Infinite Mana - Chapter 196: Invitation and Failure (Thank you for your support, knowntrainer!) (Patreon)

Several soldiers looked as though a truck had driven over them, reversed, and then decided a second pass would produce better results. Bent armor, swollen joints, blood, and barely functional limbs covered almost everyone.

None of them were even in their twenties yet, which made the sight slightly more ridiculous. They were young, trained Aura users equipped with expensive armor and specialized weapons, yet one corrupted golem had nearly dismantled the entire formation.

Sieghart crouched beside the nearest unconscious soldier and started with the damage threatening breathing. He could not simply heal everything simultaneously. Some wounds required careful alignment, while others could wait until more dangerous injuries were stabilized, forcing Sieghart to prioritize instead of drowning everybody in White Mana.

The first soldier coughed violently after several minutes and finally began breathing normally. Sieghart moved immediately toward another without waiting for gratitude, because several people still looked considerably closer to corpses than patients.

As he worked, one thought kept returning despite himself. They should have fought better. There had been six trained Aura users plus their captain, all armed specifically for golems and accustomed to operating as a coordinated formation against opponents relying almost entirely upon physical attacks.

The Guardian had been powerful, certainly, but it was still fundamentally a golem. No deceptive swordsmanship, no complicated spell combinations, no intelligent feints, and no clever attempts to exploit emotional weaknesses.

It punched.

It charged.

It spun.

Then it summoned smaller constructs and made everything much worse. Sieghart frowned while repairing another fractured forearm. Perhaps calling it brain-dead was unfair when the creature had demonstrated enough awareness to identify priorities and defend its exposed core.

Still, compared with fighting humans or Chimerians capable of changing tactics deliberately, the Guardian remained relatively simple. Given their numbers, Sieghart felt that the soldiers should have controlled the encounter more efficiently.

Then another thought corrected him. He had not fought it directly. Not really.

Sieghart had remained behind everyone, stunning smaller constructs, cutting joints with Water Jet, reinforcing Aldren, and healing injuries while other people received most of the Guardian’s attacks. It was easy to criticize positioning when five meters of corrupted metal had not been repeatedly trying to smash his head into the floor.

Perhaps he was underestimating the creature precisely because his support role had allowed him to observe without experiencing the same pressure. That possibility annoyed him. Sieghart liked believing his conclusions were based on evidence rather than arrogance. Aldren interrupted his thoughts before they could continue much farther.

“That was good training for me too.”

Sieghart looked up while finishing the final adjustment around one soldier’s shoulder. Aldren stood several meters away, bruised heavily beneath his armor and looking considerably more tired than before the fight began.

“You?”

Aldren nodded while resting the hammer across one shoulder.

“I expected trouble. I didn’t expect that much.”

Sieghart looked toward the Guardian’s enormous collapsed body.

“That makes two of us.”

The captain glanced across his injured soldiers before his expression hardened slightly.

“Still, this explains a lot.”

Sieghart finished the healing cast and stood.

“The increased golem numbers?”

“Indeed.”

Aldren walked toward the Guardian while stepping around several motionless smaller constructs. Most had already begun shrinking now that the corrupted mana connecting them to their summoner had disappeared. Sieghart followed and looked across the chamber through Magic Vision. The strange dark-red network that had spread through the floor during battle was already fading rapidly.

“You think summoning those smaller ones was affecting the rest of the dungeon too?”

Aldren crouched near one cracked plate and examined the damaged mineral beneath it.

“I do.”

The captain explained that if the Guardian possessed some ability to accelerate golem creation, then the abnormal population growth throughout the upper floors suddenly had a much simpler explanation. The summoned constructs might not have remained limited to the chamber. The Guardian’s influence could have spread through nearby mana channels, gradually increasing reconstruction rates across multiple floors even when nobody disturbed it directly.

Sieghart considered the possibility while remembering how dark-red mana had traveled through the chamber before smaller golems emerged. That certainly matched what he had seen.

“What happens if more Guardians start doing this?”

Aldren’s expression changed slightly.

“Dungeon breaks.”

Sieghart had heard the term before, although mostly in reports involving monster populations becoming large enough that the dungeon could no longer contain them naturally. If reconstruction rates continued rising, then miners and adventurers would eventually fail to kill monsters quickly enough to keep populations below whatever threshold prevented them from escaping.

Once that happened, surrounding settlements would suddenly have much larger problems than falling ore prices or damaged equipment.

“The human lands might start dealing with continuous dungeon breaks if this keeps spreading.”

Aldren nodded once.

“That’s what worries me.”

Sieghart immediately remembered their earlier conversation about worsening dungeon aggression, shrinking human territories, and rumors connecting the changes to the expansion of the Lost Lands.

One corrupted Guardian did not prove any of those theories. It did make them considerably harder to dismiss. Aldren turned toward his soldiers and raised his voice.

“We’re done here. Full retreat once everyone can walk.”

Nobody complained. That reaction alone demonstrated how tired they were. Sieghart returned to healing while the soldiers gathered weapons, checked one another’s armor, and separated anything important from the piles of shrinking golem remains. By the time the last serious fracture had been stabilized, most men could stand again, though several moved stiffly enough that another battle would have been a terrible idea.

Sieghart looked toward the Guardian before following the others. Its massive corpse had already shrunk considerably. Large metallic sections contracted into dense chunks of ore while cracked armor plates became smaller every few minutes as the magical expansion supporting them disappeared.

Several valuable pieces remained visible. The core interested Sieghart considerably more. Aldren’s final hammer strike had shattered it into dozens of dark-red fragments, some no larger than fingernails and others closer to broken pieces of crystal.

Sieghart hesitated. He wanted those.

“Do you mind if I take the Guardian’s parts?”

Aldren glanced toward him, apparently expecting Sieghart to ask for payment or perhaps additional ore rather than scavenging from the monster personally.

“Go ahead.”

Sieghart nodded. That was easier than expected.

He moved toward the corpse immediately and began collecting whichever ore looked unusual enough to justify carrying, storing several dense metallic pieces inside his bags before searching deeper between the collapsed plates.

The core fragments were easier to locate through Magic Vision.

At least, they should have been. Sieghart frowned almost immediately. The dark-red corruption was gone. He picked up one broken piece. Amber-brown mana remained inside it, faint and unstable, but none of the corrupted coloration that had dominated the Guardian during battle survived.

Another fragment produced the same result. Then another. Sieghart’s irritation grew.

Aldren looked toward him from farther away.

“Problem?”

“Nothing important.”

That was technically true. It was simply extremely disappointing. Sieghart had wanted the corrupted Guardian’s core precisely because the creature possessed an ability he had never seen ordinary golems demonstrate.

It had spread mana through an entire chamber and generated dozens of smaller constructs from surrounding material. If the System interpreted that principle properly, Sieghart might have gained something related to creating golems, summoning constructs, or perhaps manipulating dungeon-born material.

That would have been useful. Very useful. Instead, the hammer had turned the core into gravel. Worse, whatever corruption carried the unusual principle appeared to have vanished once the Guardian died and the core broke apart.

Sieghart gathered every fragment anyway. Maybe enough pieces together would still contain something. Probably not. He had learned not to trust appearances completely, but Magic Vision showed no dark-red residue anywhere inside the fragments.

“This is annoying.”

One nearby soldier looked toward him.

“You wanted the broken rocks?”

“Yes.”

The man shrugged.

“Merchants.”

Sieghart almost corrected him. Then decided that explanation was considerably safer than admitting he planned to absorb fragments from a corrupted dungeon Guardian directly into his own body. He finished collecting the remains and followed the retreat.

The climb toward the surface took significantly longer than the descent because several soldiers could not maintain their previous pace despite being healed. Sieghart resisted repairing every ache simply because someone walked stiffly. The important injuries were stabilized, and exhausting himself mentally over discomfort would accomplish little.

More importantly, the group encountered far fewer golems on the return journey. That was interesting.

Either destroying the Guardian had disrupted reconstruction throughout the lower floors, or the creatures already present had stopped receiving whatever additional energy had made them unusually active.

Sieghart recorded that mentally for later. Perhaps Aldren’s theory was right. When sunlight finally appeared ahead, several soldiers visibly relaxed. Even the ones attempting to maintain professional posture began walking faster once the camp noises reached them from outside.

They emerged to immediate attention.

People around the entrance stopped working after seeing the condition of the returning soldiers, particularly the damaged silver-blue armor and the number of men moving with visible exhaustion. Aldren ignored the questions initially and directed his group toward their carriages before turning toward Sieghart. The captain removed a money pouch from inside his armor.

“Your payment.”

Sieghart accepted it. The amount was noticeably heavier than the small collections of five-silver fees he had been receiving beside his own carriage. Aldren had apparently counted properly. Sieghart had too.

“You earned it.”

“I know.”

Aldren laughed quietly. That reaction was becoming strangely common whenever Sieghart answered honestly instead of pretending money had somehow become embarrassing to accept. The captain adjusted his cape and glanced toward the dungeon entrance one final time.

“If you’re ever looking for work, give my name to anyone wearing this emblem.”

He touched the sword, spear, and shield stitched across the blue fabric.

“They’ll know where to send the request.”

Sieghart looked at the emblem. That sounded dangerously close to establishing contacts with an organization connected to military operations, nobles, borders, and whatever future invasion Aldren had described.

Useful information could come from that. So could trouble. Sieghart settled upon the safest answer available.

“I’ll remember.”

Aldren nodded and turned toward his soldiers. Sieghart did the opposite. He walked quickly toward his carriage before anyone could introduce another opportunity, request assistance, ask questions about his Water Magic, or decide the strange healer deserved recruitment immediately.

The vehicle remained untouched. Sieghart unlocked the rear compartment, slipped inside, and shut the door behind himself before removing the bag containing the shattered Guardian core.

He spread the fragments across a cloth. Still no corruption. That remained deeply irritating. He considered waiting. Testing them. Comparing the fragments against ordinary golem cores. Perhaps asking Mira eventually. Then Sieghart looked toward the closed carriage door. He had absolutely no patience for that right now. He selected the largest fragment and began absorbing it.

Mana entered him immediately. Nothing unusual happened. Sieghart absorbed the second. Then the third. He continued piece by piece until every remaining fragment had dissolved, feeding the Guardian’s accumulated energy into his endless reservoir.

No foreign hunger appeared. No rage. No desire to replace his limbs.

No strange knowledge.

Eventually, the System responded.

[Experience + 1000]

Sieghart waited. Nothing else appeared. He kept staring at the empty space beneath the notification as though disappointment alone might convince the System to reconsider.

Five seconds passed.

Still nothing.

“No Golem Summoning?”

Nothing.

“No Construct Creation?”

The System remained completely silent. Sieghart leaned backward against the carriage wall.

“One thousand Experience and nothing else.”

That was objectively a good reward. It did not feel like one. He had watched the Guardian create an entire army from dungeon material and spent most of the fight imagining what kind of spell the System might build from that principle.

Now the answer was apparently nothing. Sieghart looked toward the empty cloth where the shattered fragments had been.

“Should’ve asked them not to smash the core.”

That would have been difficult in the middle of a battle involving several unconscious soldiers and dozens of smaller golems. Still annoying. Sieghart stored the newly collected ores and started reorganizing the compartment before checking his updated experience again.

One thousand points brought him considerably closer to another Personal Level. That mattered. Probably. He sighed.