Tom and Mike sat against the tunnel walls, counting their injuries. Both of them had countless scraps and bruises. Mike's shield arm was in particularly bad shape. The whole arm looked blackened from the bruises. It was almost like a color slider, as his hand was completely blackened from the bruises, and it started lightening until it reached his elbow, where it was his normal slightly tanned white skin. It was almost fascinating how clearly his skin's qualities were visible, one could clearly see how the force had spread through his arm.

"So, your arm?" Tom quickly asked, letting the question hang in the air.

Mike was quiet for a while. But then seemed to come to a conclusion. "Yeah, I might have cultivated a bit. What about your movements? It's quite clear that you are no master fighter, yet you still somehow managed to survive?"

Tom decided that the cat was already out of the bag, so he answered."Yeah, I might have dappled a bit with cultivation too."

Then the atmosphere turned awkward. Both knew what they wanted to ask, but at the same time, neither of them wished to pry into the other's business. On top of that, there was the ban on sharing cultivation knowledge freely with others.

This time it was Mike who decided to force the conversation to its natural continuation. "So... Wanna have a small exchange of experiences, nothing free, just two dudes trading some information?"

Tom was way too curious to refuse such an offer, even if a small part of him didn't wish for him to share anything for free.

"Did you too use cores?" Tom started, but before Mike could answer, they heard a roar that quickly reminded them that they might have dealt with the golem army, but its general was still alive, doing who knows what, as they hadn't seen it during the whole battle. Presumably, it had gone to the upper chamber to block their escape routes.

"Maybe we should take care of this big bastard before we continue this," Tom said while getting up. He was dreading what kind of surprises the big golem had prepared for them, as it seemed way too intelligent to just stand there and wait for them.

Mike agreed with a nod and started getting up. They quickly decided that even if it would probably be smarter to go up from separate tunnels and for the other one to ambush the bigger golem from behind. However, neither of them was confident that they could hold off against the golem alone for more than a couple of seconds, so they started making their way upward using the same tunnel.

As they neared the chamber, they started hearing sounds like stones grinding together, but they didn't let it bother them. They pushed forwards and rushed out of the tunnel, hoping that they could end this quickly.

Once they reached the upper chamber, they saw how the bigger golem that was completely made out of a black ore was taking pieces out of the chamber's wall and making a pile out of them. There was also one of the weakest golems standing in front of each of the four tunnels that led out from the mountain.

Just as if their timing had been pre-planned, the mount of stones started moving as the bigger golem placed the last piece of rock on it.

It seemed like rushing up here hadn't been a bad idea. They had discussed that if the golem wasn't doing anything too dangerous, they would retreat back down to the tunnels. However, it seemed like it wouldn't be an option now.

They didn't dare to give the golem chance to start bombarding them with the rock, so they started closing the distance immediately. Apparently, the golem didn't wish to give them any space either, as it rushed towards them, determined to end the pests that had bothered it.

The only cover the chamber had was the obelisk in the center, so they naturally headed for it. Hoping that the thing that referred to itself as a teleporter would be made out of some durable material.

The weaker golem stood guard over the escape routes, and the newest one moved in front of the tunnel leading downwards. Apparently, the bigger golem had enough of its underlings not delivering.

Once Tom and Mike arrived at the obelisk, the golem was also almost there. They hadn't been able to come up with any clever plan for this encounter. The bigger golem clearly wouldn't chase them nor let any of its brethren pummel it to death, so their only option was to go the old-fashioned route and see which one of them could beat the other first. Tom and Mike split up, both attacking it from different directions hoping to split its attention.

It attacked Mike with both of its arms, selecting the bigger and slower of them as its target. Tom didn't waste any time and attacked it with all his strength, swinging both of his hammers with his whole body, aiming for the back of its knee, or at least what was the golem equivalent.

The hit landed with a loud bang, and Tom was reminded of the time when he had hit the golem in the cave with a rock. How his arms were in excruciating pain like he had struck his hammer against an impenetrable wall.

However, Tom could see that all the pain hadn't been completely worthless, as a coin-sized piece of rock was separated from its leg. Now he only needed to hit exactly the same spot twenty times straight for it to lose one of its legs. Tom was sure that at that point, he would have died from all the internal bleeding he would have caused to himself.

The golem turned around, almost like it could taste Tom's despair in the air, as it seemed like it had realized the same thing as he had, its opponents could barely harm it. Tom could have sworn that he saw how the completely smooth black boulder presenting its head twisted into a sadistic grin.

As the golem started attacking him, Tom yelled," It's a lot tougher than we thought! What do we do?" Panic coloring his voice.

Before he got any answer from Mike, he heard a clang and Mike's yell of Anguish, apparently, he had also given it all he got.

They continued dancing around the golem, knowing that if they didn't defeat it now, the next time would be a lot harder, as it could create even more of these golems.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

For five minutes, they attacked the golem in turns, whenever one thought their body could handle another hit, they would attack. However, the combined exhaustion from this fight and the previous one was making itself known. Tom could feel how his movements were getting slower and slower, each of the golem's attacks just a bit closer to hitting him than the last. And Mike looked even worse, he had been slower, to begin with, his experience mostly making up for his speed. But he had already had to block one of its attacks with his shield. Tom was sure that Mike's arm had broken as he had heard a snap all the way from the other side of the golem.

The golem had smelled blood and started attacking Mike more relentlessly.

Tom was starting to grow desperate, and the reality of the situation finally started sinking in, as all of their efforts were about to go to waste. He also realized why the golem had been so adamant about blocking their escape route, as if they didn't manage to take the cores with them, they would at most waste some of the core's energy, as they could just reform. He was sure that if Mike went down, he would be soon following him, as the spread attention of the golem was already too much for him to handle.

He focused his mind like he had never done it before, not caring about the consequences, trying to speed his mind up, so he could come up with a way to bring it down.

***

Mike felt it as the golem's fist connected with his shield and broke his arm. At that moment, despair filled him, he needed to do something, but before he could think of anything, the golem doubled its attacks against him. He yelled for Tom to help him, but in his peripheral vision, he saw how Tom had frozen on the spot, as if his whole body had just been forced not to move, his gaze intently locked on the golem.

He yelled for Tom to snap out of it, but he saw no reaction. He could feel how his legs were starting to give, barely carrying him forwards, as he danced away from the golem's attacks, his only saving grace was the obelisk in the middle of the chamber that he was circling.

Then just as he was about to start cursing at Tom for freezing up in the middle of combat, he saw how Tom's head snapped up. However, his eyes didn't move away from the golem, on the contrary, they seemed to focus on it even more intently.

Tom started running, and once he was about to reach the golem, he jumped and started piggybacking the golem.

Before Mike could even react, the golem brought its arms down, crushing both of Tom's legs between its body and its arms. However, Tom didn't even utter a single sound, like he wasn't even aware that something had happened, he hang on to the golem utterly unmoving.

***

Tom's mind went straight to the core. It was the obvious weakness, but how was he supposed to access it? When there was who knows how much ore blocking his way. But then it hit him. How the cores could control stones just by sending their energy into them, and how he could steal this energy for himself.

He immediately clung to the idea like it was a life raft that was going to keep him from drowning. He looked at the golem, and he knew what he had to do. He needed to get close to it and stay there, so he started running and jumped onto the golem's back.

He immediately started seeing how there was a massive ball of energy in the center of its chest, and how the energy ran through its body like it had veins, feeding the energy to each and every part of its body.

Once Tom saw the sheer amount of the energy he was facing, he knew how badly overmatched they had been from the start, he didn't even dare to dream about drawing any of it into himself. But he did notice something else, the knee they had been hitting the whole time was leaking some of the energy to the outside of the golem's body, just like it was bleeding.

He wasn't sure what he could do, but doing nothing wasn't an option. Tom started drawing the leaking energy toward himself, and at the same time, he forced his mouth to say "knee."

He kept on drawing the leaking energy, guiding it straight toward his head, trying his best to offset his willpower expenditure. But there were two-part to willpower, will, and power. He redoubled his efforts on drawing the energy in, treating it like the most important task in the whole world, and it might have been, as it was the thing keeping him alive.

Then he noticed how the leakage was starting to grow and grow. He had no perception of time. The only thing he knew, was that he was starting to drown in the energy he was drawing in. He could feel how there was just too much energy for his head to turn into willpower. With the last of his control, he sent as much of the energy as he could out of his head and let it spread out through his body.

He didn't dare to pass out, so once he had sent most of the energy out and stopped drawing in more, he focused on the place in his head where the blue energy presided.

The space was completely filled with grey energy, and there was only a tiny portion of blue energy left in the center. However, it was getting lighter blue each second, getting diluted by the grey energy visibly.

Tom didn't know what was happening, but he had a premonition that it was nothing good for him. He could instinctively feel that if his willpower was diluted too much, he wouldn't have any willpower nor will, he would just become being controlled by its instincts, as his very being was diluted, turning him into something else.

He didn't even dare to think if this affected the reality. Because the only thing he could think about was, what could he do? There was so much energy in his mind, but he had no willpower left to control it.

The only thing he could think of was if he couldn't let his will dilute too much, what was stopping him from condensing it, so he did just that.

He focused on the areas around the center that still had mostly blue energy, that had yet to completely dilute, as he could still feel that he had some control over it. And then he pushed it all together. Not letting it mix with the energy around it, moving it nearer and nearer to the center until the energy started condensing and gaining some of its pigment back.

He could feel how the grey energy wanted to mix with the blue energy, but he didn't let it. He continued pushing the energy to concentrate more and more, noticing how he was tiring, but he didn't dare to let it stop him.

Once he had a small blue orb of willpower in the center, he let the energy dilute a bit and repeated the progress growing more tired with each pass.

***

Mike heard it as Tom said, "knee." And he understood immediately. He used his one working arm to hit the golem's knee, and to his surprise, it was almost like it was made out of a completely different material than before. His hammer took a massive chunk out of it, and the golem fell forwards, landing on its stomach.

To Mike's surprise, Tom didn't even twitch as the massive golem fell down, he just kept hanging on its back.

But he had to finish this now, as he had no idea what Tom had done nor how long it would last. However, he could worry about it later, as he had to finish this now.

The golem's movements had become sluggish, but he didn't pay it any attention, as he reduced the rest of its leg into a ruble. Then he attacked its arm, and to his relief, it was also much more malleable than before, and he continued to destroy both of its arms. Now that the golem was immobilized, he pried Tom off its back and started hammering at the golem's torso. It was still ridiculously tough, but as the golem couldn't move, he continued on hitting at it, and whenever he saw it starting to for a new leg or arm, he immediately destroyed it.

It took him a full hour to finally reach the golem's core. In the end, he was just lifting his hammer up and letting gravity bring it down, but to his relief, as time went on the golem had become softer and softer.

He pried the core out of the golem and looked at Tom, who was still just laying on the ground, not moving at all.

Then he looked at the golems that were guarding the tunnels. To his relief, they still just stood there, not moving at all. Then he let the exhaustion claim him, and he fell to the ground laughing uncontrollably.

They had finally won!