The Martial Unity

Dodging was a basic part of human combat and Rui had no qualms of using it against the golem. However, he got the feeling that the concept was slightly new to the golem as it didn't react the way one would if one were accustomed to this foundational basic maneuver.

Generally, long-range Martial Artists maintained some measures against the capacity to dodge. Whether it came down to increasing the speed of their attacks or increasing the number or area of effect. However, it was clear to Rui that the golem had yet to make such measures.

'....despite being intelligent. It can be deduced that it hasn't been alive for very long, or hasn't faced any opponent other than golems.' Rui concluded.

Golems were far too unwieldy and large to engage in any amount of evasion, especially from a smaller target.

WHOOSH!

Rui evaded another wave of the fiery lava-plasma mixture with Wind Breathing before racing forward towards the golem, closing a bit more of the distance before the creature blasted away another attack.

The ground beneath them sunk as the creature began consuming more rocks from the land to fuel its attacks.

Even as he dodged the creature's volcanic attacks, he studied its body.

'The damage that I inflicted on its body is already gone.' Rui narrowed his eyes as he side-stepped yet another volcanic eruption.

He had landed his heaviest attack which certainly had crumbled the esoteric ore rocks in its body to sand in a single impact.

'The issue is that it restored itself by melting the sand to rock.' Rui noted. 'An interesting way to use its heat to heal from damage.'

It was stronger, faster, and even more resilient than ordinary golems while also much smaller, making it much harder to target.

'It's like an evolved version of ordinary golems.' Rui realized. 'Is this a statistical anomaly, or is this some sort of growth path for ordinary golems?'

He didn't know.

Unfortunately, he wouldn't be able to find out any time soon.

He had already used his Martial Heart twice before, so he hadn't even gone into this fight at full power. Furthermore, not only did golems have great stamina, but this one seemed particularly adept at absorbing its environment to blast him with attacks.

Something needed to give.

And something did.

"FUUUUU!" Rui exhaled forcefully and deeply as he activated Void Forestep. This metabody was the only one that could not be used without the VOID algorithm, which made it harder to use than the other metabodies, however, it was also the least taxing out of all of them and the most long-lasting out of all of them.

The lava golem seemed taken aback as Rui ran literal circles around it at speeds that it was clearly unable to even perceive, for its attacks had all but stopped.

BAM BAM BAM BAM!!!

Rui shot concentrated attacks impacting a single point to inflict damage as deep into it rather than wide. He had already learned from his previous mistake and had adapted to negate its strengths.

BOOM!

CRACK!

A powerful blow from him exposed the innards of the golem; a massive crucible. He had already figured out the mechanisms of how golems generated heat to heat up rocks into lava, and now, plasma.

It was pressure. The strange geobiology of the golems most likely included esoteric substances that caused the rocks to push and crush against each other with immense force. If the force was great enough, it would reduce the rocks at the center to smithereens and eventually sand before heating it up until it began melting.

That would explain why golems seemed to permanently and passively generate and release lava and magma. It would explain why the entire lava-stridden region he was in at the moment never seemed to run out of lava.

The cores of their bodies had become powerful crucibles that didn't fall much behind genuine active volcanoes in terms of power despite their smaller size.

'Incredible. And yet...'

It was not enough.

BOOM!

Rui blasted another hole into its core with a concentrated blow, creating another release valve for all the heat and pressure to escape.

'You can't generate the high heat with high pressure if there is an escape route for all that heat to be expelled into the environment.'

It was similar to all the air in a balloon rushing out the moment a hole was poked into the balloon. The crucible needed to be a closed system where it could apply immense force from all directions.

Once that was disrupted, it could no longer generate heat, making it impossible to spew out large amounts of lava.

Rui circled around the golem at lightning speeds, blasting it with powerful concentrated attacks, damaging the crucible at the core of its body, crippling its offense.

Without its lava, it had nothing.

BAM BAM BAM!!!

A myriad of concentrated blows that dug deep crashed into the golem. Rui focused on cleaving apart the dense and heavy tough material that constituted its body.

CRACK!

A powerful kick literally chopped the golem into halves, reducing it to rubble.

Rui collapsed to the ground once he confirmed that the battle had been won, exhausted. On top of using yet another substantial amount of the Martial Heart for the third time, he had also used the Godspeed technique, tiring himself out even more.

He quickly pulled out a dense food pill quickly consuming it with a little relief, before glancing at the golem rubble beside him.

"If you just knew martial arts, let alone Martial Art, you'd be extraordinarily strong," Rui murmured.

The golem was that strong based on its intrinsic ability alone. Rui couldn't even imagine how powerful it would be had it been actually skilled at combat. Though he was grateful that it wasn't skilled, he would be dead if it possessed even a fraction of the skill and technique that he did.

His mind immediately dwelled back on the oddities surrounding this particular lava golem and why it was so much different from the rest of them. There was much that he didn't know.