Chapter 13:
Guidebook and Inn
WE TOOK SEVERAL BREAKS for the horses to eat and rest as we continued northward. The green scenery from the back of the wagon continued to slowly flow by. Soon, it was midday.
By then, I was a bit bored, so I took out a book from my bag: the Illustrated Guide to Golems. The golems in the fields had reminded me I now owned this book. With so much free time in the wagon, why not spend some of it on reading? I also had Edible Wild Grass, but I wasn’t in urgent need of any grass-gnawing. Golems were far more important.
“This book has quite handsome binding…” Had it really been all right for the bookstore grandma to give me such a discount? It hadn’t clicked when I was paying, but if this was originally worth six silver coins and I paid only one and copper change, then it was the equivalent of having the price of a sixty-thousand-yen book dropped to ten thousand. I had done something outrageous.
“Oh? Is that the book you bought yesterday?” Mr. Chotos asked.
“Yes. It’s on golems. Listen, I got this for about one silver coin, but…could that possibly have turned a profit?”
“What? One silver coin?! That’s unheard of. An academic book like that should be far more expensive. If that’s all you paid, that store’s definitely in the red.”
“Ugh, I thought so. I have grievously wronged the bookstore grandma.”
Had she accidentally given me the wrong price? Although I hadn’t realized it at the time, I might have acted as a swindler who took advantage of the elderly. For a man who took pride in his cultured nature, this was an unforgivable act. I was drowning in the seas of my guilty conscience.
But Mr. Chotos seemed to be thinking something different. He was smiling. “Ah, I see. You bought that book from Old Dancy’s shop, huh? No wonder she gave you such a good price. You should be grateful and accept it.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Her grandson was seriously injured by Dazu’s group last month. Luckily, they left him his life, but it was a terrible thing. Seeing as you beat Dazu so thoroughly, she must’ve wanted to express her gratitude.”
So that was what was going on. Even though I had been given a rare gift, everything still came back to that illegal act of violence against the punk gang. I felt a little ashamed. But if this gift had brightened the grandma’s mood, I supposed everything was okay.
However, given this new knowledge, I now understood the debt collectors had been misbehaving all over Tibar. This Paisley Company had hired those guys to do those things, which in turn made them responsible for more brutality than I had already imagined.
Frankly, I was getting nervous. Why did Mr. Chotos have to go and borrow from that company, of all places? There was a limit to mere stupidity.
Or should I say, mister, I don’t know how exactly you’re misunderstanding this, but the one who tossed out that big muscle-meatball wasn’t me, it was Gol.
“Looks like you helped out the bookstore grandma…” I said as I rubbed Gol’s head. “Good for you, Gol.”
Gol was delighted, but slightly confused at the same time. I suspected she didn’t know the reason for the rubs. Her flustered movements just gave me that impression.
Again? When are you going to start listening to other people?
“In any case, if that’s what happened, I shall indulge in the grandma’s kindness and gratefully read this book.” I sprawled on the soft blanket spread out for us and flipped open the cover.
This Illustrated Guide to Golems, if I were to compare it to something from my original world, felt like an illustrated textbook for junior high to high school students. I didn’t really know how widely books were distributed in this world, but there appeared to be some degree of difficulty involved in reading this one.
It might be out of this less-informed-than-a-kindergartener’s league, but that can’t be helped. Let’s work hard to understand it.
Fortunately, when I flipped through the pages, my translation ability didn’t corrupt any words. The descriptions were probably about the illustrations, so I didn’t think there would be any references to spells that weren’t in the book, for which I was relieved.
I flipped back to the beginning, but this time, I took my time going through it. I had plenty to spare.
Mmhm, mmhm, very interesting… I see. It seems there are two classes of golems: light and heavy.
Heavy-class golems ranged from three to six meters tall, like tank-level huge. Most were for military use, but a portion did engineering work. Meanwhile, over 90 percent of the golems in this world were light-class. From what I’d seen, Gol was most likely a light-class golem.
Were the “light” and “heavy” classes determined by weight? Or were they based on height, or even horsepower?
“Hey, mister, about the class distinction for golems, on what basis—”
I raised my head to ask a question, but it seemed Mr. Chotos was snoring sloppily on the blanket. Teru was also snoring, though much more cutely. Their stomachs had just been filled with lunch.
“These two sure do sleep a bunch…” They didn’t resemble each other at all, yet you if you studied their habits, their blood relation was clear.
The only ones left awake in the lightly swaying wagon were me and Gol. I sprawled out on the blanket reading the book, and Gol laid beside me so we could look at the book together.
“Are you interested in the illustrated guide, too?”
Gol drew her face closer and looked very satisfied, her cheek rubbing against my shoulder.
“You really do like rubbing your cheek against my shoulder, huh? Are you thinking this should be some kind of new trend?”
Gol looked at me with her pleased, sparkling crimson eyes. She was in a wonderful mood. In that case, I wanted her to do whatever she wanted and enjoy this pleasant journey. I let my partner do all the rubbing she desired while I dropped my gaze back to the illustrated guide.
Um, where was I again…? Ah, that’s right. The part describing the class distinction between golems.
According to the guidebook, light- and heavy-class golems were further divided into subcategories. In other words, my Gol was known as a “shrine golem” while the ones I saw in the fields were “farming golems,” and there were plenty of others.
Ultimately, I believed the difference between light- and heavy-class golems could be likened to the difference between small- and large-breed dogs. For example, a shrine golem would be a Shiba Inu, while a farming golem would be a Golden Retriever.
This dog analogy really is great for golems.
In any case, the different kinds of golems made them seem like all sorts of fun. Gol had fought with the other golems in the shrine, but I hoped that one day she could make friends with the other children.
“Still, this book is much simpler to read than I anticipated…” Each description of a golem was accompanied by a simple illustration. It really was easy to parse. Just as expected of a book recommended by the gracious bookstore grandma. The next time I met another golem, I might even be able to distinguish its type.
The next page I turned to had an illustration of the most common type of heavy-class golem employed by the military: a shield golem. Thick, sturdy armor covered their faces, and they were practically invincible when assembled in formation. They were amazing.
The illustration depicted a tough golem with T-shaped face armor and L-shaped arm armor. If any single word could describe this guy’s appearance, it would definitely be “shield.” That armor was probably made of the same special stone the shrine golems’ breastplates had been crafted from, since they had a similar thickness. The shrine golems’ breastplates were slightly thicker, though.
On the following page was the “crossbow golem.” The illustration showed a bulky golem with a large ballista in place of their right arm. The description said they were capable of long-distance attacks with their ballista, which also made them a unique type of heavy-class golem. The power behind their massive stone arrows could easily pierce a castle wall. How terrifying.
But while this crossbow golem had destructive power, it had a short range and an accuracy problem. As such, they couldn’t be used in a castle siege or as crowd control unless multiple golems were lined up for a barrage.
Well, if they had range, people could have asked them to exterminate those monkeys from afar. Just went to show the world didn’t always work out so tidily.
“There also seem to be quite a lot of heavy-class types like the ‘hammer golem’ and ‘war-elephant golem’… I guess most of the golems of this class really are used by the military.”
On the other hand, there was quite a diversity of uses for light-class golems. They served in manufacturing and care, though they could also be used for combat. The type Gol was often presumed to be, the “shrine golem,” had several pages dedicated to it.
It appeared that shrine golems were considered a special type. They originally weren’t seen much in public, since their main purpose was to protect religious institutions. Even their creation process was kept secret by these religious groups. But since they were uniformly beautiful and graceful, they had many imitations, though the materials used for these mimics’ differed from the ones employed by the churches and generally had lower performance capabilities.
Additionally, shrine golems were considered a type of “ancient golem.” These ancient types were based on golems excavated from old ruins, so a subset of their functions had yet to be discovered.
Huh, so are they like some kind of OOPArts? Well, at the very least those ladies’ breasts were out of place, in a way.
I continued to leisurely page through the guidebook as the wagon rocked. “This book is so interesting that I just can’t stop.”
There were so, so many different golems. It was almost like a fashion magazine… No, if I had to be precise, it felt closer to reading an automobile catalog.
Ah, this “crying golem” was truly interesting. It appeared to be a golem used by an ethnic minority somewhere to hunt, but they also produced extremely terrifying sounds from their mouths. When hunting, they would use their voice to corner prey…almost like a hunting dog.
Okay, I was convinced. Golems really were dogs.
“Oh? What’s this golem? It looks cool.”
I had found an illustration of a golem that looked like the gallant, strong, armored knight I had first imagined and failed to create. It was another kind of ancient golem. The illustrated guide called it an “armored demon gol—”
Bleurgh.
“Urgh…”
I suddenly felt sick and I fell on the book. Yeah, so… It was totally my bad reading a book for a long time inside a rocking vehicle, and I was now completely wagon-sick.