"The Golems guarding the stairs were taken out."
Nysa immediately adopted a fighting posture, Mana coursing through her limbs. "The Henosis Seekers? How come we haven't sensed them?"
Jonam looked around the room, frantically searching for something. Realization slowly crept onto his face when his gaze landed on the Automatons.
"We've been fooled. The melody is a sound-based hypnotic spell. It was fine-tuned to detract our mystical senses so we wouldn't feel them creeping on us."
Chills crawled down Nysa's spine. It went beyond the dread of falling right into a trap. She felt a gaze staring at them from somewhere outside their reach, toying with them amidst a laugh. "I have a bad feeling. What should we do—"
The wall next to the entrance suddenly collapsed, revealing a blurry figure that shot through the debris.
It was a dark-skinned, black-haired woman in her early twenties, wearing light armor over clerical garb. The Luminous Spear, symbol of the Temple of Stars, was carved on her breastplate.
A man with similar clothing closely followed her, and although his head was cloaked, Nysa could see a golden hue glimmering from his hidden gaze, assessing them like a predator with perception magecraft.
There were no words uttered. Both sides knew what was going to happen and acted accordingly.
Jonam was the first to react. He tapped his Golem's back, pouring Mana over its stone surface. "Sixty percent output. Launch."
The mystical mark previously inscribed on the Golem's head spread like a spider's web, covering its blank face.
It moved in the blink of an eye, instantly reaching the black-haired woman's position with a speed no stone-based creation should have been able to display.
Their physical clash resounded in a booming shockwave, but Nysa was too focused on the other magus to follow their battle.
Her shadow had already snuck from under her feet when the enemies appeared, and it caught the golden-eyed man mid-run, fusing with his shadow and paralyzing him.
She then revealed three thick, blackish needles between her fingers and threw them toward the magus' head while he couldn't move.
The needles strangely phased through his forehead and dug into the crumbled wall behind him.
"What?" Nysa blurted out.
The man's silhouette dissipated like a mirage shortly afterward, signaling that it was an illusion.
He emerged from the smoke generated by the destroyed entrance, four wisps of differently colored lights dancing atop his palm. They grew bright enough to invest Nysa's sight, scorching her retinas and temporarily blinding her.
The pain made her stagger, and that was enough for the enemy magus to switch his stance.
He jumped forward, drawing a double-edged shortsword as he headed for Nysa's position.
Like that's enough to put me down! Nysa bit her lip, pushing through the pain while sharing her senses with her shadow, which allowed her to follow the golden-eyed man's movements.
She took out a hidden leaf-shaped dagger in response, adopting a defensive posture.
Their blades collided with each other, and while the man had a bigger reach, Nysa's physical aptitudes were greater at night.
She forced him out of balance with sheer brute force, then twirled another needle with her free hand, ready to stab him at point-blank range.
At that moment, the room's sole window shattered, and two new figures broke through the shards of glass—a large, brown-bearded man and a younger one with bright, fiery hair.
They also wore the odd combination of clerical outfits and light armor, designating their affiliation as the Temple of Stars.
That slight instant of inattention slowed Nysa's movements, and her opponent slid away from her attack with barely a scratch on his side.
He threw his shortsword at her while in mid-air, but her shadow morphed into an elongated dark blade, parrying it with ease.
The golden-eyed man's expression shifted when he saw her spell. "Court of Shadows...?"
"No matter, we shall arrest them for the glory of our Kingdom. Prepare yourselves, criminals!" The large bearded man declared from his position, gathering Mana in his feet and legs as he prepared to lunge forward.
However, instead of moving, he abruptly collapsed on the floor, followed by his red-haired ally. Their limbs trembled, and their eyes turned bloodshot as if they had been plunged into an agonizing nightmare in mere instants.
"Aeson! Theras!" The golden-eyed man cried before he caught his head, suddenly plagued by an intense headache. "What the—"
Foam escaped the edges of his mouth, and he fell on the ground in turn, his body randomly spasming.
"They talk too much. I've had all the time in the world to prepare my spell." Jonam spread his arms toward each side of the room, covered in translucent strands of blue Mana. "I'm overloading their minds with massive amounts of information. It's enough to knock them out for a few seconds, but we must retreat. We're outnumbered."
Behind him, the battle between the marked Golem and the black-haired woman was still going strong.
"They might have allies standing-by outside, ready for an ambush," Nysa said. "Can't you make more Golems?"
"Crafting Golems is a time-consuming endeavor. At this level of output and with the lack of high-quality materials available, I'm afraid one is my limit. Any more, and they'll be mannequin-shaped fodder."
"PRAISE THE MOTHER!" A cry echoed from the window's location, where the bearded, large man had passed out.
Golden light coated his body, and his already prominent muscles bulged. He woke up from Jonam's stroke-induced slumber with unfocused eyes, illuminating the entire room like a human-shaped sun.
Jonam tsked, showing displeasure for the first time. "A Sun Devotee. Mental attacks won't work against a practitioner of the Dawn Sorceries."
"PRAISE THE DAWN!" The Sun Devotee bellowed, this time pouncing toward them at neck-breaking speed.
Nysa kicked up the table to use it as cover, but the bearded man punched through it like butter. Splinters and wooden debris flew everywhere, but the light-emitting magus didn't care.
He charged again, destroying the ground and collapsing the entire floor with a powerful stomp.
The Automatons tumbled downward alongside the magi, breaking their mechanisms and corrupting their melody as soon as they impacted the hard surface.
"Enhancement magecraft shouldn't allow for this sort of brute strength!" Nysa broke her fall with her Mana-enhanced legs. "Is this really an Occultist?"
Jonam landed next to her, his glimmering blue gaze directed at the Sun Devotee.
The Temple of Stars' magus glared back at them from the middle of a small crater, his body shining as brightly as a golden star.
Meanwhile, the cacophonous rain of rocks, ornaments, and mechanical contraptions all around them was loud enough to resound outside the building.
"This must be Fanatismos, a spell unique to the Dawn Sorceries," Jonam noted. "That burst of strength earlier was momentary. If I'm right, there's probably a backlash of similar potency after using it. That's why he isn't pressing the attack. He can't move."
"Shadow!" At Nysa's command, her shadow moved across the cracked walls, heading for the bearded magus.
At the same time, Jonam took conscious control of his Golem, forcing it to pounce at the target while it was still immobile.
The black-haired woman emerged from the rubble at the last moment.
She bounced off the columns and gained a sudden burst of speed, enough to intercept the Golem mid-air with a calculated elbow strike.
She rammed it against the advancing shadow, raising another dust cloud and saving her ally.
"Thanks for the help there, Semele. I thought I was done for," the bearded man said.
"No worries, Aeson. They're too crafty." The black-haired woman dug inside the Golem's chest with her foot, destroying it. "We can't drop our guards."
Jonam smiled, tracing a particular symbol with his fingers. It was similar to the one he had carved onto his Golemn, but this time, he drew it with thin filaments of Mana in the air.
"Such cautiousness." He ended his gesture with a clasped fist. "Too bad you can't prepare for what you can't predict."
Mana overflowed from the mark engraved on the demolished Golem. It merged into a single point, compressed enough to fissure the ground with its weight.
Aeson and Semele realized what it meant as soon as it formed, but unfortunately for them, it was an instant too late.
"Farewell." Jonam released his fist, and the compressed bundle of Mana exploded.