Ezzie said, just as we reached the Drowned Quarry.

Ezzie said.

Ezzie said.

I dashed through the shallow water, aggroing every golem in sight. The quarry was fairly large, though, and it took a full twenty minutes of running around between the moving statues before I’d aggro’d them all. Even more annoying was the fact that if I let a golem get too far away they’d simply give up the chase and head back to where they’d spawned.

Rounding up a hundred percent of them proved impossible, but I ended up grouping about twenty of the creatures together. There were so many golems—and they were so tightly packed, shoulder to shoulder—that the water around them was seething under the nonstop impact of their footfalls.

“Lecherous Strike,” I said. “Witchflame Burst.” I waited for the horde of golems to close on me, and when the lead mob was almost close enough to hit me, I slammed my hammer down into the water.

But the water boiled away instantly, throwing up a huge cloud of steam in the process, and the mud beneath flash-dried before my hammer even made contact. The resulting wave of purple-green fire vaporized a huge swath of the swamp and caused so many yellow numbers to appear overhead that the golems were lost in a sea of damage readouts.

The numbers themselves weren’t impressive—thirties, forties, a few fifties—but the sheer number of times the attack had struck was pretty incredible.

I worked the golems down easily from there; as long as I stayed close, the golems just lumbered after me in perpetuity as their health values steadily fell. I permanently learned Lecherous Strike too, which was pretty cool.

When the golems fell, they did so enmasse, maybe ninety percent of the creatures crumbling into rocks and splashing into the water at the same time. Ezzie took to deprinting the loot as I dragged the stragglers away from the bodies and kept grinding them down.

The next combo put the rest of the golems down, so I checked my experience bar right away: that pull had been worth thirty-five percent of a level. I said, laughing the words.

this?> Ezzie said, as she floated the Constructor from body to body, deprinting everything in sight.

I said, looking around.

I said.

I looked around at the empty quarry and spotted a lone golem splashing through the water.

Ezzie said.

I said.

The respawn rate was definitely slower than I’d hoped; it took the better part of an hour before the golems I’d killed began to pop back into place, and there were maybe fifty total spawns to work with.

It was pretty cool to watch, seeing the nanobots uncloak and meld into feet, into shins, knees and so on, forming the golems from the bottom-up.

By the time we finished up, we’d collected an obscene amount of mining materials, six sets of golem plate, fourteen pieces of gear that were too light to be of use for me, and a handful of weapons that were destined for the villagers.

The prettiest piece, though, I would be keeping for myself:

{Stonehide Ring} (Binds on Pickup)

Grade: F

Item level: 12

Slot: Finger

Quality: Rare

Secondaries: +2% Physical Mitigation

Magical Resistance: 20

Durability: 15/15

I’d also hit level eight and—to my massive chagrin—level nine; I’d misjudged the number of golems on a particularly large pull and had accidentally picked up too much experience, so I’d missed out on three potential bonus points. Stats were still looking pretty decent, thankfully.

{Silas}

Level: 9

Base Class: Brawler

Gear level: 53 > 80

Grade: F

Strength: 28 > 31

Dexterity: 15

Constitution: 16 > 23

Intelligence: 8

Wisdom: 7

Charisma: 8

Physical Attack: 17 > 22

Magical Attack: 7 > 13

Health: 260 > 330

Stamina: 160 > 230

Mana: 80

Armor: 70 > 75 (45% physical mitigation)

Magical Resistance: 17 > 37 (24% magical mitigation)

Frost Resistance: 20 (13% frost mitigation)

But the loss of those precious points had left me pretty frustrated and I was exhausted aside from all that, so Ezzie and I decided to call it a night, mulling over our final Class Modifier choices as I hoofed it back to the fast travel node.

{Smooth Operator I}

Effect: Any attack that would otherwise deal more than 25% of your current health is instead converted into {Operator’s Edge}, a DoT (damage over time) that inflicts 10% of the converted damage every 1 second for 10 seconds. Additional attacks will increase the strength of the DoT; this passive may affect any number of strikes simultaneously.

Next level: Adds a 5% chance per tick of damage taken to nullify the tick’s damage.

{Glare Plating I}

Effect: You gain 1% Strength for 20s whenever you reflect damage. Max stacks 5.

Next level: Max stacks 6.

{Lustrous Sheen I}

Effect: You radiate 20% of all healing received to up to 5 allies within 10 yards.

Next level: All allies healed by this passive gain {Luster} for 5s, increasing the effect of all healing received by 5%.

Those were all…interesting. Seemed like our modifiers were dovetailing a bit.

Ezzie said.

Ezzie said.

I said.

Ezzie said.

Ezzie said.

Ezzie said.

I cursed under my breath.

I climbed up out of the quarry and struck out on the road back to town, which was straight and narrow.

Ezzie grunted.

I could feel Ezzie readying another argument, so I pressed forward.

Ezzie said.

I said, excited now.

Ezzie said.

I said, laughing as I selected the passive and confirmed my choice.

Ezzie said.

Ezzie sighed through the link.

Well…that wasn’t great. But if he’d made it that high, maybe he really did know better. How could he not, really?

Ezzie said. She paused, and I felt her swallow through the link.

Ezzie said.

Something struck me then, a feeling of hopelessness that was flooding through the link, so clear that I felt like I could probably articulate it. Seemed worth a shot.

Ezzie said.

Ezzie said.

I forced a laugh.

, Ezzie said, just as I reached the fast travel node and the cloud dipped down and scooped me up.