The white stone figures rushed at them, and they rushed at the figures. They weren’t puppets. Ike was sure of that from the moment he first clashed, and his fist carved through stone instead of porcelain. They were stone, stone all the way through, their rough-hewn forms not carved by any man, but shaped organically. Rather than puppets, they were stone beings of some sort, golems, perhaps? But not golems that had been built; instead, Ike got the distinct feeling that these beings had grown here. They were this land’s natives, and they were not happy.

  “We aren’t puppets!” Ike tried.

  No response. They continued their blind charge.

  “Oh no, what are we going to do?” Wisp said sarcastically.

  “Oh man, I wonder,” Ike chuckled. He reached into himself and sought out that part of him where the King’s power hid. There was some resistance, not from the King, but him. He instinctively rejected the King’s power, because it wasn’t fully his. Not yet.

  That’s alright. I’ll just make it mine.

  Ike forcibly activated the skill. Light flowed over his body as the cape and staff manifested, but the crown, belt, and bracelets did not. Nonetheless, those two alone were enough. The cape acted as a second layer of his Storm Clad, further enhancing his body and his strength, while the staff drew in mana from all around and sent it whirling into his core. He hadn’t activated it yet; its passive state was enough to keep his core full when he was essentially idling it, as he was now, with the King and Storm Clad active, but little else. Just holding it, he sensed that if he intentionally channeled or activated the staff, all the mana in the surrounding region would pour into him.

  As he activated it, he sensed the King’s personality attempting to overpower his. The whole world seemed smaller, as though it ought to fit in the palm of his hand. He didn’t dismiss Wisp or Mag, but he suddenly felt more as though they were loyal subjects worthy of his presence and respect, rather than equal beings and friends. Well, equal beings in Wisp’s sense; he wasn’t sure he ever saw Mag as an equal. More like a cute mascot-slash-pet-slash-scout?

  However he felt about Mag and Wisp, the King changed that. Simply using the skill made him feel more haughty. He stared at the golems in distaste. These pathetic things didn’t deserve his presence. He would do them a favor, and wipe them out.

  Ike activated the Hungry Sword, pushing it to its full awakening. The sword sprung forth, instantly growing longer. He halted his charge. Why did he rush to them, when they ran to him? Let them come. He would be their inevitable death.

  Wisp looked back, startled that he’d stopped. “Something wrong?”

  Ike waved her on, struggling to make the gesture not-haughty through the King’s desire to look down on everything around him. “I’m just… going through some stuff. You might want to get out of the immediate area, though.”

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  “You got it, fancy Ike,” Wisp replied, touching her forelock. She bounded away, hopping onto the shoulders of the first line of golems and stepping nimbly from head to head, jumping around like only a spider could. The golems didn’t react to her passing. When she wanted to, she could move so lightly not even Ike could sense her passing, let alone some beings carved from unfeeling stone.

  Huh. Ike used his last few seconds before the wave of golems crashed into him to watch her go, a little surprised. He’d always thought she could only move like that in spider form. That was on him, honestly.

  The golems closed in. Ike turned his eyes back to them, raising his brows just an inch. “Thank you for coming, gentlefolk. And… farewell.”

  One slash. One mighty slash of the Hungry Sword, empowered by both the King and Storm Clad, its power backed by the constant draw of mana through the staff. The sword smashed through the first line of puppets, then hammered into the second line.

  As it swung, a flash of light burst from its hundreds of blades. Scintillating blade beams shot off in every direction, something Ike barely knew how to activate—but the King knew it well, and the Hungry Sword was all too happy to help. It trembled, firing off blade beams like a porcupine fired quills, the bright needles shooting into the golems and shattering them apart as they passed through. It was an incredible sight. A prismatic beam shot forth, struck a golem in the chest, then burst. Shards of golem shot off in all directions. That repeated hundreds of times as the beams shot off in all directions.

  In the distance, a huge spider kicked golems left, right, center, left part two, right part two—with seven out of eight limbs. Golems went flying. Laughing uproariously, she threw herself forward, sliding on her many knees with her mouth wide open and her mandibles snapping. A golem dropped out of the sky as Mag released it, crashing headfirst into another golem and causing them both to shatter.

  There were many golems. A great many of them. But before Ike and the others, they might as well have been ants—and not the ancient hivemind full of wisdom beyond human memory kind, either. White golems flew all over the place, shattered into pieces, broken apart, dropped from the sky and bitten in twain. The wall continuously spawned golems, and they continuously broke them into pieces. Ike drew mana from the sky and, when he needed to, fed it to Wisp and Mag, letting them fight on the same as he could. They fought, and fought, and fought, and at last, the golems thinned. Or rather, the wall thinned. All the golems had peeled off of it, leaving only a thin layer of wall behind.

  Ike kicked one of the golems aside, stumbling over a field of shattered quartz to reach the wall. He hauled back the Hungry Sword, and for the first time, he activated the staff. Mana flooded into him, and he poured it all into his sword strike.

  “Go! Smash ‘em!” Wisp cheered.

  The Hungry Sword slammed into the wall. The wall shuddered, then broke apart, the last of the quartz shattering under the might of the blow. The wards trembled. Without a wall to bind them to reality, they blinked out one after another. The blockage preventing their passage faded away.

  On the far side of the wall, a great mass of fog awaited them. Ike stood, waiting for it to fade, but it didn’t. He glanced at Wisp. “What do you say? Do we go in?”

  “It’s that or walk around. And we already killed the stone people thingies,” Wisp pointed out.

  Ike nodded. “Wise words.” Deactivating the King, he sheathed his sword and walked onward. Wisp followed, with Mag fluttering down from the sky to walk on his other side.

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