Tough bastard, aren’t you? Will himself wasn’t sure which of the combatants he was talking to. OK. The golem is slow, and I can probably avoid its attacks without much of a problem, and if needed, I can run away. Question is, can I even hurt it? Damn thing is made out of earth and rocks. Then again, my claws are actually meant to dig tunnels, aren’t they? Wouldn’t that mean that they’ll be effective against it?
Figuring that this was one fight where charge wouldn’t be the best strategy to use, Will approached the golem carefully. The monster was too busy attacking the pickled Wild Sage to spare any attention for the approaching wombat, and Will managed to get withing striking distance easily. Choosing a moment just after the golem attacked his minion, Will jumped in and clawed at the golem.
The monster was significantly harder than packed earth had any right to be, but Will’s claws, covered with bronze and boosted by a skill, were enough to open deep wounds? Holes? Trenches? In its body.
Still, the monster was a lot bigger than Will, and the damage, in comparison, was slight. Which meant that what followed was a long and drawn-out fight, in which the golem tried (and failed) to hit Will, and the wombat slowly whittled the monster down to nothing.
Literally whittled it down, since the golem didn’t seem to have any actually critical spots, and just kept fighting until there was nothing left of it but a pile of earth and stones.
Even more annoying for Will, halfway through the fight the charge lighting up the golem’s body ran out, dropping Will back into complete darkness. Not that the golem was fast enough to take advantage of Will’s sudden blindness. The wombat simply cast Shock Bolt in burst mode, and lit the golem back up.
And the battle took so much time that he wasn’t ever in danger of running out of mana. All told, Will figured that it took nearly an hour to finish the battle, and while he came out of it completely unhurt, he was also winded and tired, and had to sit down and rest for another ten minutes before he could continue.
1 Earth Golem slain!
Gained 20 XP
This is going to be an exhausting Space, isn’t it?
Ten more minutes were spent on harvesting the pile of earth that used to be a golem, yielding something called “Living Earth”, at good quality. The room at the end of the tunnel had two places where Will felt he could mine, and Will managed to collect two more chunks of iron ore from one, which he attributed to Plenty activating, and a single Stonelight Crystal from the other.
Which, just as he’d expected, could be used to give light for up to one hour.
Yeah, that’s not going to be worth using, I think. It’ll give me light for at most one fight, at the rate these are going. I’m probably better off getting enough for the quest and leaving.
Rested and with full resource pools, Will went back to the main cave, still using the same tactic of casting shock ball to light up fifty meters of tunnel at a time.
He’d managed to find another mining node about twenty meters after the tunnel, this one yielding just a single Chunk of Iron Ore again.
Twenty meters later was another tunnel. Will sent a Shock Ball down the tunnel to alert the resident golem to his presence. This time, however, instead of the ponderous clanking sound the first Earth Golem made when it walked, Will heard a quieter, susurrating sound. And it was moving fast.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Half panicking, Will launched another Shock Ball into the tunnel, and watched the skill slam into a figure just as big as the other Earth Golem, but made out of sand instead of earth and rocks.
By the time Will’s spell had hit, the sand golem was halfway through the tunnel. It looked more like a snake made out of sand, with large sandstone fangs, which it bared in Will’s direction. The susurrating sound Will had heard was the grains of sand making up its body scraping against the stone floor of the cave as it slithered.
The one bright spot about it, quite literally, was that the Shock Ball was grounded through its body, hitting it enough to melt patches of sand and turn them into molten glass, and whatever was animating the golem couldn’t seem to control the glass like it did the sand, which was already slowing the thing down a little.
Will sent his minion ahead of him to attack the golem, and started backing away while casting Shock Ball as fast as he could. The pickle couldn’t actually hurt the monster, but the golem didn’t seem smart enough to understand where the shock balls were coming from, and stopped to engulf the Wild Sage.
Four Shock Balls later, the sand golem was more glass than sand, and had stopped moving. The victory message marked it as a “Quicksand Earth Golem”, which Will figured was as good an explanation for its speed as he was likely to get.
The pickled Wild Sage, which got caught inside the golem when it was glassed, remained behind when the golem’s body disappeared after being harvested, looking none the worst for wear.
Harvesting the golem got Will a Sphere of Thunderglass, and the room beyond yielded two Lightstone Crystals and another Chunk of Iron Ore.
The next side room had a Crankscout. This one looked like the first Earth Golem, except built out of the by now familiar bronze plates and gears. It was, however, almost entirely covered in mud. Presumably its means of camouflage.
The Crankscout didn’t seem to be any faster than the first Earth Golem had been. Will had no idea why that was. The other Crankscouts he’d fought were a lot faster. Best he could guess was that the things were trying to behave like whatever it was they were supposed to be camouflaged as, and therefore it couldn’t move faster than the Earth Golem it was mimicking.
Not that it mattered all that much, since the Crankscout didn’t have even close to the resiliency of the Earth Golem, and Will’s claws just ripped through its thin bronze plates with ease.
Even better, Will’s new Harvester skill actually worked on the clockwork monster, and Will got a brass cog for his trouble.
The rest of Will’s time in the Heart of the Earth wasn’t much harder. He’d gotten another Stonelight Crystal from the Crankscout’s room, as well as a Chunk of Iron Ore and another of Silver Ore. Will assumed that the silver was due to Plenty activating again, but had no way to be sure.
He fought one more basic Earth Golem after that, and got the final Crystal and another Iron Ore for his trouble.
The reward for finishing the quest was, of course, a Miner Skill Shard. Which Will was at least fifty percent sure he’d be getting, so wasn’t that much of a disappointment.
With the quest done, Will had a whopping four hundred and fifteen XP to work with, and for once he had a very good idea of what he wanted to do with them.
Until I upgrade Shock Ball so it can hit things with lightning resistance, I’m going to have to boost my damage from other sources. The problem is that there’s just so many of them! It’s almost like there are entire Spaces just meant to counter me. And my only other option is to level up the Claw Proficiency skill again. So that’s two hundred XP.
Skill shard: Claw Proficiency
Tier: Basic
Type: Beast
Level 3
XP 0/300
Increase the damage of natural claws and claw weapons by one category.
Level 2: Add one level of armor piercing to natural claws and claw weapons.
Level 3: Increase damage by one more category for natural claws and claw weapons.
The claws that catch!
More damage. Nice! That leaves me with two hundred fifteen more, which is enough to boost Plenty to level two. It’s already getting me more loot, and leveling it up will increase that and the chances to get better loot. More and better loot means more money, and more money means more options in the future.
Plenty didn’t get any new abilities at level two, but Will now had a one in five chance for extra loot, one in ten for getting a higher quality drop, and two percent for a special item drop, which he had some serious hopes for.
Satisfied with his upgrades, Will did his business and moved to the next Space. Which he was certain would be the upper left corner Space, since he’d be able to stop at the merchant type Space he assumed would be there.