The first target Rei went after was the Stone Golem.
Being made of rock, it carried considerable weight—which meant it was by no means fast.
Lindy had taken shelter in a corner of the building to stay out of Rei's way.
Ideally, he would have wanted her to leave the building entirely, but the door had shut behind them and showed no sign of opening.
If Lindy attacked with everything she had, she might be able to smash through the door and get outside. But these were people who had laid such an elaborate trap for the two intruders. There was no way they hadn't accounted for the possibility of someone breaking the door down.
Even if they did get outside, another golem was likely waiting for them.
He wondered if he was overthinking it—but given how thoroughly they had been set up, it seemed plausible.
"Whoa!"
Rei's attention had been on Lindy, and the Stone Golem seized the opening to swing at him.
He dodged the blow and brought Death Scythe around. Infused with mana, the blade sheared through the arm with ease—but something was off.
"That's not right," Rei muttered, sidestepping the severed forearm as it plummeted to the floor.
It was the sensation from the strike. More precisely, the feel of cutting through the Stone Golem's arm. Something about it had been... wrong.
The resistance had been high overall. That much he could tell.
Of course, he was cutting through rock. Not ordinary rock, either—it was carefully chosen golem material, refined by an alchemist. So of course it would differ from regular stone. But Rei felt there was more to it than that.
Is it because they use humans as materials?
That was the hallmark of the Dolan Workshop's golems. What specific effect using human bodies as material actually had, Rei couldn't say. But having now fought one firsthand, it was only natural to assume it played a role.
At the very least, the Stone Golem was clearly stronger than a standard specimen, and...
"They're smart, too!"
He leaped, dodging a punch from a severed arm that came flying at him from behind, trailing a metal cable.
A Rocket Punch?
Twisting midair, he identified his attacker.
The golems clearly hadn't planned on fighting him one-on-one. The Stone Golem had attacked first simply because Rei had approached it. Then, while making it look like a duel between Rei and the Stone Golem, the others had joined in.
Clever wasn't the wrong word for it. If Lindy had been here alone, she almost certainly would have walked right into their trap.
But the one fighting these golems wasn't Lindy. It was Rei. Sensing an attack coming from behind was second nature to him.
Still, there really are all kinds of golems in here.
Jumping into the air was normally sheer recklessness. In midair, you could only adjust your body so much—a direct attack would be nearly impossible to dodge.
Sure enough, a golem some distance away opened its right palm and launched a spear straight at him.
Under normal circumstances, evading that would have been impossible.
But these were not normal circumstances.
Rei activated his Sleipnir boots and kicked off the air itself. By triggering them repeatedly, he ricocheted through the air like a rubber ball hurled inside a narrow room, weaving past the spear. Then he closed the distance with the golem that had fired it and swung Death Scythe at its neck—
Huh?
The golem raised its hand to shield its face.
For a split second, Rei was baffled. That movement had looked exactly like a person reflexively protecting their face.
It wasn't impossible that it had been programmed to do that in an emergency. But Rei was the one who'd noticed it, and he doubted anyone else would have read the gesture the same way.
Since they use humans as materials, did they build in human-like reactions?
The thought flashed through his mind, but he didn't let up. He severed the hand shielding the face with Death Scythe, then drove the Twilight Spear from his left hand straight through the skull, shattering it.
Where exactly the golem's Core was located, Rei had no way of knowing. If it had been semi-transparent like the Water Golem, he could have spotted it—but this was a golem built from ordinary materials. So when the golem stopped moving after only its head was destroyed, Rei was genuinely surprised.
He'd assumed the Core would be in the chest.
Still, taking down the first one this quickly was a good sign.
Multiple golems still filled this wide space. Given that he'd have to fight them all, he decided his best bet was to thin their ranks as fast as possible.
"Next!"
He kicked off the headless golem's body and launched himself toward another one—the golem that had fired the Rocket Punch.
A Rocket Punch was a great way to catch someone off guard, but once launched, the arm was useless until it was reeled back in. The golem hadn't fully retrieved its arm yet, making this the perfect moment to strike.
"Power Slash!"
The skill activated, and Death Scythe carved clean through the Rocket Punch golem's torso. Power Slash, which dramatically amplified a single strike's force, was now at Level 5.
Up through Level 4, the sheer power had come with a recoil strong enough to potentially damage the wielder's wrist. But at Level 5, just like his other skills, it had undergone a major upgrade: the strike power had increased even further, while the recoil had vanished entirely.
The resulting blow didn't just knock the seven-meter golem back—it shattered it. Not sent flying. Shattered.
Just how devastating that attack was spoke for itself.
"Next! Whoa—!"
He turned toward another golem, only for a different one to come lunging at him. Rei hit the floor and immediately kicked off, dodging the blow while bringing Death Scythe around. The mana-infused blade severed the arm without resistance.
The severed chunk—larger than Rei himself—spun through the air, a sight so surreal that Lindy, watching from afar, could barely process it as real.
But Rei had no time for surrealism. He was already moving on to his next attack.
The golem, suddenly minus an arm, seemed to lose its balance. And Rei never let an opening pass.
"Die!"
He hurled the Twilight Spear. Charged with mana, it punched straight through the golem's chest—and kept going, obliterating the entire upper body.
He still didn't know exactly where the Core sat, but it had to have been somewhere in the upper torso. With it gone, the golem crumpled to the floor, motionless.
And the Twilight Spear wasn't done. It tore through the upper body of a second golem standing behind the first, then punched into a third. By the time it ran out of steam, it hadn't completely destroyed the third one's upper body the way it had the first two—but it had still done serious damage.
After smashing through the far wall of the spacious hall and sailing off into the distance, the spear returned to Rei's hand. The ability to recall it at will, no matter where it landed, made it an invaluable weapon.
"Alright, that's a fair few down. No idea what the Dolan Workshop was thinking, cramming all these golems in here... but if this was a trial run, it was a waste of time!"
Two golems had been destroyed without even landing a proper hit on him. The alchemists had to be gnashing their teeth.
With that in mind, he dodged a strike from a mud-water golem.
It was water-based, like the Water Golem outside, but there was a critical difference: this one's body was made of muddy water. The Water Golem had been transparent enough to reveal its Core's location at a glance. This one's murky interior made that impossible.
"Also, the wreckage is getting in the way!"
Defeated golems littered the floor. The hall was large enough that he could still move, but the debris was undeniably slowing him down. If this kept up, things would only get more troublesome.
Besides, these were Dolan Workshop golems. Whether he handed them over to Roger later or found some other use for them, collecting the wreckage now was the smart move.
Decision made, Rei began touching each fallen golem and storing the remains in his Misty Ring—all while continuing to dodge attacks from the mud-water golem and the rest.
The alchemists are probably watching this through some kind of remote means. Wonder how they'll feel watching their creations get smashed to pieces and the scraps hauled off right in front of them.
Alchemists took fierce pride in their work. Having the wreckage of their own golems stolen wasn't something they'd take lying down.
...Honestly, Rei wasn't thrilled about putting golems made from human materials into his Misty Ring, even inside that pocket dimension. But this wasn't the time to be squeamish.
One by one, he stashed the remains until the floor was clear enough to move freely.
How are the golems reading this situation? he wondered. Their situational awareness was apparently quite high—even as the wreckage around them vanished, they showed no sign of confusion.
Strange. Their tactical awareness is unusually sharp. Are all golems like this, or just the Dolan Workshop's? ...I'll ask Roger about it later.
His musings were cut short by a longsword crashing down toward him.
"Longsword" was a loose description. A blade wielded by a golem standing nearly seven meters tall was less a sword and more a slab of iron. To Rei, on the receiving end, it felt less like a slash and more like being struck by a massive bludgeon.
"Too slow!"
The blade smashed into the floor where Rei had been standing a heartbeat before, burying itself in the stone. He could have parried it with Death Scythe or his spear, but in this situation, a simple dodge was all that was needed.
And the moment that golem left itself wide open, Rei was already moving in for the kill.