Chapter 90 – Rock ‘N’ Roll
“A monster, you say…? That’s a golem.”
“What are you talking about? Golem is a monster, isn’t it? Isn’t it just right to defeat it?”
On a slope overlooking the Dark Forest, we watch a huge golem roaming about.
The mounted golem is said to be an artificially modified wild species, but its appearance is more different than we had imagined.
Instead of the robot-like shape I saw on the way to and from the imperial capital, it looked somewhat like a haniwa (clay figurine). It was about 4 meters tall and made of stone. Not ore-like, but mossy rock. It is like a rocky golem. In his hand is a club… or rather a tree itself nearly 3 meters long. It is scurrying around, looking for something.
“It must be looking for us.”
“What did you do, Myrril?”
“I had to let some Beastman escape from the forest, so I put a .45 right in its eyeball. It didn’t scare it off, though.”
“Of course, shotguns wouldn’t work either. The sodofu* couldn’t even reach the upper half of its body. I tried shooting at it with a thirty-ought-six from above the canyon, but that was also repelled.” [T/n: Sawed-off shotgun.]
Myrril and Minya talked without a trace of regret. From the beginning, they probably didn’t think they would be able to beat it.
That’s true. Handguns, shotguns, and rifles are not meant to break rocks.
Well, as for RPGs…
“Okay, then, Yadar, you want to go first?”
“Ohhhh, can I shoot?”
I took the warhead out of storage and inserted it into the firing tube. Then, after confirming that it went all the way in and evacuating the Beastman from behind Yadar, I handed it back to her.
“Safety device check. Scope light on.”
“Safety confirmed. Scope confirmed.”
“Raise the firing hammer.”
“Hammer’s up.”
“Align the target with the center of the horizontal bar and the top of the vertical bar.”
“Target in line.”
“Backward check. Safety release.”
“Safety off.”
“Fire!”
Wosh!
Surprisingly, the sound is not loud. Although there is a huge burst of flame from the rear of the tube, the recoil is reduced by it, and in fact, there is almost no shock. However, the speed of flight was much faster than seen in war movies.
When it hit the left flank of the slowly moving rocky golem, it was gouged out with a dull thud, and its left arm was ripped off.
“…Amazing, what a power!”
Without screaming or showing any anger, the golem noticed us and began to walk toward us.
“Who’s next? We don’t have much time.”
“I’ll do it.”
Biot, the Bear-Beastman, raises his hand. We can hear the golem’s footsteps approaching. Just as well, since he is a serious and calm type. The RPG-7 looks so small in his huge hands. The trigger guard looks tight, but there seems to be no problem.
After a series of safety checks, he holds up the firing tube with the warhead set.
Wosh!
Immediately, the golem twists itself, causing the aim to be slightly off. The bullet lands on its right shoulder and explodes. The golem, which had lost both arms, stamped its foot in a small gesture of anger.
“Hey, Myrril, does the golem have emotions?”
“I don’t know that, but… even monsters are living creatures, so I can’t say that they don’t.”
If they were intelligent enough to communicate, I wondered if they had any feelings of guilt, I thought to myself in the corner of my mind.
After killing more than 30,000 “human beings,” it is meaningless to talk so nicely about it now.
The golem loses its balance as it tries to rush in and falls over, unable to get back up. It looks like an old comedy, but there is nothing comical about it.
The golem crawls and writhes, gets up on its knees, and prepares to lunge again.
“Next… then, Perun, it’s you.”
“Oh.”
He’s the young Werewolf who served as Heimann-jiisan’s bodyguard at the Machine Gun Seat. Perhaps it’s because he’s been through the ordeal, or perhaps it’s his original personality, but he’s somewhat aloof and has a strong sense of humor.
After quickly and accurately confirming the safety, he holds up the firing tube.
“Fire!”
Wosh!
The warhead flew straight up and pierced the golem’s gouged left flank. Yadar’s first shot blew out the back of the cavity, which was already crumbling, and shredded it from the waist up. Whether there was a core there or the connection to the limb was severed, the rocky golem collapsed and stopped moving.
“That’s good; let’s pick another target for everyone after that.”
“I’ve heard that they often attack in couple between the male and female golems.”
“Eh? What do you mean by ‘male and female’… golems have a male and female?”
“I don’t think they reproduce. They are often found in pairs, one large and one small, so we just call them “couple” as a matter of convention.”
Whether it was a male or a female, the sound of tree canopies shaking and trees crunching in the depths of the dark forest was definitely heard.
“Yoshua, does it take three shots to kill a large golem?”
“No, it only takes two shots. However, if you can target a specific part of the body, such as the hip or waist, you may be able to do it with just one shot.”
However, at first, you want to take it easy and limit the number of people on the front line to three at the most, with a total of at least ten warheads.
The reason for keeping the number small is also a matter of safety control. The firing flame of this weapon stands out like a flash every time it is fired. There is even a story that it is called a suicide weapon because of the concentrated fire it receives after being fired.
I don’t want to send my comrades to the front line with such a thing. That’s why I support them.
Let’s hope the RPG-7 will not have many chances to appear in the Casemaian after I’m gone.