"Oh, Rei. You're back already? What on earth is going on out there?"
When Rei returned to the room, guided by an assassin he had encountered along the way, Lindy was in the living room—an unusual sight.
That said, she hadn't been spending enough time there for her presence to be considered all that rare.
Still, given what Rei knew of Lindy, it wouldn't have been strange for her to be off with Anne.
Thinking that, he glanced around the living room and found Camila there as well.
Whether she was worn out from keeping up with Anne, or whether the tension from Anne's kidnapping had finally drained from her, she was now fast asleep on the sofa.
So that's why Lindy is here.
Since Lindy wasn't acquainted with most of the illegal slaves, she probably couldn't just leave the sleeping Camila behind to go with Anne.
"A lot happened. First, the guards didn't lift a finger even when the Jalis Workshop was attacked by adventurers hired by the Dolan Workshop. Yet the moment I stepped in and the adventurers fled, the guards swooped in immediately."
"That's... troublesome."
As someone who worked as an adventurer in Egginis, Lindy understood full well that a powerful workshop like the Dolan Workshop could exert influence over the guards.
Even so, the fact that fellow adventurers had attacked the Jalis Workshop only earned a displeased furrow of her brows before she let it go.
They might all be lumped together under the word "adventurer," but at the end of the day, they weren't comrades or anything of the sort.
If Lindy had regular party members she worked with, it might have been a different story.
For his part, Rei was an adventurer too, but he didn't feel the need to atone if some Gilm adventurer committed a crime.
In that sense, it was only natural that Lindy didn't seem particularly shaken by this incident.
"Then, after I drove the guards off and got back to the Slum District, Dolan Workshop golems were on a rampage."
"Is that true!?"
The one who reacted sharply to Rei's words wasn't Lindy, but one of Ilunara's fellow alchemists.
Even as a non-mainstream faction member, having worked as an alchemist at the Dolan Workshop, he couldn't afford to let Rei's words slide.
"Yeah. There were quite a few of them. The plan was probably to lure me out by attacking the Jalis Workshop, then deploy guards to arrest me if things went well—or at least detain me under the pretext of questioning me. While I was tied up, they'd send golems into the Slum District."
"The golems' objective... well, there's no need to even ask, is there."
"Right. Anne, Ilunara, and the others who escaped from the Dolan Workshop. Plus, the Workshop almost certainly knows about Lindy's involvement, so they likely intended to grab her too—as a hostage against me."
"...You're right."
Lindy looked far from pleased at Rei's words.
She wasn't angry at him; rather, the fact that she had become a burden was what soured her expression.
If she had the same kind of power as Rei, not only would she have protected Anne and the others, she never would have forgiven those who had ordered Anne's enslavement and intended to offer her as a sacrifice to necromancy.
Rei noticed Lindy's mood but judged that saying anything would only wound her pride, so he let it be.
While Lindy fell silent, the alchemists in the living room pressed on about the golems.
"So, Rei-san. What type were the golems?"
"What type, you ask? Well, there weren't any like the ones you used—Water Golems made of water, or anything like that. The ones that stood out were golems fitted with metal armor, like knights."
"Metal armor... Nilkeena's?"
"Almost certainly. Nilkeena was always boasting about how powerful her golems were. ...Though outfitting golems in metal armor drives the price up to an astronomical level."
"Well, there's no denying her golems look impressive. They were popular among nobles, and they sold even at a premium."
Having said that much, the alchemist turned his gaze to Rei.
Rei grasped the meaning behind that look and nodded as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"I took down the metal-armored golems. Their wreckage is currently stored in my Misty Ring."
"Just as I thought."
At Rei's casual admission, the alchemists—particularly the male alchemist who had just looked his way—wore complicated expressions.
His body was no doubt still aching from muscle soreness, but he shook his head emphatically, ignoring the pain entirely.
That was how costly the golems created by this Nilkeena person must have been when put up for sale.
Rei could gather as much from the alchemists' attitudes, but that didn't mean he had any intention of feeling guilty about it.
If they didn't want such expensive golems destroyed, they shouldn't have deployed them in the Slum District in the first place. They could have just set them up as decoration somewhere.
Once you send a golem into actual combat, destruction is a very real possibility.
Even if he caught blame for it... that was Rei's honest take.
"By the way, do you think the loss of those golems—the ones this Nilkeena person made—actually hurts the Dolan Workshop?"
"Huh? Well... if you're asking whether it stings, it definitely stings, I think. But with the Dolan Workshop as it is now, it wouldn't be surprising for them to replace that many in short order... or so I'd assume."
"And it wasn't just the metal-armored golems. The majority of the golems that came to the Slum District were taken down by Seto and me. Their wreckage is sitting in my Misty Ring right alongside the metal ones."
"That's... more than just a sting, I'd think. If it were only Nilkeena's golems, that'd be one thing, but the rest of them as well..."
"From where we non-mainstream faction members stand, it serves them right."
Perhaps recalling how they had been mocked and given the cold shoulder by the mainstream faction alchemists, one of the alchemists spat the words out.
Given that the mainstream faction was to blame for their current predicament, such resentment was only natural.
"But the mainstream faction's golem productivity was never particularly good, was it? For Rei-san to destroy them so thoroughly... they won't exactly serve as sellable products anymore, will they? Well, considering what the mainstream faction was actually doing, it's unclear whether anyone would even continue doing business with them in the first place."
A note of sorrow colored the female alchemist's words.
Though she was now labeled non-mainstream faction and had fled the Dolan Workshop, she still held deep emotional attachment to the place. That much was obvious.
The male alchemist who had been wearing a smug expression also found himself unable to say anything more after seeing her reaction.
Given the current situation, it probably wasn't unreasonable to think he ought to be grieving over what had happened to the Dolan Workshop.
"I'm fairly sure I took out most of the golems. But they started retreating the moment they saw us arrive, so... and this is a real maybe... I think a Dolan Workshop alchemist had actually come to the Slum District. I couldn't find them in the end, though."
"Considering the golems retreated the moment you showed up, that possibility can't be ruled out. But whether the mainstream faction would actually come all the way to the Slum District... honestly, I'm not so sure."
Rei looked puzzled at one of the alchemists' remark.
"They began retreating the instant I arrived, right? Wouldn't that mean an alchemist wasn't even necessary?"
"That's not necessarily true. They could have given orders in advance to retreat if Rei showed up—say, if someone came flying in on Seto. Or it wouldn't be strange for the golems to have been ordered to pull back if they took damage."
"They can do all that?"
From his conversations with Roger, Rei had heard that golems could be pre-programmed with orders to a certain extent.
And while roaming around Egginis, he had picked up at least some information on the subject.
Even so, the idea that they could pull off what the female alchemist described was somewhat unexpected.
"Ordinary golems can't. But the cores the mainstream faction used were high-performance. ...Though now that I know the reason behind that performance, I have absolutely no desire to use them."
As an alchemist who had crafted countless golems over the years, the woman had her pride.
Using necromancy to turn human souls into materials for golem cores was something she could never accept.
If someone pressed her on why monster materials were acceptable in golem crafting but human souls were not, she would hesitate. She would hesitate—but in the end, she would still say no.
On that point, it was a line that shouldn't be crossed, more as a human being than as an alchemist.
"I see. That means the reason I couldn't find the Dolan Workshop alchemist wasn't simply that I was too late or failed to spot them in hiding—it's that they were never in the Slum District to begin with."
"That's only a possibility, mind you. Depending on the circumstances, it could just be that Rei simply couldn't find them."
The male alchemist's words were fair enough, but Rei decided to let them pass without comment.
From Rei's standpoint, it was better to treat this as the Dolan Workshop alchemist never having come to the Slum District in the first place.
In truth, if an alchemist had been present, Rei—or more importantly, Seto—didn't think they could have evaded detection.
Given the keenness of Seto's five senses, the possibility that no alchemist had come to the Slum District at all was by far the more likely explanation.
"Anyway, while I was searching for the alchemist, Seto spotted two groups brawling."
"Huh? You intervened? Why?"
Lindy must have anticipated where the story was heading, because she immediately questioned why he would go out of his way to do such a thing.
The others didn't voice it, but their expressions likely mirrored Lindy's sentiment.
They all turned their gazes toward Rei, waiting for his answer.
"It's not like I had much of a say in it. One of the groups had a lot of kids in it, so Seto probably couldn't just leave them to it. And honestly, watching something like that isn't exactly pleasant for me, either."
The children had been desperately leveraging their small size to resist the opposing group.
But the gap in physical ability between children and adults was significant, and if Rei or Seto hadn't stepped in, the children almost certainly would have lost.
Then again, if the kids' side had been winning... maybe—just maybe—I might not have intervened.
How things would have actually played out, even Rei couldn't say for certain.
He couldn't say, but somehow he couldn't shake the feeling that might have been the case.
"You're a strange one. Well, that aside—what are you going to do now, Rei? Do you have anything that needs doing?"
Rei thought for a moment at Lindy's question—delivered as though intervening in a Slum District brawl was the height of eccentricity—then shook his head.
"No, there's nothing in particular I need to do right now. If anything comes up, it'd be something like scrambling again if the Dolan Workshop sends more golems to the Slum District."
"Is that right? Then would you humor me a bit?"
"Humor you with what? I'll pass if it's cleaning."
At Lindy's request, Rei assumed she was telling him to help with the cleaning Anne was probably doing around the Fusetsu hideout, and shot back that he'd pass.
It wasn't that Rei couldn't clean.
Back in Japan, cleaning duty at high school was perfectly normal, and tidying his own room hadn't been unusual either.
But that didn't mean he wanted to clean here.
He could do it if he put his mind to it, but it was a hassle.
That was Rei's blunt, honest feeling on the matter.
Lindy, who had indeed been about to tell him to go help Anne clean, shook her head at his words.
"That's not it. I want you to spar with me."
The word "spar" that came from Lindy's mouth—instead of "clean"—drew a grin and a nod from Rei.