Chương 36: Metal and Blood 3

Dar Buldir was a leftover from a bygone era. The ancient fortress had been built atop a small hill to serve as a border outpost against the Dominion. Back in its glory days, the elven nation's military might was feared across the continent much like the Empire of today. However, that was centuries ago. Since the Dominion's fall and the emergence of the far less militaristic Republic, there were practically no border disputes from either side.

New roads and highways emerged as new settlements and trade routes were established along the region, gradually turning Dar Buldir into a remote post with no real purpose. As such, the decision was made for the Horkensaft Kingdom to abandon the fortress rather than waste gold on its upkeep and maintenance, with plans to reestablish it should the need arise. It had been thirteen decades since then. Countless groups had claimed ownership of Dar Buldir since then, often by forcefully evicting the previous residents.

The fact that most of its fortifications still stood strong was a testament to dwarven stonework and gnomish enchantments. The walls were far from unblemished, of course. Over a century of sporadic fighting and near-total neglect had left both the perimeter and the structures full of holes and cracks. Overall the damage wasn't catastrophic, and could easily be repaired with two weeks and a few dozen skilled workers.

That said, Dar Buldir's current occupants had no idea how to mend stone fortifications or recharge weakened wards. They were goblins, after all. Though marginally more civilized than most monstrous species, such maintenance was beyond their primitive means. The greenskins could barely put up a wall of wooden stakes that didn't fall over in a strong breeze, let alone patch centuries-old enchanted masonry.

The goblins had nevertheless made an attempt at plugging the gaps with logs, twigs, ropes, furs, mud, and whatever other materials they could muster. It was better than nothing, though not by much. The 'repairs' served little purpose but keeping out wind and wild creatures, and would surely crumble the instant an actual assault were to arrive. And Fizzy was more than willing to demonstrate the accuracy of that assessment.

"Ready?"

"Damn right! Let's go!" With her alter ego cheering her on, the golem charged through a patched section of the fort's outer wall. The dry logs exploded with a deafening crash, sending splintered wood flying everywhere. This was accompanied by the screams of two greenskins caught in the wake of the golem's entrance and were knocked over in the debris. They were common goblins by the look of them - gnome-sized, skinny humanoids with noses, ears, and teeth that were best described as 'long and pointy.'

Fizzy couldn't tell if they were any tougher than normal since both of their skulls went splat with one swing of the construct's oversized wrench. She still had plenty of chances to test whether they were, in fact, as strong as Alexei warned her. There were five more of the vermin in that courtyard alone. They displayed an unusual level of intelligence and fled screaming.

Four clambered up various fortifications using the ropes dangling from them while the last one squeezed through an unfilled gap in the central keep's wall. The sound of multiple war horns filled the ruin as the alarm was raised. Fizzy was expecting to see dozens if not hundreds of the vermin emerge from the interior of the fortress and swarm her in some desperate attempt to bring her down with numbers. She was therefore surprised to find that this was not what happened next.

Yes, she was immediately suddenly surrounded by a lot of greenskins, but none of them dared come down to her at ground level. Instead, they all huddled along the walls equipped with various ranged weapons. Some had basic slings of leather and sinew while others touted bows and crossbows that were most definitely looted. None of those had a single chance of piercing Fizzy's hide.

However, the golem couldn't help but notice there were an unusual number of crudely-carved staves and wands being waved around, not to mention the two ballistae rapidly swinging to point at her. That last part confirmed Alexei was right to be cautious. The typical goblin was far too stupid to operate siege weaponry. Then again, these bipedal vermin had an instinctive understanding of pack tactics, which probably helped them coordinate when it came to operating those turrets.

Fizzy carefully scanned the goblins as they manned the battlements, curious as to why nobody had started firing yet. Were they simply too awestruck to dare attack? Or was it something else? Probably the latter, given the leader that showed up. Or at least, Fizzy assumed this one was the leader. He was much larger than the other greenskins, about the height of an adult human male and with similar proportions. This was definitely a hobgoblin, and it wasn't just his Ranked Up species that set him apart.

He wore actual armor in the form of looted chainmail, which was a significant step up from the rabble's oversized shirts and loose leathers.

"That the Scalper guy?" Plus whispered. Doubt it, Fizzy replied. He's not the only hob around. See that one on the left holding a brass wand?

"Oh! Nice catch! Almost missed him!" The greenskin in question was making an attempt at blending in with his lesser kin, but he wasn't doing a good job due to his significantly larger size.

"You!" the first hob yelled down at Fizzy.

"Intruder! Warning! Leave! Or die!" Those words genuinely surprised the golem. Goblins did not give warnings, mostly because they did not share a language with the enlightened. This hob was the same, given how his speech was disjointed and awkward. Most likely he had just memorized those few words and could not hold an actual conversation. That, along with his underlings' unusually high trigger discipline suggested that someone had gone to great lengths to, for lack of a better word, civilize this bunch.

It was all rather curious, but ultimately of little interest to Fizzy. She wasn't here for a chat, but to relieve some mental stress. Plus.

"Ye, boss?" See the loudmouth in the chainmail?

"Yeah?" Bring him down here, will you?

"You got it!"

"Parallel One." With those words muttered under her breath, the golem's left eye blazed with a green light. Having been given shared control of her body and the Skills and Spells that went with it, her alter ego activated the Magnetize ability. Seemingly out of nowhere, the goblin speaker was pulled off of his elevated position by the same gear he was using for protection.

He fell towards the ground with a yelp, but failed to reach it before Fizzy's horizontal swing caught him in the ribs and sent him crashing through another shoddy patch of wall to her left.

"Hazar!" The hidden-but-not-really hobgoblin reacted a second too late as he gave the command to open fire. A volley of projectiles came down on Fizzy. She ignored all of the pebbles and arrows, focusing instead on the magic users and mounted siege weaponry. She might be worried about those smaller attacks if they had a veteran soldier's Attributes and Skills behind them, but they didn't. Or so she assumed. However, those mundane projectiles did indeed dent and scratch her up, slowly chipping away at her HP.

It was common knowledge that goblins, much like all humanoid monsters, had access to the same Jobs as adventurers through certain racial Skills. However, it was rare for the savages to cultivate these vocations beyond Level 25. And yet Fizzy found herself surrounded by nearly forty gobs with Level 40 to 50 Ranger Jobs. She had clearly underestimated them, and the blobs of conjured acid the Casters flung at her were bad news.

The ballistae ultimately proved to be little more than a bluff, as the greenskins' aim with the heavy siege weaponry was so atrocious that Fizzy wouldn't get hit even if she wanted to. That said, all those attacks ultimately amounted to little more than an annoyance. The damage wasn't zero, but it was negligible, and caustic magic was easy enough to avoid for the experienced combatant thanks to the predictions of her Champion of Chaos Skill. It was also that same ability that was starting to annoy her.

It was trying too hard to judge the trajectory of all incoming projectiles, flooding her vision with a dense array of lines and dots. Taking these guys head-on was too much bother for the golem's liking, so she chose to take a detour. She shrugged off two volleys of magical and physical projectiles by the time she made it to the hole she blew the chain-hob through. That guy had not only survived the impact, but was also waiting for her. Spear in hand, he thrust at her as she entered the building.

The golem momentarily let go of her weapon so she could pinch the incoming tip between her fingers, stopping it dead. She looked her attacker dead in the eye, then broke the weapon in her grip. To his credit, the hobgoblin remained cool and swung at her head with the haft end of the weapon. He missed as Fizzy charged into him in the blink of an eye with a single punch between the legs. It was a devastating blow that would make the greenskin swear he could taste his own testicles if he hadn't passed out on the spot.

His neck was then snapped as the construct mercilessly stomped on it. Now that she had a moment to herself, the golem unhooked the one-handed bomb-flinging crossbow from her belt. She grumbled to herself as she awkwardly loaded it with one hand, idly wondering if she should work on updating the design. That thought was shelved for the moment as she peeked out of cover and fired a high-explosive grenade at the battlements.

The resulting burst of flaming shrapnel punched a significant hole in the goblins' firing line. The stubborn bastards refused to falter and returned fire as much as they could, but had little success in hitting Fizzy since she had immediately hidden behind cover.

"What are you doing?!" Plus yelled at herself.

"What does it look like?!" Fizzy snapped back while loading another H. E. round.

"I mean why are you running around? Weren't we gonna put the fear of Bob into their souls?"

"And how do you propose I get up there?!" There certainly weren't any stairs up in this structure. By the looks of it was intended to serve as a kitchen or mess hall or something along those lines. This was also its current function, if the piles of dried meat, salted fish, and barrels of stolen ale were any indication. That aside, there was no way up since the building had no second floor. Scaling the walls themselves was not an option either, and those ropes would surely not handle her dense mass.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Who said anything about us getting to them?" Plus pointed out.

"Oh. Good point." Fizzy didn't get a chance to reconsider her approach before something crashed down into the kitchen from the thatched-up hole in the ceiling. It was a lump of foamy water that maintained a vaguely serpentine shape, clearly animated through magic. This creature was produced by Surging Guardian, one of several Skills that could conjure a mindless elemental minion to do their master's bidding.

It was a fairly advanced ability, which suggested the hobgoblin caster Fizzy spotted earlier was the one responsible. The creature lunged at the golem and quickly wrapped itself around her. It tried its best to crush her in its grip, but could not exert enough force to do so. In fact, it didn't even manage to restrain her as the golem casually flicked the switch on the device strapped to her back. The charge pack flared with electricity, causing the Surging Guardian to explode into steam, water, and blue sparks.

It had been a futile effort, but not entirely fruitless.

"Damn it! That bastard got my grenade launcher wet!" Whether intentional or not, the hobgoblin Shaman had drenched Fizzy's weapon, washing away the lubricants within. The device was still technically functional, but far more prone to jamming and exploding in her hand if she were to fire it. This was yet another flaw in its design that the golem really needed to work on. In any event, her ranged options were reduced to nil, so she had no choice but to close the gap between her and the meatbags up there.

She would also follow Plus's suggestion of bringing them to her. The Magnetize trick wouldn't work since none of the others were wearing enough metal to get yoinked off the rampart, but the golem had a good idea on what to do. Speaking of the defenders, the hobgoblin Shaman was barking orders at the smaller runts. He reorganized their positions along the wall, making sure they were spread out so most of them could continue shooting at this weird metal dwarf in case it tried to climb after them.

So far none of their attacks had much effect, but he was confident they'd win if they played it careful and safe. That approach had worked many times before, just as they were trained. They had the numbers and they had the high ground, so the sham-hob thought their odds were good. He, of course, was dead wrong. RRRUMBLE The entire fortress suddenly started to shake. The cause of this disturbance was revealed moments later as a section of wall began to crumble.

Not the shoddily thrown together barricades that the goblins had put up, but the ancient stonework left behind by Dar Buldir's original owners. The golem charged through the collapsing bricks and ploughed straight into the next wall. So much time had passed since these fortifications had seen proper maintenance that the underlying defensive enchantments had weakened considerably.

It still took a lot of effort on Fizzy's part to break through the magical protection, but once she did, it began to fail in a cascading pattern. Without mystical support, Dar Buldir's timeworn walls began to buckle and give with greater and greater ease as the madly grinning golem ploughed through them. With their 'superior position' rapidly collapsing around them, the goblins finally gave into their cowardly nature and started panicking.

The remaining hobgoblin's voice was drowned out in the crash and din of falling rubble before he too was forced to fall. It was a rough landing that saw him roll across the ground while coughing and sputtering from the dust that now invaded his nostrils. The Shaman forced himself to his feet just in time to notice the invader barreling towards him. Or at least, he assumed it was her. That glowing red silhouette in the dust cloud was about the same size and shape.

Thinking quickly, he grasped the collection of carved wooden tokens dangling from his neck, each of them loosely resembling an animal.

"De-chu-ka!" With a quick chant and a firm grasp on his talismans, the Shaman instantly invoked a Spell that the civilized world knew simply as 'Frost Blast.' A surge of pure cold erupted from the ground, enveloping Fizzy in a blinding white gust that also dispersed her cloud cover. It did a fair amount of damage and caused her to trip and fall over as her joints instantly seized up in the ice. As per usual, getting nailed with her Bane was devastating.

Granted, it wasn't as bad as facing a Cryomancer, but this hobgoblin Shaman had instantly made it to the top of her 'to smash' list. Thankfully for the golem, she had the foresight of kicking her Engine of Destruction into high gear before she started ploughing through the fortifications. The scorching heat thawed out her limbs in moments and she resumed charging the hob. However, this guy was no fool. He noticed the amplified damage of his Spell and deduced that ice was the metal golem's Bane.

"De-chu-ka! De-chu-gro!" He hit his target with another Frost Blast and immediately imbued the axe at his hip with freezing cold. He just wished he had figured out this dwarf-thing was weak to frost sooner. If he had, he would have imbued his allies' weapons with ice instead of amplifying their projectile speed and damage with wind magic. In hindsight, that would have allowed the goblins to inflict a lot more damage initially.

Not that anything would have changed since Fizzy's Parallel would have healed her up right away just as she was doing now. A sudden surge of divine radiance from the Holy Light Spell saw the golem rise from the last Frost Blast with near-full HP, her slightly dented frame popping back into peak condition. Fizzy caught up to the hobgoblin Shaman seconds later. He swung at her with his icy axe, but her wrench was faster.

It smashed into and shattered the hob's forearm, forcing him to drop his weapon with a pained yelp. The comically oversized tool danced through the air despite the golem's one-handed grip on it as she directed it into both of her victim's kneecaps with a pair of precise swipes. The Shaman screamed bloody murder as he fell onto his face, his crippled legs no longer able to support his weight. He tried desperately to crawl away with his one good arm, but there was no hope for him.

In a fit of violent inspiration, Fizzy gripped his slightly narrow skull within the jaws of her wrench. She then began to slowly tighten its grip, her mad grin widening to face-breaking proportions as the worthless meatbag beneath her feet screamed in agony. Thirty blood-curdling seconds later, his skull gave way under the mounting pressure and exploded like an egg. With the main threat reduced to a mangled mess, the golem spent the next while hunting down and squashing every last goblin she could.

A few of the vermin tried desperately to fight back, but could not even scratch the Paladin's mithril frame. Most greenskins scrambled to flee, but few were quick enough to escape the rampaging construct's Armored Charge, and fewer still could hide from an Artificer's heightened senses. The pathetic fleshlings were caught, trampled, beaten, crushed, and literally pulled apart as Fizzy cackled with delight.

At this point there was no strategy or objective behind her actions, just an instinctual drive to kill and destroy. The Paladin had fully given into her monstrous side for the first time since donning that cursed gauntlet, and it felt good. Intoxicating. Addictive, even. It was no wonder that wild golems were so damn aggressive when this was the positive feedback they got out of their own cores.

Fizzy had experienced this sort of rush before, many times at that, but she was able to keep her murderous urges in check for the sake of Boxxy's Facade. With that subconscious limit gone, there was a very real chance that the mentally unstable golem might lose herself completely and never come down from her psychotic high. Thankfully for the former gnome, she had someone else on hand to keep her grounded.

"Fizzy? Fizzy!" she yelled at herself.

"Fizzy, I think he's dead now!" Plus struggled with her other self, barely managing to stop the golem's hand before it impacted with the goblin's torso for the tenth time. The original personality groaned and strained, but could not overpower her positive side. They shared the same frame, and the contradicting orders it received made it shudder and wobble in place as if a statue being pulled in opposite directions.

The mental struggle continued for several seconds more before Fizzy's bloodlust-fueled trance finally began to relent. A few moments later, the golem snapped up to her feet and stepped back from the mangled carcass she had been straddling.

"Crap. Now I'm covered in blood and guts," she complained.

"Well, yeah. Meatbags go splash when stomped. We know this," her Parallel pointed out.

"Yeah… Sorry, Plus. I guess I got carried away a bit."

"I think it's more than a bit, boss." She turned Fizzy's eyes and head around, pointing them at the carnage the golem had inflicted over the past several minutes. The formerly mostly intact fortress of Dar Buldir had been, to put it mildly, given a thorough makeover. The fortifications were so battered and cracked that it was a small miracle that any walls still stood, and any surface not caked in blood was scorched black. Also, everything that could be on fire was on fire.

Feral-Fizzy had detonated every last grenade tucked away in her mostly fireproof satchels and pockets by grabbing them with her superheated hands. She wasn't sure why she'd done that. It was a complete waste of resources that perfectly punctuated Plus's words.

"Okay, I got a lot carried away," Fizzy sighed.

"Was it fun, though?"

"Damn right. I feel so much better, you have no idea."

"Then that's alright, then!" the golem smiled at herself.

"Shall we cool off now?"

"Let's." There was a dull clang as the Engine of Destruction was disengaged and the mithril golem stopped generating absurd amounts of heat with every motion. While it was handy to have effectively infinite MP, the Skill's self-damaging effects could easily overwhelm the Parallel's constant chanting of self-healing Spells. Well, at least in theory. Fizzy wasn't quite sure how far she could push herself, and she wasn't about to risk testing that limit.

That, combined with her uncontrolled rampage, helped her realize that she didn't know her own construction as well as she liked to think. She pondered on that curious thought while her bright-red frame gradually cooled back to its usual white. On the upside, the excess heat had all but evaporated most of the filth stuck to her shiny skin, so the eventual clean-up would be less annoying than she initially anticipated.

She'd still have to wash her fireproof outfit, but that was a lot easier than scrubbing every nook and cranny of her body. And then her mind snapped to the nagging thought that she'd never get polished by Boxxy ever again, which immediately ruined anything resembling a good mood.

"We got all the meatbags here, right?" she tried not to think about that.

"Most of them. Two or three managed to flee into the forest. Think they'll bring more friends for us to squish?"

"Doubt it. Even if there are more of them skulking around out there, they won't dare come back after what we did to the rest of them. Wait…" Digging through her somewhat hazy memories of the slaughter, Fizzy couldn't help but notice something was missing.

"Kilroy, you there?!" she yelled. A cloaked figure dropped down from the shadows above in response, standing at alert just a few paces from the miniature war machine.

"Aye?" the Rogue asked.

"You saw everything that went down, yeah?"

"Aye," he grinned.

"Am I correct in assuming the Scalper isn't among the casualties?"

"Aye," he nodded. Of course he wasn't. Judging from how this 'sweeper' was described to Fizzy, he should have clearly stood apart from the rabble as extra dangerous. And yet, none of the metabags here had survived more than a few direct impacts from the golem's attacks. Even the hobgoblins had crumpled like paper once the Paladin got her hands on them. It had all been too easy. For her, at least.

She was fully aware how superior she was to meatbag adventurers in every way, so she deemed it only natural that their lot would struggle with this bunch.

"Any idea where he might be?" she asked the dwarf.

"Aye," he pointed through a hole in the wall.

"South? You're sure?"

"Aye," he nodded again.

"Saw two o' the gobs run that way all desperate like. They probably went to get 'im."

"…" Fizzy stared at the dwarf for a silent moment, her eyes blinking rapidly.

"What?" he noticed the funny look.

"There a problem, ma'am?"

"No. It's nothing," she lied.

"Holy crap. He can say stuff other than 'aye,'" Plus whispered in the back of her head. I know, it freaked me out, too, she admitted.

"Anyway, let's not leave a job half-done, yes?"

"Aye!" It was at this moment that a spinning axe flew out of the night-veiled hole behind Kilroy and sank into the back of his skull, killing him instantly.