Tempest’s magic had its limits, and Velik quickly found them. He’d pulled the dust-laden air out of the tunnels and blasted fresh air in, but the farther Velik got from the base camp, the thicker the air got again. After a few minutes of walking—during which time he disabled three more wandering golems—he found the edge of Tempest’s range.

  An almost straight line where the dust had been swept away ran across the floor in front of him. New dust was already settling down, but the demarcation was clear. Beyond it, visibility sharply plummeted. On the bright side, anything moving around down here is going to leave some very obvious tracks.

  For the next hour, Velik followed the massive footprints in the dust wherever he found them and disabled the golems. He left them beyond for the workers to collect and dismantle, having neither the desire nor the means to lug them with him. With each win, he got more annoyed that he wasn’t growing closer to his next level up. His plan to hit level 50 on this expedition was a bust, and no amount of money was going to make up for that.

  There was probably some logic to the layout of the sky bridge facility, but Velik couldn’t see it. It didn’t help that quite a few hallways had collapsed, sealing off whole sections that might contain golems or, hopefully, actual monsters. He probably wouldn’t find out for days, unfortunately, not until the work teams got around to digging them out.

  That didn’t mean there was nothing left to explore, however. A sky bridge was a big place, and this one was no exception. Keeping Jensen’s words in mind, Velik moved deeper. Eventually, he got far enough away from where they’d made their entry that the only dust floating around was from his passing.

  There was no light, of course, but that didn’t even slow him down. Velik was long past needing light to see by, and the golems apparently didn’t care about it either. He wasn’t entirely sure how they were navigating the dark, but it obviously wasn’t by sight. Noise seemed to draw them in, and once he realized that, he made a point of cleaning out whole areas just by being loud about his fights. Several large rooms had dozens of partially-destroyed golems piled up in them.

  Not every golem was still functional, of course, but even the ones that just stood there like silent metal statues got pried apart, just to be safe. The last thing Velik needed was some level 20 crafter getting dismembered when some golem came to life unexpectedly.

  Eventually, Velik found himself in a hallway sized for a giant. One end was buried in rubble, but the other side led to an equally massive door. Oh, I bet there’s something fun behind this, he thought to himself as he pried the door open. Rather than swing in or out, it slid apart, splitting down the middle and both panels disappearing into the wall.

  At least, that was how it was supposed to work. The left side panel got stuck a few inches in, and it wasn’t hard to see why. The wall was in terrible shape, partially buckled. That curve blocked the panel from retreating any deeper into the wall, but Velik got a lucky break in the right side. It slid in a full two feet before getting caught.

  No golems would be getting through that gap, and unless the workers who followed behind could cut through the door, it would probably be a pain getting out whatever valuables were hidden away back there, but it was more than wide enough for Velik to slip through. He held off, though.

  The hallway stretched on past the door, and sitting in the middle guarding it was something the likes of which Velik had never seen. It was twenty feet all and probably weighed five tons. It had six limbs, each one covered in thick armor plating and with curved blades at least four feet long coming out of the elbows, wrists, knees, and hips. The feet of the monstrosity were clawed, and it had an animal-like muzzle that Velik had no doubt was also full of razor-edged teeth.

  It was clearly a golem, though one on a massive scale. Everything about it was thick, heavy, and armored with overlapping plates. Even at its joints, Velik saw no openings or vulnerabilities. Anyone tangling with the sky bridge’s defender would need to overcome its defenses with raw power.

  Jensen would tell him to walk away, that the doors were a foot thick and that would be enough to hold it back. They’d come back with a clever solution later. Velik could practically hear him say it. The machine would have to be destroyed eventually, but there was no reason Velik had to do it by himself right now.

  He didn’t have to, but he wanted to.

  Besides, the golem was awake, or active, or whatever the word was where they were moving around. It’d be too dangerous to leave it alone, he rationalized. What if the doors aren’t strong enough, or if it retreats and we lose track of it? Better to take care of a potential problem now while I have the opportunity.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  His spear uncoiled from his arm, its [Shape Shifting] enchantment working to return it to its normal form. Velik gave it a pointed wedge of a tip, something that would have an easier time piercing the massive golem’s armor. With nearly 200 in his physical, he was confident that he had the raw power to make that tactic work. And if not, there were other options.

  The golem had a circular indent in the middle of its face plate, vaguely reminiscent of an eye. Velik counted six more of those circles scattered throughout its body, positioned to cover every possible angle. With it being pitch-black, and the experience he’d had with the lesser golems wandering around, he didn’t expect it to be able to see, but it was best not to assume it was blind.

  His cloak billowed out behind him, invisible and only half-formed. He’d replaced the old one, upgrading it with something similar but made out of bound mist. It had a few new tricks, and one of them was the [Agility] enchantment woven into it. Another was [Air Walk]. If this golem reacted to noise, then there was no reason to make any.

  Velik slipped through the door and leaped, taking silent steps across empty air in three great leaping bounds. His spear led, aimed directly for that central indent. For a fraction of a second, he thought that maybe he’d been mistaken about the golem being active, or that maybe it just couldn’t react for whatever reason.

  Something flashed up and over and speeds too fast for a normal human to even see. A tail! It was, of course, bladed just like every other part of the massive golem. Velik twisted his whole body into a spin with the help of [Air Walk] to redirect his momentum. The tail blade sliced through the empty space where he would have been if he hadn’t dodged, so close that it scraped off his shirt.

  Once again, [Armored] proves its worth, Velik thought. All the benefits of field plate, but comfortable and unobtrusive.

  Not one to let an opening pass him by, and seeing so many segmented metal plates that allowed the tail its needed flexibility, Velik drove his spear into the offending appendage. It punched through one of the joints, then the tip got caught in something mechanical inside. The golem whipped the tail around, trying to force Velik to either let go or to smash him into a wall.

  Or that knee blade, Velik thought as he kicked off another [Air Walk] to flip around his spear so that the sword-like protrusion slashed through empty space instead of taking off his leg. It swished by, but the golem immediately realized it had missed and its tail shifted directions to line Velik up for another strike.

  Not content to just sit there and let himself get carved up, Velik reoriented himself to get his feet under him, then tore the spear sideways through the metal of the golem’s tail. As he’d thought, the need for added flexibility meant the designer had compromised with less armor plating, and while Velik didn’t outright sever the tail, he did rip a huge chunk of its internals out.

  Metal scattered across the floor, and Velik slipped free of his perch well before the golem could bring another blade to bear on him. He watched the tail flop, the last ten feet or so of it no longer responding properly to the golem. That didn’t stop it from barreling forward, its back four limbs tearing across the floor while the front door lifted up to either crush or skewer him.

  Velik dodged backward, willingly giving ground as he lashed out with the spear. Though a golem couldn’t bleed, the weapon was also enchanted with [Mana Drinker], and he was willing to bet that if he hit the machine’s power source, he could shut it down with one blow.

  Of course, Jensen will be pissed if I destroy such a valuable component, so maybe I should do this the hard way.

  His spear just pinged off the golem’s armor, though. Regardless of whatever strategy he settled on, the first thing he needed to do was find a weak point to exploit. He was easily dodging the golem’s rather predictable attacks, and it was having trouble keeping up with him once he started circling around it. It didn’t help that he was regularly darting between its many legs, trying to get it to trip over itself.

  Velik found that a glancing blow could scrape the armor, maybe peel off a bit of metal, but that he couldn’t quite get the power he wanted to punch through what had to be six-inch-thick plates of some metal he’d never seen before coming to the sky bridge ruins.

  It wasn’t even that he couldn’t break through, it was just that he couldn’t get enough time to work on any single spot, and trying to charge in a straight line to throw some momentum and weight behind it was a good way to get skewered. His best defense was unpredictable movement, and that made it hard to attack.

  Annoying. I know he doesn’t want me to [Dread Lance] this thing, but if I’m not getting through it, no one else is either. Might not have a choice here. I guess there is one other thing I can try, though.

  It was a skill Velik didn’t use often, mostly on account of the fact that he didn’t want people to know he had it. Here and now, however, he was alone. He’d remove any armor pieces he damaged to hide the evidence, and no one would have to know. It was perfect.

  He broke away from the golem and retreated back through the doors. It hunkered down, watching him, but making no move to pursue. Velik glanced around, making a show of it, just to see if he could bait the golem into trying to attack through the door when it thought he wasn’t looking, but it didn’t fall for it.

  Fine. We do this the fun way, then.

  And he called upon his final skill, [True Form].