"If everything is going south, why are you laughing?" Raagu asked.

"I'm not laughing." Inxialot looked at her as if she was insane.

"I've been sitting here the whole time and he never laughed." Zolgrish put his right hand where once his bladder was in a sign of sincerity.

"Never mind." She sighed. "Activate the Gargoyles, but make it look believable. We don't want the disciples to discover that this is just a test. They are here to learn a lesson and if they don't, I'll put you in charge of the next test as well. Raagu out."

The idea of spending even one more minute out of his lab, of leaving so many ground-breaking experiments unattended, made Inxialot focus on the screens with unwavering determination.

Then, after a few minutes, he got bored and pressed the button that activated the Gargoyles' energy core to speed things up.

***

After searching the ceiling for hidden entrances, Estor the Treant had climbed atop one of the tallest buildings of Urgamakka. He wanted to study the city's layout from above and guide his teammates where Life Vision revealed to him the position of huge sacks of mana.

"Did you find anything?" He asked via the communication earpiece.

"No. Just lots of crap and security systems." Pyra the Redcap replied. "You?"

"Nothing as well. Be careful while flying near the roofs. This place is filled to the brim with Gargoyles." Estor kept his distance from the creepy stone statues that were covered in engraved runes that shone in the dark.

"They are the weakest and oldest kind of golems known to mage, but there's something odd about those things. They all share the same energy signature."

"You mean they were all made by the same mage?" She asked.

"I wish it was that simple. They are both fueled and controlled by the same source which means that if you activate one, you activate them all." He replied.

"Well, thank the gods we sent our resident bookworm as a scout. I wouldn't have even recognized that old junk. Mistaking them for a surveillance device might-" Pyra's scream interrupted the communication.

"Pyra? What's going on?" Only a small cracking betrayed the nearby statues coming to life as they encircled the hapless Treant. "This is impossible! I'm alone up here and I'm damn sure I didn't touch them."

***

Soon the air above Urgamakka's buildings was filled by a black swarm of creatures that attacked anyone on sight. Gargoyles were small statues, barely one meter (3 feet) tall that resembled a demonic humanoid with short wings, horns, and a jagged tail.

Unlike modern golems, their diminutive stature made it impossible for the mage to imbue many spells inside their bodies. Their main mean of offense were their claws and talons that were great against regular humans but pointless against a good enchanted armor.

It was the reason why they had become obsolete and why none of the Awakened apprentices felt threatened by their appearance. Small bodies meant a limited resistance to direct hits and being fueled by old magic, the Gargoyles could only have a few pseudo cores aside from those necessary to move.

A hail of darkness and earth based spells hit the swarm from all sides, breaking them into a bunch of rubble.

"Those damn leaves for brains!" Quya the Naga said while butchering several Gargoyles at the same time with his six arms. "How could the Fae be so stupid? Those damned statues brimmed with mana since our arrival!"

"This is not our fault!" Pyra pointed her polearm at Quya, ready to resume fighting. "It must have been one of your feathered friends. Who knows, maybe they took a dump while flying around, without any care for the rest of us."

"I'm not a pigeon! I-" A rumbling noise cut Scala the Roc short and forced everyone to turn around.

The shattered Gargoyles had melted into a black liquid that had put the pieces back together before turning into stone again.

"What the fuck?" Pyra clenched her fist, making the ground turn into quicksand that trapped the small golems before crushing them to bits like a vise.

Once again, it took the broken Gargoyles just a few seconds to reform.

"Estor, I need options! These things refuse to stay down." Pyra yelled inside her communication earpiece while flying towards her group.

"Me too!" The Treant yelled as all of his knowledge proved to be incapable of getting rid of the ancient constructs.

***

"What the heck is going on?" All that screaming made it hard for Lith to focus on the Eyes. The slightest distraction reduced the efficacy of the scan and delayed his work by several minutes.

"I don't know, but we better take our weapons out, in the case-" Several small horned creatures jumped on them before the headache that blurred their vision faded.

"Seriously? Imps?" The moment that adrenaline cleared his head, Lith crushed the Gargoyles with his bare hands and got back on his feet with a kip-up.

"Imps don't exist. These things are not living beings and are we are far from done." Phloria pointed at the broken stones turning into liquid.

She had gotten rid of her own with a tier four Mage Knight spell, Blast Guard. It produced a small explosion around her that had sent the Gargoyles crashing against the nearby walls.

Constructs were immune to fire, but the shockwave and the following impact had shattered them.

'This makes no sense. Liquids cannot be turned into golems. Solus?' Lith asked after Life Vision failed to locate the Gargoyles' pseudo cores.

From his studies at the academy and under Faluel, he knew that the only way to destroy an artificial being was to shatter its power source. Yet the constructs had completely turned into liquid, without revealing the presence of enchanted mana crystals.

'I'm sorry, but my head is exploding. I need a few minutes to recover.' She replied as the sudden loss of contact with Lith's and Phloria's minds had almost fried her own.

'I don't know if we have that long!' Lith replied as his spells failed to destroy the constructs for good and more of them joined the attack.

War had an easy time shattering them, but without a core to break, Lith could only keep a few of them impaled on the blade at the same time. Their movements would be sealed by War's Counterflow skill, but that was it.

Heating the Gargoyles enough to make stone boil required a time that they didn't have due to the relentless onslaught. Earth could shatter or block them but either way, the constructs would just turn liquid and start over.

'Okay, let's try this!' Lith hurled a jet stream of Origin Flames that hit a Gargoyle square on the chest.

The mystical flames burned the stone as if it was hay and once the construct turned into a pool, it stayed that way.

"Phloria, get down!" Lith yelled as he spun on himself, making his breath form a ring of Origin Flames that burned his throat and their enemies alike.

Phloria did as instructed, preparing a few spells at the same time in case Lith's plan didn't work.

"Can you do that another one hundred more times?"  Phloria asked while pointing at the countless Gargoyles still flying around. 

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