I call back, and the other end comes up busy. I toss the phone to the side and punch the goon one last time.

I make a pitstop at what used to be my home. My [Broken Body Gui] should have survived the damage, so I don't have to stay naked.

I spot commotion around my house as I ride on Duchess' back high up in the night's sky.

The enforcers showed up and started questioning the bystanders, so I sent Rob to grab my clothes in my stead since he's the only one with stealth abilities. I check my system messages.

[Resistance Fire: 70 > 150]

[Resistance Force: 89 > 125]

[Resistance Blunt: 201 > 220]

Once Rob reappeared with my things, we headed off to the strip mall.

~

We can't keep traversing the skies because we will eventually get spotted, and that would bring issues that I don't have time to deal with. It doesn't help that I'm obviously being watched.

Someone or something must be keeping tabs on me. The timing of the mysterious phone call and catching me the first night I got home with a bomb is too coincidental for my liking. But I don't sense anything, and neither do my beasts.

It's almost like the walls have eyes, watching my every move. What else can be stalking me but the surroundings themselves. It's not like I can sneak around with my entourage of sharks, and the alleyways have so many walls, so I might as well take the main road.

I wonder the reasoning behind meeting me at a strip mall of all places. If the mysterious phone guy wanted a public area with shops, there is a massive shopping center close to the strip of dingy shops.

The strip mall is a "U" shape of shops with a fountain in the middle, next to a waffle kiosk.

The waffle "kiosk" sits central to a hardware store and a toy shop. There is no one here except for someone making waffles and a man sitting, waiting for his food even though he already has a stack of waffles in front of him.

The gentleman sitting at the table wears an expensive suit without the jacket. His hair is trimmed neatly, and he is without facial hair. He seems to be middle age, but appearances are deceiving in this day and age. Everything about him screams prim and proper, but his fingers are scarred and deformed like he put his hands into a millstone every day for the past decade.

I want answers. Before rushing ahead without a care, I activate [Scientific Insight+]

[??? lv 100]

He gestures for me to sit across from him.

I can pull a "vigilante's justice" and push him down and strong-arm some answers out of him, but hearing what he wants to say to me won't change my disposition about thrashing him for conspiring against Flash Gordon and me.

I sit down with Rob standing at my side. Duchess and Khan stay ominously in the sky, waiting for any combat to spark. The gentleman puts down his fork and knife and wipes his mouth with a silk handkerchief.

"I miscalculated. I thought the explosion was enough to incapacitate you long enough that you wouldn't even realize what was missing. You are much more hardy than projected. Your other beasts appearing was also out of my calculations since I didn't spot them at your domicile."

My eyes narrow.

"I also apologize about the hair. Alchemy had some great advances in hair growth. You should look into that."

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Is that vulgarity your only question, Ellis?"

"No. You have to entertain my language since I'm very close to committing a crime against you. You know who I am, so who are you."

"I am somebody you cannot deny, and I want something you have. Do you know the value of the rock you personalized? An unranked [Elemental Stone] is casually possessed by some newly awakened that still hasn't left the city he was born in. Any golemancer would kill for such a perfect core material, and I am not just any golemancer."

He stands from the table and keeps talking.

"I am both a warrior and a poet, and I let the wrong emotions get the hold of me once I first spotted the [Elemental Stone]. I should have done this from the start instead of having to waste resources crafting bombs."

Plural? That doens't forbode well.

"Give me the stone. Name your price, or I will take it from you here and now."

I pause to think for a moment, not about the "deal" he offered me but all the information he spouted out during his monologue. I can derive most of my answers from those words.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

The motive is clear, and I learned about his occupation. I can start finding an identity with this. The gentleman golemancer probably doesn't have too great of a watch on me since he doesn't know about the magnificent mansion or that I'm leaving the city in a few weeks. It could be second-hand sources supplying this info, but I bet he has surveillance drones hidden as everyday objects.

"Alright. I have on stipulation."

"Oh, and what might that be."

"Kill yourself."

"Pardon?"

I look him dead in the eyes.

"If you do the deed for me, I'll have to repay you. Won't I?"

I go to stand up and punch him, but the chair I'm sitting on animates. The armrest of this metal furniture binds around my one arm as the legs bind against mine.

The table jumps up and pins Rob before he could sneak attack the golemancer or help free me.

Once the waffle kiosk twisted and transformed itself to have arms and legs, I realized everything here was a fucking golem. Even the employee making the fucking waffles was nothing but an animated construct.

Golems of all shapes and sizes start swarming out of the surrounding shops. I'm most afraid of the concealed mass of metal and buzz saws from the constructs that left that hardware store.

Not only can this fuckers golems transform, but they can also voltron together?

Once the physical buildings of the strip mall started to shake their foundations off, the gravity of the situation hit me.

"I'll be taking this."

The golemancer pulls Flash Gordon from my inner pocket. He starts tossing him up in down in front of me.

"Don't bother sicking your beasts on me. They'll die before they can reach my feet."

I refuse to reply to this man.

"You know, Ellis. When I watched your cage fight against that barbarian, I was unimpressed. It was two brutes wailing on each other. Very uncivilized. Where did such a boorish being as yourself find such a magnificent rock?"

Flash Gordon was at an apex of an arc when he said those words. Instead of falling back into his hand, Flash Gordon floated.

"How peculiar-"

Flash Gordon slammed himself right into this guy's nose.

-630

Instead of a shower of gore, or at minimum, a broken nose, the golemancer was unfazed as a random approaching golem shatters into pieces.

I force my muscles to fight against the steel binding my body, twisting it as I fully stand up.

I already exhausted my [Broken Blood], so if I run out of mana, I'll probably die. My whole fighting style banks on my overbearing resistance and healing. If one of those fails, then I'm at half capacity.

I bit down near my arm, and my teeth sunk into the metal. I ignore the taste of my blood as I tear my arm free from the metal bindings. I make quick work of this chair golem now that my arm is free, turning it into scrap.

I kick one of the table legs off and give Rob enough breathing room to slip away.

Duchess and Khan should have already swooped down with some timely assistance. I glace up and saw why the golemancer was so confident.

The sky is covered by hundreds of flying drones, most taking the form of city-dwelling birds, like a pigeon or crow. Golems that must have come from a sporting center hurl baseballs and nets at my beasts.

Duchess uses [Telekinesis] to redirect projectiles away from them and fly the bigger drones into one another while Khan brings his wrath down on the aerial drones.

My jab heading to the golemancer's skull is blocked by the waffle golem, which is unfortunately not made of waffles.

It presses a waffle iron against my skin, but it's nothing compared to the explosion I endured earlier.

I sick Rob on this thing, so Flash Gordon and I can put our focus on the mastermind behind this.

"Ellis, your face gives the impression that you want to kill me? You'd be horrible at my poker table."

I roundhouse his head, but instead of a satisfying crunch, the golemancer disappears, and a teddy bear is left in his place. The plush toy is turned into scraps and stuffing.

"Now, now. Aiming for the head is ungentlemanly, not that I expected anything more from you."

I turn to the sound of his voice and spot him on top of one of the animated shops. Switching places? I try to launch myself towards him, but I get interrupted by dozens of teddy bears and dolls that start clinging to me. A cursory glance of my surrounding shows that there are possibly thousands of golems in the surrounding area.

I wonder what the limit of this guy's power is. Is he untouchable in a fight as long as he has his summons? I glance at Rob. He gets hit in the head by a waffle but is unfazed, finishing off the waffle golem with a wack of his shovel.

"..."

The golems are kinda trash. Their numbers are impressive, but they aren't any more dangerous or durable than their nonanimated counterparts. Even if these dolls had knives, they wouldn't be any threat.

A couple of the dolls pull out their back strings, and instead of a voice line, I get a foreboding feeling. I tried throwing the dolls off of me, but I couldn't get all of them.

Multiple grenades detonated next to me, but instead of dying to shrapnel and the point-blank explosions, I was only heavily damaged by the suicide attack.

[Resistance Fire: 150 > 165]

[Resistance Force: 125 > 153]

[Resistance Piercing: 100 > 147]

Unfortunately, my fire resistance is much higher than my piercing resistance, so my wounds aren't as cauterized as I like them to be.

My blood starts dripping like raindrops onto the slurry of cotton and waffle debris that I'm left with. I stare daggers at the golemancer as I spit blood and a few teeth out from my battered body.

I use my healing liberally since I don't need a full health bar to fight effectively. A hidden perk that the [Broken Body] martial art gave.

Although it doesn't look like it, Flash Gordon was damaged from the explosion even though he should have been relatively fine from that position.

"You must have brunt some of that damage for me. Thanks, you magnificent guard."

"Are you thanking it? Although it's a magnificent stone, it's still only a rock. You do know that, right?"

I hurl Flash Gordon with all my strength at the golemancer. He only sticks out his hand and catches Flash Gordon. The store golem next to the one he's standing on becomes demolished instead of the golemancer.

"I'll be taking this."