Chapter 5: Temple of the crumbling corundum
I walked in and the whole interior was covered in ruby and sapphire crystals. There were also colorless and brown-colored crystals but the rubies and various colored sapphires were the majority. I spotted some Padparadscha sapphires. The amount of gold I could earn by selling all this would be insane. The door closed behind me and I didn't know if this was a good or bad thing. I wasn't great at earth magic or knew much about rocks but all I knew was those crystals growing like this was not normal. Some earth magic must've been at work here. I carefully inspected the area first. This place seemed bigger on the inside than on the outside.
I didn't notice any living life forms but I did spot some magical lifeforms. Like golems made out of rubies or sapphires. Or easier said Corundum which describes the type of rock ruby and sapphire are. I was wondering if this place seemed to be too easy. I could see every magical life form on this floor, there seemed to be multiple floors. I could only see 4 floors down without extra effort. I also spotted various traps and possible secret passages and doors to treasure rooms. Is this way too easy or am I just perfect for this stuff? I would admit my Elgards eyes are quite overpowered and since at no point in history it was very common, I assume there was never a thought to counter it. I thought a bit longer if I wasn't making some newbie or obvious mistake but I couldn't come up with anything.
I did hit a problem though. The lifeforms on the 4th floor seemed tough. They probably wouldn't be able to land a finger or well I guess rock on me but defeating them seemed like it would be a challenge. I thought of my skill set that could deal with it. I could melt them with fire magic, I wouldn't need to hold back down here. But besides that, nothing else would probably deal well with a crystal-based magic life form. Well, earth magic would be perfect here but I sucked at that.
Can my new sword deal with them? I was a bit concerned because corundum is one of the hardest minerals out there just below diamond. It was the second or third hardest mineral but I only remembered that there isn't much stuff harder than corundum. It would be a better place to test my skills and sword out than against a living being with kids. A golem wandered towards me. It didn't seem to have noticed me yet.
My first test was to check if they would be hostile toward me. It seemed to have spotted me but it just continued its patrol. Am I not perceived as a threat or intruder to it? I waved at it, tried to block its path, and draw on it. But it didn't pay attention to me. This was a little bit disappointing; I was expecting some exciting dungeon experience but if they didn't even see me as a threat then I could easily waltz into every room, clear out this place, and leave without a scratch. I wanted to fire some bloodlust at it to see if it reacted but I stopped myself. I should first gather some shiny sapphires and rubies before I possibly get locked into battle! I fetched a pickaxe from my dimensional pocket, which I still had from when I went gathering ore with Gregory.
Two swings was all it took for the metal to shatter on the crystals. Right hardest mineral besides diamond, I forgot. This is quite the corund-rum. I bet Ted would love this pun. To mine diamonds, they use diamond-tipped tools if I'm correct, so if I can make this golem smash into these crystals they should break. This brings me back to my first problem.
Why don't these golems attack me?! The golem looked at me and continues its patrol. I refused to leave this place without at least a couple of tonnes of rubies and sapphires. I walk over to the golem and tried to lift it and throw it at the crystals. Obviously, that failed because the golem was heavy as fuck. I tried to push it, but it just continued walking while pushing me easily.
Ha, truly a worthy opponent! I said that but I was already exhausted. Maybe this was their strategy! They tire me out by doing nothing! The ancient civilization was on a completely different level! I tried provoking the golem and making “your momma” jokes.
Yo momma is so fat, when she fell, she shattered a sapphire! Hmm, still no reaction. Maybe my “Yo momma” jokes are terrible. I rested a bit while studying the golems patrol pattern. It seemed to have a certain route it did not deviate from. I was also checking out other golems in this dungeon and most seemed to also follow a fixed path. These seemed to be marked with small rubies embedded in the floor. I was wondering if stealing rubies will allow the golems to follow you since their path seemed to be dictated by rubies alone. This might be important information. Rubies seem to be worth more than sapphires so a regular adventurer would want to prioritize these over the sapphires.
Although I don't know what the state was on padparadscha? Paradpasha? paparasha sapphires but those seemed to be also quite valuable. I decided to prioritize the paparazzi stones and leave the rubies be. One or two golems might be easy to fight off but if all the golems in the dungeon got pathed towards me that would be quite a nasty development. Which yet again brought me back to my first problem. How do I get this golem to react to me?! Oh! I tried talking to it in the ancient language belonging to the civilization that built this place. There was no name attached to them so I called them the Corunds. I spoke Corund to the golem but it didn't really react. I tried giving an order.
Golem! Smash! The golem showed some resistance but it smashed the floor.
Hehe, this is so easy. I said but I already wasted almost 2 hours to get this golem to do anything. It did seem to put up some resistance toward the order though. I can just assume that the stronger golems won't be so easy.
Golem! About face! Dash! Smash! The golem turned around; it didn't dash because it was slow as a snail. I waited 10 minutes before it decided to smash. My excitement was short-lived because it missed the crystals, I wanted it to smash. It missed by quite a lot actually.
Golem! Burn 270 degrees! Smash! I butchered my pronunciation and ordered the golem to burn instead of turn. I was about to correct myself when the golem burst out in flames. Noo my mining buddy! I doused the flames with water magic. As I did that the golem went on alert and some golems on this floor stopped their patrol and seemed to face my direction. My trusted mining buddy started attacking me.
What? Mining buddy why?! It started casting earth magic and shooting corundum crystals at me. I dodged the machine gun-like barrage of corundum. I saw that it hit the sapphire crystals behind me. I guess this is a more efficient way of mining. 2 more golems appeared and started shooting rocks at me. I easily dodged it and started collecting sapphires and stashing them in my dimensional pocket. I formulated a hypothesis for this sudden attack. The moment I used magic the golems started to attack. It would be a dumb security system if it would only kick in when someone used magic. So, my conclusion was that it did not detect me.
Since I got nauseous from using magic 5 years ago, I made my internal environment almost devoid of magic. The magic was all stored in my tails which are hidden so I don't give any magical signature off. Whatever magic I use mostly comes from me pulling in ambient magic with energy manipulation or with frost element. So, since I have no magic signature it was as if there wasn't anything in front of the golem. I dodged more flying rocks and crystals and cut the 2 new golems in half. I made sure to hit their core so they wouldn't get back up. I was reluctant to cut down my mining buddy because we had a bond. Even though it was mostly me trying to get it to mine sapphires for me and it mostly ignored me.
I let my mining buddy mine everything in this room before I realized something. Will these golems even notice the rubies if they are stashed in my dimensional pocket? I threw a ruby to the side and my mining buddy dashed at it and smashed it. Oh, so now you can dash, eh?
Golem! Burn 500 degrees! The golem started to burst out in flames again. Hmm, can I melt these golems without using magic? What temperature does corundum melt at anyway? Mining Buddy seemed relatively fine, it kinda looked a bit cool, and the fire looked a bit like it had hair. I wanted to bring it along with me but that would be quite hard if it kept attacking me. I kept dodging its attacks while thinking.
Golem! Stop! Follow me! The golem stopped attacking and stood still. It presented a ruby to me. Hmm, you can only follow me if I carry this? Alright. I took the ruby and walked around; the golem neatly followed me. I checked the area but no golems seemed to react to this ruby...I picked up a random ruby and walked around with it and even though it was subtle, all the golems on the floor seemed to either follow it a bit or their movements seemed to be linked to the ruby I picked up. I put the ruby in my dimensional pocket and the fixation the golems had on it seemed to disappear. Now before I really could start my exploration, I should make sure that I don't get an army of golems listening to my orders. I only need 1 mining buddy and I'm not a fan of crowds.
Golem! Name Change! New name: Eric! I hoped that this would work.
Eric! Smash! Nothing happened. I wanted to give my mining buddy a name. Maybe Eric wasn't a Corund name.
Golem! Name Change! New name: Bunai! The golem didn't seem to react.
Bunai! Smash! Mining buddy smashed the ground.
Hahaha, I'm a genius! Let's go Bunai!
As I walked toward the next chamber. But Bunai stood still.
Ah right, Bunai! Follow! And Bunai followed. The next room wasn't really special; it had more golems, a more complex but still simple path to progress, and a lot of rubies and sapphires. I could easily dispatch these golems but I drew inspiration from a series I watched as a kid. It was about some guy who caught creatures in small balls and held battles with them. I also felt like a summoner fighting with my summoned creature. Maybe a tamer was more accurate because technically I tamed Bunai.
Bunai! Dash 30 degrees, right? Turn around! Smash! Another golem was destroyed by Bunai.
Bunai 3 Golems 0! We were the perfect team; I was the brains and Bunai was the brawns. He also looked super cool with his flaming hair. I cleared the first floor like that. I got various weird booking objects and treasures from this floor. No secret passage was safe! I'm going to completely clear out this place hahaha! There was also a magic scroll between it but judging from its magic it was earth element magic.
Heroic grade Golemancy? Meh, useless, I'll give this to Greg. The second floor was noticeably harder. There seemed to be crystals mixed between the corundum that obviously wasn't corundum. I let Bunai smash them but they turned into monsters that attacked us. They were quite small and fast so Bunai was too slow to deal with them. They were like crystal mimics. Nasty creatures. These things got one shot by me so they were a non-issue, I just wanted to know what would happen.
Bunai! Turn 40 degrees right! Dash! About face! Dash! Smash! The golems started to get more complicated attack patterns so my list of orders became longer and more numerous.
Bunai! Block! Counter! Smash! Turn 50 degrees right! Backstep! Block! Smash! If it wasn't for my Elgards eyes it would be hard to anticipate all the golem attacks and plan ahead. Bunai seemed to be struggling because the golems on the second floor had way higher specs than him.
Golem! Stop! The golems stopped for like 2 seconds before moving. But that was enough for Bunai to execute my orders and smash the two golems we were fighting. It didn't finish them off.
Golem! Burn 1000 degrees! The golems burst into flames but didn't melt. I knew hard materials had a high melting temperature but I didn't want to melt all the precious sapphires and rubies lying around here So I carefully ramped up the heat. Since the golems already took some damage from Bunai the heat made a lot of cracks appear on the golems and their corundum exterior shattered. I cut the cores so that they wouldn't reform.
Bunai! Burn 100 degrees! I lowered the temperature of Bunai’s hair because I saw what the heat did to the golems. Bunai took quite the beating. He was clearly the underdog here about to rise to the top! Jokes aside I doubt that he will be of any use on the third floor. This was quite the problem. I couldn't just abandon my mining buddy. Reinforcing him with frost magic would just drain its magic till he would collapse, and reinforcing him with ice might damage him more due to cold shock. I couldn't use the obvious option of earth magic. Fire would just make him crack unless I would use a specific color of fire. Deep orange flames had the property of reinforcements but they were also quite hot.
Maybe that isn't a good idea. Wind and water would probably do fuck-all. Hmm, but is that true? I could use water to soften the blows, Give Bunai a water mantle to protect him from other golem smashes, and make some water rotate around him to add power to his movements. That is what I'm gonna do! I made a water mantle for Bunai and all the golems in the vicinity started going crazy and beelined towards us because I used magic.
Perfect! Bunai! Hydro Pump! Bunai reacted but just used his regular smash. Hmm, that was to be expected.
Bunai! Laser Beam! Bunai stopped and started charging.
Wait seriously?! I dodged for cover because Bunai was half-facing me and I didn't know how powerful the laser beam would be. Boom! I heard lots of falling and crumbling rock sounds. I looked up and saw a scorched path going from Bunai toward the wall. In its path, there were two golems with their upper half melted off. The wall behind them was glowing yellow-orange from the heat and a lot of molten rock was dripping down.
Nooo! My sapphires! But seriously how cool! You can shoot lasers! Bunai seemed to be unresponsive. Its magical signature dropped in intensity by quite a large margin.
Hmm, that's to be expected that it would take up a lot of mana. There was only one golem left. I got out my sword and went to the golem. I forgot how slow they were because all the time I was being tuned into Bunai's speed. I tried to cut off the arm of the golem but it was quite hard, literally and figuratively. I jumped back and inspected the edge of my blade. It wasn't chipped yet but it probably would if I kept this up. Time to apply more speed to my swings. I let the golem walk up to me. I dodged sidewards to avoid its punch and I aimed for the shoulder joint of the golem. It got cleanly cut off but I felt my sword chip. I looked at my blade, it looked quite bad but I could still use it. Since the golem was already damaged by Bunai I covered the golem in water and froze it. The expanding ice made the cracks worse and the golem shattered. I got the core and looked at my sword again.
Note to self don't try to cut corundum with regular steel. I stashed my chipped sword and walked over to Bunai. It seemed he was still offline. His magic signature started to become stronger but he was still resting. I walked over to what normally would be a secret door but to my eyes, it was just a regular door. I dodged a cliché spike trap and hopped into a treasure room. There was just boring gold and silver stuff in here which I stashed away. But on the floor, I saw some text in Corund. Under it, there was a text in a language I didn't know. This didn't surprise me because I just got lucky that I could understand Corund so it could be that the next dungeon was in a language I couldn't understand. But even though I've never seen these symbols before, they seemed familiar to me. They also emanate power. The energy they give off is special, it is not leyline energy or magical energy it feels more… primal. It is the first time I feel this energy but I can't shake off the feeling that it is familiar. I make a mental note of these symbols. There was nothing really interesting in this room. I found another text in another language in the room. It was from another ancient language I knew because of Tero.
The Corund text on the floor said “Harvest” and the newcomer ancient language said “Rock”. How strange. Even though it seems nonsensical to me I made mental notes of them because if there's anything I learned from the entrance puzzle it is that the ancients love puzzles. This text that gives off this primal energy could become a problem though. I came out of the treasure room, almost fell into the spike trap I dodged earlier, and walked over toward Bunai. It seemed he was finished charging and was patrolling this area. His pathing was a bit glitchy though because a part of his pathing needed to go through the part his laser beam melted and the rubies in the floor were messed up in that spot. I inspected Bunai and he was quite battered. I decided to shatter him so he could reform without the big cracks. I did it carefully. I waited for 5 minutes and he reformed. I inspected him again and he didn't seem as good as new but it seemed good enough.
There was one more room left before the third floor and I needed a plan to tackle this. The next room had a boss and the golems on the next floor were way stronger than Bunai. I looked down and saw up to the 5th floor. I didn't know how deep this would go. The first two floors took quite a while because I was robbing the floors clean. Almost any sapphire or ruby crystals were collected by me. I would be rich beyond measure! That didn't excite me though because we needed funds for after our escape at least for the coming 500 years we wouldn't have to worry about money. I could see Raishin finding a way to blow through it all in a record time though. As I reach the entrance to the floor boss room, I realize I didn't think of any plan on how to deal with this boss.
I wonder if Bunai can one-shot the boss with a laser beam. I looked at Bunai. He seemed fearless. Or just apathetic, I couldn't tell. If the laser couldn't one-shot the boss Bunai would probably get destroyed.
I opened the sapphire gate and gazed inside the boss room. An enormous golem with a ruby chest was standing there. It was easily 10 times taller than me. I couldn't imagine this thing being fast though. But it was a floor boss! I should assume this thing is as fast as me. As usual, nothing reacted till I used magic. Which was good because this gate was really pretty. It was a nice dark blue but you could still see a bit through it. I took out my chipped blade.
I'm sorry buddy, but I got to sacrifice you for the greater good. I took some distance and dashed as fast as I could without using any augmentation. I tried to gain enough speed to help me bust down the hinges of this gate. I probably could only take 1 door but that was fine. I slashed at the hinges with all my might. They did break. Do you know what also broke? My sword. It shattered into a million pieces. Well, I didn't count them but you know what I mean. The door started to fall but I started to see a problem.
Bunai! About face! Dash! Stop! Bunai managed to dash away just in time to dodge a massive sapphire door falling on him.
Oof, I almost assassinated my mining buddy. Now I need to get this door in my pocket dimension. I opened it big enough for it to fit the gate.
Bunai! Push! Bunai started pushing but it went slow. I helped him out but I don't think I made it go any faster.
Ok, screw this, Bunai! About face! Laser Beam! I made Bunai face the boss and shoot his laser beam. At that moment I used water magic to lift the gate into my pocket dimension. I also made a big lens made of clear ice in front of Bunai. My goal was to focus the laser beam with the lens and hit the boss' core. Bunai shot his laser, which got focused on the boss' core, and… it went right through it. The laser beam was ruby red and it looked quite cool.
Hmm, this is surprisingly easy. The boss collapsed and crumbled. I made a mental note that focused lasers are overpowered. Bunai was offline again, but it seemed it had less magical energy than the last time. Hmm seems his next laser will deplete his mana. This is bad. if Raishin was here he could feed it mana. I'm only on the second floor but it seems my firepower has already dropped by a lot. It took Bunai 20 minutes to recharge. I was looking around but didn't see any treasure.
What is with this shitty system?! What boss does not drop any loot? I feel scammed! Imagine if I was tryharding this boss, had an epic battle, defeated it and it didn't drop anything. Unacceptable! I need to calm down, this isn't the last boss. I looked at the pile of molten rock that was the boss a while ago.
Meh, the boss turned into unusable junk, at least I have more than enough rubies and sapphire by now. I did see a canister hidden in the molten rock. I easily pulled it out and opened it. It seemed to have blueprints of some kind of contraption, it also had instructions on how to make a relic magic hammer and relic magic shield.
Whoa, this stuff is legit valuable! Magic weapons could compete with magic users these days. A regular person who can't use magic well but is adept at using a weapon could stand toe to toe or even beat a magic user with a magic weapon. It is called a magic weapon but its magic seems to be different from regular magic, it isn't super special but they still seem to work when magic is sealed. So, from the stories I heard from Ted, in big cities when entering big public buildings, everyone gets scanned for magic weapons and unless you have a license or some special circumstances you will be barred entry, or your weapon will be temporarily confiscated. Getting a magic weapon is hard because they are expensive and there aren't many blacksmiths that can craft them and those that can try to drive up the price as much as possible. But now I have access to this craft too! I looked quickly over the material list and my excitement died. It needed a crapload of exotic or rarer materials. However! This wasn't so bad; some alternatives needed stuff from rare or mythical beasts. This would be relatively doable for me since I stashed whatever I could find in my dimensional pocket. I don't know what kinds of junk I chucked in there from my early days though.
I continued looking over the materials and it seemed some key ingredients that were needed were some I found here in this dungeon. Is it possible that farming dungeons would be perfect to get materials for crafting relic magic weapons? Oh, right I forgot the relic part of the weapons. Well, this just means that they are hella strong and closely based on the original version which is, as you can guess, invented by the ancients. You would think over time that technology would improve them but it seems we only went backward. Some events in the past wiped records and almost all traces of history and historians call it the Great Eraser. Quite lacking in inspiration. It seems these dungeons are one of the few things that could let one gaze back toward those times. Since my sword shattered earlier on, I was very interested in creating a sword that wouldn’t shatter at the first random golem I meet.
Suddenly it felt like there was a lot of stuff I needed to do, get more familiar with leyline energy, work on these ancient languages, and raid dungeons to craft cool weapons. At least I won't be bored for a very long time. Some materials needed some specific processing but luckily, I know an alchemist so that won't be an issue. Besides that, we needed to escape this town and find out what happened to our homeland. I found out not too long ago how to break this slave seal but it seems this barrier around the town also needs to be addressed I will only break it when we are ready to escape for safety. Our masters seem pretty nice but who knows what they will do when we escape? I found some stuff Gregory could use and stashed it in my dimensional pocket. Bunai seemed to have finished recharging and started to patrol the area. Yet again with glitchy pathing because, we melted a part of the floor. I looked down at the third floor. All the golems down there seemed to be a great deal stronger than the second floor.
I looked at Bunai who was still patrolling the boss's room. Should I make Bunai the new floor boss and head down alone? He won't stand much of a chance versus those golems. I should also worry about myself since I will have to put in more effort to get out here. It is one of the issues I avoided thinking about and addressing. If I hit the lowest floor, how do I get out? Do I have to walk back to the entrance? I surely hope not! We kinda made a mess out of the second floor so it might be hard to go back through it. I decided to take Bunai with me and see how things go.
Bunai! Follow! Bunai stopped his patrol and followed me.
We went down the crystal stairs to the third floor. Arriving on the third floor I noticed that there wasn't any floor below the 6th floor.
Six floors hmm, A notable thing about this floor was that there weren't any secret rooms. There was a secret passage that seemed to bypass a huge spike pit with pointy crystals at the bottom. It had a lot of floating platforms that went back and forth. I assume the intention is to navigate with those over the huge spike pit. There seemed to be various primitive and cliche traps along the wall and on some platforms.
They want to kill whoever gets in here… So now I have a problem. I wanted to try this attraction park Uhm this deadly trap out for Ummu science. Yes, let's go with that one. But Bunai won't be able to follow me through all this. I don't think I can make him go through the secret passage alone, there were only 2 golems in this secret passage but they would own Bunai without breaking a sweat. Well, golems don't sweat but it would be an easy win for them. But going through the secret passage with Bunai would be dull for me. There were various assassin skills I saw Viridian perform in the past that could help in this situation but I didn't know any of them.
Carelessly trying these out could get me killed. That made me wonder how my shadow clone was doing. I tried to connect to it but it seemed I couldn't look outside the temple or connect to anything outside it. Telepathy seemed to be blocked. This isn't surprising to me though. Since I couldn't body swap with Bunai or trap him in my shadow and release him when I arrived, I decided to leave him here, do the parkour eh I mean go through the trap carefully, and then retrieve Bunai via the secret passage. There were 2 golems on this side, about 4 on platforms in the trap, and 2 on the other side.
Bunai! Turn 60 degrees right! Dash! Smash! Back step! Uhh, Counter?! Smash! Bunai dashed at the nearest golem as I covered him in water magic to enhance his power and not get one-shot by these golems. I made sure that I used just enough magic to only put the two closest golems on alert. Bunai landed his smash but the enemy golem seemed to not care since Bunai didn't even scratch the golem.
Oh shit! The golem smashed at Bunai but the back step command saved him there. Bunai prepared a counter but it failed since there was nothing to counter. He smashed again but he missed because there was some distance between him and the enemy golem. The second golem was approaching so things were about to get spicy. The second golem suddenly started dashing at Bunai.
Bunai! Turn 90 degrees right! Dash! About face! Dash! Smash! Bunai Dashed out of the golem's path with milliseconds to spare. The second golem crashed into the first golem, this seemed to damage both of the golems. Bunai turned around and smashed into golem 2 and broke his arm.
Shit, this isn't working, Bunai! Retreat! One armed Bunai retreated while I froze the golems together. Hmm, I wonder if this will work.
Golem! laser beam! The golems were frozen together facing each other so if they would use a laser beam, they would take each other out. They started to charge their lasers but canceled them when it was about to fire. Too bad but the heat melted them together. The ice also melted but I didn't need the ice anymore to stick them together. I am sure Ted would've been able to come up with a good pun in this situation but I couldn't come up with anything. As I suspected Bunai is kind of useless on this floor, I could try melting the golems together but I had the feeling I wouldn't get as lucky as I just did.
Golem! Burn 2000 degrees! The golems glowed red first before instantly igniting like the golems on the first and second floor; afterward, they ignited and started melting. I made a frost blade and cut the cores. I might have to switch to using fire magic soon if this keeps up. I had more than enough rubies and sapphires so, in theory, I could let loose. But since I haven't been in a combat situation for forever, I wanted to gauge how well I do in an environment where I can't just go ham with fire magic. So far, I was quite disappointed in myself, Bunai was carrying me quite hard in this dungeon. And now that he can't compete with the threats here all my options are severely limited, I underestimated this dungeon after all. I don't like having my options limited so I will use this dungeon as a learning moment. Now before I go and have fun, I mean investigate this trap I want to see how the other golems on the other side would react if I temporarily spiked in magical energy. Since I entered this dungeon, I was in my human disguise but since there was nothing in here besides golems I didn't need to stay in my disguise, I made all my 7 tails appear which were paired with a magic spike.
Feels good to have them out after a long time! In the past 5 years, I went from mastering 4 tails to mastering 7. Only need to unlock my last two tails and master them. I could do a lot of nasty stuff with this increase in firepower. Sadly, using too much magic would still make me nauseous and this was why Leyline energy was so interesting to me. I haven't used it a lot but while using it, it feels like it has a lot of potential and can form to my will almost as easily as magic, on top of that it overpowers magic so I could get really powerful If I master it. So, about the golems' reactions to the magic spike… I'm at a loss for words. Two of the 4 golems that were on the floating platforms are flying at me. Yes flying, they have some jetpack features. Isn't this cheating? After dealing with them I will check if Bunai has this function. I take a ruby out of my dimensional pocket and throw it to distract the golems. After the golems get temporarily distracted, I form ice spears and throw them at the golems. My aim wasn’t to destroy them but to freeze their jetpack function. I don't miss with these eyes so the jetpacks got successfully frozen and the golems fell into the pit. I looked over the edge and saw the golems running into the wall trying to fire their jetpacks and trying to get up here. I refroze their jetpacks with frost magic because melting the regular ice and coming at me when I was occupied would be quite unfortunate.
Bunai! Use uhh what is the Corund word for jetpack? Hmm, Bunai! Fly! Bunai reacted but nothing happened.
Bunai! Take to the sky! Bunai! Levitate! Bunai! Fall upwards! Nothing I tried made Bunai fly. What was this golem racism? Giving floor 3 golems jetpacks but not the floor 1 golems! The ancients were jerks. Anyway I spiked yet again in magic and the other two golems that were patrolling the floating platforms flew at me. I disabled them the same way that I disabled the other 2 down below in the pit. They can have a wall-running party down there. Now that there won't be any F3 (floor 3) golems bothering me I can start exploring.
Bunai! Standby! Bunai seemed to fold itself up and looked like a pile of corundum now. It seemed to slowly recover magic in this state. I hop on the first floating platform that floats by and start to map the most dangerous ehum most interesting route over these platforms. I wouldn't take any unnecessary risks but I wanted to make sure I know what this dungeon has in store for me going forward. After planning the perfect route, I started hopping from platform to platform. I turned off the filter in my eyes that detected the traps to make the experience as authentic as possible.
It is important that I can also react without the correct filter on! This is important for the future! I'm not seeking a thrill here or anything. I dodged a spike trap that appeared on a platform I wanted to hop to by grabbing the edge of the platform with one of my tails. At the same time, some rocks got shot at me which I deflected with one of my other tails. I swung from platform to platform like a monkey with the help of my tails. I'm sure the ancients didn't plan for someone swinging below the platforms since there were no traps on the bottom of these platforms! I grabbed another platform and it flipped around making me lose grip.
Ok, maybe I jinxed it! I blasted a lot of water downwards cancelling my downwards velocity and redirecting my trajectory sideways and up towards the next platform. I climbed on the platform.
Yikes, that gave me a scare! I looked back and I seemed to be about one-third in, Bunai was still on stand by and the 4 golems seemed to try to follow me while in the pit but got hindered by all the spikes, which gave me an idea, I can just create frost pillars to block the path of the golems, they don't seem to be able to deal well with obstructions that don't give off magical energy. I got up from my short rest. I wanted to try something but it would be quite risky. It was inspired by when we were swimming in the underwater cave 5 years ago. I could try using my tails as propellers and fly! But if this didn't work then the fall would be quite nasty.
I looked down and shuddered at the idea of me laying there impaled in the near future. I didn't have much space to pick up speed but that was not a big problem for me. I jumped and spun my tails as fast as I could physically manage. Using magic would be way more efficient but I didn't want to trigger the golems on the other side while I had a big possibility of crashing down. I seemed to do well until I messed up and my tails got tangled.
Oh shit! I created a big bubble on which I landed.
Phew, ok doing this with seven tails makes it quite easy to get them tangled. I manually detangled my tails and tried again with 4 tails. I used the other 3 tails to balance and steer in the air. I had a grand total of 10 seconds of being airborne before I landed on a platform. This shit is exhausting yo! And not worth it. Now that I knew this was an option it was time to test something else. I took some sandwiches and food out of my dimensional pocket.
The great thing about being an ice/frost user is that you can even keep your food refrigerated in the dimensional pocket! Although time flows differently there, I don't know how and what. I've been using it since forever but since I'm not sure about the rate at which time flows there I just refrigerate food that can spoil easily. Nobody wants to get stuck in a dungeon with mouldy food. I saw all the shadow liquid vodka I confiscated from Gregory in my early years and got a little homesick. Gregory was the only one who had access to anything that could fill his soul container and gain multiple lives. This vodka was way less effective than the actual potato but it was better than nothing. I cheered myself up and got ready to try out the next thing on my mind.