Stone Felling

The golem’s steps rocked the ground as it approached, its pickaxe still held high. The depressions that served as its eyes glowed as they locked on to its assailant. John took a step back, keeping himself between the nearing mass of stone and Vivian, summoning his greatsword into his free hand.

“Think I should wait for it to close the distance or go on the offensive?” he asked his companion, eyes flashing to her mana bar for a second. Her distortion effect had only brought her mana down a few points, the blue bar remaining mostly full.

“Letting it get closer to where I’ve set the distortion might not be a good idea,” she responded, a hint of apprehension in her voice. “We probably shouldn't test fate and give the other golems a chance to really see what we’re doing here.”

“Keep it away from the edge, got it,” John muttered and moved to confront the golem. As John got close it began to swing its pick down at him. Like its walking pace, the attack wasn’t fast and John easily evaded the strike. The heavy instrument crashed into the rocky ground, sending up a rain of sharp rocks. The few that hit John harmlessly impacted his jacket and he wheeled around to the golem’s side to deliver a horizontal strike to its extended arm.

15 DMG

The dull sound of magically enhanced wood smashing into animated stone echoed through the dig site and John pulled back from the golem. His strike had chipped into its tough exterior, carving out a small chunk with a number of cracks radiating out from it. At this distance, John could see the damage his fireball had caused. Its side was scorched, several long and deep cracks creeping up and down the blackened stone.

Casting Fiery Pursuit as he backpedaled, John flung the orb of flame into the golem as it freed its weapon from the ground.

28 DMG

The second blast of fire squarely hit the stone creation’s broad chest and caused it to rock back ever so slightly, smoke obscuring its head. With its vision blocked, John circled around behind it and delivered a downward strike to its back.

10 DMG

27(3) EXP Gained

John’s physical strength was far from enough to upset the golem’s footing and it only wobbled slightly before it crumbled away, leaving behind a chunk of iron and a small stone sphere the size of a softball covered in magical symbols.

“Well, that wasn’t too hard,” John remarked, willing his sword away and picking up the two drops. The lump of iron he stowed while he lifted the Glyph Stone up to inspect it for a moment. The symbols were arranged as a series of lines that ran up and down the sphere, like the longitude lines of a globe.

“You recognize any of these?” John asked Vivian as he drew up to her, offering the loot. She relaxed her stance and took the sphere, her optical distortion fading away. The golems remained at work, either unbothered by their fellow miner’s destruction or simply unaware of it. Still, John kept an eye on the assembled workers as Vivian turned the sphere over, fingers tracing the glyphs.

“Some are close to commonly used glyphs,” she said after a minute of inspection, “and I can assume they are used for the same function, but the rest aren’t ones I’m familiar with.”

“What do the ones you kind of understand do?” John asked.

“They’re mostly basic start or stop instructions,” Vivian explained. “The start ones are triggered by a certain condition, usually specified by the glyphs immediately around it, and start whatever process the rest of the glyphs spell out. A stop does the same in reverse. A condition is met and it halts the process. Without that, the effect would keep going as long as the activation trigger was present and it had mana to provide power.”

She handed the sphere back to John and shook her head, a disappointed look on her face. “But since I can’t figure out what these lines do or the triggers for the starts and stops, I’m not much help here.”

Catching her depressed tone, John, after a moment of hesitation, brought her into a one armed hug. She stiffened at the sudden affection, then relaxed into his embrace.

“Let’s look at the positive here,” John said quietly. “We’ve got a whole new set of glyphs you can work with. Who knows what these things will be able to do.”

Vivian smiled at John’s attempt at bolstering her mood. “Yeah, that’s true. Maybe you can shed some light on it?”

John returned her smile, brought the sphere up in front of them and cast Observe.

Both John and Vivian looked at the stone as they finished reading the display.

“So, should we test it or wait til we’re done?” John asked, slightly rolling the stone around in his palm.

“As interested as I am,” Vivian answered, “we are on a time limit. We can toy around with it later, and if we get more, we won’t have to worry about doing something wrong and breaking it.”

“Fair points,” John said, willing the sphere away. “I wonder if all of them have the symbols in the same pattern.”

“I would assume so,” Vivian muttered. “I think they’re set up to be the command cores for the golems.”

With great ****, John pulled away from Vivian and regarded the nearby golems before looking at his gloved hand.

“I did twenty-eight damage with each fireball and ten and fifteen with the sword,” he muttered. “So eighty-one damage. I can only fire three more Pursuits with the mana I have. I think we should try to go with physical attacks. It should only take about eight to beat a level four and unless there’s a massive jump in HP or armor for levels five and six, not much more for the higher levels.”

“The golem was rather slow,” Vivian remarked, a hint of uncertainty in her voice. “Do you think you can keep evading them?”

John shot her a confident smile as he called his greatsword to hand. “Strafing runs are something I’m good at. And I just had an idea that you might like.”

Aeolia easily dipped under a slow-moving stone fist before flying up towards its expressionless face. Her glaive, coated in a tempest of green wind, carved a line from navel to neck as she did, sending out a fine spray of stone dust like blood in her wake. She flew high, surveying the five golems that were locked onto her.

“Okay, attacking one will draw in its buddies,” she noted as the throng of stone hulks swayed as they impotently watched her hover above them. “And staying small limits my damage output. I could go all out with long-range attacks, but that could run me dry too fast. Guess I need to see what I can do with up-close attacks and keep my mana usage low.”

She flew slightly higher, edging away from the group as she did, then altered trajectory, diving down with her wings pulled close. Her minor retreat had spurred the golems to move after her, their lumbering forms nearly lining up.

A vicious smirk grew on Aeolia’s lips as she extended her wings and turned her fall into a fast glide parallel to the ground, growing to full size as she neared her targets.

“Thanks for making this an easier job,” she said, igniting her glaive, the wind extending nearly a meter out. “Now I don’t have to waste mana on attacks for all of you.”

With the green gale screaming, Aeolia raced past the golems, the wind enhanced blade carving into the procession like a saw. The lead golem’s arm was cut cleanly off, but it took the brunt of her attack and the other golems only received cuts of varying severity, the worst one damaging enough that Aeolia thought a stiff breeze could finish the job and the least only a little more than her first attack scarring the arm of the last golem.

She banked sharply, made a hairpin turn and zoomed towards the first golem, a powerful flap of her wings propelling her. She ended the flow of mana into her weapon, the roar of the summoned gale dying right as she swung the notus steel blade at the dome head of her target.

While notus steel wasn't some super magical alloy with monstrous durability and cutting power, it was still several steps above its mundane base, and with Aeolia's speed and strength, the blade tore a massive chunk out of the head with a loud crack.

The golem wavered as half of its face was shattered and scattered but it refused to fall. Aeolia clicked her tongue in frustration then whirled her blade high as the golem remained functional.

“Guess I’m going to need to step things up a bit,” she groused, gripping her glaive tighter as she retreated back a bit. “At least I know raw **** works.”

She flew back towards the group and brought her weapon down on the wounded golem’s crumbling head. Hitting the compromised extremity did the trick and the whole head was smashed to pieces. With that, the golem finally fell, vanishing away before it could hit the ground.

Aeolia didn’t pay it any attention after it began to fall, shifting her focus to attack the next one in line, lashing out with a series of quick thrusts at the golem’s moss-covered head before delivering a high sweeping strike to the now cracking dome.

It broke like its predecessor’s but Aeolia had to fly away from a slow-moving fist, flipping into the air before bringing her glaive down on the arm as it passed through the space she vacated. The extended limb cracked on impact but didn’t break from her underpowered hit.

She scowled. “For a bunch of stone men ten levels weaker than me, they sure need me to put in a bit of effort to break them. Hope John and Vi are doing alright.”

She shook her head to clear away that negative thought. She knew that the pair was more than capable of dealing with the golems, smart enough to know when to fall back and quick enough to escape if things went south.

“And,” she said aloud, “if they need someone to swoop in, I'm going to need to be free to come in. Time to smash some stones.”

She dived down at the remaining golems, easily weaving in and out of the loose collection of attacking golems. Her attacks weren’t at full power, but with her speed and reach, she carved chunks out of them until the final one took a blow right through the chest, causing it to vanish.

Aeolia landed and took a few deep breaths.

“Well, that’s five for me,” she said before frowning. “Took a bit longer than I would have liked, but I’m sure I’m in the lead.”

She turned and flew up to a nearby stack of crates and collected the array, seeing her fight had taken close to fifteen minutes.

“Yeah, that took a bit too long,” she chided herself as, with a small pulse of mana, she willed the array to float after her. She tapped in her five count victory then gave the array one last look over, admiring Vivian’s work with an appreciative smile.

With her kill count tallied and short reprieve done, Aeolia took to the air. The telltale sound of mining echoed some distance away, signalling her next killing field.

-15 HP

John grunted as a glancing blow clipped his arm before he could get away from the box of golems he had worked himself into. The first part of his battle plan had gone well. The nearby golems had been spaced out enough as they worked for him to basically race around them, striking them with the greatsword before moving to another. His initial blows weren’t anything major, mostly doing between seven to ten damage with each hit.

It was slow work and it got harder as the golems converged on him, reducing the space he had to work with. Which is where Vivian came in. She would displace John’s image, making him appear several meters from his actual location. The strategy worked well at first and the hit and run tactic let John slowly build damage on the golem, with one falling after only a few minutes.

However, in his haste, he had made one mistake: he neglected to keep in mind all the quirks of Vivian’s ability. Namely, that if the target of it was moving, it dramatically increased her expenditure of mana.

He had been moving when her mana had become too low to maintain the effect and the golems were quick to lock onto his actual location. And now he’d taken damage due to his negligence.

“John!” Vivian shouted, her voice reflecting her minor exhaustion through her panic.

“I’m fine,” he called back, quickly pulling away from both her and the remaining golems. “Just a little love tap. Nothing too bad.”

“Sorry,” she shot back, a heavy amount of guilt replacing the panic.

“No, it’s my bad,” John countered. “I should have remembered that a moving subject is harder for you to do your voodoo.”

“And I should have let you know I was running low,” she replied.

“We’ll call it an even failure on both our parts,” John offered as a compromise as he stopped his retreat. “And you might want to step back. It might be a little risky but I’m going to try using Fiery Pursuit with fire mana. See what it does.”

“If you’re sure,” Vivian replied; though with the golems between them, John couldn’t see if she had stepped back. Then John converted 15 mana into the 10 fire mana he needed to trigger the glove’s enhanced Evocation. The elemental mana sent warmth through his body before he willed it back into the glove, along with the remaining nine mana needed to cast the attack as he held his hand out, finger up, palm facing the horde.

The fireball that manifested was easily more than twice the size of the normal one, and John let out a bark of laughter as he let it fly towards the approaching golems. It moved slower than its non-elemental variant but the golems were obviously not programmed to recognize the flame as something to avoid, and when it reached the head golem, it exploded.

42 DMG
39 DMG
37 DMG
32 DMG
94(5) EXP Gained

The blast blinded and deafened John for a moment, though he still caught the damage and experience notifications. When his vision returned to normal, he saw the sole remaining golem splayed on the ground. Its earth toned front was charred black and several pieces had been knocked loose, ruining the glyphs that decorated its chest.

John approached as the golem tried to right itself, its movements even more sluggish than before. Before he could deliver the coup de grace, Vivian drew close.

“You know,” she said in a small voice, “I don’t think I’m much of a fan of splitting up. It seems every time we do, something bad happens.”

“Yeah,” John admitted. “We really should get a little genre savvy. ‘Don’t split the party’ really sounds like good advice after our little screw up there. Anyway, let me take care of this guy then we can move on.”

John hefted his greatsword over his head and brought it down on a cracked portion of the golem’s chest.

16 DMG

27(3) EXP Gained

The golem’s body cracked before fading away, leaving a pile of iron and copper ore and three more Glyph Spheres. John willed the bounty into his Inventory and looked at Vivian.

“So, do we keep this game up, or just find Aeolia and throw in the towel?”

Thanks again for reading this little story. If you liked the chapter, please hit that thumbs up, and if you want to support my writing, check out my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ScrapCrow. Get access to my chapters before they’re published here and join my private Discord.