817 T.D.o.N.B: Fin, the First, part I
The fire elemental which became the first target reacted quite soon and started I would say running toward my golem, but it looked more like hovering slightly above the ground. It was a swirling cloud of raging flames, roaring loudly as it moved.
Fin stopped, extended his left hand, the mechanism popped out, and he started shooting water bullets at the creature. Each of them made this strange sound similar to the one made by a bottle of champagne being opened.
The speed was enough to break bones, and he was shooting one after the other. They hit the mark, which we could hear thanks so the wild hissing made by liquid changing into steam, but it didn’t seem to work.
At first. One volley in and the elemental slowed down. His flames became visibly smaller. Fin then stopped shooting, and moved his hand, like he wished to backhand the creature, which still was far away. As he moved his hand, the water pistol switched to jet stream mode.
The motion made it cut like a blade through the whole burning body of the monster, and to my surprise, it killed that damn thing. The gun popped back into the arm, and my creation moved on.
– Holy shit! – Lucas shouted. – That was fast! Wow!
Few people agreed with him. I didn’t waste my time on middle chatting. I was too focused on observing the golem, so I immediately followed him.
Fin picked the crystal from the ground, shoved it into his belly, then changed direction to go after the next closest elemental. He killed the monster in the exact same manner, which immediately alarmed me that his speed of clearing the whole place was quite slow. On the other hand, he didn’t have to rush, like I usually did. He had a whole day to collect the crystals.
We watched him slowly make his way to the cave at the base of the volcano, but soon I lost my patience and began helping him, ripping apart the elementals with my telekinetic powers, so we wouldn’t wait for over an hour before we could check how Fin would do with more enemies at once.
Inside, in the chamber with the broken ground, filled with deep crevasses leading to pools of lava, he got quickly overwhelmed. I watched him shoot at a single elemental which led to blurring a few of them. He took the initial one down quite easy with the jet stream, but the second enemy was almost at his face by that time, and more were following.
He got surrounded, and the elementals started blasting him with scorching flames to melt his parts, but it just wasn’t working. He didn’t even use the barriers.
– Holy shit – Lucas said once again.
– You don’t have any other lines? – Dasha asked him immediately.
– I’m just impressed. They are fucking welding him, but he just stays there, and swings that thing – he explained himself.
– It’s a pudao – Tihana and I said at the same time.
– Whatever it is, he swings that well – he replied. – And he might not be the fastest guy in town, but they can’t even touch him. Look.
He gestured at Fin with an open hand. At that point the golem was just surrounded by a raging storm of flames, roaring so loud we had to rise our voices to continue the conversation. Despite all that, that automaton was cutting them down one by one.
– It’s hard not to look – said Marving. – Damn… What is this thing made of? Can you make armor from the same thing? I wouldn’t say no to something like that.
– Maybe the armor can endure the temperature, but you would get cooked inside – Dasha pointed out.
She was right. Fin armor wasn’t just made to absorb high temperatures, because that would melt the core eventually, so I enchanted it with the capability of reflecting most of it. It would take a long time for him to heat up, and he could take quite a lot of it before anything he was made of would even approach a malting point.
The only thing I was worried about, was the fact that his killing speed was slow, which, if the numbers of elementals were high enough, could actually, eventually, lead to his destruction. And there was plenty of them inside the volcano.
Marvin didn’t feel like arguing with Dasha, so he didn’t say anything more. We all just observed Fin taking down the last monsters. There was another surprise, though. He didn’t move forward after the battle. He started cooling himself down with the water gun. Spraying a mist of water at himself, which quickly was evaporating, but it was also lowering the temperature.
– Wow! – Lucas shouted once again. – You even thought about that, boss?
I didn’t say anything to that, because I did. It was Fin himself figuring out his situation and taking action. After all, the protocols were arranged in such a way, as to prioritize his own survival over the crystals.
When he finished, he picked the score off the ground, and moved on, heading deeper into the cavern, where plenty more elementals awaited him. I observed him carefully, watching every move, and I noticed that he actually was searching for pathways.
It wasn’t so obvious, because his head was just a decoration, so he wasn’t actually using vision to move. The core was able to project a wave of magic in a short radius around him, and in a longer radius in the direction, he was facing, so he relied on that to move. It was actually a better way than vision because vision needed light.
A few hours later, we finally arrived at the place where the entrance to the boss room was. The symbols above the passage made it quite obvious, and everyone started to get excited about the upcoming fight. I was more worried.
I wasn’t sure if Fin’s offensive capabilities will be enough, but there was no other way to check than by experimenting. I needed to test my golem, to know what was working and what wasn’t. He needed some improvements already, but the last battle would definitely point at more. I had no doubt about that.