Chapter 31: Last resort

Chapter 31: Chapter 31: Last resort

Jason blocked the first strike and felt the impact travel all the way up into his shoulder, heavier than anything the previous waves had thrown, his spear groaning under the pressure until he shoved a thread of essence through the shaft to keep it from cracking outright.

"These hit like actual D-Rank," Skyler shouted, already backpedaling from one.

"Focus the joints," Reeve called, shield catching a blow that sent him skidding back half a step despite his own considerable weight and strength. "Same weakness, just more armor around it."

They exploited it anyway, methodical, coordinated, Reeve tanking the worst of the impacts while Skyler and Jason worked the openings and Wen kept a steady stream of restorative essence flowing toward anyone who took a real hit while providing backline support alongside Skylar.

Jason took several of those hits. His forearm split open twice, closing each time within a breath or two, faster than it should have, faster than anyone at his cultivation level had any right to heal.

He caught Reeve glancing at him once, something curious behind the focus, and decided that was a conversation for another day.

Every strike he landed felt less effective than it should have, though, the natural weakness of Fire and Lightning against Earth dragging at his output no matter how clean his technique had gotten.

He funneled a small, careful current of Crimson Blaze into the spearhead instead of relying on raw impact, fire chipping away at stone in short, precise bursts rather than trying to overpower it outright, and the difference showed immediately, cracks spreading through the plating faster than blunt force alone had managed.

Then he layered a short Sun Shift burst onto the strike itself, stacking the speed on top of the fire, and the golem in front of him staggered backward from a hit that should have barely scratched it.

’There. That works.’

Reeve, fighting beside him, was having the easiest time of anyone, his own Earth affinity turning every clash into something closer to a fair fight.

Skyler’s arrows carried enough raw penetrative force that the golems’ toughness barely mattered to her at all. Wen struggled more, her Water essence working against the grain of Earth, but her higher cultivation more than made up the difference.

Jason had none of that natural advantage.

What he had was everything else, ingenuity, adaptability, a spear art built specifically to bend around whatever situation it found itself in.

’They’ve got experience. I’ve got to make up the difference with creativity.

The third wave finally broke, the last golem crumbling into rubble under a combined strike from Reeve and Skyler, and the clearing went quiet just long enough for everyone to catch a single ragged breath.

Then the ground shook again, harder this time, and the fourth wave began emerging from the tree line, ten golems in total, one of them considerably larger than the rest.

Nobody needed to say the word "boss" out loud.

They all understood it anyway.

---

"That’s the target," Reeve said, already shifting the formation. "Focus fire on the big one once the others thin out."

Jason felt his essence reserves sitting lower than he liked, the accumulated cost of three waves finally catching up to him, and forced his breathing steady before the anxiety in his chest could turn into anything worse.

Reeve caught the moment, glanced over, and gave him a short, approving nod.

"Good. Panic gets people killed faster than any monster does."

The fight opened hard, Reeve’s voice cutting through the chaos almost immediately.

"Wen, keep me covered, I’m pulling aggro."

Jason felt it a heartbeat later, a strange, deliberate pull in the ambient essence around Reeve, subtle, something he wouldn’t have caught a week ago but now registered clearly as an active technique, a taunt skill dragging the smaller golems’ attention squarely onto him while Wen’s restorative the essence kept pace with every hit he absorbed.

The fight ground on for the better part of thirty minutes, the smaller golems falling one by one to the same armpit weakness, until only the boss and a single lieutenant remained.

"Skyler, with me on the boss," Reeve called, already moving. "Jason, Wen, finish the other one."

Coordinating with Wen took a few clumsy exchanges to settle into, her rhythm built around years with this exact squad, his built around a week of adaptability drilled into him by a man who valued flexibility over memorized combinations. But his spear art bent easily enough to meet her halfway, and between the two of them the last lieutenant went down clean.

Then Jason looked over at the boss fight, and something had clearly gone wrong.

The boss had grown. Visibly. And one of the lieutenants that should have already been reduced to rubble instead lay motionless with its head caved entirely in, empty.

’It’s absorbing their cores.’

He watched it happen to the second lieutenant a moment later, the boss’s fist crushing straight through the fallen golem’s skull, essence flooding visibly into its frame, the creature’s mass swelling further.

"Reeve!" Jason was already moving.

He reached the fight just as the boss absorbed a third core, Reeve barely managing to hold its attacks off now, Skyler peppering it with arrows that barely seemed to slow it down anymore.

’This isn’t working. It’s outscaling us faster than we can hurt it.’

His mind raced through everything the week had given him, the spear art, the elements, the layered techniques he’d only just started to control, and one idea surfaced, reckless and probably stupid.

"I’ve got something," he called, already backing off from the fight. "Cover me. I need a few minutes."

Nobody argued. There wasn’t time to.

He drove his spear into the cracked earth, essence pouring out of him and into the ground in reverse, drawing mana back in as fast as he could manage, refining it down into his depleted core in short, desperate bursts instead of the slow, careful process cultivation normally demanded.

’No time for careful. Just needs to work once.’

He funneled the recovered essence straight into the spear and his own legs simultaneously, Fire condensing down at the tip into a single blinding point, Lightning threading down the shaft to fuel Piercing Thunder, and beneath both of them, Sun Shift activating on top, three techniques layered together in a combination the manual had never once suggested was survivable.

Pain tore through him immediately, muscle and tendon screaming in protest as his body strained under output it was never built to contain.

’This is either going to work or it’s going to be the last stupid decision I ever make.’

"Skyler! Now!"

She understood without needing more than that, loosing an arrow that forced the boss to twist, exposing the vulnerable seam beneath its arm for exactly the half second Jason needed.

He moved.

Faster than anything in the clearing could track except Skyler herself, the world tunneling down to a single point ahead of him, and he drove the spear forward with everything left in his core.

The golem exploded into a cascade of shattered stone, the shockwave rattling across the clearing.

Jason hit the ground a moment later, entirely spent, every muscle in his body screaming, essence reading flat zero.

Wen was at his side almost instantly, hands already glowing, water essence pouring into him to knit torn tissue back together.

Jason started laughing, delirious and half-conscious, staring up at the ash-gray sky.

"It worked," he wheezed. "That was such a stupid idea, and it actually worked."