Chapter 127: 070. Guardian of the Tomb (Part One)

“Uh? Eh?”

At first, fluster, then horror rapidly filled up Hans’s eyes.

Just as he began stumbling back from horror, something tripped his legs from behind. He lost his balance and kissed the ground with his butt.

With a gap as narrow as a single strand of hair, a large blade sliced the empty air just above his head.

He dazedly stared at the skeleton that rescued him and muttered out, “A h-holy skeleton! I knew it, my eyes didn’t deceive me back then!”

Dude, this isn’t the right time to get amazed!

The Cyclops Golem raised its sword once more.

While observing the statue, I shouted out. “Rescue!”

My skeletons quickly made their next moves. They bent down and grabbed Hans’s arms before pulling him back up to his feet.

“Restrict!”

The other skeletons used their steel chains and tied up the Cyclops Golem’s limbs.

“Punish!”

The holy skeletons leapt up from the left and right sides before elegantly swinging their blades at the Golem’s chest.

A loud metallic clang rang out, and the huge Golem stumbled back. However, the skeletons were wincing away while looking at their swords after landing back on the ground.

The blades forged by the dwarves had cracked, that’s why.

Hans urgently shouted out at this sight. “That creature’s exterior has elements of Eltera mixed in, sir! That metal is tougher than any forged steel, and it also possesses resistance against magic as well! Regular swords can’t possibly damage that thing’s armour!”

Blooming hell, it’s one thing after another, isn’t it? You telling me that my dwarf-made weapons are useless against that statue?

When the Cyclops Golem swung around the swords held in both of its hands, the holy skeletons quickly raised their shields to try and defend against the attacks. However, they failed to withstand the impact force generated from the large blades smashing into their shields and got blown away to crash into the nearby walls.

“Wha-what?!

The mercenaries also raised their shields in alarm. They tried to protect themselves from the merciless hackings of the Golem, but unfortunately, their limbs and bodies were easily chopped apart like blocks of tofu.

“Uwaaaahk!”

The merc leader, Kasal, screamed in horror as he watched his comrades get picked off and suffer miserable deaths. He urgently turned around to escape from the chamber. However, when he got to the doorway, he realised that the gate was closed shut. The exit had been sealed tightly while we were being distracted by the Golem’s rampage.

“What’s going on here?! Why isn’t it opening already?!”

Despite Kasal’s desperate pounding on the sealed door, it didn’t even budge an inch.

“Lady Tina! Come this way…!”

Damon took Tina and quickly hid behind one of the tall and wide pillars. They raised their staves and got ready to use magic.

Meanwhile, my summoned skeletons kitted out in full armour and shields, faced the Cyclops Golem. I extracted my musket rifle and went behind the same pillar as well, and while leaning against it, began offering a prayer.

It was right about the same time that the Cyclops Golem’s lone eye began ‘burning’ in an eerie crimson hue, followed almost immediately by a single ray of crimson beam.

The skeletons raised their shields again to defend against this new attack.

However, when the ray and their shields collided…

…The shields and the skeletons gradually turned into stone.

“What the heck is that?!”

I sucked in a cold breath at that sight.

Damon, currently hugging Tina tightly while pressing his back against the pillar, replied. “It’s petrification magic, my lord!”

Petrification magic, is it? Was it similar to Medusa’s glare from the Greek myths?

“Hang on, won’t I die instantly if that thing hits me just once?”

What kind of an unfair cheat was this?!

Damon continued with his explanation as cold sweat drops trickled down his face. “That magic envelops its victims in a hardened layer of stone, my lord. If you are unfortunate enough to be struck by that beam, rather than you turning into a stone statue, you’ll instead burn to death from the excruciating heat or suffocate from being unable to breathe!”

Huh, so it’s like a ‘rapid-dry concrete’ ray, then?

I shifted my gaze to another pillar over yonder. Hans was there, still alive and leaning against it.

I called out to him. “Hey, don’t you have any useful items on you?”

“Pardon? Ah, please hold on.”

Hans placed his large bag down and began pulling out all sorts of junk from inside it. I used [Mind’s Eye] to check out his things.

[Poison Bomb], [Goggles that sees magic circuitry], [Warp Scroll], plus various books and other knick-knacks; despite being an Alchemist, he didn’t seem to have all that many useful stuff, as far as I could tell.

“Hey, hand over those three items to me.”

“I beg your pardon? B-but…?” Although Hans tossed the Poison Bomb and the goggles in my direction, he held onto the Warp Scroll. “This is incredibly expensive, sir.”

“It looks to me like some cheap-ass product that will only warp you three metres or less, though? Just hand it over, will ya?!”

Honestly, when compared to the warp magic Nasus used, that thing didn’t even deserve to have the same spell name.

“How can you say that…?! This is one of my life’s masterpieces, sir! Eh? How do you know about its function?”

“Just shut up and give it to me already. Or you wanna end up as a dead statue too?”

Hans eventually tossed the Warp Scroll in my direction.

As the Cyclops Golem continued approaching us while shooting out that crimson beam, I put the goggles on and stared at the moving statue. I could ‘see’ the flow of demonic energy in and around that thing.

I spotted some kind of a gemstone-like object embedded near the Golem’s eye. It seemed to function as its brain.

I quickly injected divinity into the crystal sphere named [Poison Bomb]. Our opponent was a statue, so a bomb permeating with demonic energy wouldn’t be anywhere remotely enough to eliminate it. However, the story should be somewhat different if it’s a purified holy water bomb.

I threw the sphere which now contained holy water at the Golem. It clattered onto the statue’s chest and exploded spectacularly. The huge moving statue wobbled unsteadily and temporarily stopped shooting that crimson ray. It even began shaking its head.

That’s my opening!

I activated [Divine Aura] and temporarily ‘enhanced’ the Warp Scroll.

The moment I ripped the scroll up, my body split apart into tiny particles and teleported elsewhere. My destination was right above the Cyclops Golem’s head.

I stabilised myself by standing on the Golem’s shoulders, then grabbed the damn thing’s head with one hand and used my other to aim the musket’s muzzle right at its large eye.

“Hey, as*hole, it’s time to die.”

I pulled the trigger.

The holy bullet fired out from the muzzle and struck its target, causing the back of the Golem’s head to explode. It stumbled back before suddenly going crazy. It reached up to grab me, but right at that very moment, numerous cracks began running throughout the Golem’s huge body, and eventually, the entire thing just crumbled down to pieces.

I wobbled a bit but still managed to stay on my feet above the debris of the broken-down statue. I looked around the vicinity, but by then, all the mercenaries were already dead. Some had their bodies chopped up to bloody chunks, while the rest had turned into stone statues themselves.

I shifted my gaze over to the exit only to find the mercenary’s leader, Kasal, had also turned into a statue as well, forever frozen in the middle of pounding on the door.

“Is… is it over now?”

Hans peeked his head out from around the pillar.

Damon brought Tina out from their hiding spot, then while alternating his gaze between me and the destroyed Cyclops Golem, sighed deeply in admiration.

It was then, the hallway began shaking ominously. Crumbs of debris began falling from the ceiling, and then the whole thing gradually started coming down on top of us.

“Really now?! Give me a break.”

We came here to explore some ancient tomb, but at this rate, I might as well shoot the next sequel in the Indi*na Jones franchise or something.

While looking at my skeletons, I quietly massaged my temples. They broke apart Kasal’s statue and struggled mightily to pry open the exit. Eventually, though, they gave up and shook their heads.

Left with no other choice now, I looked for another exit. Sure enough, there was a small doorway right behind where the Cyclops Golem used to stand.

“Huh, so you want us to enter even deeper inside, is that it?”

It was as if the tomb itself tried to encourage any would-be invaders to willingly throw themselves into the next trap.

“Let’s get out of here, everyone. Otherwise we’ll all be crushed to death!”

Hans called out to us and then hurriedly placed his stuff away in the bag.

In the meantime, I picked up a portion of debris that used to form the Cyclops Golem. By using the trio of [Mind’s Eye], [Divine Aura] and Hans’s goggles, I was able to analyse its magic composition quite easily.

I stared at the magic stone within the debris for a little while before heading towards the exit. Tina and Damon quickly followed after me.