"So it was no good?"
"Yeah, sorry."
In response to Mirusu's words, the adventurers who had come out of the Dolan Workshop offered their apologies.
That said, the adventurers really had no reason to apologize here.
The shelter rooms within the Dolan Workshop.
They had somehow persuaded the people inside to come out of the building, but among them there was no one who knew about the Dolan Workshop's dark side like the man Rei had captured.
They were apologizing for that, but the fact that no such individuals were in the shelter was hardly the fault of the adventurers who had gone there.
Of course, if someone connected to the Dolan Workshop's dark side had been in the shelter room and the adventurers' mistake had let them escape, an apology wouldn't have been unreasonable... but that wasn't what had happened.
"What about Seto...? From the looks of it, seems like he hasn't found anyone either."
Rei, who had been listening to the conversation between Mirusu and the adventurers returning from the Dolan Workshop, murmured this while looking up at the sky.
In the direction of Rei's gaze, Seto was still flying through the air, circling and surveying the area around the Dolan Workshop.
Even though Rei had asked Seto to do exactly that, he had judged that it would likely be difficult for Seto to find anyone who had escaped from the Dolan Workshop.
After all, the alchemists Mirusu and his team had captured were also people who had fled the Dolan Workshop using hidden passages.
For Rei, he couldn't understand why they hadn't immediately fled elsewhere after traveling through the hidden passages.
"Then shouldn't you call Seto back already?"
"Just in case. I think it's highly unlikely, but because I think that, I can't completely deny the possibility that slacking off there might turn out to be a mistake... right?"
When Rei said that, Mirusu nodded.
Even with underground passages available, the possibility that someone might deliberately travel above ground to escape—taking the enemy by surprise—couldn't be denied.
Whether anyone would actually do such a thing was, honestly speaking, uncertain.
Even so, if there was even the slightest chance, it was better to be safe.
(If more golems appear or something comes up that only Seto can handle, that would be a different story.)
As far as Rei was concerned, there was no pressing need for Seto to do anything urgent at the moment, so for now he simply had him keeping watch from the sky.
"More importantly... hm?"
What to do next.
Rei had been about to ask Mirusu that, but suddenly his gaze shifted.
Mirusu and the other adventurers followed Rei's line of sight.
There, they saw an adventurer running toward them.
For a moment Rei wondered if it was an enemy, but when the adventurer noticed Rei, Mirusu, and the others looking his way, he waved his hand broadly.
If it were an adventurer hired by the Dolan Workshop... or by Dailas, he would never bother waving at Rei's group like that.
That meant the person was running toward them because he had some business with Rei's group.
"Is that... Myona?"
The running man was apparently an acquaintance of Mirusu, who muttered the man's name.
Looking again at the face of the man named Myona, Rei confirmed that he was one of the few who had fought Dailas inside the building where the Holy Four Assembly was held and survived. Rei remembered his face as well.
"If the guy we left behind at Dwanda and the others' location is coming here... does that mean something happened?"
Seeing the man named Myona approach, Mirusu muttered this with a bad feeling about it.
Indeed, wondering what on earth he could have come for in this current situation, Rei could only agree with Mirusu's premonition.
"For now, shouldn't we decide what to do after hearing him out?"
The man who had been apologizing to Mirusu for not finding a single target among those brought from the shelter said this, and Rei and the others felt the words were reasonable, so they nodded honestly... and judging that they should hear the story as quickly as possible, they moved toward the running Myona.
When Myona reached Rei and the others, he shouted at Rei first.
"Rei, sorry, but you need to come back to the building where the Holy Four Assembly was held!"
At those sudden words, Rei was caught off guard for a moment... and then turned his gaze toward the Dolan Workshop.
"Did the guys who escaped from the Dolan Workshop go to rescue Dailas? I don't think they had the leeway to bring golems with them, but..."
"No! Well, in a way it might be similar... Dailas-san... no, Dailas has absorbed corpses and turned into something like a giant golem, and he's rampaging!"
"...Huh?"
Rei had thought the Dolan Workshop alchemists had led golems to rescue Dailas, but what came out of Myona's mouth was entirely unexpected.
"What exactly do you... no, anyway, the fact that you came here means the rampaging Dailas can't be contained with just the forces left behind there, right?"
The people inside the building were those the leaders had brought in, judging their hired hands to be skilled.
Given that, the people there should have been reliable as a corresponding combat force.
But the fact that Myona had come to fetch Rei meant that the forces left behind were helpless against it.
(Absorbed corpses... so it's what you'd call a Necro Golem. In a way, it's fitting for a golem from the Dolan Workshop, which uses necromancer techniques. I didn't know how Dailas obtained such overwhelming power, but from the sound of it, that seems to be the cause.)
He was probably adjusted to serve as the core of the Necro Golem.
Given Dailas's position, why he would do such a thing to himself... honestly, Rei had no idea. But considering the current situation, that guess didn't seem far off.
"A golem of corpses... let's just call it a Necro Golem for now, but we can't exactly leave it as it is. Mirusu, I'll head to the Necro Golem. Is that alright? If Seto and I go deal with the Necro Golem, you'll need to handle any golems that appear here on your own."
Since they had already defeated that many golems the first time, Rei expected no more would appear.
But that was purely Rei's expectation, and in that sense, the possibility that an alchemist was still hiding inside the Dolan Workshop, waiting for an opportunity to deploy golems, couldn't be completely denied.
If Rei and Seto were gone, Mirusu and the others would naturally have to fight any golems that appeared.
"I don't mind. A Necro Golem, huh. A form fitting for that name... Please defeat an enemy like that as quickly as possible. Thinking about something like that rampaging through the city, we can't exactly investigate the Dolan Workshop calmly either. ...By the way, I forgot to ask, you mentioned Dailas absorbing corpses, but are Dwanda-san and Robel-san safe?"
Mirusu asked Myona with a serious expression.
Dailas had become a Necro Golem, and Lusitania had been killed by that same Dailas.
Given that, the only ones left to govern Egginis were Dwanda and Robel.
As far as Rei was concerned, since Orban was acting as their bodyguard—technically Robel's, but they were together—he didn't think they would be killed so easily.
However, he had only heard about the Necro Golem, so he didn't know what kind of power it actually possessed.
Given it was a golem created by the Dolan Workshop—though that expression might not be entirely accurate—and given they used necromancy for golem cores, it wouldn't be strange for them to possess considerable knowledge of necromancy.
Thinking along those lines, Rei's prediction was that it would possess a corresponding level of combat power.
"They're safe. Um... the bodyguard took them away the instant he saw the Necro Golem start rampaging."
The bodyguard in this case was undoubtedly Orban.
Whether Myona knew Orban's true identity, or simply judged him as a skilled bodyguard without knowing anything—Rei couldn't tell, but at least it was a relief to confirm that Robel was safe.
"I see. Then I'll head out and defeat the Necro Golem right away. ...Seto!"
"Grrrrr!"
Hearing Rei's voice, Seto, who had been flying through the air, dove straight down toward the ground.
Stroking the head of Seto, who had landed on the ground without any trouble, Rei made his request.
"Seto, apparently an enemy is rampaging in the building where we were just now. I want to defeat it. Will you come with me?"
"Gruu!"
In response to Rei's request, Seto purred as if to say, "Of course!"
For Seto, there was no way he wouldn't grant a request from Rei, whom he loved.
Moreover, he had been flying through the sky on the chance that someone might escape from the research facility, but in the end no such person had appeared.
The escapees had fled using hidden passages and underground passages, so it was only natural that Seto, flying through the sky, couldn't find them.
It was possible they had traveled through underground passages to a building some distance from the Dolan Workshop and emerged from there, but in that situation, Seto couldn't seize enemies coming out of a building either.
In the end, he had just been flying around doing nothing in particular.
For Seto, who had been idle like that, granting Rei's request and heading somewhere else was no problem at all... rather, it was exactly what he wanted.
"Alright, Seto says he's in too, so I'm going to go defeat the Necro Golem."
The reason Rei was going together with Seto was, as expected, because flying on Seto's back was overwhelmingly faster than running on the ground.
Normally, riding a Tamed Monster and flying through the sky in the city was an illegal act, but in the current Egginis, doing so was not a problem.
Rei mounted Seto's back.
Seto immediately began to run, flapped his wings, and soared up into the sky.
On the ground, Mirusu and the others prayed that Rei and Seto would defeat the Necro Golem as quickly as possible.
"Whoa, it got that huge? I heard it absorbed corpses, but I don't think there were that many corpses inside the building."
Seto, having taken off from the Dolan Workshop, arrived at the destination—the building where the Holy Four Assembly had been held—in less than a minute.
However, the building where the Holy Four Assembly had been held was now in a state that could more appropriately be called ruins than a building.
Beside that building, the Necro Golem was in the process of destroying it.
(That Necro Golem was Dailas transforming... or rather, absorbing corpses to become it, right? If so, its will should be Dailas's, so why is it destroying that building?)
According to what Rei had heard, that building had been specially constructed for holding the Holy Four Assembly.
In a manner of speaking, it was regarded as a symbolic building for those who governed Egginis.
So why was the Necro Golem, which should have possessed Dailas's consciousness, destroying that building?
Honestly, Rei couldn't understand that at all.
(Or perhaps, by becoming a Necro Golem, Dailas's ego is gone? If Dailas still had his ego, I don't think he would do something like that. If that's the case... that means it's even more dangerous in that sense.)
For now, the Necro Golem appeared to be focused on destroying the building where the Holy Four Assembly had been held.
But that was only for the moment.
What would happen elsewhere as time passed—unfortunately, Rei didn't know that either.
"Seto, we're taking down that Necro Golem. ...Still, it really has gotten huge."
He had heard from Myona that it had grown considerably large for some reason.
Even absorbing the corpses that had been inside the building, it was larger than that.
However, the size of Dailas's... the Necro Golem's size was beyond what Rei had expected.
Why it had grown that large was, unfortunately, something Rei didn't understand.
But if told it was a Necro Golem, there was something strangely convincing about it.
"Well, we can't just leave things as they are... Seto, first strike. We need to draw its attention over here too."
"Grrrr!"
At Rei's words, Seto nodded and dove toward the Necro Golem.