The bullets were non-existent, it was all a farce, to confuse the giant.
Both Cain and Ragta moved at the same time.
Cain slipped into stealth, his body dissolving into the mist with practiced efficiency, vanishing from view just as the golemite's heavy steps tore into the broken ground.
Ragta, meanwhile, acted with brutal clarity.
He slammed his hands into the ground once more, conjuring a second wave of crystal growth — not just walls this time, but coffins.
The crystal pillars wrapped around Midi and Dilim's broken bodies, sealing them inside translucent sarcophagi of fortified earth-prana.
Protecting them. Preserving what was left as the alloy shells rained down.
Then Ragta turned back to the fight. He reached for his weapons, both scythes still gleaming with savage intent then began to connect them.
His movements were precise, almost ritualistic.
Ragta slammed the bottom shaft of the first scythe against the top of the second.
A mechanical click snapped through the air — the second blade slid upward, locking in with a final, brutal snap
The two weapons fused into one monstrous scythe, its blade now stretched into a monstrous length — heavy, curved like a crescent moon meant to reap not crops, but worlds.
Ragta's fury boiled over.
With a roar that shook the mist, he surged forward. A low sweep from ground to sky, as if he were cutting grass rather than stone and metal.
Clang! A crack like a mountain breaking rang out, a screech of stone and steel surrendering to force.
The weapon connected and it carved — cutting through the golemite's midsection with horrifying efficiency, slicing up through nine meters of alloy, rock, and evolving mechanisms.
The golemite staggered, bisected halfway up its frame.
But it did not fall — instead, it reacted with eerie, mechanical instinct.
It gripped the embedded scythe rod jamming and clamping down with all four of its reinforced arms, locking the weapon in place like a vise.
Ragta smirked when he saw it. The giant's muscles bulged, swelling grotesquely with the flood of prana coursing through him, skin cracking at the seams under the pressure.
He gripped the scythe's extended shaft tight — and began to swing.
The golemite, easily the size of a conventional tank, became nothing more than a bludgeon in Ragta's hands.
Cain, still hidden in the mist, watched the impossible sight unfold — he knew the real battle had just begun.
He moved quickly to the crystal coffins where Midi and Dilim were entombed, his fingers brushing across the slick, polished surfaces. He tapped experimentally, searching for weakness.
Nothing, the crystal was dense — too dense.
Even with his best explosives, he wouldn't be able to breach it. Drilling wasn't an option either.
Giants had far superior skill in manipulating tremors and vibrations.
If he tried boring through, Ragta would feel it instantly and crush the attempt and even squish him to a patty.
Cain exhaled sharply, glancing back at the battlefield.
The golemite's predicament was getting worse by the second
Ragta swung it around like a club, venting his fury with each whiplash arc. The alloy creature wouldn't last.
Cain didn't hesitate. He pressed another button on his wrist remote — this time not for explosives, but for something embedded earlier.
A speaker, hidden deep in the twisted amalgam of metal that formed part of the golemite's frame.
Piercing, high-pitched tone screeched out across the ruins, slicing through the mist.
Cain's eyes scanned quickly.
A projector rigged into the ground.
Simple axle spinning inside a wheel, a crude rhythmic cue system he had installed earlier.
The axle stabbed through the wheel — driving in, tearing out, plunging back again in a relentless rhythm.
Ragta vented his rage while the golemite tried to understand what it meant, but on the third— the golemite understood.
Skidding, scraping the earth, it twisted its battered limbs closer to the scythe embedded in its frame — the weapon Ragta had so confidently wielded against it.
Ragta narrowed his eyes. He wasn't stupid.
He felt Cain's ploy and instantly abandoned the scythe, letting the weapon get stuck uselessly to the stone creature.
Cain almost cursed under his breath.
He hadn't anticipated Ragta being so pragmatic. The golemite was embedded with kilograms of magitech explosives — it needed Ragta to hold the weapon to trigger maximum damage.
Without the connection, it was just deadweight.
The golemite, sensing that the abandoned scythe was no longer shielded by any prana reinforcement, shifted tactics.
It began assimilating the blade — its arms warping, metal fingers unfolding to absorb the fallen weapon into its own body structure, piece by piece.
Cain tensed — ready to pivot to another plan when he heard it.
Clink — sharp metallic rattle, it was chains — small, delicate and almost inaudible clinks.
Cain's head snapped up and what he saw froze him.
At first, he barely caught it. A faint sound going — zing zing zing.
Like glass strands being drawn tight.
Cain's hearing was sharper than most. Tuned by necessity, by survival.
'He... He... He's an assassin all along?! How?'
He caught the glint in the mist — a shimmer no thicker than fishing line, so fine it was nearly invisible.
Threads so thin they could have been hair.
Emerging from the mist like a phantom, Ragta stood, his hands spread, each finger intricately laced with these threads.
With a slight taut of Ragta's fingers, the battlefield shifted.
The golemite jerked violently, convulsing as if seized by some unseen force. Its limbs spasmed, sparks vomiting from severed joints.
From the golemite's battered frame, even finer strands unraveled outward — woven through its body like puppet strings.
It was torn apart piece by piece — like a toy, pried open by a curious child, reckless to see what lay hidden inside.
Armor plates snapped off and clattered to the ground.
Alloy ribs tore free, scattering in fragmented shards. Joints buckled and twisted with surgical cruelty.
Entire limbs separated as if peeled away by invisible blades.
Cain didn't watch the end —he moved.
Snatching his last potion from his belt, he ripped it open with his teeth, swallowing the liquid without hesitation.
He didn't care about efficiency anymore nor about the golemite.
'Investment? Who cares.'
All he cared about now was the only thing that ever mattered — his life.
Without wasting a moment, he sprinted toward the jagged cliff face a hundred meters away.
The mist was undisturbed as he passed.
Was Ragta strong? Too strong.
Cain found himself questioning everything — whether the battle doctrines, the fighting manuals, the so-called wisdom of the scholars mattered
'Or Maybe... maybe Ragta was just beyond it all. A monstrous genius.'