Murkwater Crypt (2)

Lyra was already moving, firing her enchanted arrows with deadly precision from the back of the formation. They struck the golems at their joints—the neck, the elbows, the knees. But the arrows simply bounced off the thick plating with metallic pings.

"My arrows aren't penetrating!" she yelled, frustration in her voice.

"Fireball!" Finn screamed, launching a ball of flame that engulfed one of the golems. The fire scorched its surface, turning the rust black, but did nothing to halt its advance.

The party was in trouble. Their weapons were ill-suited for this kind of enemy. The golems felt no pain, had no flesh to pierce or burn. They were simply walking walls of metal and stone, and they were slowly closing in.

Leon, standing at the back as instructed, watched the scene with an analytical eye. 'Golems,' he thought, a flicker of hope igniting within him. 'Could it be this simple? Does one of these have the Core I need?'

He wasn't looking at them as monsters; he was looking at them as machines.

He ignored the chaos of the battle and focused on their design. His eyesight, sharpened by millennia of cultivation, was far beyond human limits. He noticed a subtle detail the others, caught in the heat of battle, had missed: among the dozens of runes etched on their bodies, only one, located at the back of the neck, pulsed with a faint, steady light. It was the lynchpin, the power source.

"They're like puppets," he mused. "Cut the strings, and the puppet falls."

Just then, one of the golems cornered Finn, its massive hand raised to crush the terrified young mage.

"Help!" Finn shrieked.

Brom and Lyra were too far away, pinned down by other golems. Without a second thought, Leon bent down, scooped up a loose, fist-sized rock from the floor, and flicked it.

The rock shot through the air like a cannonball, striking the golem precisely on the glowing rune at the back of its neck. There was a sharp CRACK, and the red light in the golem's eyes instantly died. It froze mid-swing, then collapsed into a heap of inert, useless junk with a final, echoing crash.

While the others dealt with the immediate threats, Leon quickly moved to the fallen golem. He ran a hand over its chest plating, tracing the crude, carved channels back to the shattered rune on its neck. He found no complex inner workings, no hidden chamber. There was no central power source, no distinct, self-contained core. It was a cheap, mass-produced model.

'No core,' he thought with a hint of disappointment. 'Just a simple construct. My task won't be this easy.'

"Woah, lucky shot, kid!" Brom yelled, managing to push another golem back.

Lyra, however, saw it differently. She had seen the impossible speed and the pinpoint accuracy of the throw.

That wasn't luck. Her eyes narrowed as she glanced back at their F-Rank "baggage handler," a flicker of suspicion in her mind.

"Leon! How did you do that?" Finn cried, a look of hero-worship on his face.

"Their necks," Leon called out calmly. "There's a glowing rune on the back of their necks. That's the weak point."

"What?"

"I see it too. So I just need to hit this?"

CRASH

Another golem came crashing down after getting hit by Finn's fireball.

Now knowing the trick, the party's strategy shifted. Lyra's arrows aimed not for joints, but for the master runes. Brom used his axe not to break the golems, but to spin them around, exposing their backs. Finn's spells were used to distract them. One by one, the constructs of the Old Kingdom fell.

Breathing heavily, they stood victorious in a chamber littered with mechanical corpses.

"Ahh, it is so easy. We are going to be rich soon." Brom laughed.

Finn, on the other hand, seemed to have a particular grudge against them, and cast multiple fireballs to completely destroy their shells.

"Die, you pieces of metal junk."

"Alright, that's enough." Lyra said, as she got up. "Let's move on now."

She still had a suspicious look at Leon, but did not dwell on it for too long. There would be more opportunities later.

The trio pressed forward, leaving the silent chamber behind and entering a long corridor. Right in front of them was a treasury chest, that seemed to sparkle brightly.

"Yay! Treasure." Finn immediately ran forward, shouting out in happiness.

"Wait..." Lyra tried to stop him, knowing fully well that there could be traps all around.

But Finn was already halfway down the hall, his greed propelling him forward.

Brom grunted, "Idiot kid will get himself killed," but he followed, not wanting to leave the mage unprotected. With a sigh of frustration, Lyra motioned for Leon to follow her as she cautiously advanced.

As the four of them stepped onto the flagstones in the middle of the corridor, a low, deep rumble shook the entire hallway. Dust rained down from the ceiling.

"What was that?" Lyra shouted, her body tense. "An earthquake?"

"The whole crypt is unstable!" Brom roared, planting his feet wide to keep his balance.

Just then, a spiderweb of cracks appeared on the floor beneath them.

"It's not the crypt," Leon said, his voice extremely urgent. "It's the floor."

"Back!" Lyra yelled. "Everyone, back the way we came! Now!"

But it was too late. With a deafening groan, the flagstones didn't just fall; they crumbled into dust. The ground beneath their feet vanished.

"No!" Finn screamed, flailing as he lost his footing.

Brom roared in frustration, making a desperate leap for the solid ground they had just left, but the collapse was too wide and too fast. He missed by inches, his armored hands clawing at empty air. 

A collective scream echoed in the darkness as they plummeted downwards, landing in a heap of dust and stone in a vast, cavernous hall far below.