This Novel is not my Novel

"Oh no...! It seems the magic core is somewhere near the center of its head, rather than directly in the middle."

Fjodora lamented her failure and drew the wrong conclusion.

If I continued standing by, she might pepper the Boss Golem's head with arrows and only realize that the magic core was not there after riddling it with holes.

Or, through some scheme of the original author, she might never realize it at all and eventually order the original protagonist to blow away the golem's perforated head in its entirety.

"That is unlikely."

Fortunately, I could refute Fjodora's conjecture with confidence.

And the reason was as follows.

"Have you forgotten that Reisir's earlier attack struck the top of its head? If the magic core were located in its head, that blow would have shattered it."

"Then are you saying its attempt to protect its head just now was a deception?!"

Fjodora had misjudged the situation yet again.

Still, she seemed to understand that the magic core was not currently in the golem's head, so I decided to let the matter pass for now.

It was enough that we would not waste our strength concentrating our attacks on the golem's head, which was presently nothing more than a lump of stone.

Once they had seen the golem protect a particular area, draw the stones composing its body toward that location, compress itself into a sphere, and then return to its original form another time or two...

They'll realize that the action serves to reposition its power mechanism.

There was no need to struggle to explain something only I knew by piecing together whatever evidence I could find.

No, there was no time for that.

The golem's enormous fist came flying toward us.

When I say its fist flew toward us, I am not speaking figuratively.

Instead of bending at the waist and swinging its fist at us far below, the Boss Monster remained standing upright and launched its fist as a projectile.

It's not even a robot! What is a golem doing with a rocket punch?!

There was no propulsion device attached behind the fist, so calling it a "rocket" was not entirely accurate.

Still, that was certainly what the attack felt like.

Helga and Pret had been separated from us from the outset, so they were not a concern.

Naturally, the first to evade were Fjodora and Lausa, who possessed the ability to leap through space.

I had been standing farther back than the others.

By kicking off as though shoving the ground away, I hurled myself backward and escaped the attack's range.

Yor quickly followed me and avoided the danger as well.

True to his role as the original protagonist, Reisir looked after the others even in such an urgent situation.

He first shoved Ríolíkin and Vigdís out of the attack's range. Then he seized Sveinn by the wrist and threw himself sideways with him.

In that brief instant, he saved three people.

Boom!

The golem's fist—essentially a boulder approximately two meters in diameter—slammed into the ground.

The deafening crash that left my ears ringing, the ground trembling beneath my feet, the deep crater it left behind, and the sudden blast of air pressure made its destructive power easy enough to imagine.

Good thing the Boss Golem shrank.

The boulder had landed close enough for me to touch if I reached out, and it filled my entire field of vision, sending a wave of dizziness through me.

Had it been even slightly larger, I might not have escaped completely and could have had one of my legs crushed beneath it.

But something about this situation feels familiar...

The instant I realized what was happening, I tried to cast the memory from my mind.

But by the time I thought that I must not uncover the source of that familiarity, it was already too late.

I had experienced this before.

Something enormous had rushed toward me at high speed, stopping right before my eyes and filling my entire field of vision.

The headlights that had once bleached my vision white flared to life inside my mind and turned my thoughts blank.

A crushing pressure surged over me and choked off my breath.

"Myaaaow!!!"

A piercing cry struck my eardrums alongside the clear jingling of a bell.

My body reflexively sucked in a sharp breath, restarting my halted breathing, and my fading consciousness grew somewhat clearer.

Judging by the fact that the golem had yet to retrieve its fist, my panic could only have lasted an instant.

Yet I had broken out in such a cold sweat that I could feel the dampness soaking down my back.

C-Calm down... This isn't a mass of metal like a truck. It's only a rock, and it stopped in front of me...

The moment I thought that, the boulder before me began to move. My legs nearly gave out beneath me, and I almost collapsed.

Fortunately, rather than charging toward me, it floated into the air and reattached itself to the golem's arm.

Only then could I draw several ragged breaths and feel relief.

"Karvaldr! Are you all right?!"

Reisir, who had rolled across the ground with Sveinn, hurriedly rose and called out to ask if I was safe.

I must have looked quite unwell.

"......Pay it no mind."

"You seemed like you could avoid it on your own, so I looked after the others..."

Judging by the excuses he was blurting out with such an anxious expression, he seemed to think I was upset that he had not helped me.

That was not the case at all.

Just as he said, I had evaded the enemy's attack on my own. If Reisir had not looked after the others, all of them would have been badly injured.

"I only meant that I was slightly startled and that you need not worry."

I explained in a deliberately calm tone, correcting his misunderstanding.

This was no situation for a prolonged conversation.

I needed Reisir to stop worrying about me and focus on the battle.

"Huh...?"

For some reason, Reisir seemed puzzled.

In any case, I was not the only one whose body had frozen in shock at the Boss Golem's rocket punch.

At least I had evaded the attack by myself. Ríolíkin, Vigdís, and Sveinn had been so surprised by the unexpected attack that they had not even reacted in time.

He'll decide it was nothing important and let it go... right?

I sincerely hoped so.

Frankly, even I found what had just happened deeply unsettling.

I had been so shaken that I had not even managed to thank Yor for snapping me out of it.

It'll be a problem if I lose my senses like this every time I encounter a similar situation...

I truly could die again.

I had only escaped unharmed just now because the monster had been targeting someone else.

Considering that...

Perhaps realizing I have this problem now was fortunate in its own way...?

The Boss Golem launched its fists again.

This time, it fired two instead of one. One targeted Reisir, while the other targeted Fjodora.

It was attempting to eliminate those who had launched threatening attacks against it first.

No matter how literal a blockhead that monster may be, surely it wouldn't place its vulnerable power mechanism inside a fist before launching it.

The fact that Reisir and Fjodora successfully evaded, after which the boulders that had missed their targets returned to their original positions, was proof enough.

The power mechanism must be what drew the stones back and assembled them into a body.

I deliberately engraved this painfully obvious fact into my mind, trying to erase the memories of the past and immerse myself in the present situation.

Perhaps the effort paid off, because my concentration returned.

Moreover...

Is it because I've never attacked the Boss Monster myself? It doesn't seem to care about me at all.

The tension that had been constricting me excessively began to ease.

I regained enough composure to think calmly.

By carefully observing the Boss Monster and the people around it and analyzing what I saw, I even succeeded in activating 【Character Analysis】 again.

At last, the turmoil in my heart subsided.

My mind, which had been lurching to a halt as though someone kept slamming on the brakes, began turning once more.

Even when Yor and Lausa launch attacks too weak to pierce the rocks—or Sveinn hurls a mass of water with practically no offensive power—it always defends the area containing its power mechanism and then reconstructs its body if that area is targeted.

At worst, the surface of the rock would be chipped slightly or get wet, so it could simply ignore those attacks.

Revealing the power mechanism's exact location to us, however briefly, and disrupting the flow of battle by relocating it every single time only placed the golem at a disadvantage.

It looks as if it has no capacity for thought whatsoever and merely reacts and moves according to a preprogrammed algorithm.

In the pre-remake original work, Reisir had fought this Boss Monster several years later.

At the time, he had just lost his companions, so no one was by his side.

He had not deliberately set out to conquer a Demon Realm alone. He had simply stopped at a village to replenish his necessities when a Demon Realm suddenly appeared.

That was why I had only learned today that the golem attempted to protect its power mechanism even against weak attacks.

At that point in the original novel, Reisir had been far stronger than he was now.

Even a casually launched basic attack contained enough power to shatter rock, so it had seemed perfectly natural for the golem to defend its power mechanism every time.

Could this be a new setting Author Senna added for this encounter?

With supporting characters in the role of companions present, she could hardly leave all of them standing around like mere decorations.

Perhaps she had added it to give them some pretext to contribute.

Since she had moved the golem-type Boss Monster's appearance forward, she would have needed to adjust the balance as well.

"—seems to be continually moving the magic core's location! That is why the area it protects keeps changing and why it repeatedly compresses its body into a sphere!"

I suddenly thought I heard someone speaking, so I temporarily suspended 【Character Analysis】.

It was Fjodora.

Her voice was brimming with excitement, as if she had discovered some astonishing truth.

It seemed the original author had finally permitted her characters to obtain that information.

Before the Boss Monster raid began, they must have fought several ordinary monsters on their way here, so everyone was probably at least slightly fatigued.

None of them looked as though they were about to collapse from exhaustion yet.

But did that make our situation fortunate?

Not at all.

It merely meant the true ordeal prepared by the original author was only beginning.

"This is quite troublesome. If we identify the magic core's position first and then target it, we will already be too late. Must we attack with all our strength every time and simply hope fortune favors us...?"

Judging by Fjodora's words, the original author clearly wanted us to struggle and struggle, only to repeat the same futile effort over and over again.

Then, when someone was gravely injured or everyone collapsed from exhaustion...

When despair overwhelmed them and their minds became filled with the word "surrender"...

She apparently intended to stage a scene in which her protagonist scraped together every last vestige of his strength for one final blow, shattered the magic core, and brought down the Boss Monster.

In the pre-remake original work, there were several occasions when everyone relaxed the instant they thought they had barely overcome a crisis, only for a supporting character to be killed by a villain who appeared out of nowhere.

Worse still, there was currently an obvious threat remaining in the form of the confession villain.

I could not obediently dance to the original author's tune.