Stray Soul

The first thing I did after entering floor -5 proper was to attach more branches onto the metallic plates on my body to stop them from moving around and making noise.

I didn’t know if they were even audible through the sound of rushing wind, but it was better to be cautious than not.

Then, I started inspecting the mana storm that had somehow overtaken the entire floor, and felt the mana flow around me.

I was somewhat disrupting the mana flow, as I was simply too big for it to easily move around me, but disruptions I was making to the flow would hopefully seem only as just some random anomalies instead of something to worry about to whatever was making this.

And as I stood around for a few seconds, I was able to discern the rough direction of the eye of the storm.

It was somewhere north-east of me, so, wanting to discover if Heinrich, Xavier and Elise were alive or not, I started making my way towards north-east, and as I got closer to the eye of the storm, the mana in the air got denser and denser, and the storm itself faster and faster.

It was not to a point where it hindered my movement, but it was to a point where I simply couldn’t keep the metal on my body from swaying in the wind, and had to deal with the clanks of the metal plates, which were, thankfully, somewhat drowned out by the sheer amount of mana in the air.

And as I got closer and closer to the eye of the storm, I realised something.

It was moving around.

“Definitely a monster then...” I thought to myself, and from my experience of not having seen any other monsters in this floor so far, I could safely assume that whatever monster the eye of the storm was, was most definitely a boss monster.

And as this was the first floor where E ranked monsters could come to be, and as it was greedily devouring all the mana in the air, it’s rank should be somewhere in-between high E rank and low D rank.

Of course, it being a low D rank was not really likely, though it was possible that it was on the border of ranking up, which was not that much worse than being in low D rank honestly.

“Now, where could those three be...” I thought to myself once again.

If they had managed to escape the monster before I even came here, and we had just not encountered them while coming down to this floor, it’d be great!

But most likely, they were hiding from the monster somewhere instead of having already escaped or being dead, as even 2 mid levelled E ranks like Xavier and Elise should at least be able to defend themselves against a peak E rank monster.

I, of course, had to somehow find them, and get them out of this floor. Preferably with most of their limbs intact.

Also preferably, without alerting the monster as I was getting really bored of my body being destroyed every other fight I had, and wanted to keep this iteration of me functional for as long as possible... and because there was a very real chance that, if my body was subjected to the elements on this floor for a long enough time, the dense mana in the air would slowly penetrate my body and send me to kingdom come.

I didn’t like my semi-immortality challenged by the very nature of how my enemies fought... but, alas, I also couldn’t let those three die without at least trying to save them.

Afterall, I had said I had good intentions, hadn’t I? Then, the least I could do was to try and prove that my intentions were really good and out of the kindness of my heart.

After a few more moments of readying myself, I once again started walking towards the heart of the storm, this time more careful not to make any noise though as I didn’t want to alert it to my presence.

And after a few minutes of walking, I started hearing heavy thuds in the distance.

Whatever this monster was, it was heavy. And slow. Perhaps another golem then?

If so... my chances of surviving a fight against it got slightly worse as I still didn’t have anything to easily kill golems with.

“...I should’ve just taken Gram’s mace before heading to the dungeon... dammit.” I lamented to myself, and started listening to the steps of the boss golem, and taking a few steps towards its direction whenever its steps got too quiet.

After a half an hour of stalking the floor boss in the mana storm, I realised that he was patrolling around a block of test chambers.

They weren’t anything impressive... or at least they didn’t seem to be as the past 2 floors had test chambers similar to these, but the golem must have a reason to patrol here, right?

“...Does he think the intruders are hiding in one of the rooms?” I thought to myself, and... my hypothesis seemed to hold water as there wasn’t anything important around here that would justify it patrolling here.

I’d understand it patrolling here if it was a stairway to the lower floor, or a place that the previous inhabitants of this place ordered it to patrol, but surely just some random rooms wouldn’t have any importance to any researchers, right?

Waiting for the golem’s heavy thuds to fade away, I started inspecting the insides of the rooms by inserting an eye held by a branch under the doors, and... yup. Seemed like normal experimentation rooms from the upper floors.

There was a large black board in one side of the room that had some drawings on it that were long faded away, and, though I couldn’t see the tops of the tables from this low on the ground, there were probably some mana crystals, tomes, wands, and other magical stuff that I didn’t quite understand the purpose of.

“Can they be hiding in here?” I thought. Though I could see a lot even from the low position of the eye I had inside the room, there were still some blind spots around, so there was a possibility those three may be hiding in this room...

“Well, the boss is not around, so I see no problem with checking inside quickly.” I thought to myself, and opened the door after pulling my eye stalk out of under it.

And the moment I opened the door, the thick mana outside immediately flooded in like a tide, and pushed everything around.

Tomes of unknown origin and purpose were thrown around, chairs hit the walls, and glass tubes were pushed to the ground and shattered.

*Crack~*

As the room fell into silence after a few seconds, the dungeon did no such things, and fast and heavy thuds of the floor boss could be heard from the corridors, closing in to where I was.

“...Fuck.” I muttered, and decided to take my leave before the dear host could come and give me a hug that was so tight that it’d break every single bone in my body.

Running through the corridors, I stopped really caring about the sound I made and instead focused on getting out of the floor as fast as possible, and escaping to an upper floor where... it most likely could follow me to...

Look, I’ll think about the consequences of my actions later. And I am not even going to a stairway near the one where I parted with Caroline, Lazarus, and Xylene. So, I also shouldn’t be putting their lives at risk.

The monsters on the upper floors also should offer some resistance to the floor boss, which would weaken it somewhat.

They’d of course focus on me, or any other intruders first, but if I make my get away fast enough, I may be able to make the dungeon monsters fight with each other, and do the clean up after wards.

Though for me to be able to do that, I’d first need to actually get off of this floor which seems less likely to happen by the moment as the floor boss’ steps get closer and closer to me.

After only a few minutes of me running away, I was able to catch a glimpse of the floor boss and... it was a golem alright. Just... not one I had seen before.

It had the basic humanoid shape of the other golems I had encountered, but the main difference between it and the other golems was its height, and the fact that that... well, it simply didn’t have the blue orb or whatever it was called the other golems had.

Instead, I could see inscriptions upon inscriptions covering every inch of its skin, and glowing a calm blue.

It was nearly 3 meters tall from what I could tell from a distance, and its arms were long enough to reach its feet.

And I could see a small crack across its body, perhaps inflicted by the other three in their first encounter, that had caused some inscriptions on the golems body to lose their blue glow, and stop working.

Sadly though, the crack wasn’t big enough to disable the inscriptions which made the golem functional, and was probably too costly to be worth it.

“...Hopefully they are still alive by the time I come back.” I muttered to myself as I continued to run towards where the closest stairways should be.

And after another few minutes of running away while being chased by the stone monstrosity, I finally reached the door that led to the stairway and pushed it with as much force as I could muster.

Nothing.

Then I pulled it towards myself, thinking that perhaps I had forgotten how the doors opened in my haste.

Nothing again.

Then I pushed and pulled at the door a few more times.

Push, pull, push, pull, push, pull, push, pull, push...

“WHY DOESN’T IT OPEN?!” I screamed in anger at the door, as it was quite literally about to ruin my life.

Then I saw the floor boss coming from around the corner with one of the eyes at my back.

“...Okay, fuck this. Another door to we go!” I said, and immediately started running away, but the mana in front of me quickly became so dense that it felt viscous for a moment, and then felt like a solid wall.

The mana had become so dense in fact that I could see a shimmering blue wall in front of me through my normal eyes, and I could see some of the inscriptions on the golem’s body glow even brighter than normal as it approached me.

“...Well, fuck.” I muttered as I turned around to face the golem, who was walking towards me—slowly.

It had stopped running like before, and was instead going at the same speed as when it was just patrolling around.

Not that I could really get mad at it for underestimating for me as... well, I was simply weaker than it, and it could probably kill me.

Not that that meant I’d give up easily.

The shimmering wall behind me might’ve blocked my way, but that just means I have to create a new one by going past it, which was going to be hard... but perhaps I had a chance?

I mean, not really. But if I could make some cracks on its body, perhaps I could stop it from making this bullshit barrier again.

Though the arm that was glowing brightly was behind it, which was... going to make this slightly more difficult than normal.

“...Well, these won’t be useful to me anyways...” I muttered as I detached the metallic spikes on my body, and grabbed them all with a claw.

A single one of these was most definitely not enough to crack the stone the golem was made out of, but with using them together, with in tandem with my mana strengthening, I’d be... perhaps able to make some small cracks on its body?

No need to think too much though. I just gotta act now, as I thinking won’t do much for me.

Grabbing the assortment of weapons in my claws ever so tightly, and covering them in branches so they wouldn’t scatter around after the first attack, I looked at my mana counter to see how much mana I had remaining.

Mana Points: 2.682/2.700

Thanks to my constant improvements on my mana cloud network, it didn’t use a lot of mana anymore, but running around had put a slight dent into it.

But I had more than enough mana to push my way through!

Waiting for a few moments more for the floor boss to get close to me, I immediately put a hundred mana into dash, and zipped across the dozen meters or so in between us in a few seconds and then put another 30 into harden, to make sure that my bones wouldn’t break with the sheer force that I hit the monster with.

And as my claw holding the mass of weapons came closer to boss’s body, the mana in the air got denser and denser until it felt like I was moving through honey.

And as the tip of my weapon approached the golem, it was stopped by a shimmering shield covering the body of the golem.

Then I turned my head up, towards the golem, and saw that both of its arms, and its back were shining brightly.

“...You know, you are a real cunt.” I said, and then promptly felt my skull get pulverised by the golem’s fist.