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48. Golem

It was so majestic that one couldn’t help admiring it.

「…It’s too big to use for dungeon capture.」

A white porcelain humanoid appeared, mowing down trees and all else in its path, stepping over the steep and inhospitable mountain without hesitation.

A golem.

Even though I detected its presence with my skills, I couldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes. A golem of such extraordinary size and precision. The stone giant, whom I only knew through knowledge, was staring down at the village.

「Marge, what should we do?」

「Shizuku, cooperate with Asagi and gather everyone in one place so that they don’t get caught up in the battle.」

「Okay.」

I watched Shizuku sprint away and looked up at the golem again. With such a conspicuous appearance, it can’t be called reconnaissance. It could destroy the entire village just by walking.

「Koe-san, what’s in that direction?」

「The production area where weaving sheds and other facilities are gathered. If it is destroyed, it will take some time to restore.」

「I can’t let it go any further than this, huh…」

The golem had a gigantic body that was comparable to the Snare Snail that I fought in the dungeon, and it was walking on two legs. I don’t know how much power it has hidden in it, but I have no other choice.

「[Asura’s Six Arms], activate. I’ll draw it away from the village first.」

「Understood, master.」

Six invisible arms appeared. It hit the ground and launched me forward, making a beeline for the golem.

「…This thing is quite hard.」

My three fists crushed its face, but the limbs were still intact. Follow-up attac–

「Are you perhaps the [Skill Lender]-san?」

「Huh!?」

「Hello there. I came here to visit you. Are you perhaps busy right now?」

「…I am, thanks to you.」

For some reason, I was greeted by a red-haired girl sitting on the golem’s shoulder, and I stopped my fists.

◆◆◆

It’s been about two and a half months since I came to the village.

The food reserves are quickly running out, and the time has come to fill everyone’s stomachs with the food purchased from Kinui. It seems that taking action early paid off. Thanks to this, we avoided starvation, but I feared what would come next.

『The people of the village being content with having their prisoners mine the dungeon to earn food without any effort.』

However, this situation did not come to pass.

In fact, being fed by captives was seen as a dishonor by the werewolf race. So much so that some of them were starting to learn how to explore the dungeon from me and Bellman’s group. The person who started it was the black-haired young man who insisted on severe punishment for Mello during her trial. He took on the role of flagbearer, and although he was struggling, he continued to train with the aim of reaching the deepest point of the dungeon.

There may come a day in the not-too-distant future when farming and mining can coexist as two pillars of this village.

Asagi has daily discussions with the villagers about farming, which is another pillar of the village.

「This time of year is called tillering where we branch the stems and increase it.In the case of wheat, we step on the stems and break them to make sure there isn’t too much or too little…」

「It might also be effective on rice. Let’s try it. Also, consider the draining of water.」

「The damage caused by weeds cannot be ignored.」

「It will decrease as the years go by. We just need to endure it for now.」

「There seems to be something like a disease in some of the rice plants…」

「Remove the bad parts immediately and use salt, vinegar, etc.」

It seems that they went through a lot of trial and error when cultivating wheat, and that experience has been put to good use in growing rice. However, as they are not exactly the same, there were some inexplicable differences that reared their heads.

「Marge-dono.」

「Thank you for your hard work, Asagi.」

「We don’t have enough manpower.」

Wheat is generally grown by scattering seeds in an open field. It seems that they did the same thing when trying to grow wheat in this village.

On the other hand, rice is grown in a safe place in advance until the roots emerge, and then transplanted to a paddy field. Furthermore, growth can be controlled by controlling the amount of water. As a result, the yield from a single seed is sometimes more than 10 times that of wheat.

It has no problem with continuous cropping, and the harvest is efficient. While it is suitable for the wolf’s hidden village, it also required a lot of effort.

「Marge, is there any skill that can increase the number of workers?」

「As one would expect, there is not. It would be a different story if it was golems, though. But that’s a bit…」

「Is there a problem?」

「You can’t learn it that easily.」

Even within skills there are ones which are difficult to learn and ones which are easy to learn.

Above all, the skill [Mud Infant] that creates and controls golems is in a class of its own. According to information I heard, it is a difficult skill that requires dedicating everything as an alchemist to mastering it. There are only a few people who can use it, and they only have one or two other skills at most.

「Someone like me who was in the position of distributing skills to the party, it was simply a skill that was difficult for me to get my hands…on?」

「What is it, Marge-dono?」

My presence detection that I had spread loosely around the village suddenly sensed something abnormal.

「…A golem.」