Black Onyx - Phoenix Resurrection

Three-Eyed Plague Bearer galloped through the forest, its clawed paws slipping on the muddy ground. The winter chill came to an end, and the first warm rays of sunshine began melting the compacted snow into puddles, making it difficult to escape from predators.

And this creature was doing exactly that, escaping desperately from the clutches of a monster. A stone beast rumbled behind it, its rocky appendages gripping the ground with much greater ease and allowing it to catch up despite its slower running speed.

The Three-Eyed Plague Bearer ran as best it could, having already completely given up the thought of retaliation as that has already proved itself impossible. The Golden Core inside its chest pumped the energy to its short forelimbs and tiny digits to scratch and claw, yet the beast felt nothing as it mercilessly tried to crush it just as it did with its less capable kin.

The Three-Eyed Plague Bearer was blessed by the world to develop the capability of deeper thought, yet the only thing it seemed it was good for was to realize how utterly doomed it was. It could do nothing but run, and that was after having survived the madness that was the flood of beasts. Its less capable kin didn’t seem to share its concern as they feasted by the day and died by night in the thousands. Yet there were always more young ones to take their place.

It regretted now, it regretted so much that it was cowardly and didn’t take the chance to feast more during that time when food was abundant and power was there for the brave for the taking. Instead, it had only gone out at night, as it had learned in its youth, under the cover of darkness, and ate scraps that remained behind.

But now all of that didn’t matter anymore. It felt the stone beast flash its energy, and the ground beneath its paws turned to muddy rubble in an instant. It lost its footing and tumbled for just a moment, yet even that was too long in the high-speed chase.

Claws of stone, far larger than it, burst out of the ground and coiled around its body, with the flintstone ape right behind.

The Three-Eyed Plague Bearer screeched, begging for mercy, but there came none. Instead, a stone fist descended, glowing like gold, and ended it all.

I ran through the forest behind Tiny, grinning stupidly all the while, with Shao Lin right behind. We were chasing a Three-Eyed Plague Bearer, an evolved version of a Giant Rat. We had found a nest while exploring, and Tiny did a great job taking them all out. Well, almost all of them.

The strongest among the bunch managed to escape, but it was too panicked to properly run, and Tiny was right on its tail. Literally.

Its tail was long and meaty, though I would refrain from eating its flesh, as just the smell of the nest made me gag, let alone the creature itself. We chased it more for fun than anything, though there were tasks given by the Sect to eradicate these creatures as they were considered pests more than anything else.

[Go, Tiny, go! Catch the rat!] I cheered my little buddy.

The golem had some rudimentary Earth Elemental magic and it used it well. It created a localized earthquake that cracked the ground and made the large rat stumble. It then created a hand out of stone to contain and gripped it tightly.

[Good job, Tiny! Do it now, kill it!]

And he did. Tiny lifted his heavy right hand, a stone club more than a limb, and smashed it down on the rat. Its head exploded and bits of brain and blood painted the ground around it.

I was mightily impressed by Tiny’s demonstration. Both he and the Three-Eyed Plague Bearer were supposed to be in the Golden Core Realm, but Tiny’s strength and toughness were both a notch higher than a simple Class I beast.

I came to the dead rat and patted Tiny on the back for a job well done. I then dug out the core, revealing a small golfball-sized golden sphere to the light of day.

[It's kind of small.] I frowned

“I mean… What did you expect? It’s a rat! I’d say it’s actually pretty big for a creature of that caliber.”

[Hmm…] I just absentmindedly nodded and stuffed the core into my pocket. I just felt its Soul bind to mine and was flooded with memories. As it turned out, that rat was most likely sentient. Or, at least it wasn’t a mindless beast, that’s for sure.

Oh well, it was dead now. And my Soul greedily devoured the delicious Soul Essence to reinforce itself against the pressure of the Divine Fragment. Every day I took a step closer, and every day I felt my resistance increase as my Soul was squeezed to its limits. I had been doing it for so long already, I forgot how life felt without a constant headache.

Must have been nice.

[Alright, let’s continue. Come, Tiny, let’s find some more things for you to do.]

Tiny took a few steps, but just as I was about to turn around he suddenly stopped.

[Huh? Tiny? Is something wrong?] His empty eye sockets carried no emotions and his stone face remained equally expressionless. I came closer to see and nudged him with my finger. [Hey, you alright buddy?]

“I think he just ran out of energy.”

I looked at Shao Lin incredulously. [Already?! But we barely just started. Those other golems can go for so much longer, and those freaks are ten times larger!]

“Yeah, well… He only has one core to store Qi, and it’s not that big either. Good quality sure, but it probably can’t contain all that much Qi.”

I clicked my tongue and frowned. If Tiny could barely work for an hour, that was a problem. I hoped he would be able to last at least a day before needing to recharge. Maybe I just needed to power it up with a Spirit Stone?

“Hey! Stop! What are you doing?”

[What?]

“You’ll destroy it if you try to give it Spirit Qi. Not everyone can resist its power without problems like you. Even to living creatures, it would have been damaging, let alone to just a core of a dead one.”

[What the hell am I supposed to do then? Just let it recharge naturally? That’s going to take weeks!]

Shao Lin shook his head. “Elder Li has a contraption that can speed that up, but it’s still going to take at least a day. You can’t just stuff copious amounts of energy inside a dead core, you’ll ruin it. You need to be slow and gentle.”

Another obstacle. I internally sighed and opened Tiny’s chest to extract the core. I carefully put it into my pocket and then stuffed the stones into a storage pouch.

If a single core wasn’t enough, then I just needed to add more. And maybe reinforce the stones even more so Shao Lin couldn’t so easily destroy them.

[Hey… Quick question. Can golems be made out of metal?]

“I… Yes, sure, they can be made out of many things. Stones, soil, metal, wood… As long as it conducts Qi, it should work. Of course, depending on the quality of your materials, it might need more or less energy to function.”

[I see… Thank you.]

“No problem.”

So… That made me think.

Out of all the materials, theoretically, a golem made out of Mithril should be the most efficient, and probably the strongest. Since, as far as I knew, Mithril was the best metal for magic artifacts. It was the best conductor of Qi as well as the material most capable of holding onto enchantments without breaking.

Not every piece of scrap metal could hold the same grade of enchantments, unfortunately. Normal iron was terrible at conducting Qi, and if any complicated enchantment was placed upon it, it was more likely to overheat and melt than to give birth to the desired magic effect.

Unless you made a self-heating iron pan for cooking. That was just about the only thing that worked.

But yeah… Collecting enough Mithril to make a golem was probably ridiculously expensive. Even the Spirit Swords already cost hundreds of Spirit Stones, and I was pretty sure they weren’t made out of pure Mithril. A much heavier metal was probably mixed with it, as Mithril by itself wasn’t all that heavy while the swords were.

Anyway, daydreaming of having a personal indestructible guardian was perhaps a bit too far, even for me.

I just had to kill a few more Golden Core beasts and Tiny could stay running for a bit longer. Yeah, that was a good plan. We had to start small. Five Golden Cores should do the trick.

“Yawn. Let’s go back, shall we? It’s getting late.”

I ripped the large badger-like creature open and rummaged through its insides in search of the elusive Golden Core while ignoring Shao Lin. He could have given me a hand and we would have been done sooner, but he insisted he would get his clothes dirty.

Well, I didn’t care either way, but that just meant it would take longer. The beast I was busy butchering was the third one we killed on the way back. Well, on the roundabout way back. I had beast cores to find, and as the Beast Tide was quickly disappearing, it was difficult to find them. I refused to pay for them because they were still super expensive despite the price drops, so I was left with no other choice but to procure them myself.

At least I got plenty of food and Golden Essence, so it wasn’t all bad.

[Ah! Here it is.] I pulled the core the size of a baseball. It was a good size, though still just half of what Tiny’s original core was. I considered looking for more creatures, but the sun was already going down and I was getting sleepy. Thanks to Shao Lin who was yawning in boredom.

Seriously, every time I saw him open his mouth slowly and yawn, my body did the same. Really, it was an odd thing.

“You done?”

[Yes, damn it! Stop yawning, you are making me sleepy too.] I shook off the blood and guts and finished converting the badger-like beast to pure Essence. [Alright, let’s go before you fall asleep because I’m not carrying you back home.]

“Same. You are yawning like a bear in late autumn.”

[Man… shut up.]

“You first.”

[...]

“Thank you.”

I was so done that I just shook my head and continued back home, ignoring Shao Lin’s victorious laugh behind me. One of these days… One of these days I would beat him at his own game and then he would have to think twice before playing me for a fool.

I just needed to get a bit stronger. My time would soon come, I just had to be patient.

But first, we had to upgrade Tiny!