Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear

After I destroyed the Stone Golems with one punch each, I noticed that the party was looking at me differently.

「Where does all that strength come from when you have such a small body?」

The tall Toya-san said while patting my head.

「I can’t think of her in the same way as before.」

Senya-san said and touched my arm.

「Hmm, so soft!」

What was soft? The Bear-san? Or my arm?

I shook the two of them off and moved forward.

Thanks to my recent demonstration of skill, our formation had changed; for some reason, I, a frail girl, was walking in front with Jade-san.

Mel-san said she would cover us and that I didn’t have to worry, then went to the back of the group.

While walking at the front of the group, I silently wondered if it was a good idea to change the layout of the party this suddenly.

Well, since I could defeat the golems with a single punch, I didn’t really need others to watch my back anyway.

I decided to deal with any Stone Golems that appeared from now, but when we got to the Iron Golems, I would first see how Jade-san’s party fought them.

Since I could basically defeat the Stone Golems with a single Bear Punch, I decided just to keep going with it and not try other attacks.

Well, I wanted to try using magic, but I was worried about the tunnel’s stability. It would be bad if the tunnel collapsed because I used magic poorly.

「The tunnels were strengthened with magic, so they won’t crumble from just a bit of magic, you know.」

Jade-san told me, but how much was just a bit of magic? Would a light Bear Punch or weaker magic be fine? I really had no idea when he told me like that.

If I tested it and the tunnel collapsed, we would end up being buried alive…

Since I didn’t know how much strength I could use, I decided to just keep Bear Punching the Stone Golems.

「Our roles have completely reversed now, huh.」

Jade-san said after I defeated another Stone Golem with a single Bear Punch.

「Yuna-chan, you’re too strong.」

「Defeating Stone Golems with a single punch each is just unbelievable.」

「It’s a good thing I didn’t make fun of you earlier.」

「Yeah, because if you did, you would have become like those Stone Golems, you know.」

「Yeah, and I would properly engrave your gravestone with, 『Here lies Toya. He was mauled by a bear.』」

「Don’t just kill me off!」

Everyone laughed at his retort.

We kept moving forward without a problem and arrived at the next floor, where Iron Golems would start to appear.

Based on how the strength of the golems changed based on the floors, this kind of felt like a dungeon. There had been dungeons in the game, but were they in this world too?

If they were, I would like to dive into one at least once.

However, before considering a dungeon raid, I first had to deal with the Iron Golems in front of me.

I could melt iron with Fire Bears, but doing that in a tunnel would be suicidal.

It would be great if I could wrap their heads with water and drown them, but they wouldn’t suffocate, right? Hmm, they might rust and be unable to move if I doused them in salt water, but I probably wouldn’t be able to sell their materials afterwards.

Would I be able to cut them up with Bear Wind Magic? No, I would probably destroy the tunnel faster than I could defeat them.

I could try using Earth Magic to make a Bear Golem and pin the Iron Golems down, but I didn’t really want to use that in front of Jade-san’s party.

I could also make a pit to bury the golems inside, but if I dug up the floor like that everywhere, it might cause the tunnel to sink. Also, I wouldn’t be able to get the iron that way.

I wanted to give some of the Iron Golem bodies as souvenirs to Gold-san and Gazar-san, but I would also love to take some for myself and turn them into pieces of art.

I decided to just try using a random attack for now, while also watching how Jade-san’s party defeated them.

Since the floor had changed, I could now detect several Iron Golems, including five of them far away from us.

So, those were the five Iron Golems they had been talking about.

Huh? From what they told me, the golem that started this all should be behind the five golems, but my detection magic didn’t pick it up.

Was it not there, or was it among those five?

Overthinking wouldn’t help, so I decided to just defeat any Iron Golems that came our way for now.

When the first Iron Golem came into view, the party immediately moved into battle formation.

The Iron Golem looked just like an Earth Golem, but made of iron. Its thick arms looked like giant hammers; getting hit by those would surely mean death. If the golem could understand me, I would have definitely recommended that it become a carpenter…

「By the way, how do you defeat an Iron Golem?」

「Normally, there is no other way than to just keep damaging it until it stops moving.」

「Though if we weren’t in a tunnel, we could defeat it with strong magic.」

Mel-san muttered with a sigh.

I knew it, they had it hard because we were in a mine.

This location made it hard to use magic, which reduced the variety of usable attacks.

Well, this didn’t change what I had to do: approach the golem and hit it with a Bear Punch.

Using the mobility of the Bear Shoes, I drew close to the Iron Golem, which swung its giant hammers towards my head.

For an instant, I considered using the White Bear Glove to block it, but I realized that it could turn out badly and decided to avoid it instead, and the hammer-like arms hit the floor with loud bang.

After getting past its arms, I hit its body with a Black Bear Punch.

Normally, hitting iron would hurt, but thanks to the Bear, it didn’t hurt at all.

The golem was pushed back a few meters, but it didn’t collapse.

I knew it; it was different from Stone and Earth Golems.

This one was hard, heavy, and solid.

Yep, it was troublesome.

Just hitting it with enough power to take down Stone Golems wasn’t enough here. I had to hit harder.

Since I had already tested my attack, I decided to leave the rest to Jade-san’s party.

Immediately after I hit the golem with a Bear Punch, Mel-san sent an Earth Golem at it. Magicians could compress the earth to make it harder, so the Earth Golem that Mel-san sent was able to dull the Iron Golem’s movements for a moment, but it didn’t seem to have dealt any damage. Toya-san used the opening to attack and knocked the golem’s arms aside.

It was like attacking an iron pillar. There was no way a sword could cut it.

When the golem turned to face Toya-san, Senya-san prepared to attack it from behind.

She was holding her knives; was she planning on attacking it with knives!?

Senya-san quickly closed the distance and cut its leg. Well, I said cut, but it wasn’t like she actually cut it off. Still, there were visible traces where she cut it. I didn’t see that wrong; she had cut it with a knife.

「Senya is wielding mithril knives, you know.」

Mel-san explained to me when she saw that I was surprised.

So, she had mithril knives, huh. Well, considering her rank, it wasn’t that strange.

Senya-san continued to slash at the same place until the golems leg finally broke off.

Amazing, she was able to cut that giant leg with just a knife.

She showed a satisfied expression when the leg hit the ground, and Toya-san, who had been keeping the golem’s attention all this time, finally got a chance to catch his breath.

「Jade’s sword is also made of mithril.」

Toya-san and Senya-san backed away from the golem, which lost its balance after its leg were cut off, and Jade-san came in to strike the golem with his sword.

The golem tried to use one of its arms to protect itself, but Jade-san was able to cut it off in a single strike.

Amazing! A mithril sword was able to cut off an Iron Golem’s arm?

「It isn’t just the mithril sword, you know. It’s also thanks to Jade’s skill.」

Mel-san explained to me as if she had read my mind.

She was right. If anybody was able to defeat an Iron Golem with a mithril sword, they would just have to loan the swords to rank D and rank E adventurers and resolve this problem in an instant.

It was only thanks to Jade-san’s skill that he was able to cut off a golem’s arm; that was why he was rank C.

In this case, Senya-san being able to cut it with a knife was quite amazing as well.

I wondered what my sword technique was like.

I used a sword in the game, but I didn’t know how good I was in this world.

If I had a mithril sword, would I be able to cut it?

It would be great if the Bear Cheat had an effect on my sword skills as well.

The Iron Golem tried to get up but couldn’t with only one leg left, so Jade-san took his time to deal with the remaining golem’s arm.

He dodged it by taking a few steps back, attacked it, and then dodged again.

「Ah, if only I had a mithril sword myself, I could cut it as well…」

Toya-san watched Jade-san with a frustrated expression.

「Impossible.」

Senya-san spoke a single word of denial, and when he tried to rebuke,

「Last time Jade lent you his sword, you weren’t able to cut it.」

Senya-san added, shutting him up.

「Giving you a mithril sword would just be a waste.」

Senya-san delivered the final blow.

Jade-san continued to carefully cut the golem, making its movements duller and duller, before it finally crumbled down into a mountain of iron.

The remnants looked pitiful; if they couldn’t be defeated more cleanly, the golems couldn’t be made into artwork.

Author’s note:

I bought a new hard drive and had to reinstall the operating system; that’s why the chapter is short.

If this solution won’t work, I will have to consider buying a new PC.

I just connected to the Internet and still have quite a few things to do, so the next chapter will also be short or late.