With the stone wolf bearing down on him Quinten had little time to react. He swiftly grabbed the gun with his good hand and let loose to empty the clip. Half of his shots missed in his haste but finally, as the gun clicked empty, the enemy collapsed mid charge. The scraping of stone on metal set his teeth on edge, even though the makeshift earplugs. Quinten barely had time for a quick sigh of relief when two more of the strange, quadripedal stone golems stepped across one of the thresholds. Instantly locking their single red eyes on to Quinten. The lead, a bigger golem snapped like a bulky lion with two horns, let loose a rumbling growl like several stones grinding against each other. The second looked like a carbon copy of the now wrecked mass of stone in front of Quinten. As they made eye contact, it lowered its head and followed the lion in a headlong charge towards the intruder. Quinten forced his way through the pain to grab a new ammo clip from his pocket and replace the empty one, letting it fall to the ground after ejection. Because his damaged arm was already in motion, its continued use was easier, so keeping it up to aid his aim became simpler, with eight shots, Quinten was able to hit the lion bot in its eye. However, this didn't incapacitate it like he'd been expecting. Instead, its charge deviated and became erratic. First, it slammed into the wall. With a scraping crunch, the already damaged shoulder plate crumbled into dusty gravel. Its attempt to correct itself caused it to rush headlong into the wolf golem. The two horns snapped off against the rocky hide of the wolf and the collision caused bother of them to stumble. 'Must have damaged some of the controls with one of those shots.' Quinten thought in surprise while watching the scene unfold. As the wolf bot attempted to extricate itself from the thrashing limbs of its ally, a loud snap resounded through the hall. One of the lion's legs shattered at the joint and hung uselessly by a coppery bundle of wires. Finally free, the second golem restarted its advancement towards the intruder. Aside from a few chipped and a small, radiating crack where the lion's horn struck, it was fairly undamaged from the small fray. Still in a shocked surprise from the scene, Quinten didn't have the time to lift up his weapon before the wolf was upon him. The only thing that kept him from falling prey to the wolf golem's savage jaws, was an instinctual leap to the side, saving him from the serrated chomp by mere centimeters. Landing hard on his damaged arm, pain lanced through Quinten's whole body and 5% of his health bar disappeared into the ether. The golem skidded to a stop, it's claws sinking into the floor and producing a cacophony of crackle sparks. Quinten scrambled up and out of the way while the wolf leaped towards him again, landing on the spot his head had recently occupied. Without so much as a thought, he took advantage of his positioning and leapt as hard as he could onto the back of the golem. He locked his legs onto its torso and brought the gun to its head and fired two shots. As the rounds opened up a hole in the back of its head, it attempted to shake Quinten off to get rid of the unwanted passenger. The extreme jostling was too much and caused Quinten to drop his gun as he went to grab on with his arms to remain on its back. A lull in the wolf's attempts gave Quinten a brief moment to collect himself. He quickly grabbed the hunting knife and jammed it into the hole while twisting and jerking it from side to side. Zzttaap Suddenly, a paralyzing shock conducted through the knife and directly into Quinten and he shot off the back of the wolf while the golem sputtered and collapsed. Through the daze, Quinten noticed his health had been reduced by a whole 20% to fall just below half. A new debuff appeared in the form of a jagged lightning bolt flashing red. For an entire 30 seconds, Quinten found he couldn't move a single muscle. His only course of action was to lay there, paralyzed, and suffer through the pain wracking his body. The only solace to Quinten's situation was that the wolf hadn't moved and the lion could only thrash on the ground. With the damaged control system and the broken leg, the lion bot was basically out of commission. Finally, after an eternity, the flashing debuff relented and faded out and control slowly returned to his body once more. With a pained groan, he slowly picked himself up, his body stiff and sore, and limped his way to retrieve the fallen gun. Looking it over, he noticed a small scratch gouged into the metal along the left side. "Got your first battle scar eh?" He chuckled and a thought came to him. "You deserve a name... Scar sounds pretty good actually. That's it, that's your name now!" He felt pretty good about it. With Scar in hand, Quinten made his way over to the downed stone wolf, just to make sure it was actually dead. He nudged its leg and the whole body twitched and groaned. He leapt back and fired three shots into its chest and it fell back to the ground. "Wheew! Shit that scared me!" Breathing heavy from the fright, he wiped off the sweat and kicked it again for posterity. With no more movement, be breathed a sigh of relief and focused his attention on the thrashing lion bot. Funnily enough, it was slowly spinning on its side in its futile attempt to pick itself up. Every so often, a small jitter ran through its body, accompanied by a small crackle of electricity within its body. It was almost comical as he stood there. With a quick thought, he grabbed his phone and turned on the camera to record a short video while it continued its antics. As an artificial construct, Quinten had none if his normal empathy for living creatures towards the golem, and with the recent life and death situations, it felt good to relieve a bit of stress watching the scene. Of course, Quinten didn't let go of his cautiousness. After 30 seconds of filming, he put the phone away and brought out Scar to finish it off. It took five shots before he broke through the hardened stone carapace and another two before it finally stopped moving. This required him to switch out to his last ammo clip. With the death of this final enemy, a whole sweet of popups rushed across his field of view. 'These damn things are getting annoying... I wish there was a way to keep it out of my vision...' Suddenly a light chime rung out and a small box appeared in the bottom left of his vision with a block of unreadable text. Within it, Quinten noticed a few familiar lines, ones that had just appeared in the last batch of alerts. 'Dope! Just with a thought, the weird UI changed. Mental note, experiment later.' (Hopefully, he'll remember...) After making sure the lion bot was dead, Quinten let out a huge sigh of relief and collapsed against the wall. No more enemies were coming out, but there were still other doorways so he remained vigilant just in case. ------ Demi sat there, stunned. Once more Quinten was on the verge of death, yet triumphed. She knew the golem's power. Without that gun, she knew Quinten would have little to no chance of prevailing at this point in time. Even with it, there was a good chance of failure if anything went wrong. But the luck and persistence he showed moved her. He continued forward despite his pain and fear. He found ways to motivate himself rather than reasons to quit. She admired his perseverance. A small smile graced her lips as she thought about his future. If he were to conquer this dungeon, his potential would be limitless. She started humming a melodic tune as she sat back to continue watching her new favorite show.