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Ch230-A Friend Indeed

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As far as matchups went, this was utter dogshit.

Sylver’s shades were all made with a relatively single purpose in mind. They appear out of nowhere, strike the opponent in the back of the neck while they’re distracted by Sylver, and then disappear back into the shadows.

Their weapons are mainly blades, swords, daggers, spears, and axes, the sort of weapons that benefit from being fast as opposed to heavy. Even the bows and slings were all in the “light” category, Sylver didn’t have any catapults, ballistae, or trebuchets in his back pocket, the closest thing he had to anything that could break through a solid defense was a war pick.

And while a charged-up shade might be capable of exerting enough piercing force to get through a steel helmet or enchanted chainmail, Ki reinforced rock wasn’t really on the table.

Maybe the Dai and Sho combined shade could make some cracks, but that “maybe” hinged on the reinforced stone in question standing perfectly still.

On the bright side, and you had to really squint to see it, the stone golems weren’t doing a whole lot better. All of their attacks were blunted and lessened due to the magical rain blood all the shades were coated in.

The reason this didn’t result in an automatic win for Sylver’s side, was that the golems weren’t the only ones being blunted by the blood.

Lion was the group’s heaviest hitter. To be more accurate, he was the group’s only heavy hitter.

He used a martial art that seemed to place very heavy emphasis on taking a metric fuckton of damage and then destroying your opponent with a single punch. If it weren’t for the blood, Lion’s face would have been barely visible under all the bruising, but because Ki was neutralized, Lion was merely out of breath, as opposed to dead.

After 6 minutes, and 52 seconds of combat, Sylver’s side only managed to defeat 3 golems.

In both cases, Abby and the witches did something that caused the golem to stop moving, and while it couldn’t protect itself, Lion punched its core out of its chest.

Hound wasn’t much use in this fight, his whole thing was a mixture of stealth and speed, both of which were worthless against these stone golems. They didn’t have any blind spots, and more annoyingly, Hound couldn’t do whatever it is he normally did while covered in life-saving Ki nullifying blood. And while he might be fast, his speed didn’t do jack shit against fucking stone.

Admittedly, that little knife he swung around felt to have a considerable amount of magical heft to it, but even that just barely managed to scratch the golems.

The thing that made the whole confrontation significantly more difficult than it had any right to be, was the fact that the golems weren’t stupid. There was nothing simple or pre-determined about their movements or formations, these things were actively learning the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents, and slowly but surely, they were getting closer to defeating them.

The second Sylver tried to pull blood off Lion’s fists, 3 jade arrows nearly sliced his hands clean off. There were 14 archers, that Sylver could make out, that were waiting for the smallest sliver of bloodless skin to tear into pieces.

On top of that, they kept moving around to the point Sylver was barely able to keep track of all of them.

Aurick was with the witches, being used as a human shield, and through some sort of witchcraft, every single arrow heading towards one of the women went out of its way to hit Aurick right in his uncovered chest.

“DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY GOOD IDEAS?” Sylver shouted towards his exhausted group.

Sylver’s shouting caused the nearby jade golems to turn their attention towards him.

Sylver used his left hand to deflect the blade coming for his neck, he used his right to push away the battle ax on its way to split him down the middle, towards the swordsman golem, and as the spear wielder tried to shove his tipped pole through the back of Sylver’s right thigh, Spring materialized on his back on the floor and kicked the spearhead off course.

As the trio attempted to force Sylver into jumping into the air, where a barrage of arrows would make him look like a porcupine, Sylver’s robe grabbed hold of the spear wielder’s head and pulled Sylver backward.

Sylver landed on his hands and ended up doing a backflip as he turned himself the right way round.

The shades closed the gap between Sylver and the trio, and the golems went back to exchanging blows with Sylver’s blood-soaked shades. If you forgot the fact that both of them were trying to kill the other, it almost looked like some sort of practice duel.

The golems were significantly stronger than the shades, but the shades had speed on their side, as well as the fact that the golems couldn’t do enough damage to most of them to make them burst.

“Alright, guess we’re going with my idea then,” Sylver said.

“You have a plan?” Aurick asked, as a bright green jade arrow collided with his open eye and shattered into a sparkling cloud of green.

“I wouldn’t call it that. I have an idea, but I need them to back off for about a minute,” Sylver answered.

The battle carried on as normal for a while. The golems were very careful to stay close to one another and were even more careful not to leave any gaps in their defenses for someone to slip past them.

If not for that, Sylver was fairly certain nobody other than Lion would be capable of holding his own against even one golem.

Sylver’s side kept their distance, in an attempt to bait the golems out of the safety of their peers, but those green things knew exactly how to attack without breaking the group apart. These weren’t just a loose collection of fighters; this was an army. It was coordinated, it utilized its strengths for maximum efficiency, it didn’t take unnecessary risks, and it never forgot that stopping the invaders was more important than killing them.

In theory, if Sylver forced [Hare’s Great Escape] to activate, he should be capable of moving quickly enough to get through the 3 layers of guards standing around the doors leading to the emperor.

But if there were golems on the other side of the door, he wasn’t sure what his next move would, or could, be. At the absolute least he needed Lion and Owl to come with him.

Neither of them said anything, but Lion and Hound simultaneously jumped in front of Sylver and managed to force the 4 green golems about to attack him, into attacking them.

Sylver jumped away from the front line and found a good spot near the middle back of the large room. His robe puffed out, and spread out along the floor, like a tent, or like an extra-large gown.

Archers fired their arrows at Sylver, but the witches forced the projectile towards Aurick, and after exactly 1 minute had passed, Sylver’s robe returned to its usual shape. He got as close as he could to Lion and hoped the large man would understand the intention behind the vague hand gesture.

Lion barked a word in a foreign language towards Hound and Owl, and the two joined Sylver in pushing the guards back. Even the witches seemed to realize what Sylver was trying to do and used their odd magic to hinder the stone golems.

The green bastards seemed to be almost smiling, as Sylver and company got closer and closer, and were mere steps away from being in the perfect spot for a pincer attack.

The fancy marble shattered as Sylver slammed his foot down through it.

In a literal wave, the blood that had been carefully rationed between various shades flowed towards the dense group of level 500 golems and splattered all of them. The crack on the floor spread out, and created a circle around Lion, Hound, Owl, Aurick, and the witches, as they huddled together.

It’s hard to describe what happened next, but it worked sort of like an explosion-powered seesaw.

The stone floor shivered for a moment, and then the side on the left began to lift, the side where all the golems were, while the side on the right began to fall.

Sylver had spent 10 seconds mapping out the earth beneath the room they were in.

Another 5 seconds double-checking his math.

Another 10 seconds waiting for the shades he had sent out to return to him and spent the rest of his minute discovering that his [Rune Of Infinite Summoning] wasn’t as infinite as it claimed.

Somewhere in the 500 area, Sylver stopped being able to produce the bombs as quickly as he had been. He could still make them, but because of the delay, there was a chance the shades underground wouldn’t have enough time to set everything up.

There were 2 explosions.

The first tore the tunnels apart and created empty space underneath the right side of the room.

The second explosion functioned as a sort of catapult, and with enough room to move the way Sylver wanted, every single bright green stone golem was sent flying through the wall. If they had been human, they would have simply splattered against the wall, but because those green fucks were made out of extremely hard stone, they just broke through it and kept flying.

A couple tried to do some fancy footwork midair, but the blood they were all covered in stopped them from doing anything that would stop their flight.

“We have about 6 minutes until they get back here. Roughly, the smaller ones might get here quicker,” Sylver said.

He didn’t get much choice in the way of direction, the golems had all been flung eastwards, and were only a short stair climb away from getting back here. If he threw them towards the west, they would have just landed in the emperor’s garden.

Where before there was white polished marble floor, there was now a steaming ditch full of singed dirt. If someone paid close attention, they would have been able to see traces of the tunnels filled to the brim with explosives left behind.

“6 minutes?” Hound asked, with a judgmental tone Sylver didn’t need right now.

“Ish. There’s also a good chance they jumped off one another and are seconds away from coming back here,” Sylver said.

Hound scowled for all of 2 seconds before a light shove from Owl shut him up.

With the golems out of the way, the group was faced with its next challenge.

The door.

Sylver gestured towards Owl, “If you can create a barrier to direct the explosion, we could-”

One of Abby’s witches walked past the two men and placed her hands on either side of the spot where the two large doors met.

Sylver could tell no one else could see them, because they continued looking at the witch’s back, as opposed to the 4 enormous arms that had materialized a couple of feet above her. The two dainty-looking hands pressed their palms against the doors, and mimicked the small witch’s movements, as she pushed against the door.

With a squeak, the two doors swung open.