Fetche – 4

ㅡCRASH!

Had I gone about halfway down the stairs leading to the underground ruins, I turned my head at the thunderous explosion heard from behind. A rock-formed eyeball was limbering up at the start of the stairs.

Its appearance was like a human eyeball carved from rock with four legs attached to it. According to the setting, it was one of the golems that served as guardians of these ancient ruins.

And it was also a clever fellow who would help me with what I was about to do.

‘First, I should probably run away.’

To skip the rest of the section entirely, I first had to enter a little deeper into the ruins, so I quickly ran down the stairs.

From behind me, I heard a ‘Deu-deu-deu-deuk’ sound of stone rubbing against stone. It was the sound of the golem retracting its legs into its body.

Soon after, the stairs began to vibrate. This meant that the Eyeball Golem, which had transformed into a perfect sphere, was rolling down the stairs.

The sound from behind me grew louder, but I continued deeper inside, passing several crevices arranged for hiding. Only when I reached a precarious point did I hide myself.

The moment I squeezed my body into the crevice, the Eyeball Golem rolled past the passage. It was a timing where, if I had been even one second late, my legs would have been crushed, or my lower body would have been mangled.

From the other side of the passage, a ‘Kwang!’ collision sound echoed, and a fierce shockwave swept through the passage. I slipped out of the crevice. It was flailing its legs and spinning around in place.

As expected, its stupidity was just like in the game.

After that, nothing much changed. It was a repetition of running to avoid the Eyeball Golem rolling and chasing me, hiding in crevices, and then dashing forward while the golem, having crashed into a wall, spun around.

As soon as I repeated this exactly four times, I arrived at a vast plaza. It was a place that allowed me to skip the entire middle section of the ancient ruins and proceed directly to the boss battle.

Although there were as many as eight paths in the plaza, I didn’t have to worry about getting lost. Because the real path had torches lit next to it, making it easy to distinguish if one observed carefully.

ㅡKwaaaang!

That is, if one could observe carefully while the Eyeball Golem was rolling from behind them.

As it had done so far, the Eyeball Golem crashed into the plaza wall, then spun around in place, and seizing the moment its rotation stopped, it extended its legs.

A large iris turned towards me. Kkeum-ppeok, its rock-formed eyelid blinked once. Finally, the golem, standing majestically on four legs, looked down at me.

It was a creature that I could easily defeat if I wanted to. Like a golem, it was strong against physical attacks but weak against magic and divine spells, so if I just changed its attribute, I could roughly beat it down.

I was leaving it alone because I needed to use it to skip the ruins.

‘This is it.’

I chose one of the dead-end paths and entered, approaching the bridge near a cliff that was abruptly broken in the middle.

The bridge that should have connected the two cliffs had long since collapsed. Through the gap, ancient ruins of dizzying depth were visible. If I didn’t use a trick, I would have to descend all of that, one by one.

That is, if I didn’t use a trick.

From the other side of the passage, I heard the Eyeball Golem, which had followed me, preparing to roll again. I pressed myself tightly against the cliff and gripped Wingless Nightmare with both hands.

ㅡKuru-reureung…….

I heard the sound of rocks colliding with each other, and the Eyeball Golem appeared. It was a size that virtually filled the passage. That’s why there were crevices on the side, to avoid it.

Here’s a very interesting fact.

That roll can also be parried.

It’s impossible with other parts, and it’s only possible when it makes contact with the part that precisely corresponds to a human iris, so the timing is truly insane and frustrating, but the key was that it was possible nonetheless.

I adjusted its rolling speed by moving my position little by little. I had to make sure its iris was facing me when it reached the very edge of the cliff. Only then could I parry it without getting crushed.

I accelerated the Eyeball Golem’s speed a few times, and then stood at the very edge of the cliff again. In that state, I waited for it to roll towards me. The ‘Kwang-kwang’ sound approached right in front of me.

‘Now.’

As I intended, it revealed its iris just before reaching me. Matching that moment, I swung my sword. The blade of Wingless Nightmare collided with the large, rock-formed iris.

ㅡKwad-deu-deu-deuk!

The Eyeball Golem’s body sharply twisted sideways. The golem, having performed a 90-degree right-angle drift, immediately slammed into the passage wall. With a ‘Kwaaaang!’, a shockwave erupted.

My body, directly caught by that shockwave, floated up into the air. And then I began to fall downwards. All sorts of structures, paths, and bridges shot up from below.

As always, this was a technique that used a falling attack.

Unless one used wall-clipping or glitches, it was safe to assume that skips always involved a falling attack. Excluding the routes intentionally designed by the developers for this purpose.

‘Got it.’

A torch brushed past right in front of me. If the torch brushed past like that, it meant I had the angle just right. If it was further than this, or if I hit the torch? Then I’d just die from the fall and have to try again. What else could I do?

Not long after, the figure of a mob that would become my sacrifice appeared. In fact, it was a bit ambiguous to call it a mere mob. Because it was a giant golem, twice my height, holding a bow and staring blankly downwards.

Anyway, to have a comfortable boss battle, I had to defeat it. If I went in without defeating it, it would shoot arrows. That’s quite annoying.

‘It’s good to take care of it while I’m at it, I guess.’

Gripping Wingless Nightmare upside down, I landed on its head. With a ‘Kwajijik!’ sound, it couldn’t even react, and its head was crushed by the divine punishment from the sky.

Originally, it was a distance that could never be reached by jumping. If I had clumsily tried to jump down from that spot, I would probably have fallen miserably and died somewhere in the boss room.

However, by pressing tightly against the cliff and parrying the Eyeball Golem’s roll, and then being propelled by the shockwave generated when it slammed its head into the wall, the distance could be covered by falling.

This was the trick to skip the entire ancient ruins.

I descended to the ground, breaking through the golem’s shoulder. Using my sword as a support, I spun my body half a turn. Wingless Nightmare vertically split its entire upper body, starting from its head, reducing my falling speed.

I landed lightly on the ground. The golem, whose head had burst and upper body had been vertically split in half in just a few seconds, fell backward with a ‘Kung’ sound. Soon, its entire body crumbled into pieces.

Shaking off the stone fragments clinging to my blade, I looked down at the boss room. The boss of these ancient ruins, the ‘Six-Armed Golem’, was leisurely wandering around the massive plaza.

It had a complete human upper body, but where its lower body should have been, two arms were attached instead, and two large arms were attached at the position of its shoulder blades. Because of that, it had a total of six arms.

‘I can’t just jump down from here…’

If my HP stat had been just 5, I would have just taken some fall damage and been fine, but with 1, I couldn’t. I quietly followed the path behind the railing. Anyway, it was a quick trip from here to the boss room.

“I just need to pick this up.”

I picked up a scroll from among the fragments of the Six-Armed Golem’s corpse.

This was also a magic scroll, but it wasn’t something Minerva would go crazy for and rush at, like an ancient scroll. It was just something that seemed interesting, nothing more.

I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t classified as an ancient scroll, despite being a scroll found in ‘Ancient Ruins’.

Still, if I gave it to her, she’d probably show some interest. I carefully tucked the scroll I had picked up into my inner pocket.

The golem’s corpse disappeared as if weathered into stone, and a magic circle was drawn in the center of the boss room. I stepped onto the magic circle. Then, the platform itself began to rise into the air.

‘I wonder what happened to Fetche by now.’

I had told Rije to handle her appropriately, so she probably hadn’t died yet.

She might be in a state where she’s literally just not dead, but the Rije I knew wasn’t the kind of person with such a brutal personality to do something like that. Of course, that included the other Knight Commanders of the Silver Dawn Knights.

The platform, which had been rising vertically towards the ceiling like an elevator for a long time, stopped inside a dark room. I stepped off the platform and pulled the lever placed right in front of me.

Then, the entrance, which had looked like a wall, was lifted upwards. Dust scattered everywhere with its movement, as if it hadn’t been used for a long time.

I waited for the door to fully open before stepping outside. A familiar sight met my eyes. It was Rije and Nyx. Their expressions brightened considerably, as if they had also spotted me.

“Oh, you’re here? Delta?”

“Hehe, you’ve arrived?”

Rije smiled brightly and waved her hand, and Nyx gave a shy smile and likewise waved shyly. I waved back.

Just as I was about to approach the two of them, a very urgent voice was heard from somewhere.

“De- Delta-nim!”

‘Delta-nim?’

At the very unfamiliar address, I turned my head towards the direction of the sound. A woman with pink twin-tailed hair, to put it bluntly, Fetche was frantically running towards me.

And she was naked.

‘What the hell? Is she crazy?’

Startled, I tried to avert my gaze, but because I thought I’d caught a glimpse of something faint, I looked back at Fetche.

Upon closer inspection, she wasn’t naked. It was just her usual outfit: an underboob top and tights that were practically the length of briefs, but the angle she was running from was so exquisite that it looked like she wasn’t wearing anything at all.

For a moment, I wondered if Rije had stripped her clothes off and was tormenting her. With the long coat that had covered about half of her body gone, I was once again struck by the revealing nature of that outfit.

‘What a fright.’

As I lightly patted my startled chest, Fetche, who had run right up to me, bowed her head and prostrated herself flat on the ground.

But her butt was facing me.

“Please, hit me as much as you want! I beg of you!”