Chương 58: 58 Loop 2, Part 12

The battle was over, but my army was still on fire. They stood still as soon as the last Frollart was dead, smoke rising into the air.

"Finn, can you put them out, please?"

"Dude, you set them on fire. You do it."

"And I do like them on fire. But if you didn't notice, I'm out of mana. Life moves fast like that."

"Fucking pyromaniac," was what he muttered under his breath. I only heard it because of [Subtitle]. It took him about six casts to douse all nineteen burning golems. By the end of it, the library smelled like a barbecue had gotten into a fight with a rainstorm and lost. While he worked, I sat and thought. I needed to meditate. But could I afford the time to do so right now? My mana bar was a sliver of red so thin it was basically nonexistent. Ambient draw would give me some back, but not fast enough to be useful.

One golem destroyed out of how many? Close enough to zero for my count. It was all worth it, because we'd taken zero real injuries on our side. Though Finn's robe had gotten an unfortunate scorch mark in a place that made it look like he'd soiled himself. I giggled. We had won. The Frollart horde was completely gone. Sure, maybe the dungeon would send more up to this floor soon enough. But for now, hundreds of the little bastards had been completely routed.

The library was just charred bandages and blue stains from wall to wall. The ghosts and the ghost books ignored all of it, of course. I canceled the [Enlarge] casts one by one, realizing that despite their usefulness, the impracticality of giant golems would become a pain quickly. The golems shrank back down until the army was regular-sized again. Axe's [Subtitle]s appeared beside him.

"A glorious battlefield. I will count the dead. Count. Co…" He trailed off and started poking every single Frollart corpse—even the ones that were mostly puddles of blue blood. I count 284.

"What?" Finn said.

"There weren't even two hundred."

"No, you're off, sir. Learn to count corpses that have burst. It is an important post-battle skill. I will teach you." He literally grabbed Finn's arm and dragged him over to a blue puddle. Finn protested, but it was in vain. While this was going on, Flag drifted down the line of golems, patting each one on the shoulder with both hands. Oh, good work, team. You burned very well. I am so proud of every single one of you. Except Axe. He hurt one of you, and I'm sad.

He sniffled, which was odd, because I didn't know golems could sniffle. But he pulled it off. This is the best team I have ever been a part of. And I've been on at least two teams now. I love teams. The decapitated golem lay where it had fallen, its head ten feet from its body. Both parts looked about as bothered as stone gets. Suddenly, I was back to that first loop. Vex's hand was still pointing as the head bounced across the floor. I blinked the image away. Fuck. He was alive, not dead. Get out of my head.

We'd repair the golem when we had time.

"Okay," Finn said finally, wresting his arm out of the axe-headed golem's reach.

"Now can we deal with the fact that your uncle is lying half-dead in a monster graveyard?" Up close, my uncle looked better than any comatose man had a right to look. His golden dome shimmered over him, as calm as a lake in winter. Just beyond it, the Froll's carcass sat in a heap of split seams and cracked bone. The smell coming off it made me plug up my nose. If I'd had mana, I would have cast something for it. But as it was, I was lucky I hadn't hit mana sickness. Fuck my life. Right?

"He's really breathing," Finn said, crouching at the edge of the ward with his wand out.

"Okay, let me just run a diagnostic and we can get him upstairs." His wand tip touched the gold ward, and the diagnostic spell fizzled out at the surface, like water hitting a hot pan. Finn frowned and tried again. This time, he was slower, careful not to hit the ward. The diagnostic light crawled over the dome but found nothing to diagnose.

"It won't go through." He tried a third time, and failed just as spectacularly.

"Laz, nothing's going through. I can't scan him. I can't treat him. There's nothing I can do. The ward's impenetrable."

"Well, he's breathing. That's a start, at least." I leaned forward in my chair, which should tell you how seriously I was taking this. I pressed a hand against the ward. It was solid, smooth, and warm to the touch. [Soul Sense] could detect his soul, still under there, faint but steady. I felt a phantom twinge from where the [Soul Tether] should have been. But now there was nothing to it. We'd have to just move him and worry about the rest later.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I gestured to one of my golems and said, "Lift." The golem knelt and wrapped its arms around the golden dome, but its fingers slid off, like the ward was covered in oil. It tried again, patiently, because soulless golems didn't have a second speed. Its hands slid off again.

"Stop," I said before it could waste more time failing. Magic didn't pass through the ward. Golems couldn't grip it. So what were we going to do? The ward was a perfect bubble wrapped around my uncle. But as the golem had demonstrated, the ward still moved when touched. It wasn't stationary. Which meant Corwen wasn't stationary. Axe spoke.

"We can break it. Flag and I can take turns. I give it four or five hours, if the ward fights back against us. Oh, I hope it fights back." It repeated itself again, because that wasn't going to get annoying. I actually considered acquiescing to his request. But it wasn't really something I could afford.

"No, we don't have the time to do that," I said.

"Then what?" Axe responded.

"We take him back up." I stared at the shaft.

"Up there?" Finn said.

"How are we gonna get him up there?"

"The golems will carry him."

"Dude, they already failed to even lift him, and now what? You want them to carry it up the shaft. With the destroyed ladder. You want to haul that giant golden ward, with your uncle inside it, up the shaft that our golems had to fall down."

"They rained down, Finn."

"Laz."

"You were there. It was raining golems. Don't try to rewrite history." The problem with the shaft was that it was five stories of nothing, straight up. I said "broken ladder," but that was a little bit of a moot point given the fact that, you know… magic existed. The bigger problem was mana. Finn had spent a large amount putting out my army, as well as helping get it together. And by "get it together," I mean set it on fire. I had spent all of mine helping win the battle. Neither of us was in a good spot.

Which meant I was going to have to meditate again. As much as I hated it. The only reason I was even considering the idea was that it would save me effort later. Or effort now. But we really couldn't afford the time it would take to regen our mana. No. We were left with one obvious solution. Thinking outside the box. Fortunately, we had nineteen golems to work with.

"Walk," I commanded, pointing at the shaft wall. The first of the green golems walked to the wall and stopped. I commanded the second to climb onto its shoulders. And then a third. Then I switched to the reds, and then to Finn's golems. One golem at a time, the army stacked itself into a tower of stone and gold. The column braced against the shaft walls, becoming a living ladder. By golem sixteen, the tower had reached the top. Oh! It's a ladder, Flag exclaimed. I've always wanted to try an actual working ladder.

Ever since I saw the first ladder that didn't work, I really wanted to use one. That was exactly the go-to positivity I was looking for. Flag really had a unique perspective that put everything into place. It took a bit to figure out the logistics. I was grateful that Flag, Finn, and I all had [Float] active, but it wasn't going to be enough to get my uncle upstairs. The dome was just too unwieldy for the three of us to manage on our own. Getting it off the ground was the hardest part.

It took Flag, Axe, Finn, myself, and the bottom golem all shoving before the dome came properly off the floor. And then we promptly dropped it, and it rolled away. Thankfully, even though my mana was just a sliver, I had enough for one more cast. And Finn had enough to cast a spell that I hoped he still knew. Finn did. He cast [Containment]. A smallish net shot out of the end of his wand, collided with the golden sphere, and fell to the ground. The net was supposed to unravel ongoing magic.

The ward, being the ward, didn't let it get close enough to try. It just slid off the gold like everything else did.

"Laz, how the hell are we going to get that around your uncle?" I rolled my eyes at him and cast [Enlarge]. The net swelled until it completely engulfed my uncle, dome and all. We cinched it tight and tied it off to the shaft of Axe's head.

"Well, you know the plan, Axe. Start climbing."

"You are not welcome," Axe said.

"Thank you, Axe," Finn said. Then Axe was climbing. He did the bulk of the lifting, hauling the netted dome up the living ladder golem by golem. With Axe pulling from above, Finn, Flag, and I got to work under it, holding it in the air between us and floating upward to alleviate most of the weight. Each golem took the weight as Axe passed, then heaved him up to the next while he kept the netting steady. At the top, the last golem pressed Axe over the lip of the shaft, and we shoved the dome onto solid floor.

The gold mesh settled into the stone of the Archives with a soft thud, and my uncle slowly rolled onto the stone. He gave slow, steady breaths, as if he hadn't been affected at all.

"Next time," I whispered to my uncle as I hovered next to him, "can you collapse next to an elevator? I'm getting tired of lugging you up here. One time. That's all I'm asking for." Of course, he didn't answer. But someday, he was going to wake up and owe me an unbelievable amount for all the effort I'd gone through to save his sorry ass. I intended to collect it. With interest.

"So." Finn's voice was gentle. It was as if he'd noticed the whispering and hadn't wanted to interrupt, but knew he had to.

"Where are we going?"

"Dude, have you not been paying attention? We're going back to the book thing." I settled back into my chair and pointed at the army, directing it to collapse itself.

"Hold position at the doors!" I shouted down the shaft. The golems began unstacking themselves in reverse order—which was somehow worse to watch than the stacking—then marched off toward the dungeon doors.

"We're going to see the Keeper. The wonderful keeper of books." I turned my chair toward the Archives.

"We have to pay what we owe her."