The guards were frozen in place, rendered utterly unable to move by Seto's King's Intimidation.
Among those protecting Dailas's mansion, everyone near the main gate had been completely neutralized by Rei and Seto's assault. That they could no longer even react to Rei's taunts was, if anything, an unexpected bonus.
After knocking every last guard unconscious, Rei advanced toward the main gate alongside Seto.
The gate should have been left open when the guards first emerged, but those inside the mansion who had heard Seto's roar and rushed out to investigate caught Rei's declaration and scrambled to slam it shut.
Though they were hired as guards, none of them believed they could handle Rei and Seto on their own. That was precisely why they chose to seal the gate, fortify their position, and wait for reinforcements to arrive.
Alternatively, they may have simply been terrified of Rei and Seto's presence and opted to barricade themselves rather than fight.
If Rei and Seto had been adventurers of only middling ability, such a response might have sufficed.
Dailas's mansion, while not particularly large—at least compared to the other estates in the Upscale Residential District—belonged to one of the men who governed Egginis. Given the shady dealings he conducted behind the scenes, he had taken precautions for emergencies.
But Dailas's gravest misfortune was making an enemy of Rei.
Perhaps he had resented Rei looking into the unusual gatherings of bandits. Maybe he had coveted the materials of an unknown dragon. It could have been displeasure at Rei's investigation of Golias, anger over the illegal slave operation being shut down, or fury that his necromancy had been exposed and the altar stolen.
Whatever the reason, Rei's existence was an obstacle to Dailas and the Dolan Workshop in every conceivable way. The result was their decision to send assassins and attempt to kill him.
The current state of Dailas's mansion was the direct consequence of that choice.
Or perhaps he had simply never imagined his role as the mastermind behind the Dolan Workshop would be exposed.
Either way, antagonizing Rei had unquestionably been Dailas's greatest mistake.
Beyond that, making an enemy of Fusetsu was nearly as catastrophic.
"Closing a gate like that won't... no, hey, this is... they've got something interesting going on."
Rei had been about to strike the gate when he suddenly stayed his hand.
The reason was simple: the gate was clearly not ordinary.
The iron components comprising the gate reshaped themselves into spears and lunged at Rei. He swung Death Scythe to intercept them.
Whether it was solid iron or not, there was nothing Death Scythe could not cut.
With a single blow, the spear the gate had formed was effortlessly severed, its tip clattering to the ground.
"As a surprise attack, it wasn't bad. ...The fact that something like this exists must be why the security here wasn't all that sturdy... or am I wrong about that?"
Rei voiced his theory but revised it mid-sentence. The guards on the far side of the gate wore expressions of sheer disbelief at what had just transpired before their eyes.
Judging by their faces, they had no idea the gate possessed such a capability.
There was a chance they were acting, performing surprise to catch Rei off guard—but from where he stood, they looked genuinely astonished.
"A Magic Item... no, a golem!?"
Watching one spear tip get sliced off, they must have recognized Rei and Seto as genuine threats. The spears fired from the gate multiplied to over ten.
That said, failing to kill Rei with the opening ambush was a fatal mistake.
Had they known what kind of opponent he was, Rei would have had any number of ways to deal with them.
He cut down the incoming spears one after another, and Seto dispatched them just as effortlessly with its razor-sharp claws.
Together, the man and the gryphon closed the distance to the gate. The moment Rei and Seto's strikes shattered it—or so it seemed—the iron spears interposed themselves as shields.
The gate itself emerged unscathed, but the section that took the blow was violently blasted away.
Even with a dozen iron spears massed together, they could not withstand Rei and Seto's combined assault.
The real casualties were the guards stationed near the gate.
Their proximity meant they bore the brunt of the scattered iron spears blown loose by Rei and Seto's attacks.
Struck by the flying projectiles, the guards screamed in agony.
Given that the blows came from Rei and Seto, the impact was tremendous. Several men suffered broken bones in their arms and legs where the iron spears had struck.
...Even so, it was a mercy that no one was run through by a spear tip.
"Tch. Annoying trick. ...What the hell is this gate, anyway?"
Rei put some distance between himself and the gate, surveyed the guards writhing and screaming in pain, and muttered his question aloud.
He suspected it was either a golem or a Magic Item, but he had no definitive proof.
Given Dailas's connection to the Dolan Workshop, however, it was a reasonable assumption that this was a Dolan Workshop golem.
If this gate is a golem, there's naturally a core inside. And if it's a Dolan Workshop core... I don't even need to think about it.
That meant there was a high probability a human soul had been used as material in the core of the golem disguised as this gate.
It was only speculation on Rei's part. The possibility that it was a golem built before the Dolan Workshop ever dabbled in necromancy could not be entirely ruled out.
"Either way, if you're going to get in my way, I'll just destroy you. After that, I'm storing you away so Ilunara and his group can examine what kind of core you've got."
Rei addressed the gate golem, though whether the golem actually comprehended his words was anyone's guess.
For that matter, it was unclear whether the golem before him even possessed that degree of intelligence.
Even so, the gate golem seemed to register Rei as an enemy. It generated iron spears once more and launched them.
Weaving through the barrage, Rei issued orders to Seto.
"Seto, leave this golem to me. Leap over the wall, get inside, and take down the guards. Make it as flashy as possible—and don't kill them!"
The iron spears rained down in succession, but Rei evaded every single one.
Seto, watching Rei handle the assault, apparently decided he would be fine. It peeled away from the gate golem.
Rei had told Seto to fight flashily because, as the diversionary force, they needed to draw maximum attention.
He had said not to kill because, from what he could observe, the guards seemed to know absolutely nothing about Dailas's true nature.
The odds that every single guard was ignorant of Dailas's secrets were slim.
Yet from his encounters so far, Rei was fairly convinced the vast majority were in the dark.
As evidence, the first man he had defeated had not only been startled by Rei and Seto's sudden appearance but had seemed genuinely bewildered as to why anyone would attack the mansion of Dailas, a man renowned as a good person.
"Grrrrrrl!"
Seto let out a sharp cry in response and, with a few running strides, sailed over the wall and into the grounds.
It was a wall no ordinary person could leap so easily, but for Seto, clearing it was trivial.
"Hm?"
Dodging the spear attacks while keeping one eye on Seto, Rei suddenly noticed something odd.
The gate golem was focusing all its attacks on him—but even so, why did it show absolutely no interest in Seto, who had just vaulted the wall?
Does it lock onto a single target and ignore everything else until that target is down? Or does it only fight human-shaped beings—humans, elves, dwarves, beastmen—and disregard Seto as clearly non-human? No, it attacked Seto earlier too, so that rules that out.
Contemplating this while continuing to evade the spears... the moment screams began echoing from the other side of the wall, Rei went on the offensive.
"If it's a gate golem, I just need to destroy the walls anchoring it and store it in the Misty Ring. That ends this!"
He shouted, dodged the iron spear salvo, and surged forward in a single explosive burst.
Having evaded the gate golem's attacks continuously up to that point, Rei could easily predict the timing of each strike.
Partly because it was shaped like a gate rather than a humanoid, golem attacks tended to follow set patterns.
That observation reinforced Rei's suspicion that this golem's core did not contain a human soul.
Golems with cores powered by human souls had reactions that felt more human, and they rarely adhered to such rigid attack patterns.
Of course, he couldn't rule out the possibility that this was simply a consequence of its gate-shaped form.
Exploiting the gap in his opponent's pattern, Rei closed the distance and swung Death Scythe in a wide arc.
In that instant, the blade of Death Scythe—infused with Rei's magic power—sliced clean through the wall securing the gate, meeting no resistance whatsoever.
The impact sent the gate severely off-balance... yet, perhaps because it was a golem, it showed no sign of distress and simply fired more spears at Rei.
Rei caught the incoming iron spear tip with the Twilight Spear, pivoted half a turn, and slashed upward from below to sever the second wall. With both the left and right walls destroyed, the gate toppled forward and crashed to the ground.
Naturally, destroying the anchoring walls was not the same as destroying the gate itself.
The fallen gate launched another volley of iron spears at Rei... but he sidestepped the attack, touched one of the iron spears, and the gate vanished in an instant.
"Phew. Fighting golems really is refreshingly simple. ...Having to wreck the wall before I can store it is a pain, though."
The Misty Ring fundamentally could not store living creatures, and in this case, the gate could not be stored while it was still attached to the wall.
That was largely due to Rei's own perception: the gate and the wall were connected, therefore they registered as a single unit.
That was why he had severed the gate from the wall before storing it in the Misty Ring.
"Still, a gate golem. That's actually pretty clever."
The gate being a golem had been completely unexpected.
As such, the very concept of weaponizing a gate as a golem struck Rei as a remarkable idea.
If I describe this to Roger, could he build something similar? Not a gate golem, but a door golem or a window golem? That would essentially give me automatic doors... automatic windows, things like that.
Doors and windows that opened on their own without needing to be manually pushed would be reasonably convenient.
He had already commissioned defensive golems from Roger, but if possible, he figured he might as well request that sort of golem too. With that thought, Rei headed toward the direction where the screams had been growing steadily louder while he fought the gate golem.
Since Rei had told Seto to be flashy, Seto was likely not staying in one spot but moving around as it fought.
"Now then, what do I do from here?"
Rei muttered, scanning his surroundings.
Whether it was the influence of Seto rampaging noisily nearby, or whether Dailas's mansion simply had few guards hired for security to begin with... or whether others had judged it impossible to approach due to the battle between Rei and the gate golem—
Whatever the reason, there were currently no enemies in Rei's vicinity.
Under the present circumstances, he could either head toward Seto and raise havoc alongside it, or he could start a second major commotion somewhere else.
While he was still weighing his options, several new guards appeared, as if to make the decision for him.
"Hey, wait! Why is there an intruder over here too?!"
"How should I know! But fighting this guy's better than fighting that monster! Let's go!"
Whether they had fled at the sight of Seto or simply judged Rei the lesser threat, the men charged in to attack all at once.
Going by appearances alone, Rei was certainly a less daunting opponent than Seto.
But... whether they were panicked, confused, or simply not thinking straight, the men had completely overlooked one crucial fact upon seeing Seto.
If Rei commanded Seto, that meant Rei was someone whom even the fearsome Seto acknowledged.
And above all else, not knowing about Rei—the bearer of the Crimson moniker—was a fatal mistake.