I am the Arcane Archer, and all my skills are self-created.

Looking at the entire wall of star iron ore veins before him, Li Wu was in high spirits. It was truly an effortless find. He had thought he would have to search the entire mine and collect the ore bit by bit, but unexpectedly, he had found a rich ore area directly.

However, he did not start mining immediately. The appearance of the mining golem made him realize that this place was not as simple as it seemed on the surface.

Such a precious mineral vein couldn't possibly be guarded by just one elite monster.

Li Wu concentrated his mental energy to the limit, carefully sensing the movements around him.

Sure enough, after he killed the mining golem, a series of increasingly dense clicking sounds came from deeper in the mine, which sounded like countless gears being activated at the same time.

Li Wu's eyes narrowed, and he immediately raised his bow, aiming it into the darkness deep within the mine. Soon, pairs of eyes flashing red light emerged from the darkness, followed by figures identical to those before, stepping out of the shadows.

One, two, three... a total of seven or eight mining puppets lined up in a row, blocking the mine exit and trapping Li Wu inside.

"There really are more."

Looking at the group of steel lumps in front of him, Li Wu felt not nervous but rather excited.

They came at the perfect time, saving him the trouble of searching for them one by one.

click -

The lead mining golem emitted a mechanical grinding sound, seemingly giving an attack command. The next second, all the mining golems simultaneously took a step forward and charged towards Li Wu.

The sight of eight steel golems charging simultaneously in the cramped mine was incredibly oppressive. Any other fragile class would probably have panicked in this situation, but Li Wu didn't even blink.

He calmly calculated the distance between himself and the puppets, as well as their charging speed. The instant the puppets entered his twenty-meter range, he moved.

[Chain Lightning Arrow]!

Two dazzling beams of lightning darted and leaped back and forth between the eight mining puppets in the narrow mine shaft.

-1750! (Weakness Critical Hit)

-1780! (Weakness Critical Hit)

-1710! (Weakness Critical Hit)

……

A series of damage numbers, accompanied by a paralysis effect, appeared above the heads of all the mining golems, momentarily halting their charge.

Seizing the opportunity, Li Wu fired two more Chain Lightning Arrows. The lightning flashed again, and the puppets' health bars dropped even further.

Click click click!

These puppets seemed to realize that the enemy before them was different from those they had encountered before. They stopped charging blindly and quickly changed formation, with four puppets at the forefront, raising their steel arms to protect their energy cores.

The other four puppets retreated to the back, and their arms suddenly changed, turning into dark, gaping cannon barrels.

"And ranged attacks too?"

Li Wu raised an eyebrow, somewhat surprised. The next second, blinding energy began to gather in the barrels of the four puppet cannons in the back row.

Li Wu immediately realized something was wrong, and without hesitation, he turned to the side and hid behind a protruding rock.

Almost the instant he hid inside.

Boom boom boom boom!

Four beams of energy grazed the spot where he had just been standing and slammed into the rock wall behind him, blasting it into fragments and leaving four charred craters.

"It's quite powerful."

Looking at the four craters, Li Wu mentally assessed the damage. If that shot had landed squarely on him, he would have been half-dead even if he didn't die.

Unable to stand still and attack any longer, Li Wu immediately changed tactics. He began to move quickly, taking advantage of the complex terrain in the mine. He was extremely fast, his figure darting between rocks and ore pillars.

The puppets' energy cannons couldn't lock onto his location at all; they could only futilely blast the entire mine into a mess.

As he moved, Li Wu never stopped firing his bow. Every time he dodged, he would fire two [Chain Lightning Arrows], continuously draining the health of all the puppets.

This is a kite battle where archers fight against a cumbersome enemy, and Li Wu has taken this kite battle to the extreme.

His every move was perfectly timed, allowing him to dodge enemy attacks while ensuring his own damage output remained uninterrupted.

The golems' health bars steadily decreased. Two minutes later, with the last two [Chain Lightning Arrows] fired, the health bars of all eight mining golems were emptied almost simultaneously, and they collapsed to the ground with a thud. The entire mine finally returned to calm.

Li Wu took a slight breath and walked out from behind a rock. Although the battle was not dangerous, it was still a considerable test for him.

He stepped forward and picked up the loot scattered on the ground. The eight elite monsters had also given him a little bit of luck and intelligence, and dropped two pieces of excellent plate armor.

"A good harvest."

Li Wu packed his things away and then walked to the Star Iron Ore Vein. Now, nothing could disturb his mining anymore.

He took out a spare pickaxe from his backpack, which he had bought at the store just in case. He imitated the puppet's movements and struck a piece of exposed star iron.

clang!

A crisp metallic clang rang out, sparks flying everywhere. Li Wu felt a jolt in his hand, the pickaxe nearly slipping from his grasp, while only a tiny bit of star iron fell as dust.

[System notification: Your attempt to mine Star Iron has failed. Your mining proficiency is insufficient.]

"..."

Li Wu stared speechlessly at the system notification; after all that effort, he realized he couldn't mine anything. This was rather embarrassing—he was sitting on a mountain of gold but couldn't get his hands on it.

"Should we find a player whose profession is mining to help us?"

Li Wu immediately rejected the idea. Putting aside whether he could trust others, just bringing people here would risk exposing his own location.

There must be another way.

Li Wu frowned and began to search carefully inside the mine.

He searched the entire mine thoroughly. Finally, next to one of the fallen mining puppets, he found something peculiar: a yellowed parchment buried beneath the puppet's remains. Li Wu moved the puppet's remains aside and picked up the parchment.

[Damaged Puppet Core Modification Blueprints]

[Type: Engineering Drawings]

[Requirement: Basic Engineering]

[Effect: Allows modification of the mining golem's core, enabling it to obey simple commands.]

Li Wu's eyes lit up as he looked at the description on the blueprint.

Although he had no engineering background, the blueprints gave him a completely new idea. What if he could get these mining golems moving again and making them work for him? He immediately began examining the golem wreckage.

He discovered that although these puppets were broken apart, most of their core components were still intact, especially the most crucial one, the energy core that was flashing red light.

Li Wu collected all eight energy cores.

Then he walked to the center of the mine and placed the excellent-grade mining golem design blueprint he had found earlier and the damaged golem core modification blueprint together.

"I don't know if it will work..."

Li Wu took a deep breath and began to try to reassemble an energy core according to the method on the modification blueprint.