Chapter 804: Tell Them You Beat Me Up
Eyes wide, Adam barely had time to catch his reflection on the silvery edge of the sword. The brutal whistle sliced locks of sky-blue hair. He felt the icy metal kiss his scalp, about to cleave his head as easily as a watermelon.
’Damn it!’
With an inner roar, he sent a desperate burst of mana beneath his feet while cancelling the spell he permanently kept active to reduce the weight of his bones. The rocky ground rippled as if someone had hurled a boulder on the surface of a lake that could not support the new burden.
The blade carved a searing, bloody line on his scalp. His heart pounded against his ribs, his pulse drumming in his ears. Blood spewed down his forehead, a scarlet veil covering his vision. Yet, before the massive sword reached the bones, he fell through the ground, vanishing in its depths.
CRACK
Metal crashed on stones, gravel shooting through the walls like shrapnel.
The colossal construct plunged its hand inside its torso, then pulled a helmeted head up. A red light glinted from the slit of the visor. Crouching, it patted the shattered, hard ground, in which Adam’s blood had melded as a part of the gray stones.
It snapped its head up emotionlessly, the visor flashing with cold calculations and locking on the red carpet two meters away.
Underground, Adam halted his descent with a grimace. A construct as powerful as a magus with mechanical might as appalling as the guardians of the void palace. He had no chance.
Flee!
Liquid rock solidified into a slanted tunnel around him. He lashed dozens of thick, mana ropes to the sides and pulled hard twice. They stretched like rubber, making him nod—they would hold.
With a deep breath, he pulled himself back into the tunnel. Each step became a struggle as the groaning ropes reached the limit of their tensile strength. Jaw clenched, he leapt forward.
His hair whipped against his face as the ropes shot him upwards. He passed through a liquid section of the ground above, the red carpet meeting his bleeding scalp. He slapped it off, only for his blood-covered eyes to widen.
Dread’s icy fingers wrapped around his heart as he saw the construct already on him, blades drawing a shining horizontal arc.
He saw Desmond’s soundless cry inside the protective bubble. It was just a few steps away. He had calculated the angle to emerge beside it, grab the teenager, and bolt toward the door. Yet, his mind rang with painful realisation. The construct wasn’t like the guardians of the void palace—puppets that carried commands. It was sharp, designed to analyse, understand, and counter viciously.
A single glance was enough. The blade would slice through his waist, forcing his torso to divorce its loving legs.
Clenching his teeth until he tasted blood, he snapped his left leg up.
The edge crashed against his shin like a carriage pulled by a hundred mad horses. The thickest bone in human anatomy cracked; splinters drilled into his calf and ground against his kneecap. Blinding agony seared through his nerves, but with what little mental fortitude he could muster, he tightened his windpipe to suppress his scream. Even as the impact hurled him back, he growled in refusal.
He would not give the thing trying to kill him the satisfaction.
He crashed into the wall in a cloud of dust, the air knocked out of his lungs. He gasped, but his gaze never left the construct, which seemed to return it with a cold indifference that betrayed its next move.
It stood motionless one moment. The next, the map on its torso pulsed, and the ground shook with its charge.
Adam tried to stand, but his left leg felt like a gateway to a world of pain. It buckled, the bone-deep cut painting the ancient slabs red. But he wouldn’t die. He knew it—the way to survival. Not raw strength. Not even confrontation. Like with the guardians, it wouldn’t work. Even worse, this was a magical construct, and he knew its builder protected it against offensive spells because that’s what he would have done.
"Weight," he muttered on his knees, raising his fist.
The very spell he had cancelled earlier surged toward the construct like harmless mist. Defensive matrices shone on its torso, drawing weaving patterns between mountains, rivers, and cities. Yet, the construct’s visor pulsed with equations in which X suddenly became Y.
As its processing failed to find a countermeasure, its weight was halved, then halved again, and again until several tons became a few hundred kilograms. Its center of gravity instantaneously shifted, and its now light leg struck the ground too hard. Mid-charge, it leapt with terrifying momentum, crashing helmet-first into the ceiling.
Rubble rained in the room, but Adam wasted no time on celebration. That thing wouldn’t die from a simple collision. Absolutely not. After all, he would have also enchanted it to disperse impacts...
Without testing his theories, he hurled mana ropes around the sphere protecting Desmond. Beneath his stomach, he condensed a sky-blue platform and sent it toward the open door while pulling the slack-jawed Desmond out with him.
However, the ceiling cracked as the construct pushed its head out. The visor flared and its blade whistled before it could even land, each strike slicing through the spell afflicting it as if it was tangible. Not haphazardly, but with the method to counter curses that Adam had learned the previous day.
The shockwave of its landing extinguished the torches, and the pillars trembled. Its charge dug craters as the weight alteration vanished.
"Get off my ass, you abominable can designed by an enchanter who understood nothing about style!" With Adam’s roar, diamond-shaped mana rose into dozens of walls between his escaping figure and the construct.
Simultaneously, he dismissed the bubble around Desmond and screamed. "Don’t let it follow us! Close the door the moment we’re out!"
CRASH
Before Desmond could answer, the first mana wall shattered into sparkling motes like glass struck by a war hammer. The second followed, then the third.
He gulped, his eyes narrowed on the approaching door. It wasn’t far—the construct was unbelievably fast.
"We won’t make it!" Clinging to the platform, Desmond let out a strangled scream as the haunting echo of the shattering barriers grew closer. He thought about his lightning, but it wouldn’t be faster than the platform.
"Close the door!" Adam simply grabbed him by the shoulder and hurled Desmond out like a professional pitcher. "I’m in trouble..." he sighed, stacking five gravity arrows pointing outside.
WHOOSH
They propelled the platform five times faster, turning it into a blur that crashed into the corridor’s opposite wall in the blink of an eye.
Wide-eyed, Desmond watched the dust rising from the impact before remembering his mission. He slammed the door shut, but not before seeing the construct a few steps away, blade cleaving toward them.
Even after the metallic door sealed the vision of horror inside the mysterious room, he trembled, his breath caught in his throat.
It was only when alarms blared through the reward hall, and Adam coughed behind him, that he recovered.
"Adam!" He rushed at him, supporting him with his shoulder. "You’re alright?"
Adam glanced at his left leg, then pointed at his crooked nose, and the blood staining his forehead. "What do you think?"
He raised his palm to interrupt Desmond, sighing. "That’s not the worst. The alarm... How do we explain I crashed into the wall?"
After a moment of silence, Desmond shook his head. "We tell the teachers the truth. The mysterious room, the golem... they’re too much for us."
"That bastard is mine," Adam simply said as hurried footsteps echoed in the distance. "Don’t tell them, Desmond. We’ll uncover this mystery—later, prepared."
"But..."
Adam shook his head. "Tell them we got into an argument and you beat me up. I don’t care. But the room is ours. Think about it; the magus construct must be guarding something. I don’t know what, but you’re the only one who ever found this room, so don’t let fear cloud your judgment. Trust me on this one."
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AN: Today is my birthday. :D