A Little Too Big 3
Thud, thud, thud—
A thunderous roar filled the wide clearing with noise. The source of all that racket was none other than Kayden, bouncing around in a frenzy like a puppy seeing snow for the first time. How on earth had things come to this?
I couldn't quite accept the scene unfolding before my eyes.
"Whoa— th-this is seriously amazing—!"
"What in the world is…."
Kayden had completely forgotten her stoic adventurer act, laughing with the pure delight of a mischievous boy. Her voice rang out across the clearing in a booming wahahaha—, and at that absurd spectacle, not only I but Han Se-ah and the rest of the party could only stare up at her in stunned silence.
Even the viewers.
Yes—staring up.
They were staring up at Kayden, snugly nestled inside the golem and piloting it.
Could you even call that thing a golem, though? It was nothing like the old ones—round boulders or steel lumps with limbs slapped on and no head to speak of. This one had sleek arms and legs, five fingers on each hand, and every joint rendered with perfect human precision.
Yes—more than "golem," the word "mecha" suited this slender giant of steel. And Kayden had climbed inside it using a key-shaped mana stone.
"…Looks like the thirtieth floor's gimmick is that thing—whatever it is, golem or mecha."
That wide clearing I'd thought looked like a hangar turned out to be exactly that. When Grace slid the mana-stone key into the keyhole she'd found, a solid door rolled upward with a heavy grinding rumble. Inside were three completely wrecked golems—and one intact Knight-type Golem.
"The boss looked insanely huge, so I guess we fight it by riding that golem."
A boss monster grown massive enough to fill the cave passage, and a giant Knight-type Golem standing ready to meet it. I'd seen something like this in other RPG dungeons before. I just never expected to see it play out right in front of me.
Just as Han Se-ah muttered, the thirtieth floor's gimmick seemed to be that golem. If the tenth floor's concept was a city raid and the twentieth an orc army, then the thirtieth was probably something like a giant-monster showdown.
"Mana stones from rock golems are the fuel, ones from steel golems are the battery, and ones from golden golems are the ignition key. Good thing Roland already stockpiled plenty of rock golem mana stones. Though at ten gold apiece for fuel, the cost-efficiency on this thing is worse than a sports car."
Under normal circumstances, the intended approach seemed to be luring the boss into this wide clearing and fighting it with the Knight-type Golem for a limited time, using whatever rock golem mana stones you'd scraped together.
But limited time or not, Han Se-ah's inventory held roughly fifty rock golem mana stones and about twenty steel golem ones, all neatly tucked away. We were so well-stocked there was no need to stop Kayden—who, true to her chuunibyou nature, had lit up at the sight of the Knight-type Golem and started swinging a sword around the clearing.
Every time the Knight-type Golem swept its arm, a steel longsword that looked a good three meters long carved through the empty air with a whoosh. At that size, it probably had strength on par with an ogre. Then again, even without a natural-born six-star tank, the game needed some way for players to hold that giant boss monster at bay.
"Whew… that was, well. An embarrassing display."
"I-I wanna ride it too!"
While Han Se-ah and I were still puzzling over the thirtieth floor's gimmick, the rest of the party was having the time of their lives with the golem.
The moment Kayden finally calmed down and climbed out after thoroughly practicing every sword technique she knew from the cockpit, Grace immediately snatched the key-shaped mana stone. She didn't know how to swing a sword like Kayden, but she hopped around, flailed the arms and legs, and generally enjoyed herself in every way she could.
Whether the mana drain was low outside of combat, or the developers had kindly designed a single rock golem mana stone to last longer than expected, Grace got her fill of fun right after Kayden.
"Irene, want to try it too?"
"No, I'm fine…."
"Unnie, then I'll take a turn."
Unlike the golems that were just rocks with limbs attached, the Knight-type Golem had sleek extremities and even finely articulated fingers. Its thick, armor-plated chest housed a space a person could climb into—something like a cockpit—and once you inserted the key-shaped mana stone into the crystal orb there and placed both hands on the controls, you could move it as if it were your own body.
Through Kayden, Grace, and then Han Se-ah taking turns operating the golem, we learned several things.
One: unfortunately, the Knight-type Golem couldn't be driven out of the clearing.
"If we want to leave, we'd have to crawl out on our hands and knees."
"As expected—we'll have no choice but to lure that thing here."
Presumably to counter that enormous boss, the Knight-type Golem boasted a frame nearly six meters tall. No matter how smoothly the passage had been carved, it was only about three meters high, so there was no way to get the golem out of the clearing.
…Han Se-ah had tried stuffing it into her inventory after reading the viewer chat, but that didn't work either. The developers clearly intended for it to be used only against the boss—not for hunting other monsters. Since neither the wrecked golems nor the Knight-type Golem could be taken out, maybe we should defeat the boss and then call in a mage from the Magic Tower to take a look.
"Ah, one of the mana stones just went dark. Looks like it used up all its mana."
"About ten minutes per rock golem mana stone, then?"
Two: just as Han Se-ah had muttered, the Knight-type Golem ran on mana stones obtainable from the golems on floors twenty-one through thirty. Just as the chest—where a person sat—had a keyhole, the back had a component for inserting mana stones like loading a battery pack.
A steel golem mana stone, cut into a crystal-like shape, went in the center; round rock golem mana stones went around it. Climbing onto the Knight-type Golem's back like loading batteries into a toy robot, I slotted the mana stones in myself.
"How about it, Kayden? Think you can hold it off?"
"Yes. It should be more than possible."
Having figured out the thirtieth floor's gimmick, Han Se-ah laid out a strategy. Calling it a strategy was generous—it was almost painfully simple. Kayden would pilot the golem; I would lure the boss monster. …Because I was stronger than that Knight-type Golem.
There was no reason for me to awkwardly cram myself into the thing, so I'd draw the boss monster to the clearing bare-handed, then Kayden—who was confident in physical combat—would board the golem and hold the boss at bay. After that, I'd pulverize the elongated boss from head to toe across the wide clearing.
I'd been using my role as the party's guide as an excuse to leave a fair amount of the fighting to them, but there was no reason to make them take down a suspiciously oversized boss monster entirely on their own.
Leaving Grace, Irene, and Han Se-ah behind in the clearing with Kayden aboard the Knight-type Golem, I walked the passage alone. More precisely, alone with the sub-camera drone stuck to me. Glancing at Han Se-ah's stream window, even with one camera following me, the rest were busy filming the Knight-type Golem.
Apparently she was fine skipping the part where I searched for the boss monster, but she wanted the scene of me driving it back to the clearing on stream.
Well, an armored knight charging in while luring a colossal beast—that was bound to be just as gripping as a humanoid giant robot. Broadcast-obsessed Han Se-ah would never pass up footage that valuable. And for certain viewers, the scene of me luring the boss would be especially important.
Option one or option two—cave monster or maze golem—viewers who'd bet their entire stream-watch points on which one was the thirtieth-floor boss were starting to bring it up again. No matter how hard Han Se-ah tried to shut it down and change the subject, people who'd all-inned their points weren't going to stay quiet forever.
Thanks to that, her chat was split roughly half and half—translated speech asking about the robot on one side, Korean viewers arguing over point bets on the other—and growing even more chaotic. Still, robot-related talk was winning on pure volume.
Apparently a fair number of people who'd felt a vague resistance to the fantasy genre were finding their interest piqued by the idea that if you kept developing golems further and further, you could eventually build a rideable one like this.
Tapping my shield with a clank and checking the Heroes Chronicle gallery instead of Han Se-ah's stream, I saw the word had spread far and wide in under an hour. "+18 Mecha Girl"—somehow Han Se-ah's nicknames just kept getting longer.