Chapter 47: Chapter 46: outclassed

The smooth walls of the mine stretched out in front of us as we prepared our sources of light. My final choice ended up being a torch, though an artificial one, which is effectively a gem on a stick. The dwarves scoff at that and Nikki takes out three proper lanterns.

I hand the torch to James, taking his focus away from the quest marker. He then lights it, presumably with his stamina, while I take out another one for Jo. Then I produce a mana sphere for myself, trying to replicate Jo’s lighting with the mana inside.

It promptly explodes into a bright flash of light, blinding us for a moment. The others say nothing, but their glares say it all. The second attempt goes much the same, but not quite as bright.

By the third time, Murdoc has clearly had enough. “Why are ye doing that? Don’t ye know yer own spells?”

Feeling slightly indignant, I reply “Nope, never used this spell before.”

And he just stares at me. Jo looks a little apprehensive at me, but says nothing as I manage to get it somewhat working by the fourth time. The light is slightly flickering, and a bit too bright, but I slowly manage to improve it for the fifth iteration. Yes, the fourth iteration exploded when I let go of it.

I hower the bright bulb above and behind my head, so that I don’t get blinded by it. I can’t really be bothered to focus it, so it will be a flood light for now.

Jo asked what exactly I did, if I haven’t used that spell before, to which I answered that I modified her lightning spell. She looks closer at the sphere for a moment, squinting all the while, before she spots the similarities. The main difference is that I enclosed it within the sphere instead of sending it towards the enemy.

Having sorted out the light, we start walking into the mine, guided by the quest marker that only I and James can see. There is a small problem though, as it seems some golems heard those explosions, and now a flock is making its way towards us. If my eyes don’t deceive me, pretty much all of them are the ants, and they don’t seem to care which surface they walk on, traversing walls and ceilings just the same as the floor.

Since we are just inside the opening, I suggest that we take the confrontation outside, and unsurprisingly, everyone agrees. Luckily, the golems aren’t running at full speed towards us, so we have plenty of time.

Once outside, we have a short discussion of what formation to use, and end up with stamina users in the front, and us mages in the back. Now the question is how much should I and James do, and how much should we let the others contribute? I guess however much they can manage. As the golems exit the mine, I cast my buffs on everyone, and ask James if he feels up to fighting, which he is.

I start the encounter with a wide area slowness debuff on the entrance. Not as powerful as a targeted one, but better than nothing. Then I start picking off the ones on the side with some mana spikes.

As the wave of golems crashes into our frontline, James smashes them to pieces in single strokes of his pickaxe, Murdoc and Garth seem to be able to handle a single golem at a time, but not taking it out quickly enough. Shain also manages one with the help of Nikki and Jo, though Jo mostly observes me instead of fighting and I have to save Shain a few times by taking out the golems he was fighting.

Once the fighting is over, we have collectively destroyed around thirty golems, with five of them not being destroyed by me or James. I guess that means that they can contribute around fifteen percent, though they seem tired after the fight.

Thinking about it, this is the first time Jo has seen me fight, which explains the expressions. I walk up to her and put my hands on her shoulders.

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“Are you alright?” I ask her.

After a moment of looking unsure, she answer “I am.” before continuing.

“I knew you were powerful, but you deal with the golems as if they are nothing. And what is that spell you use?”

I don’t really know how to respond to that, but I can explain the spell, so I attempt to do that. I explain that It’s a basically mana thruster constructed inside of a basic mana bullet. I then proceed to help her to understand it by demonstrating it while the others rest up, except James. He is just waiting and watching me talk to Jo.

“You know, I really wasn’t expecting you to take this mentoring thing seriously when I originally brought it up.” He says, distracting both me and Jo. I didn’t originally, but Jo grew on me, and I can’t just stop teaching her now that we have started.

“Maybe you should find an apprentice of your own.” I say back, to which he murmurs, “maybe”.

Then I clap my hands and say to everyone that it’s time to get back on task, and start to walk back inside, reigniting the thunder orb, making it slightly less flickery than its predecessor.

James and Jo follow me, standing slightly in front of me to not be blinded by the orb, though Murdoc and his group don't follow, seemingly realizing how outclassed they are. I just shrug my shoulders as we start to walk, with James in front and me in the back.

The tunnels are pretty empty now that we lured all of them outside, so we walk for a good while. When we encounter forks in the tunnels, we simply follow the marker.

After a few turns, and probably more than a few meters of descent, we start to encounter golems again, but we decide that unless something happens, we should dispose of them quickly and silently. Luckily there are few things quieter than unhealing them to death. Jo seems slightly disturbed by the quite frankly evil feeling spell, but doesn’t say anything about it, probably saving such questions till after we get out of here.

After a few more golems, they get strong enough that they can resist it to some degree, so we switch over to regular destruction, which is not as quiet, and as such one kill quickly becomes two. The sound didn’t travel all that far, so only a handful came to check, which we quickly disassembled.

Soon enough we stumbled across a large cavern, whose walls were covered in various gems, and in the center of that cavern sat a golem, more than twice the size of the rest, made entirely out of gemstones.