Before Cerion and I could even come up with some kind of strategy, a giant stone fist came flying down, right at the both of us. We dodged out of the way on time, but only barely, because a split second after I activated aura step and Cerion used his wave movement skill, the fist landed on our previous position, digging into the tiled floor of the complex and causing a small crater to form.

Witnessing its power, I grimaced and evaluated our situation. Dealing with a monster that had more physical strength than myself wasn’t anything new, nor was its speed, as far as we had observed. The issue was that much like the last boss, no weak points were visible, apart from the goliath’s eyes.

Figuring this was the best opportunity to test its defenses since I hadn’t charged up any mana yet, I called out to Cerion.

“I’m apparating! Distract it!”

“I’ve got you covered!” he shouted back.

A moment later, a round, orb-like water vortex appeared from his palm, growing in size as it approached the golem, until it became about a tenth of the stone creature’s size, which translated into a diameter of ten meters.

It flew at the golem slowly, who moved to paw it out of the way. I took that chance to phase into a shadow, reappearing in a ghost-like state on the golem’s nose, which was actually just a stone archway turned upside down as it was assembled into the human-shaped giant. I swung my blade, timing it so that I would rematerialize right before my blade hit the eye that was responsible for the golem’s raw power and mana. Unfortunately, stone bricks covered it partially right before my blow struck, causing my attack to deal limited damage.

Luckily, limited damage was all I had needed to break a chunk off of the core, creating a crack in the rest of the giant marble. This time, I was smart enough to leave a curse mark, instead of focusing purely on the power of my strike like I had done with the core in the clocktower.

Of course, I had expected the skill core, as I had come to call it, to react to my attack on its brother, the power core. First, it had attempted to defend it, which was only somewhat successful. Now, it would seek to counterattack, I knew.

I whirled my mana into another apparition, drawing mana from my core until it was nearly empty. I was too slow, though, because the stone archway that I had been standing on turned into spikes beneath my feet, piercing through my armor. From all directions, spikes flew at me in retaliation to my attack, some of which hit me before my apparition pulled me away.

As I reappeared on the ground, I clutched my abdomen to stop the blood flow and tore off pieces of my armor that were digging into my flesh because of the punctures. I breathed a sigh of relief as dark form started to do its job, healing my wounds, which luckily weren’t even close to lethal. It wouldn’t take long to heal.

I shouted a warning to Cerion, who was surfing around the buildings and dodging stones that the behemoth had hurled at it before I had left another wound on one of its cores.

“Cerion! It still has the ability to freely manipulate its body! Watch out for counterattacks from any angle when you get close!”

“Got it!”

As we spoke, the effect of my attack finally became apparent. Now that the power core had been partially broken as well, something about the boss’ presence seemed to dim, if only slightly. The more wounded it became, the weaker it would be. Maybe my reckless attack on the skill core before the fight would pay off more than anticipated, I pondered.

It seemed that the creature heard my thoughts, because with its next attack it proved that it still had both skill and power in spades. After clutching at its second broken eye, stones moved to cover both eyes, leaving only small gaps, supposedly to see out of, like a helmet. After renewing its defenses, it lifted both of its hands, which slowly warped to form sharper, more uniform appendages, which looked like blades instead of hands. With a strange roar, it started to move, twirling around like a spinning top. Its movement had been surprisingly quick, but what truly frightened us was what came after.

Out of nowhere, strange gusts of wind started to form, similar to the sword arcs that Cerion and I loved to use, only colorless, as if made out of neutral mana.

The issue at hand, was that it didn’t just create one half-moon-shaped wind blade, it created hundreds upon hundreds, forming a massive cyclone that spread outwards.

As the torrent of blades that moved around the golem in a circle widened, it tore up the tiled floor and smaller buildings, as if they were blades of grass being torn up in a tornado. Stones were torn from the ground and catapulted into the air, flying around the entire city and crashing into random houses and buildings, reducing them to rubble.

The wave of destruction gradually approached us, forcing Cerion and me into the sky without skills. Unfortunately, remaining in the air to dodge its attack would drain our mana quickly. This wasn’t a huge issue for me because of my insane mana regeneration, but it would also stop me from gathering enough mana to counterattack. Cerion, on the other hand, was in a race against the clock. He had an impressive core with a large capacity, but, eventually, it would run out of mana. Cerion had shared that he, too, had the skill [Battle meditation], but that skill wouldn’t keep him afloat. It just wasn’t powerful enough to fuel his movement skill for extended periods in the air.

To make matters worse, the golem didn’t let up its attack, even after half a minute.

Seeing our predicament, we both realized that only by attacking the golem would we be able to stop its own skill. If this was what a broken skill core could accomplish, I couldn’t imagine what the golem could have done at full health.

The issue with that was that only its eyes were vulnerable. We could, figuratively speaking, spend a century attacking its legs, arms and torso, only for it to regenerate instantly. Maybe my maelstrom skill could carve into its body, but even then it would be difficult to deal any real damage. I wondered how we could get past the protection around its eyes, though. Then I remembered how the tsuchigumo colony had gotten past my own maelstrom. Their acid had pierced my barrier because liquid was hard to stop fully with a skill like that. While that revelation made no difference to me personally, it meant that Cerion could partially ignore the defences the golem had put around its eyes, because there were small slits and holes in the stone that covered the cores. Having come up with a quick plan, I called out to Cerion.

“Cerion! Can you drown out those eyes of its?”

Looking at me confusedly as he surfed through the air, he responded.

“Wha… what? Drown its eyes?”

Oops. I probably should have explained that more clearly.

“Like with the spides! Attack through the holes in its armor!”

“My attacks aren’t acidic, Arthur!”, he shouted back from some distance away.

“Figure something out then! Focus on the right eye! Our right, the light blue one!”, I called back, confident he could somehow deal damage to the golem if he used my idea.

Cerion huffed, but nodded in the end.

“Its your turn to distract it!” he finished resolutely.

I grinned. Luckily, I knew just the thing to distract it with. Instead of continuing to bounce up and down, I redirected my aura step to the stone giant, launching myself right at the tornado it was still creating. As I reached it, I saw Cerion behind me, charging up an attack slowly. I flew into the tornado, dodging incoming wind blades one by one with aura step, flying around like leaf in the wind.

It felt like I was trying to navigate a thunderstorm. I was forced to dance up and down, right and left, lifting my legs to dodged certain attacks and squeezing through tight gaps, just to get closer to the real prize, its head.

After a little while, I was finally close enough to its eyes. Now that I had gotten close, I realised that the golem's head wasn’t spinning, instead floating several feet above its torso, unattached. It remained fixated on our direction, or, specifically, fixated on me. I shivered a little at the thought.

Nervously, I grinned, sheathing my sword and summoning two overloaded orbs, one in either hand. Charging them up was slow going, because I had to concentrate on dodging, instead of prioritising my mana usage on the orbs themselves. Apparently, even animated constructs could get frustrated, because as I stared down the boss, its attacks increased in speed and frequency, nearly knocking me out of the sky several times.

By now, my puncture wounds had long since healed, giving me all the mobility I needed to continue my previous strategy. Eventually, the orbs were charged up enough to be thrown, so I didn’t bother buying more time and chucked them at its head. They slowly homed in on the curse mark I had left before.

Unfortunately, the golem’s intelligence was higher than anticipated, because it decided to turn its head around just in time, forcing the orbs to blow up the back of its stone head, rather than its eyes. The two orbs destabilised and exploded creating a massive shockwave, which threw me back. I had anticipated it, but it still sent me reeling as I lost some control over my movement, causing me to lose a foot to a wind blade, armor sheared off cleanly. This wasn’t very surprising, seeing as both the armor and my feet themselves took a beating from my aura step, which relied on small explosions to propel me forward. They were already being destroyed more quickly than they healed, so they weren’t tough enough to withstand more attacks.

Luckily, the golem had taken some damage as well. The back of its head had become a crater, most of the stone that was previously there having blown off in the blast or reduced to rubble. I even saw the backside of the two cores, though only small cracks were visible from this side, signifying the damage I had done to them was minimal. Perhaps more importantly, the head re-joined the torso, which stopped spinning, the tornado of wind blades slowly petering out as it did so.

As I bounced around with a single foot and a bloody stump in the other foots place, I mocked our opponent, using the fancy lingo Cerion had taught me when we had visited a restaurant a few weeks ago.

“That was just the entrée, idiot!”

The head started to recover, drawing in stone and rubble from the rest of its body to patch holes and cover the eyes again. As it did so, a few stone boulders flew at me, trying to force me to make some distance. With my mana just barely enough to keep me in the air, I went along with the golem's intent and dodged backward. Fortunately for us, its recovery was slow. Too slow, in fact, to prevent Cerion’s attack.

From the sky, a large waterfall seemed to appear out of nowhere, as if Cerion had carved a hole in the dungeons ceiling and redirected a wide rived into it. This was not the case, however. This powerful phenomenon was the result of Alia’s and Cerion’s teamwork. As the waterfall neared the golem’s head from above, it stopped its downward flow and instead enveloped the aforementioned stone skull. Soon, a giant ball of water covered the behemoth’s head, as if it was a bubble.

From a distance, I could see Cerion clasp a raised hand, forming a fist with a previously open palm. The bubble became smaller, concentrating around the head, becoming denser and denser, to the point that cracks started to appear on the stone itself.

Now I understood Cerion’s plan. He intended to use some free form water manipulation to break both eyes with intense water pressure. I was pretty sure he didn’t have a system-recognised skill like this, after all.

The giant clawed at the bubble like a drowning man would, to no avail. Just when I though we would win like this, the monster's eyes started to shine brightly.

A moment later, an immense shockwave erupted from them out of nowhere, throwing both Cerion and me to the ground. My friend created water haphazardly as he fell, slowing his fall, but I had a hard time regaining control because of aura step’s random nature.

I crashed into the tiled floor, forming a crater as I made impact. As I crawled out of the hole, slowly healing the fractured ribs I had gotten, I stared at the sky, watching the boss change its shape.

The stone body of the golem, that seemed to be made of pieces of random buildings, now started to flow as if it was water. As it had melted the same way iron did when heated.

The two blue eyes slowly separated, both drawing in the liquid stone to themselves, forming new bodies. As the cores separated, I noticed that both were filled with cracks and holes. Clearly, Cerion’s attack had partially worked.

The power core slowly formed a shield, made out of smooth stone rather than the patchwork job the last golem had looked like. The giant tower shield had a single blue gem in the middle, where the power core rested.

The skill stone took a similar approach, only forming a stone broadsword instead, large enough to be wielded by its previous form, which now no longer existed. On its pommel, the skill stone rested.

The duo of weapons floated in the air, revealing their massive size, each approaching at least 40 meters in height. They stared down at Cerion and me, as well as our summons, ready to finally kill us, it seemed.

With a nervous chuckle, I drew my blade.

“Ready for phase two?” Cerion asked.

“Always.” I answered resolutely.