The left golem retaliated with terrifying speed for something its size. Its massive arm swept down like a collapsing tower. Quinn barely rolled aside as the fist pulverized the floor where he had stood, sending a spiderweb of cracks racing outward. Stone chips peppered his armor. He sprang up immediately, gauntlets still humming with restrained power.
"Come on!" he roared.
He closed the distance again, ducking under a follow-up swing that whistled overhead. Planting his feet, Quinn unleashed a rapid barrage, three heavy punches into the golem's lower torso. Each impact landed with a deep, thunderous boom. The dark alloy gauntlets drove deep craters into the ancient rock, shattering outer layers and exposing glowing earthen veins beneath. The titan staggered back a full step, its enormous foot gouging a trench behind it.
Quinn didn't let up. He leaped onto the golem's thick thigh, using the jagged stone surface as handholds, and climbed higher. From there, he delivered a devastating upward hook into the construct's ribs. Then another. And another. Each punch sent visible shockwaves through the giant's body. Chunks of rock exploded outward, raining down across the chamber.
But the fallen debris didn't stay fallen.
Even as Quinn landed back on the ground, the shattered stones trembled, levitated, and began flowing back toward the wounds like living clay. The cracks knitted themselves together with slow, grinding sounds. The golem straightened, green eyes blazing with renewed fury.
Quinn's eyes narrowed. "They're not just healing… something's pulling it all back together."
He glanced toward Camilla, who was still dancing around the right golem in a whirlwind of fire and manic laughter. "Camilla! We're going for the core! That's what's controlling the reattachment. If you understand that then stop your distasteful act!"
Camilla gave no sign she had heard him. She was too deep in her frenzy, leaping, spinning, slamming her Infernal War Greaves into the right golem's leg with explosive kicks that left molten orange imprints. Yet something in her feral mind registered the words. Her wild grin sharpened with new purpose.
"A core~" she sang under her breath, almost playfully. "Let's find the pretty glowing heart!"
She exploded forward with fresh savagery.
Quinn focused on his own opponent. He pushed deeper into his own power. A faint aura flickered around his plated gauntlets as he channeled roughly fifty percent of his Aura energy into them. The power nodes at the rear of the gauntlets glowed brighter, the low hum rising into a fierce vibration. The air around his fists seemed to distort with compressed force.
He charged.
The left golem met him with a crushing overhead smash. Quinn sidestepped at the last moment and countered with a devastating right hook. The aura-enhanced gauntlet struck the golem's torso dead center. The impact was monstrous. A crater the size of a dinner table formed instantly, rock exploding outward in a violent spray. Quinn followed with a left cross, then an uppercut, each punch driving deeper, carving massive dents and sending hairline fractures racing across the giant's barrel chest.
He circled rapidly, never staying still. A heavy backfist to the spine. A spinning elbow to the hip. A brutal double-fisted hammer blow to the knee that nearly toppled the titan. Every strike left deep, smoking craters. He was searching, probing torso, back, limbs for the telltale brighter glow or denser concentration of earthen energy that would reveal the core.
Across the chamber, Camilla had fully embraced the hunt.
Her Infernal War Greaves grew hotter with every passing second. The orange cores blazed like miniature suns. Molten embers swirled violently around the jagged wing-like plates. The temperature radiating from her boots became so intense that each step melted the polished stone floor beneath her, leaving glowing red footprints and small puddles of liquefied rock. Thin trails of smoke rose continuously.
She launched herself at the right golem with gleeful abandon. A flaming leap carried her high. She came down boots-first onto its shoulder, stomping with both greaves. The molten claws sank deep. Stone melted and bubbled around the impact point. She rode the collapsing shoulder down, then sprang off, flipping gracefully before driving a spinning kick into the golem's lower back. Another molten crater formed. Molten slag dripped from the wound.
"Yes! Yes!" she cheered, voice bright and unhinged. "Where are you hiding, little core?"
She danced between the giant's legs, stomping holes into its thighs and calves. Each kick melted through layers of rock, exposing glowing inner veins. When the golem tried to stomp her, she cartwheeled away, leaving a trail of melted stone in her wake. The heat from her greaves was so intense it warped the air around her.
Bulk kept them both alive from the rear.
His massive projectile launcher thumped rhythmically, controlled, measured shots. Each heavy bolt slammed into joints or previous wounds, staggering the golems and creating openings. He had already burned through the first set of three canisters. Sweat streamed down his face. His crude prosthetic screamed with every shift in weight, the black stitches pulling painfully, but he refused to falter.
"Reloading!" he shouted.
He dropped the empty canisters with a clatter, yanked three fresh ones from the support box, and slammed them home. The weapon whined back to life. Bulk braced again and resumed firing, his bolts providing the crucial rhythm that kept the titans off-balance.
The team was winning the war of attrition but only barely. They were hurting the golems badly. Deep craters pockmarked their colossal bodies. Molten holes smoked where Camilla had struck. Quinn's aura-enhanced punches had shattered entire sections of stone. Yet the regeneration, while slower now, refused to stop completely. The floor beneath them pulsed with ancient power, feeding the constructs through hidden veins.
Then the golems adapted.
Sensing the shift in tactics, both titans grew more aggressive. Their movements quickened. Green energy flared violently in their eye sockets. The right golem roared and brought both massive fists down in a hammer blow that cratered the floor hard enough to send a visible shockwave rolling outward. Camilla barely escaped, the force knocking her sideways.
The left golem lunged forward with surprising speed for its bulk. Its tree-trunk arm swept in a wide arc, forcing Quinn to leap backward desperately. The back of the fist still clipped him, launching him across the chamber. He crashed and rolled, armor cracking further.
The ground began to quake more violently. Each step of the twenty-foot guardians now registered like minor earthquakes. BOOM… BOOM… BOOM. The polished stone floor trembled continuously. Dust and small debris rained from the impossibly high ceiling.
One of the golems grabbed a broken chunk of its own body, the size of a boulder and hurled it like a cannonball. The projectile smashed into the upper wall with devastating force. Several mounted floodlights exploded in showers of sparks and shattered glass. The chamber's clinical white illumination flickered, some sections plunging into harsher shadows as more lights were destroyed by flying debris.
Another chunk flew. Then another. The air filled with deadly shrapnel as the golems began ripping pieces from themselves and their surroundings to use as weapons, only for them to slowly reattached what they sacrificed.
Quinn pushed himself up, breathing hard, aura still flickering around his gauntlets. "They're getting desperate!"
Camilla laughed wildly as she barely dodged a stomping foot that melted the floor where it landed. "Good! This is finally playing seriously!"
Bulk fired another heavy bolt, but the right golem batted it aside mid-flight with a massive forearm. The construct was learning. Its green eyes locked onto the support gunner with clear malice.
The team was starting to feel overwhelmed. Their speed and coordination still gave them the edge, but the sheer raw power and resilience of the two colossal, was pushing the three warriors further. The golems pressed forward relentlessly, each step shaking the ground, each swing threatening to end the fight in a single blow.
Quinn, Camilla, and Bulk found themselves slowly being forced into a more defensive posture, dodging and weaving between the giants' increasingly furious assaults while still searching for the elusive cores. The once-sterile chamber had transformed into a war zone of shattered stone, molten floors, flickering lights, and echoing roars.
Agatha reclined in the high-backed command throne, one leg crossed elegantly over the other, her chin resting on her knuckles. The control room bathed her in shifting blue and white light from the wall of monitors. Every screen displayed a different angle of the unfolding carnage on the fourth floor. She watched with the keen, predatory interest of someone who had seen a thousand battles and grown bored with most of them.
On the central display, the left golem retaliated with terrifying speed. Its massive arm swept down like a collapsing tower. Quinn barely rolled aside as the fist pulverized the floor, sending spiderwebs of cracks racing outward. He sprang up immediately, gauntlets humming.
Agatha's lips curved into a slow, appreciative smirk.
"Not bad," she murmured, eyes gleaming. "Quite entertaining… for a moment."
She tilted her head, studying the rhythm of their movements. Quinn's disciplined fury. Camilla's chaotic, almost artistic savagery. Bulk's steady, grinding support from the rear. She filed each detail away, already mapping the most efficient sequence in which she would discard them once the time came. Who would break first. Who would beg. Who would force her to exert herself.
"Don't just dull my spirit," she whispered to the screens, voice laced with mock affection. "It'll spoil my mood."
She also watched through the mirror she wield. The mirror showing the same battlefield from impossible angles the cameras could never capture any portraits their power levels. Agatha flicked her fingers, and the mirror's surface rippled like water before settling again.
"The Eclipse-Walkers are still as fishy as ever," she continued, almost conversationally. "Greedy bastards with ears on every wall, flocking here the moment news hits them. Are they still chasing that same tired objective?"
A soft chime sounded.
"Aid?" she called.
"Yes?" The AI's calm, genderless voice filled the room.
She paused, tapping a long nail against her lower lip. "Can you… do the thing where I can talk to Seth?"
"Certainly. One moment while I establish a secure connection."
The pause stretched only a few seconds. Then a faint click, followed by the low ambient hum of machinery on the other end.
"…Uh?" Seth's voice came through, slightly distracted.
"Seth, can you hear me?" Agatha asked sweetly.
"Yes. What do you want?"
She brushed off his curt tone with a soft laugh and leaned closer to the monitors. On screen, Camilla had just launched herself at the right golem, her Infernal War Greaves blazing like twin suns as she drove molten kicks into its stone hide.
"Are you seeing this?" Agatha asked, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.
A heavy silence.
"What…?" Seth asked.
"Are you witnessing what's going on right now? The invaders are putting on quite a show!"
Seth's response was dry as bone. "Really, Are you seriously mocking me right now?"
Agatha's smirk widened into a grin. "What do you mean by that?"
"You're making fun of my disability." Seth said.
"That's false," she replied, feigning innocence. "I never said anything like that." Agatha replied.
"You didn't put it into words. You said it indirectly." His voice carried that familiar edge of irritation she found endlessly amusing.
Agatha let out a bright, girlish giggle that echoed through the control room. "Come on, don't be like that. Where's your sense of humor?"
"That's outrageous. You're clearly messing with me." Seth said.
"It just slipped out," she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm. "I didn't have time to think my words through."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes. And it was very funny right after, don't you think? Lighten up, brat." Agatha replied.
"Yeah, it was. Now you've just rubbed salt in it." Seth said.
Agatha laughed again, softer this time, and glanced back at the monitors. Quinn had just unleashed a devastating aura-enhanced barrage, carving deep craters into the left golem's torso. The construct staggered, but the shattered stone was already flowing back into place.
"You are aware of what's happening, right?" she asked.
At the workshop, Seth sat at the control panels hunched over a wide, illuminated drafting table. His metallic blindfold sleek, matte black with faint glowing runes along the edges, covered his ruined eyes completely. Blue holographic schematics of a colossal armor floated above the table, rotating slowly as he manipulated it with precise gestures of his gloved hands.
"I'm fully aware," he answered flatly. "I just don't have time to sit through every dramatic play-by-play."
"They're on the fourth floor now," Agatha informed him anyway.
"I know that."
"I never thought anyone would get past the third floor," she continued, genuinely impressed. "They must be very interesting. And powerful."
"Ohhh," Seth replied, heavy sarcasm dripping from the single syllable.
"…And abnormal. Like you."
"How lovely. You're flooding with jokes today, Agatha."
"That one was just casual. It's no news to you."
Seth exhaled through his nose. "Why did you call? To make fun of me?"
Agatha's gaze returned to the monitors. Bulk had just reloaded his massive launcher with a metallic clang, sweat pouring down his face as he kept the golems off-balance with precise, thunderous shots.
"What are you doing right now?" she asked, changing tack.
"In the workshop. Crafting metals. Refining the new frame." Seth's fingers danced through the air, adjusting a section of the holographic armor's shoulder plating. "Are the intruders going to be troublesome? Doesn't sound like something you can't handle."
Agatha leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms luxuriously. "They've got wit. Skill. Fire. I'm sure our eventual encounter will be quite lively."
She watched Camilla cartwheel between the golem's legs, molten footprints burning into the polished stone floor. The air around the woman visibly warped from the heat. Quinn moved like a seasoned tactician, probing for weaknesses even as the chamber shook with every colossal step. Bulk refused to falter despite the obvious pain radiating from his crude prosthetic.
A delicious little shiver ran down Agatha's spine.
She spoke again, voice lower, almost intimate. "I'll contact you later after I'm done taking care of them."
"Okay," Seth replied. "Go do what you do best. Just keep it under control."
"Alright, I heard you."
The connection cut with a soft click. Agatha let the silence settle for a moment before releasing a long, theatrical sigh. She stretched her arms high above her head, back arching like a cat waking from a nap.
"What a night…"
Her eyes lingered on the screens a few seconds longer. The golems had begun adapting, ripping chunks from their own bodies and the chamber walls to hurl as projectiles. Lights exploded in showers of sparks. The once-sterile white chamber had become a war zone of dust, molten stone, and roaring fury.
Agatha finally stood, smoothing her dress with both hands. She glanced down at the elegant but now slightly inappropriate attire and clicked her tongue.
"Guess I'll have to change again."
She walked toward the exit with graceful, unhurried steps. As she passed the console, she dismissed the mirror with a casual wave. It folded into glittering motes of light and vanished into her personal dimension storage.
At the door, she paused, looking back at the monitors one last time. Quinn, Camilla, and Bulk were still fighting brilliantly. Still breathing. Still full of potential.
A gracious smile touched her lips.
"And give our guests a proper welcome."
She exited the control room, the heavy doors sliding shut behind her with a decisive hiss.