I let out a slow breath that fogged in the remnants of the cold.

  “That,” I said quietly, “was exactly what we needed to see.”

  Tad smiled. “It was more than we could have hoped for. But there’s one more thing we have to test.” Tad raised his head to the sky and called out to the dungeon. “Spot! You know what to do!”

  A moment later, a trio of Order members appeared. A trio of Lawspeakers, to be precise, but somehow all level 220.

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Lights and Mirrors

  I wasn’t surprised by their appearance because Tad and I had discussed it beforehand. We hadn’t told the others, though, and the shock on Clay’s face made it worth it. He quickly caught on, though. Identify tended to ruin tricks like this.

  Lawspeaker (Epic)

  Level 220

  Dungeon Imitation

  Before they moved, Tad held up his hand. “Everyone step back.”

  Not only did I step back, but I also threw up a force shield since I knew what was coming next. Tad raised his hand and a fireball blasted forward to explode against the golem. The construct didn’t move an inch. It was covered in flames, but they all soaked into the golem’s body. The damage that pitted the iron surface healed with surprising efficiency. It didn’t matter if it was caused by shadowy blades, acid spray, or elemental ice—it all disappeared in seconds, leaving the golem at 100% durability, up from the 89% it had been at following the previous battles. Even that much damage had not affected its functionality.

  The final test began.

  The three Lawspeakers didn’t move like normal dungeon monsters, but like trained casters who’d spent their lives learning how to make distance, timing, and fear do the heavy lifting for them. I was beginning to recognize when the dungeon put extra work into creating the monsters it made for us to fight. It made me rethink my role as a Dungeon Manager. I could learn some useful things here that would translate over when I got home.

  Their tabards were perfect copies of the Order’s, but the way the light clung to them was wrong, like paint on glass rather than a true aura. They raised their hands in unison, and the air in front of them thickened with the same judgment magic I’d seen in Basetown, only purer and sharper, as if Spot had distilled it down to the core function.

  A lance of radiant light slammed into the golem’s chest and left a smoking trench across the iron. The impact didn’t slow it the way lightning had, but it burned deeper than the ice or acid had ever managed to, heat drilling in until the rune paths beneath the surface flared defensively. The golem took a step forward anyway, posture unchanged, and I felt Tad’s satisfaction sharpen. This was the test he wanted, the kind of damage that an awakened Order force would rely on.

  The second Lawspeaker chained his casting into a net of glowing bands, loops of light that whipped out like living ropes and wrapped around the golem’s arms and torso. The bands tightened with visible force, trying to lock joints and bind motion, and the iron giant paused for a fraction of a heartbeat. The rune clusters along its shoulders lit in sequence, distributing torque and resisting the seizure. The golem flexed once, slowly and deliberately. The light bindings stretched, groaning, but they didn’t snap.

  I could say with confidence that the Order casters were much more deadly than the Lawkeepers I’d slain. Those had all been under level 100. It made me wonder what experience Spot was drawing on to create enemies that acted like this.

  The third Lawspeaker spread his fingers, and a ring of sigils formed around the golem’s feet, chains of light stabbing up from the circle like spears. Each chain hooked into the iron with a hiss and began burning channels into the legs, as if the magic was trying to write itself into the metal. The golem’s runes fought back, but the damage still accumulated, and I could see the surface integrity drop in my mind the same way I’d tracked it during the crab fight. The light was proving to be more focused than I’d imagined, similar to a laser beam from a sci-fi movie. Professor Jerry Hathaway would have lost his mind if he could have gotten his hands on lasers like this, especially if it meant he didn’t have to put up with Chris Knight’s shenanigans.

  Tad’s earlier fireball had left the golem pristine, but now the damage was real and persistent. The radiance ate into the iron surface in clean lines, leaving edges that looked carved rather than melted. I watched the golem’s internal sprite pattern accelerate again, and it reminded me of a tactical team switching from patrol to combat mode. Rather than panicking, they were prioritizing. Good for them.

  The golem advanced like a siege tower rolling forward under its own power, each step steady, each motion deliberate. A second lance of judgment slammed into its shoulder, where the iron glowed red-white for an instant before darkening into a charred groove. The golem didn’t flinch, but it did adjust, raising its forearm to present a thicker plate to the incoming fire.

  The light bindings tightened again as the golem closed the distance. One Lawspeaker retreated, hands already weaving a new chain spell, and the glowing bands around the golem’s torso pulsed as if the caster had found a rhythm. The golem responded by rotating its hips and shoulders together, not fighting the chains directly but changing how the force was applied. I saw my kinetic rune script activate, bleeding torque into the golem’s stance so the bindings were forced to stretch across moving mass rather than lock a single joint. That bought just enough slack.

  It ripped one arm free with a slow, grinding flex, and the light bands snapped back like whips.

  The nearest Lawspeaker reacted quickly, throwing up a shield of radiant plates that hovered in front of him like mirrored glass. The golem’s fist hit the shield and the plates shattered, but the impact still slowed the golem’s follow-through. A second Lawspeaker used that opening to slam a chain of light into the golem’s exposed arm, the magic biting deep and burning like a branding iron pressed too long. The golem’s durability dipped again, and I felt a tight knot form in my stomach, even though I knew this was the point of the test.

  “Keep going,” Tad murmured, more to himself than the golem. His hand was clenched, but his eyes were bright. He wanted data, not comfort.

  The golem answered by changing tactics. It stopped trying to strike through the shields and instead targeted the ground around the Lawspeakers, not to break the dungeon floor, but to control space. It slammed both fists down, and the impact sent a wave of pressure outward that disrupted casting rhythm and forced the casters to rebalance. The spell plates wavered, the chains slackened for a heartbeat, and the golem used that heartbeat perfectly.

  It leaped.

  The leg runes flared, and twelve feet of iron launched forward in a clean arc. The first Lawspeaker tried to blink sideways with a light-step spell, but Spot’s imitation didn’t include true spatial escape. The golem landed directly in front of the caster, and its fist drove straight through his chest. Radiant energy flared outward as the imitation died, dissolving into dungeon mist, leaving nothing behind but an afterglow.

  The remaining two casters shifted formation, one anchoring a shield lattice while the other began chanting a longer spell that made the air vibrate with pressure. Lines of light traced across the floor and walls, intersecting into a cage pattern meant to trap the golem in a focused kill zone. Tad stepped back again, keeping his hands away, resisting every instinct to intervene. I mirrored him, force shield ready but unused, trusting the golem to solve its own problems.

  The golem took the cage head-on.

  Light slammed into it from three angles, burning into the chest and shoulders and leaving deep wounds framed with molten iron. It kept walking, each step forcing the cage tighter, each motion demanding that the casters either hold their pattern or retreat. The shield caster’s hands shook as he poured mana into maintaining the lattice. The second caster’s eyes were wide with concentration as his final spell completed.

  A chain of judgment snapped out like a spear, hitting the golem square in the sternum. The iron around the impact cratered inward, carved away in a circular burn. The golem rocked back for the first time in the entire test, and I felt a spike of concern cut through me. Its durability dropped hard, and my instincts screamed that if the spell repeated cleanly, this could become catastrophic.

  What bothered me the most about this was that I’d used runes to make it more resistant to magic, but it was still taking this kind of damage. Without the rune script, I was certain it would have already failed.

  All thoughts of its durability escaped me as it burst forward faster than I had seen it move yet.

  It seized the shield caster by the throat and lifted him off the ground. The man’s legs kicked uselessly, light flaring around his hands as he tried to cast while beating at the iron hand that gripped his throat. The golem squeezed, and the caster dissolved with a crackling hiss, leaving only a puff of mist behind. The final Lawspeaker tried to retreat, throwing chains and lances in a frantic barrage, but the golem’s movements were already tuned to his timing.

  It stepped through the last lance, took the burn across its shoulder, and drove its fist through the caster’s face. The imitation died instantly, and the hall went quiet except for the faint crackle of the golem’s cooling surface. It stood still in its resting state, smoke rising from multiple scorched channels, iron pitted and carved where holy magic had struck true.

  I checked its status and felt my jaw tighten. It was at 72% durability. It would still be functional, still lethal, but the golem looked like it had been through a war. Tad’s expression was fierce and satisfied, like a commander seeing a weapon prove itself under the exact circumstances it was built for.

  “Sadly, the dungeon can’t completely imitate Light of Judgment attacks. It used concentrated light to imitate them, but there was no divine blessing in any of those. I think this proves my concern, though.”

  With a final thank you to Spot, we left the dungeon. Tad and I took the golem back to the forge area, where we restored it to full durability with the flames from the forge. Clay and Oliver met with the others, filling them in on what had happened. I chatted briefly with Selena, who was up from her nap.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know how long this is going to take, but we need to make some improvements on this golem. If we can perfect the flaws in the design, there’s a good chance that the dungeon can make duplicates.”

  “Won’t any copies be stuck inside the dungeon?”

  “Normally yes, but the dungeon has spread so that the entire warehouse and everything within thirty feet of it are all part of the dungeon. We’re hoping to lure them here to fight if it comes to it.”

  Selena didn’t seem convinced, and I understood why. In her experience, they would have just bombarded us from above, but the technology here wasn’t up to anything like that. “I’ll do my part. Samvek and I will take Clay, Oliver, Fara, and Crynane into the dungeon for another run. Let me know if you need me, but otherwise we’ll probably be gone for a day. Our time is quickly running out, so we have to push.”

  I thanked her with a kiss, and when everybody was gone, Tad and I got to work. I explained that while I didn’t think I could add any rune script that would make it any more formidable, I had an idea I wanted to try.

  Tad had one of his own. “I can add more enchantments to it. There’s room in the matrix.”

  When he explained what he meant by room in the matrix, it finally solidified in my mind that there were some genuine differences between us and between the systems we worked under. He had a far more intuitive feel for enchantments, to the point that he could sense when there was potential to add enchantments to an item. By contrast, my approach reminded me of programming—a useful tool, to be sure, but one that lacked the artistry of his approach.

  After a brief back and forth, we decided I’d try my modification first, because if it worked, it would take the least time. I reached out with Terrakinesis to the golem again. It was still tricky, as the iron came from this world, but inside the dungeon, the ability worked as well as if I were at home.

  I figuratively rolled up my sleeves and got to work. The goal was to smooth and polish it to a mirrorlike shine that would reflect light-based attacks rather than absorbing them. As was often the case, I’d underestimated the difficulty of the process.

  I studied the damage patterns for a long moment, letting Spirit Sight and mundane vision overlap until the picture felt complete. It had already been restored, but I found that I could still see residual evidence of where the damage had been. The light-based attacks had burned cleanly through the surface, bypassing some of the advantages iron and runic structure normally provided. That meant the weakness wasn’t in the magic which sustained it, but in the raw metal. It was in how the surface interacted with radiant energy. The solution felt obvious once I stopped thinking like a combatant and started thinking like a material shaper. Hitting stuff was easy, but leaving something behind had more meaning.

  Rather than beginning to push with Terrakinesis, at first I just listened. The iron responded with that familiar, heavy presence, dense and compliant with the dungeon’s rules. I started smoothing the surface, not grinding or reshaping in chunks, but coaxing the outermost layer into a continuous, uninterrupted plane. I needed to understand it better.

  The process was almost meditative. I didn’t add mass or alter thickness in any meaningful way. I simply removed imperfections. Every microscopic ridge that could catch or absorb light flattened into a seamless curve, until the golem’s body gleamed with a perfect, liquid sheen. It wasn’t polished in the traditional sense, like when I brought a shine to a cast iron pan to see if I could. This was aligned.

  I felt like I was on the edge of something impressive, so I pushed longer. As I did, I lost track of the hours that flew by, only stopping when I got a notification.

  Iron Golem has been upgraded to Metallic Mirror Golem. Level upgraded to 285.

  When I stepped back, the effect hit me sideways. The golem was still there, but my eyes struggled to define it. Light didn’t scatter off its surface anymore. It reflected cleanly and precisely, bending perception so the shape seemed to blur into whatever was behind it. Against the dungeon walls, it looked less like a figure and more like a distortion, as if space had been folded around an absence.

  I looked to Tad, who let out a low whistle. “That’s… unsettling.”

  The golem took a step, and for a heartbeat it vanished entirely, leaving only a ripple in the air where it should have been. Then it reappeared as it moved into a different angle of illumination, the distortion resolving back into form. I felt a grin tug at my mouth despite myself. “Well,” I said quietly, “that’s going to make it even harder for anyone to hit the thing.”

  Tad laughed once, sharp and delighted. “I don’t think the Order is going to appreciate invisible iron mirror monsters.”

  “Probably not,” I agreed. “And from a defensive standpoint, this is a win. Light-based attacks should be significantly less effective now.” I paused, eyes tracking the subtle shimmer where the golem stood. “We’ll just need to remember where we parked it.”

  Chapter Fifty: More

  Tad and I stood near the edge of the forge, watching our first golem as it settled into stillness. The iron giant was difficult to focus on, but I found with practice, I could make myself sense it. Seeing it with my physical eyes was still difficult, but I could pick up the disruptions. The shock factor would be a key part of its deployment on the battlefield.

  “Did you get a notification about it upgrading?” Tad asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah. Metallic Mirror Golem, getting close to level 300.”

  “Speaking of levels, did you gain any more after you finished the upgrade?”

  “Uh, what do you mean? I only got levels before because I assumed that was the system treating it as a quest.” Then I remembered him saying that he gained XP from crafting. “Did you?”

  “Uh, only one, since I didn’t actually do any of the work. Hopefully I’ll gain some more when I add some new enchantments to it.”

  I would have complained, but he needed the levels more than I did right now, and I did have another notification I was going to need to deal with pretty soon. I’d put it off because I wanted to watch him work, but it was still exciting.

  Terrakinesis (Epic 99%) >> Legendary 1%

  Evolution is available.

  Terrakinesis: Colonizer

  With this evolution, Terrakinesis will grow as you grow, but its function will largely remain the same. However, you will be able to use Terrakinesis on any world which you have gained 51% or more control over.

  Terrakinesis: Home Builder

  With this evolution, the range and amount of matter that you can affect with Terrakinesis will be dramatically increased, so long as you are only affecting inorganic material and are attempting to build something permanent. The new range will be up to a quarter mile in all directions, with a 1% increase for every percentage point of growth you make on the ability.

  Terrakinesis: Zookeeper

  Terrakinesis has grown to be capable of affecting any matter which is native to Earth, including biological organisms. The ability will continue to work as it does now, but your greatest gains will be awarded when affecting biological matter. Terrakinesis can affect any being on the surface of the planet.

  Each of the options had an argument which could be made for taking it, but I was determined not to decide until I’d fully thought it through and had a chance to speak with Selena and Samvek. For now, I could tell Tad was itching to get to work, and I was looking forward to watching him.

  He walked a slow circle around the golem, and I could feel the connection between him and our construction. System Sight, with its temporary upgrade, was allowing me to see the way the Fey System interactions worked. There were karmic connections between him and the various sprites inside the disc that were more than familiar to me. It made sense. I recognized their sentience now, and knew they all looked up to him.