Exploration (Welcome to the Multiverse Book 10), page 41
“Stars above,” Oliver practically groaned. “This thing’s a mage-killer.”
Tad and I exchanged a look. We agreed with Oliver’s assessment, although we both knew we hadn’t yet reached the limit of its capabilities. He called out to Spot, aloud for everyone’s benefit. “Throw a bunch of level 200 monsters at it. Some physically strong, some casters. Try to imitate some other types of magic, like Void or transmutation. We need to figure out what its limits are.”
Spot’s voice came back. “As you wish. Just don’t complain to me if I break your new toy.”
The hall’s air shifted in response to Tad’s command, and the dungeon changed the way it breathed. The pillars around us didn’t move, but the mana flow did, tightening into channels that made the space feel like an arena. I sensed the floor ‘choose’ a new rhythm, one built for mixed threats rather than single-purpose constructs. Tad rested his hand against the golem’s forearm, and I could feel the quiet alignment between dungeon and master deepen.
The first wave came from the far end of the hall, with the sound of iron on stone. Ogres emerged in a staggered line, each one taller than a man and built like a siege ram, skin mottled and thick, eyes bright with dungeon-born cunning. They certainly had more bulky proportions, but the golem was still taller than any of them.
They carried heavy weapons that looked too large to be practical, mauls and cleavers sized for crushing walls and felling trees, and they swung them with confident intent. The air around them held that faint oppressive weight of beings that could actually hurt someone. Identify told me that they were all around level 200, which would be insignificant to me but a good test for the golem. Or so I hoped. If our creation was going to be of any use against the Order, it would have to be able to handle a threat like this.
The golem moved before the ogres could close the distance. Its stride lengthened, a picture of mechanical efficiency, and it met the first ogre’s charge with a single punch. The impact didn’t crater the floor, but the stone rang like a gong and a pressure wave rolled outward, making my teeth buzz. The ogre’s chest collapsed inward as if it had been hit by a cannonball, and it flew backward through the air before dissolving into dust. I admired the handiwork. I was pretty sure I could have hit the monster harder, but the golem wasn’t that far behind me.
Two ogres flanked to either side, trying to split the golem’s attention, and one raised its maul to smash down on the golem’s shoulder seam. I watched the rune clusters along the golem’s torso flicker in sequence, pushing torque into the hips the way I’d designed them to. The golem caught the maul mid-swing and stopped it dead, iron fingers tightening until the haft cracked and splintered. It yanked the ogre forward and drove its knee into the creature’s stomach with such force that the ogre folded around the strike and dropped without even finishing a scream.
Heavy hammer blows didn’t seem to matter to the golem either, I noted.
The remaining ogres hesitated for a fraction of a second, and that was all the golem needed. It surged forward in a burst, momentum gathering as if the air was being dragged along in its wake. It moved through the group like a judgmental battering ram, breaking bodies and weapons in a clean sequence that looked like it had been rehearsed repeatedly before this—the main attraction. I could see the sprites working in concert, their synergy composed of long sequences of small decisions, stitched into perfect execution.
There was so much for me to learn from this, but before I could think on any of it, the dungeon shook as the next phase of testing began.
Chapter Forty-Eight: What a Golem Wants
The hall went quiet for a beat, then the floor behind the ogres rippled like disturbed water. Giant crabs pulled their way out of the stone as if the dungeon had decided the ground was optional. They were demonic in the worst way, shells jagged and spined, eyes glowing with baleful intelligence, and their claws were thick enough to snap trees. The air around them smelled of brine and rot, and when they clicked their mandibles, the sound carried a malicious rhythm.
Something about them angered me, almost a burning sensation, and I was able to track it back to my Hell System class. Something about these beings was an affront to me as a Duke of Hell. Intellectually, they were just another monster, but the sensation was there all the same. Fortunately, I had the willpower to rein in the urge to obliterate them. This was supposed to be an experiment, not a massacre. At least not by my hands.
It instantly became clear that they were far from simple brutes. They attacked like a pack of predators, but with even greater intelligence than I expected. Each was wider than the golem, and despite their flattened shape, they stood taller than me. Their massive pincers seemed capable of cutting steel if needed. Iron would provide as much resistance as butter, but there was more to our golem than the metal it was made of. This would be an excellent test of the golem’s durability.
Two crabs charged from the front, claws snapping toward the golem’s legs, while a third climbed atop the line of pillars and dropped from above. The golem reacted instantly, jumping backward with shocking speed for something that heavy, and I felt the leg runes flare as they compressed and released force. The crabs that had lunged low slammed into empty space, claws closing on nothing but air. The one from above hit the golem’s shoulder, though, and I saw its claw sink into the iron far deeper than the ogres had managed.
That got my attention. They could damage it. This was the first serious damage that I’d seen it take, and I feared for a moment my earlier assessment was off. But while such an attack might have seriously damaged a flesh-and-blood creature, the animating force behind the golem wasn’t based upon a system of muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones. It was simply solid iron, and laden with enchantments.
The golem didn’t panic or stagger. Frankly, that was one of the most intimidating things about it. When it was damaged, there was no flinching. There wasn’t so much as a squeak of sound. The injury might as well not have existed. The golem just kept going about its business the same way any machine would.
I saw the internal runes flash as systems compensated. It seized the crab by the claw and spun, using raw leverage to swing the creature like a flail into the other two. Shell cracked against shell, shards and ichor spraying, and the sound was like stones grinding in a landslide. The golem followed through with a stomp that didn’t damage the dungeon floor, but the vibration shook loose dust from every pillar and made Clay curse under his breath.
More important than smashing a few crabs were the ramifications of what the golem had just accomplished. It had used a weapon of opportunity. I wasn’t sure if a crab whip was as effective as a dwarf in a chair, but it still had a certain panache. It also showed that the sprites running the golem could act with more than simplistic intelligence. Whenever we’d fought a golem in one of my D&D games, they were typically beaten because they were slow and limited in their options. If our golems had the degree of situational awareness this one had just displayed, I wasn’t sure what their limits would be.
The crabs adapted quickly, and one of them exhaled a cloud of caustic mist that washed over the golem’s torso. The mist hissed against the iron and left shallow pitting, and for the first time I saw real surface damage accumulate faster than it could smooth out. I could sense Tad wanted to do something, but I put a hand on his shoulder. “We can’t intervene unless it’s going to be destroyed. The damage it takes tells us as much about its capabilities and weaknesses as the monsters it crushes. We now know that while it’s not immune to acid and will take damage, it isn’t particularly vulnerable to it either.”
Tad nodded in agreement, but he retained his pained expression.
As the golem finished off the last of the crabs, I felt a shift in the dungeon. There was an emptiness, and I could only equate it to my limited experience with the Void. The next set of monsters explained what I was sensing.
Void hunters appeared without warning, phasing into existence in broken angles anywhere a shadow might once have fallen. They were lean, humanoid silhouettes wrapped in dark armor that drank light, and their blades looked like condensed night with edges too sharp for matter. Their movements were wrong in the way only spatial magic made things wrong, skipping distances and attacking from impossible positions.
Looking at them, I wondered if that was what it was like fighting someone who was using Here Not Here. I’d never really been on the receiving end, so it was fascinating to watch. More significantly, quick identification told me the dungeon had broken the level limits on the fourth floor—these void hunters were level 210.
Behind them, an arctic fox padded into the hall, snow-white fur rimed with frost, eyes like pale stars, and the cold it brought with it was sharp enough to sting my lungs. I called it a fox, but it was more like the size of a bear, with lean, sharp lines. It displayed as level 215.
The void hunters went for Tad and me first, which made sense. They knew what the dungeon wanted, and it wasn’t to see how hard the golem could punch. One appeared behind Tad with a blade angled toward his spine. The golem moved just as quickly, slamming its arm down to block the strike. The blade skittered off its arm and Tad was forced to leap out of the way to avoid being cut. The hunter’s blade still bit into Tad’s metal armor, but it was a shallow wound, only made possible due to the spatial edge to the weapon. Tad stepped back out of range with a calm that told me he’d expected this.
The golem turned toward the threat, but the void hunters didn’t commit to an all-out attack. They circled and blinked, trying to land hits where they were most likely to matter, testing whether spatial distortion could bypass iron and rune structure. One hunter stabbed straight at the golem’s chest, and the blade sank in a fraction before stopping as if it had hit an invisible barrier. The golem didn’t counter immediately, and I realized it was measuring, letting the sprites learn how to interpret this kind of attack.
Having to intercept attacks directed at us was more than the golem could do. It wasn’t that it didn’t try. It was that there were too many angles to cover. This was important information.
The arctic fox moved next, and the temperature dropped in a clean, brutal plunge. Frost raced across the air, a sudden solidification of the space between the beast and the golem that threatened to lock joints and seize movement. But the golem wasn’t slowed in the slightest. Temperature was apparently irrelevant to it, at least to the levels we’d seen. Frost crystallized along its surface, and I worried about it becoming brittle, but if that was happening, it didn’t show it in the way it moved.
The fox’s tail flicked, and a forest of ice spikes, some taller than the golem, erupted from the dungeon floor. The ice damaged the golem, but the real intent behind the attack was to trap our creation. They might as well have been breadsticks for all the good they did. The golem shifted its limbs without any sign of effort. The only sound was that of ice cracking and shattering. I had to raise a shield to block the shards, which was another important data point. The golem was protective, but it couldn’t always account for collateral damage.
Before the golem could fully engage with the arctic fox, the void hunters came in again, a blur of broken space, blades flashing from angles that made my eyes hurt to track. They tested, flickering close just long enough to cut and withdraw, spatial edges carving thin, precise lines into the golem’s chest, shoulders, and neck. Each strike left shallow grooves that didn’t heal, the iron scorched and warped in response to the attacks. No single blow was significant, but they were adding up. The golem turned smoothly, but for the first time it was clear that it couldn’t quite keep up with their tempo.
I felt the sprites inside it accelerate, patterns tightening as they tried to predict the next strike. The golem raised an arm to block one hunter, but the blade slipped through space and bit into its side anyway. Another hunter appeared behind it and slashed at the knee joint, the spatial edge slipping past the resistance runes and cutting deeper than I would have liked. This was exactly the kind of threat constructs were supposed to struggle with—enemies that ignored mass and durability and instead attacked the rules holding everything together.
The golem adapted.
It shifted its stance, lowering its center of gravity and widening its footing. The rune clusters along its legs and torso began to pulse in new sequences, brighter and faster, reacting to timing rather than force. I realized what it was doing and felt a chill of appreciation run through me. It wasn’t trying to hit them where they were. It was preparing to hit them where they would be.
One hunter reappeared near its left shoulder, blade already mid-swing. The golem didn’t turn. Its right hand had already snapped up, fingers closing on empty air a fraction of a second before the hunter fully manifested. Space collapsed around that grip with a sound like tearing cloth, and the hunter screamed as its phase locked. The golem crushed once, and the void hunter imploded into fragments of shadow that the dungeon absorbed instantly.
The other two hunters adjusted, blinking farther out and attacking in tandem. Their blades struck in a cross pattern, carving a deep X across the golem’s chest. Iron peeled back in curling shards, and I felt Tad tense beside me. The golem rocked backward under the combined hit, and for a heartbeat it looked like they’d found a way to destabilize it. Then the kinetic runes flared, dumping force into the ground and snapping it upright again without a single wasted motion.
It lunged, not at either hunter directly, but at the space between them.
The jump runes activated in sequence, and the golem crossed the distance in an instant, slamming both fists together in a thunderous clap. Space rippled outward, the shockwave distorting the hunters’ blink paths and forcing them partially solid. One hunter took the blow full-on and disintegrated in the compression wave, its armor and body blinking into nothingness. The last hunter managed to phase out, but not cleanly. It staggered back into existence a dozen paces away, movements suddenly ragged and delayed, blinking in and out like a bad TV signal.
The arctic fox chose that moment to strike in earnest.
It darted forward with terrifying speed, wind and frost coiling around its body as it leapt. Its jaws snapped shut around the golem’s forearm, ice exploding outward as cold magic surged into the iron. I heard metal crack, a sharp, ugly sound, and saw frost spiderweb across the limb. The fox landed and wrenched sideways, trying to tear the arm free, its strength far greater than its lean frame suggested.
The golem didn’t pull back.
Instead, it drove forward, ignoring the damage, and seized the fox by the scruff of its neck. Frost blasted outward in a violent shockwave, ice forming along the golem’s chest and face, and for the first time I saw the iron stiffen slightly under the cold. The fox twisted, tail lashing, and a cyclone of frozen wind tore through the hall, flinging shards of ice in every direction. I raised layered force constructs instinctively, absorbing impacts that would have shredded flesh. I was less worried about myself than I was Clay and Oliver.
The fox ripped free and sprang back, blood steaming where iron fingers had pierced its hide. It attacked again, summoning spears of ice that hammered into the golem’s legs and torso, cracking and chipping iron with relentless precision. The golem weathered it, but the cumulative damage was obvious now. Chunks were missing, surfaces had been scarred and pitted, and the construct’s joints were showing clear signs of stress.
I could feel the sprites learning faster now, desperation driving adaptation.
The final void hunter reappeared above the golem, blade raised for a killing thrust aimed straight at the control disc embedded in its chest. That was the right move. If that disc were destroyed, the golem would fall inert. Tad inhaled sharply, and I felt my own body tense, ready to intervene if this crossed the line.
The golem moved first.
It released the fox mid-lunge and twisted, letting the void blade sink into its chest rather than blocking it. The spatial edge cut deep, sparks and fragments flying as the blade bit toward the disc. Then the golem’s hand closed around the hunter’s wrist, runes flaring violently as it locked the creature in place. The hunter tried to blink away, but the timing was off. The golem had learned the cadence.
It tore the hunter apart in two brutal motions, ripping arm from body and then smashing the torso into the floor with enough force to end the threat completely. The spatial distortions collapsed, leaving only fading echoes that the dungeon swallowed whole.
That left the arctic fox.
It circled now, movements more cautious, frost and wind swirling tighter around it as it reassessed. The golem turned to face it, posture altered, one arm hanging slightly lower than before, ice still clinging to its surface. I saw the breath weapon runes along the golem’s chest and throat begin to glow, building pressure.
The fox lunged, aiming low, trying to hamstring the golem and keep its mobility advantage. The golem exhaled.
The cloud rolled out heavy and dense, iron dust and shadow infused with curse magic. It washed over the fox and clung, sapping strength and endurance in visible waves. The fox staggered mid-leap, momentum faltering, and the wind around it collapsed into nothing. Frost dulled, its magic suddenly struggling to sustain itself. The breath weapon had crippled its Durability and Endurance. That was all the advantage necessary.
The golem advanced, each step deliberate.
The fox tried to retreat, ice forming under its paws to launch it backward, but its timing was off now. Staying away from the golem proved to be its undoing. After another half minute of the chase, the golem used the breath weapon again. The curse stacked, and the fox’s movements slowed further—just enough. The golem closed the distance and brought both fists down in a single, devastating strike. The impact crushed ice, bone, and magic as one, and the fox dissolved into drifting snow tinged with pink that evaporated before touching the ground.
Silence followed, heavy and complete.
The golem stood amid the wreckage, iron body scarred and damaged but stable. Spirit Sight showed the sprites reorganizing, patterns tightening again as they integrated what they’d learned. The construct straightened, posture resetting to neutral, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
