Chapter 116
“Now, make sure you get this to Ophilia. Got it?”
“Got it….”
After we finished trashing the department store, we went home. At the ground-floor entrance, I took the paper bag that Dohee unnie and Chaea unnie handed me and went up to our place. Inside was a pouch with the odds and ends Ophilia had supposedly given me, along with something we bought at the department store.
“We’re heading out!! Bye, Eve~~!”
“Ah, goodbye!!”
If I judged by the distance we covered while going around the department store, it’d probably come out to half a lap around the Earth, but we only bought a few things anyway. I can roughly guess what the present for Ophilia inside this bag is.
‘Does Ophilia wear underwear..?’
If she does, that’s interesting in its own way; if she doesn’t, that’s a little strange too. I tucked the bloated-belly doggo under my arm and pressed the button for our floor in the elevator.
ㅡbeep-beep
I entered after punching in the front-door password, and the smell of food was already drifting from the entrance, as if Ophilia had been cooking.
“Ophilia, I’m home.”
“Princess, you have returned. Was your outing enjoyable?”
“Mm… it was fun, but I feel like all my energy got drained out of me.”
“An analysis of women who visited department stores in Gangnam showed an average walking count of about 20,000 steps. I judge that Princess also got a fair amount of exercise.”
“Uhe….”
“Therefore, let us give stretching a rest today.”
“Yahoo~~~”
Yeah, we really did walk a ton. When I handed Ophilia the paper bag the sisters had given me, she rummaged around, pulled out the pouch, and found the gift.
“Princess. What is this?”
“Ah, that’s a present from Chaea unnie and Dohee unnie to Ophilia.”
“Mm, I see.”
“Would Ophilia not need it..?”
“Using it wouldn’t be a problem. It’s just a luxury item at an unnecessarily high price.”
“Expensive stuff is nice to wear, I guess….”
Ophilia does wear underwear. I learned something new today.
‘No, I guess that’s obvious..?’
* * * * *
I don’t do stretching, but I still stream for the golems. Honestly, it’s kind of fun? I just leave the stream on, chat a little about this and that, and watch them post reports on what they’ve been doing.
I don’t know whether they have phones or installed computers, but they take pictures of what they did today and email them to me. Then I check the inbox, look at the photos, and talk to them a bit about it.
“Wow, you found the boss! Nice work!”
Today, they said they had pinpointed the boss’s location in the newly purchased Gate and defeated it for the first time. The boss, which looked like a huge pill bug with a massive body, had been smashed to bits all over the place, and Minium was lying behind it.
Minium was in front of it, giving double thumbs-up.
Boss monsters differ from Gate to Gate, but they feel like they pop back up somewhere after about a week to a month.
“Whoa… that’s insane..?”
And after checking everything through the analysis device and setting the market price, a report said they make about 800 million won every time a boss is defeated. Staring so intently at a lump of text like this makes it feel like I’ve become the CEO of a super successful company, which is funny.
“Mm! Minium, excellent work! And Suri and the golem soldiers get my praise too!!”
Today’s stream was also super full of content. I said goodbye, telling them I had to go, and they’re all telling me not to leave, but I’ve already been streaming for two hours.
“I’ve got nothing left to talk about now. You guys should go rest too! I’m ending the stream, okay?!”
ㅡminium : no way
ㅡminium : jesus christ
“You’re not even religious, so why Jesus?”
ㅡclick
As long as the stream was fun, that’s enough. After turning it off and looking over the streaming platform’s main page, I could see all kinds of people. There were viewers in the 5,000 to 10,000 range, VTubers too, all sorts of different people.
ㅡAh, Angel! What the hell is that player?!
ㅡAh, Angel! Looks like an angel, but plays like the devil! Total Lucifer~!!!
“Wow, they’re good at the game.”
A stream of someone putting on a huge show in a streamer scrim match. Come to think of it, when people go live, most of them are playing games.
“Hmm, should I try playing games too..? But the games I play don’t really suit streaming.”
Leaving the stream on just to show a boring fish eating, or while I steal brainrot and stuff, doesn’t really have the right vibe. Of course, the brainrot side might have some funny scenes… but still, it doesn’t really suit streaming.
And I’m not even doing a skill showcase. If I turned on Hyper Shot and just kept showing myself dying, the golems might say it’s boring and leave the stream.
“Oh dear, so those in charge really do have a lot on their minds.”
“Princess, it is time to eat.”
“Mm-hmm.”
For now, it was time to eat.
* * * * *
“Huff, huff….”
ㅡclack!
“The profitability is better than what we initially analyzed. The boss entity’s mana stone is of excellent quality.”
“Kwahaha! Now that’s a find!”
ㅡsqueak….
“Really? Was it pretty strong? If Suri and Minium had a hard time, then it must have been really strong.”
ㅡsqueak
“It wasn’t hard? Unhihihi, okay, okay.”
ㅡbeep..!
Anyway, all the golem buddies gathered in the forge today. If you ask why, it’s because Grandpa Galahad’s parts are going to be replaced.
When he was first made, he was built with high-weight metal, but generally golems aren’t great at flashy movements; they’re better at steadfastly carrying out simple actions.
Using high-weight metal to make a tank golem is basically standard Earth practice, but Grandpa Galahad isn’t that kind of case.
“3.1 tons? Wow… Grandpa is super heavy.”
“Kwahaha! This body has some heft to it!”
“Mha-hang.”
Having recorded a ridiculously huge weight on the industrial scale, Grandpa came back down with a booming thud. I wonder if this feels like a scale to him.
“But now it’s different! Come, look at this!”
“Woooh!!”
Grandpa’s handmade, super-strong, ultra-light, ridiculously hard magical metal ingots were piled up in a mountain. They’d been stacked outside the forge like a hill, and even though the volume was enormous, the weight reduction was absurdly good, so the total weight was only about 400 kilograms.
With ordinary metal, of course, it’d be impossible; you can only make it by mixing in expensive lightweight rare metals from certain Gates.
“I’m probably the only blacksmith in the world who has this technique! Kaha-hat!”
“Amazing, Grandpa!!!!”
“As expected of Sir Galahad’s eye for quality. Splendid.”
Ophilia also picked up an ingot, looked it over from every angle, and swung it around in her hand as she nodded. Even though they were the same volume, the difference between the two metals was about 7.7 times, and apparently a difference like that is completely possible in metallurgy.
Osmium, the heaviest metal in the world, and lithium, the lightest, differ by a whopping 44 times for the same volume. Of course, we’re not just after lightness—we also need to preserve strength—so we have no choice but to borrow the power of rare metals.
“Hwaa, how much is all this?”
“About 270 million won.”
“Kkyep.”
And then there’s the long-awaited 12 kg of high-priced, high-purity mana stone. The mana stone used for Ophilia is said to be even more expensive than this one—wasn’t its weight about 800 grams back then? This one costs as much as 22.5 million won per kilogram.
The one used for Ophilia costs a ridiculous 60 million won per kilogram. There aren’t many for sale either, so when one doesn’t show up, you have to pay extra above asking to buy it—it’s an absurdly catastrophic price.
“Grandpa, are you going to use all of this?”
“That is correct.”
“He’s really going to get stronger…. Does he need this much..?”
“P-Princess?”
“Ah, that’s not what I meant.”
He already had some mana stone in him when Grandpa was made, but if you add this much more, it makes me wonder whether he’ll become something even more amazing. How much stronger would he get?
“Princess, when you make a golem, do you know what power mana stone has?”
“U-um… I’m not really sure?”
“The mana stone used in golem creation affects the finished golem’s adaptability.”
“Adaptability..?”
In other words, it refers to the property of being able to change. If you made a golem with 100 kilograms of metal and 200 grams of high-grade mana stone, you could alter the golem’s body by as much mana as is contained in those 200 grams of mana stone.
If the mana stone is significantly scarce and you use mostly metal, you’ll end up with a clunky golem whose abilities and power are only on par with the original metal. But if there’s enough mana stone to cover the whole mass of metal, then even with the same amount of metal you can make a golem that is far more flexible and high-performing.
“I see, maybe the fact that adding mana stone to Doggo gave it extra functions is like that.”
“That is correct.”
ㅡbeep!
“So you want more mana stone? What are you going to do with even more mana stone in there? You’re not going to start stuffing your face with feed again, are you?”
ㅡbeep….
More mana stone is one of those things where more is better... well, not exactly, but if there’s enough of it, you can make a much stronger golem. Among Awakeners, it’s common knowledge that the person with the most mana is the strongest.
“And this is the result of using enough mana stone to cover all of the metal used.”
“Uing?”
Ophilia reached out and rested a hand over her chest as she spoke.
“N-no way..!”
“That is correct. This body is an artificial body made with a total of 30 kg of rare metal and 800 grams of high-end mana stone. It possesses enough mana to more than cover the entire mass of metal.”
“Does that mean…. Grandpa can become human too?!”
“Correct.”
“Hwaeeek!!”
Yeah, now that I think about it, something was off. Ophilia clearly appeared in human form, so I’d been wondering why Grandpa still looked like a robot even though he used more metal. It was the ratio of mana stone that mattered.
“G-Grandpa!! Please come here quickly!!”
“Kwahaha! Understood, Princess!”
Grandpa’s super-massive body came thudding over to me. He was 4 meters tall, so I had to look way up at him, but Grandpa dropped to one knee halfway, and I stood with one foot planted on Suri’s back.
“Princess, then.”
“Ah, yes! Ophilia!”
ㅡclick!
ㅡsqueak….
ㅡbeep-beep-beep!!
The other golems were fully brimming with anticipation too. Honestly, I was a little, no, very much excited as well. Grandpa’s true form—of course I was curious.
“Huff, huff..!”
“You just need to stay calm, Princess.”
“I-I understand..!”
Grandpa’s true form—what would it look like? It felt like something was just about to come to mind.
‘Okay, let’s do this.’
As seriously as possible. I’m a princess, after all, so I put a princess’s dignity into it.
“Sir Galahad, I bestow upon you a blessing in the name of the Princess!”
ㅡflash..!!
In an instant, an enormous amount of mana was sucked in, and the metal piled high toward Grandpa Galahad was drawn in as well. The blinding light flashed before my eyes.
The mana that had gathered in a circular shape quickly shrank and contracted, then changed form as it spat out the original metals in a rattling, clattering shower, back into ingot form.
“Hweh..!”
ㅡclack..!
ㅡsqueak..!
ㅡbeep-beep..!
As the light gradually faded and it became enough for me to open my eyes, I felt a warm breeze.
“G-Grandpa..?”
“Princess, thank you for remembering me.”