"Uwooooooh!"
The adventurers led by Mirusu fought the golems in groups of nearly ten each.
A fair number of adventurers had been killed by the golems, and even those who survived had suffered severe injuries that put them out of action. Even so, looking at the overall situation, Mirusu's side held the advantage.
The biggest reason for that was, naturally, Rei and Seto.
"Listen up! Focus on defense, not attack! All we need to do is buy time! If we hold out here, Rei or Seto will come eventually! Leave defeating the golems to them!"
Many adventurers obediently followed the shouting man's words.
However, some found those words hard to swallow.
Those who took pride in their own abilities, or those who—being in Dailas's employ—found themselves antagonistic toward Rei... for such people, the fact that Rei could defeat opponents they couldn't was galling.
Galling though it was, given the current situation, they had no choice but to rely on Rei.
At the start of the battle, some who resented depending on Rei or Seto had ignored Mirusu's instructions and charged in to defeat the golems themselves.
If the golems they were fighting had been from another workshop rather than the Dolan Workshop, those people might actually have managed to bring them down.
Unfortunately, the golems the adventurers were currently fighting were Dolan Workshop golems.
When facing Rei or Seto, the golems had never been able to fully leverage the performance of their cores—cores created using human souls as material through necromancy.
Against adventurers who weren't Rei or Seto, who possessed merely the average combat ability found in Egginis, however, the golems could unleash their high performance to the fullest.
As a result, those who had tried to defeat the golems themselves rather than leaving it to Rei or Seto ended up killed or dealt fatal blows.
Seeing that was precisely why even those who harbored resentment toward Rei decided not to fight, but to leave it to Rei and Seto.
Considering the current situation, they judged that to be the best course of action.
They didn't like Rei's presence, but they could fully comprehend his ability—or so it seemed.
And then... for those who had been focusing on defense in their fight against a golem whose forearm ended in a hammer, a savior appeared.
"Get back so you don't get caught in this!"
Shouting, Rei closed the distance to the golem in one burst, Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear in hand.
The golem swung its hammer—integrated seamlessly with its arm—down at Rei.
That hammer, a solid mass of metal, was a strike so powerful that even the slightest touch would unquestionably break at least one bone... no, rather, it would tear skin, crush flesh, and shatter bone. It wouldn't be strange to end up reduced to something like ground meat.
But no matter how powerful a strike was, it was meaningless if it didn't connect.
Rei casually dodged the blow swung down at him.
No matter how much the arm was integrated with a hammer, that strike was obviously inferior in speed compared to an ordinary weapon—say, a longsword. For Rei, dodging such a strike was no difficult matter.
With a thunderous boom.
The golem's hammer came crashing down—not on Rei, but on the ground.
The earth caved in deeply, as if to demonstrate the hammer's power.
"Too slow!"
With that shout, Death Scythe flashed, cleaving the golem's torso into upper and lower halves. Then, the immediately following strike from the Twilight Spear gouged out the golem's core from its ruined body.
Normally, destroying the golem's core outright would have been the quickest approach, but these cores contained human souls.
Whether they could be successfully released, or whether they could be laid to rest... Rei unfortunately didn't know the answer himself. But if it were possible, he judged that would be far better than simply destroying them.
Having defeated the hammer-armed golem, Rei immediately headed toward another location.
Watching Rei's retreating figure, one adventurer showed a look of utter relief.
When the Dolan Workshop's walls first shattered and a massive number of golems appeared, he had truly thought it was over.
This many golems—and Dolan Workshop golems at that. Could they really win against such opponents?
Yet once the battle actually began, they had somehow managed even against those foes.
The biggest reason for that was, without a doubt, Rei and Seto.
Opponents that they couldn't defeat even when fighting in large numbers, opponents against which focusing entirely on defense to buy time was the absolute best they could manage.
Yet Rei and Seto were dispatching such opponents with effortless ease.
Honestly, he found himself harboring a strange feeling—half wanting to know just how great the gap in power was between them, and half not wanting to know.
(An alias-holding A-Rank Adventurer isn't just for show, huh. ...Rather, seeing that level of ability and still holding hostility toward Rei—I honestly think that's genuinely impressive.)
The man who had been watching Rei's back thought that way as he recalled those who still harbored hostility toward Rei.
Meanwhile, Rei—completely unaware, or perhaps uncaring, that he was being thought of in such a way by other adventurers—had just finished off a roughly three-meter humanoid golem.
This golem was equipped with large shields in both hands. In terms of offensive power, it was clearly weaker compared to the other golems, but its defensive capability using those shields was extremely solid.
What's more, while its attack power was weak, a charge using those shields carried enough force that a direct hit could easily prove fatal.
It was a formidable golem, but when Rei channeled mana into Death Scythe and activated the Multi Slash Skill, even its sturdy shields were effortlessly slashed apart. Its torso was destroyed and the core extracted. In the end, he had easily dispatched a golem that multiple adventurers had been fighting together yet couldn't bring down.
(Now then, the remaining golems are few. In that case, what will the Dolan Workshop's alchemists do? Naturally, they won't simply let themselves be captured. If so, the most likely course of action is... running away, as expected.)
For the Dolan Workshop's alchemists, having deployed this many golems, they probably believed the odds of victory were high.
In fact, that judgment was by no means wrong.
Rei and Seto were unharmed, but several people had already died fighting the golems, and even those who hadn't been killed had suffered injuries severe enough to put them out of the fight.
Given that, the Dolan Workshop's choice was, in a sense, by no means a mistake.
However, the fatal flaw in that thinking was forgetting that Rei and Seto were among the enemy.
As a result, many golems had already been destroyed, and the battle had shifted in favor of Rei's group—or more precisely, the unit led by Mirusu.
Considering the current situation, it was highly likely that the Dolan Workshop's alchemists would judge that they had no chance of winning and flee.
"Seto! You don't need to fight the golems anymore! Fly up into the sky and attack anyone who tries to flee from this building! Capturing them alive is preferable, but if that proves difficult, you can kill a few of them!"
"Grrrrrrl!"
At Rei's instruction, Seto let out a deep purr as if to say leave it to me and launched himself into the sky with a few running strides.
One of those watching this showed visible dissatisfaction, wondering why Seto was being pulled away at a time like this.
Even if the number of golems had decreased, they hadn't yet defeated all of them.
In such a situation, deliberately dispersing their combat power was unacceptable.
If one were like Rei—someone who possessed enough ability to fight golems alone—it wouldn't be a problem given the remaining number. But for the rest of them, it was a different story.
More than one or two person held such thoughts.
Then, just as someone was about to voice their dissatisfaction, a single man spoke up.
"Calm down! Our objective is, first and foremost, the Dolan Workshop's alchemists... no, capturing everyone inside the Dolan Workshop! Given that, you should understand what the enemy will do now that their golems are losing! That's right—they'll flee! Are you willing to let our targets escape for the sake of your own skins!?"
Those words carried enough persuasive force to silence the adventurers who harbored resentment toward Rei.
Though, in reality, there were of course still those who harbored ill will toward him.
Even so, in this situation... to complain out of concern for one's own safety to Rei, who was acting to achieve the very objective they had been commissioned for—that was something their pride as adventurers could not permit.
Or perhaps it wasn't only those with such pride who held back. But either way, voicing such complaints here would undoubtedly lead to all sorts of trouble after this incident was over.
To avoid that, they simply needed to obey Rei's instructions for now.
"Hey, how long are you planning to just stand there! Let's go back up the ones still fighting the other golems!"
Though Rei had defeated the golem for them, there were naturally still those fighting golems in other locations.
Given that, going to aid their allies was only natural.
For those still fighting the golems, having watched Rei and Seto defeat golems for others, it was only natural to think that they should hurry up and come help.
Even those dissatisfied with Rei would find it entirely understandable to want to scream Are you kidding me!? if the golem they were fighting was put on the back burner while they saw those who had already gotten their golems defeated lounging around.
Because the adventurers understood that too, when told to go help others still fighting golems, they readily accepted and moved out.
(I guess things are fine here for now. After this... this unit's efforts really do come down to relying on Rei, huh.)
Thinking that way, the adventurer who had barked at those dissatisfied with Rei also headed out as reinforcements for those fighting the other golems.
"Mirusu, got a minute?"
Rei, having instructed Seto to act separately, didn't head toward the other golems. Instead, he came to where Mirusu was positioned.
Around Mirusu, those who had been injured in the fight against the golems and could no longer engage in full-scale combat had gathered.
Those with relatively minor injuries served as guards for them, while Mirusu issued commands from this position.
Normally, Mirusu should also have been on the front lines fighting the golems, but he remained at a distance from the action so he could respond immediately if the Dolan Workshop made any moves.
For Rei to come to such a place, it would have been unreasonable to expect Mirusu not to be surprised.
"Rei!? What's going on!?"
At Mirusu's flustered shout, Rei skipped the preliminaries and stated his business bluntly.
"Send anyone who can still move from this position to scatter around the perimeter of the Dolan Workshop. With the golems being destroyed one after another, the alchemists might try to flee. I've got Seto searching from the sky, but we should have people moving on the ground too."
"That's..."
He must have judged that Rei's words had merit.
If Mirusu had been on the Dolan Workshop's side, it wouldn't have been strange for them to have fled immediately given the current situation.
With Rei and Seto present, there was no chance of victory.
It wouldn't even have been surprising if they had started fleeing the moment Rei approached the Dolan Workshop.
The fact that they had instead prepared golems and launched a counterattack was perhaps because they thought—it was a real long shot, but maybe somehow they could pull it off.
Or perhaps the possibility that they were using the golems as a diversion to buy time while they escaped couldn't be denied either.
"Understood. I'll send out those with relatively light injuries who can still move."
If the ones fleeing were alchemists, they might possess the technical skill to craft golems, but in terms of raw physical combat ability, they were greatly inferior.
If these had been alchemists from outside Egginis, they might have been able to create and use Magic Items... but unfortunately, the majority of Egginis's alchemists specialized entirely in golem crafting.
Given that, there was little need to worry about Magic Items, and lightly wounded adventurers could easily handle them. So judging, Mirusu immediately issued orders to act in accordance with Rei's instructions.