168 – To Split a Boulder With a Dagger

Zelsys took up a wide grappler’s stance with her arms held out, the bayonet nestled in the pit of her thumb as it hung onto the pinky by its finger-ring.

The cleaver-arm came crashing down with all the expected speed and force of an immortal machine, almost too fast for even her Homunculus Eye to see.

In a split-second snakes of Fog coiled out of and around Zel’s arms, and she grabbed the cleaver as one would a falling log. One moment Delta’s entire mass had been moving to slice the beast-slayer down the middle, the next it was brought to a complete halt and a jet of Fog as long as her arm was now gushing from Zel’s right eye.

Zelsys let out an exhilarated laugh, exhaling some Fog as she pulled herself up onto Delta’s arm and ran up it.

“My turn!” exclaimed the slayer, pulling back her arm as she sucked in a deep breath. Delta didn’t resist or even try to shake her off. It just stood there, anticipating the strike to judge whether it truly would be stronger than its own.

A gout of Fog poured from Zel’s face in the moment just before she struck, and Zefaris could’ve sworn she saw the jet of Fog form into an antler for the moment before it too was spent. What she couldn’t see, however, was the stab.

Obscured by Fog as it was, that wasn’t the sole reason; so fast and so forceful was the strike that even she couldn’t track the movement with the obstruction. The next moment, she saw her bayonet buried up to the hilt in Delta’s headless torso, cracks spreading out across the black-stone titan’s surface. And atop him Zelsys stood still gripping the knife, her chest heaving with labored breaths as she laughed her victory.

Then, she yanked the bayonet out. Crack. Crack. Crash.

The small cracks quickly became two large ones, bisecting Delta down the middle. His eye turned back to cyan only a moment before the two cracks met and he fell apart, with Zelsys having already jumped onto the ground.

Zefaris ran over under the assumption that the so-called duel was over, and she was right - when Delta’s larger form fell apart, it only exposed a human-sized form within, one that was staggeringly similar in form to Sigma’s.

When Delta began falling apart, Zel's first thought was to save herself the fall and jump off. The first thing she saw after she rolled across the ground and regained her bearings was a smaller, human-sized golem standing among the rubble, his solitary eye flickering cyan.

She felt Zef come up to her and handed the bayonet back, uttering a statement of thanks while her attention remained fully focused on the smaller golem.

He stood there for a moment, gently swaying in place as he stared off into the middle-distance. The flickering stopped, and with it, the motion; he raised his hands in command, two more pillars rising from the floor.

Instead of putting its hands down, it began slowly clapping and its eye snapped downward to meet Zel’s gaze. It sounded less like clapping and more like a pair of rocks banging together, and thankfully he stopped before he spoke again.

“I expected you to pull it off, not to one-shot my boss shell!” Delta laughed in disbelief, all of the mechanical stiltedness now gone from his voice. The golem spoke more like a deeply relieved and pleasantly surprised older man, if one ignored the fact his voice still sounded like a millstone made to speak.

“Barely even Second Circle and already crossing the sound-speed barrier,” he continued. “I’ll gladly let you pass and have my subordinates guide you through the third floor, but… That doesn’t fulfill my obligations.”

Delta’s gaze shifted between the two slayers as he answered their unspoken question, “I am required to reward challengers who best me, whether they do so the intended way or through an agreed-upon alternative. Name something materialistic you want, and I’ll do my best to meet your request. Exhausted as the dungeon is, there is an empire’s worth of treasures in these walls - I wager that’s part of why the Parasites want control. So c’mon, name your treasure.”

The two slayers exchanged looks. With the encouragement of a smile and a nod from her counterpart, Zefaris pulled Pentacle from its holster and spoke her request.

“Reloading, aiming, target tracking. I struggle with numerous targets and extremely fast ones,” she said, gesturing about with the gleaming handcannon. “I need something to help fill the holes in my combat style.”

“Yeah, yeah I think I can help with that,” nodded the sub-core, eagerly raising his right hand and snapping his fingers. Strange mechanical noises could be heard from within the pillar to his right, and after a few seconds it opened up to reveal a black orb the size of an eye. So black was its surface that, at a glance, it looked like a hole in the world. As Delta turned it about in his fingers a gleam of light reflected off its polished surface, reaffirming the orb’s physical existence.

“Philosopher’s Eye,” he said, slowly walking over to Zefaris. “High-precision motion tracking, universal essentia conductor for versatile self-defense…”

After trailing off for a moment he reached out to hand the orb over with the words, “Damn things used to be all over the place.”

Zefaris seemed hesitant to take the eye, staring at it with tangible trepidation.

She muttered, “I-I don’t… I’m not sure...”

Zel wanted to say something, but she wasn’t sure what to say herself. It felt like Zef was fighting her own instincts, struggling against a visceral aversion.

“Huh? You are missing an eye, yes? I can tell that there’s nothing in the left socket, even if you keep it closed. It’s not like you’ve gotta hook it up to the nerves or anything, just slot it in like a glass eye and it’ll connect on its own,” Delta continued to encourage her, nudging it into her hands. Zef’s hesitation waned at the reassurance that it could simply be placed into the eye-socket like a glass eye and she quickly took the eye, stowing it in her pocket.