26 Dragon-chan’s trip, part 2: Golem hunting

Three days after I left that town, I had left that country, the name of which I didn't even know, and entered Ordesia, where Douglas said he'd be after I crushed Regulus. Soon after, I came across another town, so I decided to see what that one was like. It seemed to be rather prosperous, so it probably has some kind of specialty export. I landed a few dozen meters from the gate, shifted back to my humanoid form, and released my magic, becoming visible.

"Halt! Who goes there?" (Gate Guard)

"I'm a wandering adventurer, I'd like to enter and learn about this town, as well as get some food and a place to stay the night" (Nene)

"Very well. You seem a bi-" (Gate Guard)

"A bit young to be an adventurer, yes, I know. In truth, I am too young by the rules of many countries, however, where I registered, there were no age restrictions" (Nene)

"I see... Anyways, this town is called Ferritea, it is, or was, a mining town, known for its high purity iron, abundant mithril veins, and being the only place in the country one can mine adamantite... however, our mines have become unusable due to an outbreak of Golems that don't seem to have their numbers go down, no matter how many we kill. The highest we've found is Iron Golems on the lower levels of the iron mines. We don't know what is inhabiting the mithril and adamantite levels, but they can't be easy to deal with, considering that we've not been able to have anyone enter there and leave alive" (Gate Guard)

"Hmm. I'll see what I can do about that problem you've got" (Nene)

"I was telling you that so you'd stay away from the mines... They've killed a B rank adventurer, as well as a C rank party. Don't be so eager to die!" (Gate Guard)

"Yeah, but I've beaten several A and S ranks, and I have an S rank as my disciple. I think I can handle some Golems... After all, I have earned the Golem Grinder title" (Nene)

"Get a load of this pipsqueak. She says she has an S rank as a disciple. Really? What's his name, and where is he now?" (Man coming through the gate)

"His name is Douglas, he's either in Regulus or here in Ordesia, depending on how-" (Nene)

"Douglas, you say? There's an S rank by that name who took care of an Elder Dragon a week or two back. I was there when he said that he still can't hold a candle to his teacher, someone by the name of Nene. Still, you are too young to be his teacher. Besides, he's from Regulus, and you beastkin are almost exclusively slaves there. You might want to check your facts before claiming something that impos-" (Man)

"My name is Nene. You can check my card if you want, and it doesn't matter if he came here from Regulus, he and I are both from the Drachen Empire. Also, Regulus no longer has a system of slavery that allows slavery of anyone who is not a criminal. I made sure of that when I crushed its castle... well, melted it, actually" (Nene)

At that, they roared with laughter, and I just rolled my eyes and went in the gate after I handed my card to the guard. Once I was inside, I went to the guild, told them I'd accept the quest for clearing out the Golems, and went through the usual "you aren't strong enough, you're not old enough, you don't have enough people" conversation, so I just showed the receptionist the Golem Grinder title and went to the mines. Sure enough, there was a guard on the entrance to the mines, one who pointed his spear at me to prevent me from entering.

"Wow, talk about an overreaction... I'm here to enter the mines to deal with the Golem problem. It's a request that's gone through the guild, and I do have the strength to do it, even if a Mithril Golem shows up, I'd be fine. I've broken mithril swords with my hands before, and I've slain several dozen Golems, stone or better, if not hundreds or even thousands of them. I've dealt with a group of four Mithril Golems on my own in a space similar to a mine, and, uh, one more thing... Your pointing a spear at me won't do anything at all... That spear has an iron spearhead, and so the chances of it hurting me is nil. Hell, I keep a pet who would eat that spear for breakfast. Wanna meet her?" (Nene)

Just then, Lapis gave a soft roar from my hood, roughly translating to "I'm not a pet, you know".

"What was that? That sounded like a Dragon in the distance... Hey, if you're an adventurer and you heard that too, you should go report it to the guild, right? Go on, scram" (Guard)

"Four things... First off, there're three Dragons, not one, in this area... that I know of, at least. Second, all three are what you'd call God Dragons, so no one country has the strength to beat even one of them. Third, they are not a threat to anyone besides bandits or monsters... or shopkeepers' food stores... and fourth, they aren't in the distance, they are right in front of you. The pet I was talking about? She's in my hood, a Gold-bordered Blue Dragon named Lapis. Another one is in my cloak, Gold-bordered Red. His name is Rubel" (Nene)

"O-o-o... oh... Okay... And the third?" (Guard)

"I'll tell you about her later... If you're still here when I get back from the mines" (Nene)

"You still can't enter. Sorry, I'm under strict orders not to let anyone pass" (Guard)

"You can't really stop me, and besides, do those orders apply to those asked to enter by the guild? Ah, whatever. It's not really a problem if they do, I could just force my way past, or sneak past. However, I think you should actually, you know, understand my strength. I've got the Godslayer and Golem Grinder titles, and as I said before... that spear has no chance of hurting me" (Nene)

With that, I walked into his spear, and when it hit my chest, the tip just... broke. That is even despite the fact that my chest being quite soft and squishy... Yeah, unlike Yuna, I'm not flat... well... OK, fine, I'll admit it... I am flat as a board... I've just used shapeshifting to change that... I'm only twelve, I have time to grow, right? Right? Anyways... As I was saying, his spear broke, and he was surprised. I grabbed the broken tip as it spun in the air, and Rubel poked his head out of my cloak, sniffed it, and shook his head, as if saying "Not pure enough". I then crushed the bit of iron in my hand, and walked past the dumbfounded guard into the mines after leaving him a mithril tipped spear, and having taking the slight amount of time it took to inscribe it with "A gift from a wandering adventurer, not to any one guard, but to the guardhouse, for use by whoever needs it at the time"

Once I got into the mines, I almost instantly encountered an Earth Golem, which shattered with a light punch. I couldn't use magic, as we were inside the mines, but I shouldn't need it. I progressed down and down, still managing to oneshot everything, even after I came across Iron Golems. I went further, and came across a Mithril Golem. I punched it, and, for once, it didn't break. It had cracks, but it still could move. I punched it again, and it did shatter that time. I kept going, and then...

"Is that an Orichalcum Golem? It's my first time seeing one... I wonder what it'll take to kill it?" (Nene)

I punched it, and it didn't do more than stumble back a step. Looks like I'm going to have to get serious... somewhat. I extended my claws, and shoved my hand into its shoulder, perfectly separating its arm from the rest of its body. Before it could reattach that arm, I stored it in my Hoard. I then realized that, as orichalcum has the ability to repair itself if you put in magic power, it was able to regrow that arm over time. With that... I got an almost infinite supply of it, as it seemed to stack very well with the large amount of magic power in a Golem's core and a Golem's innate regeneration, such that it can create new parts as opposed to taking a bit from all over to heal small cuts, as it normally would. I summoned a dozen or so of my Dragons, between Gold-bordered Green and Gold-bordered Blue, gave them temporary storage rights for my Hoard, and asked them to cut off the limbs of any Orichalcum Golems they came across, storing the cut off parts, until the Golem ran out of power, at which point they would just store the rest of it and come back to me. I tried to get groups of two or three of the Golems in the area of a single one of my Dragons, and I didn't forget to put up a sign at the entrance to the mine saying "Do not enter until (three days from that point) due to large-scale fighting and slight risk of cave-ins. Signed, the teacher of an S rank adventurer"

I kept going, killing single golems in one hit by shoving my hand into their cores so as to keep the power in said cores, to increase the value of them. For groups, I left a Dragon farming them, and going along like that, I reached the lowest level of the mine, where I encountered a group of seven Orichalcum Golems, twelve Mithril Golems, and a room behind that group. I killed the Mithril Golems, left two of my remaining three Dragons farming the Orichalcum ones, and went past them. There was just a single Golem in that room, but it was my hardest fight to date, as it broke my claws when I tried to do the same thing to it that I did to the others. Punches did nothing, and I had to resort to using one of my strongest magics, being {Draconic Invite: Mjolnir}, to completely fry the Golem's core. I could have cut it using {Tempest Edge} but that would probably have caused a cave-in, which I didn't want. I went outside by way of collecting all of my Dragons and their spoils, took it out, and noticed why it was so hard, as I couldn't see its color very well inside the mines. I have night vision, but it's black and white, sadly. Anyways, the Golem was an Adamantite Golem, a Golem with difficulty on par with that of an Ancient Dragon, or God Dragon if it's inside of a cave, like that was. I took it to the guild, and the three others inside of it freaked out. The funny thing is, the guard from when I tried to enter the mine was walking past the guild as one of the adventurers ran out in a panic, looked inside, and fainted.

"Umm... uh... I... uh... How did you kill this thing? I can't see a visible wound anywhere on its body? Also... I think this is an Adamantite Golem... That's... a group of S rank adventurers would have trouble taking that thing down... how are you only rank C?" (Guildmaster)

"Uh... I think it's because I'm just doing whatever looks interesting and killing what I come across, so I'm not getting the needed quest counts... and I tend not to stay in one place long enough to have them see my strength enough with their own eyes to be able to bypass the quest count. Not sure though, I mean, I don't have much knowledge in the ways the guilds work. Oh, the way I killed it was by using lightning magic" (Nene)

"I see... Well, you have enough quests completed to rank up to B now, so... congrats, I guess. I think, based on all of your titles and your 100% request completion rate, that you could easily be rank S, based off of your skill alone. I'll add on the Adamantite Annihilator title... I hope that this is the last Adamantite Golem I'll ever see, and that the mines will be free from Golems from now on. Did you kill all of them?" (Guildmaster)

Yeah... I already am S rank, as he's going to learn in a few minutes when he puts my new title on both of my cards.

"I killed all of the ones I could find, and I made sure to clear all of the levels that had Mithril or higher... oh right, I should probably sell the other golems I killed. I'm going to want to keep this Adamantite Golem, it'd be a great advertisement for my shop or something... maybe a blacksmith's shop, actually, but..." (Nene)

"I guess you can keep it... we probably don't know how much to buy it for, in any case, and even if we did, we might not have the funds to do so. So, how many other Golems do you have?" (Guildmaster)

"Uh... I have... let's see... 1481 Iron, 273 Mithril, and 66 Orichalcum Golems. I didn't collect anything from the Earth and Stone Golems, so they should still be in pieces in the mines, if someone wants to get them" (Nene)

Should I have understated the numbers? I know he couldn't buy them all, and I have the Golem Grinder title already, so they wouldn't help in getting me another title, not that I really need more. I think this is just bad for his health...

"Fourteen... Hundred... Iron Golems... almost three hundred Mithril Golems... sixty six Orichalcum Golems... That... That's a threat on par with a horde of Elder and Ancient Dragons... and you beat them... casually... That's it, I'm done. I can't deal with this... I think I'm going to retire soon... Oh, right. We don't have the money to buy more than a hundred or so Iron Golems, a dozen Mithril Golems, or a single Orichalcum Golem... You'd have to go to the capital to be able to sell that much... and even then, you'll probably only be able to sell a small portion of them. I think that you have earned yourself more money than a Duke has... Like, you could buy a small country with this much... and considering your titles, you have the materials or the payment for the materials of a few Ancient Dragons at least... that's... enough to live off of for a few thousand years while living like a king... well, in your case, it'd be like a queen" (Guildmaster)

Yeah, it was bad for his health... oops...

"Yeah, uh... considering all of the stuff I have, I could actually live more like a hundred thousand years as a queen if I wanted to. I even have the lifespan to do so, funnily enough. Well, I'll sell a hundred Iron and a Mithril Golem, how about that?" (Nene)

"That's about as much as we can pay for, so... sure. I'll just bump you up to B, and then we can go to the warehouse and you can put them there. I'll assume that you have a relic item bag or something, because you are amazing enough that I wouldn't be surprised at all if you did. Also... should we... wake that guy up? And, uh... can you put away the Adamantite Golem? I don't want to make more people faint" (Guildmaster)

"I'll wake him up and put away the Golem while you deal with my rank and title" (Nene)

After saying so, I handed the guildmaster my cards, put away the Golem, created some water, and splashed the guard with it. He woke up wearing a startled expression, looked around, confused, and his gaze landed on me.

"So... what am I doing here? Why are you back here already? Did you run from an Iron Golem or something? I knew you couldn't do it... You're just a C rank girl" (Guard)

"B rank, actually. I just completed the request for the Golem subjugation, including several dozen Orichalcum Golems and a few hundred Mithril Golems. I had to use some pretty strong magic on the last one though... that (insert extremely strong language that one wouldn't expect from a girl in her pre-teens) couldn't even be scratched by my claws..." (Nene)

"Wait... the hell? Nene, can I talk to you for a second?" (Guildmaster)

"Sure" (Nene)

I walked over to where he was, and he and I started to talk in a whisper.

"Why do you have two cards? Why is one of them rank S? Why does it say that you joined before you were even six years old? Why-" (Guildmaster)

"I decided that being rank S at twelve in a country that doesn't let people my age even be adventurers would cause me way too much trouble, so I got a second card. I got to S rank after a lot of hard work. I joined when and where there were no age restrictions. Does that answer your questions?" (Nene)

"I... I guess so. Even so... My god... I think I really will retire soon..." (Guildmaster)

Soon after, I got my cards back, sold some small portion of the Golems, and then left town towards the Ordesia's capital city for the purpose of selling more of the Golems. I even got a note from the guildmaster saying that these came from my quest to clear the mines, and listing the ones I had already sold. I was also given his letter that announced his plans to retire, which he said was due to "a sudden onset of mental instability and aging due to surprises from the B rank adventurer with 27 titles known as Nene", a letter I was to give to the capital's guildmaster. That reason, the "sudden onset of mental instability and aging due to Nene", by the way, later became known as "Nene Syndrome" or "The Nene Effect" and was used as a reason by several dozen retiring guildmasters and high-ranking adventurers over just the next few decades, let alone the rest of my life. Whoops.