Novaris: Adventure in the Shattered Fang Continent

“Alright, everybody. This is the plan. Lili, keep the boss busy, but don’t kill it; do the bare minimum. Rose, front and center, you are our tank. Keep those rolling golems busy. Arelion and Tesilim, take out those spiked golems. I will help Rose so she doesn’t get overwhelmed!”

Lili, having left as soon as she had gained her orders, appeared near the boss and began peppering it with stabs, trying to keep its attention. The minibus-sized golem was made of gray stone and was a hulking figure whose limbs took the shape of clubs that ended in flat round points instead of the normal curved endings seen on most clubs. It was as if somebody had taken five different large clubs, shortened one, and then merged them into a large torso.

The boss was strong, but thankfully, it was still slow. Though it made craters with each of his strikes, Lili was able to dodge and get away from all of them.

Faster than their boss, the rolling golems looked more like bulky humanoids without any discernible features. They could roll up into balls, making them much faster. Tesilim rushed past them, seeing Rose light up with golden energy as she dodged the first one that came rolling at her before tanking one of them with her shield.

Focusing back on his task, he missed as Alyx finished a spell. The gnome wanted to give Rose as much room to work with as possible and had infused a decent amount of mana into the spell before unleashing it. If he had wanted to, he could have demolished one of the golems on his own but decided to split the attack against the three now coming at Rose since they had diverted in a failed attempt to catch Arelion and Tesilim.

"By steel's edge and iron's might;

Release metal slashes into the fight;

Sharp and swift, cut through the air;

Strike my foes with deadly flare."

The spell finished, and six lashes of gray silver metal-like energy erupted from in front of him as they headed to the still-approaching golems. As the energy flew, it took a more physical appearance before finally striking the golems who weren't able to move out of the way. Sure, their balled-up state gave them speed but didn’t allow them to maneuver very well, letting the slashes cut deep into the golem's stone body, disrupting their rolls and further giving Rose a chance to do her thing.

Arelion and Tesilim were approaching the five-spiked golems. They looked much like the rolling golems and were made of gray stone like their boss, except they had many spikes coming from different angles on their bodies. The golems kept shooting spikes at both of them, but they could easily dodge out of the way. For his approach, Tesilim simply did short-range teleportation’s while also deflecting some of the spikes with his katana or simply moving his body accordingly. On the other hand, Arelion dodged all the spikes with sheer skill or deflected them with his daggers.

The first to strike was Tesilim, who summoned slashes of water around one of the golems. He wanted to take one of them out as soon as possible and put a bunch of mana into the spell, watching as the water slashes cut through the golem’s body. After taking one of them out, he teleported behind another and hit it with his katana, only managing to cut into it a little.

As Tesilim engaged with his golem, Arelion finally made it to his. They were running a bit low on mana since it had been a minute since they had recharged, but it should be enough to end this fight. Using the golem in front of him to block the incoming spikes, Arelion infused his dark mana into his dagger as he quietly invoked his “Consuming Darkness” technique. Activating the technique, he felt Setiels mana cursed through him, making his body burn with cold energy. Then, once it was complete, he stabbed the golden in front of him before jumping away. Once a safe distance from the golem, he activated his other technique, “Debilitating Darkness,” as he Unleashed a multitude of dark slashes like he had done to Tesilim in their spar. That was one of his favorite combos as consuming darkness slowly ate at a creature's mana, eventually killing the golem. While debilitating, darkness slowed them down, making it harder for them to stay in the fight. He hoped he could get consuming darkness to a point that it would give him the mana it consumed but that still seemed like a bit too far away.

Watching the fight, Alyx saw that Lili was keeping the boss distracted and that Tesilim and Arelion were doing their jobs. Looking back at Rose, he unleashed more metal slashes at the now freshly rolling golems.

Rose was excited to be in the midst of combat once again. She had imbued her shield with Sol's power and slammed it into the incoming golem, momentarily stunning. Annoyingly, the stun didn’t last as long as she wanted it to, as the thing was clearly resistant to that type of attack. However, it was enough to let her imbue her sword with the burning power of the sun and cleanly cut the golem in half before receiving the slam of the second golem she had dodged earlier with her shield.

Stopping the slam on its tracks, she didn't wait for the golem to roll itself up again. She dashed forward, her shield smashing into it once again. She didn't want to waste time on this, as there were three more rolling golems, so she raised her sword into the sky and called for one of her techniques.

“Solar Beam”

She poured lots of pure godly mana into it as a beam of sunlight struck the golem before her, visibly causing the thing's skin to melt. With that particular golem out of the fight, she turned to the last remaining three only to see that one of them had already been defeated by Alyx. She was happy to see that she had a competent teammate with her as she charged at the remaining two golems.

Back to Tesilim, the elf was mad because he had used a lightning bolt point-blank against the golem, and it had done jack shit. So afterward, he infused even more of his mana into more water slashes, feeling the burn as he took out the two other golems, leaving the last two to Arelion. Looking over to the half-elf, he was surprised that one of the golems was slowly crumbling away while stabs and slashes were slowly wearing down the other one. Deciding not to interfere with that fight, he looked over at Rose, witnessing the freaking beam of light come down from the sky before the redhead rushed to their other remaining rolling golems.

“That’s freaking awesome,” Tesilim commented, deciding to join her as he teleported behind one of the golems and slashed it with his katana. Then Rose engaged the other one and managed to kill it with her glowing blade. Multiple metal-looking slashes from Alyx later cut the one he had interrupted as they completed their cleanup process.

Of course, then they turned to look at Arelion and found that he was slowly walking towards them as the two golems he had been fighting slowly fell apart behind him, still attempting to give chase or shoot their spikes, which also disintegrated mid-flight.

They still had the boss to deal with, but as Lili was easily dealing with it, they wanted to make up a plan. They knew there was a chance they would fall apart after leaving the city, but it was best to have some composition until then. The chat was rather fast, as Alyx pointed out their strategy, which did not rely on Lili. The white hair elf was still a rank above them and they were the ones still needing to catch up.

First off was Rose, who rushed the golem as Alyx communicated with Lili to back off and let Rose tank some hits. This would allow the redhead to increase her enhancement with pure mana, which would help her rise through the ranks faster. Next up in the plan was Arelion, who was going to do whatever he had done to his golems in order to slowly whittle down the defenses of the boss. Meanwhile, Alyx and Tesilim would annoy the boss, trying to keep some of the pressure off Rose. Sure, they wanted Rose to enhance her body, but at the same time, they didn't want her to get overwhelmed and possibly hurt.

The plan went off without issues. Rose took hits like a champ on her and reinforced her body. Whenever she took those hits, Alyx and Tesilim would step in with teleports and spells to cause the boss to target them instead. Meanwhile, Arelion would sneak in stabs and slashes as he slowly drained the boss, causing it to lose even more mana. Naturally, Lili watched the whole time, ready to intervene in case something went wrong.

Once they felt that the boss was weak enough, it was time to complete the plan. They all had to make sure that they didn't completely run out of mana during the fight, as they still had to walk back to the city. So, instead of throwing everything that they had at the boss, the plan was to simply weaken it and have Tesilim deal the finishing blow as he had been wanting to do since the five started.

In order to set up Tesilim, they did a combination attack. Or, more importantly, Alyx and Rose did a combination attack as Arelion backed off, saying that he was running a little bit too low on mana. This time around, Rose activated a different technique, calling for a barrier wall made of golden energy, which was then further reinforced as Alyx called forth a barrier in front of said barrier wall. The boss, not being the smartest cookie in the jar, just attacked the barriers, letting the group retreat so Tesilim would have room to do his thing.

Some distance from the golem, Tesilim yelled out the words he had been waiting to say during this whole fight.

“Nothing Personal, Mr. Golem!”

Then he disappeared from his spot, appearing behind the golem and unleashing a slash of lightning using all of his weapons mana. Usually, that attack wouldn't have done too much damage to the golem as it was made of stone, but Arelion and the fight, in general, had weakened it a good deal. Then there was the fact that Tesilim had essentially unleashed all of the mana within his weapon, which was basically the same amount of mana he had access to. And since he had barely used any of the item's mana, the amount of lightning that struck the golem was genuinely amazing to see as it flashed, almost blinding everybody nearby, including Tesilim himself.

Once the lightning cleared and everybody could see again, they just saw the crumbled pieces of stone with scorch marks on them, along with a line of lightning charred marks left behind by the incredible force of the lightning slash that had left their mark on the ground in a semi-straight line.