An irritatingly grindy brawl with a seemingly empty reward

Instantly, all of us scatter in different direction-not out of any planned strategy, but the simple instinct of self survival. People nearby can be obstacles to you dodging-and none of us wanted be on the receiving end of his sledge. Even those of us who could survive such an experience would not put bets on it being a pleasant experience. This actually turned out to be even better for defense for another simple reason: it limited how many people he could engage with at once. He seems to largely favor sweeping blows-meaning if we were together, he'd probably be able to nail a few at once.

These kinds of things went through my mind as I tried to look for any kind pattern I could ****-some window of vulnerability. Unfortunately, the cheap tricks we'd had before wouldn't avail us this time-it was a solid construction, so we couldn't basically take it apart to expose its core-and it actually had a core, so that 'erase the symbol' thing that cleared previous golems didn't exist either. There was nothing I could see but a pure, attritional grind of a fight. A plan naturally took form as we all tried to find some way to get our lick in, individually, and its attention seemed to rapidly shift to whoever last attacked it-or whoever was closest if nobody tried to attack it for a few seconds. Not the most complicated through process.

Simple tactics for a simple foe-whoever was within range that it had its back to would attack it while it was distracted trying to hit someone else-only to skedaddle when it turned its attention back to them. This process would then repeat with its new facing-with a natural rotation building up as people getting out of its way on defense were out of position. Occasionally, we managed to get a hit in strong enough that that it actually damaged how it functioned a little-slowing it down and making the process easier. Occasionally, someone gets a grazing blow from that hammer sending them flying removing them and me from the rotation as I scramble to patch them up.

Finally, he's so damaged her can barely even stagger over in response to his target-and frankly, all of us are exhausted from just the sheer exertion from fighting the battle for this long. So I take a risk to finish this off-dumping all of my mana, and a good amount of my health, into charging up a Smite-creating a glowing sphere thrumming with enough Dark power that it seemed to actively eat light near me-an effect that extended to the whole room for a moment as I unleashed it, leaving us all uncertain before vision was restored. The rusted metal thing have a couple corroded twitches and dissipated away into dust. That was actually enough to see Smite finally rise a level, a fact I appreciated as I slumped down. There was a slight mechanical noise as two objects seemed to appear from below the floor-The first was some kind of...odd little extension I could only describe as a small plinth-which seemed to have a slot in it for something, and the most elaborate chest thus far-which made it all the more disappointing when I looked into it and found it to be completely empty.

Pretty sure that the slot is for the thing we found elsewhere, I wave at Arete and wait for him to make use of it while asking "Hey-it's not normal for a chest to be wholly empty, is it?" He just muttered as he gingerly slid the device into the slot, like he was worried about it breaking. "For a room like this, it is." I only responded with a slightly confused noise, to which he cryptically continued.