Lucky or Unlucky 5
The steel golem, stripped of all four limbs, let out a pitiful sound as it flopped and rolled across the floor. Having torn them off, I could finally feel how different it was from a rock golem. Where a rock golem was basically a boulder with arms and legs stuck on, the steel golem — for all its similar silhouette — clearly had gears and axles built into its joints.
Part of me wanted to rip the torso open too and compare the steel golem's mana stone against a rock golem's… but with a golden golem supposedly coming next, I figured I'd better hold off.
"The rock golem was sturdy enough, but this one's far tougher. A swordsman who hasn't reached a true realm of mastery probably couldn't even scratch it."
"Ugh, it's so heavy…!"
We propped the rock golem and steel golem bodies neatly against the corridor wall, and the severed limbs became the party's toys. Kayden poked at them with her sword; Grace tried to lift one into her inventory and nearly jumped out of her skin at the weight.
Han Se-ah likewise grunted and wrestled a crushed steel golem arm into her inventory, then started examining the leg joints while chatting with her viewers. Ten minutes might sound short at a glance, but standing around in an empty corridor doing absolutely nothing made it feel plenty long.
"The rock golem was just a rock, but this one's built so complicated and precise. If we hold out another ten minutes against the golden golem, do you think some mage boss is gonna show up? Wait — golems would be more of an alchemist thing, right?"
And so, loose but never fully dropping our guard, another ten minutes passed.
At last, the golden golem we'd been waiting for appeared at the far end of the corridor.
Just as that excited young adventurer had said, a deep THOOM rolled through the air, and mana circuits etched themselves in a cascading rush across the pitch-black, smooth walls of the hallway. If the rock golem had been roughly two meters and the steel golem about two and a half, this one looked closer to four.
Clearly bigger than the steel golem, though still a bit smaller than the ogre we'd fought before. If that massive body really was solid gold, ripping the limbs off would be a gold-farming machine… but the developers had probably locked that down somehow.
"For now, how about we wait out another ten minutes against this one too? There might be something after it."
"Sounds good. We can smash the golem after the ten minutes either way."
A golden body gleaming with oppressive luster in the dark. The same sluggish gait as the others, but with a frame easily twice as large, every footfall sent a heavy boom echoing down the corridor. Facing something giant-kin again after so long made my hands itch.
Of course, remembering this was a Floor 21 spawn, a few hits of reflection damage could pulverize it — so I'd have to be careful.
An hour of searching the labyrinth, twenty minutes of waiting: this was a precious body. Kill it by accident and we'd be back to combing cave walls for hours. With that in mind, I stowed my shield, braced to catch the golden golem's fists, and stepped forward.
"That thing — even just selling the scraps would be insanely expensive, right?"
"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing."
Listening to Grace and Han Se-ah chatter behind me, I went out to meet the slow-moving golden golem. Same flat, broad build as the others — no neck, no head, just a torso with limbs attached — but at nearly four meters, I had to crane my neck a lot higher.
Bigger frame, body swapped to gold, yet the combat program inside seemed unchanged: it raised its right hand high overhead, same as always. The fist climbed until it nearly scraped the ceiling, then came whistling down toward my skull—
"…Huh?"
"What was that flash?"
Something flared — and with a shockwave, the golden golem's arm was crushed to a ruin.
"Roland, are you okay?"
"…Looks like there was a magic circle related to shockwaves engraved into the fist."
When a golem brought its fist down on me, the usual control technique was to catch and brace the wrist. Snatching something out of the air with your bare hands didn't count as a hit, so the reflection passive never triggered.
Against the golden golem, that was impossible. The instant I stopped the fist, light flared from its knuckles and something slammed into my palm.
I'd reinforced myself with mana to grab something that heavy, so I didn't take damage — but the grab check had become a hit check. That was the problem. And if the hypothesis about absurd defense but low HP held true, it explained why the golem's right arm shattered and crumbled inside my grip the moment reflection damage hit it.
"If it loses both arms like that, is it gonna start kicking?"
"Still, good thing only the arms broke off separately. Otherwise we'd be wandering the caves for hours looking for a new labyrinth."
The silver lining, as Han Se-ah said, was that only the arms that had fired something like a shockwave got pulverized. Without that, who knew how many more hours we'd be lost.
After calming a heart that had jumped for an entirely different reason, I moved in close, intending to tear off the golden golem's legs with as little damage as possible — and the thing started shuffling its steps, almost hesitating. Its stride had clearly shortened a lot compared to when it first appeared.
Sensing something off, I looked the limbless, torso-and-legs golem up and down, and it visibly flinched. At that size, even a tiny jolt made its massive legs scrape the floor with a grinding scrrk. Not just me — the rest of the party had caught on too.
"Doesn't its reaction seem weird?"
"It does. The rock golem and steel golem just kept crawling forward even after all their limbs were torn off."
The party, now thoroughly suspicious, gripped their weapons and clustered behind me — and the golden golem simply stopped walking. Faced with behavior so clearly different from its predecessors, the others stared up at that enormous body with a mix of anticipation and unease.
"Let us speak."
"Wha—?!"
"I-It talks?"
"Let us converse, humans."
The golem was talking.
If I went back to the guild and reported this to Elise, she'd accuse me of drinking again. Then again, this was a fantasy game world — a talking golem wasn't that far-fetched. The way it transmitted sound through mana despite having neither a mouth nor a speaker was pretty fascinating, though.
The rest of the party seemed just as captivated; the sight of them fearlessly clustering in front of the golem was something else. Given how tall it was, they looked like kindergarteners gathered around a teacher.
"What kind of conversation are we having?"
"It concerns your true nature."
Whether this was a Floor 21 side story or main-story material tied to the Tower, the golden golem launched into something weighty. Han Se-ah, as party leader and player, naturally took the lead in talking with it, and everyone else leaned in to listen.
Even Kayden — who usually played the cool, taciturn top-tier adventurer — had her lips parted slightly in total absorption. Under that strange tension, the golem and Han Se-ah began their exchange.
"We are the guardians of the labyrinth. And yet we cannot determine from where you have invaded."
"Labyrinth? This is the Tower."
"No. This place is a labyrinth. The site we were appointed to guard for the whole of our existence."
"I'm telling you, that labyrinth is connected to the Tower."
Han Se-ah kept talking with the golem, completely ignoring the viewers grinding their teeth into dust. As the conversation went on, something suddenly occurred to me. I'd been glancing at her stream window and browser under the pretense of staying alert… and it had been about ten minutes since the golden golem appeared.
I pulled my eyes off the hologram windows, looked at the golem, and casually drifted closer to Han Se-ah's side. Everyone was so absorbed in the golem's story that their tension had clearly melted away. You could see it in their loosened stances — the unspoken assumption that a slow, armless golem reduced to nothing but legs couldn't possibly do anything.
What could an armless golem do, after all?
"Created because of the Demon King who invaded our world, the final bast—"
"A Demon King? So they got invaded by one too— wait, wh-wha—?"
"May the Goddess grant us her protection!"
Self-destruct. That was what it could do. The conversation cut off mid-sentence and a brilliant light erupted from within, so it probably wasn't a deliberate suicide — but the result was the same.
KABOOOM—
A blast thundered through the cave as the golem's golden body became a mana bomb, detonating in a flash of searing light and raw force. Han Se-ah, who'd been idly wiggling her fingers in midair to fiddle with system windows for her viewers, didn't even have time to react.
The one stroke of luck was that Irene — who'd only been listening, not participating — responded instantly and threw up a protective holy barrier.
When the roar faded and the billowing dust cleared, what lay before us was a shattered labyrinth. Just like after we'd dealt with the rock golem, the smooth wall surfaces began reverting to the rough texture of ordinary cave rock. As the barrier dropped, the party members emerged from the dust with awkward, downcast eyes and quietly gathered around me.
"You know what I'm about to say, right?"
"…Yes."
"No matter how much the other side has reason and can hold a conversation, you let your guard down way too far. At the very least, you should've been ready to move or react."
Everyone but Irene — who'd responded immediately — hung their heads in dejection. Moments like this really made you feel that a 5-star earned its rating. How was a priestess faster on the draw than an agility-type swordswoman and a scout archer?
Or had she simply never dropped her wariness, treating anything of the Tower as something unholy?
And so the golden golem vanished without a trace, leaving behind an unsolvable Floor 21 plot hook and a single key-shaped mana stone. …Did that mean the rock golem mana stone I'd bought for ten gold and fifteen silver was completely worthless now?