Chapter 106: Rocky Graveyard

  The side effect of keeping the heatmap active was that his head was already filled with mana. His thoughts were flying a mile a minute. Within the span of a couple of seconds, he took measure of his foes. These things were taller than the sentry golems he had seen in Tava. Nor were they as sophisticated. They looked crude. But that didn’t make them any weaker.

  The golems surrounded them inside a hexagon formation. Moira was already running on fumes, and Kwame’s mobility was severely hampered. On the plus side, Parth was healed. Kwame’s reserves were in good shape, so he could provide ranged support. Parth’s mana tank was almost full as well. Going by sheer capacity, Parth’s reserves being full meant a completely different ball game than anyone else’s. He could afford to lose manna, a lot of it. And he would still have way more remaining than his peers.

  There was only one valid tactic here, given their condition. And he didn’t hesitate.

  “Moira, take to the skies, I’ll cover you. Take Kwame as well.” Parth shouted.

  His teammates followed his instructions without any questions. Moira’s wings manifested, and she took to the air, taking her floating platform with her. The moment she was airborne, the Golems began stretching. Their bodies were malleable. And they were converging as if trying to form a dome. Unfortunately for them, Parth was a major disrupting force when he wanted to be.

  With a wide sweep of his hands, he sent eight blindingly fast fireballs at the golems. The last three of the fireballs burned blue. It didn’t surprise him anymore. But what surprised him was the sheer heat coming from those fireballs. With his heatmap, he could clearly sense how much stronger those fireballs were than the rest.

  The fireballs hit the golems and exploded in a burst of flames, which stuck to the targets. Immediately, Parth knew that something was wrong.

  The force of the explosion warped the golems severely, affording Moira and Kwame the window to fly high and set up an airborne sniper’s nest. Parth had expected the fireballs to blow off parts of the automatons. Instead, their lava-filled bodies acted like jelly. Their shapes twisted and elongated due to the explosion, but they ultimately held together. A major part of it was that the heat from the fireballs wasn’t affecting them. He could clearly see it; they were sucking in the heat from the fire.

  He remotely pumped more mana into his flames, but they didn’t intensify much. The heat was being instantly subsumed by the automatons.

  Maybe he could engage in a tug of war, trying to wrestle control back. However, it was not the right move at the time.

  He felt something fast enter his heatmap’s domain, and mere milliseconds later, Kwame’s knuckleball punctured through two golems. The sheer force blew apart their structural integrity, raining chunks of lava everywhere. Before Parth could even track its movements, it sped out of his range.

  Kwame was on a strafing run. The artifact would be back soon, taking out more golems.

  But Parth knew that it wouldn’t help in the long run. Because the raining chunks of the golems disappeared one moment, and two fully formed golems appeared in their initial spots once again. This was another battle of attrition.

  The instant reformation clinched it, though. The golems were a part of another dungeon trap. They weren’t independent monsters. Just like Parth’s time inside the dungeon trap during the first trial, any damage done to the trapped location would be repaired instantaneously. And given that the golems were formed from the ground, the dungeon did consider them a part of itself.

  Compared to last time, Parth had better control over his senses. Not to mention the brand new magical sense in itself. So, he could understand even better what Stefan was saying way back then. It was eerie to sense how his flames ceased to exist along with the destroyed golems. The newly formed ones didn’t have Parth’s flames either. It was as if someone reloaded a save file.

  Figures, the dungeon was a save-scumming piece of trash.

  Nonetheless, it was pointless to keep engaging these mindless chunks of molten stone. They’d reform as long as the trap’s power source remained. And unlike Tavan golems, these things didn’t have an internal power source. He could sense that clearly when they got blown into chunks. There was not an ounce of magitech inside them. There couldn’t be, given that all they had inside was lava.

  Parth didn’t care for the heat itself. He was immune to that. But he wasn’t immune to blunt force. Nor did he want to get covered in a rapidly cooling layer of lava, leaving him encased in stone. He wouldn’t give the dungeon the opportunity.

  Thankfully, flames were not all he had. He could afford to spend mana, generating just pure force. His doppelganger had given him ample practice, after all. And even if he used his flames, he’d just need to stick to his usual strategy of using the flames to supplement his punches. No need to pull out the fancy stuff like sticky flames and beams just yet.

  He sent some small, rapid bursts of fire up in the air. It was one of their pre-planned signals. Moira and Kwame would prepare accordingly. Now he needed to do his part.

  Parth dashed forward, bursts of flames propelling him forward at an astounding speed. Before his target could even react, he had slipped past its guard. Putting the entire momentum to use, he launched himself upward, unleashing a devastating uppercut that tore off the upper half of the golem.

  Midair, with more bursts of flames, he angled himself towards the next golem and crashed into it the next second. His heatmap was flaring at full force the entire time, trying to find any anomalies that’d lead him to the power source.

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  This time, the damage wasn’t enough to instantly destroy it. But a classic follow-up of a cross-hook combo splattered this golem as well. Predictable, given how much he’d practiced the good old two-three, as his coach used to say.

  It reformed instantly, but by then, he was already at his next target. He kept moving because his bubble of extrasensory perception moved with him. The more ground he covered, the more the chances of finding any oddity.

  As he arrived at the third golem, it had just begun a slow sweep towards him. These things were slow. Sure, they were flexible and capable of causing large damage. But he was the worst matchup for them, in terms of sheer fighting prowess. He was sure that given their heat resistance and consumption, these things were the worst matchup for his predecessors. These things had an inherent advantage over Pygilists. Too bad, he was The Pygilist.

  A hook and a rear uppercut later, he was already dashing towards the fourth golem. In the back of his mind, he was tracking the movements of the rest of them. The heatmap didn’t give him magical predictions. But he was beginning to love how useful it was in a fight. It gave him practically a three-sixty degree awareness. It gave him eyes on the back of his head. Which was a massive boon during group fights like these. Overnight, Parth had become very hard to take by surprise in a fight.

  The fourth one was a bit farther than the rest, so it did have some time to get into a defensive stance. Still too slow for him, though. But Parth had to bleed off some speed to get a better angle at the center of mass. He pivoted on his right foot, ducked, and stepped. Planting his legs firmly on the ground, he unleashed another hook.

  To his surprise, his fist sank into the rock without any resistance. This would be deadly to any melee fighter, as the lava would smother and consume the offending appendage. Before the mindless automaton could react, he pulled back his arm and jabbed with the other.

  So far, he hadn’t needed to jab because these were mindless opponents who didn’t react exceptionally fast to him. But it seemed that if they had the slightest time to prepare, they leaned heavily on their liquidity.

  The jab too began to sink without much resistance, so he retracted his arm again. As he moved back, one of the golem’s hands warped, forming a wide sheet, attempting to wrap him like a Christmas present. But once again, it was too slow for a fully rested Parth.

  He slipped past the golem, and by now, his movements had kited the rest to his position as well. Parth sent a few sparks straight up in the air, signaling his teammates.

  With that done, he disengaged and retreated even further, drawing the ambling constructs towards him. And as he moved, his heatmap finally caught something odd.

  Parth had sensed some air fluctuation inside a hut. The biggest hut facing the town square, in fact. He wanted to smack his head, given how obvious it was. The air fluctuation itself was obvious due to his temperature sense. But the largest hut should have been a point of interest regardless.

  As he moved, the Golems that were following him began to cluster. They were mindlessly following the shortest route to him. This caused some of them to line up in a straight line. Some of them were right next to each other, but it didn’t matter. All of them were grouped closely. And that was enough for Kwame to act.

  The knuckleball took a few moments, probably building up more speed as it boosted its momentum with its magic. But it came swiftly nonetheless and slammed into the golems at a devastating pace. Parth didn’t need to see to get a picture of what was happening in the resulting dust cloud. The ground had cratered, and there was pretty much nothing left of the golems except for small chunks of lava. But they reformed immediately inside the crater.

  Nonetheless, Parth hadn’t stopped a moment. By the time the golems ambled out of the crater, he had already closed in on the hut. He barged in through the massive hole in the wall promptly.

  He quickly understood what he was sensing. There was air rising out of the edges of what seemed to be a large tile. It contrasted with the whole place, given how smooth the cut was. Its surface was even smoother than the rest of the floor. Maybe brand new, he wouldn’t have noticed the difference. But with the dilapidated condition of the hut, it was pretty easy to spot. Especially given that his heatmap was showing him where to look.

  The air escaping from the edges of the tile was comparatively cooler than the air inside the hut. It was an indicator that there was something hidden beneath the tile. The escaping air was possibly the hottest air inside the chamber underneath. But the chamber itself seemed to be cooler than the outside. The more obvious indicator was how the hidden space interacted with his heatmap. He could sense a tunnel, a sheer drop right beneath the tile. After that, there was something, but he couldn’t say what.

  It was not the gaping void of the dungeon boundary, but it was still muddied. Some sort of interference due to the raw mana density in the air. It was possible that a cache of crystals inside the trap was the culprit for this interference. Just like how Emilia could not sense the previous cache they came across. Because her extrasensory perception relied on a domain as well. Meanwhile, Stefan had better luck because his artifact was observation-based. Whatever the case, Parth had enough clues to jump in.

  He focused a bit on what was happening outside to see that the golems were slowly ambling towards the hut. They didn’t care about the aerial bombardment and kept walking.

  Parth didn’t waste much time after that. He bent and punched through the tile in one smooth motion. And just like last time, the piece of stone covering the hidden chamber did not repair itself on its own. Taking that as an even better confirmation, Parth dove in.

  The drop was roughly ten meters deep before he hit the ground again. He looked around, fully alert. It seemed that he had been dropped inside a moderately sized chamber. It was neither large nor small. He couldn’t completely depend on his heatmap once again. Now that he was so close to it, he could practically taste the ample mana mixing with the air, causing his preternatural sense to fluctuate. But his eyes worked just fine.

  Smack dab in the middle of the chamber was what appeared to be a gravestone. That was new. There was no pedestal like last time. What was not new were the crystals that were neatly arranged all around the gravestone. It was as if the mana crystals were flowers set to decorate the grave of someone. And the blue glow from the crystals lit up the whole room. There were more mana crystals here than there were in the previous trap.

  It didn’t matter, though. He had to pluck them to deactivate the golems. It felt a bit weird, snooping around a grave. But what was a grave actually doing here? That in itself was a major question for later. Right now, Parth didn’t have much time to dwell on it. He had to stop the golems at all costs. So, the crystals had to be harvested. He dashed closer to them. As he reached out with his hand to pluck one of them. A cough came from right behind him, startling him immensely.

  He leapt over the grave, turned mid-air, and was about to punch out a beam of fire, when the figure in front of him raised his hands in surrender.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! I mean you no harm. If you are real, that is. You are real, are you not? I sure hope you are,” the old man said.

  Path held back his flames as he landed. He slowly circled to the side. To get the grave out of his line of sight. To get a better view of the man. The first thing he noticed was that the man was transparent. And he was floating. The most confusing part of it all was what was hanging around his neck. A very familiar dream catcher pendant. The Unbound Phantom. The same artifact that Timmy held.

  What sort of fresh hell was this?