CHAPTER 831: THE UNFORESEEN VARIABLE

"Desmond!" Adam roared, and the answer came instantly.

The golem’s helmeted head shifted, the red glow searching for the other intruder. All it could lock onto was a flying flask that shattered at its feet. Glass shards sprinkled the ground, made viscous by the murky grey liquid that spilt out.

Its enchantments flared on its torso for the briefest moment before falling silent. Not a threat, at least not one its protocols could identify.

However, Adam’s smirk broadened even as the nightmare of enchanted steel took its next step. He lowered his head sideways, gesturing to remove an imaginary hat. "Courtesy of the best alchemist."

The moment the mechanical foot touched the viscous liquid, its composition adapted to metal. What was thick in texture turned light and greasy.

The light beneath the golem’s visor flickered for a heartbeat as its foot slipped with a wet sound. Ridiculous. A child’s trick... unpredictable. Balance broken, back crashing down, it froze for a split second.

And Adam seized it.

This time, he flipped mid-air, centrifugal force building up. Ten dark gravity arrows condensed beneath him. Like a dark meteor ten times heavier, he cleaved downward, fists outstretched, eyes locked onto the rivers painted across its torso—the nexus of its self-repairing enchantment.

He collapsed on a wide river cutting through a serene plain of green, the cold metal caving beneath his fist. Yet it was already pushing back, trying to recover its original shape, as two streams of vapor erupted from the golem’s shoulders.

Even worse, the light beneath its visor flickered with deadly intent.

Its blade rose like a guillotine but didn’t register in Adam’s vision.

His sky-blue eyes darted across the river, dismantling metal to peer at the symbols that pulsed beneath its surface. The pressure from the strike ruffled his hair. He could feel the icy bite of the weapon inching on his focused frown from above.

Yet, his eyes narrowed.

There. A vulnerability!

Qi erupted from his fist in a torrential burst that made the frame of the golem groan like a sinking ship. He punctured a needle-sized hole, right at the link between the fourth and fifth clusters of symbols.

The moment his Qi pierced through the weakest link—if he could call this impossibly tiny and arguably necessary lower input that ensured smooth stability in the golem’s colossal frame—the blade carved a line on his scalp.

Blink? No time. Death, then. As if!

Something crashed against his side. Not the silvery broadsword. He saw it flash where he had stood with brutal efficiency. No, it was a purple bolt that crackled against his skin, hurling him away from inevitable death.

He spun mid-air, sliding on his feet a few steps away from his foe, his eyes shooting between the pillars, where steam rose from the tip of Desmond’s outstretched wand.

"You madman!" The teenager’s voice cracked.

"Perfect shot!" Adam waved his seared robes.

"Did you at least get that bastard?" Desmond asked as he bolted behind the square pillars.

"Doubting the best enchanter?" Adam glared at the rising golem and smirked at the barely noticeable hole in its otherwise perfect frame. It didn’t mend. He could destroy it.

He bounced and cracked his neck playfully, then slammed his fists against each other. Space distorted around them with a shrill screech.

"Give way for the best cultivator." Ancient slabs exploded beneath his feet.

The golem moved with calculated precision, ready to greet his foolish charge with a downward slash.

However, Adam halted in his tracks at the absolute edge of its range, fist striking the air exactly four meters too far from its torso.

The air shot in a concussive blast of raging winds that collapsed on a mountain chain painted on the golem’s torso, jerking it a step back.

A cacophony of groaning metal engulfed the room, but the golem steadied its footing. Its visor shifted down to a barely visible impact mark—negligible damage compared to its disabled self-repair enchantment. Execute the intruder before he could ruin another one.

It crouched, steam blasting the greasy liquid against the walls. Then, it charged Adam, broadsword dragged behind it in a trail of sparks against the ground.

When it swung at an impossible angle that would have torn a man’s shoulder, it was with a mechanical brutality that erased Adam’s playful smile from his face.

He back-flipped the raging broadsword, mana erupting from his palms into a platform he landed on—just as the golem followed up with a punch that blew his hair back.

Sweat trickled down his furrowed brow as he punched and leapt in the same movement. The compressed air crashed against the same mountain chain, deepening the impact mark ever so slightly.

But he knew he couldn’t rely on the same trick, not against that monster of prediction. That was why he didn’t blink again, worried that it would calculate the most likely points he would appear at and simply strike him. And that was why he didn’t land on another platform, and instead condensed an icy ramp on which he slid to the ground, a couple of meters behind his adversary.

The golem lifted its foot to charge, but he struck first. A punch, ten, then a hundred. His arms blurred, space trembled, and air turned into a weapon that dug at the mountain chains a little more.

A continuous hiss of vapor blared from the golem’s shoulders as it absorbed the physical impacts and charged.

To its surprise, Adam did the same. He lunged forward with bestial grace, clenching his teeth. The blade came down. He spun around it, both fists crackling with enough gravity that the final step felt like the heavens pressed against his back.

"Should be soft enough now," he declared in the moment between his narrow dodge and the golem’s next fluid strikes, which would seal any notion of retreat. Then, he hurled both fists at the dent in the mountain chain.

CLANG

The painting cracked open this time, metal shards flying everywhere. The golem froze, its protocols glitching as calculations flooded its core to answer the critical question: how.

The answer came in the blink of an eye. The negligible damage had accumulated—not from the impact, but from the foreign energy that bypassed its mana absorption. It was unnoticeable, fire particles so tiny and inefficient that they would require hundreds of precise strikes to soften its armor...

And now, the impact absorption enchantment crumbled with the left side of its torso. But it wasn’t over. Not yet.

The light beneath its visor flared, but it was too late by a split second.