Chapter 444: On-site Inspection (2/2)

And then, seeing that ahead of the curved path in front of them, the four froze. The horses also stopped in their tracks out of fear.

The thing that was lying there-it was like a scene out of hell.

Countless corpses of enormous centipedes of over 10 meter in length.

“Mr. Lash! This is way more than just five!”

“Y-yes… then, after that, even more of them came crawling out…”

Heintz felt a chill down his spine, seeing more than hundreds of such corpses lying in front of him.

While still on the horse, they went closer to the one noticeably bigger corpse.

Gloria could not help but stare in wonder, seeing the body cleanly cut in two, probably with a huge sword.

“He… he can cut a monster of this size…?”

Gloria tried slashing at its shell as a test.

And with a high pitch sound, the sword’s blade broke off.

“It sure does not feel like it could be cut with a sword.”

The sword she brought with her this time wasn’t the one Jin made, it was one made with the usual steel.

And such a sword’s steel stood no chance against the centipede’s toughness. Gloria realized anew, the fact that although Machina’s strength is very reliable, it is also a threat.

They looked inside the shell to find some sort of a yellow colored liquid. It seems to be the liquid these centipedes released from their mouth. Gloria nonchalantly thrusted her sword into that liquid.

“Uwaah!”

The steel sword gave off a white smoke and melted away just like that.

“Ms. Gloria! I told you about this! The fact that its liquid can dissolve anything. Although, it seems like the liquid does not do anything to itself.”

“……”

Looking at her now broken, melted off sword, Gloria muttered,

“…I wonder if Mr. Jin would make me one if I asked……”

“It seems Ms. Gloria, Mr. Heintz and two other soldiers reached the scene.”

Laojun, who was monitoring the Inado mine’s situation using the surveillance system Koushin, muttered.

He could clearly see Gloria’s surprised expression.

“It would be better to clean it up after having them see it, after all.”

The shell would make for great material so Laojun planned on collecting them from the start but to display what went down there, he just took the five 50 meter class ones and left the rest.

He had just witnessed Gloria trying to cut the centipede’s body and try to touch the liquid with her sword.

“It’s the liquid that melted even the Land units a bit. Simple steel would not be able to endure it.”

Laojun does not have a face but if he had, he would definitely be wearing a wry smile right about now. It is possible for the mobile terminal golem Laozi however.

“They are lucky the centipede’s liquid is very volatile.”

It would be extremely dangerous if the whole area had been a sea of such liquid but in about two hours, most of the liquid had evaporated. Only the shells remained.

That too will evaporate in a few more hours. It would prevent anyone from misusing them so Laojun didn’t mind.

After all, they had collected that liquid more than necessary from the four bodies of the 50 meter pedes.

“Hmm, it seems they are going to check the mine too, for what it matters.”

He said as he saw Gloria and her group climb up the mountain.

“……It’s completely unusable, huh?”

Heintz said, looking at the sorry state of the mine. They couldn’t even tell which was the entrance from all the rumble and the remains of general purpose golems.

“Was it worth sacrificing expensive golems?”

Gloria asked, not really pointing towards anybody.

“No clue. I just followed my superior’s orders.”

To the knight Heintz, disobeying orders was something unthinkable.

“……Let’s head back.”

Gloria announced with a sigh, turning around her horse.

Heintz and the other two followed after.