Jonathan tore across the ground, his feet sinking into the clouds as he raced towards the golem, his fist cocked back and ready to pulverize the machine. It rose too quickly for him to reach it, though, and swung its hammer at blinding speeds. Jonathan crossed his arms in defence, but was blasted aside regardless, his forearms breaking before the force. As far as he could tell, his mechanical foe had no special abilities beyond raw stats, and whatever the white flames coating its hammer were.
Jonathan skidded to a halt, the clouds below slowing him down with their cottony thickness. He had almost no time to react as the golem came charging in, boosters of white flame shooting out of its calves. It moved at well over the speed of sound, looking like a blur even to Jonathan.
He used his Blessing, and rolled under the incoming hammerblow, turning behind the golem’s back, and driving his fist into its opalescent surface. The stone shattered, and the golem stumbled, before turning its momentum into a blistering swing of its hammer, the weapon whipping around, faster than Jonathan could dodge. It blindsided him, and cracked his jaw, sending him flying into the arena walls. His neck had nearly broken, which, while not fatal at his level of power, would have been a major inconvenience.
Jonathan curled his lip in annoyance, and got to his feet, pushing off the arena wall. He could see the golem approaching him at a maddeningly slow pace, filled with the surety of its strength. The construct was almost the exact opposite of the precious dungeon challenge. Every aspect of its power was evident, and that evidence was enough to show that it was nearly impossible to defeat. It easily had the stats of a Tier 5, and not a low one either. Jonathan was far beyond the pale when it came to his physical strength, and even he could tell that he was outmatched here. If he hadn’t used his stats points before the fight, he would have already died.
He crunched his fists together within their gauntlets, and galvanized his element, Maw of the Void coating his entire body in a veil of pure destruction. As far as he could tell, nothing could detect the Void while in this form, save for by contact. The golem continued without a hitch in its step, and Jonathan took this to mean that he was correct. Launching himself forwards with a snap of his legs, Jonathan cocked back his fist, and covered it in the purple fire of the Void.
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The golem sped up, its feet blurring as it raced across the ground, its hammer swinging already, a hundred feet away from Jonathan. A blazing cone of pure fire exploded from the back of the hammer, propelling it, and the golem at hypersonic speeds. Jonathan stood his ground, and used Aegis of the Void’s Dichotomy. While he normally extended it in a dome around himself, this time he condensed the shield down to the edges of his armor, essentially creating a second set.
Jonathan punched as the hammer streaked towards his head, his armor condensing further into a bulb of superdense Void energy. When it struck the hammer, the weapon bent around it, coming apart as the Void began to eat through it. Only, the process was far slower than Jonathan had expected. Up until now, almost everything he encountered, from circle lords to reality itself, was vulnerable to the Void. This hammer, though, was so durable that it was as if Jonathan were using another, inferior element. In fact, the blazing flames of white that surrounded the weapon began to push back, warring with the Void over its territory.
Jonathan gritted his teeth, and imagined a cosmic wind blowing from behind him, pushing all of the aggregated Void energy surrounding his body forwards. In a wave of purple and nothingness, the flames of the nadir swept over the golem, shredding the top layer of its skin. The golden accents on the alabaster figure vanished, revealing dense, shining flesh underneath. There were no organs, or bones, or indeed, any visible way that the golem could even move. It had no joints, or engines, just a solid mass of elementally accelerated stone and metal with enough strength to beat down the man who had killed two circle lords.
Slowly but surely, Jonathan was pushed back, his armor creaking in tune with his bones as the golem forced him down into the clouds below. The substance was odd, with a limited range of motion. The first foot or so felt like a mound of cotton, but as soon as it was pushed down beyond that, it was like stone, and of a Tier far beyond Jonathan’s own. His muscles started to tear, peeled from his bones as his body warped. As he struggled, he realized something terrifying. The golem could have done this the entire time, but was simply playing with him. Jonathan didn't think that it had the capacity for malice. Rather, it was some directive left by its master to cause the most pain possible to its foes.
