The Golem Mage

This caused Alec to stare at his hands in surprise, wondering what exactly had changed from his earlier move that allowed him to knock out a Tier 8 Abyssal Brood Lord so easily.

He had been confident he could win after merging with one of his bloodline, but not in just two moves, it had happened far too quickly.

He had used the compatibility between his black ash special ability and the Sanguine Bat bloodline to shift from one position to another, then coated his hands with gravity energy, planning only to increase the force behind his punches, one rear uppercut, followed by a hook punch. That was all.

It felt unreal to him that he had just knocked out a Tier 8 lifeform so easily, until another notification appeared, and the smaller set of messages he had been ignoring in the same section finally popped up before him.

[ Second Level Effect Active. ]

[ Gravity Gloves Equipped. Close Combat Type weapon detected, random ability being generated to match. ]

[ Intermediate Close Combat Mastery Lv. 5 = 40% Stunning Possibility. ]

[ Host has successfully comprehended a close combat move personally. Due to the circumstances and the level of the opponent defeated, your mastery has leveled up exponentially. Memories will be transferred soon. ]

(Close Combat Mastery is a skill most of the golems possess, but it is Saint’s primary mastery. So when Alec comprehended a move, he awakened that mastery personally. It became his own, just like his blade, sword, and scythe masteries, rather than something he was merely borrowing through the shared skill set of his golems. He now had his own understanding of close combat and the weapons tied to it since he already gained epiphany.)

“Fuck,” Alec muttered.

Though he had activated the Second Seal of his bloodline, he had only done that because of how well it complemented the Sanguine Bat bloodline and the boost it gave. Nothing more.

He truly had not expected that coating his fists with that much gravity energy would make them count as a glove-type weapon, but what shocked him most was the stunning effect his fists had gained.

That was clearly what had caused the Abyssal Brood Lord to be knocked out, and just as he was still trying to process this new ability, the system seemed to decide that he was now safe enough to receive the close combat memories it had mentioned.

“Hmmm!” Alec groaned lightly as countless movements and techniques began engraving themselves into his mind, almost as if he had spent years personally practicing them.

However, that wasn’t even the best part of the memories he received, the real gain was that there were weapon-related moves hidden among them—not teaching him how to wield a weapon from scratch, but how to make far better use of the ones he already had, and how to use his speed and agility to stay sharply aware of his surroundings, avoiding attacks that should never have been able to reach him in the first place.

“Ahhhh!”

The Abyssal Brood Lord, who had smashed through both golems and Zergs alike when Alec’s punch sent him flying, finally woke up from its stunned state, and it was absolutely furious.

It punched its hand into the ground, but in the very next moment Alec closed his eyes, trying to connect his energy eyes with his earth element.

As a three-dimensional seismic image formed in his mind, and Alec started moving forward, his hands lowered calmly at his sides instead of retreating, this made the Abyssal Brood Lord visibly surprised.

Yet even as black flesh-like tendrils drilled out of the ground in an attempt to catch him, Alec simply sidestepped them one after another while continuing his advance, It was almost like he could peer into the future and see what the Abyssal Brood Lord wanted to do before it even moved.

The combination of Close Combat Mastery and his energy eyes changed his understanding of battle entirely. Now, it was no longer something he could only use when linked to Saint’s skills set.

It had become a passive ability of his own, as he continued moving till he was close enough.

The first thing the Abyssal Brood Lord did as he closed the distance was spit out a mouthful of miasma, to the Zerg race, that might have been harmless, considering they were creatures that could feed on biomass when they couldn’t get fresh flesh, but to humans, it was an extremely dangerous poison.

However, Alec, who had kept his hands lowered and his eyes closed this whole time, finally decided it was time to change things up, as he raised both hands and swerved them through the air, creating what looked like a flaming cutter.

A joined black-and-crimson mini tornado of flames swirled out, pulling in the smoke and destroying it.

At last, Alec entered proper striking range, as the Abyssal Brood Lord instantly swung its claw, trying to rip Alec’s neck apart.

However, Alec only moved back slightly, watching the claw pass by. He bent lower the very next instant because right after the claw came the bone blade that shot out from the creature’s elbow.

Even then, Alec watched it all as though it were happening in a much slower motion before his eyes.

After evading that sequence, he poured all of his strength into his right fist and sent another uppercut straight into the chin of the Abyssal Brood Lord, the moment it landed, it felt like he had triggered another critical hit, because he could see the Abyssal Brood Lord’s eyes roll to the back of its head.

Its body sagged as if it were about to collapse back to the ground, but Alec had no intention of allowing that, he grabbed its writhing hair with his left hand to keep the creature upright, then changed the energy coating his right hand from gravity to hell flames.

[ Change in Glove weapon, another random perk being generated. ]

[ Intermediate Close Combat Mastery Lv. 5 = 40% Increased Flame Damage. ]

What followed was a brutal straight punch to the face of the Abyssal Brood Lord. Alec punched and punched, whenever the Abyssal Brood Lord began to regain consciousness and tried to break free, Alec would switch the energy on his hand back to gravity and smash its face again until it was stunned once more.

_ _

The battlefield around Alec’s clearing had already been settled, as for the second round of zergs that appeared, it had been completely taken care of by the golems and his summoned units.

Meanwhile, Alec still stood there staring at the Tier 8 corpse before him, half in a daze that he had defeated a Tier 8 lifeform so easily, though he was capable of doing something like that, it usually only happened when he was in his werewolf form.

And since he was not yet a true Tier 7 mage, there was always a time limit to how long he could maintain the Eclipse Fenwolf in merged form.

Knowing that nothing else around him posed any real threat now, he began storing the corpses of the Zergs into his space ring, all he did was use gravity to create a kind of black-hole pull that dragged them closer, and once they were near enough, he activated the suction force of his space ring and drew them all in.

He only planned to sacrifice some of the slain Zergs to the temporary City Heart to see if he could buy anything back to his city, and since he still wanted cultivation, mental and healing pills, along with system points he had planned to save the rest of the zerg corpses, as the best way to get both was to take them into the amulet space.

That way with the new points, he would be able to purchase another builder team to handle many of the projects he had already put on hold.