The cavernous chamber of the fifth floor was filled with a rich, dark silence that only broke whenever Agatha allowed herself to be amused. Through the polished obsidian surface of her magical mirror, Beaumont's arrogant declaration, "I'm the Apex one and I get to decide the outcome!" echoed with a tinny, theatrical quality. For a split second, her composure remained perfectly still, and then her shoulders began to tremble. Agatha laughed out loud. It was a clear, ringing sound that filled the empty, vaulted space, rich with an ancient, mocking delight. "Apex one?" she gasped, her voice lifting into a pitch of genuine hilarity. The laugh extended, rolling over itself in waves, completely consuming the silence of the chamber before it finally began to die out nearly a full minute later.
She took a sharp breath, wiping a non-existent tear from the corner of her violet eyes. "What a childish thing to say... is he a man-child?" A brief pause settled over her as she leaned closer to the mirror, her eyes narrowing with a predator's curiosity. "How much self-esteem do you shelter inside that small frame? Are you a prodigy son of the soil who prematurely left the home of your trainers? Did you drop your books early just to come scream your pedigree in these walls?" A low, dangerous smirk curved her lips as she reclined back into the shifting obsidian of her chair. "Can this get any better?"
Back on the fourth floor, the reality of the battlefield was far less elegant. The echoing remnants of Beaumont's boast were instantly swallowed by the deafening roar of the unbalanced, Golem. Beaumont didn't stand still to admire the forest of stone spears he had just conjured. He swooped down from his position, his boots hitting the cracked stone, and took exactly fifty steps forward in a rapid, blurring dash before halting abruptly in a solid, low stance. With zero hesitation, he cast his next spell. Warm amber sigil circles bloomed violently in the air around his forearms, spinning with a fierce, high-pitched hum. From the shattered bedrock at his sides, a giant drilling rock, its tip rotating with such speed it screamed through the air, shot directly toward the golem's massive torso. What went for a perfectly clean, lethal strike was suddenly intercepted. The titan, despite losing its balance, possesses a terrifying, instinctual reaction speed. With a sickening grind of tectonic mass, the golem yanked the projectile aside with its massive left arm. The brute force of the deflection threw the drill off course, but Beaumont's control was too tight for a complete miss. The rotating tip altered its trajectory and drilled directly through the titan's right ribs, spraying a massive shower of gray stone powder, ancient moss, and sparks of dormant earthen energy into the air. The titan roared, completely ignoring the massive cavity in its side. It began smashing through the rooted boulders that had pinned its legs, its asymmetrical arms swinging like wrecking balls as it tended to close the distance toward the source of its pain. Beaumont moved instantly. He took a sharp, rigid stance, planting his heels firmly into the ruined floor, and stretched his arms straight out before him. The commanding pressure of his Earth-born mana surged forward, physically halting the golem mid-stride. Before the massive abomination could even begin to open its volcano-shaped maw to unleash its green flames, Beaumont smirked. "I've seen that already," he said, his voice laced with absolute confidence. He immediately clenched his left fist tight and drew it back toward his hip in a violent, synchronized motion. Obeying the sudden pull of his authority, several giant drill rocks burst out directly from the titan's chest. They didn't just pierce the monster; they erupted with explosive momentum from the very wall behind it, pinning the giant's torso in a brutal, cross-directional cage of stone. Beaumont held his breath, his bloodshot hazel eyes scanning the frozen, impaled monster. Is that it?
The golem gave out a hollow, vibrating roar that lasted for several agonities of seconds. Then, its asymmetrical head slowly tilted down, looking straight at Beaumont with a dead, completely unbothered gaze. The green flames on its shoulders didn't sputter; they burned with a steady, clinical intensity. Beaumont's smirk turned cold. That's probably not it, he thought, a wave of genuine frustration washing over him. "So, that was a decoy, huh? Just something to fool a mage's mana reading," he muttered aloud, his voice dropping into a sly, analytical tone. He flexed his neck from side to side, hearing the vertebrae pop, and cracked his knuckle joints one by one. His eyes drifted away from the massive chest cavity and locked onto the impossibly high ceiling, right beneath the clinical, white glare of the electrical lamps. "Then the main source has to be inside the ceiling. Up we go!" Moving with urgent speed, he closed the distance until he was exactly fifty meters away from the immobilized golem. He conjured a series of massive, warm amber sigil circles that manifested in the air, rapidly growing from small, dense rings into wide, intricate geometries of glowing gold. The moment the magic locked into place, the foothold beneath his boots violently erupted. A thick, solid stone podium shot upward like an ascending elevator, carrying him straight toward the vaulted ceiling and away from the flooded floor. Behind him, the golem began breaking the rocks from its chest, its immense strength cracking Beaumont's iron-hard restraints into dust. The moment its hollow, flaming head swiveled upward and noticed he was heading directly toward the ceiling, it panicked. Beaumont instantly pulsed his mana down, forcing a temporary halt on its movements as he continued his rapid ascent. The golem roared one more time a sound of pure, vibrational fury that shook the entire fourth floor. Every single form of its lingering green flame energy, from the burning rivers on the floor to the torches on its shoulders, began to flow upward, siphoning directly into its open, hollow mouth. Within a few seconds, the staggering amount of elemental heat was compressed into a dense, vibrating sphere of emerald energy. With terrifying velocity, the titan spit it out. The green flame energy took a giant, roiling ball form as it launched like a meteor straight toward Beaumont's rising platform. Beaumont's heightened senses screamed a warning. He reacted instantly, his hazel eyes tracking the hyper-fast trajectory and predicting the exact angle of the incoming projectile. As the massive flame ball got closer, radiating a heat that began to blister his skin even from a distance, he stamped his left foot heavily onto the surface of the ascending podium. Warm amber sigil circles flickered wildly beneath his boot. Instead of continuing upward, the podium reversed direction, descending rapidly for a number able amount of seconds to pull him out of the line of fire ball. But the dungeon's magic was far more adaptive than he anticipated. Rather than the giant flame ball launching straight ahead into the empty ceiling where he had just been, the emerald sphere unnaturally altered its path. It curved sharply downward in a steep, aggressive slope, tracking his descent and meeting Beaumont head-on. Beaumont's eyes widened in genuine shock. "What on earth?!" He had no time to dodge. With a desperate flick of his wrists, his four defensive stone slates flew forward, fixing themselves together into a solid, interlocking shield right in front of his face. An instant later, the giant flame ball detonated against the barrier.
A massive, apocalyptic explosion engulfed him entirely in a wave of blinding green fire. A concussive shockwave and a deafening soundwave followed immediately behind the blast, shattering what remained of the stable air in the chamber. The sheer force of the detonation blew the descending podium into dust and launched Beaumont backward. He dropped heavily toward the ground, his frame shrouded in thick, dark smoke that bled away into the rushing wind of his fall. Gritting his teeth through the blinding pain, he forced his fractured focus to cast another spell before he could smash into the stone bedrock below. Bright amber sigils bloomed in mid-air. An elongated, smooth earth slide erupted from the broken terrain just in time, catching his falling body and swooping him safely down to the jagged floor, where he slid to a halt on his rear. Coughing violently, Beaumont pushed himself back up to his feet, his muscles aching and his skin covered in soot. He checked his defensive slates; they were heavily scorched, smoking profusely, and sections of the solid stone had been superheated into patches of semi-translucent, melted glass. Across the ruined arena, the golem gave an immense, explosive outburst of radiating heat waves. The wave pass grazed Beaumont body frame. The golem rage, torn through earth that had pierced him from behind with sheer force and heat. Breaking through the elongated forest of massive boulders, it took a range stance. It jaws open, concentrated mouthful flame energy and beam it towards Beaumont's angle.
Beaumont cast a rapid mobility spell, raising a thick, flat boulder beneath his feet. He jumped onto it, using his mana to surf across the arena floor with vastly increased mobility. The golem followed him ruthlessly. The massive, volcano-shaped head swiveled with terrifying precision, chasing him around the entire floor and up the vertical walls with its continuous, non-stop flame beam. The heat was blinding. Several moments later, the friction and intense thermal energy began to shred his surfing boulder slide against the jagged floor, turning his ride into a rain of sparks and crumbling rock. Attempting to escape the line of sight, Beaumont tried to dive into the ground mud, intending to use his wall-swimming technique to get closer to the giant's blind spot. But the moment his feet touched the mire, his senses recoiled. The texture felt completely different. The intense, prolonged heat from the green flame beam had altered the battlefield entirely; several massive sections of the ground were actively becoming melted ground glass. Controlling glass was not nearly as easy as pure earth magic. It resisted his hereditary authority, requiring twice the mana for half the control. "Damn it!" he screamed, his voice cracking with exhaustion. Every single time he tried to manipulate a section of the ground glass to form a reinforced shield, the golem's relentless emerald beam would strike it, completely obliterating the structure into explosive shards. Left with no other choice, he cast a rapid series of basic earth spells, using the remaining fragments of the jagged floor to launch himself in erratic zig-zag patterns, barely staying one step ahead of the tracing beam of fire. His breathing was shallow, his lungs burning from the toxic thermal smoke. Is it really trying to tire me out? he thought in a sudden flash of panic. My stamina is running out. I can't keep this speed up much longer. He took a sharp breath, forcing himself to calm down as he skirted the edge of a molten glass crater.
Propelling myself upwards toward the ceiling core right now is definitely a bad idea. It'll just shoot me down again. I'll just have to wait it out until this continuous beam finally stops... and then I have to go big to completely immobilize it. "And that's when I'll strike," he murmured through clenched teeth.