Chapter 11: Barbarian Queen’s Awakening

Chapter 11:
Barbarian Queen’s Awakening

REMEMBER BEFORE when I said that there was no way a monkey’s body could be made of rocks? Sorry, that was a lie.

Of course, I’m talking about the monkeys in this world. Because my Goltarou had been mercilessly killing monkeys throughout this journey, I was getting tired of seeing their corpses lining the side of the road.

Strictly speaking, as these monkeys had guts and bones, their insides most likely resembled those of a normal vertebrate. However, their hardened covering was indeed entirely made of stone. Because they could use Earth spells to create rocks as well, I theorized that they manufactured this stone armor with a spell and stuck it to their body with a continual flow of mana. However, there was a flaw in this theory: If a monkey’s mana supply was cut off at death, why didn’t the stones on its body crumble away?!

Ah, I can’t anymore… Stone monkeys… My knowledge of how the world should work had been completely demolished.

On the topic of monkeys, there was another impossible thing about them. As you know now, the stones created by the monkeys via Earth spells flew through the sky when they attacked. Such a thing could not be done.

I was a little slow on the uptake, seeing as how moments after I first witnessed these flying rocks, I also controlled them via NTR—like RC toys! But such a physics-defying feat should have been impossible for an Earth spell.

You see, if the Earth attribute were capable of firing a cannonball, it wouldn’t be treated like trash. When you created a rock, it was fixed to its location on the ground. The Earth attribute’s crummy track record continued into effect-longevity: If you lost concentration, everything you made would fall apart.

This was the reason why attributes that dealt with solid mass, such as the Earth or Ice attributes, were difficult to use in battle. However, Ice spells could manifest effects anywhere in the atmosphere, so they could utilize height difference and gravity in attacks. This actually gave the attribute a unique edge. Besides, the ability to freeze one’s surroundings was in itself impressive, not to mention useful. All that utility made Ice fundamentally different from the Earth attribute and its useless rock generation.

Admitting this to myself was getting depressing, so I tried to mentally drop the topic.

In short, these monkeys were mystery upon mystery, and their appearance was only the start. They were on my mind for a reason, even though there were no monkeys at present. To be precise, a few were littered across the ground, but they were dead. In fact, their corpses lay in heaps by the roadside.

My Goltarou hadn’t done this.

A majority of the corpses were already skeletons. The rocks that covered them were piled on top of and between the bones, painting quite the bizarre tableau.

I went up to some of these corpses to examine them more closely. After all my unpleasant prior exposure to skeletons, I was building up an unfortunate tolerance for them.

The monkeys in this area were quite large. Size-wise, they could be on par with gorillas. They would still perish in one hit from Goltarou.

“This one, most likely, had its cervical vertebrae…severed,” I said.

In other words, the monkey’s neck was cut, killing it instantly. The clean stump on the rock body, where the trunk of the neck should have been, indicated that it had been halved in one swift motion. I checked some of the other rock-pile corpses, but this was the only visible injury on any of them.

My Goltarou consistently beat the monkeys to death. By comparison, this was a clean and tidy approach.

Goltarou poked his head over my shoulder to look with me. I could barely believe this was the same guy who got so spooked when we found that skeleton underground. Was he building up a tolerance like me?

Goltarou rubbed his cheek against mine as he looked at the monkey’s bones.

He he, are you interested, Goltarou? Mammals have seven vertebrae. No, wait. Was seven the right number? This monkey appeared to have seven… I had to remember that my background knowledge was unreliable. I should probably have stopped smugly explaining things to Goltarou, but he was such a passionate student that I couldn’t help wanting to teach him.

No, no, no! This wasn’t the time for such activities. No matter how you looked at it, we weren’t in some tranquil learning environment. The monkeys in front of us had been decapitated.

“Come to think of it, that shrine should be around here…” I said.

By my reckoning, we were nearly on top of the facility labeled “shrine” on the map. However, the scale on the map was larger than I had estimated. Therefore, after we passed the shrine, we wouldn’t be too far from Samari.

If I thought logically about the situation, the monkeys had most likely been eliminated by the ones in charge of the shrine or by the people of Samari—though I was a bit baffled as to why their remains were left on the roadside.

“Hm? Wait, what is this…?” I murmured. I had noticed something shining inside the monkey’s skeleton. When I picked it up, it appeared to be a dark-brown crystal the size of a dry-cell battery. Color-wise, it was practically black. When I rotated it in my hand, the corners reflected the light. I felt like I had seen just such a strange crystal before. “Ah! This looks like the jewels on the cane that bastard Zairein was holding.”

The crystal’s color and shape were different from the heap I had seen on the cane, but I was sure that if this rough stone were processed, it would look identical.

When I checked the other bodies, I discovered the same kind of crystal nestled inside them.

“Hey, Goltarou. Do you think we can sell these?” I asked as I showed him the black crystals.

Goltarou peered at them, interested.

“Hey, Gol. Did you know? A sperm whale’s gallstone can sell for a stupidly huge amount of money.”

Goltarou listened intently. He really was dedicated to learning, but I felt like his face was yet again too close.

At any rate, as far as money went, right then I had only a few coins and some suspicious bills. Even if these crystals only had a modicum of monetary value, I would benefit from grabbing as many as I could. Besides, being so small, they wouldn’t add too much bulk to our load.

The true nature of this crystal was totally beyond my ken. However, my common sense had short-circuited somewhere while trying to understand these strange monkeys, and I was operating largely without it. My head and heart broken, I gave up thinking too hard about it.

I began to gather the black crystals from the corpses. With Goltarou’s help, I soon filled a light sack.

Looks like I’ve picked the area clean, I thought. That should be enough.

In truth, I couldn’t stand to gather more; I was afraid of the heartbreak if it turned out I’d wasted time gathering crystals worth no more than the pebbles on the ground.

Still, I hadn’t noticed any of these crystals inside the bodies of the smaller monkeys the two of us blasted through on our way to this point. Could crystal development in monkeys be related to size?

***

Soon afterward, we arrived at the shrine. It was a massive white stone building whose architecture stood out from the bleak expanse. It made me think of an ancient temple. In other words, there was no doubt that it was the shrine. Besides, there was nothing else around. As usual, there was no sign of life either. Was this another uninhabited building?

No… Three white figures were moving about in front of the shrine’s entrance. At first I thought they were those large monkeys, but the monkeys weren’t white. Thus far, they’d all been brown. And I’d seen a lot, but never yet encountered a single albino variant.

“That means… Could they be people…?” My chest swelled with anticipation.

However, when I drew closer I came upon a bizarre sight—walking Greek statues.

Wait, were they actually statues of Greek goddesses? Was it a trick of the eye? A mirage? No, nope, sorry, brain! These white goddess statues were, for some reason, moving. For a moment my thinking once more shorted out and played a scene of an idyllic old European castle backed by classical tunes.

Then I noticed something. Each of these Greek statues had a pattern on its forehead. There was some slight difference in shape, but one woman’s forehead pattern actually resembled Goltarou’s.

Aha. These women were golems. They were white, had patterns on their foreheads, and looked so alike that they seemed to be relatives. Even their size was more or less the same across the board.

Well, my Goltarou is made with a beautiful white material of superior quality. He he… How surprising; I’m quite the doting parent.

The golems had noticed our presence, but they didn’t seem to show any signs of hostility. Far from it—they moved aside, making a path to the entrance as if they were welcoming us as visitors to their shrine.

How friendly. What stunning customer service.

Just in case, I instructed Goltarou, “If there are people or golems in the shrine, you cannot punch them unless I give the order.”

He was a clever guy, so I didn’t think I had to worry, but I also wanted to avoid any unnecessary trouble. After all, Goltarou had never met another human being besides me. Well, saying that, the only people I’d met in this world were skeletons.

“Guess we’ll just make ourselves at home inside,” I said. “They gave us a warm welcome, after all.”

As I walked inside the shrine, I took another look at the Greek statues. Each of the women had their own unique design, but in general, they were all tall and had long hair falling down their back to around their waist. They also wore armor covering their chest and held some kind of polearm. Only the one in the middle had a different color for her weapon and armor. She seemed to be their captain.

But why were their chests so large? Honestly, I’m talking bombastic levels of bosom. Was their creator some kind of pervert…?

As I squinted at the captain’s chest, I sensed a sudden bloodlust boiling behind me.

Ah. Bad. I quickly and unconsciously moved, driven by experience and intuition. It was like when you’re walking your dog, encounter an unfriendly dog, and the two are about to fight. Sensing their spiking aggression, you pull on your dog’s leash to stop them.

I realized I was tightly gripping Goltarou’s arm. Goltarou stared blankly at my face.

Huh? He doesn’t seem bothered at all. Was that bloodlust just my imagination?

And why was I gripping Goltarou’s arm so desperately? I tilted my head as he walked right past the golems and into the building.

As I passed by as well, I got a better look at the weapon in the golem’s hands. It resembled a naginata. While the pole was shorter than an actual naginata, the blade was wider and larger. I’d never seen such a weapon in my original world. The thick blade looked heavy, but the material didn’t seem to be metal. Most likely, this was a long melee weapon made out of some kind of stone.

I was suddenly sure that it was what had been used to slice the heads right off those stone monkeys. We were really lucky that these women didn’t view us as hostile.

We passed through the front of the building where the golems were stationed, continued though a row of columns, and stepped inside the expansive interior of the shrine.

The stone facility within resembled the ruins inside the cave back in the basin. However, the architectural design followed a different sensibility. The shrine was transcendentally beautiful and the decorations meticulously detailed. From what I could tell, it had required significant artistic skill to craft. Unlike the stately and straightforward nature of Luvel Zairein’s tomb, whose infrastructure felt masculine, this white shrine had a feminine air.

Even the stone ceiling’s design was gorgeous. Elegant women were depicted on the high relief. Were they this world’s goddesses? A woman clad in fire, a woman accompanied by birds, a woman veiled in thin cloth, a woman holding a strange staff with a wheel… From this angle, I could only make out the images of these four, but going by the design, I believed there were likely somewhere around ten figures on the ceiling.

“This is a really impressive place, but…” I trailed off. Still staring up, I let out a sigh of mixed admiration and disappointment. Nowhere inside this shrine had I seen any sign of movement, let alone life. “Is there no one here either…?”

As there were golems, I had expected to see some people, but this complex really was uninhabited. Were the golems outside like security robots, then?

Either way, nothing alive was inside of this old building. There was only the sound of the wind whispering between the line of broad pillars.

No…on closer inspection of the interior, there appeared to be something standing in the corner—a headless golem. If I had to use a famous example to describe it, it would be the Winged Victory of Samothrace. However, I was pretty sure Winged Victory was bigger than this figure.

At first glance, she looked like a normal statue, but her shape too closely resembled the Greek statues outside. Also like them, armor covered her chest and that strange weapon was in her hand.

I approached her, but she didn’t seem to react to us. She had no head, so she was probably already broken. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to look away from this headless Greek statue standing alone inside the shrine. To tell you the truth, I wanted to investigate something.

“I wonder what kind of material was used as their base…”

I wanted to know more about how these golems were created. When I made Goltarou, I made sure to consider the mobility of his joints, although I still crafted him according to the textbook’s instructions. As such, Goltarou’s base design ended up resembling a mannequin.

However, these golems were shaped exactly like Greek statues. So how did their joints work? Come to think of it, whenever Goltarou threw a serious punch, his body moved like a whip. Likewise, I had confirmed his ability to adjust the hardness of his body. Did that adjustment factor work on the same principle as his fluid movement?

I nodded. “Let’s check it out.” I loved learning, and I considered myself a man always seeking to expand his knowledge.

In the name of that expansion, I closely examined the headless golem’s body, slowly feeling it all over. As expected, it felt like a smooth stone. The smoothness continued around its elbow joints. Hmm, how about around the waist? And exactly how were these fluttering clothes made? Were they trimmed from the base or wrapped around it after? I continued to dive deeper and deeper into my examination.

However, looking back on it, I probably shouldn’t have let myself get so involved…

As I was tinkering with the golem, I felt an abnormally intense gaze on my back coming from Goltarou. However, this had been happening a lot recently, so I wasn’t the least bit concerned. I was thoroughly engrossed in my investigation of the golem in front of me.

I wonder what exactly Goltarou was feeling at the time. Did he see me as a pervert who loved statues of beautiful girls and got excited feeling them up? Urgh, I’m sure that was exactly what he saw. And I’m sure that seeing his partner’s disgraceful behavior, Goltarou felt pity, sadness, and deep regret. But since he was kind, he didn’t know how to vent his anger. Furthermore, Goltarou was an extremely thoughtful guy who could read the mood.

You could say that, in a way, I was underestimating him at the time.

I wasn’t aware at that moment, but I must have spent a long time fiddling around with the broken golem. After feeling over the body, I turned my attention to the golem’s torso. “The part I’m the most interested in would have to be her armor…”

It was a different color from her body and looked to be a piece of stone armor. It had probably been made from the same material as the naginata in her hands. The armor only covered the golem’s torso, so it was essentially a breastplate.

This is probably what the introductory book meant when it talked about special stone armor used for combative golems, I thought. I should make some of this armor for Goltarou as well.

I was thinking of my anxiety when we were surrounded by monkeys and Goltarou was about to be bombarded. However, there was a glaring imbalance in protected areas here. Was a golem’s weak point located in their chest?

The stone material used for the armor was much tougher than that of the body. How did the armor feel? Yeesh, this woman’s chest is huge.

To confirm the armor’s material, I leaned in close to peer at the golem’s chest. At that moment, something of purest white cut the air between me and the golem.

It was, presumably, Goltarou. He was extremely wary of anything coming into contact with me. Even so, when he came between my face and the golem’s chest, it didn’t feel very forceful. Though he was stone, this motion somehow evoked soft silk.

Then, the kind and considerate Goltarou destroyed the golem’s lower half with a single low kick.

“Wha—?! Wha… Gol?!” I gaped. A-a-are y-you a demon?! How could you kick a dead body?!

My eyes became teary as I turned on Goltarou to reprimand him. However, as soon as I did, I froze, my eyes wide at the vision in front of me.

An unbelievably beautiful Greek statue stood where I thought Goltarou would be. She was lovely enough to steal your breath away. Her body was white as snow and wrapped in smooth, silken stone. The combination of inorganic stone beauty and the graceful curves of a living creation could only be called a masterpiece. This, coupled with her transcendental features, amounted to a tremendous presence.

She was like an alabaster goddess who had suddenly descended from the heavens. The first detail that caught my attention were her entrancing eyes. The white of her sclera was the same pure white as the rest of her body. However, her irises looked to be made of red stone, like a polished, nigh translucent ruby.

The second detail: Both her ears were long. Was she what was known as an elf? The third: Her long hair flowed down her back and reached her waist. The fourth: Her chest, in comparison to the busty shrine golems, was slightly…lacking. No, as a gentleman, let me correct myself for her honor: I think she had a very elegant and refined chest.

Still, I don’t want you to think I get excited looking at Greek statues or anything like that! It was just…this girl’s beauty could have led an army of youths astray and ruined countless futures. She was probably unaware of her dangerous allure. How sinful.

At that moment, I noticed a final critically important detail: This girl had the same pattern on her forehead as my Goltarou. What did that mean…? Then, did that make… In other words, this golem…

Was Goltarou’s little sister?

Nice to meet you, little sister, I thought. I’m your brother’s best friend. Do you perhaps know where he went?

The second I locked eyes with this silent sister, I sensed a sudden burst of emotion from behind—a sharp bloodthirst that made me feel like I had been stabbed in the back with ice. In my surprise, I quickly turned. And gasped.

There stood the origin of the bloodthirst. The Greek statues—no, the shrine golems—numbered six. They rushed in from the entrance and surrounded the interior of the shrine. Each held that unique weapon.

S-six, you say…? I thought. Were there that many of them when we arrived?

The golems’ eyes flashed with a poison-green light. That peaceful feeling from before had completely disappeared. These women now saw us as targets for elimination.

The sudden appearance of Goltarou’s sister, combined with the guardians of the shrine burning with rage, meant that a completely meaningless battle was about to begin.