Marindore tossed back another potion bottle, keeping his face frozen lest it twist in disgust. Again he tossed wealth to the depths in order to merely function during this prolonged siege.

Never had he foreseen a day where he would grow unable to move, the manasphere unable to support his permanently armored body. Even in the relative backwater that was The Gray Depths, its manasphere sparse when compared against other bastions of civilization, he had not encountered such a problem before. Bonded to such a powerful artifact it was always a possibility, but the depth and flow of his well was such that he only had to pace himself under normal circumstances. Knowing his vast limits was why he had taken the risk to form the Bond in the first place. Yet now his well refused to fill on its own, not that he had the time to spare for a break in any case.

Forced to consider efficiency for the first time ever, he had to relax his form back into his basic state, that of a gangly, pimple-faced preteen, one who just happened to be made of the same impervious metal as the Adamant Armor he once Bonded. Thanks to his hoarder nature, something inherited from his father no doubt, his storage enchantment still contained his old wardrobe. Thus, him lacking pants had not been an issue—not after Sky had sent a politely worded whisper into his ear informing him that his loose cannon had become a distracting talking point for those on the wall, at least.

His cannon being on display aside, his excursion into the swamps beyond the wall was going relatively well. He ignored the tiny crawlers and larger swarmers, leaving them to those on the wall. He again ignored any distracting thoughts regarding those oversized rats and the future Troubles they represented, instead focusing on the larger grabbers who approached from the sea as he made his way out to the flingers.

He ignored a grabber’s tentacled slap, his sense of pain being something he lost along with his flesh, grasping the slippery limb with barbed adamant spikes grown from his hands and pulling the creature towards him, towards its doom. It tried to toss him aside, but found his enhanced mass impossible to lift.

He was a single, nigh indestructible man. While he couldn’t destroy this horde alone, they were no danger to him either. He just needed to take out as many of these powerful creatures as possible while his mana potions lasted.

To keep his transformations to a minimum he let the creature attempt to bite him. It raised its body up and dropped it down on him, its shark-like maw open wide.

Once inside the beast, ripping out the creature’s core only required the simple matter of finding it. He flickered on his mana-sight for but a moment, calling upon one of the enchantments once imbued into his Bonded armor’s visor. Fingers briefly sharpened pierced through the dense musculature as he stabbed his hand forward. The flesh around him slumped as he ripped loose the core and deposited it into his storage among a dozen or so others. Too bad such cores were fatal for humans to consume directly, requiring alchemical processing before the mana contained within could be safely utilized.

Depositing the entire corpse into his storage might have been the easiest way for him to escape its insides, but such actions also required a proportional amount of mana from his well. Instead he crawled his way out, like the birthing of yet another abomination. Suppressing unhelpful thoughts he shoved himself free of the creature.

Out in the swamp the crawlers and swarmers already tore away at the dead flesh, their fallen brethren becoming nothing more than another meal to sate their endless hunger.

Marindore hesitated, unwilling to leave his kill behind as fuel for his enemies’ empowerment, but resigned himself to the fact he could only do what he could, making the best out of the resources available to him. Having denied them the core, these scavengers might grow in size, but less so in power. Hopefully they could serve as training fodder for those on the wall.

After slogging through a league or so of swampland—and several dozen grabbers—Marindore approached the zone of devastation around the nearest flinger.

A warrior as valiant as himself wouldn’t have second thoughts, certainly not when he knew almost nothing could bring him harm. Yet, this monstrosity occupied more space than the royal palace. Taking the titan down might be a greater challenge than he anticipated.

The titan’s tentacles whirled in a flurry of activity, digging up mangrove trees, boulders, even packed balls of mud, flinging it all towards the city. While clusters of eyes seemed to grow randomly from its central body, allowing it to look every which way, its maw remained hidden.

Watching the creature work, thinking back to the reports he read of flinger activity, how they formed a line across the coastline, a pit sank in Marindore’s stomach. This wasn’t even an attack on the city. No—it just happened to be in their way. These things were expanding the ocean, pushing back the coast, flinging anything not of the ocean inland, likely making their way to the nearest coastal dungeon, The Gray Depths, which just so happened to be on the far side of the city, nestled between the twin peaks of The Gray Fangs.

The city was just a target of opportunity, more food for their sizable horde.

Their furious activity had to be draining these sizable creatures' reserves—it had to be. Simply moving should require considerable mana from such a creature. Whatever depths these beasts crawled out from might have a dungeon to sustain its monstrous core growth, hopefully slowly over centuries or even millenia, but here on the coast the manasphere had gone dry, as he knew quite well. Not even such titans were immune to the tyranny of mana consumption. Sooner or later they’d have to crawl back from whence they came—assuming they didn’t manage to claim the city’s dungeon for themselves.

He flickered on his mana sight. The blazing beacon of power within the creature did little to bring him hope.

Well. At least they weren’t moving very fast, taking their time to dig up the coastline as they advanced. Yet, who knew what might trigger a change in their tactics?

Charging in would likely get him flung all the way back to the city. Seeing no other option he spilled downward, shifting the metal of his body into a long, wrist-thick, millipede-like creature. While he could maintain an internal air pocket for buoyancy, sticking to the swamp bottom seemed like a safer bet. Most days one couldn’t see the bottom of the swamp. With all the mud stirred into the water by the flinger, he felt his approach would remain unseen. A metal suit of armor required no air to breathe, thus neither did he.

His well was full, his potion stock far from empty. Efficiency was one thing, but now was the time for action.

He swung oceanward, unwilling to get gathered up with a chunk of earth as the flinger excavated swampland.

Ignoring the tentacled creatures which took an interest in the shiny new underwater curiosity, he scurried towards his destination, occasionally flickering on his mana sight to make sure he remained on target.

The excavating titan sat on five massive tentacles, plus a thick tube which seemed to pump water out into the ocean behind itself. Looking closely, he noted not even the tiny crawlers dared approach beneath the giant flinger. Water, mud, and all the detritus of a swamp got sucked into the creature, while out its back pumped clear water, everything else apparently being digested by the titan.

He couldn’t have hoped for a more inviting entrance. Instead of the expected shark teeth, the flinger’s maw resembled a giant lamprey mouth, its sharp teeth aimed to shred apart all which it consumed.

His weight proved no match against the titan’s suction. Inside its bowels he reverted to his default state, only then recalling the pair of pants he obviously left behind in the swamp. They’d be worth going back to look for, once he saved the city. Enchanted pants weren’t exactly an iron a dozen. Trying to find a pair of pants in the swamp, left wherever the flinger might have sent them, was hardly a task worth his time, however, no matter the value of the pants.

Maybe he could post a retrieval request on the questing board? He could just see it now: ‘Task: Find the Guard Commander’s Pants. Reward: One silver and a single personal favor from the Guard Commander.’

Eh. Whatever. Trip it. He gave up his royal dignity long ago. And no doubt word of the request would make his father fume, same as everything else Marindore did—a happy bonus. He just wished he would be able to see the look on his father’s face when the old man realized he would need to personally thank Marindore for saving the city. Again.

He would offer more after a quarter if no one completed his pants-finding task. One silver was a bit low, perhaps, but he didn’t want to encourage adventurers to fight amongst themselves in order to be the first to his pants, either.

He flickered his mana sight off and on as he twisted upwards, the tooth-lined tunnel growing ever narrower. Ahead he watched a turtle who had been too stubborn to flee the flinger’s onslaught get caught in the narrowing channel. As soon as its shell touched the teeth the entire tunnel narrowed, the teeth stabbing and crushing in equal measure, turning the turtle into a pulp of broken shell and ground meat.

The teeth then squeezed into Marindore as well, pushing and stabbing into him but finding no purchase.

He suspected he was bound for a vat of stomach acid, and thus decided to end his ride short. Magics of void and similar devoted to pure annihilation would always remain as dangerous to him as anyone else, and while his body of armor had thankfully proven invulnerable to the few acids encountered so far, he had been warned that a strong enough magical acid could likely dissolve adamant. It wasn’t the sort of warning one wanted to test.

Flaring his mana sight once more he found the beast’s giant core overhead. Even if he had the mana to shift the thing into storage, the thing was bigger than the warehouse-sized storage space of his armor. Yet, he couldn’t leave it on the shore for the other tentacled beasts to consume. Somehow he’d have to get the thing into the city. A problem for the near future, but first he had other concerns.

He shifted his body to pure liquid and poured through the cracks between the teeth which tried to crush him, focusing upward in the direction of the core.

The finest of adamant needles stabbed into the tough flesh. The needle grew, thickening and elongating until he punched through the layer of tissue. The massive creature’s regeneration, no doubt fueled by its core, tried to close the wound, but found the task impossible until he spilled through the tiny hole.

He found himself in a fast downward flowing stream of thick purple fluid, what had to be blood pumping away from his destination. Latching on with his sharpened fingers and toes he fought the current and climbed up the tube of flesh. It might not be the easiest path, but it seemed the most direct.

All in all, taking down this titan seemed to be going far easier than he had expected. And he’d hoped for a challenge, too. This was almost as boring as the time he quietly cleared the dungeon back when he was just a kid who had just formed his Bond, eager to prove to himself he could do what none other had done in a quarter of years.

It wasn’t a question of if he could, merely how long it would take. How many people would die while he climbed up this shaft?

A white tentacled blob exploded against his face, covering it with thick strands of a sticky goo. In an unprecedented turn of events he couldn’t wipe the stuff off, his adamant hand instead sticking to his face. More and more explosions rocked his body, covering him with the extremely sticky substance.

He tried shifting his arm to remove the stuff, but found the sticky goo restricted the flow of his metal as any surface in contact with the substance proved unable to become unbonded to the impossible glue.

Well then.

So much for him having an easy time of things.