The Golem Mage

Author’s note : just wanna say thank you all for all the support and love through the years, i love you all.

Titan believed this was no ordinary Zerg queen he was facing, he felt she was exceptionally dangerous due to her tactical mastery in controlling her swarm of zergs.

Having encountered another swarm of Zerg on the Blood Moon space, Titan had an idea of how they liked to overcrowd those they faced with numbers, and barely focused on tactics, so he knew very much well that even that queen he faced back then lacked the strategic intellect this one was displaying in her ability to control her brood.

As the rapid swarm surged directly beneath the city walls, Titan sensed the distinct, powerful life force of formidable Zerg entities lurking within the massive swarm of zergs.

”Captains, prepare for defense! Have your mages move forward, stay back from the wall’s edge, and stay vigilant, those hiding in the shadows will soon show their claws.” Titan ordered.

Having battled these creatures before, Titan was certain that regardless of how they concealed themselves in the swamp, they would inevitably be forced to reveal themselves when the battle got to a certain extent.

Upon receiving their lord’s command, the captain-rank golems relinquished direct tactical control and acted without hesitation, they stepped back and all adopted low crouches with their weapons drawn showing their readiness for combat.

Meanwhile, the fearless crawlers drove their four powerful primary limbs directly into the frozen wall to begin their ascent.

The crawlers were clad in dark chitinous armor, though a few possessed a deep crimson hue. Seeing this, Titan surmised that the Zerg swarm queen may have devoured a powerful lifeform with an innate affinity for flames, as basic Zergs rarely displayed such coloration of skin.

Their primary limbs, resembling hooked blades, dug into the icy walls as the swarm crossed the distance, driven by raw aggression and overwhelming numbers.

Meanwhile, the ice mages on top the city walls conjured ice lances and launched them down into the swarm under Titan’s watchful, continuous orders.

Titan had organized the mages into three distinct rotation lines, so after unleashing their lances, the first line fell back to catch their breath, allowing the second line behind them, who had already conjured their erected ice lances to step forward and take their place.

They would then hurl their own lances after a few seconds and cycle back in turn letting the third line who moved second to take their place that way they were able to maintain a steady barrage.

Yet, despite Titan’s systematic strategy to cull their forces, the Zergs continued to gain ground.

Titan, however, remained unbothered by their progress, he was certain that the queen commanding the swarm would soon lose her patience, unwilling to watch her brood be relentlessly whittled down like that.

Moreover, her frustration would only grow given that they had already suffered roughly 500 casualties before a single crawler could even scale half the wall distance.

While five hundred out of seven thousand might seem minor at first glance, but the losses carried far greater weight when factoring in the dozens of Zergs that had been turned into ice statues at the very beginning of the artillery bombardment .

Just as he anticipated, a new Zerg unit erupted from the massed rank as if manually launched into the air, as they burst forth, Titan immediately recognized them, due to the naming of different types that his master, Alec, had previously shared with all his primary golems.

To eliminate the ranged forces hindering her crawlers’ advance up the wall, the Zerg queen dispatched specialized stalker-type zerg units to silence the archers and ice mages, which would allow the swarm to unleash its full fury.

Serving as the evolved form of the hunter-type Zerg, these zerg creatures had seamlessly blended into the cluster of crawlers, disguising their true identity.

Roughly twenty of them were propelled directly toward the city wall, carrying enough momentum to guarantee impact.

They possessed six limbs arranged so versatilely that they could seamlessly switch between crouched, beast-like stances and standing upright on two legs.

Their lower set of arms curved into deadly blade-like edges, while their bodies were shielded by light black armor plates, while a long, bony tail extended from just behind their waist, even as Titan observed their approach, he remained stationary, merely casting a brief glance towards their location before turning his attention elsewhere.

Every single one of them was a Tier 7 beast, the presence of that many Tier 7 beasts convinced him that there definitely was a Tier 8 Zerg among this horde probably protecting the queen.

Because he was certain of this, he refused to divert his gaze elsewhere to avoid getting distracted which could lead to a sneak attack on him.

However, Titan’s desire to remain uninvolved with the New Stalker Zergs did not stop them from targeting him. Roughly five of the stalkers kicked off from the air, redirecting their trajectory straight toward his position.

Where their eyes should have been, multiple glowing sensory lenses gleamed, aiding their visual tracking.

“Why the hell do you all rush toward a swift death?” Titan muttered as he calculated the arc of their approach, though they leaped from different angles to create the illusion that he was not their true target, however he felt they were underestimating him.

Despite being the slowest among Alec’s primary golems, his perception was by no means flawed.

Once they closed into striking distance, the five dropped all pretense and lunged directly at him from different locations.

Meanwhile, the remaining fifteen landed heavily upon the city wall, slaughtering numerous ice mages in the opening instant.

Their sudden impact disrupted the city wall’s defense, giving the Crawlers below a window to close the distance unimpeded by elemental attacks.

That brief advantage lasted only until the captain-rank ice golems moved into position to hurl the stalkers into the sky, because given the scale of a high-rank battle, the clash was destined to create a very dangerous shockwave.

And they knew that if that battle happened on the city wall, it would only result in further casualties among their own mages unit, which is why they have moved the battle into the air just slightly below Titan’s battle

Even without the commanding golems present on the ramparts, the ice elemental mages continued to execute the tactic Titan had drilled into them, systematically forming ice lances and hurling them downward.

However, maintaining their defense grew increasingly difficult once the Ravager-type Zergs, the literal armored vanguard of the Zerg race, took the lead from the crawlers.

Although these heavy units could still be killed, however; the continuous barrage of ice lances was no longer able to dispatch them in a single strike.