With a heavy thud, Rei touched down on the ground, Lindy still on his back.
The Sleipnir boots—a Magic Item that allowed the wearer to walk on air—were incredibly useful in combat, but they proved just as handy in situations like this.
It was precisely because he had such a Magic Item that Rei had decided to leap over the wall surrounding the Dolan Workshop.
And not just clear the wall, but soar well above it.
Simply jumping over the wall would risk triggering some kind of intruder-detection mechanism mounted along its top.
With that in mind, Rei had figured that by kicking through the air to a considerable height, they would stay well outside the effective range of any security equipment.
"It looks like we're clear. ...Lindy, I'm going to let you down."
Rei spoke to Lindy, who was still clinging to his back, but for some reason she didn't respond.
"Lindy? What's wrong?"
"...I didn't think we'd go that high..."
Muttering in a weary voice, Lindy climbed down from his back.
For Rei, who was used to flying through the sky on Seto and used the Sleipnir boots fairly often, high places were second nature.
If Rei had actually suffered from acrophobia, she might have thought he was terrified—but given the situation at hand, that wasn't exactly a concern.
Lindy, however, was an ordinary person in this world—just a normal adventurer.
Opportunities to fly were rare, and while she had been carried on Rei's back, she had probably never experienced being at such a height before.
(If we went up to the peak of the mountain where the bandits' hideout was... no, that's a completely different thing.)
Standing on a mountain summit and being carried on someone's back to a height of about ten meters carried entirely different meanings.
"Hey, settle down. We can't stay here forever. We came to rescue Anne, remember?"
"!"
Even in her rattled state, the mention of Anne's name snapped Lindy back to herself in an instant.
Given their current situation, it was only natural that she would want to rescue Anne as quickly as possible.
For Rei, it was in a way a magic word that made Lindy much easier to handle.
"You're right. We need to rescue Anne as soon as possible. Even for gathering information, I need to refocus."
Lindy took a deep, steadying breath.
As she exhaled, she turned her gaze back to the building ahead of them.
The Dolan Workshop's research facility, or perhaps their workshop. Either way, it was a building they needed to infiltrate as quickly as possible.
"Alright. If you've calmed down, let's move. ...But since we don't know what kind of traps might be waiting, I'll take point."
Lindy couldn't argue with that.
She couldn't help feeling that having the younger Rei go ahead of her was somewhat backwards.
But when it came to raw ability as an adventurer, Rei was unquestionably her superior.
Knowing that, she had no objections.
And so Rei moved forward with Lindy trailing behind.
Even so...
(No traps? Were they that confident in the wall's security, or am I just not finding them?)
Rei pondered this as he scanned the surroundings.
He checked for anything unusual nearby, but from what he could see, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
"Rei, how's it looking?"
"I don't think there's any security equipment using Magic Items. But if that's the case... then we need to worry about something else."
"Something else?"
"Yeah. If I were trying to guard against intruders, I wouldn't just rely on the wall—I'd put some kind of security devices in the garden too. The Dolan Workshop has top-tier technical ability in Egginis, so it's not like they couldn't make their own Magic Items."
Even as he said this, Rei wondered whether the Dolan Workshop's golems were only high-performance because they used human materials. If that were the case, their pure golem manufacturing technology might not actually be all that impressive.
(I should ask Roger about that later. Apparently he's looking into it right now.)
What exactly happened to a golem when human materials were used?
He was curious, but he decided that thinking about the security setup took priority for now and forced his mind to switch gears.
It was also possible that if the golems depended on human materials, the security equipment might depend on them as well. But even so, Rei doubted they would go so far as to use human materials in Magic Items themselves.
If that were the case, then the reason there was no security equipment on the grounds...
"Maybe having security equipment would actually get in their way."
"Huh? What do you—"
Lindy barely got the question out before the words died in her throat.
A heavy, crunching sound—something massive stomping into the earth—reached her ears.
"It could mean they let them rampage here as a performance test for golems made by the Dolan Workshop."
"Wait a minute. No matter what, if a golem went on a full rampage in the middle of the city, even with so few people around here... there's no way that wouldn't get noticed!"
Lindy shouted, but Rei was already pulling Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear from his Misty Ring as he spoke.
"Then what do you think is approaching? Besides... the Dolan Workshop is involved in all sorts of shady business. Wouldn't it make sense for them to have some kind of Magic Item that prevents sound from carrying outside?"
"That's..."
Unable to counter his argument, Lindy fell silent.
The situation with Anne, the rumors of golems being made from human materials, and a host of other circumstantial evidence all pointed to the Dolan Workshop's guilt.
Given all that, it wouldn't be surprising if, as Rei suggested, they had measures in place to keep sounds from leaking outside when something happened—specifically, in situations exactly like this one.
And right on cue, as if to confirm Rei's theory, a golem appeared.
Though calling it a golem at first glance would have been difficult.
Its body wasn't made of rock, earth, or minerals—it was made entirely of water.
It was what one might call a Water Golem, but what struck Rei upon seeing it wasn't so much its capability as its sheer strangeness.
(That golem... from what I can see, there are no notable components inside its body. There's something that looks like a magic stone, but that's it. What's going on? Weren't the Dolan Workshop's golems supposed to use humans as materials?)
That was the biggest question in Rei's mind.
As far as Rei knew—or rather, as far as he had been able to piece together—the Dolan Workshop's golems derived their high performance from using humans as materials.
Yet from what he could see, the Water Golem's body contained nothing that even remotely resembled a human-derived component.
(If I had to guess... it'd be where the magic stone is?)
Though it wasn't exactly a magic stone—it was something else entirely.
It differed so greatly from a normal magic stone that it could only be understood as a substitute.
Given the circumstances, the likelihood that human materials were concentrated precisely there was high. In a way, that alone was a significant discovery.
"Lindy, take cover!"
"Huh? Wait, Rei!?"
Lindy hesitated at his command, but Rei didn't spare her a backward glance. He charged straight at the Water Golem.
The Water Golem, evidently recognizing Rei as an enemy closing in on it, swung its right arm down at him.
Since its body was composed of liquid, Rei found himself wondering why it even bothered with a humanoid shape as he dodged the blow.
The strike was wide and sweeping, making it an easy matter to evade.
Closing in on the Water Golem's arm, he slashed through it with Death Scythe—but the severed surface reconnected effortlessly.
Rei wasn't particularly surprised.
He had struck expecting exactly that outcome.
Slashing water with Death Scythe naturally dealt no damage.
However... that was only true if the opponent were made of ordinary water.
The Water Golem he was fighting had most of its body composed of water, but as a golem, it was by no means made of ordinary water.
"Then take this!"
He ducked under the reconnected arm as it swung horizontally, drove the Twilight Spear in his left hand into the Water Golem's torso, and cleaved through it with Death Scythe in his right.
Both strikes weren't merely physical attacks—he had channeled mana into each weapon.
With a sound like a balloon bursting, the Water Golem ruptured.
"Whoa!"
Rei had expected to finish it with that exchange, but the sudden rupture still caught him off guard. Even so, the moment he sensed the golem was about to burst, he had already kicked off the ground and darted clear, avoiding the spray of water that had composed its body. It was an unmistakable display of the reflexes befitting an A-Rank adventurer and alias holder.
"Rei!?"
Seeing him disappear, Lindy screamed his name from a distance.
With only moonlight to see by and no Night Vision of her own, it must have looked to her as though Rei had been blown away by some attack from the Water Golem.
"I'm fine!"
He called back to her and raised Death Scythe to show he was unharmed.
As if to prove it, he started moving again immediately.
He headed toward where the Water Golem had been standing.
The water composing the golem's body had been easily destroyed by the mana-infused strikes from Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear, but he had hoped that the component serving the same function as a magic stone within the golem might still be intact.
"No good, huh."
Whether Rei's mana had been more powerful than expected, or whether it had been designed that way from the start as a security measure, he couldn't say. But the component had been shattered to pieces.
"I wanted to get my hands on that, too."
Since this Water Golem was also a product of the Dolan Workshop, the chances that human materials had been used were high.
Yet the only component-like part inside the Water Golem had been the magic stone substitute.
By that logic, the device needed to process human materials was likely either the substitute itself... or something contained within it.
If at all possible, he wanted to recover it and hand it over to Roger, who was working to analyze the Dolan Workshop's golems.
"Well, at least we picked up a clue."
"What is it?"
Lindy approached and asked Rei, who was muttering as he stared at the Water Golem's remains.
Having been startled by the golem's sudden appearance, she probably couldn't understand why Rei found the situation so puzzling.
"It's this golem. Don't you think it's strange? Think about it—this is a Dolan Workshop golem. Which means..."
"! Human materials!?"
"Exactly. But after fighting it, I didn't find anything that looked like a human-derived component. There was a substitute for a magic stone, so if there were any parts using human materials, they were probably concentrated there. It seems they know that too—It was designed to shatter easily in case of emergency."
In truth, the possibility that it had been destroyed by Rei's mana-infused attack couldn't be ruled out. In fact, that was probably the more likely explanation. But Rei decided to keep that to himself for now.
Once they got inside the Dolan Workshop, there was a high probability that similar golems would come at them again. That meant there was a solid chance of extracting more information from those encounters, and he was counting on exactly that.
Even so, the primary reason for infiltrating the Dolan Workshop tonight was, ultimately, to rescue Anne.