He went for the door and opened it. The massive door swung open without a sound and he descended the stairs with two of his new golems, 5A and 6A, leading the way. 7A was keeping a lookout behind him. They walked for ten minutes down the spiraling staircase, going deep into the earth.

“Temple?”

When he exited onto the second floor of the dungeon, what greeted him was not the rounded dirt walls of the first floor but light brown, square-cut stone, creating rectangular hallways. There were sconces holding torches every few meters, lighting the way.

He soon had his answer as the clanking of bones was heard. It got closer and closer until what produced those sounds came around the corner into view.

“Spooky, scary, skeleton. Hehehe!”

He folded, clutching his stomach as he pounded the ground laughing.

“I am hilari-ahh! Get the fuck off me.”

While he had been laughing away, the skeleton had walked right up to him and sunk its teeth into his shoulder.

“5A, bash the thing biting me heads in.”

The golem punched the skeleton off his shoulder then proceeded to pummel it into the ground.

“Good work. All of you, bash anything in the… Oh boy, I’m going down.”

He tried to staunch the bleeding, but the skeleton must have bitten an artery.

He tried to order the golems to keep the skeletons away but his mind grew groggy. Then he fell unconscious from blood loss.

…

“Mmmh, WHAT the Fuck!”

He sat up and looked around.

He looked around and saw his golems standing in the same place as before. Everything seemed the same, except for the large pool of black blood and pile of bones.

“Oh? Ohh. I think I get it.”

It seemed that when he had gone unconscious, his body had produced lots of blood trying to keep him alive thanks to his End stat regenerating his health. The wound had not closed very fast, so most of the blood had spilled, creating a large puddle of it around him. Skeletons, much like slimes, are very magical in nature. They use magic to keep their bones together. His blight had saved his ass once again. Once they touched his blighted blood, they were doomed to fall apart.

“Am I lucky or what?”

He was still feeling the effects of the blood loss in that he was very drowsy and weak.

“Hehe. And thanks for nothin’ you fucking golem pieces of shit.”

Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! Hp: 40/57 Mp: 21/21 Str: 32 Ag: 40 End: 60 Dex: 42 Int: 28 Free points:8 Class: Golemnist Lv: 13 Affinity: Perpetual/ Blight Lv: 11/ Lv: 15 Skills: Identify Entity Engraving Carving Circles: Flex Command Lite sense

He tried to count how many skeletons made up the pile but gave up.

“It’s like that thing where you count the jelly beans in a jar and try to guess how many. I was always horrible at those. Anyways, time for testing.”

He took note of the pressure currently on his mind, then added all of his new free points into Intelligence, bringing it to 32. The pressure lessened slightly.

He dusted himself off then looked more closely at his new stats.

“Whoah, I got a new circle. Lite sense? Let’s try it out.”

He went to engrave it on one of his golems. As he was engraving it he noticed that the blight cut him off earlier than before, making the process slower.

“Why is it being so aggressive today and stopping my mana so soon?”

He had noticed that his Blight affinity had surpassed his perpetual affinity by quite a bit due to Blight being the main actor in the bone fall. He would need to use his golems more in the fights to level his perpetual to be even with the Blight.

He gave up on the circle and went hunting for skeletons. He came across a few that he let his golems take care of.

He did not come across any traps through the maze-like hallways on the way to the boss room. Just a few sword-wielding skeletons gave him any trouble. They cut into the wood of his golems. Wooden golems were fragile, he needed to get a stronger material.

He stood in front of another door depicting treasure meant to lure the greedy and weak-minded, not that he was denying being greedy. He went into the room with a heavy blade. The light blades did not do enough damage to the skeletons, as he had found blunt force to be more effective.

“Come on out bastard.”

Clang, Clang.

This boss room had an open portcullis on the right side of the room that was emanating changing noises from within.

Out walked a two-meter, six and a half feet, tall, walking suit of armor.

With the skeleton were a sword and shield held tightly in their grasp. He looked back to see the door out tightly sealed shut.

“Guess we’re doing this.”

He ordered his golems to surround the knight from three sides as he tried to come up with a different way to fight. The heavy blade wouldn’t do much against the knight’s shining plate armor. But a mace might.

He let out a battle cry and charged, mace in hand. His golems were getting quickly defeated as they were cut down. One of them was even taken out by a horizontal swipe going right through the golem, cutting it in half. What the skeleton seemed to not understand was that these were not humans it was fighting, but golems.

As he smashed his mace down, the knight blocked with its shield and shield bashed him backward. As he stumbled backward he landed on his golem that had been cut in half. He cut his hand on the mace spike and covered the golem’s hand in his blood.

When he got back up his two other golems had been truly defeated, their circles were destroyed. He backed up as the knight followed.

The Skeleton knight walked over the golem thinking it dead as it followed him backward. Then it stopped as the golem grabbed its foot. It cut off the golem’s arm than its head, destroying the circles at the back of the neck. It advanced towards him but slowly slowed down. He kept backing away as the Skeleton Knight began to fall, still trying to make its way towards him, dragging itself. Then it stopped moving.

He moved towards it and gave it a poke. An armored hand shot out and grabbed his neck. The grip was too tight to escape and he struggled to get free as he was choked.

He continued to struggle as the grip grew weaker alongside himself growing weaker. Finally, he escaped its grasp as the arm fell to the ground and he gasped for air.

“Did it.”

He croaked out in victory, holding his bruised throat. He gasped for air and looked around at all of his destroyed golems.

Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! Hp: 45/69 Mp: 50/50 Str: 54 Ag: 62 End: 79 Dex: 61 Int: 42 Free points:14 Class: Golemnist Lv: 20 Affinity: Perpetual/ Blight Lv: 20/ Lv: 20 Skills: Identify Entity Engraving Carving Focus Circles: Flex Command Lite sense

He had leveled a bit on the way to the boss room and had forgotten to distribute the free points. He now put 10 into endurance and 4 into intelligence, bringing them to 89 and 46 respectfully.

“Time to get carving.”

He got out some wood from the bag, but then he had an idea.

He walked over to it and took off the helmet to reveal a skull.

“Got to get this skeleton out of it.”

He undid a couple of straps on the armor and opened it up to remove the skeleton. As he was moving it, something fell out of its skull.

“What is that?”

It was a sickly green crystal about the size of his pinkie nail.

He had noticed that his nails had fallen off of all his fingers, pushed off by little black, pointy nubs growing where the nails used to be.

He kicked off his boots and took off his socks to reveal the same thing happening to his toes. Also, his whole foot was slightly changing shape.

Click.

“Oh Fuck!”

The bones in his foot were moving and clicking, which was extremely painful. Then his hands also began changing shape, the bones moving into a new design.

By the end of the pain, his foot resembled that of a dog kind of. He now stood on the balls of his feet with his toes sprouting long black claws.

His hands had also slightly changed shape, along with the same black claws on them as his feet.

“Looking good, damned.”

He went for a little jog around the room and found it easier to move than before.

“Time to get to work.”

He got out his engraving knife and went to work on the armor. He soon ran into a problem.

He tried to think of a solution and decide to give his new claws a try. It was awkward to hold that knife with clawed hands anyways, he just kept poking himself.

The claws turned out to be an excellent solution as they were quite sharp and strong, managing to write the circles into the hard metal.

While he was working, it was like he was in a trance. His perception of the outside world turned null and he completely focused on making the circle. When he finished he did not know how much time had passed, but he felt that he was faster this time.

He munched down on some food while he thought of a cool name for this new golem. It was metal so he had to come up with something good.

“How about Scroll. Yeah, that’s good.”

He engraved Scroll next to the circles. He had used all three of his circles this time to find out what the Lite sense was all about.

“Stand up, Scroll.”

The armor rattled as it stood to attention.

“Use sense.”

Nothing happened.

He gave up on trying to figure it out and looked around for the chest.

There did not seem to be a treasure chest anywhere.

He kicked the ground in anger that the dungeon would be so unfair.

“Find the chest, Scroll. Maybe that sense circle will come in handy here.”

The armor golem walked into the center of the room and stopped. Meanwhile, he continued looking around the room.

An hour later he still had yet to find it.

“Fuck, is there just no chest?”

He walked over to Scroll to kick it to help him find the chest. When he walked up to it he heard a hollow thump where his foot landed.

“Move back.”

The golem stepped back as he crouched down and thumped the ground with a fist. It sounded hollow as if it was made of wood.

“You actually found it. Looks like that Lite sense skill can come in handy.”

He dug the chest out of the ground and opened it to reveal a glaive. A fat blade on the end of a two-meter, six and a half feet, dark wooden pole with metal twisting along the length of it. The blade had a slight upward curve at the end.

He gave it a couple of swings.

Now that he had looted the chest, he wanted to get started building supplementary wooden golems.

…

“ 8A, 9A, 1B, Scroll. Let’s head to the next floor.”

His limit of golems he could command had increased to four. He was excited about what was to come on the next floor.