Karl watched all of this impassively, asking casually, "Are these Golems difficult to deal with?"
"Karl, you don't understand, it's not just difficult! Gargoyles are relic guardians created by ancient top-tier sorcery."
"Their entire bodies are made of incredibly hard stone, and they are imbued with a strange life."
"They have extremely high resistance to magic, and their strength is terrifying; a knight in heavy armor couldn't withstand even one punch from them!"
"And they can short-distance teleport themselves. Conventional attacks like the Fireball Spell hitting them are like tickling them!"
Ephar explained rapidly, his voice carrying a trace of imperceptible tension and tremor.
Listening to Ephar's description, Karl's gaze swept over the five ferocious, roaring Gargoyles that were preparing to spread their attacks to their location.
Not only did he feel no tension, but he actually found it amusing.
"No long-range magic attack capability? High magic resistance? Great strength? Can teleport?"
"Isn't this just a pure—living sandbag?" he mused to himself, a subtle curve forming at the corner of his mouth.
He gently flexed his wrists; the desire to fight was already becoming an unbearable itch.
It seemed this mission wouldn't be as boring as he had anticipated.
Dredy and Ephar desperately held up their flickering magic shields, their faces grim.
They futilely unleashed fireballs and lightning at the approaching Gargoyles and those already besieging Yalizhuo.
The fireballs struck the rough stone bodies of the Gargoyles, only causing their massive forms to sway slightly.
Besides exploding into useless sparks, they couldn't even chip off a speck of stone.
Chain lightning wrapped around them, but the dazzling electric light flickered for a moment and then vanished without a trace, as if completely absorbed by their strange stone bodies.
Karl stood quietly behind the two, observing, and understood.
Indeed, as Ephar said, the magic resistance of these ancient creations was ridiculously high.
His gaze swept over Dredy and Ephar's feet, noticing that besides their own shields and attacks, they hadn't laid down any control arrays like slowing runes, unlike Hen.
"Do they not know these kinds of spells? Or did they just not think of it in the emergency?" Karl pondered.
He himself hadn't learned such rune spells; firstly, his learning time was too short.
Secondly, he didn't need them, because any enemy attempting to get close to him was practically seeking death.
The spells he currently mastered were few: the Fireball Spell, Lightning Spell, Magic Shield, and opening portals.
His ability to master and skillfully use these few in just over a week had already earned him Hen's astonished praise for his terrifying talent.
"Watch out, the Gargoyle teleported!" Dredy suddenly shouted a warning, his voice laced with tension.
Ephar noticed that Karl behind him had remained still, not even activating the most basic Magic Shield.
Ephar's heart tightened, thinking the young man was stunned by the situation. He sharply turned his head, just about to scold Karl and urge him to activate his shield.
At the same time, he prepared to expand his own shield's range to protect the dazed newcomer.
However, just as he turned, a faint but heart-stopping teleportation sound, "Om," echoed above Karl's head.
A massive shadow, heavy with the weight of stone, appeared out of nowhere. A Gargoyle, using short-distance teleportation, appeared directly above Karl.
With a force of a thousand jun, it plummeted down towards him like a meteor.
"It's over!" A flicker of regret and pity crossed Ephar's eyes.
He seemed to already envision the tragic sight of his newly joined young companion being crushed into a pulp the next moment.
He didn't even have time to make any effective rescue move.
Yet, in this flash of lightning, Karl, at the center of the attack, unhurriedly raised his head.
His gaze was terrifyingly calm, as if what was falling from above wasn't a deadly Gargoyle, but a light feather.
Then, he raised his hand and punched upwards, his movement simple, direct, and even somewhat casual.
There was no incantation, no magical glow, only a subtle shriek that almost tore the air, caused by the instantaneous burst of physical power.
His fist, coming from behind, met the rapidly falling Gargoyle's rear with precision.
"Pfft—crunch—boom!!" A series of strange and rapid sounds exploded almost simultaneously.
The moment Karl's fist made contact with the Gargoyle's body, the stone near the point of contact instantly turned to dust, forming a clear, irregularly shaped hole.
Immediately following, countless spiderweb-like cracks spread wildly from the hole at a visible speed, instantly covering the Gargoyle's lower half.
Finally, with a dull explosion, the massive Gargoyle, with its extremely high magic resistance, had its lower half of its body explosively shattered, as if internally detonated by explosives.
Large and small fragments of stone scattered like raindrops, hitting the ground around with a crackling sound.
The remaining upper half of its body, losing all power, fell with a "thud" beside Karl's feet, raising a cloud of dust.
Dredy heard a loud shattering sound from behind him and instinctively glanced back.
And that one glance froze him in place as if under a spell, his eyes wide with astonishment.
What did he just see?! The Gargoyle, which had just been swaggering and impervious to magic, now lay with only half of its shattered body at Karl's feet, its lower half reduced to scattered rubble on the ground.
Karl stood there unscathed, slowly retracting his fist, his posture as relaxed as if he had just swatted a fly.
Not to mention Dredy, even Ephar, who was close by and witnessed part of the process, now wore a ghost-seeing expression, his jaw nearly dropping to the ground in shock.
He had only vaguely seen Karl seemingly raise his hand, the speed so fast that he couldn't capture the specific movement.
It wasn't until the fragmented body of the Gargoyle hit the ground and shattered that he realized the attack was over, and it had ended in such an inconceivable way.
Ephar's mouth hung open, and he made gasping "ho-ho" sounds in his throat.
He wanted to say something but found himself unable to utter a single complete syllable.
This scene completely overturned his understanding of how a sorcerer should fight.
Karl's understated yet incredibly shocking blow was also caught in snippets by Yalizhuo, who was struggling in the distance, out of the corner of her eye.
She only saw that Karl seemed to have used some method to instantly destroy a Gargoyle, but she hadn't clearly seen how he did it.
She subconsciously believed that this must be some extremely powerful, perhaps even lost, ancient spell.
For more chapters
patreon.com/Robertt45