Volume 7 - Chapter 15 – What Was in the Ancient Ruins (2/2)
“Yes, Father.”
“Try opening this door, please.”
“Yes.”
Reiko promptly pushed on the door, and forced it open in one go. The hinges creaked but somehow didn’t break in the end.
“This is…”
The door was opened, and ahead were a number of unmoving golems stretched about. Dust had piled up, and both Jin and Reinhardt covered their nose and mouth with a handkerchief.
“Battle-type golems? No, they’re simple household golems.
Jin examined the unmoving golems, and judged them to be not golems for battle but for household chores.
“Five golems, huh. Doesn’t look like anything in particular is broken though.
Reinhardt also leaned over to check up on the golems. The magic lamps here were dark, and he couldn’t see well so he didn’t catch the details.
“Feels like they ran out of Magic Energy.”
But Jin refuted that.
“…No, that’s wrong. Look at this. Come on.”
Jin opened the golem’s chest and showed it. In there, a certain something was missing.
“There’s no…Control Core?”
Reinhardt grasped the situation at a glance, and went to examine the other golems.
“This golem doesn’t have one either.”
“Neither does this.”
The result of Jin’s and Reinhardt’s investigations was that out of the five golems, not a single one had a Control Core.
“It’s impossible that the Control Cores just disappeared. That means that someone disabled these golems, doesn’t it look like that?”
“I wonder. That’s the likeliest possibility though.”
Even Jin didn’t know what the truth was.
“These golems weren’t that important. At least not something they’d take along while evacuating. If that’s the case, it would be better to take only the most important part. …Is the feeling I get.”
Jin agreed with Reinhardt’s conjecture and,
“There might be something about it in the documents from earlier, let’s take a close look after we’ve returned.”
He said in addition. He then heard Reiko’s voice.
“Father, there’s one more in the back.”
“What?”
Jin shifted his attention to the back of the room Reiko spoke of, and he saw something like a human silhouette in the darkness.
“[Light].”
Jin brightened the place up, saw the human shape better. It was an Automata wearing old maid clothes. She had been left alone sitting on the floor. A similar amount of dust as on the golems had accumulated on her.
“An Automata, huh…”
Jin crouched to examine the Automata. He cleaned up the dust using magic.
Her build was that of an adult woman type. The [Magical Skin] used as skin still barely retained its flexibility.
Her hair was dark blue. Maybe the color was different from a human’s on purpose.
“This one has a Control Core!”
Jin who had been investigating yelled out in surprise.
“The reason she isn’t moving…Lack of Magic Energy doesn’t seem likely.”
That’s because this Automata had an Ether Converter installed.
“Oh, I see. She received some kind of an impact, and the Magic Energy links inside snapped.”
At last Jin’s sharp powers of observation discovered the defective part.
“Alright, let’s repair her.”
If he knew where the fault was, there was no damage Jin couldn’t fix.
“[Joint], [Fusion].”
He joined the broken parts of the Magic Energy Circuit together, and mended the Magi Device that had begun disintegrating.
“Alright, [Start-up].”
Then after giving her enough Magic Energy for starting up, the Automata came to life.
While creaking a little, the Automata opened its eyes and stood up.
“Might you. Be the one. Who woke me. Up?”
Maybe the speech mechanism was broken as there were some pauses while the Automata spoke.