Given a little luck the plan would work out perfectly. The only issue was the golems. They had worried Laurence for a long time, ever since they first injured Yun back in Aledia, and since then he had spent as much time as he could spare looking into the golems; their thought patterns, their consuming of mana, even the basics of their production. He needed to know his enemy, because he would not let anyone get away with harming those people who were his. Finally, after meeting Manas and Yun had his epiphany, Laurence had an idea of how to deal with the golems. The only issue was that he had to stop them from interrupting Yun before he was finished. It would be tight, but Laurence assumed there would be a window of a few minutes where the golems would be able to interrupt Yun no matter how well they planned it all. His only chance was to interrupt their charge and maybe curtail the few golems that could arrive before Yun completed his ascent to Heaven, then let the nature of Creation take its course.
Laurence continued to sprint down the mountain, springing off rocks and trees as he ran, shattering them into millions of pieces. His mana infused feet had the same effect every time they struck the dirt and stone floor, sending shards of rock and dust into the air around him. He was in essence much like the swarm of golems he was trying to rid himself of, just lacking in scope.
His trail of dust and detritus shot down the mountain at alarming speed, finally reaching the bottom of the hill around an hour after setting off. When he reached the bottom he encountered a new problem, he had not planned a way to stop his descent. He was now on a tightrope, there was only one way forward. If he even slightly misstepped then he would crash into the dirt and either his knees would become firm friends with his shoulder blades, or he would become a Laurence-patty that would be left to bake in the Biqiril sun. Pushing forward once more, Laurence began summoning as much mana into his hands as he could. There was no solid way for him to diffuse his momentum, but he could employ lots of little tricks to cushion his fall. He split the collected balls of pure mana that span slowly against his palms in time with his heartbeat into two, one in each hand, then began solving two problems at once. With his left hand he began trueforming to thicken the air, slowing his body through force of air friction alone as the very oxygen in his lungs began to drag against him. The longer it went on the harder he found moving, but also the harder he found breathing. This was when he activated the second ball of collected power, to form a giant cushion of pure mana to catch him in and completely break his fall. His body slowed but he had not readjusted to moving at a slower pace, he raised his leg as he intended to let the speed just bleed out and clipped his calf with the edge of his boot. He span, launching back into the air with his speed no longer controlled, before slamming firmly into the mana cushion that he had made. There was a cracking sound before the mana construct shattered under the force of his speeding body and he skidded to a stop some ten metres beyond his expected stopping point.
As Laurence sat up, slightly dazed from his high speed tumble he brushed off the dirt and dust he had picked up and looked at himself to assess the damage. After a moment of thorough assessment, Laurence decided that the worst of the injuries would heal fast enough in the mana that suffused everything within Yun's machination. The mana was less thick here, but it was still more than enough for him to recharge his body before he took his stand. He would need to be in peak condition to survive the plan he had in mind, so he sat down and looked through the membrane of Yun's machination while taking deep breaths and rotating his inner flame formation. Pulse after pulse of mana began rolling throughout his body, curling round the flame that eternally wrapped Jormugand, and then passing through it in time with the chant of Laurence’s formation to become pure and bound to Laurence himself. From there it spread throughout his body, fixing all the little injuries he had accrued in the time that he had fallen. Most of the damage was superficial, but that was what personal mana supplies could heal quickest. Mana could heal a cut in a second, rectify poison in an hour and fix broken bones in days, but anything beyond that would take years, if not longer, of constant funnelling into the injured body part. If a challenger was not willing to live with the disability then even a missing hand could cripple their cultivation speed for years, and no matter what a severed head or removed mana reservoir meant death.
As he looked through the membrane he watched as the stampeding stone soldiers got closer and closer, while the bars of light got faster and thicker with each pass. Laurence could not help but smile. Everything was going to plan so far but as he had learnt in his time in Spirit, the thing that messed up a plan was rarely something that was accounted for, but rather pure chance more often than not. This was why to make a foolproof plan he and Yun had made the plan as watertight as possible and then simply used Laurence as a stopper for the largest chance point in the plan. So here Laurence sat, at the bottom of a mountain looking at a giant magic membrane, waiting for any golems that passed through the boundary into what would become Yun's major world, the future major world of Laurence’s New-Hephaistians.
Laurence was ready. He stood up and summoned his hammer, letting the head slam heavily into the ground. The swarm was getting closer and closer, but the gaps between the bars of light was shrinking at roughly the same pace. By the time the swarm reached the membrane the entire mountain would be capped by the spinning bars of blue light, or so Laurence hoped. It would be tight, but he had faith that Yun was able to time the speed of the membrane to close and for the trap to snap shut before he was completely overrun by the monstrosities that were quickly approaching. Cycle after cycle the gap between the bars of light shrank smaller and smaller, but despite the sense of impending doom the stone soldiers Laurence thought they might feel there was nothing dissuading the hunger that had come upon them. The trap was well and truly primed, ready to snap shut at the perfect moment to cause maximum damage. Finally the first couple of golems arrived at the membrane and ran into it.
They ran in a beat too slow and Laurence simply watched as one moment they were there, the next they were not. He raised his hammer and primed his swing, preparing to knock any that came through into the wall of light that was both the most succulent foodsource for the golems and almost certain death for them at the same time. He smiled and began swinging his mighty hammer forward once more as the opening completed its revolution. Two golems shot through the gap, shoulder to shoulder when Laurence struck out. It was ill timed for Laurence but a perfect opportunity for the golems, as his hammer smashed into the chest of one, pushing it back through the opening that was even smaller. The blade of light sped past and unconcernedly split the golem in two, leaving one side with a pair of writhing legs and the other with who knows what shards of a former masterwork of array construction.
Before he had a chance to adjust his stance, the golem smashed into Laurence like a truck, knocking him back, away from the membrane. He rolled and landed on his feet, calling his hammer back and biting the inside of his mouth to slightly numb the pain in his ribs caused by the soldier. Laurence smiled as he felt the adrenaline in his body pump through him. The voice was quiet, but he could still hear it muttering. Muted violent thoughts would bubble up, but just today Laurence did not mind. He had a target to vent through.
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