We carefully made our way forward after the encounter with the slime, but I had to abandon the knife from the last town, with how eaten away it was. It was a nice one too, made of ‘corrosion resistant steel.’

In the hallway, there was a micro-golem that was more a flat disc than anything, moving around with a full sized long sword stuck to it. It wasn’t overtly aggressive and it was stuck in a corner, so we let it be. Things got worse in the second room, and I longed for that slime soon enough.

The room consisted of an iron workbench in the center, and several golem parts stuck to the walls. Balls of crystal, stone, and metal all sat in round bases on pedestals, either for display or for storage. Probably both.

We moved deeper in, and everything began to shake, various golem parts coming together around what I now realized were cores, making something akin to the one I found in the forest. The pieces were mismatched for these, one having two massive arms and no legs, another looking like a deformed cadaver, a half-sized leg and an arm that was about as big as me.

They both emitted a constant hum and spoke, but it was so distorted that all I could make out was the word “danger” being repeated over and over again. Rye took one step forward and they attacked, the legless one going first.

Have you ever seen a great ape run? The way it propels itself with its hands? That’s what that golem did, and Rye was unable to block in time. It slammed into him, sending both flying into the hallway that led to the workshop. Heard a thundering crash followed by a single muffled swear. Before I could move to do anything, the second had struck, swinging the largest arm as it limped forward. Larger objects take some extra time to get moving, but this was a golem, a mechanical thing made for a purpose. This one was clearly made to protect, and for that you would need high power and speed.

I took a hard hit to my ribs, feeling them fracture as I slammed into the shelf the cores were stored on. The golem began to wind up to strike again, but with great effort and quite a bit of pain, I managed to roll out of the way, the strike reducing the rest of the cores and the shelf to dust. It screeched, a sound that mixed ringing metal with the wailing of a tormented soul.

I rose to my feet as it did so, healing from the wounds it dealt me. It wasn’t fast enough though. I was barely able to dodge each hit and the system told me that each strike took a quarter of my health. When that ran out, wounds would begin to become fatal, and I doubted I would get a second chance.

It struck again, but this time, I tried to catch the attack rather than dodge it. It did still harm me a bit, but it was nowhere near as bad as the full swings. It shook its arm as fast as was possible for it, attempting to shake me off, but I held on tight, if only so I could live a bit longer. It started hitting the wall, but the impact rarely harmed me, more often just breaking the stone off of it. This…gave me an idea.

Undead are known for their surprising strength and speed. While they are rotting, they become restored after a kill and they don’t have the mental limiter that humans have. I didn’t have the mental limiter that a normal person would, even if I was still self aware.

I began to slide down the arm and punch it, lowering my health even further. It did make a difference though, as the golem began to flail faster and toss itself into the floor and walls. Ignoring the broken bones and bleeding hands, I hit it a few more times in the chest until it broke there and tore out the core. It didn’t notice for a bit, but as soon as it did, it used the smaller arm it had to try to pry me off or take the core back, but it was too slow. As the mana lights in its eyes died, it seemed to look at me with a mix of shock and anger, and let out one last sound, but it was nothing I could easily understand, a jumble of words from every language that existed, too chaotic to even try to understand, mixed with that screeching sound.

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I fell off the arm and landed on my back, the only thought I had being the desire to rest.

Just a quick nap…

Insects began to swarm his body before long, but something was keeping them from consuming it.

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Rye staggered, still recovering from the impact of the golem as it began to charge again. He moved out of the way, barely managing to focus on the fight as he tried to manipulate his plants to get the roots into the basement, but whether it was too deep or the basement was blocking them he didn’t know.

It charged again, this time swinging its arms out as if to grab him. It successfully did this and caught Rye in a grapple, lying on top of him before flipping him over and throwing him into the wall. The one that Paul fought had the disadvantage of slowness due to mismatched limbs, but this one seemed to have no such limitation, moving so easily and rapidly that he struggled to keep track of it.

The only way he could limit its movement would be…

Rye looked around for a heavy object that he could strike its hands with and spotted a large stone brick. Before he could grab it, the golem struck again, tossing him to the side.

As he flew through the air, Rye grasped at the brick, barely reaching it while almost tearing off his hand with the sheer speed he was thrown at. It jumped at him, but Rye managed to hit one of the hands with the chunk of stone, reducing it to nothing but a dented piece of metal.

There was a difference in how it moved, being noticeably slower now, but it was still able to toss itself with the one hand and damaged arm, although it had a lesser range of motion. He struck with the brick again, and made sure to completely remove the hands before trying to remove the core. Unfortunately, it had absorbed so much life mana from Rye that it was nearing its limit, about to explode from the sheer energy inside it. Unable to think of anything else, Rye threw it into the now dead golem’s head, where it exploded, destroying the shell and hitting him with shrapnel. That was the last thing he remembered.

———————————————————————

Paul was back in the soulscape again.

At least it was a bit better than last time, where he was fully conscious as the monsters tore him limb from limb. This time, he’d managed to pass out before he could fully notice the pain, but that didn’t make it too much better.

Those injuries… they had probably killed him fairly quickly. At least he was out for most of it. He touched his side as he looked around the void, seeing something in the distance, a ball of light that cut through the dark like a long sword through grass.

I approached it, not having much to do this time around. It was intangible, obviously. It was a ball of light, you touched a solid one you would probably burn to death, but this one had two unique qualities that stood out to me. One, it was a deep purple/blue mix, the colors seeming to try to push the other back every now and then. Two, it had no definite shape, constantly squashing and stretching into different forms that were never the same.

I used [Analyze] on it, hoping system skills would work in this bleak, barely colored void. It did, somehow, and it was amazing.

Soul of Paul Miller

Type: Split (Half-human/half-monster)

Blessing of the Phoenix - Rapidly heal from most wounds if the brain is mostly intact, while the soul resides in a void. Can be disabled at will of the user.

I was effectively immortal, as long as I didn’t just decide to give up. It also explained what this void was, a waiting area where I could actively see my soul and mess with it. I wanted to prod it more and learn what it did, but besides the fact that the system was now asking me if I wanted to revive, it was my soul, and I absolutely doubted that touching what was essentially the life force of any living thing was healthy. I selected yes on the screen once more, repeating the process that lead to me becoming undead in the first place as I waited for whatever awaited me in the physical world.