A huge boulder pinned the golem's torso to the ground.
Inside the chassis, relays clattered dully. The machine's severed limbs and shattered head, lying a few meters away among tree debris, stirred simultaneously.
Its arms and legs slowly dragged themselves back toward the torso. The lenses on the golem's head flickered dim once again.
Having fully restored joint mobility, the golem pressed its palms against the bottom edge of the boulder pinning it down. Its fingers drove deep into the solid rock. With a rasping grind, the golem heaved the boulder above itself, sharply locked its elbow joints, and hurled it forward.
Since the column's vanguard had already advanced farther, the boulder crashed straight into the middle ranks of the march. A pillar of dust, fragments of iron-bound shields, and shattered armor flew in every direction. Panic erupted along the swath as wounded soldiers began screaming, trying to claw their way out from under the rubble.
The flank commander, marching slightly ahead, heard the crashing and screams behind his back. He spun around sharply and yelled:
"What on earth is happening back there?!"
The golem rapidly closed the distance and smashed into the ranks of soldiers once again, crushing everything in its path. New spells instantly flew toward it: mages hurled fireballs and lightning bolts, but the metal simply absorbed the impacts.
At one moment, as the golem raised an arm for another strike, one of the knights spotted a flaw on its chassis. A glow bled through a deep crack in the breastplate shattered from previous explosions.
"Aim for the chest!" the knight roared at the top of his lungs. "The core is in there!"
The support mages immediately adapted their tactics. They began intentionally baiting the golem, launching minor spells at its lenses to force the machine into wide, sweeping swings. Taking advantage of the opening, that same knight lunged forward. He darted beneath the arm and drove his sword with all his strength right into the glowing seam on its chest.
The golem froze instantly. The light in its lenses died out, and its arms dropped.
The rank-and-file soldiers around breathed a sigh of relief, assuming the danger had passed. The knight hauled his blade out of the warped chassis with effort and turned his back, preparing to step away to his men. But at that exact moment, the golem's internal systems went into critical overload.
The nearest mages were the first to realize what was happening. To them, time seemed to stop: they watched a red glow rapidly expand through every seam and crack in the golem's armor. The metal shell swelled for an instant, webbed with bright lines, and then burst.
An energy wave instantly scorched the ground, practically obliterating the nearby unit. The shockwave slammed the surviving soldiers into trees with such velocity that the trunks bent, snapped, and flew apart. Infantry and wood debris were scattered in all directions across a radius of several dozen meters. Nothing remained at the battle site but a smoking swath.
Meanwhile, Iron stood behind the wide trunk of a tree, hidden by dense foliage.
The total head count of the attacking army updated rapidly on his retinas. The numbers tumbled downward, reflecting enemy casualties from Noah's ambushes and the golem's detonation, until the marker finally settled at 437,123.
"Great," the engineer noted to himself, sliding an empty magazine into a pouch.
Suddenly, the system registered thermal signatures and the movement of another enemy unit a couple of kilometers from his position. Iron raised his pistol, calculated the necessary elevation lead, and fired several quick shots.
The energy bolts arced skyward, heading straight for the center of the enemy column.
However, the rear mages of that detachment reacted in time: noticing the flashes descending from above, they instantly deployed a broad group dome. Iron's projectiles slammed into the magical shield with a thunderous roar. Several powerful explosions echoed, but the dome held.
"Damn it," Iron spat in annoyance, seeing through his retinas that the targets remained unharmed.
An uproar broke out among the soldiers as commanders began screaming at the top of their lungs, ordering an immediate re-formation and readiness for potential combat.
Realizing the enemy's attention had been drawn, Iron reached down to his collar, pressed the transmitter button on his neck, and opened comms:
"Elyria, what's your situation over there?"
Elyria maneuvered between the trees at high speed. Arrows and magic bolts flew at her, but she dodged in time, periodically erecting small barriers. On the move, she selectively eliminated soldiers from the enemy's front lines.
At the same time, the call from the engineer came through. Using the comm link, she replied:
"I ran into one of the units. Iron, they've completely surrounded the entire forest—there are no open zones at all. Be as careful as possible."
To clear some space for herself, she swept her arm sharply: several thick vines burst from the ground in an instant, smashing another group with a heavy blow and shattering their formation.
"Your job is to kill the mages," Iron said. "We'll deal with the knights ourselves somehow."
"Consider it done," Elyria replied curtly.
She shot sharply upward, rising toward the clouds. Aiming her palms down, she uttered:
"Extraction."
Colossal knotted roots burst straight out of the earth. They began rapidly intertwining, deliberately snagging all the enemy mages in the sector. In literally a couple of seconds, the roots completely sealed them inside a massive wooden sphere.
The sphere immediately began to contract slowly but with immense force, shrinking in size. A sickening crunch echoed from within. As soon as they stopped showing signs of life, Elyria hurled the sphere downward with a sharp gesture of her hand, crashing it straight onto the heads of the remaining knights.
The commander of the attacked unit panicked and activated his communication artifact.
"Lord Olgerd, the divine spirit Elyria has attacked us!" he yelled into the device. "What are your orders?!"
Olgerd's even voice came through the artifact:
"In a few minutes, you may deploy the Seal of Giers."
The connection cut abruptly. The commander stowed the device and bolted toward the armored supply wagons at lightning speed.
Elyria spotted his maneuver from above. Thick roots burst from the ground directly in the fleeing commander's path. The commander veered sharply aside, dodging the strike, and sliced through the remaining tendrils with his sword on the run. Elyria began preparing her next spell, but the surviving enemy mages quickly regrouped and shielded their commander behind dense barriers.
Elyria scoffed in annoyance. She raised her hand, and a glowing green orb ignited above her palm. The energy mass expanded rapidly. Elyria lowered her hand, directing a beam of magic at the fleeing commander.
"Do it!" he screamed frantically, without looking back.
The mages projected a frontal barrier before themselves, while one of the unit's knights drove a metal device deep into the ground with all his force. The earth shuddered, and a massive, multi-layered iron structure thrust out from beneath the soil. This defensive structure instantly expanded in all directions, screening earth and sky alike.
Elyria's green beam struck the metal. The energy punched through the first iron layer, then shattered the second and third. The enemy mages held their barriers with the last of their strength, pushed to their absolute limits as their faces grew pale with exhaustion. However, that delay was enough for the commander—he managed to reach the armored wagon and retrieve the Seal of Giers from inside.
Realizing she wouldn't breach the final iron barrier in time, Elyria sharply jerked her arm to shift the beam's trajectory. She redirected the green beam to the side, incinerating the knights and support mages surrounding the wagon. The stream of energy instantly disintegrated the soldiers, leaving behind nothing but blackened, smoking earth.
Elyria grew noticeably pale from exhaustion. She focused the beam's remaining energy into a single point in front of the fortification, forcing the magical stream to hold. Within seconds, the soil began to vaporize and rise upward under the colossal heat.
In the next instant, a massive green explosion thundered, its shockwave tearing out in every direction. Elyria cut off the beam and caught her breath heavily, hovering in the air.
Virtually the entire sector was completely wiped clean. The flash and shockwave had annihilated the support mages, the knights, and the commander.
At that moment, the commander of an adjacent squad sprinted over to the scorched blast site. Navigating quickly through the smoke and debris, he located the intact seal. The man tore off the first protective cover, then the second, then the third, and unfolded the mechanism. The device instantly transformed into a massive cannon, which he gripped tightly with both hands.
Elyria, meanwhile, used her magical sight to gauge the situation through the settling dust.
"There's no one here..." she said softly.
However, as Elyria looked a bit farther, her gaze locked onto a massive concentration of energy.
"On the other hand... over there... there's an astronomical amount of mana."
Just then, the cannon in the commander's hands fired a powerful violet-white beam with a deep hum. Elyria caught sight of the approaching flash only in her peripheral vision. Acting on pure reflex, she teleported a fraction of a second before the energy stream incinerated the spot where she had just been hovering.
Elyria materialized deep in the thickets and immediately hid in the dense canopy of a tall tree. A couple of seconds later, rapid footsteps sounded from below. Staying low, Elyria peeked through the branches and saw a large unit of knights moving in to sweep the area. Alongside them were men wielding high-tech cannons.
Elyria mentally transmitted a signal into the engineer's mind:
"Iron, their cannons are just like yours. Be careful... Also, I won't be able to fight right now; I need a little time to recover my strength."
Meanwhile, on the scorched clearing, one of the soldiers ran up to the commander with the deployed weapon, scanning the empty ground.
"Did you kill her?" he asked.
The commander lowered his barrel glumly:
"Unlikely."
"Got it, Elyria," Iron's calm response echoed in the spirit's mind.
He was already deep in combat on his own sector of the forest, holding off the advance of several knights. Iron moved constantly, picking the safest vantage points that kept him invisible to the enemy. He maintained a heavy, continuous hail of fire from his pistol, picking off the enemy one by one.
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