For the Runaway Girl 2
After I’d been shouting myself hoarse for a good ten minutes with nothing to show for it, Han Se-ah seemed to have come up with a theory.
Isn’t the rock golem’s mana stone also processed from Giant Worm corpses?
If Giant Worm corpses were needed as repair material for the broken golem, and if those same corpses were also required to fill the liquefied-mana tanks in the golem repair facility, then the rock golem’s mana stone had to be a mana stone refined from the mana extracted from Giant Worm remains—that was her guess.
“Ah, oh my goooood—!”
And that guess turned out to be more or less correct.
The moment Han Se-ah stepped out through the passage, pulled a mana stone from her inventory, and started scraping it hard against the cave wall, a Giant Worm came charging in like a shot.
If I, watching the stream, hadn’t pretended to sense a presence and turned back toward the hangar passage, Han Se-ah would have been turned into ground meat the same way Kim Seok-hyun had and sent straight back to morning—aside from that little detail, the experiment was a complete success.
A Giant Worm barreling after us like a mad thing, and a terrified beauty clutched in my arms. It looked like a scene straight out of a movie, and even the viewers temporarily stopped roasting her to watch my sprint.
Once the Giant Worm was lured into the clearing, its aggro shifted from the single mana stone to the far larger golem—
“What the hell are you doing?!”
“Ah, well, um… I was wondering if maybe I could lure it with a mana stone instead of the Knight-type Golem.”
“Then you could have just done it inside the clearing, right? Or somewhere that actually had places to dodge!”
Successful operation or not, she was still getting an earful. This wasn’t some random party member—this was the party leader pulling a sudden stunt and nearly committing suicide solo. Even if it was a game where you could revive and time rewound, that was only from a gamer’s perspective.
Trying something without a word of explanation to the others, then nearly dying alone as a result. As party leader, she’d managed to pack every single thing you should never do into one neat gift set. I set the party leader I’d carried princess-style down on the ground with a thump, and she immediately bowed her head.
“I… I’m sorry.”
“We’ll talk after we take that thing down first, so get your magic ready right now!”
The silver lining was that the mana stone’s aggro range turned out wider than expected; no one got hit by the Giant Worm that had come from far away.
The instant I came barreling into the cave with Han Se-ah in my arms, the others looked over as if to ask what was going on—and before I could even explain, the Giant Worm crashed in and nearly caused total chaos. Still, no one died or got hurt, so that was something.
“Hold it! I’m cutting the waist!”
“Got it— wait, huh!”
Our northern brat, who’d just switched from Kayden back to Katie, immediately dropped the formal speech and used the Knight-type Golem—now running at clearly reduced output—to clamp down on the Giant Worm’s maw.
Because it wasn’t in its enhanced state, every time the Giant Worm thrashed its long body trying to coil around the golem, the Knight-type Golem staggered. It wasn’t getting knocked over or shoved back, but it was locked in so tightly that smashing the worm away and carving it up with a sword the way we had on day one was pure fantasy.
Watching that, I lifted the mace I hadn’t had much use for lately and concentrated mana into it. Somehow it was turning into a dedicated boss-monster weapon.
“That shell is just rock! Hanna! Weaken it with the magic you used to detach the golem’s limbs!”
“O-okay!”
True to the game, she didn’t panic or fumble just because she’d nearly died. Before I’d even finished speaking she was already preparing rock-melting magic instead of an attack spell, and she fired it off at once. Moments like this made it clear her combat sense was excellent—she just did the dumbest things in the weirdest places.
The magic hit, and part of the Giant Worm’s rough rock armor melted into a sticky mess. It wasn’t that its skin was rock-like; the thing literally glued actual rock fragments onto itself, so it had zero magic resistance to speak of.
“I’ll blow that part open!”
“Ah! Be careful!”
Grace’s arrows immediately punched into the now-obvious weak point. I’d wondered how much two or three arrows could do against that massive body, but the arrowheads glowed cherry-red and then exploded, changing my mind completely.
She’d said she was preparing reagent-coated arrows, but she’d gone and bought bomb arrows too. Now that her income as an adventurer was solid, she was pouring money into gear without holding back. The sticky, melting rock shell got caught in the blast, and the worm’s true, rough hide was exposed at once.
Irene had no intention of sitting idle either; she perfectly blocked the shell fragments that came flying like shotgun pellets from the Giant Worm’s thrashing with her holy protection magic. The three of them really did work well together. If not for Han Se-ah’s earlier trolling, it would have been theoretically perfect party play.
Thinking that, I brought the mace—overcharged with mana to the point of excess—down hard on the Giant Worm’s waist.
Crunch—!
Even with its waist severed, the Giant Worm’s stubborn vitality kept it thrashing for quite a while. Only after I crushed the head end—the one with the mouth—did the thrashing finally stop. When a sword had punched through its maw it had died instantly, yet cutting it clean in half at the waist left it alive. What was this, a zombie? You had to smash the head to kill it.
“Without the barrier, that would’ve gotten pretty gruesome.”
“Unnie, thank you so much.”
“Not at all. I should at least be useful for things like this. …The stench is going to be awful—shall I try purifying it?”
“Better wait until the corpse is completely gone before trying purification.”
Thanks to the rampage it put on while cut in half, the once-spacious clearing was now coated in sticky green body fluid. Exactly as Grace muttered, without the holy protection magic the others would have been covered in the stuff too. Of course, the Knight-type Golem and I, who hadn’t received the barrier…
“Need more water magic, Roland?”
“Mana?”
“Plenty, so don’t worry. I didn’t use any attack magic.”
I was currently in a state too embarrassing to describe, scrubbing hard with the water Han Se-ah kept filling an empty pot with. For me it was simple enough—strip the armor and wash—but a giant Knight-type Golem couldn’t be rinsed off like a person taking a shower, so we had no choice but to leave it for now.
Because of that, Katie, who’d climbed down from the golem’s cockpit, was staring up at it with mournful eyes. Those eyes looked even sadder than a child watching a broken toy.
It wasn’t even damaged—just thoroughly coated in sticky, foul-smelling fluid—yet she was hovering near the golem with an expression like the world had ended. The stench must have been assaulting her nose, but she clearly loved that Knight-type Golem that much.
“This fight went really well. Aside from the part where Hanna’s attempt was completely reckless.”
“Ah, right?”
“You could call it mage-like, but as an adventurer it’s not a compliment.”
Only after I’d taken a direct hit from Han Se-ah’s water magic like it was an attack spell did the Giant Worm’s fluids finally wash off. Standing there in nothing but soaked pants, I picked up the scolding I’d left unfinished earlier.
“If it’s not an emergency, you need to give the party a heads-up when you want to try something. And you did it while I, the party tank, was away? If I hadn’t been on my way back to the entrance, if Katie hadn’t already been in the golem’s cockpit, the others could have been badly hurt or killed.”
At my scolding, Han Se-ah hung her head low while the others quietly nodded along. It wasn’t so much that she was truly sorry to me, an NPC, as that she also had to consider the angry viewer sentiment. The usual over-immersed complainers always took a streamer’s in-game mistakes deadly seriously.
I wasn’t genuinely furious either, so I accepted the apology and nodded. Compared to trolling that involved shooting arrows into teammates’ backs or knocking the tank over with magic, this was cute.
“Next time you want to try something, you tell the party first, make a plan, and only then go ahead. Even if I’m not there, you at least give a heads-up so Irene can put up holy protection or Katie can intercept.”
“I understand…”
In the middle of getting thoroughly chewed out, formal speech slipped out of Han Se-ah naturally. The viewers were never going to let a golden opportunity like this pass.
“Nnngh… hrzmlrgh…”
Still bowing to the party, she clenched her teeth and muttered through them. Katie was completely absorbed in the golem, but kind-hearted Grace and Irene hurriedly waved their hands and tried to soothe Han Se-ah.
And Katie—
“Um, Miss Hanna? Does the golem repair facility have a golem maintenance function yet?”
She checked the Giant Worm’s corpse, which was slowly shrinking in volume, then kept glancing back and forth between Han Se-ah and the golem hangar like a restless puppy.
If we ever had to head north for a character quest later, I really ought to give her a ride.