154 The Strange Enemy Encounter

Firing a shot at the over five-metre tall scorpion made of rocks and stone, the bullet hit the golem on one of its legs and exploded into ice spikes as the ice temporarily sealed its movements.

The floating red orb at the centre of the golem's head seemed to act as an eye as the moment the bullet locked one of its legs into place, the orb spun in place until a glowing green spot turned to look straight at Mitsuna.

"Sup."

Mitsuna muttered as she felt the lingering gaze of the golem and shot another two bullets.

Two bullets exploded into fire and lightning respectively as the stone body of the golem was scorched in a few places.

The golem did not stand idle as it turned its entire body to face Mitsuna, easily shattering the ice that was holding one of its back legs in place.

The orb that acted as its eye spun wildly yet the green glowing dot that acted as the pupil continued to stay glued to Mitsuna.

'Not that much damage, should tinker a bit more. Maybe make specialised spells for bullets instead of just engraving simple explosion spells and such.'

Mitsuna thought as she fell on her knees while skating on the sand and bent her body backwards, dodging tens of thin sand and rock spikes that penetrated out of the ground.

"Besides the layer of rock skin, the golem is at a rather high level too. 233 is a bit much to try and kill with guns only."

Mitsuna muttered to herself as she jumped to avoid a sand pit trap while waving her hand at the golem.

Eight spells of various elements were created in a quick moment as they activated a second after Mitsuna had landed and shot another bullet.

The magic bullet engraved with a sound element travelled right towards the centre of the golem's eye, aiming to damage some of its insides with concentrated vibrations.

Yet the bullet phased right through the red orb as it completely disappeared.

Narrowing her eyes at this, Mitsuna placed her gun on her back as she observed what effect the magic spells she had created would have on the golem.

Two water element spells condensed as much water as possible from the surrounding air and spread it around the golem.

A gravity element spell locked it down and inhibited its movements along with a shadow element spell that created a few tendrils that stopped it from moving its legs.

An earth element spell locked the sand surrounding the golem in place to stop it from using any of it to attack.

A lightning element spell sent a wave of electricity through the air as the surrounding water from the water element spells redirected the loose strands of electricity that missed their target back towards the golem.

An ice element spell that was activated moments after the lightning spell instantly transformed the leftover water droplets into small ice spikes that shot towards the golem.

The last spell Mitsuna had used was an element she was not quite familiar with, the soul element.

The soul element spell she made could be called a trial spell as all it did was scan the golem's body and looked for a soul or any source of life. It had no soul but did have a strange battery of sorts in its chest.

The lightning did do some damage to the golem but not much as its stone skin reduced most of the damage it would have taken.

The ice spikes did nothing either as they simply bounced off the stone, not having enough power to pierce through.

"Damn."

Mitsuna muttered as she constructed another two spells that circled around her arm consisting of the space element and earth element.

'I know the level difference is high but the damage dealt is negligible. I wanted to conserve some of the golem without needing to shatter it entirely but I guess I can't do that without thinking of some good spell to use.'

Mitsuna thought to herself as the analysis made by her Soul element spell lingered in her mind. The body of the golem was all interconnected through the battery in its chest and as long as the battery functions, the body parts would still work and eventually reattach to the main body.

If the battery were to be completely destroyed by a large amount of mana it would most likely explode, not leaving any salvageable part behind, thus the reason Mitsuna didn't use space element spells or skills to attack as their mana usage was much higher than other elements and much too high for the battery itself.

'Well, I guess I'll get a little physical then.'

Mitsuna thought as a simple teleportation spell activated and disappeared along with the earth spell that circled her arm.

Appearing above the golem, she was in position to land a full-power punch right at the golem's head and shatter as much of its body as possible with the assisting power of a large blunted spear of earth that shot up from below the golem.

Yet as her body was moving to destroy the golem, her mind realised that even after teleportation, the glowing pupil of the golem's eye still looked right at her.

Feeling that something was wrong, she searched the area with her eyes in a blitz of speed but she could see nothing. Gritting her teeth with narrowed eyes, the blunted earth spear made contact with the golem's head from below as she could no longer stop her body movements and she smashed the golem's head in from above.

Cracks spread across the head and the rest of the body of the golem before Mitsuna finally realized what was wrong and swore at herself in her mind.

'Damnit. It's a scorpion.'

Spreading mana across her body and creating a rather flimsy barrier with the few milliseconds of time she had, Mitsuna attempted to block the attack but was unable to reduce the impact by much.

The spear-like tail of the scorpion golem blasted against her body as quite a few of her ribs were broken and pierced her organs.

Skidding across the sand as she forcefully stopped herself with an instinctual wind spell and repositioned herself away from the golem, she coughed up blood as she wiped her mouth and held her side.

'It broke my bones even though I have all these passives. Shit.'

Mitsuna thought as she looked at the tail of the scorpion golem that wasn't even connected to its body.

Consisting of stone orbs and a sharp coned spear that floated a metre or so behind the scorpion golem, the tail thrashed against the sand slightly before vibrating like an angry cat's tail and aimed straight at Mitsuna.

"What the hell. Honestly."

Using a good chunk of her mana, she created a diamond element cleaver and sword while making the two weapons as dense with mana as possible while also infusing the earth element for extra resistance and durability. Mitsuna narrowed her eyes as she analysed the situation.

'It'll take more time for my body to heal fully so I'll have to play a bit more defensively.'

Cancelling her spells that were still holding the scorpion golem down to stop the passive mana usage as she planned on using a good chunk of mana for a spell she had planned out after analysing the golem, Mitsuna activated her skills.

[Branded], [Grand Appraisal] and [Silksong].

Quickly looking through the scorpion golem's skills, which she should have done before but didn't because of slightly misplaced overconfidence, Mitsuna chose to use her Solar Snow Techniques as they were mostly focused on defence.

Using her Frostburn Technique and dodging a tail thrust from the golem, she slashed at its body with her cleaver and left a decent mark as its defence was already weakened because of her earlier punch attack.

'What the hell are these Skills that it has?!'

She thought as she read the descriptions of some of the golem's more eye-catching Skills.

'[Evolved Physical Resistance], [Adaptive Defenses], [Internal Defence Reduction], [Defence Penetration] and [Behavior Analysis] are all crazy Skills for a monster that's supposedly common around the continent! It isn't surprising that I broke some ribs if the huge rock crab c*nt ignores 60% of All defences and increases damage done to the internal body!'

Mitsuna yelled in her head as she used her Sun of Snow Technique with her sword to parry the two claws of the golem that were aiming to catch her and backflipped away from it.

'The guild assignment was to only kill one to keep the population from growing and creating more of themselves. How the hell can the continent survive if there are multiple of these?'

Slamming her sword into the sand and using it as a makeshift conduit, Mitsuna froze over the surroundings while making 'eye' contact with the golem.

'With [Behavior Analysis] it's slowly learning how I move and fight and lessening the amount of openings I can exploit. The longer I use one form of attack the more resistant it is against it too so I need to surprise it with a good damaging attack for now while I finalize the killing blow I have planned.'

As she was about to activate her Skill [Sever], the golem felt the flow of mana increase as it attacked with both its left claw and tail that barreled toward Mitsuna at top speeds, trying to stop her before she could activate her skill.

The tail reached her body fast as it forced her to redirect the attack with her cleaver that cracked slightly under the pressure of the golem's attack.

Cutting space diagonally with [Sever] the tail was reduced to half its size as the spear-like tip was starting to crumble and the larger portion of one of its pincers fell and sunk into the sand with a *Thud*.

As the scorpion golem reacted to the damage by backing away while still continuously sending attacks towards Mitsuna, the ground around it relit with a freezing flame as the scorpion golem's legs were all now nearly entirely frozen over, inhibiting its movements by a great amount.

Taking full advantage of the opening after making slight distance and parrying all the attacks from the golem, she threw her diamond element cleaver into the sand in front of her and slammed her fists together before intertwining her fingers and flowing nearly a quarter of her entire mana pool through her hands.

Activating the spell with unimaginable speed, all the mana in her hands was used up as a magic circle with countless layers of extra effect-increasing spells filling the inside of the magic circle to its limit.

The diamond cleaver morphed as it changed into a nearly hair-thin line that shot into the sky. A second later, mana erupted out of the thin line as it instantly thickened and started gathering all the mana in the spell as well as any excess mana in the surroundings to the tip of the diamond pillar.

As the huge influx of mana in the surroundings caused the golem to halt in its tracks due to even a portion of the mana in its battery being absorbed, it attempted to turn and escape but was unable to.

The mana in the surroundings was being consumed, the frozen layer of ice on the sand and its own nearly fully frozen legs greatly inhibited its movements as the golem had no prior experience with moving on thick slippery ice that it was unable to shatter. Even if it did attempt to shatter the ice, its nearly fully frozen legs would shatter far before the ice that covered the ground.

The spell was finalizing as Mitsuna no longer needed to input anything into it.

Jumping up towards the tip of the diamond pillar where all the mana was being gathered, she smirked as she saw what rested at the top and how the golem was unable to leave with its attempts just ending in a comical show of falling to the icy ground.

As the spell finished, Mitsuna created three magic circles that circled around her right arm as she flipped over the pillar. While looking at the pillar and golem from above she grabbed the handle right in front of her face. The weapon she had made broke loose from the pillar of hard diamond as she fell down and forward while flipping through the air.

Activating two of the three spells that circled her arm, the weapon she had made was engulfed in a deep azure flame that created an icy mist around the entirety of the weapon.

Grinning at her victory, she used the Sun of Snow Technique to completely freeze and shatter the scorpion golem as she was no longer interested in trying to research its remains.

"Shatter, Tail Anus!"

Falling and slamming her diamond pickaxe right through the place where the golem's battery was located, deep cracks appeared all across its body as deep azure flames rose from the cracks and froze all the stone near the fire.

The scorpion crumbled to dust and crushed ice as the battery overflowed with mana and threatened to disintegrate everything near it with a rather large explosion.

Letting go of the pickaxe that was stuck to the golem's body, Mitsuna flipped off of its body as she showed the red orb eye a wide grin with the added addition of two middle fingers.

"Enjoy the 'Boom'~."

Mitsuna said out loud as the golem used the last of its mana to launch the remainder of its nearly entirely broken tail at Mitsuna, which was abruptly parried by the black magic circle that circled her arm and created a great shield out of shadows to redirect the shield.

*Clang*

"Won't fall for that twice, idiot!"

Dismissing the shadow magic great shield, she pulled down one of her eyelids while sticking out her tongue and teleporting a few hundred metres away.

Looking at the place she had just teleported away from, she shielded her eyes from the sun as she saw the golem's battery go off and explode.

*BOOOM*

With thousands of grains of sand and crushed ice being shot out in all directions, Mitsuna created a small see-through mana shield as none of the dust, sand or ice touched her.

Multiple notifications sounded out, but Mitsuna ignored them, looking instead at the explosion.

She saw the diamond tower shatter and turn to fine dust as she was thankful that she didn't stay any longer.

As the wind and dust settled down, she teleported back to the site and took in all the destruction.

'Not bad.'

Mitsuna thought as she kicked the ground, noticing the spare shards of her diamond element sword that she made still lying in the sand, not entirely destroyed by the explosion because it was mostly shielded by the sand that covered it, she thought to herself before dismissing the shards and turning them back into mana.

Looking down at her hands she had a calming smile.

'Still got it. Need to work on some things so future battles become easier but, meh.'

As she was about to look at her notifications she heard a loud sound from behind her.

*THUD*

Looking back, she could see her pickaxe wedged in the sand, it had survived the explosion thanks to being shot right into the sky because of the force of it.

"Oh. Might as well keep it."

She inspected the pickaxe and noticed that it was actually an item. Not a high rank by any means as its durability was exceedingly low and its stats suffered greatly due to this but the simple fact that she created an item through only mana and a spell was quite the achievement in her book as she didn't even know people could do that.

Storing it in her inventory as she could not turn an item she made back into mana, she thought about further analysing the pickaxe later and maybe making some weapons of her own in the future.

Before that, however, she needed some kind of proof to give the guild since she had obliterated the hunting target.

Sighing to herself, she clenched her hand before loosening her grip to get a feel for her strength before checking her remaining mana while going through all the notifications she had received.

"..."