“Move! Everyone keep moving!”
Elves rushing about frantically through the forest.
This location sat far to the southwest of the Mage Kingdom, wedged between the Bleached Bone Swamp and the Goblin King’s territory.
There the Elves were attempting to construct a massive wall of earth and stone.
But the footing was terrible, and the trees grew thick and close together.
Even with Elves who could wield magic freely, the construction was badly behind — and whether they’d finish before the Crawlers arrived was looking genuinely uncertain.
“This is bad……At this rate we won’t make it.”
Maruela, the senior knight assigned to oversee the wall’s construction.
She frowned at the work crawling forward at a painful pace.
If the wall wasn’t finished in time, the nation’s defense would be seriously compromised — that much was obvious.
Yet they’d already been at it for over a week, around the clock without rest.
The exhaustion on the faces of the working Elves was stark, and there was no more efficiency to be squeezed out.
If anything——
“Watch out!!”
An Elf working atop the wall lost his balance and fell.
Straight down, from a height of at least five meters.
Maruela instinctively reached for wind magic to catch him, but she was too slow.
In the next instant, a man came sprinting from somewhere and caught him.
“……Phew! Close call!”
The man set the Elf down on the ground and slowly wiped the sweat from his brow.
When Maruela saw his face, her expression brightened immediately.
“Piesta!”
“Long time no see. How’s the work coming?”
Piesta and Maruela had been promoted to senior knight in the same year — something like classmates.
Seeing a familiar face, Maruela felt as though some weight had lifted from her exhausted body.
“Did you come to help?”
“No — I’m here to meet some people.”
“Some people?”
“Didn’t you get word? A party from a city called Isvall.”
“Right. The ones you said you met — the ones with the golems?”
Maruela had heard about the visitors from the city of Isvall.
The stories went: they’d been trying to build a road through the Bleached Bone Swamp using peculiar golems. Their attendant — clearly a servant of some kind — had the strength of a senior knight. They’d brought mithril of a purity no one had ever seen.
Piesta and his people had apparently verified all of it firsthand, but Maruela hadn’t fully believed it.
Piesta wasn’t a man who lied — but he did have a habit of inflating things.
She’d been sure he was taking a grain of truth and blowing it up to something bigger.
“That’s right. They’ve agreed to help with the Crawler extermination as well. I told them the location, so they should arrive today.”
“Hmm……”
“What, you don’t seem very interested.”
“I’m not, really. I’m more worried about outsiders getting in the way when we’re this busy.”
“I think you’ll be fine. By all accounts their golems are quite capable.”
“We’ll see.”
Maruela shrugged, still unconvinced.
At which point, an Elf keeping watch atop the wall called out:
“Something is approaching! Those are……suits of armor? Armored giants, heading this way! More than a hundred of them!”
“Everyone stop work! Prepare for attack!”
“Wait — hold on!”
Piesta stopped Maruela before she could finish giving the order to her troops.
He pulled out a pair of binoculars and looked in the direction the lookout had indicated.
“It’s alright — they’re with us!”
“Don’t tell me — the people from Isvall?”
“Yes. They’re carrying the flag I gave them in advance.”
As he spoke, a column of armored figures pushed through the trees and into view.
At their head were two young women.
One was a sword-type with striking red hair; the other was a mage-type with purple.
Both were carrying flags bearing the Sacred Tree emblem — the mark of alliance with the Elves.
“Alicia of Isvall! Here in Lord Viktor’s stead to help with the Crawler extermination!”
“Welcome! It’s been a while!”
“Sir Piesta — good to see you again!”
Alicia and Piesta shook hands immediately.
Maruela, meanwhile, couldn’t take her eyes off the armored giants at their backs.
“……Those armored giants — are those golems?”
“They are. Isvall’s pride and joy, the Talos-type.”
“Hmm. I’d heard from my people, but……this is beyond what I imagined.”
Piesta and Maruela stared up at the assembled Talos-types, visibly overwhelmed.
Neither of them had ever seen golems this impressive.
Even Piesta, who’d heard about them from Viktor beforehand, was seeing the real thing for the first time.
The unsettling, alien presence of the golems seized his attention completely.
“These are primarily the construction-use Talos-type. It looks like you’ve been doing some building here — with these, efficiency should improve dramatically.”
“That’s wonderful. Though golems can only follow simple orders, can’t they? And you’d have to direct each one individually……”
“Not at all? That’s not how the Talos-type works.”
Alicia tilted her head, looking genuinely puzzled about what Maruela was worried about.
Taking that as her cue, Maruela decided to test it herself.
“Then……could you have them move that soil over to the wall?”
“Got it. Everyone — move that soil!”
At Misha’s words, the golems began moving immediately.
Each took up a shovel and began carving into the mound of earth at a ferocious pace.
The mound — twice the height of a person — vanished before their eyes.
Maruela’s mouth hung open at the speed of it.
“Th-that’s incredible! We’ll actually make it in time……!”
“The Talos-type isn’t all we have. Lancelot-types — forward!”
At Alicia’s command, the Lancelot-types emerged from behind the Talos formation.
Five hundred of them.
The imposing sight of it struck Maruela and Piesta speechless.