Chương 69: (67) 2.20. Between a Rock and a Harder Rock

New magical beast discovered! 1, 000 exp gained. The buzzing notification roused him from his ill timed nap, and Vin's eyes snapped open as he hurried to take in his surroundings. Thankfully it looked like he'd only lost consciousness for a few seconds, as small shards of stone were still falling from the eruption that had sent them flying.

Scule stood only a few feet to his left with his daggers at the ready, the Rogue's high dexterity no doubt having played a large part in how he was able to land nimbly on his feet looking unharmed from the surprise attack. A quick check of his pocket confirmed that while clearly rattled, Reginald at least seemed unharmed. Vin had been lucky to land on his back, cushioning the rat's fall instead of landing on top of him.

As Reginald left the safety of his pocket and ran over to Scule, Vin looked for their remaining companions, finding them a good distance away. Alka was hovering over Shia's crumpled form, looking worried as she checked on the downed elf. Based on the lack of movement and Alka's expression, Vin could only assume she'd been knocked unconscious. Shia had already been doing the worst of all of them from the radiation poisoning before the attack, and he could only imagine how much worse condition her body was in now.

Vin wanted nothing more than to run over and start healing his fallen comrade, ambient death mana be damned. But there was one, rather large problem with that. Standing almost directly between him and Shia was what Vin clearly recognized as a massive golem. Easily twice his height and wide as a car, the magical beast's body looked to be made from giant hunks of crumbling stone. Small boulders somehow stuck together made up its torso, and various shards and chunks of slate formed thick sets of arms and limbs.

Strangely enough, the beast didn't seem to have any sort of head, but that clearly didn't hinder it any as it slowly turned its torso toward Vin, letting out a growl from somewhere that sounded like crunching gravel.

"I don't suppose your poisons are going to be very useful here, huh?" Vin asked, trying to spot some sort of weakness or something on the golem. Before he ran away from home, whenever his parents had locked him in his room to stop him from running off, he used to play all sorts of old video games to pass the time. Point being, he'd been forced to fight a virtual golem or two back in the day.

Usually they had some sort of glowing weak point, like an exposed gemstone, or a large crack running through their body you were supposed to target. Evidently this one hadn't gotten the memo.

"My head hurts too much for witty banter, Vin," Scule complained, his face scrunched in pain as he tried his best to focus on the threat looming over them.

"We're in no condition to fight this thing. We need to get Shia and get out of this fragment as fast as possible."

"No arguments here," Vin said, carefully watching the golem. So far the beast hadn't actually taken a single step from where it had erupted out of the ground, and Vin felt a flicker of hope that maybe the golem wasn't actually able to move all that easily. That hope was quickly dashed as the golem went from zero to sixty in an instant, all of a sudden barreling toward them like an out of control freight train.

"Holy-!" Scule shouted as he and Reginald dove to the side. Vin was only a fraction of a second slower as he dove in the other direction, and he felt the air whoosh past him as the multi-ton pile of rocks missed him by barely a few inches.

"Alka, I could really use you right now!" Vin called out behind him, not willing to take his eyes off the dangerous beast. Apparently he'd made the right call, because while it seemed the golem couldn't slow itself down quite as quickly as it could start, it had a few other tricks up its sleeve. Before it had even come to a full stop, the golem raised its arms up behind it and fired two of the larger rocks making up the ends of its arms at them like they'd been launched from a cannon.

Vin's Threat Detection blared in his mind, as though he couldn't see the giant rock hurtling toward him. Realizing he wasn't fast enough to dodge the unexpected attack, Vin had just enough time to regret choosing to learn Stone Shot first instead of Stone Wall before the small boulder smashed into his chest, shattering every bone in his torso and killing him instantly. Or at least, that's what he was pretty sure the damage would have been.

The moment the boulder touched his chest, the projectile was repelled by a burst of brilliant golden light that erupted from his core as his divine boon saved his life yet again. While the rock bounced off him harmlessly, the boon didn't seem to nullify all the force of the blow, and Vin was sent flying backwards even further from his comrades, landing in an awkward roll. I think that's the third time I've cheated death.

Groaning, Vin pushed himself to his feet as he watched Reginald and Scule keep the golem distracted. The magical beast seemed to regenerate its missing rocks somehow, meaning there was no end to its cannon-like projectiles. Thankfully, unlike Vin, the two of them were fast enough to dodge the screaming missiles larger than their own bodies, if only just.

Pushing down the growing nausea in his stomach and trying to ignore the knowledge that every second they spent on this fragment was another second spent being bombarded with heavy radiation, Vin looked over toward Alka, throwing an angry glare at his ace in the hole.

"Alka, what the hell-" His blood froze as Vin finally realized why Alka had yet to zoom over and take control of his body. She was a little busy saving Shia's life. Standing barely a few feet from the crumpled elf was a second golem, this one far smaller than the first. But despite being only four or five feet tall, that didn't mean its attacks were harmless if the small craters each of its missing blows formed were any indication.

The golem didn't seem all that intelligent at least, as Alka was zipping around its body, keeping its focus on her and distracting it from crushing Shia's head like a melon. Vin didn't know how he hadn't noticed the second golem, but thankfully it hadn't evaded the Slayer's keen eyes. Cursing, he tried to ignore the headache he could feel coming on as he ran toward them, taking aim as he did so." Stone Shot!"

He screamed, firing a shard of stone that looked positively laughable when compared to the rocks the golems were firing. Sure enough, while he miraculously landed the shot on his first try, he might as well have lightly tossed a pebble at the golem for all the good it did. His rock impacted the side of the golem and promptly shattered, not leaving so much as a scratch on the magical beast. Gritting his teeth, Vin thought back to Eithan's lessons and the hours he'd been forced to spend handling different rocks.

Thanks to the Stone Mage he now understood the basics of runic formations a bit better than he used to, and he knew exactly how to best utilize that knowledge. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Focusing on his spell, he changed his mental image of a rock from just a regular old stone to a hefty hunk of granite. He was sure there were harder rocks out there, but at the moment, that was the only one he could think of." Stone Shot!"

This time, his projectile hit with a lot more force. And while the golem still didn't seem to react to his attack as it continued swinging wildly at Alka, he clearly saw a few small cracks spreading out slightly on the side of the magical beast. Still not enough… Realizing he had one last trick up his sleeve, Vin tapped into Runic Recalibration, finding the small cluster of runes he wanted within the spell's formation and tweaking them just so.

Picturing the granite projectile in his mind, he fired off his spell a third time." Stone Shot!" Vin stumbled and nearly fell over as a huge chunk of his mana was ripped away in an instant. Apparently the spell took a little more mana than normal when you increased the velocity as much as magically possible.

Vin blinked as his rock screamed across the empty landscape, smashing into the smaller golem and hitting the magical beast with enough force to knock it completely off its feet and send it crashing to the ground. Despite the deep cracks spreading throughout the golem's torso, his empowered spell still hadn't been powerful enough to actually do any meaningful damage. More importantly however, it bought Alka the breathing room she needed.

Seeing the golem would take a few seconds to recover, Alka immediately turned and zipped toward him, meeting him part way and shooting straight into his body. Vin would have breathed a sigh of relief when he suddenly found himself watching events unfold as though he were watching a movie, but he no longer had control of his lungs. Using his body, Alka dashed back to the recovering golem, unsheathing their sword and slicing clean through the monster's torso in a single swipe as it stood up.

'Hell yeah!' Vin mentally cheered as the golem's upper body fell away, leaving the legs standing there unmoving. To his surprise however, Alka didn't share in his celebration.

"Magical beasts aren't creatures of flesh and blood," she muttered for his benefit, her eyes watching the golem's two unmoving halves like a hawk, unblinking.

"You have to find the source of their magic and destroy it. Otherwise they'll keep coming back." Sure enough, to Vin's horror the golem's leg suddenly shot out at them as the beast's lower half tried to kick them with enough force to shatter bone. Thankfully he wasn't the one currently in charge of dodging, as Alka seemed completely unfazed by the surprise attack. Twisting around the limb of stone like a living current, Alka slashed down, separating the leg from the lower body.

Not giving the golem any more chances, she unleashed a flurry of attacks, separating each of the limbs from the main body before cutting them up a second time, and then a third. By the time she stopped, the golem wasn't even recognizable anymore, now looking like just a random pile of rocks they'd stumbled upon in this strange, flat fragment.

"I can't waste time fully dicing this thing to ensure it's dead, and we can't risk it reforming and killing Shia while we take out the big one," Alka said, clicking her tongue in annoyance.

"It has to have some sort of core somewhere, something it draws its magic from. I'm giving you back control, use your spell to find it, and then I'll take over again to help Scule."

'Wait, you want me to-" Vin paused, realizing he was talking with his own mouth again. Hearing the sound of smashing boulders behind him, Vin didn't waste time thinking, instead doing exactly what Alka asked of him." Sense Magic." Ignoring the faint magic radiating off of all of the rocks in the pile, Vin immediately honed in on the fist sized rock deep within the pile that was lit up to his senses like a blazing torch.

"Found it!" Pushing the other rocks aside, Vin grabbed the rock chunk containing the golem's core and tossed it into his pack.' What are you doing? Destroy it and start running to the big one!'

"These are the first magical beasts we've found since leaving the Sacred Forest!" Vin argued, making sure his pack was secured before he began running toward the remaining golem.

"We don't know if Erik needs these cores undamaged or not, and Shia's in no condition to tell us. Until she wakes up, we need to keep them intact!"

'Sorry, I was too focused on the fight. I completely forgot about Erik for a second there.' Alka sounded a bit ashamed of herself, no doubt remembering all the dryad had done for her.

'So long as you keep the core away from other sources of stone, the golem should be as good as nullified.'

"Works for me," Vin said, wincing as he watched Reginald barely dart out of the way of a flying rock at the last second, the rat still close enough that some of the shrapnel hit him and cut a few red gashes down his side. Unlike Reginald, who was clearly starting to run out of steam and slow down, the golem seemed happy to stand there and fire rocks at the two of them all day. Vin didn't think the rat would last much longer. Thankfully, he wouldn't have to.

'Alright, that's close enough. Swap!' Vin was happy the two of them had practiced this, as his body didn't even break stride when Alka took over. An even more impressive feat when you take into account the fact that his strength and dexterity shot up whenever Alka took control of his body. Blade in hand, Alka darted in toward the golem, rushing past the panting Reginald and drawing the golem's full attention on herself.

For its part, the golem didn't even hesitate, adjusting its aim slightly before sending two small boulders screaming their way. Vin watched in awe as Alka flowed around the first boulder before cutting the second projectile in half, turning to allow the two pieces to shoot by either side of her. She'd barely even slowed down from the attack, and before the golem could fire a second salvo she was upon it. She was able to get off two quick slashes, slicing deeply into each of the two legs.

But despite her incredible skill, Vin realized with a start that Alka wasn't able to cut all the way through, even with their enchanted sword. Unlike monsters, which were magic and flesh, the golems were beings of magic and rock. A material not usually known for ease of cutting, even if they were wielding petrified elder wood. Rather than toppling over without its legs to balance on, the golem instead smashed down with its arms, intent on crushing them under a literal ton of rock.

Alka barely managed to dodge out of the way, somehow slipping between the golem's legs at the last second and scoring two more slashes against the legs in doing so. Before it could right itself, Alka slashed at the legs one last time, her three combined attacks finally enough to carve cleanly through the beast's thick limbs. Leaping back, Alka let the golem crash to the ground before she got to work.

The magical beast flailed about a bit at first, but it was only the work of a few more seconds for Alka to cut off its arms. With no arms or legs to speak of, it was then simply grunt work to slowly dismantle the giant creature. By the time Alka's minute was up, the golem had been reduced to a massive pile of rocks, most still the size of Vin's head.

'Phew, what a workout!' Alka chuckled in his head.

'Well, I did my part. Better find that core before it starts regenerating.'

"Don't have to tell me twice." After a quick cast of Sense Magic and a short rock scramble, Vin found himself holding a rock chunk far too large to comfortably carry. Careful not to cut into the actual core, he quickly used their sword to carve it down to a more reasonable size before dropping it in his pack. The immediate danger finally taken care of, Vin made sure Scule and Reginald were okay before rushing toward their unconscious party member.

"Shia!"