“Oh wow…” Sylver said, as he willed the mushroom to stop growing, and manipulated it towards the center of the room.

“These don’t look like any kind of golem you’ve shown me so far?” Ria asked, as Sylver grabbed hold of all 4 corpses’ cores and used [Dead Dominion] to gently lay them next to each other.

“Technically, and I do mean technically, these are a type of slime,” Sylver explained, as he felt around the first dead golem’s body, and found something similar to a clasp inside its shoulder blade.

When he forced the latch thing open, he was able to pull the chest plate away.

Inside there was a creature that looked like a lump of dark yellow flesh, with slimy tendrils spread out all over the place. Sylver poked it with his finger one time before he went to close the chest plate.

“What's wrong? You can’t raise slime as undead?” Ria asked as Sylver shook his head.

“I can only raise these as zombies, but with my current range of abilities, they won’t have enough control over their muscles to move these things around,” Sylver explained, as Ria formed into her little girl form, the one she took from Chrys and stopped Sylver from closing the chest plate.

“Would you mind scooping everything out of it? I want to try something,” Ria said, as Sylver nodded at her, and in a couple of seconds, managed to tear out every tiny piece of dead matter he could sense within the brass-colored armor.

Ria very gently pulled the folded-up staff out of her body and handed it to Sylver.

She was very careful as she placed her hand over the now empty spot where the golem’s core had been.

The thing about golems, and any kind of magical technology, was that it required mana, or in this case Ki, to function. Anything more complex than a pocket watch needed to have some magic incorporated into it so as not to tear itself to pieces from mana fluctuation.

As amazing as some of the technology the dwarves had in their manaless mountains, it was worthless in 99% of the land and sea mass that made up Eira. Even the Ki dense areas had some ambient mana in the air.

Ria’s black and gold liquid metal seemed to seep through the brass-colored armor, as more and more of her body flowed into the hollow in the monster’s chest.

This kind of “golem” was sometimes referred to as an armor slime, or a metal slime, depending on who you asked. In the same way, a snail builds a shell around itself, an armor slime builds itself a set of armor. Obviously, given that this is a dungeon, sort of, some of the steps wild armor slimes had to follow had been skipped.

This thing probably ate the weapons and armors that belonged to the people that died here, and then copied the kinetic energy utilizing mechanism from some other armor slime.

Sylver was in the middle of wrapping up the three ribs at the end of his staff, so he didn’t accidentally touch them, when Ria, now inside of a golem, stood up from the ground and leaned down over the other dead [Melee Dummy].

Just as Sylver was about to offer some help, Ria lifted one club in the air and hit the monster in what would have been a groin on a human man. Sylver got to watch as she then proceeded to use her clubbed hands, to gently pull the interior mechanism out of the monster.

She repeated this process with the other 2 monster armors, and while Sylver tended to his bruises, and reformed his soul armor shields, incorporated all 4 bodies into 1.

Apparently, Sylver had damaged some of the tightly wound springs inside the chests, and Ria needed spare parts to build 1 functioning kinetic energy storage device.

From what Sylver understood, because he wasn’t interested enough to ask follow-up questions, was that the monsters had a latch and gear system inside of them. Every time one of their limbs is hit, the gear is pulled back, the tension in the spring is increased, and the latch stops the energy from dissipating.

After that, using a series of pistons and other fancy words, the stored-up energy can be used to punch a necromancer so hard that his body is sent flying.

Ria hadn’t been able to use the spread-out tendrils the monsters had on their backs and assumed that they were used for one of their biological functions, either for sustenance, or to breathe through, so she discarded them.

She ended up giving herself 4 clubs, as opposed to 2, and also gave herself a third leg, for no reason other than that it was more difficult than she expected to maintain her balance.

Aside from that, the color had changed. Previously the whole thing had been a bright orange bronze, but now it was tainted with Ria’s gold and black colors.

She even went as far as to make her golden face inside the helmet.

Once everyone was prepared to leave, Sylver made a pinhole within the closed entrance that the Blue Tiger sect group had gone through.

Now that she had a significantly larger body, Sylver had to raise the door really high for Ria to pass. She and Mora stood there, while Sylver made sure that his tendril of [Fog Form] was solid enough for him to teleport through. The amount of force required for the tiny piece of [Necrotic Mutilation] to hold the mechanism that held the door open, meant that Sylver couldn’t move away from it. He had to stand right next to the wall, practically hugging it.

Once he used [Fog Form] the door slammed itself shut, in the exceptionally fast ways only dungeons are capable of. Thankfully there was nothing to worry about. Sylver was with Mora and Ria when the door slammed shut.

Although he was tempted to increase his dexterity, Sylver inevitably placed all 30 AP into intelligence. He had stressed his mana channels almost to their limits with the sheer amount of mana he needed for that mushroom to grow. So it only took repairing his shades at an unhealthily fast rate for him to reach his actual limit.

Total Level: 166

[Koschei-10]

[Necromancer-100]

[Swamp Lord-56]

CON: 200

DEX: 110

STR: 110

INT: 449

WIS: 265

AP: 0

Health: 1,989/2,000

Stamina: 913/1,000

MP: 11,176/17,960

Health Regen: 23.34/M

Stamina Regen: 20.00/M

MP Regen: 10,708.65/M

Just as before, the system took Sylver’s stretched-out wounded mana channels, and replaced them with slightly larger, and equally stretched out relative to their size, mana channels. Sylver noticed something falling down his face, and with worrying ease, pulled out a clump of his white hair.

Great, just what I needed, Sylver thought, as he covered his head with his hood, and pressed it up against his scalp.

He needed to restock his body’s supplies, which required either performing a couple of expensive rituals or simply waiting for his internal organs to produce everything that he needed.

Sylver’s senses may have been restricted by the dungeon, but they were still sharp enough to feel the presence of the people ahead of them. As a precaution, Sylver waved his hand over the wooden board on his shoulder and altered it to look like he was a guest of the Blue Rat sect.

With his other hand, he pinched, and pulled the tips of his ears upward, to elongate them just a bit.

Sylver decided to keep his regular voice, as Mora jumped onto Ria’s back, and got ready for a fight.

“Hello! Is someone there?” Sylver shouted.

He didn’t quite slur his words, but he did add just a drop of that almost half-asleep speech pattern the vast majority of elves possessed.

In the time it took Sylver to blink, 4 people were standing in front of him, each armed with a near-identical perfectly straight sword.

Their emblems meant they belonged to the Blue Tiger sect, and the man standing closest to Sylver was the spitting image of his deceased brother. Not twins, but for an undead with terrible face blindness, they might as well have been.

The second sword on the living brother’s right side, also explained where the dead heir’s sword had gone.

They maintained a ready stance, to kill Sylver if he tried something, but after they saw the wooden symbol on his shoulder, their eyes lost some of the edge they had a moment prior. They all had identical robes, and the only difference was the color.

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” the heir Sylver had been sent to kill, asked. His robe was light blue.

Sylver was very careful not to reach towards his robe as he bowed ever so slightly, and maintained a calm, but partially confused, tone of voice.

“My name is Sorcha. I’m a mage serving under master Tarragon, the [Ancient Druid]. We had reason to believe the source of the sleeping curse was somewhere within this desert area, and we were sent to scout it out. A large group of monsters chased us into the abandoned city above, and we ended up hiding within an empty room that brought us down here,” Sylver explained and suppressed a smile as the expressions on all 4 men’s faces changed.

“It was open? The spiral I mean, you didn’t open it, it was already open?” the heir Sylver had been sent to kill asked.

“Yes. After that, we followed the blue arrows in hopes of finding an exit, and now we’re here,” Sylver explained, as all 4 men exchanged a worried look with one another.

“What are those?” one of the men asked with a gesture towards Ria’s golem body. He had a dark red robe.

“My companions. The large one is Ria, and the small one is Morana,” Sylver explained.

By this point, their swords were still in their hands, but it was mostly because they forgot to sheath them. They were upset, but not quite, there was something else there.

“What are your classes?” the man with the orange robe asked.

“[Swamp Lord] and a specialized [Tamer],” Sylver responded.

“Do you have any healing skills?” the last man to speak asked. His robe was purple.

“Only using someone else’s health. But I have a great deal of first aid knowledge, and I have a very solid mixture of defensive and offensive skills and perks,” Sylver explained, as the man in the red robe shrugged his shoulders, as he put his sword away.

The other 3 did the same.

“We cannot guarantee your safety, but we would be indebted to you if you helped us complete our quest,” the man in the purple robe said.

“What quest is that exactly?” Sylver asked, as the man in the purple robe extended a hand towards Sylver.

The shy smile that appeared on the 4 men’s faces made Sylver’s skin crawl. The man in the purple robe spoke in an excited whisper.

“Dobrynya’s hat is somewhere here,” the man in the purple robe said and continued as he saw 0 recognition in Sylver’s expression.

“The hat that belonged to the very first Dobrynya. The one that conquered this land, and erected a shield that has no equal,” the man said, and for a moment, Sylver fantasized about simply snapping all of their necks, and leaving.

He somewhat liked his chances, even if it would hurt him, he was fairly certain he could fire off one good beam of abyss magic, enough to decapitate all of them.

But this was one of those rare times where Sylver’s gut disagreed with him. For some reason, it thought the hat was important, even if Sylver didn’t think it was.

Sylver flexed his abdominal muscles just to make sure they weren’t making a mistake.

“How far away are we from the end?” Sylver asked as he did his best to make his insides reconsider.

“We’re very close. Hours away, assuming we can pass all the tests,” the heir wearing the blue robe answered, as Sylver mentally sighed.

If he had said days, Sylver could have at least argued that it wasn’t worth the time it would take.

But even if the emperor was balls deep inside the shield ancestor right now, Sylver could spare a couple of hours, since it was his gut that was telling him to get it.

He and the man in the purple robe shook hands, as Sylver put on his warmest smile.

“Happy to help,” Sylver said.

Who knows, maybe this “hat” might help deal with the emperor.

All he had to do was help these 4 swordsmen pass a couple of tests.

How hard can it possibly be?