Chapter 149: The Bear Goes to the Mines (The Hero Goes to the Mines)

Chapter 149:
The Bear Goes to the Mines
(The Hero Goes to the Mines)

 

ONCE UPON A TIME, a princess, Fina, was taken captive by a terrible witch, Ellelaura. The witch would likely gift Princess Fina a beautiful room, dress her in extravagant clothes, and grant her a soft bed. She would likely also present Princess Fina all kinds of tasty treats to undermine her resolve (and give her a tummy ache).

Until the hero—that’s Yuna—returned, Princess Fina would be forced to tour the royal capital and hang out with Ellelaura’s daughter, Shia. Princess Fina would doubtless be weeping (with joy, admittedly).

Only by slaying the golem in the terrible witch’s mines could Princess Fina escape.

“Oh, Princess Fina, please wait for me,” proclaimed the hero, Yuna, to the captive princess. “For I shall surely defeat the golem and return to you.”

She had to rescue the princess quickly—she vowed in her heart she would. And so the hero turned her back on the witch’s abode and began her journey.

 

...All right, fine. In real life, I spent the night hanging out with Fina at Ellelaura’s house, then left the next morning.

The Adventurer Guild master, Sanya, had told me that the fastest route to the mines was from the capital. Once I was outside the capital, I summoned Kumayuru and we headed for the mine.

After some breaks and a switch over to Kumakyu, I caught sight of a small town. Most of the people living there were involved with the mines—they were people who sought ore and the merchants who did business with the miners. Eventually, shops had sprung up around them, then houses, and before you knew it, a tiny town had emerged here.

I got off of Kumakyu and headed the rest of the way on foot, so I wouldn’t cause a commotion in town with my huge magical bear.

 

When I made it into town, I attracted the usual attention. I pulled my bear hood low over my face to hide and tried not to pay it too much mind while I looked for an inn.

Still, the town wasn’t exactly what you’d call lively. It gave me real “Mileela beseiged by that kraken” vibes, which…I guess made sense, on account of those golems in the mines. Maybe I could learn more about that at the inn.

While I was walking along and planning, somebody called for me from behind, “Is that you, Yuna?!”

And who should show up but Jaden and Mel, those two I’d met while guarding the students, accompanied by a man and woman. I knew Jaden and Mel from when I’d seen them during the guarding quest the other day, but even though I should have known the other two from the Adventurer Guild, they hadn’t made an impression in my memory. All I remembered was their gender.

“I knew it, it was Yuna,” Mel declared giddily.

“Anyone would know that just by looking,” a woman in her twenties said with a deadpan sigh.

“Ah, been a while, hasn’t it, bear girl?” the other guy greeted me. He seemed the youngest out of all of them. Even though he was saying it had been a while, I couldn’t remember when the last while was. I’ve got to have plenty of room in my brain for more important stuff.

“What are you doing here, Yuna?” asked Jaden.

“Well, basically for a job.”

He tilted his head. “You’re not here to slay the golems too, are you?”

“Based on that ‘too,’ I take it you took the quest as well?” Made sense. I guess these were the C-Rank adventurers I’d heard about.

“Yeah, we’ve been slaying golems for a few days now. We just came back from the tunnels, matter of fact.”

“How’s it going? If you’re basically done, then I’ll just head home,” I asked, trying not to sound as hopeful as I felt. That’d make things so much easier…

“It’s not over yet.”

“It’s not?” Ugh, was the quest really difficult enough that it was giving C-Rank adventurers a hard time?

Since we’d stopped right in the middle of the road to talk, Mel broke in on the conversation. “Jaden, we shouldn’t have a whole conversation out here. How about we talk about it over dinner at the inn?”

I looked around. We were getting some looks. Jaden’s party of eye-catching adventurers was already enough to draw attention, and here was a girl in a bear onesie. It’d be weird if we didn’t stand out. (Although most of the stares were probably for me, anyway.)

“Right, guess we’re due for a change of scenery.”

Yeah, I was all for that…and I wanted to get a room as soon as I could. If there weren’t any available, I’d have to set up my traveling bear house.

We headed toward the inn where Jaden’s party was staying, introducing one another as we went. The swordsman guy was Toya. He gave off this kind of chill-but-fickle vibe. The woman in light clothes with the deadpan tone was named Senia. I guess she was what you’d call a frigid beauty.

Jaden’s party led me to the inn. Once we settled down, I’d need to gather info about where the mines were…but wait, where would I do that? Did this town have an adventurers’ guild? Guess I’d need to ask around.

When Jaden headed inside the lobby, the woman behind the counter called out to him. “Welcome back, Jaden. Came back in one piece for another day then?”

“We did.”

“Well, then, how was it?” she asked, and Jaden just shook his head. “That bad, huh? But you made a new friend? That young girl behind you, dressed as a bear…”

“Oh, that’s Yuna. She’s a full-fledged adventurer, believe it or not. Seems she came to slay the golems that appeared in the mines too,” Jaden answered with a grin.

“Her? An adventurer?!”

Another phenomenal introduction for the bear girl. Not that I could blame them, considering how rare-to-mostly-nonexistent us bear adventurers probably were.

“She’s too cute,” the proprietress said dubiously. “No one that cute could be an adventurer.”

“No, we can all vouch for her abilities. Also, she needs a room—do you have one open?”

“If you’re vouching for her, Jaden, then it must be true. And yes, I do have one room.”

Good. I wouldn’t have to set up my bear house on the outskirts of town.

“Aww, too bad,” said Mel. “If you didn’t have any vacancies, I was thinking she could stay with us.”

“Our rooms are doubles,” Senia snapped.

“Oh, c’mon, it’d work out. See, I’d sleep next to Yuna, and she’d fit just fine. I mean, if she took off that bulky bear costume, ya know?”

Uh. Yikes. No way was I doing that. It was one thing in the safety of my own home, but I wasn’t taking off my bear gear in this place where who-knows-what could happen. Plus, if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to summon my guards, Kumayuru and Kumakyu.

Once I got myself a room, we decided to continue our earlier conversation over dinner.

“All right, so what’s the situation with the golems?”

“To summarize it…we’ve got no clue.”

“No matter how many times we destroy the golems, they just respawn after a while. There never seem to be more than a set number, but almost all of them are back by the next day.”

Was it an infinite spawn point? Any gamer would be thrilled to hear about that. You could get tons of experience and money depending on the types of item drops. Deep within my gamer heart, I still felt a pang of joy at the thought …

“We think it has something to do with a golem the miners spotted deep in the mines.”

According to Jaden, the miners had unearthed a giant cavern during their excavations. There’d been a golem right in the center of the place, and the miners had run off when the golem came to life. After that, more golems showed up—a lot more golems.

Hmm…that chamber they’d found the golem in seemed mighty suspicious. Maybe it had a golem-making thingamajig or something?

“You haven’t tried going to slay that first golem?” That seemed like the best thing to do, right? If it failed, back to the drawing board, but they had to start with that one before moving onto the next theory.

“It’s not that simple. The deeper you go into the mines, the stronger the golems get.”

“As in multiple golems, right?”

“You already knew about those?”

“I heard that’s why the quest wound up getting bumped all the way to Rank C…and even you guys are having trouble, yeah?”

“Right. The problem isn’t whether we can slay them—it’s that they’re a gigantic pain.”

Oh, I bet they were. When you were in a confined space, you were limited when it came to offensive measures. Hulking iron golems in tiny passageways would be rough. “But you can defeat them, right? Couldn’t you just keep pushing forward?”

“Well…see, there’s this huge cavern you hit before you reach the room they found that golem, see? In that cavern, you’ve got five whole iron golems in there. One or two…we can deal with that. Five is trouble.”

So basically, they couldn’t go deeper in because of those golems. Hmm. Iron golems, huh? Was there a way to get rid of them without making the tunnels collapse?

 

Jaden’s party went on to tell me a few more things, some of them news to me.

“Are you sure you should be telling me this stuff? Isn’t it normal to keep info like this to yourself?”

If another party on the same quest beats you to the punch, you lose the reward. Basically, Jaden and I were competing for the same thing.

“No, this is an emergency. If we had more time to burn, we could’ve tried out more options, but the guild is pressuring us to get it done quick. More firepower’s what we need—even if we can only get a little more of it. Besides, at this rate, we’ll end up failing the quest. That’d be a real bad problem for us.”

“Would you get credit for the quest if I were the one doing the slaying?”

“Credit for the kill always goes to the slayer, but that wouldn’t mark the quest as a failure. It’d be treated as a joint guest and we’d get a small reward. We just gotta contribute to the work. Anyway, we’ve already made a killing selling off iron golem parts, so I don’t mind telling you this stuff.”

Mel nodded. “Actually, it’d help us if you slay them.”

Looked like it didn’t matter if I was the slayer. In that case, I didn’t have to worry about Jaden’s party—I could just get rid of those golems.

“Thanks for sharing so much of your intel with me. That’s helped a ton.”

If I’d tried to gather that info alone, it wouldn’t have nearly been this simple. They’d saved me a ton of time.

Princess Fina…wait for me!

 

We’d finished eating, but there was a commotion at the entrance before I could head to my room. Unfamiliar voices.

“Whew, I’m beat.”

“Yeah, seriously. Just one iron golem after another.”

“Ehh, at least we made some scratch off ’em.”

“Good ol’ golems, heh.”

“Anyway, let’s get something to eat fast. I’m starving.”

Five adventurers had entered and, at first glance, they did not look like anybody I wanted to be involved with. (Look, it takes one to know one.)

What was with these getups?

The man at the front had bright red hair and the armor to match. If there’d been any bulls around, this guy would’ve been mata-gored.

The second person was dressed in…blue armor? The third one, green. The fourth was a mage wearing a black mantle. Finally there was a lone woman (the only one?) in her thirties wearing a white mantle. This was one vivid group of five.

If they’d only been dressed in yellow and pink instead of white and black, they would’ve looked like some pretty powerful rangers. Then again…though yellow clothes were doable if gaudy in this world, a pink mantle was right out.

The colorful squad of five came by.

The red guy looked at me and snorted. “Yo, Jaden. Since when did you jerk-offs get a pet bear?”

The other four behind him laughed. Well, then, I dub thee the bozo rangers.

“She’s an adventurer, you know. Also, she’s in Rank C, same as us.”

“You kidding me? That bear’s an adventurer? Quit pullin’ my leg.”

Wow. He wasn’t even going after my rank first—he was questioning whether I could even be an adventurer, which…actually made a lot of sense, now that I thought about it. Hm.

“And besides, Rank C? If you’re going to make jokes, at least make ’em funny.”

Bozo Red guffawed. “Nahh, I guess she’s funny enough just by existing, eh? Well, enough about the bear. How’d today go? We took out three iron golems. Couldn’t be better.”

No, not enough with the bear. This guy called me a pet. The duel was on.

But they ignored my seething rage and kept the conversation going.

“We got three too.”

“You did? Guess you losers are pulling your weight. Of course, you’re gonna let us handle those five golems deep in the mines. Once we slay that golem in the back, this quest is in the bag.”

Bozo Ranger Red left, cackling all the while. The storm was over, and silence was all that remained.

Okay, so…the bozo rangers also thought that golem in the back of the mines was suspect.

“That guy’s name was Barbould,” said Jaden. “They’re adventurers like us who came here for the golem quest. They’re in Rank C and they’ve got awful personalities, but they’re not bad people. They also pack a punch in battle.”

Yeah, Sanya had told me there were two parties here. I disagreed on the “they’re not bad people” part, but they had to be decent fighters at the very least if they could slay iron golems.

“Still, I can’t believe they’d call Yuna a pet,” Mel said. “They’re obviously wrong—she’s a mascot.”

No, you’re wrong. I’m not a pet or mascot, I retorted mentally.

“Judging from what Barbould said, golems seem to go for a pretty good price.”

“Seems like it.”

Golems were considered monsters too, so the parts belonged to the adventurer who defeated them. They would go for a pretty penny, now that I thought about it. “You haven’t sold the ones you got, Jaden?” I asked. “You just mentioned you took down three of them.”

“We sell them the legitimate way, so they don’t sell for as much. We’re still getting 20 percent more than what they usually go for, though.”

Mel sighed. “I heard that those guys get 50 percent more.”

I didn’t know how much they sold for wholesale, but that seemed pretty profitable. Unlike in the game, the golems wouldn’t disappear when you beat them, so you could trade the whole carcass in.