The Gold-Hoarder Golem

CHAPTER TEN

The growl came again, deep and heavy. Powerful enough to make the floor beneath my feet vibrate. Dust sifted from the ceiling.

The chandeliers trembled overhead, their crystal ornaments clinking together in a frantic, uneven rhythm. Somewhere behind the walls, an alarm began to wail, adding another layer of noise to the growing chaos.

The people inside the bank began screaming, some ran toward the entrance. Others rushed toward the elevators. A few froze where they stood, staring at the vault as if their minds refused to accept what they were seeing.

The security guards tried to stop the crowd, but panic had already taken control. Their shouted orders disappeared beneath the roar of terrified voices. One guard was knocked to the ground by the fleeing customers, while another drew his weapon with shaking hands and aimed it uselessly at the vault door.

I ignored them.

My eyes remained fixed on the vault. Julius stood several meters away, completely calm.

Too calm for my liking.

While everyone else was running for their lives, he watched the trembling steel door with the focused curiosity of a man observing an experiment. There was no fear in his expression. No confusion.

He wasn't afraid. He knew something.

"Aeron," he said, raising his voice over the chaos. "You seem surprisingly prepared for someone who claims this is all a surprise."

I didn't answer. There was no point in explaining myself, and certainly no time. Elena stepped closer to me, her hand tightening around the hilt of her sword.

"Who is he?"

"My frie......" I hesitated a little as I remembered the pain of Julius's sword in my last life.

Julius laughed.

"Friend?"

His eyes moved between us, lingering on Elena for a moment before returning to me.

"I thought we were closer than that."

My jaw tightened. In my previous life, Julius had been the closest person to me. The person I trusted more than anyone. The person who knew my weaknesses, my fears, and every secret I had tried to bury.

The person who eventually killed me. But this Julius wasn't that man yet. Not completely. He hadn't betrayed me.

Not yet.

I had no intention of giving him the chance. The vault shook violently.

BOOM!

The impact sent another tremor through the building. Several people fell, and a row of glass display cases shattered against the walls.

Everyone screamed.

A massive crack appeared across the steel door. It began near the center and spread outward like a web, glowing faintly from within. Heat poured through the fractures, carrying with it the metallic scent of burning stone.

I immediately looked around. The bank was too crowded. If the Golem emerged here, hundreds of people would die before they even understood what was happening.

"Elena."

She looked at me.

"Get everyone outside."

"What about you?"

"I'm staying."

She frowned.

"You can't fight that thing alone."

"I can."

"You don't even know what it is."

"I know enough."

That was only partially true. I knew what the creature had been in my previous life. I knew its general abilities, its attack patterns, and the location of its core.

But the System had already proven that the timeline was no longer following the path I remembered. Even so, I couldn't afford to hesitate.

Elena studied my face, searching for any sign that I was bluffing.

Then she turned toward the crowd.

"Everyone! Move!"

Her voice cut through the panic with startling force. People ignored her at first. Some continued pushing toward the entrance, while others crouched behind desks and pillars, convinced that hiding would somehow protect them from whatever was about to emerge.

Elena slammed her sword against the marble floor.

CLANG!

The sound echoed throughout the bank, sharp and commanding. The nearest people flinched and turned toward her.

"GET OUT!"

This time, the crowd finally reacted.

People began rushing toward the doors in a more organized stream. Elena moved among them, shouting directions and pulling aside anyone who stumbled. Her presence gave the terrified civilians something to follow, even if they didn't understand what was happening.

I watched them leave. Every second mattered.

Julius remained.

Of course he did. He stood near one of the pillars, his gaze fixed on me rather than the vault.

"You really haven't changed," he said.

I looked at him.

"What does that mean?"

"You always did have a strange habit of putting yourself between danger and everyone else."

I almost smiled.

The words carried an uncomfortable familiarity. In my previous life, Julius had said something similar shortly before we entered the ruins beneath the old capital.

Back then, I had mistaken his concern for loyalty.

"That's where you're wrong."

I turned toward the vault.

"I'm not protecting them."

Julius raised an eyebrow.

"I'm protecting what comes after them."

The vault door exploded. A wave of heat blasted through the bank, throwing chairs, desks, and loose papers into the air. The force of it drove several remaining civilians to the ground. I raised my arm to protect my face.

Metal fragments flew everywhere, spinning through the air like blades. One struck the wall beside my head and buried itself in the marble. Then the creature stepped through.

The Gold-Hoarder Golem.

It was enormous.

Nearly five meters tall, its head almost brushing the ceiling of the vault chamber. Its body was made of dark golden stone, each massive plate layered over the next like armor forged from a mountain. Glowing runes covered its limbs, shoulders, and torso, pulsing with a dim, molten light.

Thick arms hung from its shoulders, each one ending in fists large enough to crush a human body. Its legs were broad and heavily reinforced, leaving deep cracks in the marble with every step.

But the thing that immediately caught my attention was its chest.

A golden crystal was embedded directly in the center.

The core.

It radiated enough heat to distort the air around it. My eyes narrowed. The Infinite Ring wasn't inside the Golem's body. It was hidden beneath the core.

Exactly as I remembered. The Golem threw back its head and roared.

The sound was so powerful that the remaining windows shattered at once. The floor trembled beneath me, and a wave of pressure rolled through the bank.

Julius took a step backward.

"That's..."

His voice was unusually quiet.

I glanced at him.

"You've never seen one before?"

"No."

Interesting.

So he didn't know everything.

That gave me an advantage.

The Golem raised its fist.

The movement was slow, but the sheer weight behind it made the air groan.

I shouted.

"RUN!"

Julius moved instantly.

BOOM!

The fist smashed into the floor.

Marble erupted beneath the impact, sending chunks of stone in every direction. A shockwave tore through the bank and threw me into a row of desks.

Pain shot through my back. For a moment, my vision blurred. I rolled with the impact and immediately stood, ignoring the sharp ache spreading through my ribs.

The Golem turned toward me.

Its head moved with surprising precision, locking onto my position through the smoke and dust.

I gripped the Widow-Maker. I knew this fight. In my previous life, six people had died fighting this creature.

I hadn't been there when the battle began, but I had watched the surviving footage afterward. I had studied every frame, every movement, every mistake.

I remembered the way it attacked, its movements, it's strength and weakness.

The Golem was powerful.

But it was slow.That was its weakness. I sprinted toward it. The creature swung.

I ducked beneath the fist as it tore through the air above me. The pressure alone ripped my coat and sent loose debris flying across the floor.

I moved behind it and slashed the back of its knee.

CLANG!

The Widow-Maker struck the stone and skidded away, leaving behind nothing more than a shallow scratch.

"Damn."

The Shadow-Stalker had been vulnerable to the knife.

The Golem wasn't.

Its outer shell was far denser than I remembered, and the runes covering its body seemed to reinforce the stone whenever it was struck.

I needed another approach.

The Golem turned. Its fist came toward me. I jumped onto a desk.

The fist destroyed it.

Wood and metal exploded beneath the impact, but I used the broken pieces as stepping stones, jumping from one to another until I reached the creature's shoulder.

Then I climbed.

The Golem roared and tried to grab me.Its fingers closed around empty air only centimeters from my body.

I held on. Its body was burning hot.

The heat seeped through my gloves almost immediately. My palms began blistering, and the smell of scorched leather filled my nose.

I ignored the pain. I reached the chest.

The golden crystal glowed inches from my face, its light reflecting across the blade of the Widow-Maker.

I raised the knife. Then stopped. Something was wrong. The crystal was supposed to be blue.

Not gold.

My heart sank.

The timeline had changed again.

The Golem wasn't the same.

I looked at the glowing runes covering its body. They were moving. Changing.

Rearranging themselves across its armor in patterns that resembled living veins. Some symbols vanished entirely, while others appeared in places where they had never existed in my memories.

The System appeared.

[Warning.]

[Monster evolution detected.]

[Current entity differs from recorded timeline.]

[Combat data unavailable.]

I stared at the notification. For the first time since returning to the past, genuine uncertainty tightened around my chest.

"You've got to be kidding me."

The Golem's chest suddenly opened.

The golden crystal split apart, revealing a second layer of light beneath it. Energy erupted from the opening in a blinding wave.

I was thrown from its body. The world spun.

I crashed through a glass wall and landed outside the bank. Shards rained around me, slicing through my clothes and embedding themselves in the pavement.

For several seconds, I could hear nothing but a high-pitched ringing. Then Elena's voice broke through the haze.

"Aeron!"

"I'm fine."

I pushed myself up. My arms trembled beneath me, and blood ran down the side of my face. The impact had driven the air from my lungs, but nothing felt broken.

Elena looked at the blood.

"You're clearly not fine."

I wiped it away with the back of my hand.

"Where's Julius?"

She pointed toward the bank.

"He went inside."

My eyes widened.

"What?"

I turned.

Through the shattered glass, I saw Julius walking toward the Golem.

He wasn't running away. He wasn't hiding behind cover. He was heading straight for the creature.

"What is he doing?"

I watched him stop several meters away from the Golem. The creature's massive body shifted, preparing to attack, but Julius didn't move. He simply raised one hand, his fingers relaxed at his side.

Then a strange blue glow appeared around them. My blood went cold. That wasn't possible.

Julius hadn't awakened an ability yet in my previous life..Not on the first day. Not even close.

His first awakening had occurred weeks later, after the collapse of the eastern evacuation route. Even then, the ability had manifested weakly and nearly killed him.

But now, blue light curled around his fingers like living flame.

He looked at his glowing hand. Then at the Golem. A smile slowly appeared on his face.

"Aeron."

He turned his head toward me. His blue eyes seemed brighter than before, reflecting the light gathering around his palm.

"I think I just found my first ability."

The System appeared above him.

[Unique Ability Detected.]

[Authority of Dominion.]

[Compatibility: 100%.]

My entire body went cold. What the hell is happening? I knew that ability..I had seen it before. Years after the apocalypse began.

In the hands of the man who became the strongest survivor in the Eastern Rim.

Julius Everton.

The same man who had eventually killed me. But that ability wasn't supposed to belong to him this early. It wasn't supposed to exist in this moment at all.

The Golem suddenly stopped moving. Its enormous head turned toward Julius. The blue glow around his hand intensified, spreading up his arm in thin, luminous veins. The runes across the Golem's body flickered in response.

Then the creature lowered itself. Almost like it was kneeling. The sight was so unnatural that even Elena fell silent beside me. Julius looked at me and smiled.

"Aeron."

His voice was calm.

"You should have told me the apocalypse was coming."

My heart sank. He knew. Maybe not everything. But enough. The timeline wasn't simply changing.

And for the first time since I returned to the past...

I wondered if my greatest enemy wasn't the apocalypse.

Maybe it was the man standing in front of me.

Can I change his mind, so that he won't kill me in this life? or maybe I should kill him first.