Team Fighting

Saric sighed, "Well... that would certainly explain the mana river from two weeks ago."

The wolf-woman calmed down, and the male knight was more vigilant than before, clearly unsettled by the golem. The young knights were chattering among themselves, some were afraid while the others looked excited.

Atlas shook its head, "Is your group ready to move yet?"

Saric twitched, "Right, sorry, just hold on please," he said before turning to the young knights and ordering them to collect the remaining zombie cores while the wolf-woman came over once more.

"I'm Vale, by the way, the grumpy guy is Lager," she introduced, to which Atlas just nodded. Vale just smiled back while looking over the silver embellishments sprawled across the golem's body. Lager just kept scowling but didn't say anything. Looking over the armaments of the group Atlas deemed a change of arms suitable and switched the longsword for a scimitar and the tower shield for a buckler. Vale who was looking noticed the onyx embedded in its hand.

"Ooh, you have a storage artifact? Those are expensive, our order doesn't even have one, we have to carry so much heavy stuff. Would you maybe be interested in joining?" Vale talked rather fast, and Lager went 'Hey!' at the offer to join.

Atlas remained silent as it collected its thoughts before replying, "Maybe, but my goal comes first."

Receiving something that wasn't a definite no Vale was clearly happy, and Saric seemed interested in recruiting Atlas as well, something with such a large pool of energy would be useful no matter where it was.

Vale nodded and continued questioning, "Of course, by the way, did you make your weapons?"

"Yes."

"That means you have earth magic, correct?" She prodded.

"Yes."

"Can you show me?"

"... Why?"

"No reason."

"Then no. It takes a lot of energy. If a situation comes up where it's needed you'll see it."

"Aww, okay." The back and forth ended with Vale pouting, but she quickly cheered up.

'𝘐'𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘦𝘳𝘴', Atlas complained internally.

The young knights finished gathering the zombie cores, storing them in backpacks hidden under their cloaks then quickly got into marching formation. Saric and Atlas headed the group with Vale and the young knights in the middle while Lager held the rear. Saric didn't try to strike up a conversation while moving and Atlas remained silent, the only sound proving it was there being its heavy footsteps.

As Atlas did not tire it offered to clear out the enemies by itself, but Saric refused on the point that the young knights were here to gain experience as well. The golem didn't really gain much from fighting the weaker enemies so it relented. Saric let the young knights fight first until they either won or were clearly about to lose, then Saric and Atlas would step in while Vale and Lager kept watching for additional monsters.

Atlas noted that while Saric had the black blindfold covering his eyes he was still able to see to some degree, while he was unable to tell Atlas was a golem he's still able to proficiently fight. It couldn't figure out if he was fighting with other senses or had some sort of mystical alternative. Impeded sight or not, Atlas had to admit that Saric was very good at fighting, both alone and alongside his teammates.

Watching from the side turned out to be quite good for the golem as it got to see the various fighting styles of the knights and gained insight on how to better maneuver and use different weapons. Atlas was a fast learner and could visualize things quite well, assisting in its magic and now in learning the proper way to fight from the knights.

The group of nine progressed swiftly through the cold halls with Saric as the navigator, it was unknown how he knew which direction to take but they seemed to be going the right way as the enemies were getting more frequent and stronger. It eventually reached the point of Atlas joining the battle from the beginning for safety and the golem quickly got the hang of squad tactics.

Soon they reached a point where the hallway opened up into a large area lit by floating lanterns with blue flames burning inside. A pair of giant bronze doors sat at the other end of the room. A stone lectern sat in the middle of the room with magic runes adorning the flat surface.

"What is this room?" Atlas asked aloud.

"Adventurers named it the Rush Room, it doubles as a challenge room and a safe room. It's not necessary to take the challenge to access the boss room. The last part of the training for the young knights is to take part in the Rush along with clearing the boss, after that is where we part." Saric explained as he moved towards the lectern.

Vale and Lager got the young knights into a circular formation while Atlas stood by the side and changed its armaments back to the longsword and tower shield, intent on fight apart from the group.

The golem ran energy throughout its body checking that everything was in place before slowly probing into the ground surrounding it by extending its reach. While its energy and vitality did not increase on the way it still wanted to try using earth magic offensively, a full energy pool was more than enough to deal with automatically mending light injuries and it was a bit wasteful to not take advantage of the excess.

After confirming everyone was ready Saric placed his hand upon the lectern and the runes upon it lit up, causing the room to rumble as sections of the walls opened up revealing nothing but an inky blackness that couldn't be seen through. Saric quickly took his place in the formation with the knights while glancing at Atlas, a bit worried.

The telltale growling and moaning of zombies flooded the room as they walked out of the black voids and started shambling towards the knights and Atlas. The first wave was easily manageable and after the last zombie fell one of the floating lanterns changed from a blue flame to a red flame.

Atlas did a quick count and felt a bubbling excitement, every wave should be harder and there were twenty-five lanterns floating about.