Chapter 157: The Bear Enters the Mines — Part Six: Mithril Golems

Chapter 157:
The Bear Enters the Mines
Part Six: Mithril Golems

 

I’D BECOME A REAL ONE-PUNCH BEAR after mastering my static bear punch. Just one hit on an iron golem knocked it out, crackling with electricity on the ground. Piece of cake.

I could tell Kumayuru and Kumakyu were bored walking beside me since I hadn’t been giving them a turn, but I was just happy to have their company.

“Help me out if I’m having trouble, okay?” I asked them. Anything could happen in a fight, after all. That must’ve made them feel better, since they gave me a kwoom in reply and seemed to gain a skip in their step.

I didn’t really need to ask. Kumayuru and Kumakyu always came to my rescue if I was in a pinch.

I patted their heads as they walked to my left and right. It must’ve seemed out of the blue to them, because they gave me little confused head-tilts, but they seemed to enjoy the attention. We continued down the tunnel.

Kumayuru and Kumakyu didn’t need to intervene since we didn’t run into anything dangerous. Four iron golems went down, leaving only the five more on the way to the mithril golem. The bozo rangers had defeated them the day before, but they’d all respawned, according to my detection skill.

Whoa, wait. Couldn’t you just farm infinite iron from these golems then?! Well, that would leave a ton of people without jobs, and homeless…

 

We arrived at the chamber with the five golems. My static bear punches made short work of them, and I was soon headed down the tunnel to slay the mithril golem.

My map updated as I descended, and there it was: the mithril golem, marked on the map. Maybe if I just took this thing out, the rest would go away.

I got to the chamber. Light mana gems had lit the tunnel up until now, but from here on, it was dark. I made a bear light with magic to illuminate the cavern.

There were traces from the battle all over, probably from the bozo rangers’ fight. The rock faces were crumbling, holes were gouged in the ground, and I saw evidence that magic had struck the walls.

Even if the bozo rangers were playing it safe, I was still amazed they hadn’t caused a cave-in. The mithril golem stood in the aftermath of the battle.

It noticed me. It faced me.

Here we go, I guess.

My bears seemed ready to join in since they started walking ahead of me, but I told them to stand back. They let out a soft, sad cry, but I was going to fight the mithril golem alone…and I wasn’t going to fight it here.

Powerful magic or a strong bear punch might cause a cave-in here, but that just meant I’d need to move us to a place where I’d be able to take advantage of my OP bear abilities.

I brought out a bear transport gate and touched the gate to open the portal.

Oh, man, but would the mithril golem fit in the bear gate? The gate was wide enough, but this guy was tall. Maybe I’d have to really squeeze it in.

I looked over at the mithril golem. It looked back—and then ran at me, footfalls thumping as it came. It was faster than I thought. I guess I just assumed golems were slow.

(Maybe fast was overstating it. Really, I meant that it was just faster than I’d expected. It was slow as sludge compared to the black tiger.)

The golem ran at me like a charging bull. And like a matador, I stepped to the side just in time. I circled around behind it and—crack!—got it in the neck with a bear punch. The golem fell headfirst into the bear transport gate. Looked like it had worked out, despite its size.

I followed through the bear gate. Kumayuru and Kumakyu came in after me.

 

The bear transport gate took us to an open sandy beach along the shore.

We were near Mileela, though we were far enough away from town that nobody would notice. This was where I’d practiced my electricity magic last night. There was plenty of space here compared to the narrow tunnels. Clouds in the blue sky, no ceiling and no walls… I could make full use of my OP bear skills.

I looked at the mithril golem that had fallen headfirst into the sand.

“We can fight each other without worrying about our surroundings,” I told the golem. I didn’t expect a reply, but it stood up, as if it understood. Well, I’d said we wouldn’t need to worry, but really, I’d be the only one doing the attacking.

I tried throwing a fireball at the upright mithril golem. It was a direct hit, but the golem stood there like nothing happened. I tried wind magic, earth magic, and ice magic. All ineffective. I’d expected as much, but really, wasn’t it kind of cheating to have your whole body made of mithril? And sure, you might say, “Look who’s talking,” but I couldn’t help but feel that way when my opponent was a mithril golem.

Okay, then how about this?

“Bear cutter.”

Visualizing a bear’s claws, I fired off bear wind magic. The mithril golem was blown back by the impact, but…seemed unharmed? No, wait, there were three lines on the golem’s chest when I looked. I guess I could do some damage to it. Maybe if I focused on the same spot, I could take it down.

I tried using another type of bear-type magic as an experiment. Flaming bears emerged from my puppets. I doubted that’d melt the golem, but I needed to check.

The golem blocked the flaming bears with its arm. A normal monster would’ve been helpless against the bears. Game over. But the flames engulfed the mithril golem’s arm and went out just like that.

Dang. But…wait. I took a closer look. Had it melted just a smidge? Maybe I’d be able to slay it if I fired off a whole bunch of flaming bears at it?

Lastly, I tried using the electricity magic I’d learned yesterday.

I gathered electricity around my bear puppet and threw a strong static bear punch at the mithril golem. That sent the golem flying, but it didn’t seem like the electric shock had done much.

Ah, man. Guess my new magic wasn’t effective against mithril golems.

Still, it felt good actually using my abilities for a change. The golem had become a one-sided punching bag. A punching bag that also happened to be built like an indestructible tank.

The golem stood up, even after my bear punch.

Well, enough experimenting: it was time to finish things. I started running toward the golem and gathered mana in my black bear puppet.

I weaved as I got in close, dodging the arm it brought down to block me, getting under its chest. Then, with the power of wind behind me, I struck it with a bear uppercut.

The golem soared into the air from the impact. It flew high into the sky. That must’ve been, what, a thousand meters up? It wasn’t like I could actually tell just by looking. I couldn’t just look at a plane and use some kind of Bear Distance Detector to tell what altitude it was flying at, or how tall a luxury condo was. What I did know was that there was no way the golem would come out unscathed after a drop from that high. And if you specifically factored in the golem’s size, weight, and terminal velocity—well, it was going to have a bad time.

The golem spun as it fell, probably because I’d put a little spin into the bear uppercut. It crashed into the ground with a sound and shockwave like that of an earthquake, swirling the sand up over it. I’d definitely gotten this thing.

Or so I thought. The golem looked like it was starting to stand up.

It was still moving after falling from that height? How tough was this thing? Why hadn’t the impact destroyed its mana gem?

Okay, no, it was standing but it wasn’t doing it easily. It’d lost an arm, and its neck was bent out of shape too. The center of its body was cracked from the impact of the fall and I could see its mana gem through there.

Could I finish things by breaking that?

I ran toward the sluggish golem and threw a static bear punch at the crack where I could see the gem. The electricity ran through the crack and, in seconds, the gem was shattered.

With its mana gem obliterated, the mithril golem went completely silent. Mission complete.

I hoped the golems would stop respawning in the mine after this.

My bears came over to me after the battle was over. “That’s that, huh?” I patted their heads and put the pile of mithril golem into my bear storage.

Not the way I’d want to go, if I were a gigantic deadly mithril golem, but that’s just life sometimes. And hey, I needed a cool mithril knife, you know?

After gathering pieces of golem, I used the bear transport gate to get back to the mines. I put the gate away and looked around. The boss’s chamber in a game usually had something lying around, like treasure...or possibly even some treasure? (Yes, I did say it twice.)

Maybe the source of the golems was here? Or…what if there was a secret room? I inspected the walls trying to find something. I was convinced I would, but nope. Nothing. Nada.

With nothing else to do, I was about to start heading back when Kumayuru and Kumakyu started digging a hole.

“What is it?” I asked as I went over to my bears. They were digging where the mithril golem had originally stood. That’d been in a blind spot for me. Maybe the mithril golem had been protecting something?

I stepped in between Kumayuru and Kumakyu and found two round, black stones in the hole.

“What are these?” I asked. The bears just tilted their heads at me. C’mon, they were the ones who found the things and they were clueless?

Anyway. I picked up the stones, which were about as big as my fist, and inspected them, but I wasn’t a blacksmith and didn’t know all the different kinds of ores.

But I did have a skill for that. I pulled my bear hood down and used Bear Identification.

 

Bearyllium.

A mysterious ore.

 

That was it. That was the whole entry.

Bearyllium. Really? Really? Wait, were they making fun of me?

Okay, the god who’d brought me to this world had definitely been involved with naming this stuff. There was no way the rest of the world had named it that. Also, what was a “mysterious ore” even supposed to be? If even the very item description called it mysterious, how was I supposed to know how to use it?

Except…thinking back to that first message I’d gotten from that god, hadn’t he said that there would be “other presents around” and I should do my best to look for them? Maybe this was one of those. This, uh. Bearyllium. Ugh.

Plus, how was I supposed to process or even use a mystery ore? Even a video game would’ve given me more of a hint.

Complaining about that god wasn’t going to change anything, so I thanked my bears instead and gave them some good pets.

They were getting a lot of pets today, actually. Not that they seemed to mind. They deserved plenty of gratitude for all they’d done, and they seemed pretty happy with all the attention, anyway.