Chương 182: Chapter 180: Desperate battle

We're not going to survive long against that many cave spikes. Even with the lower hit points, they're going to eventually catch El and swarm over her, or they're going to decide to turn on me and swarm over me. I have to do something to even things out. The problem is, I can't think of anything. Without magic, I don't have many options. If magic were working, Mab's Rage would be wonderful right now. It's off cooldown, and would do enough damage to wipe out these little bastards. But no magic. So what do I do?

So far, all I can do is keep shooting them. My arrows are doing a bit more damage to the cave spikes than they were doing to the golem. By breaking up into the little creatures, its armor dropped by fifty. So I'm doing an extra fifty points of damage every time I hit one of them. Unfortunately, that's still not very much. I can kill one of these things over the course of two minutes if I keep firing at the pace I'm going, but I don't know if killing one of them is going to be enough to save El.

For her part, El is continuing to kite them, moving just a little bit faster than the swarm of cave spikes chasing after her on their stubby little legs. She isn't getting any hits on them, but they aren't hitting her either. For now, that equilibrium is enough. I don't know what we'll do if the other one turns into twelve more of these creatures. I also don't know how the experience is going to distribute if we somehow manage to kill them. A minute passes, and then one of the cave spikes actually dies.

As soon as it does, the others stop moving. El takes the opportunity to carve into one of them, hitting it half a dozen times in rapid succession. But then all of them swirl together and reform the original golem form. The only difference is that now its torso is shorter, from where the dead cave spike is missing. It's down to about three quarters of its health bar, and El engages with it the same way she did before. But at the same time, the other one starts to glow.

I shout at Vincent to get behind me, and he does, in time for the explosion of rocks to hit mostly me and only clip him a little bit. He still takes some damage, but I'm guessing he's still above two thousand. I take another 503 damage, bringing me down to 17, 794 damage. I'm bleeding from a bunch of little cuts, but nothing that stops me from shooting at the same pace. My skin stings a little, but I can ignore it.

The twelve cave spikes that come from this golem quickly surround Ash and Gigi, who start fighting back to back. I can tell that they're taking damage here and there, but I'm not sure if I can afford to help them. I need to keep peppering the one that El is fighting. I need to help her, so she isn't fighting by herself. She is at least on the other side of the golem now, which means that my shots are getting a flanking bonus.

The bonus still applies after the armor takes away from the damage, but it means that I'm now doing twenty three thousand damage to it every minute. It's down below half health, and El and I are steadily taking the creature down. I look at everyone's health bars. The cave spikes are all around half of their total health. El is still above three quarters, but has taken some real damage. Ash is doing a bit better, but has probably taken a few thousand points of damage.

Gigi seems like she's getting close to half health, and Vincent is at about two thirds of his total health. We keep fighting, trying to be defensive. I keep an eye on the cave spikes, hoping that Gigi and Ash will be able to take one of them down. The problem is, they're fighting back to back, so they can't exactly concentrate on the same opponent. They have to just cut and smash independent of one another, and hope that they can do enough damage. It seems like Ash is doing a lot more damage than the rest of us.

That makes sense. Bashing damage is more effective against armor. Having a suit of plate mail is great when the sword slides off the metal, but not as effective when the hammer smashes in your ribs. Ash might be able to kill one of the cave spikes by herself. After two minutes, the cave spikes form into the golem again, without any of them dying. So there is a time limit for that little trick. Good to know. I wonder how long before the first one uses it again.

It might be a one time thing, or it might be something they can do every few minutes. I just hope there aren't any other tricks this thing has up its sleeve. My stamina is draining about as fast as it's regenerating right now. I use Killing Blow again, just in case it works. It doesn't. I grit my teeth and berate myself a little bit for wasting the stamina. That's my costliest ability, and it only works one time out of fifty, and that's on average.

I might be able to level it up some more, but the leveling doesn't seem to help the insta-kill function, just the consolation prize. And it's not worth that much stamina just to get the same damage I get from Bleeding Strike. Some abilities are like traps. They're a waste, a gamble. Same is true with spells. I don't know if Magical Dart has ever been that useful. It just doesn't do the kind of damage that I expect from a spell. Not that I wouldn't appreciate it now. Any magic now would be a good thing.

It would mean that Vincent could get involved in the combat, and would mean we had a fifth combatant. But the mountain isn't letting us use magic for this fight. So there's no use in wishing. El's health is down by more than a third. That means she's lost more than ten thousand hit points. Looking around at Gigi and Ash, it seems like they've lost about the same amount. None of us are in real danger yet, but between the health loss and the stamina drain, it's getting super dangerous.

Stamina is now draining at a pretty prodigious rate. I'm losing two stamina per second, which means it's draining at five points per second. Soon that will increase to ten per second. I don't know if we have enough stamina between us to finish this battle. If Gigi or Ash run out before El and I kill this first golem, then the second golem is going to kill them. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I don't want my friends to die.

Aside from the fact that it will probably send them back to the other continent – I'm not sure if anyone set their respawn points to this one. I know I didn't – it will also reset them to level one. And it will put a stop to their goal of becoming gods. El and I won't really have much reason to continue up the mountain. Maybe El will let herself be killed so she can be with our friends. Maybe I'll do the same. That seems like a bad idea, but what other options are there?

Do we become gods and then go fetch them so they can do the same? El doesn't want to be a god, and I'm waffling on the choice myself. And then there's the question of what Vincent will do. I don't know if he'll even want to continue without the other two. We need to finish this fight as quickly as possible. It's so frustrating. My entire magical arsenal has been cut out from under me. How is that fair? How is having no magic a fair thing?

It seems like the mountain is cheating, like it's not playing by the same rules as the rest of the world. I understand that the mountain is supposed to be a huge challenge. I get that it's a gauntlet we have to go through to prove that we're deserving of divinity. I can see the point in it. But it's just not fair. I can't do more damage, which means I can't finish this fight any faster. I can't shoot any faster than I already am. I can push myself a little bit, but my accuracy is going to start dropping away.

Is it worth all my shots being less accurate just to get a few extra arrows in over the course of a minute? It's my only option, I suppose. I just hope none of my shots miss the golem and hit El by mistake. I force myself to fire even faster. I can't quite get an arrow a second, but I'm close. Over the next minute, I'm pretty sure I fire 45 times. That's a few thousand extra damage. That's something. Stamina is now draining me at seven points per second.

I still have about half an hour at this rate before I run out. But it's not going to stay at this rate. The golem El and I are fighting is down to about a third of its health. It might even be below six figures. Another few minutes and we'll take it out. But can Gigi and Ash survive those few minutes? Their health bars indicate that they can, but even with them hiding behind their shields, sooner or later stamina is going to become the main issue.

By the time we kill the first golem, the drain will be up to fifteen per second. Maybe twenty. That's going to really cut through their reserves. I keep firing at my increased pace, feeling my own stamina start to drain faster as we whittle away the cave golem. It gets a solid hit on El, ringing her bell a little bit, and I see that her health is below half. That's not good. Even at half, she has close to the same amount of health that I currently have, but I'm still worried.

Stamina is draining out at fifteen points a second when the golem starts to glow again. I don't know if it's going to be a good thing or a bad thing to have it split apart again. But I know the bursting of pebbles and rocks away from it is going to suck. The individual cave spikes have less than ten thousand hit points each. And with the lower armor, my arrows do even more damage. I can't keep firing at the sped up pace, though; they're too small to be able to trust the variance in range.

El tries to kite them again, but they move to surround her, forcing her to do her whirling dervish attack to try to keep them all at bay. I wonder if she's using something like Stinging Defense. Maybe she is. I keep shooting at the ones around her, and manage to start doing some real damage. Each arrow does 680 damage, and that means that I can kill two of them over the course of one minute. I even manage to kill a third before it forms back into the golem.

This version of the golem has only two stalactites in its chest, and only has one arm. It also has only about sixty thousand hit points left. We can do this. I hope we can do this. El attacks more often now that it only has one arm. Between us, we are able to kill the golem in about three more minutes. But that means that about 3600 points of stamina have been drained from Ash and from Gigi. I know they have more than that, but they might be getting pretty low at this point.

El charges in to help them, and I shout for Gigi to draw back and rest for a few minutes while I turn my barrage of arrows on the remaining golem. It was really close there for a while. But we do manage to kill it. I am pretty sure that I fired close to a thousand arrows over the course of the battle. My bow skill went up two points to 45. I'm the least injured among us, and I've still taken about two thousand points of damage. Without magic to heal us, that's going to take a very long time to heal.

Like, more than a day. Almost a day and a half. It'll be faster for the women, since I believe all of them regenerate health at a rate of at least one per second. But I heal at one per minute. Still faster than any human being, but slow enough. You have defeated cave golem x2. You receive (620, 000/5) 124, 000 experience. That's enough for some levels. At level 48, I have thirteen points to spend. I put four of them into agility, then put three each into strength, vigor, and presence.

I'm not entirely sure why I put points into presence, since the only thing that does is give me more mana points that I can't currently spend. But I don't think the magic blackout is going to last forever, and I'll have use for those points eventually. It puts my health up to 19, 488, my mana to 6, 960, and my stamina to 16, 320. All very respectable numbers. El also levels up, bringing her health to a very respectable 32, 160. And Gigi levels up to 42, putting her health at 18, 060.

I've still got her beat, but the gap is noticeably smaller. We decide it's best to rest for a while, to try to get our reserves back up. I try to meditate, sending my willpower through my body, trying to get it to heal faster. I try to imagine the cells repairing themselves, the wounds stitching themselves closed. I focus my essence, my inner self, my mana, whatever I can get, to the task. I imagine myself being healthy and hearty. It doesn't work.

Over the course of the twenty minutes I spend meditating, I regenerate 3, 600 stamina and 20 health. I guess you can't just meditate yourself into healing. I was clearly doing something, though, as my meditation skill increases to 18. But no additional healing. I'm frowning when I look around. Ash is still meditating, and so is Gigi. They're doing that deep breathing kind of meditation that does allow stamina to regenerate faster. It's not fair.

Maybe I should break down and take health regeneration as my next talent. I'm only two levels away from it. Granted, I need almost half a million experience to get to the next level, but that doesn't seem so ridiculous while we're climbing this mountain. I might get there. I might actually hit level fifty. Vincent should be hitting level forty nine soon. It's weird to have caught up to him in level, but I understand it when I see that I need 550, 000 experience to get to level forty nine.

I have 69, 070 at the moment, left over from my last leveling. It's a drop in the bucket, but at least the bucket isn't completely empty.