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“Hyaah!”

Lucella, stepping into the golem’s range, launched a powerful kick. She braced one leg and struck with the other, utilizing the dragon-like strength to strike the golem’s abdomen without relying on her body weight.

The sensation was peculiar. It was undeniably hard, but the feeling of ‘breaking’ was strangely absent, much like hitting a mass of cotton.

The golem, resembling decorative armor, was blown back but quickly rebounded and prepared to counterattack.

“Not letting you!”

Then came fire. Kafal’s clone compressed a vast amount of energy, forming something that could only be compared to a small, shining sun. She hurled it at the golem.

The golem’s movements were swift. It avoided a direct hit and lowered itself. Right after that, the incandescent fireball exploded directly above the golem’s head.

The deafening explosion was beyond hearing, an overwhelming pressure. Moreover, as it was unleashed within the enclosed building, the shockwave reverberated, sweeping down the long corridor, even causing Lucella to roll vertically.

For a moment, Lucella feared that the building might collapse. However, due to its unknown durability, the nearby door crumpled and broke, while the floor and walls merely warped. The golem was no different.

It happened in an instant.

Without flinching from the explosion and without stopping its charge, the golem swiftly and efficiently thrust its blue-glowing sword, piercing Kafal’s abdomen.

“Mom!”

Even though she knew it was a puppet being operated remotely, her heart turned cold.

The moment the sword pierced her, Kafal’s clone disappeared like a pile of dust blown away by the wind. It vanished as if it had never existed, leaving no trace.

—An anti-dragon weapon!

Lucella realized it.

The swift disappearance of the wounded clone and the dispersal of the dragon aura. Furthermore, considering that this building dates back to the time of the Human-Dragon War when dragons were considered humanity’s enemies, the security golem should possess the power to combat dragons.

If that were the case, the assumption that the glowing sword was the pinnacle of dragon-slaying theory and high-technology, an anti-dragon weapon, seemed straightforward.

Kicking the warped floor, Lucella began to run. The golem crossed its light blades generated from both hands in a defensive stance, advancing toward her. Its footwork was nimble, incorporating side steps left and right without compromising speed, and it employed feints.

As it closed the distance, it used its right foot to step in, raising its right hand high and then swinging it down toward Lucella.

It was a close call as Lucella bent her body halfway while stepping in with her right foot, slipping through the attack from the right-hand sword.

However, awaiting her was the left-hand sword, held in a defensive posture. The golem extended its left elbow, which had been folded.

“That won’t work on me!”

With Kafal removed from the equation, it became a one-on-one battle. The attack was aimed at delivering a blow and ending the fight, even if it wasn’t necessarily a mortal wound.

As a precaution, Lucella positioned herself to receive the attack with one arm, ready to discard it if necessary. Even if the sword of light cut through her arm without resistance, she intended to use the remaining part to fend off the golem’s arm and create an opening. However, when Lucella raised the cuff of her adventurer’s attire as a makeshift shield to block the sword of light, the attack only resulted in a burn-like injury on her arm without tearing through the fabric.

Anti-dragon weapons were the pinnacle of ancient human wisdom. The technology used today was based on the same principles, or rather, it was an imitation of the technology born during the Human-Dragon War.

Lucella had already confirmed that these weapons didn’t affect her using the weapons held by the Kugutfulm Guild. Anti-dragon weapons weren’t sorcery concept-based attacks; they were tools born from analysis and research, designed to dissect dragons.

The resilience of a dragon’s physical body was a result of the dragon aura. However, if you could deconstruct the “enhancement through the dragon aura” while inflicting damage to the body, even human strength could manage to pierce scales, tear through flesh, and draw blood.

Weapons employing this technology were referred to as “anti-dragon weapons.”

However…

Unlike dragons, who absorbed the wild energy of nature to turn it into dragon aura, Lucella generated something quite different, something difficult to describe, not quite magic power or dragon aura, a pseudo-dragon aura. This is why she couldn’t match up to true dragons, but also why anti-dragon measures didn’t work against her.

With her hand solidified like the tip of a spear, Lucella thrust it into the golem’s side. No matter how reinforced the joint was, it remained fragile. Lucella’s thin and small child-sized hand easily reached into the depths of the machine, piercing through the gaps in the armor and the inner layers, reaching the intricate mechanisms. The complex and delicate internal mechanisms were typically far more fragile than the armor plates. Lucella’s hand, glowing red-hot, melted the wiring while grabbing the core in the golem’s left chest, squeezing it until it crumbled.

The next moment, the core blew up.

“Uwah!”

The golem’s slitted eyes cracked from the inside, and from joint to joint, there was an explosion of force, a bluish-white energy light, and mechanical parts spraying out.

Then, both of its light blades disappeared, and the golem collapsed in a cloud of smoke.

“…I survived…”

Lucella let out a sigh of relief and pulled her arm out of the golem’s wreckage. While the explosion and flying machine parts didn’t leave her with any visible wounds, the compressed energy explosion from ancient technology had still damaged her dragon-like resilient body.

Her right hand, in particular, which had directly gripped the core, was in worse shape than she had thought. She couldn’t help but look away; she had only glanced at it for a moment, but it was obvious she was missing fingers and there were holes.

Lucella immediately took two blood potions from her storage pouch with her left hand and drank them. While healing magic and healing potions could close wounds, they couldn’t regenerate lost flesh. To replenish the necessary nutrients for that, she relied on blood potions.

Previously on Mount Kuguse, she used the Variant flesh to make up for it, but after learning from the experience, she started carrying quite a few blood potions on her. It would be pointless if she lost the luggage, but this time it served its purpose.

After drinking, her right arm began to regenerate quickly. It twitched and made cracking sounds, accompanied by a mixture of pain and an itchy sensation.

While trying to avoid looking at her own arm as much as possible, Lucella surveyed her surroundings. There didn’t seem to be any reinforcements rushing at her.

—Was the golem guarding against entry into this room…?

Lucella couldn’t help but wonder as she stood in the room at the end of the hallway. The sealed door, after being crushed by Kafal’s spell, easily broke with her full-powered kick.

Then, Lucella gasped in surprise.

“What is this… a morgue?”

At the very least, there was no furniture or anything else in the room. On the floor, 15 unusually sturdy sheets of fabric were neatly laid out.

On 14 of these sheets lay skeletons. The bones were all dressed in tattered clothing, and their stature appeared to be that of human adults.

It was an eerily tranquil space with only that inside. If these bodies had been left to rot, there should have been clear signs of decaying flesh or evidence of scavenging insects (or their remains). However, there were no such grim traces. It begged the question: had these skeletons been arranged here after the flesh had rotted away, or had someone been cleaning this place?

—There are some skeletons that seem… female…

Lucella noticed that among the skeletons, there were some dressed in skirts and what appeared to be feminine shirts.

Save my Mom.

Could one of these individuals have been the mother of the mummified girl? It was impossible to tell just by their skeletal remains.

“Speaking of which, why was the girl from earlier the only one in a bed? And in that state…”

The fact that these 14 individuals had turned into skeletons likely meant they had died without taking the “life-prolonging medicine.” If that were the case, the girl upstairs had been alone after everyone else had died…

Lucella shook her head, trying to dispel the bleak thoughts. Right now, her own safety should be the priority. She needed to escape from this place where dangerous guardian golems lurked. While the golems were likely following orders from a thousand years ago to protect the building, Lucella wished they’d stop attacking and instead show her the way out. She would gladly leave on her own if they just pointed her in the right direction.

It was apparently normal to give Keycards to everyone entering and exiting the buildings. It might sound strange, but, for example, servants would receive a keycard that only opened the back door, whereas the master of the mansion would have a keycard granting access to all doors. Thus, the keycards determined which locations you could enter.

Lucella considered the possibility of finding a keycard that could be used for her escape here, but she couldn’t see anything that looked like one. Just to be sure, she even checked the pockets of the corpses, but found nothing.

“Is this place really just a storage room for bodies…? Well then, maybe I should look for the place where they keep luggage, or rather, personal belongings. There might be—”

But then, it happened.

“Grooooooar!”

A furious dragon’s roar pierced through the thick ceiling and shook the entire building.

“Mom!?”