A pair of [Magic Missile]s slam into the arms of the golem, raised to defend itself against the attack. The concussive force of the spell shatters the stone where they impact at the shoulders, and a second pair of [Magic Missile]s slam into the golem's chest, breaking all the way to its core.

[Combat] is now Level 4! +100 HP +1 Strength +1 Constitution

As much HP as the golems here on the fifth floor have, my Magic is high enough to do plenty of damage with this spell. Breaking off its arms dealt a significant amount both from the impacts and from the arms breaking off. HP isn't a stat of "what damage you've taken" so much as "how much more damage you can take right now before your body succumbs to your wounds". By first inflicting damage to the arms and then removing them, I doubled up on that.

In other words, even if the golem had managed to regenerate its missing limbs before the next wave of attacks, it would have still died from the next attacks because it was still missing HP and the loss of the arms had removed a significant chunk of it.

Just as wounds can heal without HP healing, so too can HP recover without restoring wounds. Not all injuries can recover from our passive HP regeneration. Cuts and burns can heal pretty easily through it, but broken bones might not and missing limbs won't. We aren't golems, we can't just grab stone from around us and use that as new arms. Just grabbing new stone won't let them recover their HP, either, as it's not a real recovery.

Both of those are things we need to keep in mind while on this floor. The monsters here can hurt either one of us pretty bad if an attack actually connects. Thomas has probably managed to reach around or above 1,000 HP between his weapon-related Skills and [Combat], but I'm only at 500 HP right now. I can use healing magic, yes, but if we take damage faster than I can heal it, we're dead.

Even if not, the pain might still prevent us from acting as quickly as necessary.

"We should probably start swapping things," Thomas tells me. "The last few of the sturdy stones on this floor have been pretty heavy."

"Yeah," I say. "Let's-"

I cut off and yank him toward me with [Telekinesis], sending him falling to the ground behind me as loot spills out of the basket pack on his back. Shock and rage fills his mind but I don't care. In the moment after I throw him, I thrust my hands forward and conjure a series of [Barrier]s.

Invisible due to me not bothering to weaken it for Thomas's sake, the [Barrier]s are only noticeable for a moment, when an attack strikes them. Even then, the full hexagonal planes of magical force aren't visible, only the area around the strike. At my current power, each one is 12.5" on each side, though I have them pressed against each other to form a nearly seamless wall.

As the golem pulls back for another attack, I send a quartet of [Magic Missile]s at it, though the golem vanishes the moment before they connect despite the close range.

I spin and throw four [Magic Missile]s forward, past Thomas, who has barely begun to scramble to his feet. The spells soar over his head and slam into the dark grey golem before another wall of [Barrier]s stops its attempt at slamming both of its rock-hands down onto the hunter.

All four of my [Magic Missile]s struck one of its arms and while they shattered some of the stone, its limbs are thick enough that it took all four to break it off there. They struck halfway up the arm so it hasn't lost the full thing, but that's fine.

It vanishes again and I feel the surprise in Thomas's mind increase. He was confused by it suddenly being behind him but has realized that something else is going on.

A thunk sounds out as the golem rams into the [Barrier] wall right beside me. I thrust my hand forward and the golem vanishes, only for four [Magic Missile]s to slam into its damaged arm as it reappears by Thomas.

This thing is tough enough I need to go full-power so it can't see them coming. Those four were cast right before it teleported and as it teleports again, I send the next wave out.

They slam into it right when it appears beside me, breaking its right arm off at the shoulder. Its next teleport results in it losing the rest of its left arm. This thing has a predictable attack pattern, and I take advantage of it to eliminate its legs as well.

That should be enough damage, so I go for its head next. Thomas has returned to his feet by the time the golem's head is destroyed, and the beast still teleports again to try and attack us, its body simply moving forward in an attempt at a body slam.

It takes three more quartets of [Magic Missile]s to take out the rest of the golem's HP and when it fades, it leaves behind a little bit different loot than before. There are two large crystals, a fist-sized clump of ore, a sturdy stone the size of my head, and another stone of equal size which is the same color as the golem was.

[Combat] is now Level 5! +100 HP +1 Strength +1 Constitution

[Casting] is now Level 4! +100 MP +1 Magic +1 Mind

It seems I was near a new Level in [Casting] and one of those last spells pushed me to the threshold, while [Combat] went up just because of how much Skill Experience fighting a warp golem grants to it.

"That one seemed a lot more tough than the others," Thomas says. "It ain't from this floor, is it?"

"It is," I tell him. "It wasn't harder or stronger, it just had some extra magical ability and a lot more HP. Think of it as a type of 'boss' among monsters. It doesn't actually command the others, but it's stronger than them. Technically, it was a mini-boss. Its movements were too simple to be a proper boss, which would've realized quickly that its attack strategy was bad. Let's get the loot."

Thomas and I gather up the old loot, and I have some of the items moved to the side of the tunnel. Those are the ones we'll be discarding, though we might grab them in another trip into here.

The first of the new loot items moved into the basket pack is the darker stone.

[Spatial Stone] A durable stone with concentrated spatial magic essence contained within it.

"Why's this one different?" Thomas asks as he sets it at the bottom of his pack.

"Magic," I answer. "It's not just a stone but one with spatial magics, the same sort of magical energy which let the golem teleport. Instant movement between two places without actually crossing the distance. The stone can be used to create certain types of wards, but also to make a type of waystone. The one here is specially designed to allow warping through the denser mana of the mines, but inferior versions can be made for warping outside of here. This stone will allow for that, but not for within denser mana."

Stolen novel; please report.

"I'm only going to pretend to understand half of that."

"That's fine," I chuckle. "The other stone is just a normal sturdy stone, but I still want it. It's strong enough to make a good base for when I build a house."

"Okay," he says. "And the darker crystal and ore?"

One of the two crystals is just a plain magic crystal of a deep blue color. The other is dark grey, almost black, and is touched with a silvery color in aurora-like streaks when the light hits it right.

[Spatial Magic Crystal] A piece of crystallized spatial magic essence.

As for the ore clump, it's a similarly-dark grey metal, raw but pure.

[Spatial Mithril] Pure spatial mithril, this ore is excellent for harnessing spatial enchantments and channeling spatial magics.

"They're what I'm actually here for," I inform him. "A chunk of crystallized spatial magic essence and a type of magical metal called 'mithril', of the spatial magic variety. It normally starts being found after about ten levels in a Labyrinth, but you can get lucky and find them sooner. With how long it's been since someone was last here, though, I was confident we might find some sooner."

"Why's that?"

"Because it continues to generate new stuff over time," I explain. "One of the reasons Labyrinths exist is because of strong amount of ambient mana," I've already explained ambient mana to him during his lessons, so I don't need to clarify it here. "The shifts in the tunnels, the spawning of monsters, the formation of items, all of it is the location's way of dealing with that.

"When mana gathers too high for the area it's in," I continue. "It needs some sort of outlet. That's what causes items and monsters to spawn and things to mutate. When that area starts getting too full to spawn in more things, it switches to strengthening or mutating what's already there. Sometimes, it'll let more mana gather, then create something with abilities or properties not normally found there."

I toss the spatial magic crystal up in the air, then catch it.

"Like this," I say. "Nearly all spatial magic items such as ores and crystals are found in such situations. Their 'natural' location is much deeper due to the energy itself being pretty complex and needing more to create but it's a good way to burn up some of that extra mana. The amount of the energy within the ore still matches that of the area it's found in, but the size of the loot is indicative of how much mana went into the beast. A lot was spent on that golem."

"Oh," Thomas doesn't fully understand, but I think that's the best I can explain right now. "So we're done now?"

"No," I point down the tunnel. "I noticed it before the golem attacked, but you can see a darker boulder up there. One the same color as the spatial stone. Once it breaks, it'll drop probably one of the three. It's actually why I turned down this tunnel instead of going straight. We should get more while we're here and hope we can find another ore or crystal I'm looking for. That one's pale grey, almost white."

"What's it for?"

"Time magics," I answer. "The spatial magic crystal and mithril can be used to make a spatial pocket… see this big boulder?"

There's more than one thing I want these for, but only one of them is really something I can explain to him easily. Some concepts don't exist out here and he needs to get built up to being able to understand them.

Going straight to explaining pocket dimension to someone who's never even heard of dimensions before would just be far too confusing for him. Fortunately, one of the uses is pretty simple to explain.

"Yeah?" Confusion fills his mind at the sudden shift.

"See this rock?" I point at one of the sturdy stones we're leaving here.

"Yeah?"

"I can fit the boulder into a space the size of the stone with spatial magics."

"How?"

"I can use spatial magic to expand the space," I answer. "Make an empty area bigger, such as giving a bottle the same amount of volume as an urn on the inside while still being the size of a bottle on the outside. The amount of material for the bottle wouldn't change, either – I can literally take a bottle and put an enchantment on it which will make the inside, and only the inside, bigger."

Judging by the feel of his mind, he mostly understands.

"Alright," he says. "And you want to do that with your stuff?"

"My cabin, to be specific," I tell him. "It'll be a little while before I can build a proper cabin for myself, but I can update the current temporary one to have a bigger space inside, thus allowing me to store goods. With the time-based ones, I can create a stasis box, a container where time doesn't pass within. That will keep foods good permanently."

"Sounds really useful," he says.

"And difficult to find," I say. "But these mines might have some on this floor. Let's finish up here and continue searching."

As we explore the fifth floor, I destroy several boulders to swap their goods into the pack. We also collect some of the mana crystals that formed down here. They glow faintly, a sign of a high amount of mana contained within them for their size. A single cubic inch of one of these contains more mana than the entire amount that Thomas collects in a trip to the first and second floors, and some of these crystal clusters are as large as our heads.

I also make sure we mine some of the plain magic crystals which grow down here, swapping out the lesser ones from the pack.

A second warp golem earns me another level to [Combat], though [Casting] is left untouched. The strategy for it was the exact same as well so it wasn't difficult to defeat, and I noticed it soon enough to avoid needing to throw Thomas.

Something he's grateful for.

"There's a very light boulder that way," Thomas tells me at an intersection and I look down it. "Is that what you were hoping for?"

"It might be," I walk toward the boulder. "A much better target for acquiring what I want than a time-based golem."

"You ain't able to beat 'em?" There's surprise in his mind.

"They're as simple as the warp golems," I say. "But they're capable of hasting themselves, making themselves quicker through time magics. They can also slow their targets down and even slow down spells soaring toward them. I can beat them, but they're annoying to take down."

We reach the boulder, and with a small prayer to the gods that this has ore rather than crystal, I place a hand on it and shatter it with a pulse of force magic. A fist-sized crystal that's pale grey, almost white drops to the ground as the boulder fades away, and I let out a small groan.

[Temporal Magic Crystal] A piece of crystallized temporal magic essence.

"You didn't want the crystal?"

"It's useful," I pick it up and hand it to him so he can place it into his pack. "But I really wanted the ore and we're going to have to turn around soon. I'm nearly out of mana potion. Two more tunnels, then we leave."

"Alright."

We continue walking and come across another boulder with spatial properties, which yields another clump of raw spatial mithril. It almost feels as if I'm being mocked here. That's the fifth boulder for spatial magics and we've only had one for temporal magics.

As we reach the final intersection before turning back, we spot a pale grey boulder near the next one down one of the branches. At it, I make a small prayer and shatter it, and am pleased when a fist-sized clump of pale grey metal drops to the ground.

[Temporal Mithril] Pure temporal mithril, this ore is excellent for harnessing temporal enchantments and channeling temporal magics.

"That's it?" Thomas asks.

"That's it," I toss it to him. "Let's head back now, before I potentially don't have enough mana to make sure we're safe."

"Alright."

He puts the ore in his pack and we make our way out of the mines. As we exit, Aluci puts out his fire and transforms back into a palomino.

"Let's head to my place and sort out the loot," I mount Aluci. "Give me your arm and I'll pull you up. Don't worry about the loot spilling or any lack of experience, no one can fall off of Aluci unless he lets them."

Thomas is extremely nervous based on the feel of his mind, but he doesn't show it at all until after Aluci's moving once we're both on. Then, the hunter tightens his grip around my waist and his breath catches in his throat.

I could teleport us both back with what mana I have left, but I don't want to let Thomas know I can actually wield spatial magics just yet. He's probably assumed I flew to town using my magic, not warped through space. The information I've revealed to him about spatial magics has probably let him know just how potent they are, and how complex as well.

We're still in the "getting to know me" phase of things. I doubt even Dylan trusts me enough that he'd be comfortable after learning I can bend space to my will.

"That… was terrifying," Thomas tells me after we dismount at my cabin. "I've never been on a horse before and that was…"

"The smoothest ride you'll ever have," I say. "Now that you've ridden Aluci, any other ride will feel clumsy. Let's go through the loot and discuss your compensation for the help."