Infinite Mana - Chapter 183: Don't Break the Money (Thank you for your support, Miroslav!) (Patreon)

The entire construct lurched sideways and slammed one hand into the wall to prevent itself from falling. Sieghart moved Flamethrower back toward the chest. The concentrated heat found the cracks created earlier and entered deeper.

A bright internal glow appeared beneath the overlapping slabs. Magic Vision showed the mana network becoming chaotic. Several channels broke. The golem froze momentarily. Then Sieghart saw the central structure. A dense amber mana stone sat inside the chest behind several layers of partially molten material, functioning like both control core and energy source.

He focused the flames there. The stone surrounding the chest turned red. Then orange. Then parts of it began sagging. The golem finally collapsed onto one knee. Sieghart continued. Molten material poured across the floor while the chest cavity gradually opened, exposing the mana stone directly to sustained magical heat.

A sharp cracking sound echoed through the tunnel. The amber core fractured. Every mana channel inside the golem disappeared at once. The construct stopped moving.

Its remaining body leaned forward before collapsing heavily across the dungeon floor, sending hot stone fragments and glowing pieces of partially melted material spreading several meters around the impact.

Sieghart dismissed Flamethrower. The sudden absence of roaring fire left the passage strangely quiet.

He examined the result through Magic Vision while waiting for the molten material to cool enough that approaching would not become another unnecessary experiment in pain tolerance.

The fight had been straightforward. Almost disappointingly so. Still, the golem had revealed several useful things. Its movement depended upon internal mana channels.

Extreme heat could deform the physical body faster. Most importantly, destroying the central mana stone stopped everything immediately. Sieghart looked farther down the tunnel.

Another faint tremor traveled through the floor. Then another answered from somewhere else. His expression slowly changed. One golem had been easy. The camp had not been complaining about one. Sieghart smiled and formed another small flame above his palm while the dungeon shook beneath approaching footsteps.

“Right.”

Apparently, business hours were over. Training had started.

Sieghart encountered the second golem less than three minutes after melting the first one, although this time he deliberately resisted the temptation to solve the problem by turning another valuable construct into a puddle of glowing stone.

The first battle had already proven that Flamethrower worked extremely well against ordinary stone golems. Repeating the exact same solution would eventually strengthen the spell, but Sieghart had entered the dungeon because real combat allowed him to test ideas that safe training could not reproduce properly.

The next construct looked almost identical to the first, standing slightly above two meters with disproportionately thick arms, a broad torso assembled from overlapping stone slabs, and a narrow amber glow hidden inside the wedge-shaped block serving as its head. Magic Vision revealed the same basic internal design he had noticed earlier. Mana flowed outward from a dense central core inside the torso, divided through narrow pathways leading into every limb, and then returned toward the center through thinner channels.

Sieghart stepped backward while the golem accelerated toward him, deliberately waiting until one enormous stone fist began moving before activating Impulse and sliding sideways across the tunnel. The punch missed him and struck the floor instead, creating a shallow crater while Sieghart raised one hand and formed Water Jet rather than answering with Fire Magic.

A narrow stream of highly compressed water screamed through the tunnel and struck the golem's right shoulder, immediately carving a thin groove through the outer stone before the construct could turn completely toward him.

Sieghart increased the pressure carefully and swept the stream horizontally across the joint. The Water Jet cut deeper until the arm separated completely and struck the ground with enough weight to fracture the floor beneath it. Sieghart stopped casting instead of immediately attacking again because he wanted to observe the result.

"That was easier."

The golem did not appear especially inconvenienced by losing one arm. It rotated its remaining shoulder and continued advancing toward Sieghart with the same emotionless determination it had displayed before being partially dismantled. What happened behind it was considerably more interesting. The severed arm trembled against the ground, and Magic Vision showed mana continuing to circulate through the detached limb despite the complete physical separation from its torso.

Small fragments around the severed joint began vibrating first, followed by the entire arm sliding across the floor. It accelerated toward the golem as though an invisible cable had suddenly tightened between the disconnected pieces. Sieghart watched the detached limb strike the exposed shoulder. Stone fragments shifted, internal mana channels brightened, and within several seconds the arm locked itself back into approximately the same position it had occupied before Water Jet removed it.

"That's annoying."

The golem attacked again before Sieghart finished appreciating the mechanism. He used Impulse backward, avoided another heavy punch, and fired Water Jet lower across the creature's left leg beneath the knee. The result repeated almost immediately. The separated lower leg hit the floor, remained motionless for several moments, and then began scraping back toward the body once the mana inside both pieces intensified.

Sieghart kept Magic Vision focused upon the reconstruction instead of attacking. The attraction did not resemble Telekinesis exactly, because the force seemed to originate from matching magical patterns distributed across both disconnected sections.

The phenomenon reminded him vaguely of electromagnetism from Earth, although that comparison was probably inaccurate in several important ways. Whatever the actual mechanism, separate golem components behaved like pieces designed to recognize and pull themselves toward their original positions.

"Some kind of magical electromagnetism? Maybe I can learn it…"

The restored leg slammed back into place and the golem stood upright again. That immediately explained why miners found these constructs annoying even when individual specimens were not especially intelligent or magically sophisticated. Destroying a limb accomplished very little unless the attacker damaged whatever allowed the pieces to reconnect. Smashing the body blindly could actually create additional work if every important fragment remained magically linked to the same structure.

Sieghart fired Water Jet again, but this time he ignored the obvious joint and focused on the mana distribution revealed by Magic Vision. Several smaller concentrations existed near the extremities, much weaker than the central core but connected to numerous control channels.

He targeted the concentration inside the right elbow. The pressurized stream drilled through outer stone while the golem swung toward him, forcing Sieghart to use Impulse before the enormous fist could strike his chest. Sieghart maintained Water Jet during the retreat and corrected the angle continuously. The narrow stream finally reached a small amber fragment hidden beneath the joint, and a sharp crack echoed through the passage when the concentrated mana node broke.

The entire forearm stopped moving almost immediately. It remained physically attached to the upper arm, but every mana pathway below the destroyed node faded until the stone hung uselessly beside the golem's torso.

"There you are."

The golem continued charging with only one functional arm, so Sieghart shifted his attention toward the legs. Another small control node sat inside the left knee where several pathways converged before continuing downward. Water Jet struck that point precisely. The golem managed two more heavy steps before the knee lost magical coordination, causing the leg to fold beneath several hundred kilograms of animated stone.

The construct crashed forward and drove its remaining hand into the floor. Sieghart stepped around it instead of finishing the battle immediately because the central core inside the torso was still glowing brightly and functioning normally. That was the important discovery. Destroying the main core ended the fight instantly, but that same core was also one of the most valuable pieces explorers expected to recover from an ordinary stone golem.

Sieghart had solved his first encounter in the least profitable way possible. Melting the chest and cracking the central mana stone had essentially been the dungeon equivalent of hammering silver coins until nobody wanted them anymore.

"Right. Stop breaking the merchandise."

The fallen construct attempted dragging itself forward using the one remaining arm. Sieghart calmly moved around its reach and used another precise Water Jet to destroy the smaller control node inside the functioning shoulder. Once the final extremity node failed, the golem became effectively motionless. Its central core continued supplying mana, but none of the limbs could receive enough organized energy to generate useful movement anymore.

Sieghart approached cautiously and used several controlled Wind Blades to separate pieces of chest armor without striking the glowing core underneath. The process took longer than simply destroying everything, but the extra time preserved the valuable material.

Eventually, the torso opened far enough for Telekinesis to grip the central mana stone directly. Sieghart pulled it from the cavity, and every remaining magical pathway across the construct faded almost immediately afterward. The body became ordinary stone the moment its core was removed. Sieghart turned the intact amber stone between his fingers and decided that extracting money from a disabled enemy felt considerably more satisfying than accidentally vaporizing it.

"That's much better."

He stored the core rather than absorbing it immediately. There would be plenty of opportunities to experiment later, and wasting every sellable core on Personal Experience would undermine the merchant plan almost as effectively as destroying them during combat.

The next several encounters became controlled experiments rather than straightforward fights. Sieghart deliberately rotated between Water Jet, Wind Blades, Glacial Fist, Earth Bullet, Mana Sword, Telekinesis,  while studying which combinations preserved the most useful material.

Wind Blades worked well against exposed joints once Magic Vision identified the correct angle, although cutting too broadly could separate entire limbs without damaging the smaller control nodes and therefore accomplish almost nothing permanent. Earth Bullets proved less efficient because blunt impacts often pushed the embedded nodes deeper into the surrounding structure without cracking them cleanly. The spell remained useful for disrupting balance, but precision destruction was not its strength.

Glacial Fist performed surprisingly well around joints. A direct strike could fracture surrounding stone while cold spread through the mana-rich material connecting separate sections, occasionally disabling an extremity long enough for Sieghart to finish the node with another spell.

He began enjoying the process more than expected. One golem lost both arms before reaching him, while another collapsed after Sieghart destroyed one ankle and waited for the construct to shift its entire weight onto the opposite knee. A third specimen possessed unusually thick shoulder plating, forcing Sieghart to crack the outer layer with several Glacial Fists before Water Jet could penetrate deeply enough to reach the smaller mana concentration beneath it.

Every construct followed the same broad design, but variations in size, material density, node position, and external armor kept the encounters useful enough that Sieghart never needed to repeat the exact same sequence twice. Their strange self-reassembly also became easier to understand through repeated testing. Intact limbs returned rapidly, severed sections containing functional nodes remained strongly attracted to their bodies, and shattered nodes caused that attraction to disappear almost completely.

By the time Sieghart had disabled several additional golems, he had developed a reliable routine that balanced safety, training value, and profit without requiring him to destroy the primary core. Disable the extremity nodes, preserve the torso, open the chest carefully, extract the central core intact, and avoid turning valuable dungeon material into useless rubble unless the situation actually demanded it.

That approach was less dramatic than melting enemies with Flamethrower, but Sieghart had recently spent enough money in the capital to appreciate any fighting style that produced income instead of destroying it. One later golem contained something unusual beneath its outer stone. Magic Vision showed several dull metallic veins running through the torso alongside the ordinary mana channels, prompting Sieghart to disable the construct more carefully than usual.

When he opened the chest, a cluster of dark metallic ore occupied part of the interior around the central core. The material resembled low-grade iron at first glance, but mana had accumulated inside it densely enough that even Sieghart could tell it was more valuable than ordinary mineral deposits.

The customers outside had mentioned this possibility repeatedly. Some golems formed around useful ores, and the chance of valuable material appearing supposedly increased as explorers descended into deeper sections where ambient mana became denser.

Higher-level constructs could contain better iron, uncommon metals, mana crystals, or combinations of mineral deposits that ordinary miners might spend days extracting from stationary rock. Sieghart looked down at the disabled construct and almost laughed at the absurd efficiency of the dungeon ecosystem. Mana gathered mineral resources, assembled those resources into aggressive humanoid shapes, and then waited for explorers to dismantle them for profit.

"This place really is a mine where the ore punches back."

He removed several pieces of ore before extracting the central core intact. The operation took longer than simply killing the construct, but the additional material made every careful minute feel increasingly worthwhile. Several more golems appeared as Sieghart continued deeper, although the passages remained strangely empty of human explorers. Recent tool marks and scattered footprints proved that people still entered, but the increased population had clearly changed normal working patterns.

The camp's complaints made more sense now. Mining teams probably entered in larger groups and during specific schedules rather than wandering through the tunnels freely, because cleared regions no longer remained safe for predictable periods. Sieghart did not mind the reduced human presence. Fewer explorers meant fewer witnesses observing his unusual spell combinations, fewer arguments over recovered materials, and considerably more available enemies for training.

Eventually, he decided that sacrificing one intact core for information was worth more than selling every recovered mana stone. He sat beside a cleared section of tunnel and examined one ordinary golem core carefully with Magic Vision.

Nothing about the amber mana suggested corruption, emotional contamination, or the strange foreign pressure he had experienced from several unusual cores. Sieghart began the absorption while remaining mentally prepared to stop if anything unexpected appeared. The mana entered him smoothly and disappeared into his endless reserves without triggering rage, hunger, bodily rejection, or any other unwanted instinct. By recent standards, the complete absence of psychological suffering made the process almost suspiciously pleasant.

The System responded shortly afterward with a simple notification rather than introducing another branch capable of making Mira question every decision Sieghart had ever made.

[ Experience + 50]

Sieghart waited several seconds after the notification disappeared, half expecting another message to arrive late and announce some bizarre conceptual interpretation related to becoming stone or magnetically retrieving detached limbs. Nothing else appeared. There was no new magical branch, no unfamiliar spell, no foreign principle, and thankfully no sudden desire to replace his body with a collection of enchanted rocks.

"That makes sense."

The golems did not actually cast spells in any meaningful sense. They were magical constructs because mana animated their bodies, but their combat behavior depended almost entirely upon physical structure and internal energy circulation.

Their cores functioned more like power sources and control centers than spellcasting organs. That apparently gave the System plenty of Personal Experience but very little conceptual material worth translating into another branch of magic.

Fifty Experience remained useful enough that Sieghart considered absorbing more later, although selling intact cores and gathering money for books created an increasingly competitive alternative to immediate leveling.