The military forces will provoke the golems on the ground while entering and leaving the boundary at 10 points in the vicinity of Herthania Valley. We will begin the onvasion with 5 people from a point where the distance to the golems and Gigantic Rock Golem is the shortest once their caution is attracted to the maximum.
While destroying only the least amount of airborne golems at short distance, we will destroy the Gigantic Rock Golem in one go.
“Burkhart-san, this is the closest infiltration point, right?” (Wendelin)
“Earl-sama, you used 『Detection』 as well, right? The main target is right down in the middle of Herthania Valley.” (Burkhart)
To be precise, it’s right in the middle, deep inside the crevice running through Herthania Valley’s centre.
The Gigantic Rock Golem, which has no legs, is enshrined there as it gathers mana.
Surpassing a size of 100 meters, it has 8 heads at the front and 8 tails in the rear.
Storing a huge artificial personality crystal, which can manipulate 100.000 golems at the same time, and a device, which is able to produce at maximum 5.000 magic cores, albeit being low-quality ones, per day, in its body, it destroys all enemies which invade Herthania Valley.
According to the genius magic tool craftsman from the time of the Ancient Magic Civilization, Earl Ischrubak, it is a defence system that seems to be alive.
“It has 8 heads and tails?”
Although it won’t move, it will cause damage to an enemy by swinging its tails and firing rock bullets, which aren’t breath attacks, from its heads.
Given that it’s basically made out of stone, it isn’t as solid as the mithril golems we fought before, but that didn’t mean that you could take it lightly at all since since it appears that it will recover over time.
“It resembles 『Yamata no Ooki Ryuu』* I learned about in the past!” (Armstrong) (T/N: Left it like that because of the reference following below. Basically it would be “Eight-headed large dragon”)
It is similar to 『Yamata no Orochi』* which appears in the Japanese myths, but there are legends of legendary dragons, which have 8 heads, left behind in this world as well. (T/N: Yamata no Orochi or Orochi, translated as the Eight-Forked Serpent in English, is a legendary 8-headed and 8-tailed Japanese dragon that was slain by the Shinto storm-god Susanoo.)
The one doushi knows about is the one taught in the basic classroom lecture if you go to a school related to adventurers.
Though it was uncertain whether it really exists.
“I wondered about it since before, but if it has 8 heads, isn’t it a 『Nana mata no Ooki Ryuu』?” (Luise) (T/N: Left it like that for difference to what Armstrong said above. It translates to “Seven-branched/-headed large dragon” and is probably a pun towards that a dragon has already one head, otherwise it wouldn’t be a dragon, and thus the other 7 are its branches… though I’m not sure.)
“Luise-san, it won’t help even if you complain about such an old folklore, will it? Rather than that, it’s soon time, isn’t it?” (Katharina)
Katharina made a tsukkomi at Luise’s hair-splitting.
“It’s just as Katharina has said.”
While we were on standby with five people on a ridge of the rocky mountains which is located outside the boundary, the mixed forces of kingdom army and Earl Baumeister feudal army entered combat with the lured golem forces below.
“Oryaaa~~~!” (Erwin)
“Erw is putting fighting spirit into it. Though his reason for it is wrong…” (Luise)
Luise didn’t go easy on Erw who is wielding his treasured orichalcum sword while standing at the front.
Even Erw should have gone to the front with his sword that doesn’t lose its sharpness in order to lower the damage to our allies as his prime objective.
“That reason and his feelings of trying to show Karlsan his good side are fighting each other, aren’t they?” (Katharina)
“Katharina, you have no mercy either…” (Wendelin)
“All men at that age are like this, I guess. Hey, we will start soon.” (Burkhart)
An estimated 8.000 golems had gathered at the outer edge against the enemy invasion at more than 10 places.
They will be annihilated if these are all of the opponents, but there’s no need to go that far.
We are aiming for the Gigantic Rock Golem by using high-speed flight and since they have pulled the golems to the outer edges already, those golems won’t become a hindrance to the operation.
However, the 20.000 airborne golems didn’t move overly much.
It seems that they only deal with enemies invading from the sky.
“20.000, huh…?”
“Usually they are scattered in Herthania Valley. We will destroy the Gigantic Rock Golem quickly before they gather. Got that?” (Burkhart)
There’s no need to destroy all of them.
They will return to being rocks if we destroy the Gigantic Rock Golem anyway. The operation would fail if we spent that much time ((on destroying all of them)).
Burkhart-san emphasizes it especially for doushi.
“Please don’t stop on that occasion and become peerless or such, doushi.” (Burkhart)
“Tentatively I’m a professional adventurer as well, but…” (Armstrong)
In such a situation, he respects the opinion of the experienced Burkhart-san after all.
Even doushi obediently abides to the view of Burkhart-san who is his senior.
“It’s just for caution’s sake. The same applies to the others as well.” (Burkhart)
“Roger!” (Wendelin)
“Leave it to me.” (Luise)
“I’m itching to put my skills to good use.” (Katharina)
“Well, then let’s go!” (Burkhart)
Upon Burkhart-san’s signal, five people plunge into Herthania Valley with 『high-speed flight』.
The formation is: Katharina and me as two-top, behind us are Luise and Burkhart-san and doushi acted as rear guard for the sake of destroying the golems chasing after us.
“Burkhart-dono, there are no enemies in the back though.” (Armstrong)
“It would be a failure if they chased us at the current point in time…” (Burkhart)
Since we are still in the proximity of the intrusion point, the golems, which are in the sky, practically weren’t able to cope with us.
As there were several of them in front, we first threw tornadoes in the shape of spears made out of magic at them.
The hit wyvren golem and several others, which were in its vicinity, were smashed and dropped to the ground.
“You have to conserve your mana, Katharina.”
Although we formulated a perfect strategy on the basis of the data in the old book, it was a basic tactic to preserve mana as much as possible since we don’t know what might happen.
“That’s only natural. My mana capacity is lower than yours, Wendelin-san.” (Katharina)
Next Katharina uses magic against the ten-odd falcon golems which came in sight at the front.
“Tornado Break!” (Katharina)
Appropriate to her name 『Storm』, she suddenly creates a tornado in the middle of the golems at the front and blows them up into the upper sky.
The golems, who collided within the tornado, were damaged, destroyed and fell to the ground.
“Amazing. I want to attack something as well.” (Luise)
“Luise, you have to preserve your mana.” (Wendelin)
“That’s right, isn’t it…” (Luise)
Since she can’t use emission magic at all to begin with, Luise’s role is to directly inflict damage to the Gigantic Rock Golem with a powerful attack.
Preserving her mana to the limit until our arrival, she will deliver the final blow to the Gigantic Rock Golem.
This is Luise’s task this time.
『I will release my secret technique with the power of my entire body.』 (Luise)
『It looks like I can anticipate something (There’s one after all, a secret technique?』 (Wendelin)
『Wend, look forward to it very much.』 (Luise)
The Luise before our sortie was as usual.
“There are less golems than I expected…” (Burkhart)
Around 10 minutes after starting the storming, Burkhart-san tilted his head to the side.
According to the old book, the airborne golems should have come gathering more after this much time had passed.
However, with us having five times crushed a group of 10 to several dozens golems, the enemy didn’t appear in front of us overly much.
“Maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
“Artificial personality-san might be unexpectedly busy with its job.”
Once we continue flying for 10 more minutes, we finally arrive at our target point.
The huge crevice running through Herthania Valley.
The Gigantic Rock Golem is enshrined within, but in the sky above it more than 10.000 golems were waiting for us.
“Tsk! Did it guess our target?” (Burkhart)
“If there are this many of them, we won’t be able to enter the crevice.” (Wendelin)
Given that the Gigantic Rock Golem is inside the crevice, we have to destroy those golems first.
The golems were gathered in the sky with a density that covered the sky’s blue allowing one to guess that the majority of the 20.000 airborne golems was here.
“Earl-sama, it’s still within expectation. Go!” (Burkhart)
“Roger!” (Wendelin)
Even though the golems are drawing closer, I take out 10 magic gems and grasp them in both hands.
While focussing my consciousness even more, I began to prepare an advanced level spell at maximum.
“(Basically it’s refreshing to cast such magic.)” (Wendelin)
After accumulating ((mana)) for about a minute, the spell is invoked in front of my two hands.
As it took me two minutes in the battle against Great Grande back then, I have apparently grown quite a bit as well.
“Burst Tornado!” (Wendelin)
Since I don’t need to chant, I voice it out as something mood-like to let everyone know about the invocation timing of the spell.
The huge tornado, which was generated in the middle of the golems at a distance, raised a violent howl as it swallowed up thousands of golems.
Getting destroyed by crushing into fellow golems within the tornado, they fall down to the ground dragging the golems, who were safe in the surroundings, into it once the tornado dies down after a short while.
“Wendelin-san, you are strong at that kind of magic.” (Katharina)
“Yes, I am. It’s refreshing.” (Wendelin)
Since the opponents are golems, there’s no necessity to pay attention to something like intensity as with the previous wide-range Area Stun.
“It looks like we were recognised as threat to be purged.” (Katharina)
Since around 40% were destroyed in one go, the golems begin to move in order to eliminate us.
I was able to confirm that around half of the 7.000 ~ 8.000 golems are heading towards us.
“One more!” (Wendelin)
This time I fire the emission spell of the void attribute, which I used in the battle against the dragon golem, after pushing out my hands in front once again.
The power has fallen, but once hit, the golems are blown backwards, crash into the golems in the rear and thus break each other.
With their close formation having backfired, their preference in attacking with numbers doesn’t seem to be overly powerful after all.
“I saw it for the first time, but it has an absurd strength.” (Katharina)
Even Katharina destroyed a few thousand golems by firing tornado spells in rapid succession, but she ended up exhausting most of her prepared magic gems.
“However, their numbers have decreased considerably as well… Wait, aren’t they increasing?”
Certainly, although they should have decreased down to around 5.000, they have recovered to around twice that again for some reason.
“Did they already revive with the magic cores as basis?”
“5.000 per day, wasn’t it?”
According to the explanation of the old book, the Gigantic Rock Golem is capable of producing 5.000 magic cores per day. Releasing the magic cores from its buttocks part, golems take those away and small golems, just like living creatures, are born.
The born small golems attach rocks from around the area to themselves and grow big.
I felt like that was the explanation ((in the book)), but it might speed up the process to some extent if the losses increase all of a sudden.
“It has the materials after all.” (Burkhart)
There are the remains of the golems who fell to the ground after having been destroyed not long ago.
“Burkhart-san?” (Wendelin)
“It might become bad if we spend time.” (Burkhart)
The refining of magic cores might be limited to 5.000 per day, but there’s also the possibility of them continuing to increase for quite a while if they were able to store the produced magic cores.
It was necessary to hurry up the operation at this point.
“There’s only one huge reaction from within the crevice and several hundreds smaller ones. We will quickly destroy them by plunging into the crevice!” (Burkhart)
“True… Let’s storm in. Doushi!” (Wendelin)
“Leave it to me!” (Armstrong)
I decrease the number of golems by once again firing the void emission spell and doushi plunges into the crowd of golems at the same time.
———————————————————– End of Part 4 ————————————————————–