Stone Golems
"Huh? Whoa!"
As the rock shook and climbed higher by the second, I lost my footing, twisted around, and leapt down at once.
Thud.
The golem still hadn't finished standing, yet the drop was high enough. Even so, landing from that height felt far easier than it used to.
I watched the two of them finish rising to their full height.
"But wasn't the eleventh floor supposed to be a safe floor…?"
I'd clearly been told that, aside from the first floor, every first and sixth floor was a safe zone. So why were dangerous monsters like these here?
The two figures of solid rock standing before me looked at least seven meters tall. Embedded in each chest was a single small blue orb.
"That's the core, isn't it?!"
The power source that let these non-living things move. Smash that and they stop working—that was the ironclad rule of fantasy worlds. But the cores sat protected behind thick stone. The height alone made them hard to reach, and the orbs were sunk deep enough that only a heavy blow would crack them.
Hah…
I was an adventurer whose main attribute was poison. Poison Coating. Poisonous Afterimage. Even if I learned every other poison skill in existence, non-living opponents like these were natural counters to me.
Just then a red light flared in one eye as the golem locked onto me.
Against a natural enemy like this, running was the smart move. In the past that thought would have sent me sprinting for the hills. The feeling that filled me now, though, was not fear.
It was confidence—the simple certainty that I could handle them.
Thud. Thud.
The ground shook as the two closed in. The lead rock-mass raised its arm and drove a fist straight at me.
A stone punch. Honestly, that fist could have flattened a fifth-floor ogre in one hit. Huge, solid, and coming fast.
Dodge. That was the normal thought. For some reason I didn't want to.
Pride? No. I simply felt it—I could stop this.
As the fist filled my vision I drew my bare hand—no dagger, nothing—back behind me. The dark shadow of the stone loomed right up to my nose. I clenched my fist and drove it forward with everything I had.
"Uraaah!"
KWAANG!
My shout and an earth-shaking crack of impact erupted together. The shockwave flattened the grass across the plain.
The golem's stone fist met my counter and
Crack!
a fissure raced across it; the tip crumbled to dust.
"Giiing."
It made a strange electronic whine and pulled the arm back. Red light flickered in its eyes.
"Is the golem actually flustered?"
I bared my teeth in a grin.
"Cute."
Only for a moment. The crumbled fragments rose from the ground and began reattaching themselves to its body.
"Tch. So I really do have to smash the core."
A pain in the neck, as expected. Still—before, that fist would have been pure terror. Now I had stopped it bare-handed.
Strength 47.
The raw power those stats gave me was enough to trade blows with a golem of that ridiculous size.
Better to finish this fast, though. Not one of them—two.
Before I realized it the second golem was already stomping forward, both arms raised high overhead.
It's going to smash down?!
The overhead strike came whistling through the air.
KWAANG—
I slipped backward as both fists cratered the earth. The first golem's follow-up punch came right after; I leapt clear with room to spare.
Nothing hard about it. They weren't fast. Unlike before, stamina and mana weren't breathing down my neck either. I was handling them just fine without skills.
That was when a woman's voice rode the wind from far behind me.
"Stooop~~~!!"
What? I couldn't make out the words, but I turned to look. In the distance a girl with bright green hair was shouting as she sprinted toward us.
Then the golem in front of me attacked again.
KWAANG!
I met the punch with my fist once more and yelled toward the running figure.
"Stay back! It's dangerous!"
Fighting while protecting a civilian is a nightmare. I prayed she would turn aside, yet she kept charging straight at me no matter how hard I shouted.
Can she not see the golem right next to me? It's not exactly small.
I needed these two stone golems gone before she got any closer.
Three ways to put them down.
First: jump high enough to reach their chests and punch or kick the cores. Rejected. They weren't standing still, and no matter how good my jump was, my legs weren't magically getting longer.
Second: take out their legs, topple them, then smash the cores. Possible. But if they fell forward instead of backward, I'd have to pulverize the entire back plate just to reach the core. Too risky.
Third option: blow them sky-high.
The same skill combination that had turned a basilisk's steel-hard scales into deep-fried fish.
"The answer's already obvious, isn't it?!"
I activated the skill.
Super Acceleration: Dense Poisonous Afterimage
A thick, hazy cloud of poison smoke billowed out behind me. I ran.
Without destroying the core they regenerated endlessly—that was the real headache. So the solution was simple: give them zero time to regenerate and erase both cores in a single blast.
I circled the pair, easily slipping past every swinging fist. Once enough of the dense green smoke had wrapped them and climbed skyward, I cut the skill and stepped clear of the cloud.
"Golems—this is the end for you."
I stretched out my left hand and gathered flame.
"Fire…"
The running woman's voice cut through again. She was close enough now that every word rang clear.
"Stop the attack!!!"
What? Is she insane? Why would I stop?
The Fire Ball was almost fully formed into a sphere when her next shout hit me.
"Stop!! They're my golems!!!"
What? Her golems??
The absurd claim blanked my mind for a second. I looked from her to the golems and back again.
"No way… these golems are…?!"
While I stood there stunned, the red sphere in my hand slipped free of my control.
"Huh?"
The Fire Ball sliced through the air toward them. Her scream rose behind me.
"Nooo~!!!!!!"
A heartbeat later the Fire Ball plunged into the green gas, painted everything orange, and then—
Ku—KWAANG! KWANG! KWANG!!
—detonated with a roar that shook the plain.
Whoosh~ Thud! Thud!
Fragments of golem rained down like meteors in every direction. At my feet landed a stone shard of a different color from the rest—a broken piece of the blue core.
"…"
Her cry cut off with the explosion. I bent and picked up the small fragment of core rolling on the ground.
She had been sprinting at first. When the stones began to burst she slowed to a walk and came the rest of the way. Now she simply stared at the shattered crystal in my hand.
"…"
Silence.
Ah, crap… I carefully opened my fingers and held the piece out to her.
She took it with trembling hands, as if it were a family member's ashes, then cupped it tightly between both palms.
"…Um, s-sorry, but I didn't have a choice… I mean, why leave golems out here in the first place…"
"…Hic."
????
What did I just hear?
I looked at her face. From her bowed head, fat teardrops fell one after another as she sobbed.
"Aigoo, this is…"
Pity hit me first. How many men can stay strong in front of a woman's tears?
That pity lasted about three seconds. The soft sniffling grew until her shoulders heaved, then became a full-throated wail that tore across the grassland.
"Waaaaah! Half a year's work!! I'm finished! Waaah!!"
She dropped straight onto the dirt, hugged the core to her chest, and bawled.
"No, look… those things attacked me. I had no choice…"
She lifted a face streaked with tears and snot and glared at me.
"Rock One and Rock Two attacked you?! You were the one who started tap-dancing on my golems' heads, so of course they registered it as an attack! And then you turn them into powder?! If I'd gotten close enough to give the order they would have stopped… Waaaaah!!"
I cast my mind back. Yeah… I had climbed onto the rock piles and looked around. But they treated that as an attack? They just looked like ordinary boulders!
"Look… then you should have been watching the area yourself. It's dangerous…"
I pointed out the obvious flaw in her logic. She stared at me once more and burst into even louder tears.
"Waaaaah!! I'm ruined!!"
The volume of that wail made my head throb. Hah. What the hell is this situation?
I left her sitting there crying and took a step toward the village. Instantly she latched onto the hem of my pants.
"Hey—what are you doing?! Let go."
She bit her lower lip and cried harder.
"You can't leave! Absolutely not! Waaah! You did this to my Rock Duo, so you have to take responsibility!! You're not going anywhere!!! Waaaaah!!"
Hah… looks like she really isn't letting me walk away. Even when I tried to shake free she only gripped tighter and wailed louder.
"Geez…"
I pressed a hand to my forehead.
"Hah… fine. What do you want me to do, then? For the record, I'm broke!!"
A shadow of triumph crossed her tear-streaked face—the look of someone who had just won. She sniffled the last of the snot and spoke.
"…Save me."
"What?"
"Get me the main material for the core—Blue Spirit Stone."