No Pain No Gain

The bottom of the long stairway opened up into a large empty room with calming blue crystals serving as light sources. Atlas felt a bit of resistance as it tried to enter the room but the feeling faded away once it crossed the threshold. It could hear the distant sounds of fighting but paid no attention and walked around the room. The blue crystals lining the walls gave off a soothing sensation and Atlas could feel abundant energy in the room, if its own energy pool didn't refill itself so fast it could probably rest here to recuperate at a good pace. A small engraving on the center of the floor showed 'Floor 3-Z'.

The room had five exits that lead to similar-looking hallways, Atlas chose the leftmost, retrieved its great-ax from the ring, and marched forward a little excited to see if the monsters on this floor would be able to put up a fight. It didn't like fighting before it came here but perhaps now that it has real power fighting has become satisfying, either that or it just never got the chance to realize before.

Atlas soon came upon the first monster on the floor, a strange mash of man, scorpion, and dog stitched together. The amalgamation groaned and charged towards Atlas at a surprising speed, forcing it to take a defensive stance. The monster lashed out with oversized claws that left deep gashes in Atlas' armor as he tried to knock it over.

The golem didn't sit idle and punched through the amalgam's shoulder then pulled while swinging the great-ax with one hand at the dangerous-looking stinger tail. The monster screeched upon losing his tail and thrust his claws into the armor where the heart should be. In response Atlas punched the monster's elbow, making it bend the wrong way and snap before kicking it away. The golem then stepped on his leg to stop him from retreating and swiftly brought the great-ax upon his head, ending his struggles.

Atlas took a moment to remove the black blood the monster left behind before picking up the dull grey crystal left behind. Continuing on it ran into several more stitched-up monsters made of different creatures along with zombies. By themselves, the zombies weren't a threat but they traveled around the halls in packs of around ten or more. The other problem was that Atlas didn't move fast enough and they kept managing to surround it, leading to his outer durability to take non-recoverable damage.

Shortly after a rather large zombie horde Atlas ran into two amalgamations both made of some sort of horned beetle and a person. They circled the golem and kept striking whenever it showed an opening while it could only cause minor damage. They even managed to hit its core twice with their long mandibles, knocking the durability down by eight. Their outer carapace was tough enough that the great-ax couldn't slice through and Atlas kept observing to find some sort of weakness.

One amalgam rushed in to strike and Atlas prepared to counter, it switched the great-ax to its off-hand then delivered an uppercut to the bug, and while it was slightly stunned the golem shoved its fist into the open mouth before putting energy into the ring and taking out a few zombie crystals. Infusing even more energy it got the reaction it was looking for and quickly retracted its hand from the glowing mouth of the bug and kicked it away.

*BANG*

The carapace wasn't shattered but with the bug writhing and gurgling on the floor it clearly dealt severe damage. Atlas took this chance to slam the side of the great-ax down onto the bug's head and splattered light green goo across the ground. With one bug out of the way the golem could focus on single combat and without the flanking advantage, the bug was unable to hold its own against Atlas.

Taking a moment to clear the mind, Atlas looked over itself, its armor had various deep gashes and the right hand was slightly corroded, probably from sticking it in the bug's mouth. It checked the ring with slight worry but the onyx gemstone was perfectly fine. Atlas collected the two crystals from the bugs and while they were dull non-elemental ones they were larger than the salamander crystal.

The golem managed to find a side room with only a few smaller amalgams in it that didn't take too much effort to clear before putting a door on the open frame and settling down to begin repairing its damaged body.

Now that its body called for 'Compressed Labyrinthine Stone' the process of mending took much longer. The first time its body was formed its own core solved the materials automatically but now that it had to compress the stone itself it realized that it took much more energy than simply sculpting. It didn't help that the pure silver embellishments which didn't take any damage also couldn't be manipulated in any way with earth magic, forcing Atlas to work around it.

The recovery process took around an hour, most of which was learning how to compress stone with earth magic through trial and failure, many failures to be precise. Afterward, Atlas began overhauling the great-ax by compressing the stone it was made of. Unfortunately, it was unable to raise the attack power and only increased the durability. Upon realizing that the great-ax was holding up against parrying strikes while being uncompressed Atlas realized the importance of the earth magic durability infusion and attempted to infuse itself but for some reason, it wouldn't stick.

This led to the realization that a shield would actually be useful. While the great-ax could be one-handed with its strength it didn't bother with a shield as its own body was tougher than what it should be able to make, and it didn't want to carry a big heavy shield everywhere even if it couldn't technically get tired. But with the spatial ring, it could now make a variety of armaments and easily carry them around.

Atlas began planning out its own personal armory.