“Seems that way.” Bailey muttered, glaring at the screen “What are you doing, little golem?”

“Is the wall going to hold?” Patrick asked.

“It’s getting chipped, but the concrete portion alone is a few centimeters thick before the layer of lead and the Golem has maybe taken off a couple of millimeters at most.” Raul observed “And even if it gets anywhere near us, it’s really slow. We can literally escape it at normal walking speed.”

“But how does it know where we are?” Patrick asked “Any theories?”

As the actual scientist began to discuss the possibilities, Isaac began to pace the length of the room. Nothing happened for a short couple of minutes, until …

“Isaac, stand still for a moment, would you?” Raul called over to him and Isaac froze.

“Ok, go to the far corner of the room and stay there for a bit.” Raul said, then added thirty seconds later “And now stand in the corridor, just outside the door to this room.”

As usual, Isaac obeyed.

“Does anyone else see that?” Raul asked.

“It’s following him, isn’t it? It was subtle while he was just pacing in here, but now that he’d outside, it’s pretty obvious.” Amy observed “It can’t tell where we are, it can tell where its summoner is.”

And just like that, Isaac had sped up the discovery of that particular tidbit of information by a not insignificant degree. It was a part of the problem with the Summoning System, where escaping one of the creatures one summoned was nigh impossible.

The simple idea of ‘if I summon this thing, I’ll have to deal with it’ being out there and scientifically proven should cut down on the number of idiots who felt they could try out summoning and just leg it if things got too dangerous. Besides, it would overall skip a lot of the false starts and start putting them on the path to stumbling across the truly important information.

Basic ‘this is how it behaves normally’ kind of research might be intriguing on a scientific level, but it would also contribute very little towards Isaac’s eventual goal of saving the world. This style of research would help avoid accidental deaths, help create strategies on how to more effectively kill summoned monsters and be one of the starting points when it came to discovering the truth behind the [System].

Said truth hadn’t been so much discovered in the other timeline as much as simply being laid out by Janus, but Isaac was convinced that that dark secret was very important to become known. Or at least the part of it where the Summoning System was a fiendish trap to make sure people were really fucking careful when using it.

“I wouldn’t go quite that far.” Patrick cautioned “Isaac should be the highest Level here, maybe that’s why it’s focusing on him.”

‘Clang’

The golem’s next punch hit the metal door and produced a far louder sound than any of the previous ones.

“I think we can-“ Amy tried to respond, but the sound of another stone fist striking metal cut her off.

“Isaac, would y-“ Raul tried to ask Isaac to step back into the meeting room, but was also cut off by another loud ‘Clang’. It didn’t really matter, though. Context made it quite obvious what he was trying to say.

“Thanks.” Bailey said “Regardless of why this thing is fixated on Isaac or how it can locate him through walls, I think it’s become rather obvious that the original plan won’t work out quite as well as I thought it would. At least in the current setup, there is no normal behavior to observe. As such, I want to draw up a plan to determine just what it is the Slate Golem targets and if there is some kind of limit on how it can track a person, be it based on time, distance, a combination of such factors or something else entirely.”

‘Thud.’

The next punch to the concrete wall perfectly punctuated the Professor’s speech.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to let that thing keep destroying the wall while you work on that? It’ll hold up for a while, but anything destroyed is no longer avaible to protect us from the next one.” Raul asked.

“You’re right, we should take care of it. If a couple of you could help me with this thing, we can put the barrier in place and then Raul can shoot the Golem.” Bailey said.

“Barrier?” Amy asked.

“The metal thing over there. Some of the people over in the engineering faculty made it to fit perfectly into the corridor and block it completely, strong enough to stop even a charging elephant. It’s also got a hole to hit or shoot through, which we need since the door to the summoning room completely blocks anything we might attempt to get at the creature inside.” Bailey said.

“Actually, I should be able to kill it from out here.” Isaac said, hoping he managed to strike a proper balance between being nonchalant and serious. Sounding like he couldn’t care less would go over very poorly, but sounding like casually killing a monster whose fists could break concrete was easy would go over a hell of a lot worse.

“How?” Raul was the first to speak up, sounding both incredulous and curious.

“Adam, do you remember that trick I showed you earlier?” Isaac asked, looking directly at Bailey “I can phase through far more than a piece of plastic the size of a credit card. If you want, I can hit the golem without even having to open the door. So, while you work on preparing the experiment to determine the nature of the Golem’s choice of target and tracking, I can take care of the Golem.”

“Are you sure?” Bailey asked and Isaac nodded “Alright, you can try.”

With that, Isaac walked out of the meeting room and placed himself squarely in front of the door.

‘Thud.’

‘Thud.’

‘Clang.’

As the noise caused by the Golem’s fists impacting the inside of the room changed, Isaac withdrew his kabar from the sheath at his belt, which was in turn hidden under his shirt.

He waited another thirty seconds or so make sure the Golem had had the time to step directly in front of him, then walked backwards until he could see into the meeting room and observe the monitors. Now, he knew for certain that the Slate Golem stood squarely in the middle of the door.

A few more steps put Isaac back in front of the door, a mere meter separating him and the creature. Well, a meter and a twenty centimeter metal door.

“[Spectral Shift].” he announced, his torso turning a pale blue and translucent, followed by him leaning through the door, coming face to face with the Golem. A mere thought was enough to rematerialize his right hand along with the knife even as a stone fist passed through his head.

“[Piercing Strike].”

The knife sliced through the golem as if it were made from butter, piercing the dead center of its chest. Isaac knew that hit would have destroyed its core, but he knew he could use the excuse of having aimed for ‘center mass’ to explain how he’d hit it with the first hit.

Slate Golem (Lv. 1) has been slain. 3 XP gained

“Well …” Isaac heard Bailey's comment coming from the meeting room and sighed internally.

That was what he’d been afraid off. That his power and willingness to kill would scare the people he was going to be working with for the foreseeable future. It didn’t truly matter if someone would use their powers for ill, it just mattered that someone was powerful. People were naturally scared of someone who had the power to do anything to them without really being able to defend themselves given the difference in power. Hopefully, he hadn’t scared them too badly.

“… that works.” Bailey finally finished.

“You know, we really need a better setup than what we have here.” Raul commented “I know this was set up in a hurry, but having to set up a separate barrier in the corridor and let it out in order to get at it is a little, just slightly … completely and utterly ridiculous.”

“Well, that’s why the university is creating a whole new building for [System] related research.” Bailey reminded them “We just need to wait for that to be finished. Using the knowledge we gain from these experiments, we can even adjust the plans to be exactly what we need.”

“And what we clearly need are some of those Aspects of the Specter.” Amy said “We don’t have the shiny new building yet and unless we want Isaac to keep playing executioner until then, we need a way to effectively deal with creatures inside a sealed room without risking letting them out.”

“I could get those for you, you know. You need a thousand XP to activate it, though. But I can get you some. Small word of warning, though, there’s a limit to how many Aspects you can slot without a metric fuck-ton of additional work.” Isaac said.

“You know-“ Wechsler started to say, but Isaac cut him off.

“I’m well aware of the fact that I don’t have to do that and Professor Bailey can’t order me to without a whole lot of paperwork and hazard pay. I’m also aware of the fact that this is a free country and I’m allowed to volunteer to do this.”

Raul and Amy stifled a snort at that, while Wechsler just nodded at that, not looking particularly upset at being interrupted.

“If we’re going to be waiting a while since you have to finish the outline for the experiment, can I dissect the golem?” Patrick asked.

“Of course.” Bailey replied.

“In that case, can Isaac help? His power should help with cleanly getting through that rock armor?” Patrick pressed.

“Isaac, would you mind helping out Patrick?” Bailey asked in a tone that made it clear it really was just a very polite order, getting a nod in return. Isaac didn’t mind, Bailey was the boss, even if he hadn’t actually signed any contracts yet.

“Maybe we can also take the time to fix the wall? I mean, we could always use more stuff between us and the monsters.” Raul suggested.

“That’s a good idea, but I doubt we can properly fix that in a few hours.” Bailey cautioned.

“What if we used magic? It’s a brave new world out there and I’m sure there’s [Classes] out there that can work with rock and, by extension, concrete.” Amy suggested.

“You know, that’s not half bad.” Raul said “The real problem would be finding someone like that.”

“Well, if anyone we know has a [Class] like that, it would be someone in the university’s engineering faculty. Amy, if you could call them up to ask for someone with the right abilities to come help?” Bailey suggested.

“Sure thing.” Amy said.

“So basically, me and Patrick go dissect the Golem, Amy sees if she can find someone to fix the walls and you go plan for the experiment?” Isaac asked.

“Exactly. Questions?” Bailey replied. When none were forthcoming, he added “Alright, in that case, let’s go do that, then.”

With that, they all spread out. Patrick walked over to the wall next to the door and hit a button the panel that was placed there. Immediately afterwards, the big steel door began to open.

“Come on, let’s go.” Patrick said and Isaac followed with a sigh.

The Golem lay on the ground, spread eagled, having simply toppled over the instant Isaac pierced its chest.

“Why do you have that knife on you, anyway?” Patrick asked offhandedly.

“The world just changed and monsters occasionally roam the streets. I figured a knife for basic self defense might be in order and ordered a proper one off amazon.” Isaac explained.

“I’m just glad we have some rather strict gun laws here. Can you imagine if everyone started running around with assault rifles?” Patrick asked.

“I can, actually. But I don’t think it would last too long, people would eventually return to a normal state of readiness. Constant vigilance just isn’t something the human body is built for.” Isaac said.

He actually had seen exactly what happened. Basically, people had started to buy and carry all sorts of self defense gear, but started to swiftly abandon it as the feared cataclysm failed to materialize and the bulkier of the items started getting in the way far too often. Unobtrusive things like pepper spray, tasers, knives such as his own and the occasional Saturday Night Special had become more prominent with the rise of the [System], but nothing more had really happened. Besides, people didn’t need guns to be dangerous anymore and oh boy, was there going to cause a shit storm once that became apparent.

“Anyway, how are we going to get that thing into the storage room?” Patrick wondered out loud.

“I’d guess with your big manly muscles.” Amy cheerfully called from down the corridor, prompting Patrick to glare at her “Or you could grab one of the height-adjustable tables from the storage room. Slide it on while it’s folded, then use the wheels to get it to where you need it, then increase its height. Those things are weirdly strong, like a tire jack or something.”

“You mean we have lifting platforms? Yeah, that’d work.” Isaac replied

“I’ll help.” Raul offered, coming out of the storage room with the aforementioned table.

What followed was a quarter of an hour of struggling, even with Wechsler joining in to help five minutes after they started. But after adding a dozen new scratches to the floor and door, wrecking one of the tables and putting a huge dent into the wall next to the entrance to the storage room.

The lifting platform had helped a lot, but actually getting the damn thing onto the platform was a different matter entirely.

“Next …” Patrick sucked in a huge gulp of air “… time …’wheeze’ we’re getting a forklift.”

“Or a hundred … helpers.” Raul wheezed.

“I think we can grab something from the engineers.” Bailey suggested, popping his head into the room “I’ll ask Amy to see what she can get.”

Clearly, he’d noticed the noise had stopped and come to check up on the trio. And with that, he left back to his office, with Patrick calling ‘thank you’ after him. They all took a five minute break before Patrick was finally ready to begin the dissection.

“Isaac, how exactly does that [Skill] you used work? [Piercing Strike] is what I believe it was called?” he asked.

Piercing Strike (common)

Users weapon is covered with energy, increasing its ability to penetrate armor. This effect lasts for a single strike. Should the weapon in question be stuck within an opponent, the effect will last for .5 sec, allowing for removal of weapon or further cutting.

Cost: 10 mana per strike

“Like this, basically. “ Isaac said “I’m guessing you need help properly cut through the Golem’s flesh?”

“I think that just might be a distinct possibility.” Patrick replied sarcastically as he stepped up to the table that held the body.

The entire setup wasn’t all that professional compared to what Isaac had seen both on TV and in the other timeline, but it should suffice.

One table held the body itself while another stood nearby, holding various containers ready to receive anything interesting Patrick could dig out. A nearby contraption that was essentially a long upright standing pole with a camera at the end would allow them to record the whole thing from up above.

Raul gestured towards it “It’s a little exciting to imagine that that video will be known as the first proper scientific dissection of a monster.”

“I doubt it’s the first one, there likely someone who’s tried it, but we’re probably among the first to do this in a proper academic setting. And that’s part of the problem, because now I have to invent the method used.” Patrick corrected.

“Haven’t you dissected anything else before?” Raul asked.

“Of course I have, but those weren’t rock monsters. Isaac, if you would, step up to next me and put your mana into this scalpel?” Patrick asked.

Repeatedly, Isaac lightly tapped the hilt of the scalpel in Patrick’s hand, who would then then make small, shallow cuts down the center of the body, also making two cuts along where the collarbones would be on a human to create a Y-shape.

“I don’t think this is working, all you can see is more stone. You probably need to cut deeper.” Raul suggested.

“Possibly. But I didn’t want to cut too deeply and accidentally destroy something. I’m loosely borrowing from how one would dissect a frog by opening up the skin on the torso, then pulling it back and looking at the layout of the internal organs.” Patrick replied.

“Clearly, that ain’t working.” Raul told him.

“Does that thing even have internal organs?” Isaac asked.

“Unless these things drop dead at the touch of a [Skill] strengthened blade, you clearly hit something.” Patrick said.

“Maybe we should see what that is?” Isaac asked “I also only have enough mana to use the [Skill] two more times before I have to wait around twenty minutes to recover.”

“I’ll try.” Patrick said and after carefully positioning the glowing yellow scalpel, lashed out at the body to create a far deeper cut than any to date, the blade ending up embedded several centimeters deep and … truly stuck.

“Er, a little help?” Patrick asked.

Wordlessly, Isaac reached over and grabbed the hilt, pulsed [Piercing Strike] and withdrew it during the brief moment of increased sharpness.

“And now, I’m out of mana.” he announced “Also, I have a [Skill] that can permanently weaken armor. We could use that when we continue, or maybe on the next one if you don’t want to damage this one.”

“Next one.” Patrick agreed.

The three of them stood around the body for a bit more, looking it over. Well, Raul and Patrick looked it over while Isaac only pretended to be interested. This was a very weak creature with a known vulnerability, the only reason it was so much trouble was that they didn’t have the right tools to properly dig through rock.

Eventually, they were interrupted by Amy poking her head around the corner.

“Hey guys, look who I got.” she cheerfully announced and stepped to side to reveal a tall, well built blonde man.

“Hi, I’m Karl Siegel, I’m a [Geomancer]. Apparently you need someone to fix some walls that got dama-“ the man trailed off as he saw the prone Slate Golem lying on the table “Is that what it looks like?”

“A Slate Golem, a summoned monster.” Patrick said succinctly, then introduced himself and the others.

Raul, on the other hand, had a completely different question “Did you bring the forklift?”

“Forklift? No, I brought this thing, it’s an engine hoist. Isn’t that what you asked for?” Karl asked, pulling some weird contraption into view.

It reminded Isaac of one of those cranes one would find at a port to lift entire containers, placed on four wheels, with a hydraulic pump to be extend the arm upwards. Once whatever one wanted to carry was attached, one could pump that thing to rase the anchor point at the top end and lift it off the floor. One likely couldn’t go too high, but it should easily suffice to get a Slate Golem onto a lifting platform.

“I think you might be my new favorite person.” Raul sagged in relief.

“I’m guessing that thing is heavy?” Karl asked.

“You have no idea. See the dent in the door?” Isaac said.

“Yeah, I saw that. Is that what you called me here to fix?” Karl asked.

“If you could, that would be great, but actually we need to fix the inside of the summoning room.” Raul explained “Come on, I’ll show you.”

“Wow, so that’s what one of those looks like on the inside.” Amy sauntered over, then froze when she actually got a good look at the exposed ‘insides’ “Looks the same as the outside, doesn’t it?”

“Pretty much. We think the internal organs are deeper in.” Patrick told her.

“My mana is almost back up to full, maybe we could check?” Isaac suggested.

Five minutes later, his mana had run back out, leaving them with a properly sized incision to the chest, but it was still just showing more slate.

“Once again, do these things have any organs?” Isaac asked, getting shrugs from the others.

“Maybe deeper in?” Karl asked from the door “Wall’s fixed, by the way. I don’t know if you need to do any kind of inspection or something …”

“I don’t think we need to, but maybe Professor Bailey could take a brief look at it? I’ll go ask him.” Amy suggested, then danced away.

“So, that’s what a monster looks like.” Karl sauntered over and looked at the body on the table “Do those things have any organs?”

“That’s what I said.” Isaac commented, shooting Patrick a pointed look “We probably haven’t looked deep enough.”

“If we could get through the flesh more easily, maybe we’d be there.” the man shot back, frustration creeping into his voice.

“Looks like you got in there pretty good. What did you use to cut it, those edges look weirdly clean?” Karl asked.

“[Skill] empowered scalpel. With every [Piercing Strike], we can make one good cut. Eats through my mana like nothing else though and we’re currently waiting on it to regenerate.” Isaac replied.

“How many cuts have you made so far?” Karl wondered out loud.

“Too many. It’s a pain in the ass.” Patrick grumbled “Maybe twenty or thirty?”

“I think you might be going about this the wrong way. You’re doing this like a biologist.” Karl said.

“And how should we be looking at this then, oh wise engineer?” Patrick asked sourly.

“You’re trying to get through rock. Treat it as such. Use an engineer’s perspective.” Karl said, immediately preceding to point out several stress lines and how the rock was structured in such a way that the rather brittle slate arms wouldn’t break when punching something, nor would the legs break under its own weight while walking.

“If we try and break through there, we can pretty much predict how the material will crack. If there turns out to have been something we missed and it breaks that way, we know to be more careful in that location the next time.” he finished.

“Hm, if I use [Piercing Strike] on a chisel and stick it in there, we could hit it in the back with a sledgehammer and crack open large chunks.” Isaac suggested and turned to Patrick “I know you want to do this perfectly, but there will be more Golems soon.”

“No, I agree, this is taking too long. We can crack this one open, then carefully extract intact versions of whatever we find from the next one.” Patrick finally conceded.

Five minutes later, the table was covered in cracked chunks of rock, only one of which truly looked interesting. An orb that looked like smooth, polished obsidian, around the size of a human fist. The only thing marring it was a nick at one edge, with small cracks radiating out from it.

“That is the only thing in there?” Patrick exclaimed incredulously.

“Looks like it.” Raul said “If it has only one thing that’s different from everything else and it died when that got damaged, I’m guessing we found the heart equivalent? Or brain, I suppose? Anyway, we’re probably lucky you managed to hit it at all, Isaac.”

“I aimed for center mass; luck didn’t really play into it too much.” Isaac replied casually.

“Next time, I think we should check if hitting the creature anywhere else does anything.” Patrick suggested.

“What I’d like to know is if a bullet could get in there.” Raul added.

“Probably could.” Karl said “Slate is a fairly tough material, being rock, but it’s pretty brittle. The first bullet or even the second probably won’t succeed, but if it’s slow enough, you should be able to smash through eventually.”

“The damn thing makes a turtle look like a formula one racer; I think that shouldn’t be a problem.” Raul told him.

“But it can move, right? That a piece of rock can move at all without shattering is incredible. You know, I’d like to see that, eventually.” Karl said.

“Why don’t you stay for a while, then? We could always use a little help, especially if we keep dealing with rock creatures.” Isaac suggested “I sincerely doubt Professor Bailey would mind. You’d just have to clear it with your own faculty.”

“I already did, at least for today. It wasn’t really clear how long this would take.” Karl said.

“In that case, welcome to the team.” Isaac said, the others echoing the sentiment shortly.

Now, everyone who’d been on the team Professor Bailey had had in the other timeline was gathered here. The risk of Isaac’s presence accidentally butterflying away that possible roster had been greatly minimized.

Not only that, but they were also well on their way to getting some true results on the inner workings of the Summoning System. As that became known, this team would slowly be granted resources to do more than fundamental research, branching out, digging deeper and deeper into the secrets of the [System].

With Isaac’s help, they should even get there soon enough to change the trajectory of history itself, steering humanity away from the abyss.