Atlas stood on the massive city walls, blinking slowly and yawning as he watched the timer till the next wave tick down. Just three more minutes until the 7th wave started, and Atlas was planning how best to train his skills. He doubted that anything in this wave would give him too much trouble, so he might as well get the most out of it.
He was going to get Blitz upgraded at the very minimum, but he was also eying some of his less used skills, such as Lightning Beam and Demonic Claw. He didn’t expect too much out of Lightning Beam, seeing as he already had a skill that could use lightning far more effectively, Elemental Affinity. It also had the added benefit of being better in almost every way conceivable. The only downside was it was more mana intensive than Lightning Beam.
On the other hand, he had high expectations for Demonic Claw. If his thoughts were correct, he should be able to upgrade it into something more like a demonic form, letting him become fully covered in the powerful red energy that flowed in his skill. If he couldn’t do that, then he should at least be able to make the hand bigger and maybe apply it to his weapons, creating a variant of the skill that allowed him to enhance his strikes with the same power.
Either way, it would prove beneficial to upgrade the skill.
As Atlas stood waiting for the timer to reach zero, a weird chill went through him, raising the hair on his neck and making goosebumps run along his arms. Atlas shivered, brushing off the feeling and ignoring it, he must just be cold, that was probably the reason for the unexpected chill.
There was just one problem… it wasn’t cold at all, in fact, the grove had very warm temperatures, not to the point of being hot, but it definitely wasn’t cold.
But no, it was probably just a cold wind that had blown through the grove unexpectedly.
But there was no wind blowing at all, it was perfectly calm.
As Atlas tried to convince himself that nothing was amiss, the timer reached zero, and the landscape began to roil and crack.
Atlas watched in both horror and fascination as 10 giant golems rose from the earth, splitting the earth above them and creating a landscape of broken earth and turned up stumps.
Each of the 10 golems were different, and -with his heart dropping with each word- Atlas inspected their properties.
Golem of Iron
Tier: 2 Level: 200
Golem of Rock
Tier: 2 Level: 200
Golem of Coal
Tier: 2 Level: 200
Golem of Tin
Tier: 2 Level: 200
Golem of Copper
Tier: 2 Level: 200
Golem of Zinc
Tier: 2 Level: 200
Golem of Lead
Tier: 2 Level: 200
Golem of Aluminum
Tier: 2 Level: 200
Golem of Weak Mithril
Tier: 3 Level: 0
Golem of Weak Adamantine
Tier: 3 Level: 0
To sum it up in as few words as possible… Atlas was screwed. He was facing eight peak tier two golems and two low tier three golems. Which, if going by what Atlas knew, meant they were substantially stronger than their brethren.
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At each subsequent tier up, the gap between it and the tier before widened. In the lower tiers, it didn’t matter too much, as far as he was aware, but the system had told him that the higher tier you were, the greater the jump between tiers became. This was especially true for tier 5’s and up, as they were required to do more than simply kill things or craft items for experience, they had to “solidify their path” or something, the system hadn’t been forthcoming on how.
All of this rushed through Atlas’s head in brief moments, and he furiously tried to find out why the jump between the last tier and this one was so abrupt. Nothing before had hinted at this even being a possibility, let alone actually happening. They were all one hundred and twenty five levels higher than the Deepwell Titans had been, and he had honestly been at little surprise to even face them, compared to the ‘small’ twenty five level jump between them and the miniboss, Atlas was deeply concerned with this new event.
Atlas steeled himself, teleported off of the wall and appeared only a hundred feet from the golems. Atlas channeled some magic and sculpted a large pickaxe out of rock with Elemental Affinity. He wasn’t sure how well it would work, but he didn’t want to go into this fight with just his fists, he was sure that it would hurt a lot to constantly be punching the golems, and he wanted to take every precaution in this fight.
As the pick flew into Atlas’s hand, he looked up, only to find all ten of the golems charging him, shining with deep brown light.
Earthen Stronghold (S-SSS): Your body is a fortress in itself. You are tougher when touching earth. You can channel mana into this skill for added benefits.
Atlas was slightly disappointed that he learned so little from their skill, but then again, they were all significantly more powerful than him, so it made sense. Atlas turned on his heel and faced away from them, raising his pick and bringing it down on the empty air. As he did so, he activated Misty Step and appeared right behind the iron golem, smashing his pick into its back.
He had learned through a couple of uses of the skill that he could teleport anywhere within 1000 feet of himself, but he would always face the same direction as when he activated his skill as when he appeared. The easiest exploit of this detriment was to simply face the right direction before using the skill, as Atlas’s had just done.
There was a loud thud as Atlas’s pick impacted the golem, and a large dent was made in its back, which only made sense, as both Endless Might and Blitz were running, making him far faster and stronger than he should be.
Atlas pulled back for another strike, but the golem spun around insanely quickly and smashed its fist into Atlas’s face. He was sent careening in the air before he was able to stabilize himself by creating a cushion of air to catch himself.
Atlas spat out blood and glanced down at his chest, which was already beginning to heal itself by using his life force. That punch had shaved off a good 4,000 of his life force, and that was with his high resistance skill!
Atlas felt far more wary now, seeing that even the ‘weakest’ golem had been able to drastically damage him, between him and it, it was apparent that the golem was superior to him. So Atlas did what any panicked human would do, and pulled out all the stops.
Dark mist flooded from his body, coating all of the golems and beginning to slowly inflict debuffs on them. Atlas had already inflicted one debuff on the iron golem, thanks to his passive debuffed weapons, and this mist only added more, and to all of them.
Atlas then began to create large amounts of fire and earth, smashing them together to create lava. This was the first time he had done this, but he was no longer holding anything back. Up till now, he had never been at such a large advantage, the t-rex in the tutorial hadn’t fought him, so that didn’t count. But now, there were 10 beings who not only had him at a severe disadvantage, but they also held a large threat to his life.
Up till now, Atlas’s life had been threatened over and over, but never to this extent, and never had he been this scared, even with all of his powers in comparison to what the golems probably had. He was passed caring, and only wanted to see the golems dead to save himself.
Lava began to pour down on the golems, slowing them and melting at them, and they began to try and fend of the lava with pillars of earth and metal, but Atlas wasn’t done yet, he used the second property of Ultimate Consume, waiting for a few brief seconds before unleashing all the built up power at the mithril golem. Its body creaked and groaned as no less than 70 debuffs filled its body, breaking it front the inside out.
Atlas started to channel it again, and after a few more seconds unleashed it again on the adamantine golem- for a total of 4 debuffs. Atlas once again remembered why he had thought of this as a risky maneuver, it had the potential to do barely anything, heedless of the exorbitant mana cost. Or rather, it used to be exorbitant, but now he had reserves of over 40,000 mana, which let him use this skill pretty much as much as he wanted.
On the third powering up of Ultimate Consume, a large pillar of earth shot up at him, and Atlas barely managed to teleport out of the way, only for the adamantine golems fist to appear right in front of him. He was once again sent flying, but this time all of his life force was consumed to heal him from the damage that had been inflicted upon him.
He managed to recover quickly enough, but before he could regain his footing, 4 of the 10 golems were in front of him, and he barely managed to evade them, this time teleporting the full 1000 feet that he could to get the most distance from the golems.
So far he had managed to kill 3 of the golems, but the mithril golem was on its last legs, so it would soon be 4 dead golems. Atlas sent a quick Ultimate Consume at the three dead golems, receiving 20 points in Constitution, Strength and Wisdom.
He activated all of his skills, only belatedly remembering to activate Runic Armor. He instantly set all of the runes to defense, only leaving his boots with a different rune- the rune of speed. He had a feeling he would need any advantage he could get.
He once more face off against the golems, swinging his fully powered pick into the closest golems chest and leaving a giant dent in its arm, practically ripping it off and sending it spinning away.
He turned to face the rest of the golems and grit his teeth, this was going to be rough.
