He studied the movements of the monsters intently, noting that they seemed to be moving on predetermined tracks. They never got more than five hundred feet away from the book, and never closer than three hundred feet to the cavern wall. Their senses seemed to be dulled as well, as none of them had detected him yet.
Jonathan edged over towards the side of the drop off to the cavern, and waited for some time, trying to get the timing down on the movements of the monsters. They were all on different paths, winding around the center in a way that no mortal being would have been able to keep up perfectly for so long. Jonathan noticed that there were a few more of the glyphs that he had seen on the coffins on the ground, tracing out the lines that the monsters were following. If he was able to disable those lines, then perhaps he would be free to claim the book in the center. The only problem was that he would only have one shot at this, and he knew that even if he managed to disable one of the monsters, the other ones would then be after his blood.
Jonathan picked up a small chunk of rock off the ground, and eyed up his target, trying to aim for a tiny spot in the center of the nearest line. His body locked into place as he did so, allowing him to make the throw without a single millimeter of movement. His enhanced senses and Dexterity ensured that his rock went off perfectly, and his superior strength ensured that it went in a straight line, making it so that he did not have to account for any deviance. In addition, his enhanced intelligence allowed him to calculate the trajectory in real time. In short, he had become a pretty damn good baseball player now.
Jonathan watched as the stone rocketed through the air, straight on course for its target. There was a sharp retort like a gunshot, and the stone shattered. The glyph that it had struck flared with a bright light, and then exploded, sending up a small cloud of debris. The monster that had been tracing that line out stiffened, and then turned towards Jonathan, a bright light building within its empty jaws. Jonathan swore and ducked just as a beam of black energy shot out of its mouth, and burned through the roof behind him. There was a hole running all the way to the surface where it had hit, and Jonathan was glad that he had not been struck by that attack. However, the lack of noise from down in the cavern meant that the monster had been somewhat subdued by his idea.
He looked down over the edge once more, noticing that the monster had run out of energy, and was now simply looking up at him, trying to recover its power. He could already see the way that he would have to do this. The rings that the monsters were running along intersected one another, and they were able to cover all of the blind spots of the other two creatures. However, if he was able to disable the glyphs in the right spots, and bait out an attack from the monsters all at one time, he would be able to enter the cavern and abscond with the book before he was blasted into atoms.
Jonathan began to gather rocks, of which he was going to need a lot. If this was to work he would need a lot of stones to account for his error. The first strike had been easy enough, but he would have to account for more variables on the later throws, especially the ones targeting the third ring, which was shielded from his view somewhat by the large monsters that were standing there. He was also quite a bit further away from that one, by about double the distance.
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Jonathan waited until he was sure of his safety, and then lobbed a second one of the rocks towards the second ring in the cavern. His aim was true, but one of the monsters sent off a beam of energy that knocked the strike out of the air, causing it to fall to the ground, in a pile of dust. It seemed that they had been alerted to his attacks now, and this would not be as easy of a task as he had thought. As he realized what this meant, he ducked, as a trio of beams shot through the space where his head had been, burrowing up into the ground. He had almost lost his head from that triple strike, but at least he knew that he had some time now before more of the attacks came his way.
Jonathan took another rock up from his pile, and threw it towards the second ring, trying to block off the section of the cavern facing him. His strike landed true, and the glyph exploded, locking the monster out of the area that it guarded. Jonathan pumped his fist, and then threw another rock, as the corpse giant rounded the corner of the ring, managing to separate another part of the ring from it. Now there was a tunnel that was about fifty feet wide going straight towards the center of the cavern, that he could potentially run along. All that stood between him and the book was the final circle of the array laid out before him.
Jonathan readied another rock, but he noticed that the monsters were almost ready to fire again, and he ducked down as they did so, watching as the powerful attacks shot up through the ceiling above him. They contained quite a bit of power, and Jonathan was glad that the monsters were not intelligent enough to use them properly. By his count, it took about fifteen seconds for the creature to charge up their attacks fully, which meant that his avenue for success in removing the book was so small that it was almost nonexistent. He would have to cross almost half a mile of distance to get the book, all while trying to make it out in time to avoid a blast that would end his life. No big deal.
Jonathan sprang up, and tossed the final rock, destroying a part of the third ring with it. As the corpse giant defending that part of the cavern charged around its ring, trying to get to the damaged part, he threw another one that blocked off the other half of the ring. Jonathan waited there for a few more seconds to bait out another beam attack, and as the lances of dark energy shot up above his head, he slipped over the side of the cavern wall, and was off running towards the book.
He unleashed all of his speed, taxing his muscles in the process. Streaking across the ground at over five hundred miles per hour really taxed his body, but he was able to maintain it for long enough to make a difference. He was now moving so fast that he was akin to a superhero from any of those comics back on Earth, and he certainly had the strength to back it up as well. He was rapidly turning out to be some sort of Superman.
By the time that he had reached the first ring, his stamina was a quarter gone, and he was forced to slow down a little. The corpse giant that was locked within the ring there snarled at him, and tried to get past the edge of the glyph barrier, but found that it was unable too. Jonathan ignored it, not wanting to waste even a second of valuable time, and crossed the second ring two seconds later. He calculated the time that he had left, and realized that he needed to pick up the pace some more. Groaning in pain, Jonathan forced himself to go back at his top speed for a bit, reaching the final ring barely a second later. He streaked past its guardian, and reached the pedestal a moment later, grabbing the book off of it.