They gathered again, Mark and Ebony stood in front while Hector was sleeping peacefully and Scarlet allowed her muscles to relax. Her heart had been strengthened but her muscles hadn't, they sort of burned out from her enhancements and fierce attacks.
Mark followed up with a continuation of his fire arrow barrage for whatever it was worth. They already saw how ineffective Ebony's magic and attacks were. He didn't want to give the Cardinal Golem a chance to recover if it wasn't dead from a direct hit of Hector's insanely powerful punch.
The edge of his domain was where the walls were, flaming chains were employed to seal the Cardinal Golem again. He had already consumed way more fire mana in his spear to keep his domain up already but that wasn't an issue yet, it was his own mana pool that was halved from all manipulation that was an issue if the Cardinal Golem wasn't dead. It was no surprise with the Cardinal Golem's level being higher than theirs but it was just its resistance and durability that was troublesome.
They left the two heavy hitters to Mallory to care for. Within his domain, Mark could tell that he wasn't doing much damage to the Cardinal Golem without Scarlet being the main attacker and him being the support to strengthen her fire magic.
He looked towards Ebony for a second before dashing into close combat. Ebony's shield was rendered useless with the Cardinal Golem's topaz magic, although he believed Ebony should be able to hold the Cardinal Golem down in his enhanced state, Ebony probably couldn't harm the Cardinal Golem. He wouldn't be able to give support like he did to Scarlet since Ebony didn't use fire magic.
Mark probably had slightly higher Strength than Scarlet had earlier anyway, he was just slower and he didn't have the technical skill to keep up with her without getting in her way while she was tearing it apart.
'Tch.' Mark's first charge into the midst of flames he set was ramming his spear into something really hard. It hit its shield, the Cardinal Golem was trying to disperse the flaming chains at the same time, Mark's charge allowed it to free itself.
He swept aside the sword swing and slapped the butt of his spear into the Cardinal Golem's shield. Using the runes on his equipment for a burst in speed from the wind blast. Clearly noticing the state of the Cardinal Golem's body after taking Hector's punch without its shield. It looked even more broken than after Scarlet's barrage, even its new pair of sword and shield were not spared from damage.
The Cardinal Golem's speed and strength were lower than he imagined as Mark managed to force it into a defensive position as well. He was surprised since his passive enhancement was not all that strong, the raising of temperature in the room was also dialled down extremely low since he was not alone. He had to think about his allies' state.
❅❅❅
Ebony joined Mark in breaking the Cardinal Golem since he could keep up with Mark without getting in his way unlike with Scarlet.
Perhaps it was due to the 'injury' it had, Sonic Overlay was a lot more effective. The Cardinal Golem's body shattered into hundreds and thousands of pieces in less than a minute of their attacks.
Or so Mark assumed.
He felt his spear slip through the Cardinal Golem and didn't expect it to shed a layer of its 'skin' again, shifting its upper body like how warriors dodge a blow by a hair's breadth. Letting its equipment go to grab Mark's spear with one hand and pulling him into an elbow thrust that most would say it was well executed.
Mark instinctively activated his armour wind rune to blast himself back to reduce impact but he was a little too slow to reduce it by any noticeable amount.
"GAH!"
Ebony had to dodge the spear thrust that the Cardinal Golem clearly aimed to push him away. His shield was too slow and bulky to help Mark. They could physically match higher level monsters and people with multiple enhancement magic or compressed enhancement magic that only Ebony was using but with a low Intelligence, they weren't able to match them magically. It could be seen that although his shield's weren't breaking that easily, they were sent flying more often than not.
It wasn't about to let go of the spear that Mark released to escape, even when it was heating up all of a sudden but, it jerked along with the spear that was forcefully dragging itself towards Mark. The Cardinal Golem's instinct was to let go of the spear the moment Mark's own hand was back in contact with his spear and it was the right move as he wasn't able to do what he wanted.
"Urgg. That hurt." Mark grunted in pain and complained.
Dozens of spears popped up and the Cardinal Golem twisted its body awkwardly to avoid them. A few of them scraped noisily against its body and left thin cuts as they burned hot. It didn't even wriggle before it snapped its neck up to see another huge runic circle in the air above, the spears around also moved and fenced it in while flaming chains sprouted and wrapped it up tightly.
No, they weren't chains this time. They were solid spears that twisted and wrapped its body.
Ebony sensed something off with the Cardinal Golem's body or rather, the mana in its body. After the second shedding, the Cardinal Golem was slightly smaller and brighter. He was also perceptive enough to observe and memorise its vein patterns since there was plenty of downtime. He was pretty sure the patterns changed.
The next moment, he shielded himself from the orange fragments that burst all over the place when the Cardinal Golem flexed and broke itself free. The rampant ice mana around it told Ebony that it used its magic to weaken the spears internally before breaking free.
"Mark, your armour!" Mallory called out.
They didn't notice that his armour was getting eaten into by the same glow from the Cardinal Golem, probably when he came into contact with the elbow strike.
Icicle was already over the Cardinal Golem's head as Mark swiftly tore out his armour, at least it seemed like that but Ebony's senses told him Mark only tore a layer off and he was still wearing something.
He was glad for teammates that were smart and strong. The Cardinal Golem's lower body was surrounded by Mallory's mana that Ebony already familiarised with long ago. Scarlet also got up at some point in time, recovering strength in her body faster than she herself imagined possible. She watched as Mark was hit and was already prepared to get back in battle before anything goes wrong. There wasn't much time for her to enhance herself much but she didn't care and just stabbed out at the Cardinal Golem's neck when she saw the opportunity.
It didn't break its feet free to evade or bring its arms up to defend itself. Both swordsmen's blades stopped short as if they rammed into a solid wall and impact ran through their arms once again.
Scarlet winced from unexpected pain, her Constitution wasn't buffed up high enough and her body was already in a pretty beat-up condition. Somehow, the Cardinal Golem noticed that even with her mask blocking her expression and it was questionable whether it was able to understand facial expressions either.
The locks around its lower body only slowed it down a little, it reached its palms forward attempting to touch the fiery swordswoman that caused it great harm. It knew the mask was a problem and went for the less covered neck instead.
Ebony tried his best not to panic but whether it was his body, shield or a smaller scale, none of them was going to reach in time. He subconsciously blasted a stream of mana towards the entrance as he tried his best to protect Scarlet with every drop of mental and physical strength he had.
❅❅❅
"They really weren't slacking off huh?" Hardock watched and commented to the other two that shared a body with him.
"Wait." Pettock suddenly shushed them.
"...?" Confusion spread amongst them.
"Don't move, can't you feel it?" Pettock continued to confuse them.
"Feel what?" Hardock hated when people beat around the bush.
"Someone's standing right beside us!" Pettock warned the two who acted as if they were alone in this corridor.
"I…I don't sense anyone." Tuffock said.
"Me neither, no movement, no mana signature." Hardock agreed.
Both of them knew Pettock wasn't one to joke around though and trusted his words though.
"...Ha. Nobles indeed. Royals… I guess we better not interfere foolishly for now." Pettock murmured. The other two knew he was annoyed.
"Th..the golem seems pretty to..tough." Tuffock was watching the battle more closely.
"They're beating it up anyway, seems like they just have to avoid touching it directly. They would have more trouble if it could cast projectiles or have other range capabillites with that weird topaz magic. I wonder where Ordina got its topaz magic from." Hardock commented.
"Probably somewhere underground, there shouldn't be any topaz mana anywhere close. Chances are, there's a topaz deposit or even creatures in the vicinity underground." Pettock answered.
They remembered the Earthen-topaz golems that were in the shortcut from the start so there was a high chance that a dungeon that was absorbing ambient mana from a huge radius with itself at the centre found a topaz deposit somewhere.
"El! That punch is even more ridiculous than it used to be." Hardock cursed.
"He..hey. Tha…that's a domain mage!" Tuffock was shocked.
"Just a clever trick. His control over and in it is limited compared to a true domain mage. Well, it is pretty impressive all the same. It would be good if he doesn't have deep ties to their party."
The stone mage slowly stood up as the guardian seemed to be defeated soon as they wanted to leave already. Pettock was sweating internally when a gaze landed on them the moment they moved. Fortunately, their head didn't fly off as they didn't try taking another step forward.
The battle was taking some time, they couldn't see the battle clearly from the corridor but the guardian appeared to have gotten back into the battle time after time of being hammered into the wall hard enough for them to feel the ground shake.
They saw the domain mage get elbowed across the room and then the guardian floating over. Ebony and Scarlet attacked it at the same time only for the guardian to stand there and ignore their attacks.
"Help me. I'll owe you one." Ebony's irritatingly dead voice travelled into their ears and reverberated softly in the corridor.
"HAHA!" Hardock laughed.
Pettock smirked at the wonderful timing and chance.
Tuffock had mixed feelings but was just a tiny bit happy that Ebony relied on them.
❅❅❅
The Cardinal Golem's palms were just about to touch Scarlet's neck when it felt something pierced into its wrist. Not even moments later, the same thing rammed into its elbow, chest and head.
Ebony, who chased after the Cardinal Golem's back, saw its body violently flung to the side, spinning clockwise from its head. It was too obvious to him that a few thin needles that were definitely heavier than they looked were moving at extremely high speeds accurately hitting the Cardinal Golem. Due to how thin they were, he might not have noticed them if they were just lying around and didn't move at such speeds that tore apart the thick ambient mana in the room.
There was no follow up. Not from the Cardinal Golem or the stone mage.
'Ting' 'You have killed [Frost-Topaz Cardinal Golem Lvl 210]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Enemy 110 levels or more above your own, insufficient potential experience accumulated.'
Although there was no mention of 'partial' Natural Potential, there was no way to give it a numerical value to begin with. It was just believed that everyone got a different value or amount for each skill they had. It was also believed killing one with assistance would decrease it but no one knew if that was true. It was simply a theory since the experience gained was split and the experience was supposed to be converted to Natural Potential.
Ebony didn't think that was true because if it was split then they wouldn't have sufficient 'potential experience' accumulated. Hector explained that it was believed 'potential experience' worked differently as well but theories and discussions were pointless when they didn't have any reliable data to work with. No one figured out any experiments that gave good results since skill level increases after each increase in Natural Potential were different from person to person and skill to skill. There was little to no database to draw conclusions from.
❅❅❅
Scarlet didn't have any techniques to relax her muscles effectively with her blood magic and her body couldn't react in time. She even resorted to chugging a little more of Ebony's blood to get back up and into the fight again.
She saw the speeding shadow stab into the Cardinal Golem after the failed attack. Familiar grey needles that once hammered into her face and sent her neck snapping back.
They weren't any wind in the room or the corridor leading to the room so his scent never reached Scarlet. Although she did gain her own mana perception type skill in her time in the blood realm, her range and sensitivity with mana wasn't as wide as Ebony's hence, she didn't notice his presence till now.
She didn't react as violently as she thought she would and it wasn't just because her body still wasn't fully in her control. Hearing slow footsteps coming over wasn't causing her heart rate to rise in anger either.
An unfamiliar face showed up yet, she would recognise Tuffock straight away. He had the same overall look with the dirty grey robes and hair. His facial features were different, sharper nose, wider jaw and untidy stubbles. Practically a different person.
'Tuffock' was standing straight and not hiding or avoiding eye contact.
She realised that the stone mage standing before them was not Tuffock.
'...I'm not angry?' Scarlet was more surprised by the fact that she felt completely unbothered by the stone mage's presence than she was surprised by the fact that he was here or that he 'helped' her. More than 'not angry', it was like she didn't even care that the person who almost killed her was standing right in front of her. That was unimaginable from her understanding of herself.
"Been a while." The stone mage greeted. Facing Scarlet, she was probably the only one he was addressing.
"Mmm." Scarlet replied without much thought.
"No thanks?" The haughty tone she remembered was back. Ebony called him Tuffock 2 if she was not wrong.
Her arm moved up in response. The stone mage walked close enough that Ignite was about to touch his neck. His robes caught on fire despite not conjuring any more fire mana to heat them up, it was just the residual heat that hasn't cooled down.
She wasn't able to see how he put out the flames without moving but she did sense that the fire mana just couldn't burn the robe all of a sudden before dying out. He probably conjured or covered his robe in a little bit of stone mana.
Her body moved by reflex, she had thought she couldn't move her arm yet.
"Feisty as always but whatever, it was a good deal and didn't even require much effort." The confident stone mage smiled.
"Te…tell him I..I said hi…" Some familiarity was back when the stone mage glanced at the unconscious Hector.
"Well then, don't forget what you said." The stone mage walked away from the blade at his neck and walked towards the black portal that appeared at the end of the room.
"Mmm." Ebony responded.
There was no reply since the stone mage just left immediately after.
Scarlet stared at Ebony who returned her stare. She didn't know if it was his look, her skill or even her imagination but she was practically flooded with emotions of worry and anxiousness and her slowly calming heart started getting busy again.
She understood something new.
The warmth of rage couldn't be compared to the pleasure the warmth of affection gave.