D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

Chapter 2162: Chapter 2162 Hands Off

— Kat —

Kat and Lily were currently locked in combat. With the golem sure, but also each other. They were currently debating what the best plan to move forward with was. Kat wanted to distract the golem so Lily could sneak through the door behind it. They’d already made it through a bunch of times and Kat was sure that something important would be there. Plus, Kat could handle the golem for a while by itself. It was strong sure but not all that damaging to her for the moment. Apparently it didn’t notice its fire was ineffective for some reason.

Lily countered with the argument that, assuming she did leave, the golem might simply go into an enraged state. Attacking with much greater force, be more potentially deadly, or perhaps even just explode to prevent anyone doing anything. There was also the fact that it was entirely possible the door simply wouldn’t open before the golem was defeated. Kat hadn’t even managed to turn the handle last time and it was almost crazy to think you could just… open the door with no troubles. Surely they’d lock it even with the golem.

Kat wasn’t certain about that last part considering how incomplete the golem felt at times but it was likely true. Even with that being the case, Kat still wholeheartedly believed that it needed to be tested. The gains simply outweighed the potential negatives by such a large margin that it was well worth it. At least, Kat considered it as such. Lily obviously disagreed.

Her plan instead was that they needed to tangle the golem up once again, and then disable its hands somehow. Either by having her shadows dive inside and destroy what parts they could, or simply blocking the liquid metal from filling the hands back up. Lily could do it with her shadows, some paper magic, or even just Kat sticking a hand inside. While the liquid metal was strong, it didn’t really hurt anything so that was probably fine.

Kat’s counter argument was that the golem didn’t seem to be doing its swipe attacks all that often, and ensuring that one of them could be ready to try and tie the golem’s arm up was a whole secondary issue. Kat had been willing to go along with the plan originally, not wanting to argue too much.

Except when they first attempted it, the golem moved the hand further outwards, keeping it far from its body and even turning around a bit so that it wasn’t really possible to tangle it up again. Kat wasn’t sure what they even could do to trick the thing into making that same mistake. Even if it didn’t seem to hurt it, the golem was reacting like allowing it to happen again would be really bad. It was part of the reason Lily was still confident in her idea. Surely if it was so scared of getting tied up there had to be a reason.

Especially as this wasn’t simply instinct. Someone HAD to have ’programmed’ this response into the golem. To avoid getting tangled up a second time. Of course, Kat offered an alternative that instead of someone programming that specifically they may have simply ’programmed’ it in such a way that it got better at combat the more it fought. Now it was making relatively minor changes to ensure that it didn’t get tangled. Even if it couldn’t be completely disabled that way, the second or two where it needed to retract and extend its arms was a notable weak point.

Even with the arguing… Lily was winning just by virtue of the fact that while ’stalling’ to have said argument Kat was making a real attempt to try and tangle the hands up. Lily wasn’t really making an attempt for the door. In fairness to her, that was in large part due to the fact the golem had her stuck on the other half of the room, and if she approached it, the golem would attack with a flaming hand or laser eyes.

Because apparently it could do bother now. Sometime during their ongoing mental argument the golem’s head had returned to that white-ish yellow colour while the rest of it remained a burnt orange. So it was still on fire and it also had laser beams now. At least the flames had eventually melted the rest of the ice theoretically holding the door closed… but that also gave more credence to Lily’s idea that the door was just locked.

Kat had been trying to pull the golem’s arm off course so she could tangle it up for about five minutes now, but the problem was how much it all weighed. It simply didn’t matter if she was stronger than it or not, the momentum and weight itself were enough to pull her up and off the ground when she tried it. The only reason she succeeded the first time was because she’d caught the hand just before it had reversed directions AND she hadn’t really stopped it so much as she’d redirected it slightly. Something that wasn’t even really fighting the liquid metal in the arms.

Now that it was actively trying to avoid being tangled, it made use of its weight to keep Kat from messing it up. The pair had considered trying to tangle the feet up… but honestly they just weren’t long enough for something like that. The golem was rather squat after all and didn’t really like to move around. They’d only seen its feet move when it had to do a full one eighty, and even there the feet were half tangled already, being the last part of the golem to move.

Worse, the golem just… dealt with it. Apparently it was considered standard operation for the feet to tangle a little bit. It was just that unlike the hand they wouldn’t bundle up into knots making it hard to do anything with them. So honestly, Kat was running out of ideas for implementing Lily’s strategy and her girlfriend wasn’t exactly filled with them either. It was part of the reason Kat wanted to try the door.

[You know what? Fuck it. Why don’t YOU try to open the door? I’ll even accept you not going through it and leaving me here… just find out if it’s possible.]

And if it is will you finally sneak through? I’m not sure I can. The golem will blast me with fire if I try to sneak in as water and I’m simply bigger than you. It would just need to catch my wings or leg.

[I’ll think about it. We can deal with it after.] said Lily but Kat could tell she’d agree at that point. So… the plan began. Lily sent a dozen or so walls of paper out to circle around the golem. It reacted by trying to burn through them with its hands. As soon as it was distracted destroying the ones closer to Lily, Kat moved. She lunged right for the door. The golem whipped around but her hand was already on the handle, pressing it done and… no click.

Kat grimaced as she yanked backwards on the door only for NOTHING to happen. Sure there was a handle there. Sure she’d managed to pull it down… but whatever was actually keeping the door close it sure as heck wasn’t the door handle. Kat just sighed as the metal fist slammed into her. This time it didn’t throw her to the wall. Instead it wrenched her away from the door and held her tightly, burning the whole time to prevent her simply turning into water. In theory anyway.

[Kat, we can combine our plans! The golem spins around really fast to stop you getting in the door… and that means its hands are extended further than normal. If you can avoid the swipe and then pull it back with you, it SHOULD have too much momentum for the golem to avoid wrapping itself up.]

Roger! Of course, just agreeing to the idea didn’t mean they could implement it immediately. Still, the steps were all in place at this point. First, Kat tanked the massive hit to her demonic energy she needed to take upon transforming to water and back to escape the burning grasp… and from there it was simply a matter of waiting for the golem to turn to Lily, and be a bit distracted.

A few more paper shields and a big set of shadow attacks took care of that. When it had turned to clear them out, Kat rushed the door, causing it to spin right back around, hand outstretched. So Kat rolled with it, ducking under the hand and kicking it further along. Lily followed this up by grabbing onto the hand and PULLING.

Before too long the golem was tied up and was starting to retract its arms. Lily started to stuff shadows and paper into the paper and Kat… well she tried to just stuff the arm into her bracelet. To her surprise… it worked. Kat and Lily were so shocked she nearly missed the chance to grab the second one as well. Both of them together filled the bracelet’s expanded space to capacity… but the golem didn’t have them anymore.