Cave Exploration 3
A maze that appeared out of nowhere was a nightmare for any adventurer.
Because dozens of monsters showed up?
Because there was a Named that didn't belong on the twenty-first floor?
Because the paths were so tangled that the scout's burden became crushing?
No. The reason was far more primitive and straightforward than any of that.
"The paths are complicated, but there aren't any monsters."
That was it. No monsters at all.
Are you out of your minds, BB Games?
Whether this was some kind of event dungeon or not, the maze held no goblins, no kobolds, no cave spiders, no vampire bats. I had even tensed up, half-expecting the thirtieth floor's Named — the Blind Serpent — to come barreling through with that massive body of its. What a hollow letdown.
No monsters meant no mana stones. From an adventurer's point of view, that meant burning money and time for a net gain of exactly zero — a thoroughly miserable situation.
Thankfully I had gold saved up from my days as an upper-grade adventurer, plus quest rewards earned as a player. For an ordinary adventurer, this maze was vicious enough to kill any desire to climb to the twenty-second floor. A labyrinth where every minute of wandering earned you nothing — was there a more spiteful maze anywhere?
"By the way, what kind of place do you think this is?"
"Judging by the look of it, a wizard's workshop that converted part of a cave into a dungeon… though being inside the Tower, I can't say for certain."
Grace, who had been wound tight exploring the unknown, finally began to relax as the silence stretched on. Behind us, Irene and Kayden murmured back and forth. With floors, walls, and ceilings all unnaturally smooth, curiosity was inevitable.
We moved at a slow pace, checking the walls for anything of note, but with neither monsters nor hints about the maze itself, the party's tongues gradually loosened.
"It's nice that the minimap is logging everything, but what even is this? We've been walking for almost forty minutes without doing a single thing."
The maze was nightmarish from an adventurer's perspective, and just as nightmarish from a streamer's. Nearly an hour of pure walking with zero events meant the number of deleted chats was climbing fast. The terrain had shifted as if something dramatic was about to happen on the twenty-first floor — and then absolutely nothing appeared. The viewers were growing horns.
What soothed that audience, now bubbling like a pot left on a gas flame, was a monster that appeared beyond the corridor. Not a goblin or kobold in the shape of a small dwarf, not a grotesque cave spider or vampire bat — an inorganic monster.
"A golem? Why is a golem showing up?"
"So it really was a wizard's workshop, then?"
The golem stood roughly two meters tall. Whether it was carved from the cave's own black rock or not, its color was pitch-dark. Less a human form than a crude boulder with arms and legs attached, it thundered toward us with heavy, pounding steps. A massive body, a black surface that gleamed with oppressive sheen, and faintly glowing red eyes in the dark.
"It looks pretty hostile, doesn't it?"
"I'll handle it alone for now — first time seeing one of these. Fall back a bit."
I stopped the party from falling into combat formation and stepped forward. No particular reason, just curiosity mixed with a competitive itch. Even if the golem was strong, it would still be weaker than a five-meter giant, so I could advance without any real pressure.
The moment I entered arm's reach, the thing raised a heavy stone fist without hesitation. The rock punch came whistling through the air as if swatting a mosquito off a desk.
"…How is it, Roland?"
"A bit stronger than expected, but nothing dangerous. Tough, and not much else."
There was no heart-pounding duel, no flashy exchange. For all the ferocity of the swing, it was pure mass — no mana behind the strike. I caught the golem's arm the way you'd snatch a child's wrist, and it thrashed with a grinding giiiing.
The force trying to wrench free of my grip was considerable, and the body under my hand was harder than expected. A frontliner new to the twenty-first floor would have struggled just to hold it still. Watching it flail for so long with its right arm locked, I figured intelligence wasn't its strong suit.
Apparently deciding escape from my grip was impossible, it raised its other hand. No learning capacity either — the same overhead smash came crashing down toward my crown.
Thud—
"Looks like impact only damages the hit area and the rest stays protected. Grace, Hanna? Try hitting the torso."
"Got it!"
The rock fist shattered to pieces against a shield reinforced with mana rather than holy power. Unlike an orc warrior, it didn't collapse into a near-death stupor — only the left forearm that had struck me crumbled, stone fragments scattering in every direction.
Low intelligence, high durability, raw strength — a pure tank that put everything into defense. And if you attacked the arms or legs, a part-destruction system split the damage across body sections.
A party at the twenty-first-floor level would need to break the limbs first, then chip away at the torso to bring it down. As if the maze weren't annoying enough, the monsters spawning inside it came with their own tedious gimmicks.
"Arrows… yeah, of course they don't stick."
"The magic hit dead-on and still barely seemed to do anything."
"A sword would just ruin the blade. Against something like this, you'd want a blunt weapon as a sidearm."
Even the smooth stone body bounced arrows clean off and fully absorbed magic.
"If we keep hitting it with different things, we should figure out the weakness, right? It showed up in a maze this blatantly suspicious — they're not just going to tell us to beat it until it dies with no weak point. Looking at how it shatters from reflection damage alone, its HP seems pretty low. Even the orc warrior tanked a reflection hit once."
The golem's stubborn durability left the viewers rattled. Teasing Han Se-ah was fine, but most of the audience were gamers themselves, playing the world's first virtual reality game — of course they were worried about what lay ahead.
Still, for something spawning in a maze this strange, Hanna was right: there had to be a weakness.
"Um, Miss Hanna?"
"Yes, Sister?"
Once every limb had been part-destroyed, only the torso remained, red eyes staring blankly into empty air. No self-destruct, no rock projectiles, no regeneration — so the party poked and prodded, tossing out every theory they could think of.
Then Irene, having noticed something again, quietly called for Han Se-ah.
"The debris from the golem's arms and legs isn't disappearing. If we destroy the body, do you think those stone fragments will stay behind?"
"Huh? Why does that matter?"
"If the fragments remain, we could leave them with the Magic Tower to research its weaknesses… couldn't we?"
Han Se-ah looked baffled, and Irene seemed equally puzzled by the reaction — which was all the opening the chat needed. They swarmed like piranhas smelling blood.
Come to think of it, Antenor was around, and Charlotte Cavendish was already eyeing a research position. Leaving the analysis to them, as Irene suggested, wasn't a bad idea — assuming the stone fragments survived after we smashed the torso.
"Alright then. Let's see if the debris stays when we break the body."
I raised my mace high over the golem sprawled on the floor like a log waiting to be split. I moved deliberately slowly, giving anyone with an idea or a sudden urge to try something a chance to stop me. But everyone seemed convinced by Irene's reasoning — no one intervened.
CRACK—!
I brought the mace down with pure arm strength, no mana behind it. Holding back from a full-power swing left a sharp, stinging vibration in my palm — the same sensation as before I became Roland, when I'd mis-struck a pickaxe into solid rock while digging frozen ground during winter training.
"Yeah, you definitely can't take these with a blade. The rebound is ridiculous."
"That bad?"
I flexed and unflexed my hand, replaying the feel of the impact, and Kayden asked with genuine concern. As an agility-type swordswoman, she'd need proper mana reinforcement on her weapon to deal with golems like this.
High defense didn't mean invincible, though. After several more measured blows, the golem's torso shattered completely, powerless stone fragments scattering across the floor.
"The debris is still here. And that — is that a bright red mana stone…?"
"You're right. Not blue — red."
What dropped from the creature was a red mana stone, slightly duller than those of the Full Moon Wolf and the Orc Chieftain but clearly of the same family. Goblins dropped nearly colorless, washed-out sky-blue stones, and stronger monsters yielded progressively more vivid blue ones. By that measure, this red stone marked something unusual.
"Hm? The walls are shaking."
"Is the maze disappearing?"
I scooped up a few of the remaining stone fragments along with the mana stone and stowed them in my inventory. A deep rrrrumble rolled through the maze. The walls roughened again, and stalagmites and stalactites thrust up from floor and ceiling like bamboo shooting skyward.