CHAPTER 334 – THE POWER OF SHIELDING
Tom was standing behind his rock wall with a small hole to peer through and having a minor existential crisis. His eyes were not deceiving him. Somehow, the golem was completely undamaged.
Without even consciously registering the desire, the solid blast wall he stood behind abruptly fractured with cracks spreading through it before it crumbled away. Stone, dirt, and rock fell out of it to crash against the ground. Subconsciously, his mind flexed and while the entire thing collapsed with chunks larger than bricks denting the tunnel floor, he stood still and unmoving. Despite the chaos and the improbability of him being spared, none of them struck him.
The dust settled unnaturally fast, forced back to the ground with a magic enforced thought. He existed in a small circle free of debris, with a clear path between him and the outside where his target was.
It had not exploded. It waited its shell pristine without a single visible crack, apparently completely unharmed.
He glared at it suspiciously.
There was no way both he and Michael had imagined the dangerous buildup of energy. That had been real. Something had happened, but the question was what?
His heart was racing, adrenaline flooding through him, and he existed in a space between rationality and instinct. Caught between curiosity and fleeing.
With a snort at the ridiculousness of the situation, he stalked forward, his awareness pushing into the rock at his feet to have it react at an instant to rise to protect him if the worst occurred. The link he had with the golem helped fortify his courage. He could click through the various offensive and defensive options or manually compel it to lift a single leg. Not a single error message or indication of slowed reactions existed. All of his senses told him it was working perfectly, and the visual inspection matched up with the data flowing down the bond they had.
Everything agreed that the golem was undamaged and the bomb that had been forming had somehow dissipated without tearing it apart from within.
He paused two metres from it. His heart thumped, and he thought of extra tests that he could execute.
Commands were sent out.
The golem reacted smoothly. Power flowed internally and half a second later, a missile was expelled from the side. It was the size of his fist and shot at pace straight through the flower’s defensive shield and then sped across the grass for over eighty metres before it broke apart. It was a basic magic missile without an aspect and the distance it had travelled had been better than the specification of the artefact they had bought.
This was a good test. He had remotely run the same tests earlier, but he had not been able to physically verify that it had worked. Tom was surprised that the evidence of his own eyes was compelling in a way the mental link was not. He knew that was stupid, but couldn’t bring himself to care. That the golem could create magic missiles was evidence that its insides might be as unharmed as the visible shell.
Tom ordered it to demonstrate its core functionality.
This time, he could see with his own eyes. Without sound but visible distortion of the air, two different shields clicked into existence. A few thoughts expanded their size and made them shift their angles in the air. The golem, as expected performed to specification.
There was one more component to the test. For this, he retreated right to the lip of the tunnel. Head stuck out so he could see the test.
Once more, the surrounding earth was primed to leap to his defence if something went wrong.
A beam of destructive energy shot out of the machine. It left a visible distortion in its path, and it struck the stunted tree that he was aiming for. The shrub was chosen because it was the closest object that was large enough for him to target that wouldn’t hurt the flower. It was a mere thirty metres away and Tom watched fascinated, as it was torn apart from the golem’s laser beam. The leaves were torn apart like it was being hit by a huge wind; the trunk looked like thousands of insects were burrowing into the wood. Leaves charred and then it burst into flames.
Another thought caused the beam to shut down. The tree kept burning.
Tom was stumped by the result. Everything in the golem was working perfectly.
He reached out a hand and touched it. His senses entering it and checking the connections, both physical and magical, to confirm that nothing had been burnt out. Everything he touched was pristine.
“Tom, what’s happening?” Keikain called out from behind him.
“I don’t know.”
“Is it salvageable?”
“No,”
“Fuck,” the earth mage cursed.
“No, I mean it’s undamaged. Actually, I don’t know. All I can confirm is that it appears to be working.” While he hadn’t found the problem yet, it didn’t mean one didn’t exist. But honestly, if they only had to replace one faulty part that would be a massive stroke of luck.
It was probably the prison; he decided.
With his mind made up, he approached and placed a hand on the golem and forced it into a state where he could diagnose it properly.
All the details of the animation spell form were available, and he smiled at what he had done. Excluding faulty parts, the spell was more perfect than anything he had achieved before. The detail inherent in his work was something he could be proud of. His mind sunk into the inner workings, and he went straight for the prison, expecting it to be melted into slag, but was surprised to find it untouched and working as expected. His mind flicked from item to item. The control orb, the layered components to refine the elemental armour. All of them were still intact, with no sign of trauma. They were all still as good as new, and he checked carefully. It would be a disaster if there were small imperfections that allowed them to function now but would cause catastrophic failure later.
There was no damage anywhere. His mind raced and then with a sinking feeling he realised there was only one thing he hadn’t checked, the mana engines. If one of them had been destroyed, it would explain what he was seeing. If one of them was gone, there would still be power and everything would work as normal, but the golem would not be strong enough to protect them until the engine was replaced.
Relief flooded through him. A broken mana engine was something that he could work with. It could be replaced and would only cost a couple of hundred thousand credits.
“Is it safe?” Michael shouted from behind him.
“Yes,” he yelled back annoyed at the interruption.
His mind probed each mana engine. They were intact. He checked the wear and tear on them. One of them he recognised, it was the standard configuration with a few changes to make it enhanced… The other…
He paused and re-examined it. It was different, but pristine. There was absolutely no damage. If he didn’t know better, he would have assumed it had come straight out of a loot portal.
And…
There was more complexity than he expected, extra conduits and was larger than it should have been.
For some reason he did not feel alarmed, only perplexed. Mentally, he reviewed all the different information he had available. He recalled that initial intensifying energy with a changed perspective… An idea occurred to him. It couldn’t be, he thought to himself, but just in case the outlandish idea was right he ran some tests..
It was producing more power than the enhanced engine. That was… not impossible…
He could feel mounting excitement. The extra power was not a small amount, but a lot and he remembered the title he had earned.
Title: Golem Prodigy: All Golems created or materially repaired have a thirty percent chance to upgrade a component.
It had never triggered before even though statistically it should have.
While theoretically he could extract the engine to examine it, such an attempt would be a waste of time. He could already confirm that it was producing four times the power of the other mana engine.
The others were behind him. He could hear them debating what was happening. Michael and Toni were adamant that something had gone wrong and the fleeing into the tunnel had not been an overreaction. Even the chosen were on his side.
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“A mana engine upgraded to tier 3.” He told them to stop the debate, which was basically an argument between those who had used magic sense and seen what was happening versus those who hadn’t.
“What?”
“How?”
“Blessed of SANATORIES was that spontaneously?”
“No of course not.”
Michael laughed. “So, your title finally did something and made us shit our pants at the same time.”
Tom nodded still more than a little stunned. They teased him for running. Then mocked him for his good fortune. He shut them out and negotiated terms with a storm elemental. The agreement was not perfect, but Tom got what he needed: a firm commitment that ensure he had the mana regeneration to keep it permanently summoned, but it would be tight and he wouldn’t be able to help with anything else.
In future zones, he would probably only use the lesser versions to free up the rest of his combat abilities, but to protect against the cloud beams they needed the golem to be as powerful as possible.
With it safely in the converted prison, they began their testing.
For thirty minutes, they experimented with the shields that the golem was producing. The initial version powered just by the storm elemental had reflected twenty times the incoming energy. As a proof of concept, that was a huge success but not sufficient for their purposes. There were too many of the small clouds. If the golem remained at that efficiency level, it would be overwhelmed. Everlyn and Harry, with Tom’s support sought to improve the ratio. The purchased funnel convertor was tuned, and then Harry started to transcribe rituals to adjust the energy at a finer level. Every time they tinkered the efficacy of the shield improved. There was an immediate jump to forty percent, fifty, fifty-five, sixty and then despite their efforts the improvements stopped coming.
Even so, a shield that could stop an enemy attack sixty times more powerful than it was impressive.
“It should be enough,” Everlyn declared.
“Maybe,” Harry muttered. “Tom, how is the programming of the control orb going?”
He shrugged. That part of the configuration had been less successful than they had hoped.
“Do you think the angled shields can block fifty percent of the attacks.”
He shrugged again. This time with a smile.
“Spit it out,” Harry insisted.
“I think it works dependably, but it has flaws. The system can’t react fast enough to clouds straight over head… For them there is too little time between being targeted and the beam hitting us.”
“Just the ones over ahead.” Harry mused. “That means the clouds further away.” he pointed. “Can be blocked.”
Tom nodded. “Yeah, providing they’re over two hundred metres away the orb controls can react in time and the elemental will update the software as we go, So, I’m expecting the effective distance we can block at to reduce overtime.”
Harry took the information and did the calculations. “We’ve got enough tolerance.” He said finally. “If the mana engine hadn’t upgraded, we would have needed to push for more efficiency, but with the extra power we’ll be fine.”
“Let’s confirm that before we get too far from safety.” Everlyn suggested.
They moved clear of the flower so they could be targeted from all angles and tested the resilience of the golem. It was coping without an issue. After five minutes, they started their journey in a tight group. The beams targeted them, and the shields deflected them.
The field they were crossing was covered with thick, durable dark grey grass. They were so tough that if they wanted to cut them; they had to use weapon empowered skills. As they travelled, most of the beams got redirected, but one out of every ten struck the ground. Each of those was strong enough to tear apart the grass and dig into the soil underneath. A single split second of exposure left dirt and burnt scraps behind.
There was no hiding their progress. They left a significant trail of destruction in their wake, which would be visible from dozens of kilometres away.
It was a strange process, walking into virgin land and then seeing the landscape get torn apart by a mere byproduct of spells meant to kill you. They could feel the latent heat left behind from the beams and as they jogged close together Tom struggled to understand their power. He was confident that he could survive a hit and probably a few of them, but anymore would stretch his abilities to mitigate and they were not attacks that he would be able to dodge. It explained why the estimate for the cost of skills to weather this had been at the million mark for each of them.
The golem trundled forward and performed perfectly. Despite the hundreds of beams per minute that struck them, the shields the chosen had put in place were not used once. Every incoming beam was reflected away.
“It’s working.” Everlyn said finally. “And to be honest better than I hoped.”
With their safety assured they picked up the pace. There were no enemies to worry about, only twelve locations to visit and then the quest would be complete, which would allow them to leave the zone.
They began to run and even with no monsters to slow them it felt like they were making no progress.
“How long is this going to take.” Michael called out.
Everlyn, Puma, and Rahmat exchanged glances.
It was Everlyn who answered. “The zone’s grown. The early ones were forty kilometres wide. This is a hundred.”
The healer shook his head. “That’s the why, but not an answer. What timelines are we looking at?”
She glanced up at the sky as she mentally did the calculations. “We’re going to have to run about four hundred kilometres. Without the golem, we could do that in two days, but it’s slower than us and we can’t exactly leave it behind. Its pace is our pace. My guess is three days.”
“That’s a fast clear.” Michael allowed.
“But a very boring one.” Keikain said with a smile.
“Personally, I think I’ll enjoy a break from continuously fighting.” Everlyn said.
Tom privately agreed, but he kept his thoughts to himself. He had a reputation to uphold.
They camped for the night in a smaller flower. There was barely enough room for all of them to get their own patch on the floor, but they did fit which was far better than the crystal bowls in the previous zones.
A card game started up, but he declined the offer and instead settled down to sleep. He wanted to check on Jenny and if he was lucky the wador who had been blocking him would try again and he would get to do even more permanent damage.
The true dream sucked him up immediately.
Tom immediately catalogued all the senses he had available. First, it was clear he was in a human. It was not Maher this time, and it took a moment to work out who.
It was Jenny, and she was grumpy and lost in her thoughts.
Bitterness ran through her. This was not going as planned and it was the fault of that stupid skill that Tom had lucked into. She didn’t know how it worked, but she was dealing with the blowback. The last few days had been hell. The wador had turned on them after the last session. Not physically, and none of them had died, but the wador no longer used their superior skills to shield the humans from harm. But rather, they seemed to be enjoying taunting too many monsters dropping them on the humans and leaving them to deal with the consequences. The number of injuries they sustained had skyrocketed and everyone spent most of the day injured because she couldn’t keep up with the volume of lost limbs that were occurring.
In hindsight, she wished the eye had not been destroyed as it had, but the memory also gave her a perverse thrill of pleasure. She remembered the gaping bleeding hole and how she had secretly celebrated inside. Just like any human would. She had not forgotten the bigger picture that they were at war with the wador but since then they had become childish. It was like they were blaming her for Tom’s skill.
She had done nothing wrong. Her squad was innocent, and yet they were taking it out on all of them. Half of her own team was no longer talking to her.
She was furious about the situation.
They should have been getting loot from multiple other teams. Instead, everything was conspiring against her.
Vidja’s and Tom’s group had linked up. If they had been alone, then her group would have been stronger and then the rule of might meant that they would have got their tribute. But together, as they currently were, the relative positions were less clear. It didn’t help that the massive amount of experience each zone delivered had eroded their initial advantage.
The only reason she was confident her squad was still ahead was because their superior tactics had meant that they had done better in the trial, gained more experience and so were presumably higher rank now.
The scraps of information that were shared between teams were probably peppered with lies. She knew that their own communications had been slightly less than truthful, so it was hard to monitor what their relative levels were. She was confident that they had completed more zones than Vidja’s team but fewer than Tom’s, but she didn’t know how the chosen being with Tom had interfered with those calculations. It was manifestly unfair that they had gotten help from an alien species so early.
She glanced at her allies.
Yes, they were the better force to align with than stupid healers who refused to kill anything semi-intelligent. The wador were absolutely terrifying in their competency. With the two groups working in tandem, they had been able to blast through zones in three or four days rather than the week it had taken when her squad was by themselves. Offsetting that faster speed was the lower contribution score their team had got. Instead, of a hundred percent when they did it by themselves, they were averaging less than thirty.
She wasn’t even sure travelling with the wadror made sense once you examined it mathematically but it was close enough to be even that they were continuing with the arrangement.
At least they had an agreement.
Her mind buzzed as she thought about the topic. That was a part of the lock the wador had put in place before Tom’s skill had dismantled him. It was an operational security feature that prevented her from even thinking about what they had agreed. It was to stop Tom from unravelling the plans from her thoughts when the wador wasn’t actively using his skill to shield them.
Until it was time to act or a precognition block was in place, she couldn’t even consider the terms of the deal.
But she knew that it was incomplete.
She just wished they had more time to explore additional scenarios. The blindness toward the other humans and the lack of clarity frustrated her.
The dream broke apart, and Tom woke in the morning with a pounding headache.
Michael laughed when he heard of Jenny’s bad mood and the intel she had let slip. “Only thirty percent contribution. Even if they complete three zones completely, we’re going to outdo them.”
They ran and then settled in for their second night.
In the morning, Everlyn called them all over. “Today we’ll tag the final four sites and after that we need to make a choice. Do we descend early to the next layer or do an extra zone here?”
They debated the pros and cons for a few minutes. There was a risk with staying on the current layer, a chance they might not complete the zone quest in time and all die. But if they did the consensus was that no matter what vagaries or unexpected features it contained they were likely to be able to beat it in time.
“As you said,” Vidja said finally. “We need the experience. In the next zone, we’ll be splitting it between the wador and Selena’s group. This is our last chance at a big payoff. We don’t have a choice especially with the Jenny threat hanging over us.”
With that decided, Everlyn led them out.
Tom fell into step beside her and she glanced sideways at him. A curious look on her face.
Pointedly, he tapped his ear and a moment later the noise of everyone around them vanished. “You didn’t express an opinion.”
“No, I didn’t. This was a choice for the wider group to make.”
“So, you were indifferent to the outcome?” She pointedly failed to respond. “I knew it. You only put it up for everyone to decide because you knew what the decision was going to be”
She smiled. “Like a good scout. I laid out the facts. Nothing more, and Tom I noticed you didn’t say much either. I suspect for the same reasons as me.”