Advance

"Not much to report, I disguised myself as a brat and went to the area we cordoned off and ran into the subject, after that, I followed it and we became friends." Dean relayed in a serious tone.

"... Ugh... Just come back if you're done," the woman sounded tired.

But Dean protested, "No way, this guy is interesting. Oh right," he thinks before turning to the statue, "Do you have a name?"

The statue shakes its head in response.

"Sweet, Charlie help me think of a name for our new friend, he's a fifteen-foot armored golem, so he needs a cool name."

"Pfft, why a cool one, what if it wants a feminine name?" The woman argues.

"No way, it-"

The statue decides to tone the two of them out and go somewhere else in the room to continue training its earth magic. Dean doesn't even look over and just continues bickering with the woman on the other end.

The first thing it focuses on is to replace its missing hand. Instead of using a chunk of stone to mold a new hand it places the stump against the wall and begins applying earth magic to connect the two as it imagines its hand is simply stuck in the wall and begins to pull. The process is very slow but is clearly working, giving the statue new ideas. Once it fully pulls its new hand out its gives it a few squeezes to affirm that it functions before staring at the wall and thinking of experiments it can try.

-~-

Dean looks up after a fifteen-minute brainstorm session with the woman on the other end of the line, both unable to agree on a name, and notices the statue in a weird situation. He hushes the woman and gets up to take a closer look.

The statue had fused itself halfway into the wall and was slowly pushing itself deeper, merging seamlessly like chocolate melting together and soon disappeared altogether into the wall. Dean was dumbfounded, while there were a few golems wandering the dungeon made of the same Labyrinthine stone as the walls and even had earth magic none of them were known to do something like this. Dean wasn't even sure if it was safe, the dungeon might just reclaim the core if it was submerged like that.

The room rumbled and the brickwork on the wall where it had entered suddenly twisted and writhed as if it were in agony. It started to condense into a point, pulling more stone in and compressing it and for a brief moment, Dean thought he heard the same melancholic melody that spread across the world two weeks ago.

In the distance, he could hear roars that started to get closer as if the dungeon was trying to stop what was happening, "Hey hey, that's a bit much for me, you know? Charlie, I need to go, I'll call back once things have settled," Dean stated before starting to cut the connection.

"... You better come back safely," Charlie muttered before closing the connection from her side, and soon after bangs could be heard from the door as the monsters outside tried to get in.

-~-

Deep inside the wall a fist-sized clear orb with a silver branching nucleus was spinning in place as energy from the surrounding stone was being absorbed. The stone kept trying to crush the orb but it was extremely resilient and even grew slightly. A faint voice emerged from the core but was muffled by the stone.

"Core durability exceeded checkpoint, proceeding refinement."

The statue felt a tickle against its existence, similar to when was baptized by the massive crystal in the Awakening building but far weaker. The statue focused on the form it wanted to take and began moving out of the wall. As it moved more and more energy poured into its core and materials that were hidden away in the depths began flowing towards it. It met resistance as the dungeon tried to stop it from leaving and pry away the precious material it was stealing but could only slow the core and not stop it.

As the statue's form solidified the closer it got to open-air it regained its senses and could hear the muffled clashing of steel along with the roars of monsters. Once its face pushed out of the wall it could see that Dean was fending off a wave of monsters from skeletons to lizards and even golems. It hurried and pulled harder, soon freeing itself from the wall but as soon as it did the monsters all turned on it, looking at it like it was something that had to be destroyed.

"About time you came back, wait, why are you smaller?" Dean gave a slightly confused look but managed to get a breather, "Nevermind, help me out here huh?"

The statue nodded before rushing over the weapon rack. Sadly, the great-ax was now too big for it to use so it grabbed a longsword and jumped into the horde feeling full of energy. The monsters seemed prepared this time with most toting a magical means of attack in order to harm the tough defense of the statue. Once Dean caught his breath he assisted and fought alongside the statue that was only a bit taller than him now.