The moment the word left his mouth the rune under his hands lit up and starting from him the other runes also lit up in sequence, bathing the giant chamber in pale blue light that seemed to be fighting for dominance with the white light streaked with darkness.
While the monster’s eyes shined with unnatural insight, as the controlling intelligence behind the miasma realized (at least partially) what was happening, it roared, but by the time it began to do something the blue light emitted by Sam’s runes surrounded it and the rune circle was activated.
Sam watched as the blue light shining from the runes flashed once, twice, then thrice.
The moment the last flash was over, the intelligence from the eyes of the golem vanished, replaced by the more familiar emptiness he had seen in the other golems.
But the changes didn’t stop there.
The runes flashed once again, sending out a pulse of pale blue light parallel to the ground, sweeping along it inside the rune circle until it reached the golem that was still processing what happened to it.
The runes flashed a final time before finally going out, however, the light they released began to pool under the golem, and then began to rise upwards like some kind of scanning from an old sci-fi movie.
The parts that the flat plane of light touched lost their liquid state and, as if drying out insanely fast, turned into a crystallized material akin to obsidian, endlessly reflecting and refracting the white light originating from the stone torches.
Sam watched fascinated as the golem was struck motionless and slowly but surely transformed from a sludge-like consistency into what was basically the same material but all the water (or whatever the miasma considered water) sucked out. Effectively turning the sludge type of golem into a crystal type of golem.
The moment the pale blue plane of magic reached the top of the head of the golem, it stayed there for a fleeting moment and then simply winked out of existence, leaving behind a golem staring directly at Sam.
He grinned, then readied both his sword and magic, because while the sludge golem was rather hard to defeat with physical attacks, a crystal golem was an entirely different story.
Especially with the small white light writhing in the middle of its chest making it look as if the body of the golem was holding the night sky thanks to the refraction.
Obviously, the controlling intelligence was gone, as the golem simply raised its hands and pointed at Sam. He reflexively stepped aside, but to both of their surprise, nothing came from the hands.
Sam watched as the golem processed and then tried it a few times before whatever programming left behind by its controller kicked in and gave up on raining deathly projectiles on Sam and simply raised its hands and charged at him.
Sam, still grinning thanks to his plan coming to fruition, simply dodged the strike by jumping to the side.
“Wind Flurry!”
The wind blades launched from his sword raced directly at the center of the chest of the golem, but it raised its hands just in time. Though it damaged the arms, it was still a bother that it missed.
Sam clicked his tongue but still continued to dodge the very linear charges of the golem.
Because while it was smart (and fast) enough to protect its core, it wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to fight with its new body without the intelligence that his rune circle stripped from it. So, it defaulted to the old charge and smash attack pattern. Which was pretty easy to circumvent…
For a hot minute, the only thing that could be heard in the chamber were Sam’s echoing cries of Wind Flurry (while he internally lamented his lack of attack spells and skills) and the sound of the crystalline golem rumbling along the ground and smashing uselessly into the ground as Sam would inevitably dodge their very linear attack.
Then the sound of a crack could be heard.
Then another and another, until Sam was listening with a small smile to crystal chunks falling to the ground and shattering into even smaller parts as he watched the left hand of the golem practically fall apart.
First little pieces from the part that Sam targeted with his every cast, then bigger pieces began to fall until the golem was standing there with only a small chunk of crystalline material jutting out of its shoulder.
Sam’s smile turned vicious, and he exclaimed.
“Shadow Burst!”
Thanks to his increase in speed, he managed to get around the golem while it was trying to process the loss of one of its arms and made sure to use all three seconds of increased speed that the skill granted him.
He let go of a storm of Wind Blades, mixed with Wind Flurrys as well as Mana Slashes followed by Double Mana Slashes, all aimed at approximately the same spot.
As the skill ended and the golem started turning, there was a nice spot on the surprisingly smooth back of the golem, exactly on top where the light seemed to be housed in its body. The spot was circular, with cracks radiating everywhere.
He took a few steps backwards, waiting for the golem to take a few steps, ramping up for another pointless charge, then without taking his eyes off his enemy, exclaimed.
“Lucky, once more!”
The wolf vanished from his shadow, and once again reappeared behind the golem. At the same moment, the golem began to charge and Lucky launched itself at the back of the golem.
The end result was the golem face-planting with Lucky looking at it wearing a proud look on his face. Sam just ran over, grabbed the hilt of his sword with both hands, and as the golem was attempting to stand up with one hand, channeled almost all of his mana into it and with an incoherent yell slammed it down at the spot he had weakened.
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The golem spasmed a little, then fell motionless, leaving the chamber once again silent. And as the golem lay there, Sam watched as the pinpricks of light in its obsidian-like body went out and with them the torches died down a little, only to come back to life, blazing even stronger, however, they were lacking the black streaks that tainted them previously.
The wall of white fire that locked him into the room also vanished.
Sam twisted the sword a little, making sure that the monster was dead, then pulled it out, scoffed at the broken tip, and threw it away. The low-quality sword landed with a clang that coincided with the notification sound going off in his head.
[Congratulations, you defeated the Boss of the Ironwood Glade Ruins!]
The monster in front of him simply collapsed into itself, turning into dust in a few moments, leaving behind a softly glowing white ball.
Nodding at the confirmation that he was done, he leaned down and softly lifted the glowing ball of light with his palm. He had to shut down his Mage Sight, as the ball of light without the obscuring effect of the dark miasma almost blinded him with its intensity.
He spent a few moments observing it with his Mana Sense, but the only feeling he got was that it was filled with an overwhelming amount of life energy.
‘Probably some kind of energy used to maintain the trees…’
Looking at the ball of light in his palm and the giant ball of rock cradled by the stone roots that lost almost all of its shine, now that the miasma golem was defeated, Sam knew what he had to do.
So, he simply walked up to it and pressed the ball of light into it.
Technically, he could have stored the ball of life energy away for later use, but that would have invalidated his quest and more than likely would have made him a lot of enemies…
The moment the light sunk into the giant rock, it began to spin with ever-increasing speed while the light seemed to seep out of the cracks that before were filled with miasma.
This continued until he was watching a rapidly spinning rock in the middle of the room shining with the same light he held in his hands, but somehow more.
And there was a pleasant feeling radiating from it.
Sam felt at peace…
“Oh, that is why it was sooo familiar!”
Sam would forever deny that he yelped in surprise and jumped into the air as a voice sounded next to him.
Looking down at the origin of the voice, he saw to his consternation, the giant cricket that was supposed to be staying outside.
The cricket turned towards him with her entire body and had the gall to smirk at him. Sam didn’t know how it worked on a cricket body…
“I never said I’d stay outside, child of man. By the way, excellent fight!”
After a few moments, Sam managed to grunt out a sentence. “Thank you?”
“You’re most welcome, young Sam!” came the chirpy reply, and the cricket turned back to staring at the glowing orb of life energy rotating in the middle of the room.
Sam let the silence fill the room for a while as he gained control over his hammering heart, but in the end, he needed to know.
“Why is it so familiar, ma’am?”
There was a moment as the cricket hummed, then with a poof of magic, turned back into her humanoid form, still standing next to Sam, and reaching out with her hand towards the rotating globe.
She seemed to almost caress the rock.
“I was here when this place was made. I was the guardian. But it got boring, so I went to sleep…” She paused and Sam had to fight hard not to roll his eyes at the very cliché development. “But something corrupted the link, something dark and evil. But now that you removed it, it seems the connection is back, and with it, my memories, child of man.”
“I’m glad to hear?” said Sam, not knowing what else to say.
“You should be. If the darkness had been able to completely consume the life energy, then it would have spelled doom for the forest and the land beyond it.”
“Makes sense.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” came the whimsical reply as the humanoid cricket continued to caress the rock almost lovingly.
Sam glanced at the glowing rock and the humanoid monster that seemed to be almost out of it
“Now what?”
The monster retrieved her hand from the glowing rock and turned towards him; her face set into a knowing smirk.
“Now, child of man, you do me a favor and you can retrieve your prize and leave.”
Sam simply raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Up there is a crack where the miasma is seeping in,” she said, pointing upwards into the darkness of the ceiling of the chamber. “You fix that crack, and I’ll give you what you seek.”
“And what about the origin of the miasma?”
The answer he received didn’t surprise him much.
“Don’t worry, now that I’m awake and aware, I can express my displeasure to them about what constitutes as good neighborly behavior!”
He couldn’t help but shudder at the tone, but he still couldn’t pity the fools that dabbled in things that resulted in things like the miasma that he had been fighting for the last few hours.
Shaking his head, then nodded and headed for one of the sides of the chamber, while the giant humanoid cricket turned back to the glowing rock filled with life energy without a word with Lucky wandering next to her and sitting down and curiously staring at the same rock.
He walked up to the wall, placed his hand on it and cast Earth Wall, creating a foothold. He tested it and, seeing as it took his body weight, he did a few times until he had a very neat but probably dangerous staircase leading up to the ceiling of the chamber.
A minute of climbing later he stood under the ceiling looking for the leak like some kind of fantasy contractor.
‘Well, an adventurer is a kinda contractor, so it works…’ he mused while searching. “Ahh, there it is!”
After spotting, it took a little maneuvering before he stood under it, giving thanks that he wasn’t afraid of heights, and with a brief application of Earth Wall and a little extra and the crack in the stone ceiling was filled not just on the surface level but deeper inside.
While he was up there, Sam used his Mana Sense to probe in the direction the miasma seemed to be coming from, and almost fell from recoil from touching the dark mana that seemed to permeate the rock.
‘That’s some baaad juju…’
Following that, he quickly returned to the ground, canceling the Earth Walls he had created.
Soon, he was once again standing next to the guardian and Lucky, who were staring at the rotating orb, transfixed.
He cleared his throat gently, causing his wolf companion to fall over in surprise and the giant cricket to turn towards him.
“It’s done.”
“I know. Here is your reward.” A simple chalice appeared in his hand, made from, to his not-surprise, ironwood with filigree made from iron. “Thank you for your help, child of man. But it is time for you to leave, and for me to chastise a few people…”
Sam was about to answer, but between two blinks, he found himself standing back in the clearing from where he entered the ruins. The archway he used was conspicuously missing, and he could hear in the far distance screams of despair.
He hesitated for a moment, but in the end, Sam decided it wasn’t his job to deal with that, so he turned around, motioning for Lucky to follow him, and began to examine the chalice while leisurely walking and trying to ignore the wails of the damned.
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The way back to the city of Ironwood was a little more complicated than his journey from it, as several fights between guilds had broken out over the troll farming spots and he had to make an effort to avoid those or sneak through them.
Thankfully, he was lucky enough that nobody spotted him, or if they spotted him, they realized he wasn’t part of the fighting guilds and let him go.
Just to be sure, he did the entire journey in disguise using his nifty little chameleon mask.
He arrived back at the city gates, exhausted but triumphant.
Ignoring the small beggar child with too white and too many teeth giving him a thumbs up near the road leading to the gates, he checked his clothing and armor and headed towards the old ranger’s house.
He had a quest to complete.