Chapter 156: The Bear Enters the Mines — Part Five: The Golem Chronicles

Chapter 156:
The Bear Enters the Mines
Part Five: The Golem Chronicles

 

I IMMEDIATELY ESCAPED to my room after Jaden’s group and the bozo rangers started drinking in the dining room. Drunk people are the worst. You can’t reason with them, and they always wanted to get in these annoying fights. You see a lot of that when staying in inns.

The best way to deal with drunks was to never involve yourself with them in the first place, no matter what world you’re in.

I locked the door tight to keep any drunks from wandering into my room. Once I was sure no one would barge in, I sat down on my bed and wondered what I’d do now.

Jaden and the bozo rangers had basically given up on beating the mithril golem, right? Sure, soldiers would head our way if Jaden’s party told the Adventurer Guild that they couldn’t handle the golems, but it would take a while for them to get here.

If I was going to slay the mithril golem, I’d need to move faster than them.

No way was I going to hand that mithril golem over to the kingdom. If I could just figure out a way to beat that thing, I could have all the mithril for myself. I had to slay it before the soldiers.

But after seeing the bozo rangers fight the thing, I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Plus, there were those five iron golems right before the mithril golem. Since I didn’t have a mithril weapon in the first place, it would be a nightmare to fight them in the tunnel—what if there was a cave-in?

I stood up.

There was one thing I hadn’t tried yet. One trick that might just work. But I was going to have to test my theory tonight.

I set up a bear transportation gate in my room.

Where did it lead? We’ll get to that.

 

Fwunk fwunk.

Something hit my cheeks. Too sleepy. Ugh.

Fwunk fwunk.

I’d stayed up pretty late while testing my golem-slaying strategy. Didn’t I deserve just a little more sleep?

Fwunk fwunk.

Even though I’d gotten back late, Jaden and the others were still partying it up in the dining room.

Fwunk fwunk.

Can you imagine? Weren’t they tired after fighting all day? I guess that’s why they were adventurers. Inexhaustible energy.

Fwunk fwunk.

I guess people who make C-Rank have that kind of stamina.

Fwunk fwunk.

“Fine, I’m up already, jeez!” I grabbed Kumayuru and Kumakyu’s paws. Kumayuru and Kumakyu had been slapping me from either side for a while now. Sure, I wasn’t technically feeling exhausted thanks to my white bear outfit, I was still sleepy. That was kind of a plus about the white bear outfit, if you ask me: It still let me sleep. And I love sleep! Can you imagine not being able to sleep?

But it wasn’t like I could spend the whole day on it, so I got up.

“Morning, Kumayuru. Morning, Kumakyu.” I patted their heads and stretched out. Sleepy or not, I had to get to work. There I was, fifteen years old with a job. Guess this world was rubbing off on me, huh? I got out of bed and swapped my white outfit for black.

I headed to the dining room, which reeked of alcohol. The whole place smelled like the inside of a bottle.

“Oh, you’re up early, Miss Bear.” The proprietress came out from the kitchen.

“Good morning. It smells a lot like alcohol in here,” I greeted her, covering my nose with my bear puppet.

“Those idiots were drinking into the early morning. My husband was supposed to handle it—I went to bed, but he didn’t get in until morning. The fool partied with them all through the night, and now he’s sleeping it off. I’ll forgive him this time, but next time, he’s in for it.”

Still, she smiled as she opened the windows. A pleasant breeze swept in.

“We’ll air it out, so please bear with it for now. In exchange, I’ll give you extra breakfast on the house.”

I plopped down in a chair, yawning. No one was in the cafeteria, possibly because it was still early. Besides Jaden’s party and the bozo rangers, there were merchants staying here to buy ore from the town. Still, I was the only one in the cafeteria.

Since there was no one to talk to, I lounged around while waiting for breakfast. The air cleared over time and it stopped smelling like booze eventually. The proprietress brought my meal over after a while.

“Here we are. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Thank you very much.”

“What are you going to do today? You’re one of the adventurers, but…I don’t think Jaden and the others will be getting up for a while.”

“Hmm. I think I’m gonna head over to the mines on my own.”

“On your own?!”

“Yup. I want to wrap things up fast so I can go home.”

“Wrap things up? But even Jaden, Barbould, and the others couldn’t do it. A young girl like you can’t go out there on her own? No, it’s too dangerous.”

Yeah, anybody would assume that about some girl in a bear suit. Since she genuinely seemed worried for me, I took her concerns seriously. “But you’d have problems if the mines stayed like this forever, right?”

“Well, sure. If the miners wind up out of a job, they won’t come in for a drink anymore. And if they don’t come in for a drink…” She told me that they’d already lost a few customers who came in after work. I guess everybody likes a cold one, no matter your world.

“But that’s no reason for a young lady like you to go out and fight monsters.”

“I’m not going to put myself in harm’s way. Tell you what, I’ll run away if I can’t deal with anything.”

“You promise? Then come straight back here if it gets too dangerous, you here? Still, a girl like you trying to be an adventurer…” She shook her head.

I thanked the concerned proprietress and, after chowing down on my huge breakfast, headed to the mines on my own. It was early in the morning, so there weren’t many people walking around outside and I didn’t have any annoying encounters on the way to the mines.

Time to see if sacrificing all that sleep last night had been worth it.

I headed into the tunnel alone. Jaden and the others weren’t here this time to guide me, but I’d been sure to fill out my bear map all the way to the mithril golem.

Mud golems emerged as I progressed down the tunnel, but I chopped them with wind magic and continued on my way.

The tunnels were quiet and it was kinda lonely. Toya wasn’t here to say silly things, and Senia wasn’t here with her sharp tongue. Jaden wasn’t here giving out instructions either. Mel wasn’t here to talk straight with me. Even comparing it to the wilderness I’d come out of…there was no wind here, no sound of birds chirping. I hadn’t expected the quiet.

I wasn’t going to demand music or anything, but I wanted something comforting, so I stretched out my arms and summoned Kumayuru and Kumakyu. My bears nuzzled me.

There we go. Loneliness, begone!

Kumayuru and Kumakyu tagged along with me to my left and right, which cheered me right up. I had to admit I was super grateful to the god of this world for giving me these two as my summons.

I kept plowing forward with my bears, chopping up all the mud golems with wind magic as I went. They really did respawn, huh? But when? Maybe they came back a few hours after being defeated, or maybe they revived at a specified time? No matter the reason, no way could the miners work around a daily monster respawn.

Once I was done with the mud golem level, I went down to deal with the rock golems. I obliterated the first few with bear punches, but Kumayuru and Kumakyu looked like they wanted a turn.

“Fine by me. I’ll leave the next ones to you.”

They took on a golem each, easily defeating them with literal bear punches.

That’s right, folks: they’re cute, strong, soft, warm, and even convenient for travel. Every household could use one, and I was lucky enough to have two.

Since my bears had handled the rock golems so easily, I hadn’t had a chance to do anything. But once we went down this slope, we’d be on the level where the iron golems appeared, and I’d have a chance to use the magic I’d sacrificed sleep to master.

We continued down the tunnel. I spotted an iron golem before long and signaled to Kumayuru and Kumakyu to stay put as I headed toward it on my own.

Let’s hope this works…

As I formed an image in my head, yellow and blue light coiled around my black bear puppet along with a crackling sound.

Electricity magic.

Electricity was effective against a metal like iron. If I could flood the iron golem with electricity, the current might travel through its body and obliterate the mana gem inside.

Did electricity magic even exist in this world, you might ask? Well, it sure wasn’t in the beginner’s magic book I’d bought earlier. My guess was they didn’t even have a concept of electricity. If they knew it at all, it was in the form of lightning…but as for what they thought lightning was, or what caused it, they seemed to have no idea.

Hence, no lightning magic. That was my guess, at least.

It had been with that theory in mind that I’d snuck out of the inn to practice my electricity magic. I wasn’t quite sure how to visualize it at first—in games and anime, they’d recite a spell or something and lightning would burst from a cloud, but the magic in this world was tied to manipulating your own mana. You couldn’t just pull lightning from the sky.

Instead, I’d pictured gathering an electric charge into my bear puppet. Visualizing my mana as electricity turned out to be simple; a current immediately coiled around my bear puppet and began to crackle.

My experiment was a success, though I couldn’t aim with much accuracy when I fired the electricity from my glove at range. It was pretty late by that point, though, so I settled for perfecting my static bear punches instead.

 

Once I’d completed my crash course in electricity, my static-charged bear puppet was crackling away.

So far, I’d only practiced on rocks—no monsters. I wanted to see how powerful this golem was, so I threw a weak static bear punch at it. A real weak one. I mean, I barely tapped it.

With a soft whump and a loud fizzle, the thing just…collapsed. I barely pushed it and the golem fell backward onto the ground, motionless.

I kicked its leg. No reaction. Awesome.

It seemed like the electricity really had flowed through the golem and destroyed its mana gem. I packed the iron golem away into my bear storage and plowed forward, searching for the next one.