The engineers stared up at the massive golem, slack-jawed and speechless. Their lanterns cast harsh shadows across the machine, but even in that flickering illumination, they could clearly see where the chest plate had been torn off and the power core pulled out. One by one, they turned their stares from the golem to Velik.

“How?” the lead engineer asked. “Just… how?”

“High level combat class,” Velik said with a shrug.

“That armor plating must be six inches thick,” one of the engineers exclaimed. “Look, there are fresh scratches here. That from you?”

“It took me a few attempts to figure out how to get through it,” Velik said, only half lying. It had taken a few attempts, but then he’d given up on winning with a spear. They just didn’t need to know what he’d done instead.

“This thing has to be worth at least a hundred thousand decarmas,” Jensen said, walking up behind them. “And that’s not including the power core, which is the biggest any of us have ever seen.”

Several of the engineers assaulted the golem’s frame with various tools in an attempt to pull it apart, but Velik, Jensen, and the lead engineer of the team, a scar-faced woman named Jorry, bypassed that project to hit the strange room at the end of the massive hall. Velik had tried to describe what he’d found there, but lacking the technical knowledge of a true [Artificer], he’d come up short. They’d collectively decided it would be easier to see it for themselves.

“Yup, that’s the bridge,” she said after they arrived. “About what we expected. We’ll tear it apart, but honestly, I suspect the golem guarding it’s the bigger haul.”

Jorry crawled over the room, pulling up panels to get a look at the equipment hidden behind them, and even dragging Velik into being her muscle when she wanted a look at something too heavy for her to move. Jensen watched it all with a greedy gleam in his eyes.

“Ah, found it,” the [Artificer] called out from a service tunnel beneath the floor. “Just need… to… ah! Got it. Interesting mana container. It’s not like the golems. Might be worth something after all.”

* * *

The signal from the sky bridge the little spider automaton had arrived from abruptly cut out, leaving her to stare at the machine in consternation. “Great,” she muttered. “Just great. Now I’ve got to figure out where the damn thing was built by hand. I told them to put batch identification on the stupid golems, but no, that’s a waste of time.”

* * *

“Here,” Jorry said, passing up an oblong, two-foot-long, powder-blue crystal. Velik took it from her and held out a hand to pull her back out of the service tunnel. “Oof. Tight fit down there.”

“There’s no mana coming from that,” Jensen said, eyeing up the crystal Velik was holding with both hands.

“Oh gods no, it’s thoroughly drained. No damage, though. All it really needs is a fresh mana current introduced to it and it’ll start right back up again. Figured it’d be best to remove it from the socket it was in just in case it was to pick up any stray mana from someone swinging that big spear of his around.”

“Would… that be a problem?” Velik asked.

Jorry shrugged. “Who knows? Might do nothing. Might activate some of the sky bridge’s defenses. The golems are bad enough without any old traps rearming themselves. Best not to risk it, eh?”

“I’ll take your word on it,” Velik said. He turned to Jensen and asked, “Do you need me for anything else? If not, I’m going to go looking for more golems.”

“I think we’re good,” Jensen said after glancing at his lead engineer. She gave the affirming nod back, and he added, “Yep. Have fun. Maybe lead them into one of the main tunnels to make it a bit easier for us to collect the parts later before you pull out the power cores.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

* * *

The next week of Velik’s life was agonizingly boring. The engineering crews worked on the golems the forward team dispatched, and the excavation team broke open new wings in the sky bridge. Jensen was happy, but he had decarmas dancing in his eyes the whole time. Velik understood that the ruin was the score of a lifetime, that even though none of the spoils were exciting, they were highly valuable. His share was probably going to be more than the last two expeditions combined.

But the golems, aside from that one massive one, were easy to kill. The challenge was as non-existent as the treasure, and Velik had no desire to do manual labor just to keep himself busy. Once the entire facility was mapped out and they were sure it had been completely pacified, he hunted Jensen down.

“My job’s done here,” he announced without preamble.

“We’re probably going to be here another month cleaning up,” Jensen protested.

“And yet, all the danger is past. Unless something comes in from the excavation site aboveground, you’re as safe as can be,” Velik said. “Therefore, the best use of my time is looking for and pacifying the threats up there.”

Jensen snorted. “Yeah, if you say so. It’s fine, I get it. This is a huge payday, but it’s boring work. Go on, go play out in the mountains. Just do me a favor and check back in every few days. I’ll let you know when we’re close to done so we can all head back to civilization together.”

That was an acceptable compromise in Velik’s mind. Everyone on the expedition team was safe. He’d get paid. And, best of all, he got to skip out on the boring work. “Just have Tempest use that [Whispering Wind] skill he’s so fond of to let me know when you’re done,” Velik suggested.

Jensen shook his head. “If I thought you’d stay in range of it, maybe.”

“Okay, fair. I’ll try to stay within a hundred miles of the dig site.”

“Deal,” Jensen said.

I said ‘try.’

But Velik knew better than to talk himself out of a good deal. Technically, Jensen was in charge of the expedition, and Velik was under contract to protect it. It was only because they were both sure there were no threats left in the sky bridge ruin that Jensen was even letting him run off to play.

With his freedom temporarily secured, Velik ascended up through the dig site minutes later. It was early evening, less than an hour until sundown, and he was looking forward to seeing what lurked in the mountains. He’d been promised monsters of up to level 60, and by Morgus, he meant to find some.

* * *

Wyverns were interesting creatures. They came in all sorts of sizes and colors, and with a wide variety of abilities. Scholars speculated that they were a sort of lesser cousin to true dragons, though they had little in common besides a similar appearance.

The wyverns of the Demon Teeth Mountains were green and gray, generally about twenty feet long from snout to the tip of their tails, and had thirty-foot wingspans. Velik had killed three of them while escorting the expedition to the dig site, and they’d made for an exciting challenge since, unlike most aerial predators, they weren’t afraid to get down on the ground and fight it out.

He killed the first one about two hours after leaving the dig site behind. It had launched itself down on Velik’s head while he was traversing a winding ravine, looking for an easy route up to the top, but it had underestimated its prey’s agility and completely missed its opening attack. Twenty seconds later, his spear pierced its skull and, spasming, the wyvern collapsed to the ground.

[You have slain a stone sheen wyvern (level 41).]

[You have been awarded 2 decarmas.]

“Finally, some progress,” Velik said. He spent ten minutes harvesting the body, mostly for its teeth, claws, and the surprisingly strong wing bones. Those were prized among bowyers as excellent, flexible material for creating powerful bows when properly prepared, and a single wyvern could provide the raw materials needed for a dozen such weapons. Their hides were often used to make quivers, as well, but skinning a wyvern was both a lot of effort and would rapidly fill up his limited storage.

As Velik reached the top of the ravine, a pair of wyverns attacked him. Both were on the larger side, levels 44 and 46, according to the kill notifications, and Velik barely had time to harvest the first one before the bodies drew their first scavenger, a primal blood hawk. It stood six feet in height, its plumage crimson red and its beak obsidian black, and it glared at Velik with hungry eyes from its perch fifty feet away.

[Apex Hunter] was what Velik’s class had formed out of a half dozen sensory skills, including [Identify]. It hadn’t done much to assess golems, but against monsters, it did the job just fine. So Velik knew that he’d encountered his first opponent over level 50. They eyed each other warily, but it wasn’t in a monster’s nature to be patient for long, not when there was food to be eaten and a human to be killed.

Waves of magic rolled over Velik, threatening to leave him disoriented and dizzy, as the blood hawk let loose a screech and flared its wings. He weathered the attack without complaint, and when the monster realized it had failed to stun him, it lifted off the stone perch with a powerful beat of its wings, then started a strafing run wherein it unleashed volleys of feathers.

“Two can play at that game,” Velik told it. He reached up to his chest, where six throwing knives rested in a bandolier, and pulled several out. Rather than aiming at the monster, he tossed them straight up in the air, where they spun in tight spirals around each other, just waiting for their owner to command them to attack.

Let’s see what you can do, bird.