Chapter 26
Immediately I charge at the four-armed man. I attempt to bring my sword into a upwards swing into his sides, but his sword seems to flow straight into my sword’s path.
I then decide to use this moment to redirect my sword to a different path, hopefully landing at least a glancing blow, but he effortlessly move his sword slightly once again into my sword’s path.
Our swords collide, sending my sword rebounding backwards.
‘Holy shit! What is that sword made of! My hands sting like crazy!’ I exclaim to myself.
With what looks like no wasted movements, he takes advantage of my failed attack, and slashes at my side quickly.
I somehow manage to get my sword in front of it, but I’m subsequently flown backwards. He continues the pressure, and charges forward quickly.
Instead of retreating, I hold my ground.
‘If I can maybe get a read on his attack, with a sword that big, no way he’ll be able to stop a counter-attack. All I’ve got to do is dodge.’
The swing comes, coming as a downward slash straight towards my skull. Before I can even process the swing though, it goes wide left and transitions into a sideways blow.
I manage to somewhat dodge the surprise attack, but not without taking a large gash on my shoulder, that seems to instantly heal.
This time I take the initiative, and prepare a powerful thrust straight towards his chest.
This proves ineffectual, though, as he smoothly sidesteps it and brings his foot down trapping my blade beneath it on the ground.
I let go and retreat quickly, while rematerializing a new one at the same time.
This time we stare at each other for a few moment, before he smirks cockily and jumps up high into the air.
He brings his sword down on me during his quicker than expected descent. I mange to roll to the side, but before I can get my bearings, he is once again upon me. He readies a wide, but quick swing at my head.
I throw my sword up clumsily.
At the last moment, before I can even reacts, he pulls a familiar move and redirects the swing to my arm.
The swing lands, severing my arm and the next instant another swing connect at my waist and everything goes dark as my body separates at the waist.
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I wake up groggily. Looking around confused, I notice Solace to my left lazily sitting down, with a bored expression on his face.
Slowly, I begin to remember the events of our fight.
“Finally, took you long enough.” He says while yawning.
“How long was I out? And did you kill me?” I say while slightly panicking at the idea of wasting precious time.”
“Relax, you’ve only been out for 5 minutes or so. You can’t die in here remember? Your spiritual body died though, but once again my genius allowed it to reform quickly with spiritual energy.”
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This calms me down slightly.
“So what was the point of that? I don’t really get what beating me up does for me.”
“It was mostly for me to gauge where your at, and to be honest, it’s horrible. You’ve got a lot to learn kid.”
I nod, indicating for him to continue.
He says nothing while staring at me. We sit in silence for a few awkward seconds before I finally ask,
“So… you gonna teach me or what?”
“Oh sure, uhm let’s see… sorry, first time being a teacher and all that. First off I have to ask, are you planning on using that sword forever?”
“Of course!”
“Sit and think about it, like, really think about it, it’s important.”
I stop and do as he says.
‘I mean, I love this sword, it means more to me than anything else, but will I really be able to reach the top with it? Will this run-down sword allow me to become the best swordman in the multiverse?’
After a few more moments of deliberation, I make my decision.
“Yes, I’m positive.”
He nods seriously before saying,
“Good, now I want you to pick up your sword again. Notice anything wrong with it? Anything, unusual?”
I look down at the sword in my hand.
‘Now that he mentions it, even before our fight, it did feel a little… I don’t know, odd? Wrong? Different than it usually does.”
“Yeah, it feels… off. I don’t know why it does, but it does.”
“That’s because that sword is based off of your memories and yours alone, I’ve never met you or the sword in real life of course, so that sword is based on how you think it looks and feels.”
“So, what does that mean?”
“It means, you don’t know your own sword as well as you think you do.” Solace says while grinning.
I think about what he says.
‘Do I really not know my pride and joy as much I think I do?’
I’m somewhat disappointed in myself. How could I become strong when I don’t even know my own weapon?
I look up at Solace and ask resolutely,
“So how do I fix this?”
“Well, there’s a Mastery you can unlock called Item Understanding. It’s your understanding of one singular item. The deeper your understanding, the higher your mastery. You get me?”
I nod.
“So what I’m going to have you do is attempt to think about every single aspect of your sword. It’s weight, it’s feeling, It’s size, everything you can think of, and then materialize it in this soul space until you feel that it’s as close to perfect as you can get. Now the system won’t tell you when the mastery is unlocked, but you’ll feel your understanding of your sword deepen drastically when you’ve unlocked it.”
“Okay, I’ve got this.” I say to myself as I once again dive into practice.
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Kingdom Agent Rolfoy’s POV
Life is tough for Golems in the multiverse. Oftentimes people think we’re less than people because we’re artificial.
This causes many backwards nations and superpowers to enslave any golem they can find. After all, without the need to eat or sleep we make for the perfect workers. Especially if you don’t have to pay us.
The Empire is one such backwards superpower, enslaving our kind like cattle. Wringing us dry until our power cores run out.
My mission currently is to gather intel on a slave encampment somewhere on this planet and incite a slave uprising, hopefully recruiting a few into the folds of the Kingdom’s army.
The going’s been tough so far though. The Empire has got a strangle hold on any relevant information pertaining to the encampment.
I look in the mirror and take in the all too familiar features. Golems as a whole are quite the diverse looking species, but even considering that, my face is quite an oddball of our kind.
My dark, red, metallic skin is the first thing people usually notice. I personally think it’s quite charming, but if was just that, I wouldn’t be odd.
My face, like most golems, is devoid of human features. Spread all over my face, though, are small glowing rivets in multiple colorful and creative shapes, almost as if a chile drew them.
Where a human’s eyebrow might be is a pink unicorn, where a mouth may be is a yellow smiley face, etc.
Unsurprisingly, these features make me quite popular with children, the retched things. They always want to touch them or color them in.
‘Wonder what my creator was thinking when he made me…’
Unlike most golems, I was not born from a rare dungeon or created by the system. Instead I was created by a person. Who that person is, I still do not know, but I hold hope that one day I’ll get to meet him.
While inspecting my face, I suddenly get a message on a circular implement on my wrist.
It reads, ‘Emergency assistance need on planet Earth, teleporter #4587A0 at approximately 35:00 multiversial standard time. Be ready for combat at the instant of teleport. Heavy resistance expected.’
If I could breathe out a sigh, I would’ve.
‘At least it’ll give me a break from all the nonsense going on over here, system knows I could use it.’
With that I grab my weapon and armor, and prepare for a fun little war.