CHAPTER 835: THE MAESTRO OF MAYHEM

Adam tried to keep the golem locked in place, his eyes narrowed on her blade of light. Just like with his Qi, it drank the light from his mana arsenal, dismantling weapons by the dozen with each second crawling by.

But he had already condensed thousands and kept adding more to replace the ones absorbed. After all, he might be a modest apprentice in rank, but his heart fed his chaotic circuits inexhaustible torrents of mana.

And for the first time, the emotionless features of the golem shifted. The corners of her carved lips slightly twitched. Was it shock or something else? He damned hoped it was the first, even though he doubted it, considering her next move.

Unfazed by the ocean of weapons surrounding her, she uncoiled her blades from his and tiptoed back with her usual grace. Then, she lunged, not away—at him, as if she still had the upper hand.

Adam swung his Chronoscar to meet her blades while dismissing the cracked frame of his macuahuitl.

CLANG

Sparks rained between them. His arm trembled from her strength, but he grinned and gestured with his free hand. Three elemental mana swords spun before launching. They tore through the wind like descending storms, passing between his armpits and legs. His tattered uniform flapped as barely closed lacerations spewed blood.

But the golem didn’t glance at the projectiles. Instead, her light blade devoured the mana while drawing a horizontal arc toward his throat.

Adam sneered, meeting the deadly arc with a brutal upward swing of the Chronoscar. The shockwave of the impact was a percussive beat, and the room answered with a crescendo of shattering magic and screeching metal.

Slowly, he forced her to focus on his constructs. But even though she failed to repel him, her defence was like an impregnable wall of darkness and light, her steps a fluid dance that wouldn’t allow even a drop of rain to stain her silvery cuirass.

She danced through the downpour of his arsenal, devouring elemental halberds, axes, and swords until she seemed to decide that defense wasn’t what she wanted.

Blinding light and abyss-darkness erupted in a swirling tornado that forced him to squint as she slammed her twin blades against each other. What emerged left him breathless—a new sword with a pommel curved like a claw over the hilt. On the other side of the pommel, an inverted spade extended into a dark blade lined with pulsing light that ended in another spade.

Whenever she moved her new longsword, a light beam trapped in dark trails unmade his projectiles faster than ever. He gasped, the realisation choking him—if the twin blades were mythical magus-ranked artifacts, this sword was something he had yet to create... perhaps even something above that—a supreme mage-ranked artifact.

Mid-thought, a voice tore through his mind, the sound like fire grinding stones. "That hateful, unbreakable sword still exists!" The demonic cleaver’s roar caused the lake of liquid fire to surge like an inverted waterfall inside Adam’s soul sea.

"Damn it!" Adam stomped back and hurled everything he could condense simultaneously. "It’s as powerful as you!"

"Fuck off! That piece of metal is nothing compared to me." The cleaver’s answer came in an indignant scream before its voice grew somber. "The sword is strong, but the true terror came from its wielder: Leoric Caelmorne. I remember how he used it to cleave through legions of demons after he went mad with grief. It negates enchantments and curses, and devours any source of energy. Strange to see it in the hands of a mere golem."

It paused before erupting into laughter as if it had remembered why. "Anyway, you can’t defeat her. Run! And don’t forget to re-seal your dan tian and soul sea. The last thing I want is to see Haldris’ ugly face... at least not before Nyxara’s return."

Adam’s knuckles whitened around his blade, his eyes locked on the golem, which blurred through his spells in a space bleeding from light and dark tears that looked like crisscrossing claw marks.

He could win. He knew it. He had to. But he couldn’t risk damaging the mysterious room with his atomic spells—Haldris would instantly feel his Qi. No, there was something hidden between the annoying cleaver’s words: Leoric, whoever was the true terror. The golem, on the other hand, relied on its enchantment and her flawless technique.

Technique... Of course! Only unpredictability could defeat the colossal golem’s orderly predictions. She was the opposite. No, she took it a step further from unpredictability to pure chaotic movements, as if showing him what he should strive to achieve. So far, his spells had been complex constructs with a single purpose—to destroy her.

That was where he had gone wrong.

Just as the golem reached him, he muttered, "If it’s chaos that you want, I shall give it to you."

His remaining constructs shattered like stained glass, filling the room with elemental particles that drifted around him. A geyser erupted beneath his feet, propelling him upward.

The golem sliced through the water, her sword gulping the mana for a split second before a sizzle made her leap back. She glared at her cuirass, where darkened holes smeared the silver. Not water: acid.

As her lips twitched a little more, Adam hovered mid-air, a whirlwind flapping his ragged uniform. Like a maestro, he gestured, and mana played to his tune.

A firestorm swirled around the golem before she cleaved it like ribbons of satin. But it had robbed her of her vision for a heartbeat, enough for his next spell to rewrite the room.

She stepped forward, lunging, only for her body to fall upward and her face to plunge toward the ground... no, it had become the ceiling. When she tentatively tilted her head to the right, it moved left. When she tried to push it left, it moved even further out of place.

Clever, but not enough, not against her.

She flipped through the chaotic space, her heel finding purchase on empty air. Then, she rode it like a ramp as her lips curved a little more.

Adam pursed his lips, waving his hands in grand gestures. "Is there anything you can’t do, you nightmarish piece of scrap!"

Ice pillars broader than three men fell at her approaching figure while molten hands shot from the slabs beneath her. Lightning rumbled down, and space itself twisted into invisible blades. But her red gems locked onto something else as she effortlessly shattered the projectiles, for Adam was proud but not foolish enough to waste words without guaranteed victory in sight.

A distraction to hide his empty right hand.

Where was his blade?

Before she could locate it, a chaotic scream tore through the room.

"YAHOOO!"

The arm of the colossal golem shot at her, the crystalline edge of the Chronoscar, scaled to match its frame, whistling toward her neck. And wielding it like an oversized glove was a smirking Desmond.

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AN: Feeling down about this month’s stats (around 75$ only, so much less after processing fees and conversion to euros... around 3 daily collections, etc...).

To be honest, I don’t know what prevents the book from doing well, which is depressing considering all the effort and love I put into the story, especially in avoiding clunky info dumps, classic rinse and repeat, generic action scenes, or random power-up tropes.

If you have any ideas, even if it is what you hate most or simply what you’ve enjoyed so far, please share them with me.