Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 71: Practice Makes Perfect

“We could just not do it,” suggested Kurik in his typically gruff manner. “Ain’t that an option?”

“No,” Dat, Ron, and Sadie said in unison, all having heard the same suggestion a couple of times before. For his part, Elijah remained silent, and for the first time, actually considered the dwarf’s idea. Given what they’d already seen, it was unlikely that anyone else would conquer the challenge of the Ethereum. Without false modesty, Elijah could say that his group was the most powerful in the Trial, and if they found the obstacles too steep to overcome, then the same would be true for everyone else. Following that line of logic, no one would have an opportunity to beat them in the Primacy Rankings.

Their victory was assured.

Yet, Elijah couldn’t stop himself from rejecting the notion of turning back. Was it the completionist in him? Or a stubborn refusal to give up, perhaps? Pride? Maybe it was just momentum pushing him forward. Whatever the case, even if Kurik’s suggestion was, on the surface, a valid one, Elijah couldn’t bring himself to truly consider committing to it.

The others clearly felt the same way.

The only problem was that, in the few hours it had taken Elijah to recover, no one had come up with any solutions. The sentry golems were powerful in their own right, but the true issue they’d yet to solve was that none of the group’s spells seemed to work on the ambulatory suits of armor.

“How do they work?” Elijah wondered for what felt like the hundredth time. “It seems overpowered that they’re immune to spells.”

“They ain’t immune,” Kurik said. “They absorb the ethera. There’s a difference.”

“Functionally, it sounds pretty much the same,” Ron remarked.

“It ain’t. Immunity would mean we ain’t got a chance,” Kurik said. “My grandpa told me a story once when I was a kid. About an elf they called the Null Mage. Class called a Magestalker. Or that was the original. No tellin’ what it evolved into.”

He shook his head and continued. “The Null Mage didn’t have spells or abilities. Just a unique body with resistances so high that he couldn’t be touched by spells or abilities. He had incredible attributes, too. He was a political assassin.”

“What happened in the story?” Dat asked.

Kurik shrugged. “He killed everyone.”

“Well, that’s depressing. Are all of your fairy tales like that?” asked Elijah.

“Was a brutal world,” Kurik acknowledged. “Ain’t no point in tellin’ pretty stories in that kinda place. The Null Mage’s tale was meant to represent an unstoppable force. Like fate or some such. If the Null Mage’s comin’ for you, you best start makin’ peace with your end. Ain’t no runnin’. Ain’t no beatin’ him. All you can do is die on your own terms.”

“Damn, bro.”

“They told that story to children?” asked Sadie.

Elijah understood it, though. It was probably paired with some sort of admonishment to live a good life so as to avoid being targeted by the vicious Null Mage. Still, the idea of a person with high attributes who was effectively immune to spells was a terrifying one.

Clearly, there had to be limits, though. There always were. Someone like that could assuredly be overwhelmed by a large enough power discrepancy. But for someone on the same tier? They would be almost impossible to stop.

Elijah asked, “But these sentry golems aren’t like that?”

Kurik shook his head. “We’d be dead if they were,” he answered. “They absorb ethera, like I said. Important distinction.”

Elijah noted that the dwarf still hadn’t answered the most pertinent question. “What does it mean, though?”

“It means you should eat Spree,” Sadie said quietly, though not so quiet that she couldn’t be heard. Everyone stared at her, and she went red in the face. “Sorry. It’s something my sister used to say all the time. There were these commercials years ago…”

“I remember those,” Elijah said.

“Not important, guys,” Ron stated, clearly wanting to get things back on track.

They all looked at Kurik, who explained, “My point is that those cores can’t absorb it all. You can overwhelm them. They probably have an automatic shut-off so when they overload they don’t explode. It’s basic ethereal engineering.”

“Those things didn’t seem basic to me,” Elijah said.

“That’s ‘cause you opened one up and exposed the core.”

“You told me to!”

“I did no such thing. You musta heard me wrong.”

“Go for the core,” Elijah echoed, using his closest approximation of the dwarf’s voice. It wasn’t a good impression, but it got the point across. “That’s what you screamed at me.”

“That don’t sound like me.”

“I think it –”

“Boys,” Sadie said, cutting them off. “I don’t think this is very productive. We need to figure out an approach that gets us through there without getting overwhelmed.”

That got through to them, and the discussion as to how to combat the problem truly commenced. There were a lot of suggestions, including using Elijah as bait while everyone else attacked the things from range, but in the end, it came down to a similar strategy they’d employed in other challenges.

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“I can’t just throw my traps down,” Kurik said, referring to a specific type that he claimed would overwhelm the sentry golems’ ability to absorb ethera. “I need time to build a killin’ field.”

“How long do you need?” Elijah asked.

The dwarf shrugged and answered, “Maybe an hour? Two? Hard to say. But I get the cores when we take ‘em out. I want that made clear.”

“Literally no one else wants them.”

“Good, ‘cause they’re mine,” Kurik reiterated.

After that, the group finished their final preparations before once again setting off to infiltrate the latest challenge. As before, the moment they stepped a foot onto the campus, the sentry golems appeared. Now that he was ready for their arrival, Elijah could detect that they’d come through a series of black portals.

Which made sense, though he didn’t like the implications.

Regardless, he didn’t have much time to dwell on it. Instead, he and Sadie established a front line, with Dat, Ron, and Kurik behind. The first two were ready to contribute to the fight, while Kurik had already begun to deploy his traps. The latest iteration was a power crystal atop a tripod, though Elijah could vaguely feel that each one was connected by a strand of ethera that ran from one to the other.

But he didn’t have the mental bandwidth to process anything else before the first line of sentry golems crashed into him and Sadie. In the Shape of the Guardian, he managed to hold his ground, and he was surprised at how much of a difference a shift in strategy made. In the previous battle, they’d been scrambling from the very beginning, but now that they knew what to expect – and had a much clearer goal – the sentry golems weren’t nearly as overwhelming.

This time, Elijah wasn’t concerned with trying to defeat the things. Rather, he only wanted to hold his ground and delay them for as long as possible. To that end, he met them on equal terms, matching them strength for strength. Certainly, easier didn’t mean easy, and it took all of his focus to maintain his footing while protecting the others.

Sadie did the same, though with the sentry golems’ ability to effortlessly slice through her shields, she struggled to keep pace. Thankfully, she had other abilities to assist her. First among them was the skill that let her hold her ground even as the golems hammered her with heavy blows. Simple physics suggested that she should have easily been dislodged from her position, and yet, she maintained her footing.

Second, she had a couple of self-heals she could employ, which served to ease the burden on Ron, who was forced to continuously cast in order to repair the damage she and Elijah took.

Finally, Dat formed a second line of defense. His crossbow bolts depended on spells and hexes to do any real damage, so given their ineffectiveness, he’d shifted to a melee focus. Still, he clearly knew his own weaknesses, so he didn’t step up unless one of the golems managed to break through the line. When that happened, he attacked without hesitation, using his pair of shortswords to plug the gap until Sadie or Elijah could respond.

Like that, they fought, and over the course of the next thirty minutes, Elijah discovered a couple of things about his opponents. The first was that they were absolutely inexhaustible. They didn’t tire. They didn’t slow. And their blows did not weaken. Instead, they kept coming like the inexorable machines they were.

Second, the things kept pouring out of the unseen portals, flooding the street until they were stacked a dozen deep. Elijah and the others managed to down more than a few, but the fallen were quickly replaced by more of the same.

And finally, the lone saving grace was that they weren’t quite as strong as the previous encounter suggested. That was the only reason Elijah and Sadie managed to hold their own. If the sentry golems would have been even slightly more powerful, that would not have been the case.

Fortunately, the group was well used to fighting against seemingly innumerable enemies, and they made a good showing as the minutes wore into hours. Finally, Kurik shouted, “It’s done! Let the first wave through!”

At that, Elijah stepped aside just enough to allow a few through. Sadie did the same, and the sentry golems took the bait, rushing past to attack the others. At the same time, Dat sprang backward to join Ron and Kurik just past the line of tripods.

If the Sapper’s traps didn’t work as advertised, then they would be almost entirely defenseless. They’d established a plan for that eventuality, but it wasn’t without risks. So, Elijah held his breath as he closed the gap and waited for the trap line to activate.

The first golem crashed between them, its heavy footsteps clanking on the stone street.

And nothing happened.

The second came on the heels of the first, followed closely by the third. Then, the fourth. Finally, the fifth. Elijah was about to shout for everyone to switch to the backup plan when the local ethera went wild, whipping around like a loose garden hose at full blast. Then, those ethereal strands latched onto each golem in turn, and even Elijah could feel the power draining into them.

The idea was a simple one, but Kurik had been forced to adapt one of his existing traps to accommodate a new goal. The fact that he could do that without much preparation just showed how valuable he was. Elijah didn’t know any other Sappers, but he suspected that Kurik was an extraordinarily talented example of the class.

Or maybe that was the only way he could sleep at night, because if they all had Kurik’s abilities, they were an extremely dangerous bunch.

In any case, the golems that had been subjected to the traps quickly absorbed so much ethera that they began to spark. That continued until, only seconds later, they toppled over, entirely inert.

Kurik yelled, “Twenty minutes, then let the next wave through!”

Elijah and Sadie acknowledged the timeframe, then went back to work holding the horde of sentry golems at bay while Kurik exchanged the power crystals fueling his traps for fresh ones. When the time came, they let another wave through, and to similar results. According to Kurik’s estimates, he had enough crystals – acquired by Elijah the last time he was in Nexus Town – to take out more than a hundred of the golems.

Hopefully, that would be enough to turn the tide.

What Elijah knew, though, was that it wouldn’t take out the entire force. So, their success rested on everyone else doing their part. So, he bent his focus toward keeping the line of golems at bay, battering them into submission when possible.

Like that, the battle wore on.

Because Iron Scales was useless against the golems, Elijah took so many wounds that he lost count. Sadie was worse off, largely because she’d grown accustomed to depending on her armor for protection. It had been ruined in the last battle, so she’d had to make do with whatever she could cobble together with the scraps. Because of that – and her inability to rely on her shielding spell – she took a lot of damage.

Thankfully, she had the high Constitution to deal with it.

They both did.

After a while, the flow of golems abated. Then, the new arrivals ceased altogether. And at last, they finished the remainder off. Altogether, the fight took most of a day, and in that time, they’d managed to exceed even their wildest expectations. Kurik’s traps had performed better than he’d anticipated, and the others – even Dat – had adjusted well to the fight.

But they all knew that if any of them had failed to do their part, things would have quickly gotten out of hand.

“I guess practice makes perfect, huh?” Elijah said, his chest heaving with exertion.

“Far from perfect,” Sadie said, inspecting what was left of her bracer. It was so damaged that it looked like scrap metal. “We still have a lot of mistakes to clean up.”

After that, they spent a few minutes in recovery before setting about gathering the inert cores. Kurik claimed he’d find a use for them, so no one objected when they all went into his overstuffed pack. Otherwise, there was nothing to loot, so they gathered Kurik’s traps, then headed deeper into the final challenge.