Over the next few days, the force of Golems started spreading further and deeper into Ypselon and Y-City. After their initial combined combing through a big stretch of ruins, the army splintered into smaller teams led by older golem knights that used to follow Wolfram.
24/7 these golems kept on fighting and raided dungeons on the predetermined routes Seth and Mark Baker had decided beforehand. The smaller groups would keep merging to raid higher-level dungeons and split up to get smaller ones in the vicinity, purging the ruins on the way.
According to bakers Scouts, there were fewer people, the closer one got to Y-City. Because of the dense placement of the small and greater dungeons, it had been completely overrun once nobody managed the dungeons. This was why Seth felt that it was okay for the golems to move on their own, the chance to meet people was minuscule.
Meanwhile, Seth kept track of them using his skills, while he followed the the main group, whose sole goal was to reach the rendezvous point where all groups would merge back together before closing in on the former association and the places Baker suspected armories.
These places were very close to the city center, where they suspected the greatest resistance. It was close to the sleeping Leezekai, whose antlers could be seen surfacing from the cityscape from miles away.
Most of the scouts Baker sent here didn't make it back, the few that made it spoke of of creatures they had never seen before. Schools of terrifying specters, hauntingly beautiful creatures that would rip a man to shreds with their bare hands, gnomes so fast and strong, that whoever caught their attention did not make it.
All of them were creatures that were most likely connected to the awakening of the slumbering realm, since even the System Church had no records of these creatures, making them unique to Urth. As this was the most dangerous, as well as their target area, the blacksmith wanted all of his troops assembled before entering, so the individual groups couldn't be picked off by powerful beasts.
On the fourth day after entering Y-City, Seth found that his worries had come true much earlier than expected. Two-thirds of his troops arrived, followed by trails of repurposed trucks and cars filled with loot and pulled by golem horses. The leftover third of the orc golem army was caught up tens of kilometers away from the meeting place.
The bard had noticed that more and more groups stopped in that vicinity but only realized the problem when they had not moved for several hours. This could only mean one thing. There was someone or something holding the golems back. Something strong, or resilient enough to have over 1000 golems fight it for hours.
“I will have to go and take a look,” Seth decided and summoned several of his crafting stations that were not needed back in Minas Mar. Sivri was intelligent and could take the command of the army, but she was not exactly strong, this was why he summoned Cerberus as her bodyguard. To summon him, he needed enough stations present for the place to be recognized as his smithy.
“You should start sorting and re-distributing the equipment in the meantime,” he left a few words for the golden dwarf, before he got on Vegr, one of his golem griffins, and flew to the place where he could sense the group of golems that were being held up. He was about halfway there when he heard the haunting song of a bird.The source of this content nov(el)bi((n))
Fighting like a berserker was a creature that resembled a dwarf, but overall bigger than regular dwarfs and slightly slimmer. It was unnaturally pale, with snow-white hair and beard. The mouth wide open as it chanted spells, was filled with teeth like needles
Focused, Annoyed
878/1000 HP 230 000/578 000 Mana
...
Race: Nem Marvo
...>
Since the level difference was “only” eleven, Seth was able to see more details of the status with .
These numbers were frightening, especially the Mana. Also, it was fighting this many golems and had barely suffered any damage... But something was weird. Although the armored golems had a hard time just buying time, the twenty elite golems made from lv.80 orcs with big souls kept chipping away at Donnchadh's health without being pushed back.
This had been going on for hours, but Seth was able to observe Donnchadh's health go down in real-time. There had to be something more to this than what met the eye. After a while, the battered dwarf-like creature finally slumped down, its health had hit zero.
Instead of dying and awarding point, however, it was suddenly enveloped by a dark aura and its wounds started healing rapidly, filling its sickly pale body with fresh vigor. Donnchadh was ready to go on.