about, say a tenth.”

John and Aeolia shared warm smiles at the redhead’s giddiness.

“Well, I can’t think of anything to do with these things, so you can go all out with them,” John said, earning a wide smile from the redhead. “But let’s see what else it can do. Might give you ideas. The other Attribute is ‘Mana Matrix’.”

Mana Matrix: This item can be infused with mana to power the spell arrays inscribed on it. Current Charge: 0/50.

“Doesn’t sound too different from what Thomas said about what kept Clay running,” Aeolia said with only a hint of heartache. “He said his core could hold enough mana to keep him running for days fully active.”

“Bet it took more than fifty points of mana to do that,” John said quietly, before his mind drifted back to the neural core they had gotten yesterday. “You know, we never really looked into that Neural Core from the robot boss. It didn’t have anything like Mana Matrix to power it.”

“Probably needs an external power source,” Vivian muttered. “I think I can write up an array on this that could power it. We’d need to look more closely at it to see if it could work, but if it does, then that’s one step towards making a functional golem or robot.”

“Maybe we should see if the Dungeon option can be set anywhere,” John suggested. “Set it to machine and see if we can get parts.”

Aeolia shrugged. “Sounds okay to me. Getting a killer robot could be useful. Let’s get on to the last bit.”

“Right,” John said. “Though I don’t know how often I’ll get to use it since I don’t know anything about arrays and glyphs.”

“Air glyph writing,” Vivian breathlessly said, looking at the sphere in awe. “That’s… Only the really powerful and precise can shape their mana into stable arrays. It's kind of unfair that you get a cheat code that lets you just do it.”

“Just because I can cheat things a bit doesn’t mean I know glyph ‘A’ from sigil ‘B’,” John countered, running a hand through his hair. “Really wish I had a mod for Evocation that could let others use them. Maybe something where I could charge an item for someone.”

“You got the combo one from trying two at once,” Aeolia chimed in before taking a sip of her drink. “Couldn’t hurt to try to delay an effect to see if that nets you an upgrade.”

John nodded, finding her logic sound. “I’ll try it on something we don’t need. In case it blows up.”

“The only things blowing up in here will be your tastebuds,” Mason’s jovial voice bellowed as he approached their table, floating plates in tow. He deftly directed them to their intended eater, then gave a little bow.

“Bon appétit!"

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