Psycho led an army of hobgoblins who were prudent as they disabled traps and bested their lesser kin. Stepping in only to disable the golems that proved too difficult for the hobgoblins. By the time he arrived, his trail of construction had led him to a medical tent.

Psycho entered his black eyes, scanning over the surprisingly efficient medic tent. Kyrion could use one of these.

A dagger flying at Psycho was casually caught by a hole into their domain.

“You’re coming with me. Alive is more convenient but dead doesn’t change much.” Psycho said coldly.

“What are you?” Not Nicole.

“I am the cycle of death and rebirth, life and death. I am what greets you in the beginning and embraces you in the end.” A black circle began to form behind Psyho’s form.

Not Nicole shivered. “You’re psychotic.”

“See? I’m not the only one who thinks so.” Kyrion said from inside his head.

“When did you wake up?” Psycho asked aloud.

“Contingencies. Why do you keep brute forcing your way into my mind?”

“He’s nuts.” Not Nicole threw a second dagger aiming for his head.

Kyrion caught it out of the air without looking. The blade had been aimed at the boy’s blind spot.

“Oh, I’m back. Great.” Kyrion sighed as his hair returned to its typical red color, and his eyes shifted back to green.

“I will not do your work for you when you can do just fine yourself.”

“You were doing great. Being a real team player and taking my feelings into account. I was also looking forward to that thing you were going to do.

“Who are you talking to?” Not Nicole asked as she reached for a glass vial to throw.

Psycho didn’t reply.

Kyrion eventually turned his attention to the girl. “What’s your name?”

“Why would I tell you?” The glass vial went flying.

Gong moved in front of Kyrion and intercepted it with his metal body.

Kyrion placed a hand on the hob’s shoulder and healed him.

“Now thats not nice Ms Viole. I was trying to be diplomatic.”

A second glass vial was grabbed. “Who told you!”

“Who told you?” Viole demanded.

“You confirmed it.” Kyrion picked up a list of names in near intelligible letters.

“What is that?”

“The check in sheet. Last name from the bottom. Here plain as day. Odd that I don’t see the good doctor.” Kyrion looked around.

“What are you going to do with my people?”

“Lets see… I’m taking you with me, looting this place down to the last bone. Finding my friend, and then escaping.”

“Alpha, Beta, now!” Viole commanded.

3 human-sized metal golems attacked, wielding sharp medical implements. These golems were not made for combat.

Kyrion spun as they attacked, opening up his domain and instantly absorbing all three of them.

“What?”

“I didn’t want to break them, and now that you’re weaponless, come on with me and let us escape this dark and nasty place. I’m getting hungry, and if I don’t escape soon, I’ll find myself in a rather bad situation.” Kyrion crossed his arms. He was gonna miss Brion’s birthday at this rate.

“Why do you want me?”

“I don’t but Psycho does and you look alot like one of my friends. Personally I’m still mad at you.” Kyrion said without showing any anger whatsoever.

“Your fingers chipped my teeth.” Viole said, revealing a set of sharp inhuman teeth, some of which were quite damaged.

“Uh huh… Well I tried.” Kyrion turned around and left the tent, followed by Gong and the rest of the goblins.

“Oi! I thought you were here to kidnap me.”

“I don’t feel like it any more. If you’re going to follow me then come on if not?” Kyrion kept going.

Kyrion didn’t look back as another person begrudgingly joined his entourage.

“Now where is the treasure room?”

“Behind the mech hanger and through a secret pathway. There is a 2 headed Mech guarding the way forward.”

Kyrion recalled a conversation he had with Cecil. He used that word a few times.

“Lord Odin. We have arrived.”

Kyrion and his cohorts were in a large room with ten metal golems that were currently inert.

“Hmmmmm… So these golem things. How do they work?”

“Mechs, we get in and we make them move. They don’t move on their own.”

“Can anyone use them?” Kyrion scratched his chin.

“Yes but one must be able to fit inside and the controls can be a bit tricky even for our best.”

“How much combat experience do your people have?”

“Little to none aside from the corrupted renegade goblins.”

“Corrupted?”

“Some parasitic creatures have been taking over the bodies of our kind, mutating them and turning them into abhorrent creatures.”

“So those stone golems used to be goblins. Why didn’t I find any corpses behind when I destroyed them.”

“For the lesser golems their bodies are turned into cores and the cores absorb what’s around them and redistribute it throughout the creature’s body.”

“I see, what are the cores good for?” Kyrion asked.

Gong shrugged.

“Do you mind if I take all of these Golems?”

“The mechs?”

“Yes.” Kyrion stated.

“You don’t need to fight them, Lord Odin.”

Kyrion laughed as he held out both hands, and mana began to pull the giant metal golems into his domain. Along with various tools, spare weapons, and goblins cowering in fear.

“You consumed all of them. Lord Odin, does goblin suit your palette? I can…”

“I didn’t eat them. They’re just in my domain. I can let them go later. Right now they should be getting introduced to the gremlins.”

“You harbor our race’s natural rival?” Gong was aghast.

“Not your natural rival. Anyhow if you’re going to work for me you need to get used to working with all kinds of people and monsters.” Kyrion looked the shorter hobgoblin in its eyes.

“Yes Odin!”

Kyrion had no idea why they kept calling him that and decided to humor them for a bit longer. He could use the workers as his bucks weren’t coming back.

“Well then Gong lead the way.”

“All of you are traitors!” Viole continued to rant in the background, while being mostly ignored.

The hobgoblins have chosen allegiance to Kyrion over their previous dictator, who has still yet to make their presence known. This bothered Kyrion intensely. Either the enemy didn’t care or wasn’t aware. Chances were, he was leading them straight to a trap.

Gong and another hobgoblin covered in brass tubes opened a set of double doors. Gas immediately rushed out and quickly enveloped the group, and by the time Kyrion recognized the smell, fire enveloped his vision, and chaos began.

Boom!

Kyrion whispered some words after being hit, but only one person heard him between the screams and explosion.

The aftermath was horrifying. Gong and the brass hobgoblin were nothing but dust. Kyrion had blocked the area off with a wall of wind and water. Shielding the other hobgoblins and Viole at the cost of exposing himself to the brunt of the assault. Layers of skin were charred. Bits of exposed muscle and bone could be seen on his exposed face.

Still, the boy stood unmoving, unflinching, and almost unbothered. That, at least, was how it seemed until he fell to the side motionless as his regeneration began rapidly, draining nutrients from his body and mana to stabilize himself.

“Lord Odin!” Another goblin ran up to the unconscious Kyrion. A drum over its belly and two large sticks protruding from their knuckles.

Kyrion didn’t respond, his body still, like a corpse.

Moments later, a giant metal behemoth of a golem with two skull-shaped heads and streams of fire leaked from its mouths. All four eyes glowed red as they wildly looked in nearly every direction.

“Looks like you all have come to be culled. Your genetic blueprints will be delicious. Ha! Ha! Ha!” The monstrosity lagged maniacally as it brought a sizeable skeletal hand down on the hobs. Nearly killing them outright. Their bodies were stronger now, but all that did was give them time to scatter or flee.

Viole stepped up. “You’ll spare me right? I’m not going to betray you. I was trying to talk them out of it!”

“Come here, child, and I will release you from your worries.” The monster’s skeletal hand rose high above Viole.

Viole did so with full confidence.

A skeletal hand came down hard on top of Viole’s head. A large crash echoed across the room, and when the hand was raised, all that remained was a pile of blood and crushed bones.

“You outlived your usefulness when you built this.” The monster began striding forward to no avail. As though something was stopping it from moving forward.

“Did someone call for a hero?” Tim said as he raised his sword towards the golem. Its shadow spread out like a web restraining the monster.

But that wasn’t what was stopping it in its tracks. That honor belonged to a figure clad in full plate armor, their hands held adjacent and their form wide to cover more area. Their brute strength was rooting it in place.

“Calvary? I knew of one of you, but where did you come from?” The golem dropped a flaming skeletal hand on top of the knight, who took it head-on. Unbothered.

Kyrion was currently in a corner consuming a tray of sandwiches pulled from his domain to replace what he lost. He looked as though he hadn’t eaten in weeks as his skin was wrinkled. Kyrion’s red hair was the last thing to grow back. As his body began to fill out, everything was converted into fuel.

An unconscious Viol at his side. The only thing odd about the situation was that he was currently wearing a cloth cloak as a skirt due to his clothes being destroyed by that attack.

“I am Ceres Guardian of Kyrion and the harbinger of your death.” Ceres pushed forward, tipping the golem over with a strength that seemed almost inhuman.

When the fire came, Kyrion had put nearly all his elemental mana into the barrier he crafted, and even then, he couldn’t entirely escape the blast.

“Ceres!”

A plant-based body double lay where Kyrion had been standing as the real one sunk into the ground.

“You’re alive. What do you need master?” Ceres appeared next to him, and as the space around him expanded, they were currently moving towards a corner.

“Can you keep that girl and Tim alive? Tim is a human with a goatee. I need to heal and get back some mana.”

“I’ll need to be quick.” Ceres dashed towards the fray, her body sinking into the earth as she became one with the ground.

“Ahh?” The golem fell to its body, restrained by invisible chains.

Atimn kept his sword pinning the golems’ shadow, visibly straining himself. He never had to fight something like this. Giant rats were killable. This was something different.

Kyrion got up and threw Viole over one of his shoulders as he walked to the double doors. Retrieving the ashes that belonged to Gong and Tuba, who he hadn’t gotten to officially name.

He walked into the next room and set Viole in a safe place.

“I need power, Karl, Jala, Issac, and great tree lend me yours.”

“No. Not yet.” Psycho stated to Kyrion and his spirits.

“What do you mean by that? I need more mana and more power to fight that thing. I almost died!”

“You need to activate your full manifestation, and for that, I’ll need to give you more access to your mana pool. Even then you will have some trouble. So I suggest you destroy the root and let me pilot one of those plant puppets for a little while.”

“What?”

“You need acess to your full manafestaion and while I am out of your body you’ll be on your own. Your spirits will show you the way. That tree doesn’t like me, so while i’m gone I expect you to use this time well.” Psycho stated stoically.

“Why haven’t you done this before? And do I really have time for this?” Kyrion scowled as the golem got to its feet which broke Tim’s hold. Resulting in the shadow user suffering backlash. For Tim, that involved flying backward and landing hard, unable to move for a while.

“You have to consent to this knowing the ramifications if you fail to keep me separate. The key being you will die and I will as well.”

“I see. I accept your terms.” Kyrion.

“Good. Now pull out one of those mirror seeds Gamodren gave you on your fifteenth birthday.”

Kyrion did so, feeling a consciousness shift around in his mind.

“Now wha...” Kyrion grimaced as mana seemed to cycle through his brain at high speed, repairing some damage he hadn’t known was there as blood pooled from his nose.

It was another level of control and understanding of the vast ocean of mana he was holding inside himself, and understanding came with that knowledge.

He shouldn’t use all his mana at once to summon or destroy anything. If what ordinary people had was a cup of mana, Kyrion had a pool of it at his disposal. But now he saw what he could have, and expanding that pool to a lake was huge but not his limits. All it would cost him was everything, and he wouldn’t survive to see what happened next.

Kyrion slowed the flow when he felt his body couldn’t hold much more. Wooden horns sprouted from his head, his hair grew exponentially, and the ends turned silver. A cape of earth wrapped around his neck and solidified. His bangles shrunk significantly and now hung on his ears like earrings.

When the changes were solidified, Kyrion topped off his pool and made sure to cut it off. Then, pulling out a seed holding Psycho’s presence Kyrion filled it until it bloomed into a near identical copy. But, unlike usual, its eyes were a malevolent green that seemed to radiate mana instead of the pitch black he had known.

Ceres threw the golem to the side for the third time; however, she couldn’t dodge the liquid fire that coated her armor and began to superheat it.

“Ahhh!” Ceres yelled as she tried to put out the flames. It wasn’t easy, and by the time she finished, the golem had brought down another skeletal hand, partially crushing Ceres.

“Time to end this.” Tim said as he took a knee. His shadow held back the creature’s strike for a moment.

Light filled the room, covering Atimn directly and cutting his connection to the golem.

“But that’s not fair.” So Atimn moved, and wherever he went, the light followed like some sort of beacon.

Large metal tubes rose from the mech’s shoulder and set them at Tim.

Ceres brought both hands into the earth and caused a thick barricade to cover Tim.

That didn’t save her from the barrage of attacks that came after.

By the time it was done, the purple-haired girl’s armor was decimated, and she was set free, almost entirely uninjured by the assault.

When the next barrage came, she dodged with an unnerving proficiency for someone previously encumbered. Then, leading the golem away from Atimn towards an empty area where the dance continued.

“Need a refill?” A familiar voice said as a hand landed on Atimn’s shoulder.

“Refill what?”

“Mana, and stamina, you aren’t injured physically.”

“What? Oh, right kinda forgot you were a healer after….”

“So you good?”

“I could use some mana if you have some to spare.”

“Great, tell me when you’re full.” Kurion said briskly as mana flooded Atimn’s system.

“Stop!” Tim said a bit too loudly as he stumbled forward.

“Good. If you can hold that thing a bit longer. I’ll rip it to pieces... I mean disable it.” Kyrion’s voice went up an octave

“But the light.”

“Let me handle that.” Kyrion walked through the stone golem.

Ceres stabbed a foot into the earth, forming a wall of earth around her as she sunk into the ground and reappeared thirty feet away, sprinting towards the dome of earth and passing Kyrion on the way.

“How did you survive my incendiary assault? Nobody survives that.”

“It cost me around a hundred sandwiches worth of nutrition and alot of rest.” Kyrion cracked his neck.

“Sandwiches?”

“Yup, and now I genuinely have a reason to hate you. Gong was one of my allies. I don’t take too kindly to those who harm my allies.” Kyrion’s tone had broken a bit as his country drawl seemed to show itself. His arms were far apart and in a grasping formation along with his legs.

“Who is this bumpkin who has wandered into my territory. I wonder what you taste like. Did you get your muscles from shoveling cow manure?” The golem laughed, and Kyrion traced the sound to something in the golem’s ribcage.

“Let’s play a country game, one of my favorites. It’s called chicken. I’m going to come at you head on and you’re going to come at me head on. Whoever turns away first is the loser. How does that sound?”

“Like a stupid game but I’ll happily run you over.”

“I’m sure you’ll try your best.” Kyrion dashed towards the golem building up an absurd amount of mana into his right hand, and sharpened it into a thin surgeon’s scalpel.

The golem thought nothing of this and moved forward, charging a big fire attack after it ran over the human.

During the last ten feet of movement, Kyrion jumped forward towards the creature’s stomach. With his mana-infused hand, he stabbed into the golem’s chest cavity and pulled it out before swiping it a few times, resulting in a bloody snap as the cockpit was breached and the pilot was executed.

The combination of wind, water, and earth mana destroyed the internal switches, and the golem began moving wildly and almost unpredictably.

“Atimn, stop it now!” Kyrion yelled.

The dome opened wide, and a slab or earth shot diagonally upward, providing shade for Atimn to strike.

Shadows shot forward, latching onto the golem and seizing its flailing before it went motionless.

Kyrion sighed, letting his guard down as the fight ended.

Four red eyes locked onto Kyrion’s location, and a red light shot from it.

Kyrion had barely managed to shift his body in a way that caused the light to pass through something nonvital.

“Locked on. Target hit head on.”

Kyrion griped his side in pain, noting that whatever hit him had cauterized itself on the way down. He’d need to open the wound and heal it personally.

“That was cheap. You’re supposed to be down.”

A monotonous voice spoke next. “The goblin is dead yes, but I was using its body as a vessel. Operating like this require more of my focus, luckily for me your threat has been registered as very high.”

“You’re the dungeon aren’t you?” Kyrion grimaced, holding his wound.

“Correct. I have been ordered not to kill you so I’d like you to surrender now and you can die later.”

“Hmmmmm. Will you let my friends and allies go if I agree?”

“I hold the leverage here mortal. You have nothing to offer aside from the time you are wasting by not giving up.” The dungeon stated.

“So you’re really pulling my arm. If you wanted me to come quietly, you should have sweetened the pot.” Kyrion stomped the ground, causing a fog of dust to cover him.

“Is this an attack?”

When the dust passed, Kyrion removed his hand from his visibly healed wound and kept an eye on the golem.

“Just frustrated. Can’t you just let us go?” Kyrion pleaded.

“I have nothing to gain from letting any of you go. And everything to gain from your corpses. And your capture.”

“Fine then. I’ll just kill myself then.” Kyrion drew a golden dagger and held it next to an artery on his neck.

“Human? What are you doing? Don’t you fear death? Why end it all now.”

“Because if you capture me I get turned into a soulless puppet and cease to exist. I’m more of a go out on my own terms type of guy.” Kyrion said with confidence.

“Foolish human. Like you would….”

A bead of red blood trickled down the blade as the tip broke the skin. Strangely quite a bit of blood seemed to flow.

“Imagine the despair and anger on your master’s face when he finds me in this state. Too inflexible to make a deal. I bet he’d destroy your mind before having it filled with worms.”

“Stop!!! Don’t you dare! What do you want!” The dungeon seemed to grow worried.

“You know what I want. Let my friends and the goblins go and I won’t kill myself. It’s that simple.”

A brief moment of silence passed through the area.

“I agree to let them go if you don’t kill yourself here.”

“I’ll need that as an oath.” An extended period of silence passed as Kyrion let the blood flow.

“I sweat to let …Wait you!!!” The golem’s red eyes shut off.

Hostile detected in the core chamber.

Sustaining damage.

Critical threat range.

Entering Stasis.

Requesting aid from a shepherd…

Quarantine protocol engaged.

Please be patient. You will be seen in approximately one week and three days.

A much deeper and angrier voice seemed to replace the monotone one from earlier.

CoRuPtIoN EnGiNe started.

“I don’t like the sound of that.” Psycho sighed.

The golem shifted significantly as the goblin in the cockpit and the mech fused into one. Its size doubled and then doubled again, filling the large area completely as its weapons seemed to grow with it.

The skulls split wide open, exposing a few moving gears and tanks that seemed to fuse into one.

Atimn immediately sent shadows to restrain the golem.

The shadows were bypassed as the monstrosity greatly affected Atimn in power and ability.

Water coated the internal mechanisms, but the golem turned towards Atimn, all four eyes locking on and charging an attack.

A thick stone wall rose to block the four lasers congealed into one.

The blast connected tunneling through the dome and one of its inhabitants.

A roar echoed from the dome, which had broken wide open, revealing a winged lizard of absurd size and proportions. Fangs as large as a person and claws sharper than the toughest blades. Purple scales covered its body, and a bloodthirsty gaze had locked onto the golem.

Ceres’ hind leg had a hole in it the size of a ballista bolt, only it was visibly healing and shrinking as the dragon stared the mech down.

Atimn collapsed behind Ceres, who had transformed into a creature that struck fear in people’s hearts everywhere. She had used her body to protect him but fear when seeing a dragon in all its magnificence was scary.

“Atimn. Get on my back. I want you to cut its shadows with your sword while I fly around keeping you safe and attack from afar. “

“But my shadows didn’t work.”

“You can’t stop it but you can weaken it if you keep swinging. It’s moved onto peak practitioner in terms of power which means that I can’t afford to hold back. It isn’t about winning, it’s about surviving.”

“What? Surviving? Do you have an escape route?”

“When, master gives the signal I’m sure we’ll all be out safely.”

“I don’t even know what’s going on.” Atimn climbed onto the scaled dragon’s back. While scales were good hand and foot holds, it was quite uncomfortable. Atimn knew not to say this out loud and opted to hold on for dear life.