The Crossdressing Girl 1
Something about this situation was going very wrong—
That was almost certainly what Han Se-ah was thinking right now. The stream was stuttering under the sudden flood of foreign viewers, and the chat window was packed solid with every language under the sun, none of it even run through a translator. With tens of thousands of people dumping in all at once, she was scrambling to soothe and manage a live audience that had ballooned past a hundred thousand.
Koreans screaming "Go home, Yankees," Westerners who somehow caught every curse word with supernatural precision, weeaboos drowning in wapanese delusion, trolls spinning foreign-language translators just to drop insults, and regular viewers chiming in because the whole mess was getting on their nerves.
When even half of over a hundred thousand viewers start rioting, you're staring down fifty thousand rioters—so even Han Se-ah, who usually wrangled millions of subscribers and tens of thousands of concurrent viewers without breaking a sweat, couldn't help but panic.
"Doesn't this look like something we could repair, even if it's wrecked?"
"This golem's holding a bow instead of a sword, isn't it?"
While she was busy losing her mind, I led the party back into the hangar to inspect the broken golems, which must have left her wondering what on earth we were doing.
Of course, Han Se-ah was jabbing at empty air, banishing the rioters in chat as fast as she could—no help, not even a glance our way—and even after the rest of the party had filed into the hangar, Kayden was still swinging a sword with everything she had.
Apparently our little chuuni princess had a soft spot for robots right alongside her soft spot for stoic, competent adventurers. Leaving Kayden behind as she gleefully ran through sword forms, buoyed by the mountain of mana stones stacked nearby, I watched Han Se-ah finally step into the hangar and throw a question at me.
"…Hey, Roland. What are you doing?"
"Felt like we missed something, so I'm taking another look."
"Missed something?"
"Like I already told Grace and Irene—that worm is a large-class monster that ambushes merchants and nomads deep in the southern desert."
"And that matters because…?"
"Because it doesn't fit the Demon King's pattern at all. The Full Moon Wolf, the superior breed of the Horned Wolf. The Orc Shaman and Orc Chieftain meant to command the Orc Hunters. Both times, it was tied to the Demon King's power to copy monsters from the outside world."
"…You're right. The thirtieth floor is a cave, and the golden golem called itself the guardian of the labyrinth. There's no reason a desert should suddenly show up."
Only then did the viewers who'd been hypnotized by the robots remember their points, and the chat erupted all over again. A points bet that hadn't opened in ages couldn't possibly end this hollowly—or so they seemed to believe, wailing in collective grief.
Would the cave's monsters have mutated? Or would a labyrinth monster fused into the cave become the boss? Just like the tenth and twentieth floors, everyone had assumed it would go one of those two ways, so she'd only offered two options—and then a Giant Worm from the desert had dropped out of nowhere.
It was the first points casino in a long while, so people had gone all-in with every broadcast viewing point they had. Even if the points weren't real money—just something that piled up as long as you left the stream running—it still stung.
"Hmm. Doesn't look like there's anything here. I checked every wall and the whole floor—not even a tiny scratch. They must've built it insanely tough for those giant golems."
"Same on this side. No keyholes, no little grooves, nothing."
"Yeah… really nothing except the lights on the ceiling?"
Even with Han Se-ah joining the search, we tore through the golem hangar and came up empty. So the gimmick wasn't in the hangar after all—it was hidden somewhere else on the thirtieth floor? I was starting to wonder whether we should just give up and kill the Giant Worm when a familiar melody drifted into my ears.
In the stream window I'd shoved into the corner of my vision, someone was spamming donations.
"Ah—thank you for the donations, Refugee. At this rate I should probably refund ten thousand won…? A panel on the right wall, though? Oh, do I need to channel mana into it like the maze?"
Emphatic, repeated donations from a viewer seemed to light a fire under Han Se-ah. Exhausted from being harassed by chat just moments ago, she suddenly hoisted her staff and bolted toward the wall—financial therapy really did work every time.
Grace and Irene, eyes bright with anticipation at Han Se-ah's sudden burst of energy, hurried after her in little quick steps. After the inventory and the minimap, she'd just been upgraded again to "Han Se-ah, genius mage chosen by the Goddess."
"What's going on, Hanna? Did you find something?"
"Ah, I'm not totally sure, Unnie. But this spot just feels different somehow."
Of course, in a hangar that was dim even with the lights on, finding a wall section that wasn't dramatically different in color—just different in RGB values—was never going to be easy. Han Se-ah groped around for a long while before she finally found it.
"Here? Mana's flowing in, so this has to be it… right?"
The vast hangar had been built smooth and extraordinarily sturdy to house the giant golems. Just looking at the door—impervious even to an Upper-grade adventurer's magic and sword aura—told you how advanced this world's technology really was.
Of course, even if they'd built golems that could articulate joints like a human through axles and gears, the Knight-type Golems weren't immortal. Three of them were already wrecked for various reasons—limbs shattered, cockpits crushed, and so on.
So naturally, a hangar would come with a maintenance facility. That was just common sense, wasn't it?
"Is this for repairing those golems?"
"Everywhere else was completely empty, but this place is packed."
The mana panel we'd finally found—not on a cave wall, but on the hangar wall. Once again Han Se-ah poured mana into it, and the wall slid open to reveal a room crammed with mechanical arms, heavy equipment, and every kind of machinery that looked purpose-built for constructing and repairing golems.
At the same moment, a thunderous roar shook the air.
KREEEEEEEEN—
"Uwah—wh-what was that?! A last-ditch counterattack?!"
Opening the door must have been some kind of trigger. The thing started thrashing and screeching, and Kayden's startled shout carried in right after. Apparently the Knight-type Golem even came equipped with a speaker for communicating with ground infantry.
Irene heard the noise and headed outside, worried about Kayden—but the three of us stayed put, busy inspecting the maintenance bay's equipment. A 4★ swordsman had boarded a gimmick golem; if she lost the second the maintenance door opened, that would be a balance failure of the highest order.
"Whew. Did I take it down?"
"Kya—kyaaaaah—?!"
I was admiring the golem speaker's performance—it even amplified muttered asides—and poking around at this and that when hurried footsteps suddenly approached. Kayden had sounded fine, so what now? I rushed outside.
The first thing that met my eyes was the Giant Worm's corpse sprawled across the cold floor. For whatever reason, it hadn't turned into a mana stone and was still lying there as a body. I thought that might have been what made Irene scream, but…
"Th-the golem turned Kayden into a woman! What do we do—this must be a cursed ancient ruin!"
"N-no, please wait a moment, Miss Irene!"
"We must purify at once!"
The real problem was Kayden, who had climbed down from the Knight-type Golem and was standing there blankly.
More precisely, Irene had seen Katie Wellesley's true form and was now flinging holy power in every direction—brighter than the hangar's dim lights—in a full-blown panic.
"…What? Is it actually a curse?"
Grace murmured beside me, but I had no idea what to say.
What on earth was going on?
The Giant Worm's unvanishing corpse. Facilities that looked capable of repairing the giant golems. A viewer suspiciously sensitive to color values. All those miscellaneous facts were shoved clean out of my head by Kayden's true appearance.
Kayden—no, the Sword Princess, Katie Wellesley.
Daughter of the Northern Grand Duke, who had cross-dressed using a family treasure and run away from home—partly to clear the path for her sister to inherit the dukedom, but more honestly because she wanted nothing to do with politics. The curves faintly visible under her men's shirt were subtler than the other three women's, but there was no denying she was a beauty.
A slender, sharp-edged silver-haired, blue-eyed beauty with a model's build, honed by swordsmanship.
"S-so, Mr. Kayden—I mean, Miss Katie—you weren't cursed, then?"
"No. I was always a woman…"
And she was sparkling under an excessive baptism of holy power, which only made the viewers lose their minds harder. Chat could riot all it wanted—the person at the center of it all still wore a deadly serious expression.
"I had my reasons for changing my appearance with a family treasure and continuing as an adventurer, but why…"
She looked exactly like a teenage girl who'd done something wrong and was waiting for her parents to come home. The fact that her disguise had come undone the moment she stepped out of the golem—without her wanting it to—meant something had happened to the family's transformation artifact.
Obviously something bad: broken, or out of mana, or worse. Magical tools didn't just spontaneously upgrade themselves and cancel their own spells. Whether from the heat of combat or pure nerves, a single bead of cold sweat rolled down Katie's pale forehead.