Chapter 428 - Another one

I watch as the twins and Min-Jae fight against the golem made from the damaged arcane item I got.

Golem Heart (Arcane, Damaged) - Golem Heart could animate stone and metal, bringing golems to life. Now, its core is cracked, but it sporadically imbues nearby objects with a flicker of life, making them move or respond for short durations, echoing its once grand animating power.

It is entirely made out of hardened dirt, and it wasn’t even that difficult to make. It’s just difficult to control, and the orders the golem can take are very restrictive. I have a suspicion that with a bit more practice, I can improve on that and maybe even make it change its shape.

But currently, the moment I send mana into the item, it moves the earth in front of me, making it bulge and lift up to create a simple humanoid shape. Very simple, as if a kid made it out of clay. The difference is that it is twice my height and could kill that said kid easily. It could easily take down someone on Normal difficulty, and it would take a dozen or two of people on Hard difficulty to bring the golem down.

So we continue to test it while the twins and Min-Jae fight it, sweating, rolling on the ground, and screaming at me. Something rude, I’m sure, but I filter it out.

Maya is nearby, sitting on the ground with Bloodthirst in her hand as she continues to clean and then oil the weapon.

The golem is light brown in color. It moves fairly quickly for its size, but its only advantage is its durability. It’s way too slow to catch up to any of the three boys, and they get hit only because we are testing the golem’s damage, and they let it happen.

Holding the heart in my hand, I send my mana inside of it, trying to find out what all these delicate inscriptions do. Activating some switch, the golem falters and falls to the ground.

I get a few weird looks, but I quickly mess with it more, and the golem slowly stands up again, this time packing more dirt and heart, taking more of my mana as that dirt compresses.

The golem is now even slower than before.

Another attempt a bit later, the golem loses half of its material, moving faster, but I mess something up, and its leg breaks, making it fall.

I then think I come up with how to change its shape, but instead, the golem stands up as before, just this time without its left arm.

For some reason, it makes Maya laugh - a lot.

It’s to the point where I want to take my weapon from her but instead send the golem towards her in its somewhat clumsy movement.

She jumps to her feet excitedly, and blue armor surrounds her. Then, powering it with a few mana batteries on her and with her own mana, that armor grows bigger until it matches the golem’s size.

The brown stone figure without a left arm and Maya in the big mana armor clash against each other in a punching fight, neither side bothering to avoid hits.

I start getting into it, and it feels fun, so I start fueling more mana into the heart, making the golem tougher and stronger but unfortunately not faster, which Maya uses to her advantage.

A cheating fox of a woman is even using Bloodthirst, the otherwise sizable claymore now looking almost like a dagger in the hand of the blue armor.

As much as the golem, I also observe Maya, and I’m quite surprised by what I see. I knew she was quite talented with the skills she got. The mecha-like mana armor is also her idea and something I shamelessly stole. But now she seems to have invested a bit more stats into mana. She still has high physical stats, especially dexterity, but mana is getting some more love.

[Armament] is still as it was before, and I think my [Regalia] was stronger while I had it, but she clearly leveled it, and with the combination of her [Boost], it shows some nice results and spikes of speed and increased strength or durability. The mana batteries on her also seem quite nice, to the brim filled with her mana.

But as many times as she destroys the golem’s legs, I restore them, and the golem keeps coming back.

With amusement, I watch as her reserves dwindle, and she decides to stop fighting to save her mana batteries for something more useful.

More mana wins again.

As I control the golem to fight against Min-Jae, who slows it down with his skill and then bombards it, Maya comes closer.

“In a real fight, I would go after you as the controller,” she sulks like a true loser, not seeing the value of the best stat.

“Sure.” I nod.

“And can you please recreate that orb for me? It burst again.”

“It’s called the evil orb.”

“... sure.”

I do as she asks and create an orb with ever-changing frequencies and requirements for the amount of mana it needs to be fed with.

An evil orb. Yup.

The same as Lissandra did before with me, I hand the slightly modified orb to Maya, who immediately shuts up and focuses on it. She doesn’t even move away, as even that little distraction is something she can’t allow herself.

Then, with great satisfaction, I watch as the orb bursts open, Maya using too much of her mana.

Without another word, I create another one and three for me that I keep up over my head.

Maya glances at them and then at me, her eyes clearly showing that she knows what I’m doing. She then quickly turns all attention to her orb.

It dissipates this time.

I create another one.

After 30 seconds, it bursts open.

Another one.

She fails to follow the frequency, and it disappears.

Another one.

It bursts open.

Another one.

Fail.

Another one.

Burst open.

Another one.

Too slow to adapt to the frequency.

I add one more, making it four evil orbs floating over me while keeping the golem somewhat under my control. This is fun.

At this point, Maya looks like she will stab that claymore through my chest.

Is this what people call having friends? This is not bad at all. I could get used to it. I…

“Nat…” Tess sounds from somewhere behind me.

Maya immediately rushes to her to complain while pointing her finger at me.

Has she no dignity in her body? So weak.

“I’m helping,” I note towards Tess.

“I saw you helping. Mind creating one for me?” Her voice clearly shows it’s a challenge.

“Very well.” I create another orb and send it to her. I keep up with its frequencies until Tess takes over, and then I stop.

As expected, Tess does even better than Maya. She keeps up with the orb for a bit before it also bursts open.

Instead of surprise or disappointment, intrigue shines in her gray eyes, and I create another one.

And another.

Then another.

After each one bursts open, Tess seems to be doing a tiny bit better. It’s to the point where I’m tempted to create for her an original version Cockroach Sandra made and that I'm using for training instead of the simpler version of the orb made by me for the group 4.

Even though this orb is easier to work with, much easier, than the original non-adapted version by Liss, it annoys me that Tess gets noticeably better at it so quickly.

It’s not envy talking or my pride, but I know I’m better at it than her. All my skills, traits, passives, and my talent, which lies that way, allow me to do so. All my experience and hard work. Even so, a genius like Tess showing me her talent reminds me to never stop pushing ahead. If I do, people like her and cowardly Savant will take over. And we can’t have that.

“Help me with this one,” the blonde nudges Maya, who quickly reaches for the orb and starts helping as well.

The work is now much easier, split between two people.

“Let’s go eat something,” Tess tells Maya, who just grabs the claymore and follows behind Tess, both of them working on the orb. I get a short wave as they leave.

Then, once again, I send mana through the golem heart, a humanoid figure made of stones and dirt reforming.

“Try ranged attacks now,” I shout towards the boys, and we get back to testing.

***

The 6th floor monsters usually appear during the day and rarely during the night. Only when it's scorching hot outside do they leave their hidey holes and attack anything that moves, sometimes moving even in groups.

There are difficulties finding drinkable water and even food. Plenty of monsters cannot be eaten either because they taste too disgusting or are poisonous.

Sure, I bet you could eat an insect-looking monster if you had to. Your body should be able to digest it all after all the changes it went through.

But would you want to?

So, the lack of water and food seems to be one of the settings of this floor, and similar to the 3rd floor, buying them in the system shop isn't possible.

That's the system we know. Ah, good old times when I flipped the system window every few hours. I do it even now and then turn to Min-Jae, who looks at me with surprise.

“So you will be getting bulli… trained by Tess?” I ask him.

“Yes, she said it might be better to separate me and the twins.”

“Did you bully people again?”

“I did not.”

“Really?”

Instead of shouting back at me, he seems down, “Look, Nat, I know during the tournament I was behaving really pathetic. I got shit on by everyone from our group because of that already. I… it just felt…”

“Three monsters on our eleven,” I interrupt him.

As a few times before, he moves his hand, and five pieces of compressed metal fly into the air and then shoot toward the monsters.

They whistle as they pierce through the air. Each of them is as big as a head, ugly, multiple kinds of metals squeezed together. There is rust covering parts of them, and even their shapes are rather like crumpled paper than orbs or anything else. But they are effective.

The five chunks of metal slam against the monsters at a speed that they cannot dodge.

Three monsters remind me of bugs with wide heads and mandibles and four long legs.

Green blood splashes into the air, but the monsters do not even screech and come rushing towards us.

[Venomclaw - lvl 202]

[Venomclaw - lvl 203]

[Venomclaw - lvl 201]

Min-Jae moves his hand, and the chunks of metal fly back, but the monsters are faster.

They move very quickly on their long legs, each movement twitching, and their hard skeletons clacking against the rocky ground. Mana seeps out of them towards us, some poisonous aura, a cheap imitation of a domain.

Venomclaws like to move in groups, each of them having their own knock-off domain with poisonous mana in it. They like to combine it to pressure the opponent.

When there are only a few of them, it isn't a problem. But when dozens, hundreds of them combine… well, it could end up interesting.

But as expected, Min-Jae moves his orbs made of mana-conductive metal. These ones can accept the effect of his gravity skill much better and are easier to manipulate. And much, much quicker. A barrage of two hundred or so orbs shoots ahead; more than orbs, they look like bullets. A minigun spitting out the projectiles at immense speed.

They pierce through the monsters and then fly back, piercing them again and again until the Venomclaws fall down with hundreds of holes poking through their bodies.

Before moving the orbs back, Min-Jae spins them around their orbits to get rid of the blood and pieces of the monsters' bodies before he moves them into the backpack on his back.

Each of these orbs is as big as half a golf ball, something we made for him on the 4th floor. They are also heavy enough that he shouldn't be able to move them at all, but he constantly changes their weight, so it's not a problem.

“We should leave; more of them will be coming after smelling the blood of these three.”

“Nah, we are staying.”

Min-Jae looks at me only once but then gulps.

It's just the start of the day, so I wonder how many of these things we could lure here for Min-Jae to kill before they go to sleep for the night.

***

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