As he quickly flew towards the colossus of sand, that very same being stared at Cades with the huge, brightly burning, red circular eyes.
To be honest, the colossus seemed like it was trying to tell him something, but Cades didn't know what the goliath seemingly wanted to tell him.
But, besides that small detail Cades saw how the towering monster heaved its arms, as big as trains, up, and with dozens of tons of sand falling onto the desert from its every movement the huge hand balled itself up, with every one of its movements causing a loud crunching sound.
The goliath aimed the surprisingly fast, huge fist at the little, winged insect flying towards its chest, descending that very fist as hard and quickly as it could, but, even then it failed to squash the little creature as the winged being continued flying towards its only weak point.
And then they truly clashed.
The clash of the two beings at the lord rank caused intense waves of wind to be sent out from the point of collision, and with that wind the entire region turned upside down, the desert being transformed into a stormy ocean of sand.
And after that first intense clash, dozens of other clashes followed, with the sandy hills breaking apart dozens of times over as Cades added layered fire spells to his very attack, trying to turn the sand into glass.
Yet, with every single attack, sand fell down from the monster in droves and Cades slowly began being crushed under the weight of the magically manipulated sand, and yet he persisted in slashing at the exact same spot over and over again as many times as he possibly could.
The repeated attacks slowly began carving deeper and deeper into the golem, causing a shining golden stone to lay bare.
But at that very moment a wave of power was sent out from that exact same golden gem and Cades was violently thrown away, towards a near tower which collapsed in the aftermath of his collision with it.
With the tower collapsing atop him Cades was buried under dozens of tons of weathered stone, he did, however, instantly send them flying with a grand explosion of his inner mana.
Following this he went on to rush back towards the ancient colossus once more, hoping to finally get the artifact that was doing all of this for into his hands and destroy it.
But at that very moment the affirmation of his will, strengthened by thousands of repetitions began condensating around his blade and as he swung the blade, now burning with blinding violet flames, a sharp, unstoppable wave was sent towards the golem.
The wave took the form of a crescent half moon, flying across 600 feet towards the ancient colossus that tried to defend itself but was not fast enough as he was sent stumbling backwards multiple hundreds of feet.
It flew across the desert and skipped multiple times, like a stone on the sea.
With each time it touched the ground the golem lost more and more sand and became smaller and smaller.
But after all of this the golem still stood up, much smaller but still functioning and incredible powerful.
Cades, however, didn't utilize the golems glaring lack of defence, he had no idea what had just happened.
'How am I doing this ?'
He had no idea, but regardless of that, he stood still for just a second too long and the golem had already begun regenerating.
Cades sprinted towards the golem and arrived within four seconds, a whole 3000 feet, and with his blade still violently burning he heaved it up and pulled it down, putting every bit of mana he had into it.
The entire desert lit up in a blinding, violet explosion that ripped apart the entirety of the ancient, forgotten empire as the flames spread thousands of feet towards the sky and outwards, turning the once sandy hills into hills of shattered, molten, yellowish glass.
And finally, the golem had fallen, blown apart by the massive explosion far beyond the abilities of a mere low ranking lord like Cades.
Cades, however, slowly walked forward, the intensely burning violet flames not hurting him, despite burning everywhere around him. He was looking at the immense, pulsating golden glow that was constantly emanating from the mysterious artifact.
The artifact consisted of a gigantic mana stone covered in no ...runic sequences.
It was as if there was no enchantment, just pure unbridled, golden energy.
And yet, this concentration of an unknown energy laid there, half molten, but still active.
Cades could feel how it was trying to reform the sand golems, a task that would never come to fruition as he had made almost all sand in the desert unusable through the incredibly heat of the still burning flames.
He looked at the golden stone once more, his face now just a few inches away from the artifact which was sending out waves of the power that behaved completely different from mana.
Different from mana which behaved randomly and in an erratic way this power seemed to have a designated goal, a straightforward wave that all worked together for one goal, this thing was too dangerous to just carry around.
The artificer inside Cades died a hundred deaths within seconds as he heaved up his sword and slashed the golden stone with as much power as he could muster after all of this.
There was only a miniscule crack that formed within the stone, but Cades simply repeated the act.
It took two minutes of hacking away on that thing, but finally it broke apart and a thick golden string shot directly into Cades body, into the middle of his chest where his heart was located.
Cades felt as something inside of him changed, the mana growing sharper, his strength increasing even more than it already had and the flames burning all around him growing in intensity many times over.
The violet flames that were previously just about a foot in height were now two feet high.
As the golden waves continued spreading he could feel his mind becoming calmer, his concentration heightening and finally he broke through his perceived limits.
Cades was now a high lord.