Luck or Misfortune 4
Given the choice, I would have preferred to find the gimmick right away, discover a golem, and hold out for ten minutes. But…
"Where did all those golems go? Don't tell me we already wiped out every golem on the twenty-first floor? Should we head up to the twenty-second?"
"Why are you the one asking me? …But wait, don't those two proverbs mean slightly different things?"
Just as Han Se-ah was getting thoroughly roasted, that suspicious wall panel was nowhere to be found. Then again, hadn't that adventurer party who'd been hauled off to the Temple said they'd only discovered it on their way back after finishing their expedition?
Finding one a day is already a good haul. Maybe we just won't find one today?
We hunted packs of cave spiders, examined the walls while gathering moss, ran into kobold groups and fought them off, walking the dim cave paths for a long while. Just as the party's eyes — once sparkling with curiosity and anticipation — began to fill with disappointment, Grace's voice rang through the cave, nearly a cheer.
"I—I found it!"
It was tucked behind a thin, broad stalagmite rising from the floor, a spot easy to walk right past without noticing. Even hidden beyond the stalagmite's shadow, Grace had sniffed it out like a ghost — an archer truly was a scout at heart. Her performance brought the chat window, which had been cooling off, back to life.
Han Se-ah must have been just as eager as her viewers, because she practically sprinted forward and stretched her palm toward that broad panel. The now-familiar pattern of mana — as familiar as the cave itself — spread across the wall face, generating the labyrinth.
As the mana flowed outward, the stalagmites and stalactites melted away as if dissolving, sucked into the ceiling and floor, while the rough, uneven rock of the walls smoothed out into clean surfaces.
"Now we just need to run into a golem. …We will run into one, right?"
"Last time we wandered around for nearly two hours looking for one, didn't we?"
"Ugh, they say words become seeds — don't say stuff like that."
I'd tossed that little reality check at Grace, who'd been murmuring to herself as she watched the transformation. The labyrinth appearing was random, and running into a golem was random too. It would have been nice if there were a mark at the center of the maze or some hidden sign, but unfortunately we'd never found anything of the sort.
We hadn't even fully mapped the labyrinth's terrain yet, so the reality was that we'd just have to wander around until we bumped into one. Grace, apparently imagining that ominous future, clapped her hands over her ears as if she didn't want to hear it. I was chuckling at the sight when Han Se-ah smacked me from behind.
"Roland, seriously, stop with the unlucky talk…"
"Well, if we keep walking, we'll run into one eventually. Eventually."
"Ah, come on—!"
She must have overheard me even while channeling mana into the panel. Being labeled a butterfingers for so long, she seemed to put a fair amount of stock in superstitions when it came to games.
Then again, players of all sorts of games — Heroes Chronicle included, and especially gacha-style character collection games where pulling was the main content — tended to take their superstitions deadly seriously. Fans of that gacha game that moe-ified historical figures would even make pilgrimages to graves, ruins, and museums just to take proof-of-visit photos.
Of course, my own take was that if you just spent the money, the character would show up soon enough. What I'd always been short on was luck, not my wallet.
"Let's go find a golem. And no more jinxing us — lead the way."
Whether she was more superstitious than expected, or whether that special sixth sense unique to butterfingers types had kicked in, Han Se-ah pouted at a single joke and grumbled her orders. At her not-quite-a-push, everyone wore full smiles as they naturally set off into the labyrinth.
A tedious journey followed — no monsters, no traps, just the need to find a golem somewhere out there — and then—
"Finally. I really didn't think it'd take a whole hour of searching."
"This is all Roland's fault."
After an hour of taking every kind of scolding from her viewers, a pitch-black rock golem finally appeared before Han Se-ah.
The adventurers' stories hadn't been lies.
"Looking at it like this, the golem seems kind of pitiful."
"Are you planning to tear all the limbs off that one too?"
The rock golem we'd finally found after wandering the labyrinth for so long. The condition of lasting ten minutes without defeating it was far too easy. This was an enemy we could take down in five minutes without me even lifting a finger — how could we possibly fail to last a mere ten?
Aside from being sturdy, the thing had no real strengths, which was how it had ended up like this. I pulled my gaze from the rock golem flopping around on the floor without arms or legs and looked toward the steel golem.
When the rock golem had first appeared, our party had tried every kind of experiment to fill those ten minutes. We'd scattered mana around, searched its back and body for any kind of insertion hole.
"We'll save the combat experience for later. Subdue that one too."
"You sure? The only magic I've learned is earth-type — I can't manipulate metal."
"Something that size, I can just grab with raw strength."
Eventually, its constant thrashing got annoying, so we'd simply smashed the limbs. Han Se-ah cast her magic on the joints, and I yanked the rock golem's extremities free the way you'd pluck the stem off a cherry tomato.
Because a body-part destruction gimmick existed, even with the arms and legs destroyed, the golem's torso remained intact — meaning its HP was still at 100%. As long as the rock golem was alive, the timer counted, and once ten minutes passed, a steel golem came stomping over from the far side of the dim labyrinth with a low groooan.
By eye, it was much… well, not much, but a bit bulkier than the rock golem. Unlike the pitch-black rock golem, its body was a cold grayish color.
"It's a little bigger and smoother, so grabbing it might be a pain. And if I hit it carelessly and break it, we'll have to wander the caves all over again — so careful does it."
The ones reacting to my words were the viewers who'd spent ten minutes pitying the rock golem flopping on the floor. True artists of the perfectly angled roast, they were teasing Han Se-ah while fully empathizing with the golem — going on about its pebble wife and gravel children and so on.
I nearly let a laugh slip while staring into empty air, so I forced it down and walked toward the slow-moving steel golem myself.
It moved at about the speed of an adult man lightly jogging, so escaping would be easy enough for adventurers. With no real ranged attack capability either, turning your back and sprinting full-tilt would let you shake the golems off. That must have been how those adventurers yesterday had taken one hit and still managed to flee.
"Wow, would it be rude to Roland if I said the golem looks pitiful?"
"Hmm, not pitiful exactly, but more like… it looks like one of those toys the Temple children play with. I really shouldn't be letting my heart soften like this in an unholy place."
Its patterns were identical too. The moment it stood before me, the steel golem raised a heavy fist and brought it down from above. Same stance as the rock golem, same trajectory — a fist aiming for my head dropped like a hammer.
Bigger body, harder material, so the fist was considerably heavier — but at the end of the day, it was just a golem's fist carrying mass alone, not reinforced through mana.
I lightly caught the wrist to block it, careful not to trigger reflection damage, and the thing flinched and thrashed trying to pull its arm free. Of course, no amount of straining would ever free it from my grip. It wasn't enhancing its body with mana — it was simply a golem running on mana as fuel.
"Among the children, there are some naughty ones who break the arms and legs off their toy dolls and wooden soldiers."
"It's a bit big for a toy, but hearing you say that, it does look kind of similar."
Even though I was stronger, the golem's bulk itself limited my positioning. So the method I chose was twisting.
I gripped the golem's right wrist firmly with both hands and turned it one way, then turned it again. Like unscrewing a bolt or twisting the cap off a bottle, accompanied by an unpleasant creeeak-creeeak of metal. Anyone who knew martial arts would have kicked off a wall and spun their body to keep their shoulder from being wrecked.
But the opponent was a golem.
"Look at that — it just comes right off."
"One down. Take it and examine it."
It simply kept throwing its other fist until its shoulder twisted past 180 degrees, past 360, and finally tore free. And that fist it had thrown in so-called resistance went through the exact same process.
Unlike the rock golem, this one seemed to have been assembled with some care — something gear-like was visible in the torn-off shoulder joint. The problem was that I'd twisted it free by force, so I couldn't tell whether those were bolts and nuts or gears fitted onto an axle.
"…Hanna, will that fit in your inventory?"
"Huh? It probably will. Why?"
"The steel golem seems to have mechanical devices in its limb joints. I already wrecked the arms, so I figured I'd remove the legs a little more carefully and sell them to the Magic Tower."
"…So this is what it takes to succeed in life. That kind of relentless hustle."
At my words, the party members stared at me with their mouths hanging open, as if the thought had never crossed their minds.
If a monster leaves it behind, that's a byproduct. What's the issue?