Cain knew it by now, the golemite already saw him as one of its own.
Without a word, he reached over the creature's jagged back, arms wrapping around the shaft of the massive weapon mounted there
A crude but monstrous thing he'd advertise heavily to the golemite.
It wasn't elegant, nothing high-tech.
A whale harpoon — the kind once used to pierce creatures the size of buildings.
Cain had shown it to the golemite during one of their earlier interactions, half as a joke, half as a training prompt.
The golemite had remembered — so did Cain.
He whispered the twin incantations under his breath — Strengthening. Fortification.
Magicules surged into his limbs, his muscles locking up with density and heat.
He could barely move, let alone run.
The harpoon launcher weighed three tons, and all he could manage was to aim it and fire.
His looked at the two giants at the back. Then he saw Midi far in the distance, clearly font of his life.
There was Midi — the jawless giant stood behind the broken crystal cover, not fleeing like his brother.
He was watching Ragta with awe and admiration in his wide eyes, mesmerized by the scythe's perfect arcs and Ragta's overwhelming dominance.
Too mesmerized to notice what was coming.
Cain reached forward and tapped one of the golemite's sensing crystals.
There was no delay. No question. The golemite fired.
The harpoon launcher kicked back violently — not from tension or springs, but from embedded explosions of fire and ice.
It wasn't gunpowder, but the only propellant the golemite understood, a fusion of the elements it knew best.
Cain was ripped from his perch and flung dozens of meters into the air, tumbling across the battlefield like a discarded rag.
He didn't even try to land properly.
He just let the world spin and hoped the math had been right.
The harpoon screamed through the air, the whistling sound cutting a razor-line across the battlefield.
Its shaft gleamed, old and worn, but its head was brutal and wickedly shaped.
The cable trailing behind wasn't rope, but Kevlar-like weave — tight, braided, resistant to burn or snap.
The weapon had become unusable but Cain only grinned.
'It doesn't matter, as long as it hit.'
Even in his starstruck state Midi display his awareness.
The glint. The blur. The impossible speed.
His instincts screamed, and he braced just in time to raise his arms — but it wasn't the right thing to do.
The harpoon punched through both forearms like wet bark, then tore straight through his chest, embedding deep into the other side of his massive frame.
The sound was thick and sickening — a deep, meaty squelch that echoed across the battlefield.
But Midi didn't fall — because giants didn't die from something like that.
Not yet.
Their biology was something ancient — half flesh, half myth.
So long as either the heart or the brain remained intact, they endured.
To truly kill a giant, you had to destroy both — simultaneously and thoroughly.
Anything less was just pain.
The rope snapped taut, the angle sharp. With a violent tug, the golemite's reinforced hind limbs pulled.
Midi's body lurched forward, yanked off his feet and dragged through the air.
His massive form streaked across the battlefield, limbs flailing as dust and blood scattered in his wake.
Ragta's eyes widened. He reacted immediately.
With one clean upward strike of his scythe, he cut the rope.
But the tension snapped back hard, launching Midi even higher into the air like a cannon-launched corpse.
Ragta leapt after him, arm extended — he almost caught him.
But he didn't see what the golemite had become.
The moment Ragta jumped, the golemite opened fire — relentlessly.
The barrels of its upgraded gatling gun spun faster than ever before, each round more compact, more refined, chewing through the air in controlled bursts of firepower.
Ragta was forced to twist midair, shielding himself as rounds pinged and ricocheted off his armor — but that split second was enough.
The golemite's hind arms clamped the rope again and pulled harder.
With brutal efficiency, reeled Midi in like a hooked beast.
At moments, the broken giant was in the golemite's grip — it wasn't letting go.
Cain flew back onto the golemite's broad shoulder, not caring how disheveled he looked. His boots skidded across the metal surface, but he quickly righted himself.
Behind him, Midi flailed desperately — pinned down, both arms clamped tight by the golemite's vice-like hands.
Every twitch and jerk looked pitiful against that crushing grip.
Cain flicked open a small hologram, shielding it carefully with his body so Ragta couldn't see.
Ragta's heart hammered in his chest.
But he didn't move.
His muscles locked tight, his mind racing — weighing every possibility, every risk.
If he attacked now, he might doom his cousin.
Yet doing nothing could be just as fatal.
Cain calmly played the hologram for the fifth time, a muted recording from the public network, each repetition drilling into the golemite's processor.
Then, with a tap, he killed the feed and paused the timer flashing on his interface.
[Timer (Paused) - 00:03:57]
The golemite responded almost instantly — retracting the ice shard it had previously formed, absorbing it back into its body like flowing mercury.
Cain wasn't a merciful man, nor was the stone.