Chapter 69 (2/2)

4 minutes…

Every now and then there would spawn a larger golem, still level 25, but one that clearly had better stats. Still, Randidly kept his mouth shut and swept through them, knocking out their cores and crushing them.

3 minutes….

2 minutes….

3 minutes….

Randidly blinked. The time…. Had increased?

Narrowing his eyes, Randidly spared the face a glance. But it remained stoic and frowning. Still, he knew that it wasn’t a fluke. Yet he said nothing, continuing to kill golems.

More and more began to flood upwards filling the stone slab, but Randidly just upped his speed to match, once more activating haste..

2 minutes…

3 minutes…

2 minutes…

3 minutes..

A huge, 8 meter tall golem pulled himself out of the lava, bellowing its fury. Randidly allowed himself a tight smile. It seemed the big guy was starting to grow impatient. Well fine, if you wanted to be serious, you should have just said so.

Randidly had thus far just been using the bone spear as a weapon to deftly scoop out cores, but now he lengthened his grip, bringing the full 8 feet of Spine-Spear to bear. He began to sweep expertly back and forth, smashing the golem cores with accurate blows.

Hissing, the large lava golem rushed forward, and Randidly raised the spear directly over his head. With all his strength, he brought it smashing downwards, splitting the lava golem in half and revealing a vulnerable golem core. Lightning fast, a Phantom Thrust flashed forward, crushing the core to powder. The golem collapsed, and to his annoyance, some lava splashed on his bare feet.

Swearing he hopped up and down, and then stamped his feet to get the melted rock off of him. But as the stone cooled, it simply grafted onto him, and would not budge.

The lava below the platform began to bubble, and several more 8 meter golems heaved themselves upward. More disturbingly, an even larger, scaled creature moved, shifting the lava visibly as it swam closer.

Randidly just pointed his spear at the giant face. “The 10 minutes is up. Give me your blessing.”

All the golems stilled. The face’s mouth moved soundless as its eyes narrowed.

“Ahem…. The time counter….”

“Has been reset, and you know it. Honor the deal.” Again, Randidly was sweating. Because honestly, if the giant face refused….

If he survived this, he was definitely warning everyone away from the apprentice path. Whatever rewards he received were not worth this.

But Randidly had a hunch. From the way he had seen Nul behaved, although he had free will with how he did things, there were certain things that he couldn’t do. And certain things he had to do.

“Ah, right you are. You have succeeded. Now stand still and await my blessing.”

A golden sigil appeared in front of the face’s forehead and slowly began to drift downwards. In the meantime, the golems around Randidly slowly started moving again, surging closer.

“Fuck this.” Randidly ran towards the edge of the slab. Right as he was at the edge, he activated Haste, Empower, Mana Strengthening, and produced a Spearing Roots beneath him, launching himself an extra 3 meters, and then leaping forward towards the wall.

The weird thing about Spearing Roots, and Entangling Roots before it, was that there didn’t need to be actual roots for it to work. There just needed to be soil or stone. So even though the roots instantly withered and caught fire, they still came into being, and gave Randidly a foothold not on molten rock.

Burning through his mana, he raced up the inside of the volcano, moving so fast that the giant face couldn’t react. Then he leapt up, out of the volcano, and dashed across the rim, before throwing himself at the giant face.

As he approached, Randidly’s face was covered in a wild grin. The face was stone too. It took him 3 seconds, total, to climb out of the volcano, dash across, leap, and then rush up the face, leaving a trail of ash in his wake.

It was only 3 seconds later, as the face realized what was happening and his expression darkened with a frown, that Randidly leapt again, and caught hold of the golden sigil. He instantly flickered out of existence, teleported out of the strange, volcano world.

The face was still for a long time as the golem disintegrated and fell back into lava. The stone slab fell deeper too.

Still the face floated there, its expression unreadable. Then slowly, the giant face smiled.

“Heh,” it chuckled, and then it sank back into the volcano, looking forward to the next time that individual would return to its realm.