For the Runaway Girl 3

I'd given Han Se-ah an earful for that sudden trolling stunt, but there was no denying she'd uncovered something important. The rock golems' mana stones had also been crafted from Giant Worm corpses — which was why the worms went completely feral and charged the moment a stone shattered and spilled its mana into the air.

A textbook playthrough would probably involve hauling those golem mana stones off to a magic tower for research, then brewing up some kind of lure scent. But we had mana stones sleeping in our inventory that could skip right past that kind of busywork.

I was planning to sell these ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠expensive since they're fuel for the pilotable golems… looks like we're going to burn through every last one.

The real problem? Smashing the stones was so much faster than crafting a proper lure that we were chewing through them faster than expected. When you take a mana-packed crystal and just crush it open like a brute to dump the energy outside, waste is inevitable.

We'd already pushed this far — there was no way we were going to lock ourselves in a lab for days on end just to invent a mana-stone lure. That kind of sluggish play was impossible for a Korean gamer, and doubly impossible for a streamer.

"Another one's coming!"

"Got it!"

And so the grind began.

I'd wander near the entrance, crushing mana stones bare-handed, and a Giant Worm would come barreling after me. The ones that took the bait then died under the combined assault of the Knight-type Golem and the rest of the party.

Once we knew the head was the weak point, they didn't need my help anymore. Katie, piloting the Knight-type Golem, would pin the worm in place. Han Se-ah melted through the shell, and Grace finished it with an explosive arrow straight through the skull.

Any rock-shell shrapnel kicked up by the thrashing worm got casually swatted aside by Irene's barrier. A perfect adventurer-style division of labor.

Viewers cheered at the satisfying spectacle. A few — especially foreign viewers who'd tuned in after hearing about the mecha content — grumbled about humans and golems teaming up, but most of the chat was buzzing with pure excitement so long as the fights stayed flashy.

They'd confirmed it: as long as the Knight-type Golem held the Giant Worm in place, even a player mage and a natural 3-star archer could take one down with ease.

Most viewers whined about ending up with average 2-star companions, but that was just the average — and the floor. Anyone serious enough about the game to climb all the way to the 30th floor had already been using the reset button to pull at least 3-star party members. I'd seen the posts.

Hit the reset button and the game rolled back to that morning with no data saved. Classic gamer rerolling, born from that particular mechanic.

The grind went like this: ask the adventurer guild receptionist to put out a companion recruitment in the evening, then show up first thing the next morning and mash the reset button until at least a 3-star showed up. Of course, since this was a full-dive VR game where you actually had to physically move, the trip from the inn to the guild took long enough that infinite rerolling wasn't realistic… but it wasn't impossible either.

Even back in the mobile gacha game Heroines Chronicle, gamers were the kind of species who'd write macros and reroll for a full month straight just to start with the top three banners and every limited character.

Resetting the game until the companion you wanted showed up — reset marathon, or "reroll" for short. Just as some people challenge marathons, some people challenge rerolls.

The word itself came from Japanese gacha games, and thanks to gaming press coverage I'd learned that it wasn't just Koreans — Japanese players, and even Westerners who'd gotten hooked on East Asian gacha, were all running the same reroll gauntlet.

…Of course, I hadn't looked it up out of boredom. I was checking whether any other natural 6-star characters had shown up yet.

"Roland! You can stop luring for a bit! There's a voice saying the golem repairs are starting!"

I'd been leaving the fighting to the party for the sake of experience while I lured Giant Worms with mana stones and browsed the internet for a good long while. Then Grace's bright voice rang out from down the tunnel, and she came bounding over with that light, agile footwork unique to archers, practically hanging off my arm. The sight of those mechanical arms moving on their own, whirring and clanking through golem repairs, must have left an impression.

And the golem being repaired was the Archer-type she'd eventually pilot, so of course it hit harder.

Lure Giant Worms with golem mana stones. Kill them with the Knight-type Golem. The more worms fell, the more mana gathered in the hangar and the more the facility came online. After enough battles, the gradually wearing-down Knight-type got repaired — and the completely wrecked Archer-type woke up too.

Looking at just this stretch, it felt less like fantasy and more like an SF mecha game.

The Knight-type Golem held the front line like a fortress, while the Archer-type — true to its bulk — fired steel stakes closer to siege weaponry than arrows. Three-meter iron bolts punched through Giant Worm maws at terrifying speed, and the kill rate shot up.

At this point the worms were dying faster than I could lure them in. Corpses were piling up in the corners of the clearing in a distinctly unpleasant way.

"Do you think those two golems are a mage type and a priest type?"

"But… is it even possible to make something like that as a golem?"

"They're from another world. Maybe it is possible."

Our rock golem mana stone consumption for fuel had doubled, but that left Han Se-ah and Irene with nothing to do — so they stood chatting quietly while staring at the two still-unrepaired golems. The Giant Worm corpses filling the clearing in front of the hangar had made the stench unbearable. At least inside the workshop, one wall away, you could escape the monsters' horrific body-fluid reek.

Me, browsing the internet while luring worms. Grace and Katie, piloting golems and cleaning them up. Han Se-ah, chatting with Irene and working the audience.

"This one's pretty big, but looking at the proportions… it's a dagger, right?"

"This golem only has a shield. Guess mage and priest golems really were too much to ask."

After flinging around 10-gold mana stones like confetti, the four repaired golems turned out to be these: a Knight-type Golem with a longsword, an Archer-type Golem with a massive steel longbow, a Rogue-type Golem dual-wielding daggers, and a Tanker-type Golem holding a shield the size of a hangar door. Apparently even in another world, nobody had managed to build golems that could use priest or mage skills.

And right then, a mechanical female voice rang out.

A voice that rang out like a quest was clearly progressing. The party members, who'd each been climbing into one of the four golems and testing the controls, all turned to look deeper into the hangar.

A secret door large enough for a golem to walk through was grinding open with a heavy rrrrrk.

Beautiful female pilots. Pilotable golems. Giant monsters. An explosion crisis. A secret passage.

A quest story packed with every male fantasy imaginable, and the viewers boiled over all over again. The chat window seethed and bubbled like a dormant volcano coming back to life.

Everything from horny confessions about the women piloting the golems, to mecha nerds seriously debating the armor thickness differences between models, to viewers grinding their teeth over point bets and bringing up boss monsters, to the toxic ones arguing over whether Han Se-ah was going to die in a secret-base explosion ending.

"How about it, Irene? Can you handle the golem?"

"Y-yes! Walking while holding a shield feels a little awkward, but it moves more like a real body than I expected?"

Han Se-ah had boarded the dagger-wielding Rogue-type Golem, and Irene the shield-bearing Tanker-type. As for me, I was perched on the broad shoulder pauldron of Irene's Tanker-type Golem.

We were bringing all four golems just in case, but of the group, Irene was the least experienced with physical work. Grace was naturally agile, Katie was a swordswoman, and Han Se-ah moonlighted as a fitness YouTuber so her motor skills were solid.

Han Se-ah kept glancing up at me sitting on Irene's golem shoulder with a faintly disappointed look that bothered me a little — but either way, we pressed forward through the suddenly appeared secret passage, heading toward the unknown region called B-301F.