Chapter 21: Panting and Promise

Chapter 21:
Panting and Promise

 

NO LONGER was this peaceful meadow troubled by grim shadows. The remnant of the giant stone arrow was buried in the ground, its shards scattered. The aftermath of the blazing Fire spells and the fierce battle between golems had devastated large swathes of the earth.

As I stood in the remains of the battlefield, I stared at my axe and pondered. I was still mulling over the safe use of my friend the axe, sure; but more importantly, what exactly was with that crossbow golem’s outrageous sniping ability?

That stupidly huge arrow had whizzed toward us from a staggering distance, one that defied the description of crossbow golems in the illustrated guide. Our enemy was indeed remarkable. But as a word, “remarkable” didn’t really explain anything.

I understood a golem’s relative efficiency could depend quite a bit on their creator’s abilities, so perhaps my answer lay in the wielder. It still felt strange, like the golem had been too powerful.

Still, I wasn’t exactly familiar with fighting norms in this world. I did know that long-ranged attacks were limited here, which meant that crossbow golem’s massive long-distance attack gave it an unbelievable edge—so great that it might as well be thought of as a weapon from a whole other dimension. If such an attack were considered normal, it would have appeared in the illustrated guide.

At the same time, unusually powerful golems did exist, like my Gol. Yet I couldn’t help being bothered by this.

Nah, but then again…

I was about to be swallowed in a tornado of thoughts when I noticed Mr. Chotos’s eyes were glued to my battle-axe.

Gah, this is bad! Damn, did he notice my sorcery?! Although I strove to keep my expression calm, my flustered heart was in a panic.

By contrast, Mr. Chotos gave me a puzzled look. “Nemaki, could that black axe be an ancient mana tool…and a mana weapon to boot?”

“Eh…? Ah, yeah. Of course. Exactly that.” I decided to play along. I could read the room!

“I know I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, since you’re like that, but… To think you’re a mana weapon wielder, too…” Mr. Chotos droned on, muttering as he stared at the axe. “But do mana weapons fly so wildly through the air like that?”

This damn barcode nonchalantly called me “that” again!

However, it seemed he wasn’t under the impression I had used sorcery. So there was a mana tool that resembled my axe…? Frankly, I was relieved. All the blood had rushed to my head when I decided to use sorcery to let my Earth Battle-Axe fly. I had been too afraid my friends would die, and damn the consequences.

However, now that I had collected myself, I obviously didn’t want to be arrested. Moreover, if there was any truth to the contents of Luvel Zairein’s stone-book testament, numerous past Sorcerer Kings had been killed. Presumably, they had been eradicated by responsible citizens, or even arrested and given the death penalty.

In other words, if I were arrested, I wouldn’t get away with a small mark on my personal record. My life would be in danger. I had no reason to assume the Sorcerer King would be afforded human rights and a fair trial. I trembled in fear at the thought of that which exceeded a witch trial—the trial of a Sorcerer King.

While I tensed, the old driver grinned as he gazed at the pile of defeated spellcasters. “Ah, I’m blown away. You really are as amazing as the rumors say.”

He smiled as brightly as the sun. It suited him. I really had to apologize for dragging this grandpa into our personal problems.

“Mr. Nemaki!” Teru suddenly jumped on me.

“Oh, be careful.” I pointed the axe in my right hand behind me and made sure to gently catch the innocent young girl with my left.

“Yay! Mr. Nemaki is amazing!” Teru’s radiant smile was blinding.

That’s right. I was able to protect this five-year-old’s smile. As an adult and role model, I’m just relieved I could ensure a safe future for her.

I crouched down to Teru’s eye level, patted her head—it’s an adult’s responsibility to lower themselves so as not to intimidate the young—and smiled back. “Well, there’s no reason to let evil flourish in this world. If normal adults like your papa and I were to get a little serious, we could beat all the bad guys.”

Mind you, that was a lie. Truthfully, just like Mr. Chotos, I had been pretty much prepared to die. However, this was less a “lie” than one of those bluffs adults must uphold for the good of young folks.

Teru’s face was quite close to mine now. From this proximity, I could see the sparkles glittering in her young eyes. Suddenly, she planted a kiss on my cheek. Her lips were warm, soft, and small like a flower bud.

“You really are precious, aren’t you?” I sighed as I ran my hand through her fluffy, chestnut hair. Her youthful cheeks were dyed a rosy red.

I supposed she was around that age where girls practice kissing with their stuffed teddy bears. I was sure it must have been hard for Mr. Chotos to wash whatever toy she was presently doting on.

Besides, Teru, you probably don’t understand this yet, but you can’t just casually give away your kisses. After all, one of your kindergarten friends might misunderstand, and he’ll stagger off down a woeful path. A girl your age needs to be responsible with her affections.

Ugh, wait, now that I think about it, isn’t this the scene where the protagonist gets kissed by the heroine after defeating a formidable foe and begins his bittersweet journey to the throne? So then why? Why am I being kissed by a five-year-old?

Ah, this was bad. I was going to cry. Not to mention, if Teru hugged me any more tightly, Mr. Chotos might snap at me again. Plus, Gol would surely want to monopolize her, so—

“Huh? Gol?” I suddenly realized Gol wasn’t next to me. Normally, this was the point at which she always kidnapped Teru. Where had my partner gone?

I scanned the field. She wasn’t near Ginem Bari; he was flat on the ground over yonder, on account of how Gol had punched him. When I looked to the forest, I saw a white figure standing among the newly pruned trees. Found her.

Gol stood with her arms on her hips in front of the large one-armed golem, which had fallen into a sitting position. The mist had at last fully dissipated, exposing the golem’s shape. It was short, stout, and tan. So that was a crossbow golem. Heavy-class golems really were tough. While its torso was broad, its arms and legs were also incredibly thick, and not only was it tall, it was wide. All in all, it gave off a completely different impression from a light-class golem. Then again, some of the size came from the armor, so it might not have been all that different from a light-class golem after all.

Several meters to the side of the crossbow golem, among the fallen trees, was the unconscious body of the golem wielder I had caught in the collateral damage of my axe attack. He was young, and he wore an eye patch. He was also bleeding from his head and twitching a bit. I studied his bloodied face, the white of his visible eye showing, when I thought: Huh? Where have I seen this face before?

Then I remembered. “Ah! He’s that handsome eye-patched fellow who was staring at me in the lobby of the Paisley Company.”

To think this eye-patched man was the true identity of the crossbow golem wielder. With his now slovenly expression and rolled-back eye, he no longer resembled the handsome man I had seen in the branch office. That was why it took me some time to realize they were the same person.

Ah. So when he watched me in the lobby, he had been looking at me as a target.

Since the mist had vanished immediately after the eye-patched man was defeated, I surmised the anti-detection spell was one he had cast. The fact that his crossbow golem could fire from an unbelievable distance while he protected both it and himself from detection proved he was profoundly skilled. Frankly, if my senses hadn’t been heightened by sorcery, there was no way I would’ve been able to resist the threat he presented.

However, that was the end of my peaceful contemplation. A dark and furious bloodlust gushed like a flood from Gol’s entire being as she stood in front of the crossbow golem.

This was bad. Gol was incandescent with rage. The target of her dense, seething hatred was the crossbow golem.

I couldn’t say I didn’t understand why she was so indignant. I am strikingly unmotivated to act violently, even in self-defense. My rare sense of determination this time around had stemmed from the need to protect my elders and a small child. Hence my Earth Battle-Axe shenanigans, which, thankfully, had neatly obstructed the enemy’s attempt to murder me.

However, if I had been my usual moocher self and resigned myself to acting as a carefree referee, I would have 100 percent been killed by that last attack, and the perpetrator of that final blow would’ve been the crossbow golem.

“This is bad…” My face paled as I unconsciously uttered these words.

But before I could say anything like “Stop,” Gol slammed her foot into the crossbow golem. Then she straddled her toppled opponent’s chest and began to mindlessly pummel his face.

Wait, I don’t think that’s quite correct—linguistically speaking, I mean. The crossbow golem’s head had already been pulverized by the initial blow, yet Gol continued to shower the area where the head had been with vicious, wrathful punches. She was practically in a frenzied state. She must have been so panicked, so terrified at the thought of losing me.

Each time Gol brought down her fist, the trees in the forest shook as if in an earthquake. Her anger had yet to be sated. She began to rip off the pitiful crossbow golem’s remaining arm. Her thin, white, elven arm strained against the thick tan arm of the crossbow golem and disturbing creaks rang through the air. Finally, with a dreadful crack, the crossbow golem’s arm was disconnected from their shoulder.

“Hey, Gol! The match is over already. Any more would be cruel.” I had rushed over and was finally close enough to walk up to Gol. I truly was a pitiful owner. I hated watching her lose her mind, so I tried to restrain her, but, well…

That is to say, I intended to stop her, and I could have, but—no, hear me out—you understand that to reach her, I had to sprint at full speed across an entire meadow, right?

I was out of breath.

I desperately tried to catch my breath next to Gol, but I lost it all to a gasp.

Gol’s blazing red eyes were filled with murderous fury as she raised her right fist even higher into the air. Her target was the golem’s chest, the place where their heart—their sorcery core—resided.

Mr. Chotos had said that no matter how many times a golem’s body was broken in battle, it could be repaired with relative ease. But once broken, the sorcery core that housed a golem’s artificial personality could not be restored. The sorcery core in a golem’s chest was indeed like their heart, since it was formed by the accumulation of their memories and experiences. Destroying it meant “killing” the golem.

So: Gol intended to kill this golem.

“Wait—stop, Gol!” In a daze, I jumped on Gol.

As ever, when I touched her, Gol did not remotely resist me. I crashed into her with all my momentum and she fell over with her right arm still held aloft.

I covered Gol with my whole body, her on her back, so in the end it looked like I had pushed her to the ground. Her body was soft underneath mine, and everywhere we touched I was met by faint warmth.

As I held her down, I stared at her with utter seriousness. Because I had run to her as fast as I could, my breathing was still ragged, like that of an aroused beast, but that couldn’t be helped. Each time my hot gasps touched Gol’s face and neck, her body twisted as if in pain and her long ears trembled. Her crimson eyes stared up at me, feverish and blurry.

What was this? I sensed some kind of determined resolution in the depths of her eyes, glittering in their daze. It was as if something powerfully important had occurred to her, like she had decided to offer up some precious thing only she possessed, something she could never offer again.

Ah, I got it. She was ready to receive my lecture.

But you know, partner, I don’t think you need such heroic resolve for something like this. Aren’t you taking my scolding a little too seriously?

Well, whatever. In any case, this was an important conversation. As I lay on top of her, I slowly enunciated, “Hey, Gol. Let’s not kill this golem, okay?”

You see, I was against killing golems—generally, as a thing.

“I know you’re only doing this because you’re thinking of me. This world seems to welcome irrational violence, but no matter how naïve I am, you must not think it’s fine to go around killing anything and everything. One day, you may be forced to kill people in righteous self-defense…but don’t kill their golems.”

Gol stared back at me questioningly.

I continued gently. “Gol, I’m sure you would slaughter any enemy without hesitation if I asked you to, right? Well, this huge guy and those clowns are just the same. They aren’t bad. The bad ones are their owners.”

I held firm to this belief: It is the responsibility of owners to provide proper training. Any acting out, any improper aggression, is fundamentally their fault. Dogs—no, golems—are not remotely guilty.

Also, golems could be rendered powerless without having to kill them. You just needed to destroy their head. Therefore, there was no need to go through the trouble of prying off the thick armor covering their chest to kill them.

“You understand? Okay?” While still on top of Gol, I gently stroked her head.

Gol stared blankly back at me as if in the throes of a fever. She was clever; I was sure she understood. And besides, Gol was a good girl who always made sure to keep her promises to me.

Now then, all the enemies on the battlefield had been taken care of.

I got up off of Gol, who seemed oddly reluctant, and returned to the wagon. While I had run all that way in a panic, I had let the mana supply to my Earth Battle-Axe cut off. The axe crumbled into black particles inside my robe, leaving a trace of the dirt I had used to create it, then disappeared.

With the crumbling of the Earth Battle-Axe, my sorcery ended and my spatial awareness returned to normal.

As such, I didn’t notice what came next—not in time to stop it. Gol found a new target for her anger and slowly stood up behind me. Her bloodlust rose like a heat haze, and she slowly approached the defeated crossbow golem wielder: the unconscious eye-patched man…

 

***

 

As I stretched my back, I leisurely scanned the meadow that had become a battlefield. The wagon, the elderly men, and the child were by the road. Slightly further away, a large number of tattered, bloodied spellcasters lay in a burned and ruined land. These were the only things that filled my view, other than a long, white cloud drifting across the beautiful blue sky—a sky in which the only birds I knew about were the ones I could kind of see.

Yeah, this was just right.

When I activated my sorcery, I saw too much, and I ended up thinking with greater seriousness than I usually would. It was mentally draining in the extreme.

With my back stretched, I casually glanced over at Ginem Bari, whose blood was gushing from his nose. I tilted my head as a thought occurred. “Hm…? Now that I think about it, did Gol really let Ginem Bari off with such a weak punch?”

Although he was definitely unconscious, I could tell even from this far away that his injuries were minor. He had fainted after taking a tiny little punch to the face. Compared to the other spellcasters, he’d gotten off quite lightly—they were all thoroughly and severely injured, and most seemed to be in terrible pain.

“Why exactly is that…?” I pondered.

Ah. Now that I thought about it, despite our conflict, Ginem Bari hadn’t ever actually attacked me. Ultimately, he had only set his clowns on Gol. Moreover, during the fight, Ginem was the only one of our enemies who’d conversed with me, and had done so rather naturally, at that. Ginem had even casually thrown a compliment to my Gol, which had made me happy and dampened my sense of animosity. Actually, when we talked, I think I’d worn a confident, even smug expression. Truthfully, it hadn’t been that different from when I bantered with Mr. Chotos.

Gol never really paid much attention to the conversations I had with other people. However, from her point of view, the tenor of our exchange might have made Ginem Bari level up from “nuisance” to “gaming colleague.”

“Well, either way, it works for me.” I strolled over to the unconscious golem wielder, the burnt ground crunching beneath my feet.

Ginem looked like he would regain consciousness soon, which was helpful. I needed him to confess to some crimes. Indeed, now that all of this nonsense had happened, I could no longer back down.

I was going to register a formal complaint against those Paisley idiots.