Sofia observed the room she was now locked inside of.

This… This might not have been my brightest idea.

The inside of the locked chamber was not full of riches as Sofia had hoped. Instead, there were two giant golems, one on each side of the room, dormant, and a series of stacked spherical mana shields protecting what looked to be the true body of ‘Ancestor Hugo’.

The old man looked the same as he did in the painting of him by Lola’s sister, down to wearing the same exact long red and dark-purple robes. He stood upright on a raised platform in the centerpoint of the room, his eyes were closed, and he was not moving in the slightest.

Besides the massive Mithril frame of the colossus which she obviously couldn’t hope to steal; what caught Sofia’s eyes was the only other valuable looking-thing in the room: a sleek white dagger that Hugo held in front of his chest with both hands like a ceremonial sword.

A familiar design. Just like the prize sword. No wonder he really wants ‘The first key’; I’m willing to bet my entire fortune that this is either ‘the second’ or ‘the third’ key. One per admin.

Three keys to open a lock.

Wouldn’t it be nice to steal this?

Hmm. This might be impossible, though. Even assuming he won’t wake up because his actual soul is in Lola’s sword fighting against the Headmaster and Tartaros, If those golems wake up…

They’re clearly charged.

I could siphon their core with the ring, but they’re too far apart to get both at once.

And I’d need to empty the ring without waking them first. Actually it’s curious that they’ve not detected me yet. Am I invisible to them thanks to the runes covering up my heat and mana emissions?

I know for a fact the vast majority of golems rely on mana senses to distinguish things. They could’ve sensed the graveyard crew though, but I guess they didn’t.

Hmmmm… A tight situation. My only way to get rid of the shields around the guy is also the ring. Even if I get to the body it’s not a given I’d be able to pry the dagger out of his hands either. And to activate the ring in the first place I need to empty it. The golems will 100% wake up. They have to be at least level 400. I can’t do anything about them…

I can’t leave either, my only way out is also the ring.

This is the worst thing I could have found inside of here… Fuck.

I should have just broken through the base’s external shield and escaped…

I think the only thing I can safely do… Is to wait and hope this guy dies.

He’s one against three if we count the Emperor, right? Surely they can’t lose this. Best case scenario would be he dies and that disables all the shields in the base, since he seems to be the actual source of energy. Worst case scenario, the headmaster fails and this guy here wakes up…

If he does… Well the only way out is if he spares me. Seems unlikely. Maybe if I sell my body he… I’d rather not think about it…

Actually… This is risky but if my only other choice is to wait, well.

Sofia used her ability to walk on air to make her way to the ceiling. It wasn’t like the golems wouldn’t be able to reach her there, but if they couldn’t sense her, they were less likely to search there. Then, with two successive casts of Heal undead in opposite directions, she covered the locked room in rot.

The rot failed to stick onto the backside of the vault’s door, the mana shields protecting Hugo, and the outside mithril frame of the golems. Everything else, from the floor and walls to the inside and exposed cores of the golems, which were big orange spheres, was completely covered.

This will surely help empty the ring.

The rot started absorbing the mana from everything it touched, and as Sofia feared, the golems arose from their slumber, a fact which she had very little time to appreciate, as the golems instantly found her and pulverized her into a mush.

Or so Sofia believed, but somehow, when faced with the mithril fists of the Golems, she survived. At the last second, a paper doll flew out of her mouth and collided against the fists, sending the two golems reeling back.

Leverle’s charm!

‘It will protect you from an attack you cannot handle, once. And will call me.’

Before the golems could get back up, the paper doll bloated and stretched, turning into a massive black Gate. The gate broke as a massive lizard-like bipedal goat with pitch black skin, a long neck, elongated limbs, and a blank mask for a head stepped out of it, facing the golems.

“WHERE IN DEATH’S NA-”

Leverle was silenced by two white beams of mana firing at him from the golems’ cores.

There was nothing left of him but a blank mask when the beams died down, they had barely missed Sofia who was too scared to even move, and had cleared straight lines through the rot.

Le- Leverle?

The demon’s body explosively grew back from the mask, and as he reformed, he extended an open hand, in which a crooked white wooden scepter appeared with a shockwave that halfway buried Sofia inside the rot on the wall behind her.

My best bet-

One of the golems charged at Leverle with a raised fist. He was met with a tap of his scepter. Both were ejected back from the collision. And the second golem fired another mana beam, once again reducing the demon to little more than a floating mask while the scepter was nowhere to be seen anymore.

-is still to play dead.

For some reason, the air was starting to get unbearably hot in the vault. Leverle’s body reappeared again, taller and larger. He was still only half the size of the gargantuan golems, but this was more than twice his regular size.

A wave of mana spread out from Leverle. It healed Sofia from the damage the collision against the wall had inflicted on her despite the runes normally preventing healing, and as it spread through the rot, it had the effect of multiplying its growth speed to insane levels and sending it into a frenzy. The rot now truly felt like the genuine thing, and it expanded so fast that in a second, it ate everything it could besides the golems and then ate itself. There was no more vault room, only the spherical mana shields it was contained in, and more shields in the center, protecting the last bit of ‘ground’ as well as the owner of the place.

The golems were also affected, but even with the increased mana consumption rate, the mana within the golems’ cores seemed endless.

To Sofia’s shock, perhaps as an emergency protection which had triggered with the golems’ activation, the outside of the vault was entirely an inferno of dangerous-looking green flames. And inside the vault was getting hotter and hotter.

One of the golems charged at Leverle again, and was met with a gargantuan straight punch. The strength behind the hit was such that Leverle’s arm exploded upon hitting the golem, and the simple shockwave behind Leverle almost killed Sofia and instantly broke both her eardrums. The golem hit the vault’s outer shield hard enough to leave cracks into it but they were almost instantly repaired. Some green fire seeped into the vault through the cracks, and Sofia felt like she was being cooked alive.

As Leverle was about to hit the other golem, Sofia fought the dizziness and dove straight for the central shields protecting Hugo’s body. The boost to the Rot had emptied her ring in an instant, she activated the ring of Zar once more at the last second before hitting the shield and teleported up to Hugo at the same time.

The shields reformed almost instantly. But Sofia was inside.

Another hit from Leverle on the golems shook the vault, but for once Sofia was untouched within the multi-layered final protection shields of Hugo. These shields withstood the lasers from the golems and the impacts from Leverle’s punch without so much as flickering, but it seemed not even a level 500’s protections could resist the absolute effects of a Relic from the Deep.

Leaving the Apostle of Death to his battle, Sofia walked up to Hugo, who was still standing straight, eyes closed and gripping the white dagger with both hands.

[Artisan - Lv. 500+]

Sofia tried grabbing the dagger, but she couldn’t free it from the grip of the artisan. His hands looked relaxed around the dagger, clearly he was not clutching hard, and yet, even when she mustered all of her strength to pull it out of the man’s hands, It was not moving in the slightest.

I don’t have time to ponder on this shit!

You better fucking work this time!

A scroll appeared in Sofia’s hands.