The Golem Challenge
Click.
"If I do it like this… there."
Wooong!
After hours of struggle, I finally succeeded in attaching the ogre's arm that had been lying around in the warehouse.
Unlike the hard golem, this was a deep-green left arm of living flesh. The golem began to glow with a blue light and use the ogre's arm as if it were its own.
"Good thing it's the left one. If it had been the other arm, I never could have attached it."
Fortunately it was the left arm, so I managed to get it on somehow. I picked up the golem and headed for the nest clearing.
Half the heroes were still running around the clearing; the other half lay sprawled in exhaustion. Yong-ba was loosing arrows with a steady thwip-thwip.
Fewer people than before.
"Huh. Why only ten?"
"They quit. Said they couldn't take it anymore."
"That so?"
I nodded without much interest at the man sitting on the ground eating something. If it was too hard, quitting was the right call. These weren't handmade heroes—just mass-produced ones. Replacements were a dime a dozen.
I gathered the heroes together once more and presented the golem. Even in my polymorphed form it looked sizable, and standing next to the heroes it was bigger still—easily over three meters tall. The heroes glanced over with tired eyes, then began to take an interest.
"All right. See this?"
"…A golem?"
"What is that?"
"I didn't make it… I received it. Anyway, it's a golem. Land a meaningful hit on it and I'll recognize you as my disciple."
"! You mean it?!"
"For real?!"
"Yep."
Thud. Thud.
I rapped on the golem and smiled a little. I was slightly worried it might fall apart like last time, but a light knock should be fine. Color flooded back into the faces of the heroes who had been flopping around like wilted seaweed.
Yong-ba raised his hand.
"What about people who are already disciples? Do we get anything?"
"Hmm… Ah. I'll give you that too."
"Give me what?"
"That?"
"Hah—!"
A few heroes with a vaguely unpleasant air started whispering in the corner, but I paid them no mind.
"Haring is doing a favor for me right now. I'll give you the same reward."
"What is th—?!"
Yong-ba's mouth fell open as he stared at empty air. The other heroes followed his gaze and began murmuring in astonishment. They must have been looking at something related to the Goddess's power.
Yong-ba swallowed hard, then asked with a serious face,
"Um, Fire Dragon."
"What?"
"Instead of that reward, could I just ride you once…"
"No."
"Ah."
He kept asking me to let him ride. Let me be perfectly clear: I am not a mount.
Every hero in training threw themselves at the sparring match with the golem. Apparently they figured landing a valid hit on the thing would be easier than running thousands of laps around the nest while getting smacked in the head. Looking purely at the ratio of time to effort, they weren't wrong. Whether by luck or skill, succeed just once and you could skip the entire grueling process.
However.
Crash!
"Ugh… damn, this thing is tough…"
"Everyone pile on! Get at least one attack in somehow!"
"I'll bind its feet!"
"Someone pull aggro!"
"Isn't that stronger than a raid boss?"
"As expected—total noobs."
Mass-produced really were mass-produced, weren't they? Not one, but a full ten heroes were floundering against a single golem—and a golem operating at maybe ten percent of its original capacity, at that. Granted, it had been designed by a former Magic Tower Master rather than some ordinary mage…
But it's a seventy-year-old antique.
They had no business struggling against a rust-eaten golem built more than seventy years ago. I watched the mass-produced heroes thrash about while I piloted the golem like a game console. I'd planned to leave it on auto, but with nothing better to do and sleep nowhere in sight, I decided to take the controls myself.
"Pile on!"
"Hold that position! Right side's open!"
"Got it!"
"Move faster, all of you!"
"Oh."
About two hours of thorough beating later, after two of them had gone down, something like teamwork finally clicked into place and they began to move with actual coordination. The golem was gradually being herded toward the spot they had planned.
They keep cornering it…
"Hiyah."
Click.
BOOOOM!!!
"What."
"Huh?"
"Since when can golems air-walk?!"
It wasn't air-walking. Just temporary levitation magic channeled through the magic stone embedded under the golem's feet. The golem, which had been driven into a corner, shot upward in an instant, dodged the assault, and struck the heroes at the rear.
Whack! Whack!
Two heroes went flying—one from the golem's own arm, the other from the ogre's. The intellectual man who had first explained the heroes' nature to me, and the brown-haired woman with a staff. Counting the two who had already fallen, four heroes were out cold for nothing, and the remaining faces darkened.
"Hehe."
"Dragon…"
"Do better. I'm really not using anything special."
"It's too hard, though."
"Is it? Then I won't use magic anymore."
At the apprentice heroes' protests, I sealed off magic use. Aside from the brief levitation and enhancement magic earlier, I hadn't been using much anyway. Of course, even without magic, most of them couldn't land a shallow hit, let alone a meaningful one.
Clang!
"The damage isn't registering at all?"
"Shoot better! You're the only one with a real shot here!"
"I'm telling you it doesn't hit!"
Yong-ba was at least connecting, but "connecting" was all it was—not a single scratch on the golem's body. And even that was impossible without the others drawing its attention.
If I put a shield on it, they wouldn't land a hit at all.
I cheerfully piloted the golem for about a day, then switched it to full auto once the same pattern kept repeating. Even on auto, there were still no successes. Watching the heroes get pounded for roughly three days, just as I was starting to get bored—
"Fire Dragooon~~"
Haring had returned.
"Phew! Made it!"
Haring finally returned to the nest after her long journey—a grueling stretch of roughly eighteen days. Right up through the final stretch of the quest she had been genuinely stumped about how to handle things, but in the end she had succeeded in delivering the letter. She'd handed it to the knight commander who could arrange a meeting with the emperor, so it ought to clear for certain.
"Man, without Nest Return this would've taken two more weeks."
Without the skill that teleported her straight to the nest, it would have been a real disaster. Haring let out a breath of relief and opened the gallery. She'd come straight back, but she had already grasped most of the rumor mill circulating there.
"It's chaos."
(Photo of Lea sitting on the golem's shoulder, wiggling her hand)
The golem bouncing around doing air-walks like some wuxia master was already ridiculous enough.
Now she's straight-up riding the damn thing lmaoooooooo
Sitting up there giggling down at us—I genuinely wanted to hit her once…
👍 457 / 👎 7
"Everyone seems to be having fun."
While she was away, they must have been up to something interesting. Of course everyone was complaining about how hard it was—but the reward was enormous, so they were gritting their teeth and pushing through.
"I'm already on my way without you telling me."
Haring drew a deep breath with the nest right in front of her. Now she, too, would only have getting wrecked by the golem left—same as the other users. But Haring had a secret weapon.
Treasure Vault One-Use Ticket!
If she pulled an insane legendary weapon from the dragon's treasure vault, then landed a valid hit on the golem with that weapon…
Two treasures?
According to the gallery posts, people who were already disciples got the same reward as the letter delivery. If Haring cleared the golem quest, that meant she could use the treasure vault one more time.
"Can't pass this up."
This was a premium event exclusive to Haring, the first discoverer. At least, that was how she saw it as she stepped into the nest and reported her quest success to the Fire Dragon perched atop the golem…
"Did you deliver it properly?"
"Eh?"
"No reply letter came."
The quest hadn't cleared.