princess Zena of Zendor

The walk back to the road was just as easy as when we entered the forest, but now Jo is holding my old staff reverently as if it’s going to break from a gust of wind.

On the road we continue onwards in the direction of the mines, but it doesn’t take us long to spot another golem. The fact that it only took a few minutes to find another, makes me wonder why none of them interrupted our sleep.

After pointing it out to Jo, we headed off into the forest again to fight it. Since I feel no mana from it, it must be a stamina golem, which James confirms. This one is a tripod, with three short legs, a fairly large boulder as a torso and a tower of increasingly small rocks sticking off the top of it, which acts as a tentacle. Overall it probably has a bit less mass than the one we encountered yesterday.

I once again start by buffing Jo, but her overconfidence from yesterday doesn’t make its appearance. Her expression is one of focus. After that, we approach and I start to debuff it, focusing on slowing its movements.

Once I start to debuff it, Jo attacks with a lightning bolt. At slightly more than twice the power of her attacks from yesterday, she is stunned for a moment as it impacts the golem, which clearly felt it. 

It clearly wants to retaliate, but its only attack seems to be to flail about with the tentacle, so it has to move closer on its slow stubby feet, leaving her a fair bit of room to breathe, at least at range.

I and James just linger about while Jo keeps at range, pelting it with lightning bolts and mana bullets, having learned that fireballs aren’t good for forests.

Some time into the fight, I spot a different golem heading our way from further up the mountainside. I don’t think Jo is ready for multiple opponents, so either I or James has to deal with it, and since James would prefer to not fight, I’ll just do it.

I tell James to keep Jo alive, and fly off, using mana thruster to zip between the trees. This golem has mana of approximately the same quantity as the one from yesterday, and immediately lobs a ball of water at me. It’s easily dodged and I retaliate with a mana bullet, which chips some of the surface off. 

This might take a while. Hang on, I can shape the bullets like I did when we fought the abomination. A flat blade isn’t going to help against a rock, but a spike might.

I shape the next bullet to a spike, ensuring to use the same amount of mana and fire it at the golem. This time it digs a little bit into it before it spreads out, creating a crater. That’s much more damage for the mana. How can I push it further? I can do something with the mana inside like I did when heating the plate, but heating the bullet isn’t going to do anything.

As I think of what to do, the golem throws an ice ball at me, but I simply step out of the way, letting it smash the tree behind me.

Maybe I can do the same as mana thruster does and accelerate it? I make a new spike and imbue the desired effect into the mana. This time the bullet flies much faster, penetrating deep into the boulder that constitutes the torso of this vaguely humanoid golem, leaving a deep and narrow crater.

I smile as I prepare the next spike with three times as much mana and aim it at the point which I feel the golems mana emanate from, assuming that to be the location of the core.

The spike flies the fifty or so meters between us in a fraction of a second, hitting exactly where I aimed. Then it proceeds to go straight through the boulder, breaking it into three pieces in the process, before disintegrating without hitting anything else.

I guess I can one shot the golems now that I’m no longer constrained by the rules of the game. 

A great smile is on my face as I pick up the scattered pieces of the bright blue golem core.

Once I return to Jo’s fight, I find her almost out of mana, fighting a tentacle-less golem. I cast a mana regeneration spell on her, and soon enough the golem stops moving and is declared dead by James. Most of the damage seems to have been done by her lightning as the core isn’t exposed.

She’s sweating and panting, but nowhere near as bad as yesterday. She still sat down to recuperate though, with a big smile on her face. I do my best to alleviate her fatigue, while she drinks the water I gave her.

While we wait for her, James and I tell each other about our respective fights, and I hint about how little of the constraints the game imposed remains, though I’m not sure about how much of it he got from my vague terminology. Maybe I should just tell Jo about our past, though I’ll get James’ opinion on it first, and maybe David’s as well. It would make it easier in the future. How much though? That we were one two people that merged, or that this world was a game until it suddenly wasn’t anymore? I’ll ask them later.

After Jo recovered, we returned to the journey ahead of us, mainly by returning to the road and traveling along it. 

We don’t encounter any more golems until we get hungry and the sun has passed its midpoint. I manifest a table and some chairs, trying to match their shape to the shape of my wings, though not perfectly. Jo has recovered her mana by now, and has gotten close to twice of what she had when we first met, though asking her reveals that she doesn’t notice. Probably because of the fact that while fighting with my buffs, and staff, she has a lot more in terms of effective power.

Aside from that, Jo eats a sandwich with some lettuce sticking out of the bread and I give James a pre-cooked steak, while taking out a melon for myself. Only a hint of mana in this melon, and some quick use of a mana knife reveals the bright blue flesh inside. I was expecting red, but the taste is a fair bit better than the watermelons I remember. Both savory and sweet, unlike purely sweet watermelons.

Checking the atlas before setting off, shows that we are getting close to the mining town that services the mine we are going to enter. It services multiple mines and we don’t know which we’ll be entering until we get close enough for the quest marker to reveal it, though it’s probably one of the two gem mines. 

With our break completed, I shatter all the mana furniture in a beautiful display of extravagant mana waste, before we head towards the town.

 

 

Kamba

Zena figured out how attack spells work.

I'll try to get out a chapter a day for the next little while, though no promises, and not necesarrily on this story.