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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 157
🕑 Added 2024-11-01 14:30:10 +0000 UTCWhen I entered the next trial, The Arena of Strength, I saw that it lived up to its name. It was a scaled-down arena to fit the size of a large room they had been using for these trials.
In the benches were the same man-sized golems that chased me around in the first trial, but they were all holding different weapons, and down in the “arena” set against the far wall, was a stone throne with an up-armored humanoid golem that stood twice as tall as a normal man.
The moment the gate closed behind me, light filled the eyes of the giant golem. It reached over to the side of its throne and grabbed a size-appropriate flanged mace that was as long as I was tall.
It then stood up to the roaring audience, and the golem actually opened its arms wide as he slowly spun around to bask in the cheers. Whoever was controlling that golem was obviously having a good time.
When it was done showboating, it turned to me and pointed its mace at me in challenge, and I knew there were no words needed to be said… not like the golem could talk… could it?
I leveled my spear at the golem as my aura manifested from my body, covering my spear in a thin, controlled layer.
There was no referee to start us off, but I was the one to make the first move. I moved in a blur toward the golem’s off-hand side and used all the reach my spear afforded me to strike at the golem’s head, but the golem moved faster than anything its size should be capable of moving, as it shifted its pauldron in the way, making my strike glance off its rounded surface before it swung its mace at me in retaliation.
I rolled under the swing and ended up behind the golem, shortened my grip, and stabbed at the back of the left knee joint, leaving a gash in it. In retaliation, it kicked back its left leg.
I barely had time to raise my spear in defense, but even as the shaft of my spear absorbed the blow, I was sent flying and slammed into the arena wall, no doubt making the damage indicator color my whole back in a light shade of red, but it was deemed not enough damage to trigger the mana shield.
It was then that I decided to play dirty. I conjured a small whirlwind to circle around the scaled-down area. As the wind picked up in speed, it also picked up the sand and dust to create a small sandstorm to conceal myself.
While I was concealed, I was confident enough to use some instinctive earth magic to passively sense the golem stomping and swing blindly into the sandstorm in hopes of getting a lucky hit.
I took this as an excellent time to perform hit-and-run tactics. I ran toward the golem and used my spear more as a glave as I swung my spear, its shaft whipping and slashing its spearhead across its body, leaving coughs in its metal body.
I did not intend to strike its body, but after the first two strikes aimed at its joints, it suddenly became very protective of them as it started moving around a lot more defensively. But after a few more hits, it seemed to have enough, and in an almost relaxed manner, it stuck the ground twice with his mace.
Turns out this was a signal, as I looked around I noticed that one by one, pairs of red lights started lighting up around me, and through the howling of my sand storm, I could hear the clanking of the man-sized golems and their heavy thuds as they hopped off the benches and landed in the arena to surround me.
Is this the second phase of the boss fight where it calls upon its minions? Well too bad for them, because the minions were as blind as the boss golem, the proof of that was how they were wildly swinging their weapons onto the sandstorm, sometimes taking down one of their own, and to my surprise, each golem had its own mana shield that worked just like mine, and deployed when they took ‘lethal’ damage. Which I guess saves the staff from repairing golems if I trash them.
As the golems’ encirclement closed in on me, I decided to open a hole in the encirclement by casting an Earth Spike at a 45° angle, ‘killing’ two golems while giving me a path out, but somehow, my Earth Spike alerted the golem boss to my location and I felt it stomping to my position.
I ran to my Earth Spike and jumped off behind the line of golems. When I landed, I bolted to the side as the boss golem rushed through my Earth Spike and its golem minions alike, sending them flying with their mana shields deployed.
As I was thinking of a way to take this big bastard down, I came to the conclusion that this golem was just too tanky, even the strikes I successfully landed on its joints had not dealt enough damage to disable any of its limbs. If I wanted some proper damage, I needed a good opening, but this boss golem with his long-ass mace was capable of reaching me even if I stuck my spear out all the way, which was not ideal when trying to deliver powerful blows.
As I was keeping my distance while brainstorming, I noticed that most of the golems were acting rather… jerky in their movement. When I crept up behind one of them, I could hear the grinding of grit in their joints and realized what it was.
It was sand, fucking sand that may be my solution in stopping the golem boss.
I crept closer to the boss golem as it was taking swings at any silhouette that did not have red eyes, and noticed that it also had the same gritty sound as it moved. Did it also have dirt in its parts but was just too powerful for meer sand to bother it?
Well, do I have a surprise for it. If a little sand does not work, how about a lot of sand!
I added earth mana into the spell controlling the sandstorm to take martial control of the sand in the sandstorm and manipulated the sand to home in around the boss golem and seep into every crack and joint it could.
In order to speed up the process of my plan, I exposed myself by giving it random wacks and letting it chase me around so it would move all its joints and make it easier to let the sandy goodness into every moving part.
It took just over a minute before the results of my plan started taking effect. The motions became jerky and could no longer chase me. To test the true extent of the boss golem’s hampered movements, I stood before the boss golem who started swinging its mace, but it was so slow that even an untrained child could walk away from it. That was when I knew I was ready.
I waited for the boss golem’s swing to miss me before I used my aura to grant myself a burst of speed and quickly climbed to the boss golem’s shoulders and placed the tip of my spear in the collar behind its head, before putting all my weight into the spear and drove the spear down. But before my spear could sink deep, I felt the feeling of my spear hitting a mana shield.
Did this mean I won? I checked the eyes of the golem boss and found the eye-lights to be off. I will take that as a win.
