Reckless Error

The collateral wasn't as bad as Kies thought it would be which was a good thing or so he hoped. He had to have done some decent numbers on the golem to justify the damage he caused the trees.

Below him, elves were scampering onto the branches to see what happened, and from this height, it was a little funny since they looked like ants. But this wasn't the time to be looking at the elves.

Kies scanned the golem's body to see if his attack had actually done something or just angered it more. Judging by the loudness of the roar it gave, he assumed that it did hurt it some bit, and sure enough, it did!

Piece by piece, the golem's back crumbled and dropped to the forest floor. The tree stuck to it unfortunately suffered a number too and had its base blown away completely.

It slid off the golem's back and fell against another tree. Its roots were gone, meaning that it could no longer sustain itself and was bound to die.

On the bright side, one tree was worth it to take down the golem which was capable of destroying far more than that, in Kies' opinion. The elves were still going to be furious about this but he hoped that they could be somewhat lenient.

More and more stone broke off the golem, like a lizard shedding its scales. This continued for a while and Kies started to believe that he really did succeed in killing the golem. The elves were also cheering but the shedding stopped when the golem had shrunk to about a quarter of its size.

It growled to shut everyone up and inform them that it was still alive. The golem lost most of its size and body but this smaller body was a different color rock, seemingly harder than what it had before. Rather than that, it looked like this was its real body and the rock that Kies destroyed was just a shell.

Kies and the elves got their hopes up too early…

"Why did I ever think it would be this easy…" Kies grumbled to himself. He was fresh out of magic and his body was drastically slowed, running on the tiny bit of it that he saved to stay alive. This was bad.

The golem was enraged. If it chose to attack them now, at its current size, it was still fully capable of bringing down the tree. The elves knew this too and were already scurrying around, looking for a way to stop the golem while preparing for the worst too.

Kies made a huge mistake. He intended for his attack to disable the golem at the very least but it seemed that he overestimated his magic or got too cocky.

The golem roared a second time, this time louder than before. It took a step forward. The ground rumbled and shook. It took another. Another. The golem was approaching the tree.

The elves fired arrows and cast magic. They did anything they could to stop the golem but nothing was working. The thing was a literal walking mountain. To stop it, they would have to destroy one of its four feet, preferably all four to cripple it entirely.

Since the climb was uphill for the golem, that slowed its advances, buying everyone much-needed time to figure something out. Kies pulled the Moonstone out of his pouch and took what magic he had stored in it. He needed everything he could get to fix his mistake.

By the time Kies finished absorbing all the magic from the Moonstone, the golem was about to reach the top of the hill, giving Kies an idea. He may not have the power to control the earth, but that didn't mean that he couldn't manipulate it at all. He called upon the winds and squeezed them together into a tiny sphere. It was super unstable and he had to be perfect with his control or else his plan wouldn't work.

After compressing the winds, he ordered them to drill into the ground in front of the giant. It was like trying to force a needle through endless rocks. One wrong move and it would break. Kies didn't have much magic at hand and he couldn't afford to mess this up. If he had to guess, he had somewhere near a tenth of the maximum capacity he could hold.

The golem took steps forward slowly, taking its time to stabilize its foothold into the soil so that it wouldn't slip down. Kies maneuvered the winds until they were deep enough and exactly where he wanted them to be and released his control on them. The winds exploded under the layer of earth that was directly beneath the golem's feet. A landslide knocked the golem off balance and pushed it down the hill. Its fall shook the tree and caused a number of the fruits on the branches to loosen and fall.

Kies bolted for the hollow inside of the tree to take cover from the falling fruits. Once it was all over, he went back out to assess the situation. When he saw the state of the golem, he was relieved that his plan was successful.

The golem was upside-down with the upper half of its body buried entirely under the landslide. It was wiggling around in an attempt to break free. The fight was not over yet. The elves were quick to react and were already gathered around the golem and using their magic to summon plants to press down against the soil to strengthen the hold.

However, they were still struggling to keep the golem down. Its raw physical power was just too much for them to handle and the thing was going to break free unless something was done to stop it. Kies placed his fingers against his chest where his core was and checked exactly how much magic he had left. After what he did, it seemed that he had a little less than half of what he initially started with. It was very little and extremely risky, but there was still something he could do with his magic.

Doing the same magic as before, Kies called forth the winds and pushed them together into a tiny ball. He then tried to create a second one but also collapsed from trying to do so. He didn't have enough magic to do it. The first sphere flickered uncontrollably, about to burst at any moment. Kies had no magic to sustain it either.

There was no time to waste. While Kies still had the magic to contain the winds, he send it into one of the golem's legs, only to find out that the material was nothing like what he had encountered before. It was as tough as his sword if not tougher. Even still, he did not give up.

"Come on!" Kies poured everything he had into the sphere and it cracked the surface of the golem's leg. But it was not enough. Kies continued pushing through and bit by bit, pieces of the golem's leg shattered, allowing the fierce winds to penetrate deeper.

Kies vision darkened and he found himself about to black out from magic deficiency. "Just a bit more..." Nevertheless, he held on even when he felt empty, and his tenacity did not go unrewarded.

Suddenly, as if a miracle happened, the golem's leg magically softened and Kies found his winds tearing through the leg like it was nothing. Upon reaching what felt like the center, Kies let loose the winds and it blew the whole thing off. A muffled roar vibrated the ground and that was the last thing that Kies heard before he passed out.

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