The chamber had become a symphony of destruction. Dust hung thick in the air, lit by stuttering white floodlights and the hellish orange glow of Camilla's molten footprints. The polished stone floor was a ruined battlefield, cracked, cratered, and pocked with glowing puddles of liquefied rock. Every thunderous step of the twenty-foot golems sent fresh tremors rolling outward, BOOM… BOOM… BOOM, like the heartbeat of an awakening mountain.
Quinn moved like a storm given human form.
He weaved through the left golem's onslaught with disciplined precision, never wasting a single motion. A colossal fist hammered down; he pivoted sharply, the wind of the strike ripping at his armor. Before the golem could recover, Quinn exploded forward. His aura-coated gauntlet punched straight through the titan's lower abdomen with a deafening crack. The force drove clean through layers of ancient stone, leaving a ragged hole wide enough to see the flickering green veins on the opposite side. Rock dust and glowing fragments sprayed outward.
"Come on!" he growled, voice raw with exertion.
He didn't retreat. Instead, he pressed the attack, ducking under a sweeping backhand and driving another heavy punch into the golem's hip. The impact shattered outer plating and exposed pulsing earthen channels beneath. Quinn followed with a brutal elbow strike, then a rising knee that caved in a section of the giant's thigh. Each blow landed with bone-rattling power, his gauntlets humming louder as he pushed more aura into them. The air around his fists warped and shimmered.
The golem roared, an unnatural grinding sound like tectonic plates shifting and retaliated with terrifying speed. Quinn barely slipped aside as a tree-trunk arm whistled past, clipping his shoulder and spinning him. He turned the momentum into a leap, planting one foot on the golem's knee and launching himself higher. From point-blank range he unleashed a devastating right cross straight into the titan's upper chest.
The punch was monstrous.
Aura flared bright around his gauntlet as it detonated against the stone. A dinner-table-sized crater formed instantly, but Quinn kept driving forward, shoulder lowered like a battering ram. The force carved a brutal tunnel straight through the golem's upper chest to lower back, leaving a gaping, jagged hole large enough for a man to walk through. Glowing green fragments exploded out the other side, raining across the chamber.
There, pulsing at the center of the newly carved tunnel sat the core.
A complex rune-lined sphere throbbed with virulent green light, suspended in a web of living stone veins. It beat like a diseased heart, feeding power into the regenerating construct.
"There it is," Quinn snarled.
He dropped to the ground in a crouch, then launched upward with explosive force. Both gauntlets thrust forward, aura condensing into a screaming drill of compressed energy. He slammed into the Golem's break the core at full speed. The impact was cataclysmic. Green light flared violently as his aura-coated fists tore, drilled through the rune sphere. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface before it shattered completely.
Quinn burst out the other side of the golem in a spray of stone shards and dying emerald energy. He landed in a firm, wide stance, chest heaving, gauntlets still glowing with residual power. Behind him, the massive construct froze mid-swing. Its green eyes flickered once… twice… then went dark.
With a deafening groan of collapsing stone, the left golem toppled forward. The impact shook the entire chamber, sending a fresh cloud of dust billowing outward. For several long seconds, nothing moved. Then the familiar trembling began, the shattered pieces on the floor quivered, trying to levitate and reattach but failed
The stones rose a few inches, then crumbled lifelessly back to the ground in a pile of jagged, inanimate rock. No regeneration, just broken debris.
Quinn straightened, wiping stone dust from his visor. A hard, satisfied grin broke across his face.
"Good riddance," he muttered, voice carrying across the ruined floor.
Across the chamber, Camilla's fight had evolved into something far more savage and unhinged.
She had turned the right golem into a living furnace. Her Infernal War Greaves blazed hotter than ever, the orange cores burning like twin stars. Each kick left molten orange imprints that ate deep into the titan's body. She had already severed one massive arm at the elbow, the limb now lay half-melted on the floor, slowly trying to crawl back toward its owner on sluggish veins of green energy. Ash and slag dripped from gaping wounds across the golem's thighs and torso.
The construct was still attempting to heal. Chunks of stone levitated and flowed toward damaged sections, but Camilla's heat was too intense. Molten rock refused to properly rebind, instead sizzling and dripping in thick, glowing rivulets. The air around her warped and shimmered, waves of scorching heat rolling off her with every movement.
"Yes~" she sang, voice bright and manic. "Burn for me, able stone!"
She danced between its tree-trunk legs, greaves flashing. A spinning heel kick melted straight through the golem's left calf, nearly toppling it. When it tried to stomp her, she cartwheeled away, leaving a trail of glowing red footprints that hissed and smoked. Bulk's heavy bolts continued thumping from the rear, slamming into joints and buying her precious seconds.
Camilla's eyes locked onto the golem's head. With a gleeful laugh she launched herself skyward in a blazing arc, greaves trailing fire. She twisted mid-air and drove both boots into the side of the titan's neck with devastating momentum.
The kick exploded.
Molten claws sank deep, severing stone and glowing veins in a shower of slag. The golem's enormous head tore free with a grinding crunch and flew across the chamber, crashing into the far ground. Green light spilled from the neck stump like blood.
As Camilla fell, she spotted it. The core, now exposed in the ruined chest cavity below, pulsing frantically.
Her grin sharpened into something feral. She adjusted mid-fall, greaves blazing white-hot, and drove downward like a meteor. Right boot slammed vertically into the core with every ounce of speed and power she possessed.
The rune sphere detonated in a brilliant burst of green dust and fading light. The particles sparkled briefly in the air before dissolving into nothing.
Camilla landed gracefully in the wreckage, knees bent, arms spread, a delighted smile lighting up her face. For one triumphant second she waited, expecting the golem to rise dramatically.
Instead… nothing.
The headless, coreless giant simply swayed once, then toppled sideways with a thunderous crash. Stone limbs scattered. No desperate regeneration or reaction.
Camilla's smile faltered. A deep frown creased her brow.
"Ohh… not now," she whispered.
She stepped closer to the fallen giant's torso and leaned down, almost tenderly. Her gloved hands rubbed across the still-warm, jagged stone as if comforting a wounded pet. A theatrical sob escaped her lips.
"Don't die now… I'm sorry. I never knew that was your core…"
Her expression shifted abruptly, eyes narrowing into something stoic and skeptical. She poked the corpse with one of her fingers.
"I did know, but come on… you aren't supposed to go down in one hit. I thought you had two cores."
She grabbed a jagged edge of the golem's chest plating and tugged hard, trying to pull the massive corpse back upright. It didn't budge. Camilla's face crumpled into exaggerated sorrow. Fake tears welled in her eyes as she leaned dramatically against the dead titan.
"Come back, big giant rock thing! Come back!" she wailed, voice breaking with clearly theatrical grief.
Quinn strode over, gauntlets still faintly humming, armor covered in stone dust and scratches. He stopped a few paces away and crossed his arms.
"Stop what you're doing. It's starting to get annoying."
Camilla whipped around, eyes blazing with genuine irritation. "You don't know how I feel!"
Quinn raised an eyebrow. "You have feelings? I've never seen any emotional psychos. Either way, I don't give a care. Get up from there."
"What am I supposed to do with all this?" Camilla demanded, gesturing angrily at her still-blazing Infernal War Greaves. The air around the boots rippled with heat exceeding 1,000°C, small flames licking across the jagged wing-like plates.
Quinn exhaled slowly, planting his hands on his hips. "I don't know. Cool off. Before you get a mental breakdown." He turned slightly away, murmuring under his breath, "Which I pray you do… wait, if she does, it'll only get worse. Ah, dear god."
He let out a long, weary sigh, shoulders slumping for the first time since the fight began.
The momentary victory tasted like ash in their mouths.
Quinn had barely finished speaking when the entire chamber floor began to tremble again, not from footsteps this time, but from something deeper, more unnatural. Shattered stone fragments, molten slag, and the broken corpses of both golems vibrated violently against the ruined floor. Small pebbles danced. Larger chunks of rock clattered and rolled toward the center of the chamber as if drawn by an invisible magnet. Dust swirled upward in thick columns.
Quinn's head snapped toward the disturbance. Camilla froze mid-sob, her manic grin fading into wide-eyed fascination.
"What the...?" Quinn muttered.
Bulk, still positioned at the rear with his launcher, lowered the weapon slightly, sweat dripping into his eyes. "Is it what I think it is?"
The fallen debris answered them.
Hundreds of jagged pieces levitated at once, glowing with renewed emerald energy. The two ruined golem corpses began sliding across the melted floor, grinding and scraping as invisible forces pulled them together. Stone fused with stone. Molten slag cooled and hardened into new, brutal seams. The two titans were merging, absorbing every scrap of debris in a grotesque act of reconstruction. Their combined mass swelled rapidly. Cracks sealed. New limbs formed from shattered remnants. The height surged upward, twenty feet became thirty, then forty, then more.
"Unbelievable!" Quinn snarled, stepping back instinctively.
He grabbed the back of Camilla's armored top and yanked her with him, dragging her away from the growing monstrosity. Her Infernal War Greaves left twin trails of molten orange stone behind them, hissing and smoking as they carved glowing furrows into the floor.
Camilla didn't resist. She simply stared in open awe, up at the reforming Golem, head tilted like a child watching a play.
The merging accelerated. Green veins pulsed across the forming giant, brighter and more erratic than before. Its shoulders ignited with roaring green flames that licked upward like unnatural torches. A vague, volcano-shaped head coalesced above its torso, wreathed in a swirling vortex of green energy flames. No clear facial features just a menacing, hollow blaze that radiated pure destructive power. The construct grew until it towered at over fifty-nine feet, its jagged crown nearly scraping the impossibly high ceiling. Cracks spiderwebbed across the upper walls from the pressure of its rising mass.
Quinn's mind raced as he continued dragging Camilla backward.
It's not possible… How is this happening? I'm sure I destroyed the core. Camilla did too. There was no power left. Were those first cores fakes? Bait? Or is there more than one source running this thing?
"What in the gods' name is happening now?" Bulk shouted, voice echoing across the war-torn chamber.
Camilla suddenly dropped to one knee in a theatrical prayer pose, hands clasped dramatically beneath her chin despite being dragged. Her voice rang out with mocking reverence.
"The gods have answered my prayers! They noticed I, the amazing person, have reached her fill!"
Quinn didn't slow down. He released her once they had gained enough distance and lightly smacked the back of her head.
"Enough pretending to be a heretic. Nothing good will come of it."
Camilla rubbed the spot with a pout but kept grinning.
Bulk stared up at the colossal fusion, his prosthetic leg whining as he shifted weight. "I thought you both destroyed the cores. How is this even possible? Could it be…?"
"Whatever it is," Quinn cut in, voice steady despite the growing dread, "we'll just have to bring it down."
The merging finally completed with a deafening crunch that shook dust from the ceiling. The new abomination stood motionless for a heartbeat, a nightmarish fusion of both previous golems, far more brutal and asymmetrical. Jagged spikes protruded from its shoulders and spine. Its arms were thicker, ending in massive, uneven fists. The green flames on its shoulders flared brighter. Then its hollow head tilted downward, fixing the three warriors in its burning gaze.
It roared.
The sound was cataclysmic, a grinding, tectonic bellow that slammed through the chamber like a physical wave. The floor buckled. Several floodlights shattered in cascades of sparks. The shockwave nearly knocked Bulk off his feet.
"It's coming!" Bulk called out, craning his neck upward. "What do we do?"
Camilla rose smoothly to her feet, greaves still radiating blistering heat. Her eyes sparkled with renewed excitement.
Quinn's gaze flicked from the advancing giant to the environment behind it, the ruined walls, cracked pillars, and pulsing floor veins that still glowed faintly with residual power. He then glanced toward the far side of the chamber where Rate stood watching. The captain remained completely still, arms crossed, his expression unreadable in the flickering emergency lighting. No intention of stepping in.
*The stone-cold isn't going to help even if I ask. Guess we're on our own this time.*
The merged golem took its first step forward. The impact sent a visible ripple through the damaged floor and kicked up a storm of debris.
Quinn's mind worked furiously.
Previous patterns might work, but the chances of the real core being inside that thing are low. Probably another decoy. The main source has to be somewhere else on this floor.
"Listen up," Quinn commanded, voice sharp and authoritative. "Especially you, Camilla!"
He shot her a quick, warning glance. She tilted her head, already grinning.
"You'll take full confrontation against the golem."
"Full confrontation?" Camilla asked, her voice dripping with delighted bloodlust. She bounced lightly on her molten greaves, leaving more smoking craters.
Quinn immediately reconsidered. "No! You're just going to stall for time. Do damage if possible."
Camilla's grin vanished into an exaggerated frown. "You said full confrontation seconds ago. You just flipped your words."
"Don't start an argument with me. Now's not the TIME!" Quinn snapped.
Camilla crossed her arms and huffed, but the spark in her eyes remained.
Quinn turned to Bulk. "Bulk, how many shots you got left?"
"Five to six, based on my calculations outside the remaining ammo," Bulk replied. His face was pale from exhaustion, but his grip was firm.
"Make them count," Quinn ordered.
"And what are you going to do?" Bulk asked, bracing his stance as the giant took another earth-shaking step closer.
"I'll look for a way to bring it down," Quinn answered. His eyes scanned the floor and walls. "The main core has to be somewhere in this chamber. The walls… the ceiling… or the ground itself."
Camilla didn't wait for further discussion. With a wild laugh, she dashed forward, greaves blazing as she closed the distance to the towering abomination. Bulk planted his feet, prosthetic screaming in protest, and raised his massive projectile launcher. The weapon whined to life, locking onto the giant's joints.
Quinn lingered a moment longer, gaze dropping to the fractured floor beneath his boots. Glowing veins pulsed faintly beneath the cracks, feeding power from somewhere hidden. The sterile white chamber was now a devastated battlefield, molten rivers, shattered stone, flickering shadows, and the oppressive presence of the fifty-nine-foot monster advancing through the chaos.
He clenched his gauntlets, aura flickering back to life around the dark alloy.
"Now things just got more complicated," Quinn muttered, jaw tight, "and I don't like it."