Flimsier Than I Expected
"Huh. Flimsier than I expected."
Slammed backward by the fist of a Steam Golem, I went flying and, even mid-tumble, kept my eyes on the figure beyond it.
A grayish Steam Golem about five meters tall, and a man standing beside it.
The man had short gray hair and eyes of the same color, and what stuck in my memory was his uniform — a black-and-blue combination. When I'd snuck a glance earlier, I'd noticed it was the same attire worn by this city's ruling class.
The monocle fitted over the man's eye gave off an aura similar to the golem's.
So that's how he saw through my stealth.
I'd weakened my power, sure, but I hadn't expected my concealment to be pierced.
It was stealth that even a player inside the top ten couldn't easily detect.
"A bandit dares to intrude this far?"
The man frowned and lightly clenched his black-gloved hand.
Thoom!
At once, the Steam Golem standing beside him flared crimson from its single eye and came thundering toward me.
Weaker than the twenty-meter golem I'd seen earlier, but still powerful enough to crush most rankers underfoot.
Shhk. A black dagger appeared in my hand.
White Savior, with its replication ability suppressed.
"What the—?"
SKRRAAK!
The black dagger shattered the mana barrier encasing the Steam Golem and sliced it into seven pieces.
In a single instant it became a shower of wreckage, tumbling across the floor.
The man staggered back, startled.
"Well, well. So you're not some nameless rabble after all."
"...It's tougher than I expected."
And I, in 'Rafina's' voice, gave my assessment of the cleaved golem.
Even after I'd raised my strength back to Rafina's true level, the golem was so hard that the cut itself felt wrong somehow. Defensive power on par with a field boss at level 80 or 90, at least.
Thud! Thud!
The thirty-odd golems milling around the area began converging on the man's side.
Some of them even looked far stronger than the five-meter golem I'd just shredded.
"An unranked ranker? What business does the Magic Engineering Guild have with this?"
"Word was your airships were something special, so I came to take a look."
"I don't sell to Plunderers. Unless you pay a steeper price."
A steeper price?
"How much more would that be?"
"Triple. A Plunderer with no credit should expect to pay at least that much."
"........"
Triple?
Triple tens of billions? Hundreds?
"That's expensive."
"If it's too expensive, then get lost. Ah — before you go, hand over the money. You dared to trespass on an important stronghold of the Magic Engineering Guild, so you'll be paying compensation."
"I'm not sure who the real Plunderer here is."
"You're one to talk!"
VRRRMMM!
Dozens of golems charged all at once.
Their defensive power was one thing, but as the dozens of golems clustered together and their mana began resonating in sync, their menace swelled to monstrous proportions. It felt like their stats had tripled in an instant.
"...I wasn't exactly planning on fighting."
The me standing here now was Rafina.
Divine power was obviously out of the question — this was a Plunderer ranker specializing in physical prowess, stealth arts, and dagger techniques. Which meant the skills I used had to stay limited to that level.
KAGAK!
I cleaved through the first golem to reach me.
Their defense really had spiked — even the sound of the cut was different.
I cut down the second golem, then the third.
And then—
"You're flimsier than I expected."
"...!"
Dozens of cascading dagger strikes tore through the golems' chests.
Golem Lover — a golem crafter and one of the five elders of the Magic Engineering Guild, those commonly called the elites — had been in a wonderful mood lately.
The guild had once languished in the ranks of the thirties, sometimes sinking as low as the fifties. Not exactly common, but hardly top-tier either — just another 'moderately strong' guild among many.
Then, a little while ago, the guild master had returned with a special hidden piece, and everything began to change.
Through the guild master's ability, the members had acquired a technique called magic engineering — worthy of the guild's very name — and the guild's combat strength had skyrocketed. And with the creation of the Floating Ship, the beating heart of magic engineering, the guild had carved its name proudly into the ranks of those countless top-tier guilds.
Even more astonishing, these airships would serve as core items in the upcoming Great Cataclysm raid.
All those guilds are looking up to us now!
The ones who had always held their noses so high. Angel, Black Moon, Red Moon, the Mage Association, Chaos...
Those overwhelming guilds whose mere names had once made him cower now tiptoed around the Magic Engineering Guild, anxious and wary. It was a shame that the Empire, home to the rank one and two players, showed no interest in the airships, but what mattered was that the Angel Guild was paying attention.
What's that? "If you don't help us block the raid, things will get dire, so couldn't you sell a little cheaper?"
As if he cared whether a few kingdoms drowned because a raid failed.
Truth be told, most of the elders — himself included — and the guild master were rooting for the flood. If the situation grew desperate enough, their value would only climb, and then those people would finally have to buy at a far steeper price. And at that point, even that arrogant Michael and his haughty Seven Archangels would come crawling with bowed heads.
Golem Lover had been savoring the fantasy of rankers forced, kicking and screaming, to purchase airships — which was exactly why he'd come down to inspect the construction of the large-class vessels in such good spirits.
Normally this was another elder's job, one who'd contributed to the manufacturing process, but that fellow had personal business and Golem Lover had volunteered to cover the shift.
And then — a rat had dared to scurry in during his watch.
A rat with a Bandit item, the Veil of Blockade, hanging around its neck.
He'd heard that lately, out of envy, a few players had been sending spies or causing trouble for the guild — no doubt this was one of them. Catch this one, though, and he'd have a debt to collect from that woman as well.
That was the plan: pin her down using his specialty, his golems. And then...
"...Unbelievable."
Dozens of golems plunged face-first into the ground, their chests punctured clean through.
The mana stones had been carved out along with a section of chest plating, and the golems now lay clawing at the floor, venting nothing but steam — push-push — like broken kettles.
Golem Lover recoiled backward in horror.
No — she clearly wasn't this strong a moment ago. When he'd looked through his glasses, she'd been far weaker than—
Clatter.
The Plunderer picked up, without any particular ceremony, the mana stone that had fallen from a punctured golem.
FWOOSH!
Reacting to the Plunderer's mana, the stone flared with brilliant light. But within moments it dimmed, turned into an ordinary gray rock, and rolled back across the floor.
"Once you take out the power source, they're nothing special. Decent stats, though."
"......"
A golem's core power source was the mana stone embedded in its chest. Remove that, and a golem went from a precision-engineered war machine to ordinary scrap metal.
But—
Do you think they'd display it that openly if it were that easy?
The entire design of this Steam Golem was built around the stone: hundreds of circuits, dozens of layers of magic formulas, and specialized defensive abilities layered over it all. A flawless war machine combining his own class, Golem Crafter, with the guild master's magic engineering. Severing an arm or a leg was one thing — cutting the circuits around the mana stone was as good as impossible.
"You... are you with the Underworld?"
The Plunderer guild 'Underworld' — home of the rank one Plunderer, Grim Reaper. Grim Reaper possessed strength rivaling any ranker inside the top ten, and recently he'd even toppled an entire kingdom and seized its throne. If this woman were something like his second-in-command, having this level of power wasn't out of the question.
"Underworld?"
"Yes, Underworld. Did Grim Reaper send you? Or are you actually Grim Reaper him— no, no, that's not it."
Something was off.
Isn't the Jurodis Kingdom far away from here?
Jurodis lay to the southwest — a good distance from the kingdom where the Magic Engineering Guild, in the east, was located. Those busybodies had been tied up in a war with a major guild until just recently; it was hard to imagine them stirring this far out. Then a rising power, maybe?
Come to think of it, he had heard that a few Plunderer guilds had been swelling enormously by exploiting the recent chaos. Probably one of them—
......
He couldn't make heads or tails of it. Just who was this woman wrapped in that black robe?
"I'm not with the Underworld."
"......I don't know what you're after, but don't think those golems are all we have. We've got far more impressive things than that, and the other elders are no slouches either."
"I see."
"Th-that's right. And the guild master may have a low ranking, but in truth he has power on par with the top ten. You think your little Plunderer guild could survive if a large-class ship attacked your headquarters?"
The Plunderer tilted her head with a nod, spinning her dagger idly between her fingers.
She was scared. Good.
But he couldn't back down. Summoning the Titan-class golems would leave the guild's defenses exposed, and above all, it required the guild master's approval.
The docks have two 'Gigant'-class and ten 'Titan'-class... could those be enough to take her?
Every user inside the top ten was a monster. One and all, beings beyond ordinary players — untouchable monsters. She probably wasn't as strong as the heaven-beyond-heaven Leo or Sword God, but if golems of that caliber traded blows near the ships, the vessels wouldn't survive intact. Then construction would fall behind schedule, and he'd catch hell from the guild master—
"Give me one thing, and I'll leave."
"...Give you what?"
"That."
The Plunderer's hand pointed toward the sky.
Thrummm~
A small-class vessel drifting through the sky of the construction bay.
Worth little to the Magic Engineering Guild, but to other guilds, a very expensive ship — several hundred million at a time.
"You want that? It's worth at least 500 million."
"500 million, my foot. I'd say it's not even worth 50 million."
The Plunderer smirked and tightened her grip on the dagger.
Her killing intent condensed into visible form and spread outward, razor-sharp. Before he knew it, blood was trickling from his cheek.
Wh-what just passed by?
"I made a few mistakes myself, you see. Hand over that one ship, and I'll let it all slide quietly."
"Don't talk nonse—"
"Shall I crash them all?"
"...Can you even handle the consequences?"
"That's my problem to worry about. So — your choice?"
"......"
God damn it.
"Not as impressive as I expected."
Having received the small-class vessel as a transfer, I tore the ship apart — figuratively and otherwise — and reached my conclusion.
This thing was worth barely 10 million, let alone 50. It could fly and it had elemental resistance, and that was about it. Maybe that was just what small-class meant, but it wasn't particularly durable, and the circuits themselves were so unstable that the slightest break in the mana flow would send it plummeting straight out of the sky.
A woefully shoddy mass-produced model compared to the large-class ship I'd seen earlier.
Its one saving grace was that performance improved if the rider personally fed mana — or some other power source — directly into the mana stone. But then, the ship wasn't good; it was just the rider who was good.
No wonder they sold for such prices to rankers. Rankers were strong to begin with, so simply having them aboard would make even a mediocre ship seem terrifyingly capable. Unless someone at guild-master level or above was piloting it, the performance clearly dropped by a factor of several.
I moored the ship I was done inspecting in a corner of the shipyard, then dropped my disguise.
Now — time to go do some real negotiating.