The barrier shook and trembled as it was pried open. Through some sort of Fateweaver fuckery, John didn’t even care how, the two High Fateweavers on the outside must have realized that their swarming strategy was unsuccessful and instead of sending off a bunch of little dudes over time must have decided to send a bunch of little dudes in at once. That was John’s first impression.

Then the side of the barrier tore open like the sky above Rome, and in stepped a gargantuan golem. It was a crude creation and, in typical communist manner, made with a mixture of grandeur and efficiency where both didn’t really come together and the result was something grey and probably less practical than it could optimally be. However, crude and sub-optimal as collectively designed goods tended to be, they also tended to work in some capacity. From the thundering step it took, John could discern that it definitely worked.

About a hundred metres tall, it could have wrestled with Nathalia. It would have been like a kid wrestling with a fully grown saltwater crocodile (with wings), but it still could have done it. As mentioned, its exterior was mostly grey, a concrete body clad in metallic plates; on the shoulders it had two symbols: the hammer and sickle of the communists as well as a working man’s face shedding a tear of blood. One of its hands held a hammer that was made for its size, the kind that smiths and crafters used, while its other seemed to be a giant cannon.

“Thank god, it’s a giant death robot,” John uttered as he got back on his feet. Whatever wasn’t more of that terrible, repetitive, horrifyingly mechanical task of slaughtering people and had more of that fantasy flair was welcome. Sure, the golem was infinitely more dangerous, but it would also be way more enjoyable to fight. He could feel the passionate side of himself fire up the rest of his brain. Thanks to Gamer’s Body, he was rested again after the short thirty-minute break they had.

“”Fucking finally, something interesting!”” Salamander and Metra shouted out as one. They looked at each other.

“We will get along fine,” the primal artificial spirit decided in that moment, flicking away a certain girl that was blabbering on the drive by.

“Funny, I just arrived at the same conclusion,” the blaze elemental cackled.

“Nice of ya to have a sismance starting right here, but what’s the battle plan against that thing?” Rave was the voice of reason, despite an excited grin also spreading over her face as she glanced over to John. It seemed all girls were crazy in some fashion; then again, he was also showing a bit of a smile.

“First, we have to deal with that,” John said as the gargantuan thing raised its right arm, the one with the cannon.

“Well, well, it seems only I can save the day right now,” Maximillian spoke up before anyone else even presented a solution, causing his older sister to roll her eyes and everyone else to signify their scepticism in some other way as he went on a bravado ridden dialogue. “I knew the day would come where all of you could just stand there in awe as I save your butts. Hawpler, show them who is the king around here.”

“The only kingly thing about you is your tendency to boss people around,” the sphere sassed in its usual tremor as it hovered up into the air. The Grey Golem had finished its targeting procedure, and after a few moments of the barrel heating up with arcane might, an explosion of red mana shot forwards.

It bridged the distance between them, several kilometres, at a pace that would actually have allowed them to dodge if it hadn’t been the size of a boulder. Then Hawpler unleashed, the pull of a black hole forced itself on the energy projectile, and it was siphoned right into the gravity elemental, like a segment of food colouring in otherwise clear waters running down the drain.

Maximillian groaned and, suddenly pale, staggered out of his stance a bit. John swallowed his question of why he hadn’t just done exactly this for the nuke; evidently taking in too much energy at once had some nasty side effects. “I can block two more, maximum,” the king said; “So better make that battleplan now!”

“Just go in there, Momo, fly up and survey the situation. I will stay here with Undine and Maximillian and give further advice through Aclysia and the other elementals. If you are hurt, come back here,” John quickly ran down as a second shot got charged up. By the time it reached them, the more agile amongst the fighters had already begun moving.

John saw three paths to victory against that thing: they had to fight it until it ran out of power, a golem of that size couldn’t be self-sufficient, or they had to destroy it despite being way smaller, that would take a bit, or…

“Is there any way to reactivate that thing?” John wondered as he looked towards the giant.

Ria, who had also stayed behind because a technomancer was no use in a fistfight, provided an answer. “That thing is called Phil,” John still refused to call the iron giant that, “and no. Not unless you got a whole lot of mana going around. Like a WHOLE lot!” The specification was warranted seeing how 20 mana per second were something like pocket change earlier.

John pondered about that for a bit. How could they get a whole lot of mana at once? In the distance, a giant dust cloud rose as the Grey Golem used its hammer at one of the advancing group members. At least they were preoccupied.

“I could have a solution,” Maximillian presented for the second time; “Ever heard of superradiant scattering?”

John had: it was a theoretical source of near-infinite energy using a spinning black hole and electromagnetic waves. The waves would rush through the ergosphere (an area around the event horizon exclusive to spinning black holes, best described as a ‘half-event horizon’) get partially lost in the event horizon but largely absorb energy from the black hole’s rotation. The wave would then be reflected on a spherical mirror around the black hole and bounce around, gaining energy, until someone came along and opened the mirror to harness the power. Alternatively, the whole thing could be left untouched and eventually explode with the force of a supernova. It was kind of like a Dyson Sphere for people who thought playing with suns wasn’t dangerous enough. “Yes,” he therefore answered, having a bad inkling.

Maximillian gestured at Hawpler, “I can do the same, well, something very similar - it’s just the quickest example I can think of - with mana thanks to him.”

“Why didn’t you bring that up before, Max?” Ria wanted to know; “Stop having secrets! You can tell your big sister stuff!”

“Maria, I wouldn’t trust you with my piggy-bank, much less information that, until the world saw Hawpler recently, was completely in the dark,” Maximillian countered; “That aside, I can moderate it when I use it to regenerate my own mana, you know, putting 10 Maybel in and getting 20 out, but using it to power something else is going to hurt. A lot. So, I wanted to skip this if it wasn’t needed.”

Well, that explained how he never ever ran out of mana during the tournament, even when holding down Eliza. John really had to wonder how strong Hawpler actually was. From what it seemed like, the gravity elemental was just a well of power that nobody could tap into, not even the spirit himself. Kind of fitting, seeing how he was essentially a sentient black hole, but still.

It made John wonder even further what kind of monster would be created if Maximillian did go through with the fusion one day. Would it be a person to stand in the Primarch category of strength? John was kind of curious, but he also didn’t want Maximillian to just erase his person to find out.

“Aren’t you going to need a mirror though?” John asked.

“Not normally, I just send mana to Hawpler, and he sends back more; in return, I get to take all the physical pain when he overdoes it,” Maximillian answered. He looked over the battlefield, where the Grey Golem was ploughing the already ruined city with its hammer, turning it into a field on which only desperation could grow. Lights, fire and otherwise apparent attacks of magic cut and beamed through the air around the giant. It looked like a bunch of fireflies were assaulting a human.

An actual plan formed in John’s head. “Ria, Max,” he just took the freedom of calling the king in the short form of his name, given the rather heated situation. Maximillian seemed to mind, wrinkles appearing around his nose as he made a grimace, but not enough to speak up about it. “You two get the iron giant running again. It doesn’t need to be for long. I will leave you with Undine, and she will explain the rest of the plan to you.”

The ocean elemental did not seem happy with the prospect of being a mouthpiece for a rather long instruction, but given the situation, she had to comply. Taking off at that same moment, John ran towards the north side of the city, a good bit away from the actual fighting, which was happening at the west side of things.

The main reason for leaving Undine behind wasn’t that she was there to explain the plan. Momo could have flown back just as well; she had already run out of fireflies and was now basically just distracting the giant by flying around his head a lot. She could have created a new load of the buffing insects, but that mana was likely better spent elsewhere, so John told her to only do it if she would cap her MP otherwise.

‘Send all of your mana to me!’ John instructed the support now, having waited for the golem to turn his back to him. In typical scepticism, Momo first picked his brain for the plan before just going along with it.

‘That is retarded… but could also work; fine, take it,’ Momo gave her comments, and then John aimed at the sky. Combined, they had about 3000 mana left, and all of it was spent the second the Gamer used Arcana Strike. The blue and purple ball rose far above the battlefield, until it was basically just a bigger star in the cloudless winter sky.

Step 1 was complete, now to ensure that the Grey Golem actually got hit by the Arcana Strike. Also to evacuate the area. That thing would not be kind, and Arcana Strike was pretty indiscriminate about who stood in the impact site. ‘I need a ‘Friendly Fire Disabled’ passive, in which class would that be? Most likely Gamer,’ John thought as he darted off.

Great, but that was for after the battle. He hastened down the roads as he saw the iron giant move in the distance. The Grey Golem immediately noticed, and all fighting ceased as to John orders. ‘Let them fight!’ he had told everyone, only realizing he was meming the Godzilla movie when Sylph started to make fun of it.

The two gargantuan constructs moved slowly eyeing each other up. Of course, that was a planned move in disguise for Ria to navigate her robot in a position where their clash would happen underneath the, so far unnoticed, Arcana Strike. Miraculously, that worked, and when they charged at each other, they met directly underneath the Arcana Strike.

That luck only lasted for a few minutes. The two giants fought with punches that made the earth tremble. Actually, everything these two did made the earth tremble. No wonder at that size. It was Undine’s message that ruined this, ‘Maximillian is about to give in, John!’

‘Tell him ‘hang in there, buddy!’’ John joked in a stressed fashion. If the iron giant gave in before they immobilized the Grey Golem, then their whole strategy was in jeopardy and they had to go back to just beating the guy, which could have taken an eternity.

Exactly at that moment, the Grey Golem noticed the above average sized star. ‘SHIT!’ John thought. He had to fire it now; the golem had shown so far to be not stupid enough to not smell that particular trap. However, that would have hit the iron giant as well.

Indeed, the Grey Golem kicked the iron giant, causing the machine to take a step backwards from the blunt force, before attempting to get away by walking backwards. As fast as a being of that size could hope to move, Ria manoeuvred the iron giant forward and executed an aggressive grapple manoeuvre.

Metal arms closing behind the Grey Golems back, the iron giant exposed his own to easy strikes. ‘You have permission to fire the Arcana Strike,’ Undine informed him. The implication here was that Ria gave him the okay to potentially blow up the iron giant as well. ‘I will evacuate them.’

“I thank you for your services, Phil,” John said, saluting atop an intact quarter of a house as the aiming beam of the Arcana Strike descended, marking its impact site right on the iron giant’s head that was pressing against the Grey Golems abdomen.

A moment later, the ball of energy descended and engulfed an area of at least fifty metres diameter in the purple energy. Crackling with arcane might, purple and blue energy bolts dancing all over the surface, it unloaded with the sounds of stone and metal cracking.

John saw a giant ball of slime with two humanoid shapes bounce over the ground below like a piece of rubber. It was probably a very unpleasant experience, and it didn’t negate the damage from the fall from a deadly height (deadly for normal people, that was), but it did enough of a job to at least reduce the damage that could be done.

The purple veil that followed Arcana Strikes slowly thinned out until it was little more than a silky hue on top of the impact site. The head of the iron giant was either blasted off or melted. Same was true for the Grey Golem, who was missing a sizeable part of its stomach.

Still, he was moving. For a moment John was alarmed, but this was a fight they could win now; a hundred-metre-tall golem with a hole in its stomach was a considerably easier opponent, especially since that hole stretched from one side to the other.

His readiness was unfounded, however. The Grey Golem tried to violently shake off the locked grip of Phil. An incredibly loud crack, like a piece of wood breaking in a campfire, echoed throughout the whole city, as the upper body slowly split from its legs and then fell the whole distance towards the ground, causing yet another earthquake.

John rubbed the dust from his forehead once it had settled and looked at the three windows.

That was nice. ‘John, we got a huge problem!’ Momo informed him.

‘Can’t be as huge as the one we just got done with,’ John decided as he wondered if he should invest statpoints into Charisma.

‘Trust me, this one is twice as big. Look up, you idiot!’ Momo insisted, and John raised his eyes only for his jaw to drop. A tear, much bigger than the last one, had opened, and through it stepped two golems of the exact same design as the one they had just beat.

Now they had to deal with that, with the difference that Momo was completely out of mana. John had the advantage of having filled up again upon level up, but still, this was looking rather bad. Actually, how was this even possible?

A quick look over to the green strip where they had left Magoi revealed the answer. The Fateweaver had been hit by one of the stray rocks that had been catapulted across the whole barrier by the golem’s destruction. Now the defences he had put in place were slowly fading, allowing the two similarly strong Fateweavers on the outside to now pry the weaknesses open with even more ease.

Hence, the two Grey Golems just raised their canons and began charging, aiming at the now unprotected trees and Magoi underneath them. That the Blood was able to just throw these things around showed what kind of resources a desperate national guild could muster.

If they lost Magoi here, that would be it. The barrier around them would fuse with the one around and allow the Blood to attack them in full force.

The cannons heated up and then…