What a Shitty Game
I was still holding the golem's left arm, pouring every ounce of my grievance into my voice, but Seri's expression — still hidden from view — didn't change one bit.
She shook her head and took the golem's left arm from me.
"Just hand it over. I'll try attaching it."
"I'm serious. I barely moved it. Seriously, barely."
"I already told you. It's old — it can break easily. Even a trivial amount of force from Lady Lea is enough to snap it."
"…I'm telling you, I didn't."
I kept denying it, but Seri denied my denial right back and pressed the left arm against the golem.
The staff in her right hand flared with light, and the golem began to rattle and clank.
Then — crack.
"Crack?"
Thud!
The left arm, half-attached, tore free and fell.
Seri picked up the golem's left arm from where it had landed uselessly on the ground and looked at me.
"This isn't going to work."
"It won't?"
"It's too old. Even if I force it back on, it'll just fall off again. This piece was built with the former Magic Tower Master's most sophisticated designs."
"Urrrgh…"
"I could slap on other materials and force a join, but that would only throw off the balance."
"I see."
"You're better off just using it as is."
A one-armed golem.
It was already stuck at maybe ten percent of its original performance — and now, with the left arm gone, the whole thing looked downright shabby.
Sure, even like this it could still crush apprentice heroes without breaking a sweat, but I still felt a little bad about it.
I watched Seri tuck the golem's arm into her subspace storage and asked,
"What if we just stick a different arm on it?"
"Do you have one?"
"I've got a few. Dig through the treasure vault and something should turn up."
"That would throw the balance off even worse."
"Still, a one-armed golem is kind of sad, you know? We ought to slap something cool on it."
A demonkin arm or a wyvern arm would be a bit much… an ogre arm ought to do the trick, right?
That felt about right — and it'd probably end up way stronger than when it still had both arms.
Even a one-armed golem would appreciate that.
Not that golems had anything resembling self-awareness, of course.
"But why are you taking that?"
"It's not a commission fee or anything. When I have time, I'll head to the Magic Kingdom and look into it — figure out how this thing was made."
"Yeah? I can't really do anything for you in return."
"It's fine. Something like this is no trouble at all."
I can handle it on my own.
Seri smiled brightly.
I still couldn't see her face, but I roughly painted one in my mind.
A girl with burn scars who still wore a sunny, carefree smile.
Of course she looked far older than I did now, but to me she was still a tiny, tiny girl.
"Don't overdo it out there."
"Don't worry. I'm not the person I used to be."
"That's exactly why I'm saying it."
"Heh heh. Want me to tell you something more interesting instead?"
"?"
Seri turned her head.
Huff! Huff!
Run! Just keep running!
Fuuuuuck, get this damn stick out of my face already…
Five hundred laps… broken through! Haaah… I'm gonna clear it! I will absolutely clear thissss!!
Even while Seri and I were having our little golem fiasco, the apprentice heroes were still running their hearts out.
When they'd first swarmed into the nest and caused a scene, I'd genuinely considered just breathing fire on them — but looking at them now, I felt a little proud.
Where on earth did these little freaks come from?
"Them."
"Yeah. Noisy, aren't they."
"Extremely. More importantly — did you know they've only been around for about half a year?"
"I'd heard something like that."
The appearance of hundreds of apprentice heroes had only happened half a year ago.
I'd overheard bits and pieces from the fairies and Haring and the like, but I still didn't know the details.
Not that I particularly cared where they came from.
Though the way they sometimes say weirdly familiar things is kind of eerie.
"They didn't actually come from another continent. Word is they came from somewhere much, much farther than that."
"…? Then where did they come from?"
"Who knows? Even I don't know that much."
Seri shrugged and moved her staff.
A deep blue magic circle unfurled beneath her feet, and her body began to fade.
Her skills have improved a ton since last time.
At this level, couldn't she challenge for the next Magic Tower Master?
"You gonna be Magic Tower Master?"
"Please. I'm nowhere near that level. If you're curious, why not just ask them yourself? Looks like there are plenty of heroes around who'd be happy to answer."
"Yeah?"
Maybe I should ask once.
"Everyone, assemble!"
At my call, the heroes who'd been running themselves ragged came pouring into one place.
Heroes gasping for breath, heroes collapsed flat on the ground, heroes chugging something drink-like in a desperate hurry, heroes with legs shaking like leaves…
A whole gallery of human types, all gathered in one spot.
The exact count was twelve.
Excluding Yong-ba, who'd been off practicing archery, eleven of them were the new batch currently in training.
Nine guys, three girls.
The male side outnumbered the female, but that wasn't strange — heroes had always been selected with more men than women.
The reason was absolutely not because men were physically superior.
Even if someone was born weak, once they received the Goddess's power and their body transformed, physical limits could be overcome however many times over.
It's just that the male side is more the Goddess's type, that's all.
That old hag would pick ten male heroes and then debate whether to bother picking even one woman.
People used to say you couldn't even be a hero if you weren't a man.
This time she'd summoned hundreds, so she'd apparently scooped up a fair number of women too.
Anyway, the heroes peered up at me like a flock of chicks.
The reason they were looking up was that I was standing on a high rock.
"What's going on?"
"Don't tell me…! Did I finally clear the quest?!"
"She's ridiculously cute…"
"Does the Fire Dragon have a name?"
"Huff… huff…"
"Quiet, quiet."
Too many words.
I'd made them run all day — where were they even finding the energy to talk?
Just a moment ago they'd been gasping like they were about to die.
"Managing okay?"
"No…"
"I feel like I'm going to die! Please make us do something else!"
"Just one photo, please!"
"But aren't we doing sparring?"
"Fire Dragon-chan is so freaking cu—"
Ugh.
Say one word and get ten back.
Granted, I was talking to ten people, so ten replies made sense — but it was exhausting all the same.
Just ask what I need to ask and send them running again.
"You lot."
"Yes!"
"Can I just take one photo?"
"Wait, is this a treasure event?! Are you about to give us weapons…"
"Where did you come from? You don't seem like you're from another continent."
"…Uh."
"?"
In that instant, I felt the atmosphere turn strange.
The people who'd been fighting for even a single word with me just moments ago started eyeing each other, gauging the room.
Just like Haring, back when she'd been so awkward about a hero's true identity.
"What is it?"
"W-well, that is…"
"Hey! You can't just say that!"
"I haven't said anything yet, okay? Besides, on the forums they said it was fine to talk about…"
"We're, uh, from another contin—"
"You're not going to tell me?"
"It's—! So—!"
"We came from another world."
The one who stepped forward from the confused cluster of heroes was a male hero who looked remarkably intellectual.
The way he casually pushed up his glasses with one hand somehow reminded me of my previous life.
The heroes around him stared in open shock, but he seemed to be enjoying the situation — his voice only grew louder.
"Another world?"
"We are heroes chosen by the great Goddess. But is it really plausible that this land alone would hold hundreds — thousands — of people worthy of that selection?"
"…I guess not?"
Even that old hag couldn't just gacha-summon random people into heroes.
At minimum, you needed a baseline of compatibility — enough to accept her power.
But these heroes had arrived with compatible bodies from the start, so I'd assumed she'd found some kind of workaround.
"Creating compatible heroes one by one takes too long, so she brought them from another world?"
"…? Th-that's correct. Turning hundreds or thousands of this world's residents into heroes would take an astronomical amount of time."
"Hmm…"
Heroes from another world.
Thinking of it that way, a lot of my lingering questions started to make sense.
Why summon hundreds of heroes instead of the usual ten or fewer?
Because if you just bring them from somewhere else, problem solved!
If the Goddess was the ocean, a hero was an empty cup that held a portion of it.
Until now, she'd painstakingly handcrafted each hero-cup and put them to use. But if another world had a whole cup factory, there was no need to make them by hand.
Just place an order at the factory and bring the cups over.
Sure, the quality would be lower than handmade — but you could make up for that with sheer volume.
That old hag… I thought she'd gone senile, but she was actually smart?
I found myself deeply impressed by the thinking of that old hag — no, of the Goddess, the deity of this other world.
At this rate, even the Demon King sleeping up north would be grinding his teeth and muttering, in the crude words of my past life, "What a shitty game."
"Impressive."
"Heh heh. Now you finally understand our importa—"
"Then I never needed to go easy on you in the first place, huh?"
"Excuse me?"
I'd thought they were handmade heroes. Turns out they were mass-produced.
I'd been starting to feel a tiny bit guilty about making them run three thousand laps — but if that was the case, I could just leave them to it.
No — that might actually be more fun.
"I'll turn you into handmade heroes."
"Huh?"
"Look forward to it."
And conveniently, the golem was ready.