The Ruined Death Knight

Seeing Sartan being engulfed in several explosions, not even one of them thought about his well-being.

\'Where is the magic caster?\' Danzel just like the others thought to themself.

Scanning the area, Danzel saw a giant spider with a donut-shaped head and its body made out of the same marble as the tower coming out of what seemed like a portal.

"What-" Before he could even his question, another similar magic circle appear under him much faster than the one before.

Having been distracted by the weird spider appearing from the portal, Danzel only managed to turn his head to see the magic circle explode and engulf him in flames.

*Booom!

"Danzel!" Vannessa called out seeing the death knight being eaten by the flames.

Suddenly though, surrounding her, several portals appeared, and coming out of those portals were hooded figures wearing a faceless masks and wielding a spear.

With just half their body fully coming out, they thrust their spears at Vanessa.

Before the spears could impale her though, Vanessa jumped high up and stepped to one of the spears to go even further above.

"Rat like bastards." Vanessa said with her eyes filled with killing intent.

Raising one of her legs while being in the air, black flames engulfed that certain leg. The flame\'s identity was known to be the most destructive type of magic branching from dark magic out there. Chaos magic.

She then made swiped her leg and kicked toward where the faceless figures were, releasing the chaotic flames of pure destruction like a wave toward the ground.

The faceless figures quickly dived back inside the portals before the chaotic flames burn them into nothingness.

The chaotic flame disintegrated the marble-like material without leaving dust behind.

Once Vanessa fell down, 3 times the amount of portals appeared around her. And from them came out faceless figures with different kinds of weapons.

One of them took the lead and thursted his spear at Vanessa, which with little to no movement dodged to the side.

The figure thrust again and again at a speed similar to that of a peak warrior of the 3rd-tier. Though in the eyes of Vanessa, he was extremely slow.

"You done?" With a swift movement faster than lighting, she kicked the faceless figure at his head, making it explode into several pieces.

The pieces were made out of seemingly stone.

With the fall of the first figure being their signal, all others surrounding Vanessa dashed at her.

Alas, even if surrounded by all sides, Vanessa\'s battle sense was as sharp as having a thousand eyes around her. With minimal movement and precise strikes, she dodged and annihilated the faceless

But in the mids of the fight, she noticed something strange.

The broken pieces of the dead figures will get sucked back near the "corpses" before a portal appears and takes the "corpse" and broken pieces somewhere unknown.

Once that happend, another portal would appear and spew out a replica of the faceless figure that was sucked in.

Vanessa saw it happend again and again, making her realize that they weren\'t replicas but that those figures were getting repaired once inside the portal. That or someone was sending new of those every time. But Vanessa decided to stick to the former.

Agares who saw Vanessa getting surrounded was about to go and support her, but from the side of his eye, he saw a strong light coming toward him.

Hearing his danger senses, he jumped back, barely dodging a ray of extreme heat targeting his previous location and shortly after following Agares.

Forcing him to run further away from Vanessa.

"A spider?" Agares asked out loud as he saw the spider up in the wall shooting a laser from his donut head.

The spider on the wall continued to track Agare\'s movements and the faceless figures continued to rush at Vanessa without pause.

With the spiders focused entirely on Agares, she missed the sudden appearance of dark mist coming behind her head and slowly forming a being with flaring eyes.

Now fully formed, Danzel swung his sword at the spider\'s head and cut it into multiple pieces. Its head was destroyed which was used to focus the energy into one point to create the laser, resulting in the energy blowing up.

*Booom!

With the laser no longer following him, Agares eyes moved like a sharp blade toward the faceless figures before disappearing from his location.

At the same time, from the location where Sartan was previously, the smoke exploded.

And at the same time, Agares and a furious Sartan had their weapons raised toward the faceless figures.

"Sword art-"

"HOW DARE YOU GREET A KING LIKE THAT!?" Sartan yelled full of bloodlust as he swung his halbert at those figures and sent a huge shockwave that swept through many of them.

Though feeling bitter from being interrupted, Agares sword wasn\'t interrupted in cutting the rest of the figures into small pieces.

Vanessa wisely jumped away and land beside Agares.

"Move away if you don\'t want to get burn your muscle head!" She yelled as moved her right leg towards the left side with her leg burning in chaos flames.

Then she dragged her leg to the right side in a waning crescent moon shape, making a small moon of chaos flames that exploded like a tsunami towards the "corpses" of the faceless figures.

Knowing what those flames were capable of, the rage in Sartan\'s face disappeared and quickly moved to the side, letting the chaos flames remove the remains of the faceless figures.

Sartan looked at the black flames and then stared at Vanessa with a frown.

"They were getting to recover." Vanessa said while shrugging her shoulders.

"Do they have my brethren\'s blood?" Sartan said while scratching his head.

*Buagh!!

The sudden fall of the spider brought everyone\'s attention to the one who slayed it.

"Those things aren\'t living beings. They are some kind of golem variant..." Danzel said while his armor was slowly regenerating the black platings.

"Golems?"

"Golems?"

Vannesa and Sartan tilted their heads in confusion.

"Mhmm~, I see." Agares mumbled to himself, making the two ignorant people turn at him.

"Hey Agares, do you know who does things?" Vanessa asked.

Agares nodded his head.

"Yeah, one friend from my village used to make large wood puppets that could move on their own which he called golems...though everyone called them guardians rather than golems." Agares explained to everyone, with Vanessa and Sartan saying "ohh" while Danzel made a mental note that wood golems were a thing.

Reminding him that he still didn\'t know a lot about this world and its magic.

"I don\'t know what kind of golems your friends make, but those things that came from portals use the core of this tower to repair themself and charge themself. As long as we take the core, they should run out of mana." Danzel shared the information he got from the spider\'s description.

"Then what are we still waiting for, let\'s get to it"

With everyone agreeing, they let Vanessa take the lead as she had the highest mana perception among all of us and was capable to track the core supposedly if Velkirs words were true.

As for this place itself,  the dimensional shift was 10 times more impressive than the sacred vault in the desert.

In the vault, it seemed that it simply expanded the space, but here, they were stairs going up and down and long paths with hunters of traps. As they were in a tower, moving like that was quite weird.

And the guardians of this place were much more impressive than those flesh golems.

In each different path, a large number of traps and other golems were to prevent them from moving forward, with every time being one or two "superior" golems just like the spider there.

Be it flying serpents golems that crossed through space by using portals or a humanoid golem that was capable to summon elementals of some kind of different variant.

They were quite powerful.

Nevertheless, all those golems only reached the peak of the 3rd-tier.

Against Sartan, Agares, Vanessa, and Danzel...

They had no chance of defeating them.

Those 4 steamrolled their way toward their goal, devastating the golems blocking their path. And as they were in hurry, most superior golems didn\'t even manage to show their abilities.

And for the being that was observing the group of 4, it felt threatened.

***

In a wide and empty room with only a small altar standing in the middle of the room.

Hovering above the altar was the being that was threats by the newly arrived intruders.

"4 Targets of the calamity rank, a high troll, dark elf, undead, and an unknown race in the memory space. 4 warriors, with 2 capable of magic."

The being that analyzed the footage from the golems had no facial expression, not a humanoid body.

As the being that spoke in a feminine voice was a...

A mana crystal.

More precisely known as the core of the tower.

"Contact Master of imminent threat of the tower..., communication failed. Undergone repeat... communication failed.  Under gone~."

"Failed."

"Failed."

"Failed."

The mana crystal repeated the same thing again and again until its words changed.

"Self-defense protocol has been judged without authorization to be put in action."

Suddenly the altar lightens up in white light, the light slowly revealing a white plate armor with a hole in the middle.

Slowly, the core of the tower lowered itself inside the plate armor.

Just as it did, mana spread through the armor at a such great amount that it made physical.

And under the control of this mana, the core was capable of controlling the piece of armor.

"For my lord and master, I will protect this place" the core declared as it continued seeing the footage of the 4 Deathfull Skull members.