I cracked my neck as I stood in front of the portal leading to the final boss. After looting the safe, I decided that it would be a good place to hunker down for a bit to recover. Locking myself inside, I had managed a three-hour power nap. While the floor wasn’t the most comfortable, the rest was something I desperately needed. My shoulder was back to normal, the bruises healing much faster now that they weren’t in constant battle. The most important thing was the stress headache I was starting to feel was completely gone. Now I was mesmerized by the portal. Instead of six colors swirling down into oblivion like I expected, it had an almost rainbow sheen to it.

Choose difficulty level, 1-6

I wasn’t going to get in any better of shape, so I went ahead and choose option six before stepping through the portal. I was teleported to an absolutely massive chamber, and got a notification welcoming me to the heart of the volcano. I was near the edge of a platform that was again surrounded by lava, only the platform this time was 400 yards across. Patrolling the area were six groups of golems, though they left me a 50 yard area on my side. Each group had four spheres with three rows of spikes on them. One row of spikes was currently vertical and was at the widest portion of the sphere. The other two were halfway to each end, and at an angle facing away from the central row. In addition to the four spheres, were two double headed dog type golems. The leg joints could easily switch orientation, turning the rear head into the front head in an instant. Along the back was a series of barbed blades. Leading each group was a humanoid golem. Each forearm widened to form a built in buckler, and most were armed with twin axes.

Their movement patterns were painfully obvious. Two groups went back and forth in straight lines between my area and a strange set of buildings across the way. Two groups would start at the building and zig zag back and forth, going to the nearest edge first. The remaining groups crossed paths first but followed the same zig zag pattern. Isolating a group wouldn’t be that challenging, but I couldn’t do it from my current position. I had a feeling the two groups that went straight back and forth would likely come to each other’s rescue, so I wanted some tactics down first. I headed toward the right, and waited until a group was nearing the edge. Ice seemed to be the go to for weaknesses in previous levels, so I figured I would unleash it first.

“Blizzard.” I calmly shot forth a burst of cold air laced with several icicles.

“Scatter and converge.” The humanoid golem immediately ordered, and the four spheres took off immediately in a wide angle to try and flank me. The hounds started to move, but were too slow and got caught up in the attack that the humanoid simply knelt and blocked the majority of with its shields. Seeing the spheres coming at me too fast to keep pressure on the humanoid, I created a pair of mana ramps and knelt down. The leading spheres hit the ramps and went careening through the air, ricocheting off each other above my head and bouncing into the lava behind me. The other two broke off at the last second, circling around back to the humanoid.

“Flame strike.” I rolled to my left, dodging the burst of flame that it had sent my way.

“Ice spear wall.” I countered as I got back into a kneeling position, creating six spears of ice that impaled the dogs that were already leaping to take out my throat. I couldn’t quite dodge the spheres that came right after that, taking one glancing blow to the shoulder after it smashed through the ice spears while the other managed to breach my mana shield and slash a line through the side of my thigh. As they rolled away I used telekinesis to send one flying off into the lava.

“Flame strike.” Distracted by the spheres, I took that attack directly onto my back. Stumbling forward, I turned to look at the rapidly advancing golem. “Harry and disrupt.” It ordered its’ remaining minion as flames erupted along the edges of its axe. I didn’t think that would do any additional damage, but it could be intimidating as well as blinding if the flames could change in intensity. I waited until the sphere came around and was just passing the humanoid before I unleashed my next spell.

“Arctic blast.” I aimed a bit lower than normal, freezing the sphere and getting the legs of the humanoid to falter. It tried to brace itself, but a swift ice spear to the back finished it off. While it felt like I had been battling for ten minutes, in reality it was just over a minute. I grabbed the loot and retreated to the area that wasn’t patrolled to see what I needed to do from here. Noise at the opposite end caused me to look up, and despair just a bit.

The buildings I had seen were golem factories. By the time I had taken care of the group, it had already produced another replacement set of spheres. Next came one dog golem, another pair of spheres, a dog, and finally another humanoid. The group waited until the gap in patrols reached them, then they joined in to refill the gap. By my best guesstimate, it took a bit over a minute to create a set of sphere golems. The dogs took two and a half minutes apiece, while the humanoid took nearly ten minutes to finish. Luckily the groups seemed to be finished at six, so I wouldn’t get completely overwhelmed.

“Well, this will be a pickle.” I muttered. The staggered patrols guaranteed that the zig zagging ones wouldn’t leave many options for catching them all at the same time. “I should be far enough away. Let’s try this. Lonely traveler, remnant of a planet that never was. End now your ceaseless wandering. Scorch the skies and shake the very bones of this world, cataclysm mark your tomb. Meteor!”

Unable to cast spell

This spell requires you to be outside while casting. You will suffer backlash and lose half the spell’s mana cost.

PAIN! PAIN! PAIN PAIN PAINPAINPAIN! A white hot spike shot through my brain, and I dropped to the ground and started rolling around trying to alleviate it. I lay there, panting, long enough for my mana to recover. I know I was incapacitated for at least a minute, and was glad I had retreated to a safe area before attempting the spell. Eventually I recovered, and looked at everything once again. I could take out the groups, but then I would still have to take out the factories as they were producing more golems. That didn’t seem like the best of ideas. Instead I headed out to the site of the last battle, and waited for another group to come into the area.

“Earthen dome. Reinforce earth. Earthen dome. Reinforce earth. Earthen dome. Reinforce earth.” As the group came into range, I quickly trapped them and tried to make the trap as difficult as possible to escape. I could hear some slight bangs coming from inside, but that was fine. They would have to go through nearly a foot of reinforced stone to get free, and that would take a while. With one group trapped, I quickly moved on to the next one, and repeated the process with each of the zig zagging groups. Not wanting to deal with the straight groups just yet, I headed down to the factories and took a look.

There was a central gap between the buildings, and two sets of symmetrical factories. “Let’s see how these doors handle this. Plasma blast.” I sent a streak of superheated flame against the door. To my shock, it did nothing besides scorch it a bit. “Ah fuck, we are in a volcano. Hmmm.” I looked over the side, and got an evil grin. I didn’t know why earlier in the dungeon I hadn’t done it, but lava was an enhanced element. Why didn’t I use that instead of telekinesis to launch attacks? This time I flung a tendril of it across the smallest factory and waited. And waited. Eventually the lava cooled without doing much to the metal, and I was forced to head off to the side and hide from a returning patrol.

“Damnit, this is getting annoying.” I growled, looking at the remains of the ineffective lava. Cold would work, but it would take forever and be negated by the heat of the surrounding lava. I could blast it with lightning, but that wasn’t guaranteed to work. Smashing it with something could work, but again I didn’t think it would be that effective of a strategy. Metals strong enough to withstand the heat of lava likely had high physical strength as well. “Wait a second.” I muttered, trying to think things through. If I could force open the doors, there were going to be parts that could be attacked and destroyed. Water was great for destroying sensitive electrical equipment, but this world ran on mana as well. Disrupting that was usually the domain of darkness magic. Could I combine them in a way to make a super corrosive liquid?

Twenty minutes later, I gave a dark chuckle. While it was mostly darkness and water, I ended up needing to mix in a bit of earth and fire. The result easily ate through a bit of metal I had conjured, and I felt ready. Not too late either, as I had to go around and create another reinforced dome over all four of my trapped patrols. By the time I had returned, the only patrols remaining were three quarters of the way to the safe area, and far too far away to provide immediate aid. I sent eight mana tendrils out, and forced them into the four doors of the factories on the right side of the gap. One for the humanoid, one for the canine, and two doors for the spheres. Flexing my mental muscles, I pried them open like elevator doors, revealing the pristine factories within. Judging by the amount of shiny materials and runic writing, this was an incredibly complicated system. One that I immediately wrecked by launching orbs of my newest magic inside. As they exploded in the center, they coated all the nearby equipment and immediately started dissolving metal and disrupting mana conduits. Arcs of electricity burst forth, further demolishing the factories.

*ALARM* *ALARM* *ALARM*

An incredibly loud klaxon sounded as soon as the first factories were taken down, and the patrols immediately started returning. They had thrown all caution to the wind, and the spheres were leading the way by far. The first set of four was quickly disposed of from an unexpected mana ramp and a bit of a gravity assist, but the others swarmed around the ramp and made straight for me. “Featherlight. Gravity well.” I created a gravity well nearly twenty feet above me, and at the very last second leapt straight up.

*CLANG* *CLANG*

The spheres collided with horrendous force, and that seemed to disorient them. A flick of telekinesis for each of them, and they were over the edge. I had a second to prepare for the four canines, and overcharged an earth spell. “Field of spikes.” They stood no chance, as I had slightly modified it. Instead of flat ground, I had the floor drop down slightly and angled all the spikes inward. With compromised footing and no way to evade, they were all skewered.

I started heading toward the other set of factories, blasting the klaxon with a bit of lightning to destroy it. “Ah, now I can hear myself think.” I said, turning to prepare for the humanoids to attack. I was preparing for them to split up and try and attack from my blind spots, but they had other plans.

“Mode change: Total defense.” The lead one said, and I watched in awe as his bucklers flowed down through his hands and fused with his axes, changing shape so that they became large shields with a flattened portion toward the golem’s central line so the shields could be better combined. The second golem used the first one to cover, and they both charged directly at me!

“Corrosive blast.” I immediately cast the same liquid that took down the factories at the golems, hoping to wear away its shield. A second, smaller cast got shot towards its feet, and to my luck ended up eating into both of its ankles. It kept coming until its foot broke off, falling down a few feet from me. Its partner leapt over it, and was unleashing a series of blazing fast slashes at me. I tried conjuring a vortex shield, but his attacks keep disrupting the shield before it could form.

“Lightning tether!” I cried after taking a third slash across the chest. A bolt of lightning arced from my hand to the golem, disrupting it for a few seconds. “Mage blade.” I didn’t have much time, so I went with a simple attack. A blade of darkness magic to cut straight through the golem’s core. I managed to pierce it, and smiled in satisfaction as the golem died.

“AAAAAH SONOFABITCH!” I screamed in pain, unable to savor my victory. Two spheres were rolling away from me as I slammed down onto my back, legs bleeding from the spikes as they passed me by. I turned to see the doors to the factory already closing after having released the new spheres. “Mother fucking reinforcements.” I swore, seeing red. I turned back to the spheres, and sent out four mana tendrils since the spheres couldn’t detect mana. Two tendrils latched on to each sphere, one on each end of the axis it was spinning on. Once I lifted them into the air, they were helpless as I casually tossed them into the lava.

“Now, let’s take care of you.” I said, heading to the sphere factories. I slammed my mana into the gap and tried to force them open again, only to find that I was unable to. Some sort of self-locking mechanism in case things were activated? “If only I had something to eat through that lock. Oh wait, corrosive blast.” I didn’t want to wait, so I went ahead and blasted all of the factory doors with my new magic. Inside was a mesmerizing sight, a magical assembly line. The spheres were nearing completion, so I quickly blasted everything with corrosive liquid again. The lightshow was a bit better this time, as the opened sides of the golems discharged copious amounts of mana.

“That looks dangerous. You guys should really make sure that those front doors stay sealed when a work is in progress.” I chuckled, before turning and heading toward the trapped patrols. I quickly reinforced the domes one last time, then I would silently create a hole for me to blast magic through. Even in the heart of a volcano, unleashing a blizzard within an enclosed space with no cover is a great way to take out enemy golems.

*RRROOOOAAAAARRRRR!!!!!!*

As soon as I killed the last of the golems, I heard a massive roar coming from the direction of the factories. Rising from the lava was a massive humanoid golem. One hand ended in three claw like digits, while the other was a massive club. The feet were strange as well, having three clawed toes pointing forward and one pointing backward. It walked slightly forward, balanced by a large tail. There was something deforming the back, but I couldn’t quite make it out.

“You killed my children you bastard!” The golem screamed, charging forward.

“Blizzard.” I launched a cold attack at it, but was surprised when it simply charged through the spell and slashed at me with its clawed hand. Before I could retaliate, a second arm uncurled from the back, grabbed me, and threw me across the platform. I rolled for a bit, groaning as I stumbled to my feet. This time I was going to teach the golem a lesson. “Lone traveler, bringer of life. The stars give birth to your tails. Streak forth, and annihilate my target. Comet.” Once again the golem charged straight at me, only pausing for a second to bat aside the attack with its club. “Vortex shield!” I frantically created a shield to block the knife hand slashing for me, but it went straight through the shield and tore three gashes on my arm. Jerking back in pain was the only thing that saved me from getting smashed by the overhand swing of the club, though the punch follow through hit me directly in the chest and sent me flying backwards again. I was down to a quarter of my health and just over half my mana, and I knew I didn’t have enough to cast a spell with the power needed to slow down this new golem.

“Do you have any idea how long it took me to create them?” It shrieked again, and I saw a possible opportunity.

“They were just golems!” I called out. “How hard is it to make one?”

The golem paused, staring at me. “Just golems? JUST GOLEMS?! THEY WERE A ROADMAP TO THIS, THE GREATEST CREATION OF TY THE BURROWER! HAVE YOU NO IDEA WHO YOU ARE EVEN FIGHTING?”

“Ty the Burrower? Never heard of you. Sounds like the name of someone who likes to run away though.” I shrugged, hoping to goad the thing into a monologue.

“Maybe when I was a worthless fleshbag, but I am invincible now! Never again will I have to hide from a foe!”

“So what do those pathetic golems have to do with you?”

“Idiot! I spent years making the slightest improvements. Each time getting slightly more efficient, slightly deadlier, making the armor just a bit stronger. When the spheres were done, I made a breakthrough in core shape! That gave rise to the canines. Golems better able to hear and take orders, but more importantly keeping a bit of their pack hunter instincts.”

“Instincts?” I asked, confused.

“Of course! Do you? Of course you don’t realize, you aren’t a craftsman at all. Imbecilic adventurers, only good for smashing things! All craftsmen know the golem core is an advanced form of a soul crystal. I spent years attempting to improve it beyond the canine form. Not just size, but grain structure and crystal shape, I took it all into account. Bastards cast me out of society! So what if I used a few sentient souls for experiments? They were prisoners sentenced to death anyway!” The golem snarled, starting to pace back and forth. “They couldn’t see my genius, short sighted fools. I showed them! Their precious disciples became the humanoids you so carelessly dispatched. They managed to keep a bit of their knowledge, but it was mostly fighting. They could barely use elemental enchantments! Do you know how hard it is to keep several arch mages alive and unable to escape? I had to do that for another decade before I fixed the crystals!”

“I’m sure it was challenging.” I nodded along.

“Damn right it was! But I did it! And those fools became the lesser elemental guardians. But even that wasn’t enough. They were limited, could only use one element.”

“So what did you do?” I asked, prodding him along.

“Went with the next most powerful souls of course!” He railed. “Sure, summoning from the elemental planes so often was dangerous, but that couldn’t stop me. I found the secret, the link between everything that allowed for more efficient storage. The light and shadows confirmed it, able to not only keep their knowledge but also their personality! I took what I learned from them and created the perfect soul stone! And now my soul is what powers this perfection of a golem!”

“Perfection?” I asked. “How do you consider that lumbering monstrosity perfection?”

“Behold!” He cried, and started activating things. “This head has eight vision inputs, giving me omnidirectional vision! Arms on the back as well as ones at the base of the tail give me unparalleled attack and defense. A plethora of hidden blades compliment the massive club of my arm.” Indeed, hidden blades sprouted from both arms, legs, on his back, down his tail, and from his stomach. “I can even use my own magic.” He said, launching an earth spear across the platform. “And to top it all off, my armor is impregnable.” He said, thumping his chest.

“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that.” I said, rolling onto a side to hide what I was doing from him.

“And what would you know about it?” He sneered, stalking closer. “You bore me, but you do owe me. I think I’ll enslave your soul to power my new factories.” From its chest, an ominous black crystal emerged. I faked like I was trying to slink away, still hiding the spell I was channeling. As soon as it got close enough, I released it.

“Corpse of a forgotten star, remnants of an explosive death. Titanic forces clash with but one escape. Burst forth into the void of space. Pulsar blast!” The same spell that took down the guardian of the lake found a new target, and carved a neat hole through the armor as my mana levels dropped drastically. The golem froze for a second before the core fell out, just in time as my mana had dropped to 100.

“Take. That. Bastard.” I panted, wincing at the headache that had returned. I felt a rumble in the platform and tried to ready myself for another battle, only to relax in relief when I saw it was simply a portal appearing to take me out of here. Before I left, I made my way around to loot everything. The spheres dropped level 1 military cores and some spikes, canines dropped level 2 military cores and reinforced claws, and the humanoid golems level 3 cores and some amorphous armor. The factories dropped some melted components, that I simply left behind. The major golem was one I was most nervous about, and for good reason. The core that dropped was called a sentient soul prison, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I did take a few of the blades, but the real prize was the book that it dropped.

Astral guidebook

A summoner’s guide to the astral planes and their connections. While it doesn’t contain any actual summoning methods, it is still a valuable resource for any would be summoner.