Tom was smiling.
The challenge trial was going as well as he could possibly hope. In the latest stage, his strategy had been sound. Was it the best? Maybe, but at the very least, it was good and his execution while not flawless had been near perfect. He had only missed two throws and getting tagged with slow on four occasions, but he was not sure that had cost him. Tom waited a moment, but no new spell was awarded. Internally he was calculating his reward and the fact he already had a tier three spell meant he had achieved a rating of at least Good and he had hoped that the seventh the stage would push him to the Very Good rating but apparently that was not the case.
“What does the next stage look like?”
It is an obstacle course with lava spitters.
Lava spitters shoot multiple projectiles in a straight line. Lava will stick to surfaces and burn for fourteen seconds instead of bouncing off. The lava spitters are difficult to destroy as they are fully organic and have a range of twenty metres. The recommended strategy is to wall them off.
“Not destroy?”
Earth manipulation cannot crush them with an acceptable efficiency.
Tom caught the specific wording and the fact he had been thinking about using Earth Manipulation and Susie had picked up on it. Having his mind read had long since ceased to worry him in these situations.
“Or maybe kill them with the Thrown Rock spell?”
The approximate size of a typical spitter is your fist.
Tom considered that. “I assume that means they will be hard to hit, at least without practising the spell more.” The intelligence said nothing. The answer, after all, was self-obvious. “And the only objective is fastest clear?”
Correct
The timer counted down.
The instant the counter hit zero Tom dashed down the tunnel. Almost instinctively, he destroyed the four homing missile shooters that were in range and then ducked hurriedly backwards as a spray of red liquid splashed past him from well beyond twelve metres.
Lava spitters
When he looked across the wall had lava running down it. When he held a hand near it, he could feel the heat.
That was not nice at all. Even stone skin would fail against that. Tom suspected that the addition of the lava spitter was a direct response to his willingness to tank hits directly on the previous stage. Was it retaliation or random chance? Or was this to drive him to use Remote Earth Manipulation more in the way it was intended? Tom knew that the skill was not designed as a scouting ability and nor did growing a finger length of rock to destroy a missile launcher count as a standard use case. These lava spitters were probably not punishment but more introduced to force him to apply the Spell as intended at this low level. Basically, applying it to become a more flexible version of Earth Wall.
It didn’t matter. His mix of magic did not have an easy answer to something like this new spitter. He categorised what he had noticed about the attack. It was accurate, and an almost instant response to his presence through the speed the lava flew was low and it was only half a cup of liquid. The problem was that it was shooting accurately from twenty metres away.
Tom snuck a peek and then pulled his head back as the lava shot through the space it had been filling to strike the far wall. The physical spitter was at ground level. With a flex of his mind, he raised an earth wall that was about a metre high and half a metre wide. Then, being careful to stay low he crawled close to the wall.
It brought six more launchers into his range. He destroyed them all and then planned his next movement. His target was still beyond the reach of Remote Earth Manipulation so he could create more walls to progress or see if Throw Rock could destroy it.
He stood. Threw his rock and ducked immediately.
Lava arced over the top of him and there was the sound of his projectile smashing into the wall.
He flared Remote Earth Manipulation to sense the world around him.
Annoyance flared. His throw had missed and judging by the spreading cracks his rock had hit the stone floor to the left of the spitter. Not particularly close.
Tom stood and repeated the action.
The instant the lava passed he rose.
The spitter was still alive.
This time, he took a moment to aim. He dropped at his knees and the lava swept over his head. Luckily it had targeted for his head rather than his chest… because if it had aimed lower than he would have had to check how stone skin stood up against lava.
Tom hit the ground, breathing heavily.
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Too close.
When he peeked, it was around the side of the barrier instead of the top. No lava arced out at him. His pebble had destroyed the target. Eighty mana burned, and he was barely twenty metres into the maze. Curiously, he examined the spitter.
Lava Spitter – Tier 4–Disabled
A nasty plant that can fire streams of lava that will trouble most organic creatures.
This specimen has been lightly damaged and cannot spit lava for another five minutes and thirty seconds.
Tom shook his head in disbelief. Tier 4 and his near direct hit had not destroyed it and instead only hurt it slightly. Throw Rock was not a suitable solution. The spitters were only the size of his fist and hard to hit and even if he hit them, the throw might not even disable them.
Avoid or block with earthen walls he decided, and preferably the former. They were too powerful for any other response. With the decision made, he moved with the aim of avoiding lava spitters. It was something Tom discovered he could do. Unlike the previous stages, which were mostly linear and gave zero choice, this stage this was a maze of interconnecting tunnels. Exploration was not always easy. Some shafts went vertical but when you could sense the walls and then effortlessly create handholds if needed, a vertical stretch was not the challenge it would have been to most people.
Remote earth manipulation gave him the lay of the landscape. If there was a line of sight beyond the twelve-metre range, he would grab a quick peek. Most of the time, lava bullets would target him. Usually, that was sufficient for him to backtrack and try to find a different route, but sometimes he had no better choices. On those occasions he didn’t attempt Throw Rock again and instead utilised temporary walls till he could get close enough to grow a proper wall in front of it.
After almost forty minutes of progress, he spotted the glow of the exit. His brain felt strained.
It was a couple of metres below him and eleven metres away. It reminded him of the jump he did to start the first stage. The only difference was that the twelve metres had lava spitters set up almost twenty of them, and they would fry anyone passing through space. He could wall them in, but that would take literally hundreds of mana and another fifteen minutes.
“I’m so going to regret this,” he whispered to himself.
He backed up. Lightning Steps activated, and he charged for the lip of the shelf he was on and leapt.
Once more, his legs were engulfed in lightning from his toes to his hip and he launched out into the air. Immediately, he engaged stone skin over his entire body and flew.
Lava slammed into him, but because it was hitting from both sides, he was not knocked off course.
His mana plummeted as the lava burnt him despite the stone skin and he was forced to heal himself at the same time.
Then he was falling toward the safe zone. Stone on stone might cause shattering. When he felt himself entering the safe area, he released stone skin.
Mana rushed into him, and the lava on his skin evaporated away into nothing. He was not instantly healed. With a gasp, he turned off pain and then healed himself. Given the availability of unlimited mana he went for quantity over efficiency.
A smell very similar to roasted pork greeted him and he healed through the damage. The pain had stopped immediately, but as the healing bubbled through him he could feel his skin moving and reforming and his eyes grow back. It was a heady feeling. So much healing was funnelling through him that Tom wouldn’t be at all surprised if this caused Touch Heal to level up one or two times.
Just over ten seconds later, the last of the deep burns vanished.
The throughput was so significant that he suspected his healing levels went up as he dumped his entire pool multiple times over a ten-second period.
With a groan, the phantom pain stopped, and he had the strength to open his eyes and read what had happened. The thick crappy leather armour that had served him so well against the wasps was tattered and useless, burnt away by the lava. He pulled it off in disgust and got dressed quickly in his magic blue skivvy. A set of clothes he had been awarded by the previous trial.
Congratulations, you have reached the eighth safe zone.
Magical knowledge flooded into his mind.
Tier four spell Stone Golem learnt.
His mind registered the fact, and a grin swept across his face. Being taught the tier four spell meant he had reached the Very Good performance level. He was going to get a legendary title. He mentally fist pumped at the achievement as his mind assimilated the details of what he had been taught.
Creating a stone golem was nothing like summoning an elemental. You crafted a body, then you animated the body and then imparted basic operating parameters. At the most basic level, it was a lump of stone, mana to run it and a set of instructions that basically corresponded to mana channels to allow the crafter to puppet the construction.
That was the basic structure of the spell, but under the bonnet every step in the process could be improved. It was artwork created of a few splashes of paint versus a modern A+ game that produced an entire world complete with a painting mini game.
Details mattered.
Materials used could change everything. Individualised rune work and sculpturing would modify the eventual outcomes. If you engraved tiny runes on everything or added such simple details as hair on the body, it would transform the final result, and the runes were not necessarily the pathway to power. The golem created was as much art as science and the creation would act accordingly. Sometimes simplicity would triumph over detail and other times simplicity was a bucket with a hole in its bottom.
The amount of mana invested initially was important and also what you gave it over time. Finally, the operating procedures could be simple or immensely complicated. At a higher level, legendary power sources could be incorporated or a consciousness such as an elemental added to give the golem intelligence.
Tom smiled as he learnt more. Was it a skill that he would have chosen? Never. But after having slightly more than the basics shoved into his mind, he loved it.
It suited him.
A basic template with a range of complexity that you could build on top of it. A hobby, so to speak, that could fill his downtime and let him create something special. Tom’s mind touched the vast amounts of knowledge shared with him curiously.
The basic spell was only ten percent of what he had been given. For some unknown reason, a significant amount of alternative information had been imparted. It was more comprehensive than any assisted learning he had experienced in the DEUS’s trial.
Your challenge is to use the supplied materials and your skills to create a golem capable of finishing any of the prior stages.
Material supplied reflects your progress to date.
You can choose the stage you wish to instruct the golem to complete and if you are successful, you will get points ranked accordingly based on how long it takes to finish.
If it does not finish, you get zero points.
Golem must weigh at least one hundred kilograms.
Construct the Golem under the assumption that it will not be used in any future stages.
You have five minutes to plan your building and twenty minutes to build the golem.
“Awesome.” He clapped his hands. First, he would assess his materials and then decide which stage to finish.