When Merida felt the distortion of the mana in the area, she expected some stupid mage casting magic spells out in the open, not a dimensional rift opening in the middle of a busy road.
Dimensional rifts required at least one king-ranked mage to deal with since the hostile forces that come out of the rift would either be technologically advanced, or wielded strong enough magic to cross dimensions. Along with a potential army of hostile forces.
Merida was only a Viscount-ranked mage.
Casting translation magic, Merida stood before the army of snake-headed soldiers. “State your business here!”
A snake-head with golden armor and a red staff stepped forward. “Domination!”
That signaled the start of their attack. They began firing green blasts from their scepters, causing anyone hit to fall to the ground as their bodies corroded. Giving them quite the painful death.
Merida immediately created a wall of ice to protect the civilians trying to escape. But Merida couldn’t protect everyone. The people that were too close to where the rift opened fell first, and the area where the ice wall couldn’t cover was still under fire.
Even with the enforcers arriving and returning fire, civilians were still dropping. “Ms. Merida!”
Merida turned in horror to find Hanna and her friend Rose heading towards her instead of evacuating like the rest of the students. “Get ba-” Merida was interrupted by a chunk of her ice wall exploding, causing her to fall to the ground.
The snake leader went through the hole with his staff pointing towards Merida. “DIE!”
The blast fired, but a golem blocked the attack with a runic shield. “Huh?” Merida looked at the golem in surprise, then she turned to Hanna and Rose who had a similar golem protecting them too.
“Need help?” a hand was offered to her.
Merida looked up to see Rose’s brother. “Thanks,” she accepted the hand and they turned back to the snake leader. “I assume the golems are yours?”
“Something like that,” Lucas replied as he took off his coat.
“Any chance you got more surprises on you?”
He began folding his sleeves. “Just one more.”
With his coat off, Merida saw an attachment on his belt that looked like a compartment that held five marbles. One of them was already missing, which she believed was the one that saved her.
He grabbed the remaining marble from the compartment and threw three of them to the side. “Protect the civilians!”
One of the golems held the same shield as the first one, while the other two carried guns that immediately began firing at the invaders, covering the escape of the civilians.
“Wipe them out!” Lucas threw the last marble near the snake leader.
The golem wasn’t even finished materializing as it took action. A lance went through the snake leader, while a great sword swung from below and sliced the snake man in half.
Merida wasn’t an expert in golems, but she knew a golem wasn’t supposed to move that fast, nor did they have the capacity to move with such fluidity. It was like she wasn’t looking at a golem, but a person.
“Where did you get that golem?” Merida questioned Lucas.
“Iris,” he answered. “Percival, thin their numbers as much as you can!”
The golem responded by raising its lance and preparing to throw it. Purple energy shrouded the lance like a beautiful flame. Then it threw it with so much force that Merida felt the shockwave reach her.
The lance shot through the army, leaving nothing left in its path.
Merida was shocked, but it seemed Lucas was even more surprised by the power of his golem. “I take it that Iris didn’t mention how strong the golem is?”
“It’s new,” that was the only thing he said before proceeding to help with the evacuation of civilians.
With the help of his golems and the enforcers, they managed to stall enough time for a king –ranked mage from the military to arrive. Merida recognized the golem magic expert Fredrick arriving on the military gliders.
Fredrick came with an army of his own golems. Giant behemoths of metal crashed into the ground and began tearing the snake headed invaders to pieces. “Good job holding out Merida Winterbelle,” Fredrick said as he floated towards her on a glider.
“Thank you, but most of the credit belong to someone else,” Merida glanced towards Lucas who was helping a woman out of her car.
The moment Fredrick saw Lucas, his eyes sparkled with interest. Then he turned towards the powerful golem in the form of an armored knight. “Hahaha he has truly blossomed.”
“Do you know him?” Merida asked in curiosity.
Fredrick turned back to her. “It is confidential young lady,” Fredrick laughed as he floated away on his glider. “Wrap this up!”
One of his golems approached the dimensional rift and began to seemingly force it close using its hands. But it proved to be a challenge as a hand came through the rift and went right through the golem’s chest.
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The golem was ripped in half as a giant Naga with white scales came out of the rift.
“Oh?” Fredrick looked at the scene with interest. “Comparing it to these guys, it’s clear that’s a monster and not part of their civilization,” Fredrick stated.
Merida agreed. The snake headed invaders seemed like the sentient residents of their dimension. They wore sophisticated armor and even rode on vehicles, while the naga had nothing but its bare scales and a blue trident as it hissed at them.
“Is that a monster lord?”
Merida turned to see Lucas staring at the naga with interest.
“I suppose?” Merida answered.
Lucas grinned. “Percival, dig out its core!”
Merida was surprised by the sudden order, but she was more surprised by the golem tearing its way towards the naga. It sliced through the enemies with the grace of a master swordsman until it reached the naga.
The golem held out its hand and its lance came flying to its waiting hand. It leaped and hurled its lance down, piercing through the naga’s tail and locking it in place. When it tried to slither around to face the golem in the air, it got off-balanced and fell to the ground, exposing its back to the knight.
The knight spun in the air, creating momentum and unleashing a slash the ripped through the naga’s back. The monster shrieked in pain, but it wasn’t dead yet. It began thrashing around and eventually freed its tail.
Even the snake headed soldiers around it were caught by its violent thrashing, causing their formation to break. Fredrick’s didn’t waste that opportunity and continued to slaughter the reptilian invaders. His golems rained down magic bullets and ripped them apart with bladed arms.
As all this happened, Merida used magic to shoot spears of ice and create walls to keep the invaders away from civilians.
A wall of stone and trees followed as more mages from the military and the association arrived. One of the enemy tanks broke through her wall of ice, but quickly got dealt with as a giant ball of flames was dropped on it.
“Rescue and evacuation complete!” one of the military soldiers yelled out.
With the tide of the battle in their favor, Merida had the luxury to look around. She tried searching for her cousin, but she was likely taken away for evacuation. Instead, she tried looking for Lucas and noticed he was gone along with his golems, except for one.
The golem named Percival was still in the battlefield, facing the giant naga. It swiftly maneuvered around the monster, avoiding attacks and slicing through its flesh. It didn’t take long for the monster to finally fall as Percival impaled its lance through the naga’s head.
The naga’s body fell to the ground. Percival kicked it over the make it lay on its back before stabbing its sword on the naga’s chest. It pulled out the sword and reached in, pulling the monster core out of its body.
Merida was too far away to see if the core in the golems hand was a regular monster core or had an emblem. Before anyone could stop the golem, Percival dashed away and leaped over a wall of stone.
Merida couldn’t help but chuckle.
Lucas sat quietly with his sister in the evacuation area. Medics were looking them over for injuries, while also checking for any virus that they might have caught.
“How did you get such a strong golem?” Rose asked.
Lucas turned to her, trying to think of an excuse. “I helped him out with some stuff,” he said, trying to refer to Iris as a different person.
Rose didn’t seem convinced, but didn’t say anything else.
Once they were cleared by the medics, they were allowed to leave the evacuation tents and go home. Most of the students returned to the bus, but Lucas talked to the instructors and said they were heading home by themselves.
“How do you expect to go home?” Rose asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Well... this was supposed to be my gift to you for your graduation, but I needed to add a few features,” Lucas gave Rose a marble.
“I already have a golem,” Rose stated.
“Look closer.”
Rose rolled her eyes and examined the marble closer, only to find out that it wasn’t a humanoid golem inside. “Is this...”
Rose threw the marble and materializing a car. She turned back to Lucas.
“Congratulations on your graduation.”
Leona studied the footage of the recent dimensional rift incident. The race of the invaders was called Severium, and their dimension was home to mostly reptilian creatures. Their species thrived on conquering others, plundering other civilizations and turning them into live-stock.
They got their hands on this information by forcing it out of the Severiumites they captured alive. Given the cruelty of their race, they didn’t hesitate to pry out any information from them by any means necessary. By the end of it, there were no more prisoners left.
Other than the dimensional rift, the most surprising thing was the appearance of a familiar face. Not Merida Winterbelle, but Lucas Atican. The young man had succeeded in turning a monster lord into a golem.
From what Leona could see, the golem was at least as strong as a peak Duke-ranked or a King-ranked mage with no stars. Additionally, the golem didn’t move like a golem at all. It was far from mechanical. If she saw this video without knowledge of it being a golem, she would assume it was someone wearing a cybernetic armor.
From Fredrick’s explanation, he stated the golem was created using ancient golem magic where the magic circle manually sourced materials for the golem instead of bringing an already built machine to life.
It also came to her attention that Lucas Atican was Iris, the golem crafter that supplied them the latest mana steel golems being used in the military for dangerous missions.
Thanks to his golems, they no longer need to risk the lives of their soldiers and increased the effectiveness of recon missions.
All because Lucas Atican made a golem that even a king-ranked golem mage couldn’t replicate.
“Screw Waywood, I should have hired him for my division,” Leona grumbled.
“All done,” Lucas said as he finished the body Perci wanted.
It was a prism with four smaller electromagnetic prisms to act as his arms. After Perci possessed his new body, the light blue prisms turned purple with a yellow glow in the center of each prism.
“Outstanding work boy,” Perci floated around his office, testing out his new body.
Watching Perci fly around his office, Lucas became curious to ask a lot of questions. Like why he wanted a different body? How did he know golem magic? Where he was from? When did he die?
Too many questions, but Lucas didn’t want to ask any of them. He never liked asking about anybody’s past unless they bring it up themselves, so Lucas diverted his attention to the item stored in his spatial core.
The naga wasn’t a monster lord. That much was obvious when Percival easily killed it, so the monster core Lucas obtained from it was a regular monster core.
“I never expected you to be greedy,” Perci commented, seeing Lucas stare at the monster core in disappointment.
“Nobody’s perfect,” Lucas replied as he placed down the core.
He could at least use it on a custom golem since the quality is pretty high. So far, the custom commissions he was getting only revolved around using a different material, minor physical alterations, or additional functions like being able to cook. And he has been getting so many orders that some people somehow resorted to calling him on his phone.
“Aren’t you popular,” Perci commented when Lucas’s work phone began ringing again, showing an unknown number.
Before Lucas could reply, he heard a knock from his door. “You got a visitor... again,” Jared’s voice came from behind the door.
Lucas sighed and stood up, but it seemed whoever his visitor was, couldn’t wait outside. The door to his office opened to reveal three people, one of which Lucas recognized from a recent incident.
“We came to make a deal Mr. Atican.”
