The Lord of the Clock Fortress, the guardian of the Third Floor, has transformed itself into a powerful monster, but originally, it was just an ordinary mage scholar.
In other words, it started with a frail body, necessitating the company of six knights as bodyguards upon arriving in this land.
Well, it didn’t hold out with all six knights until the end, though.
There are laws to be upheld even in war, but when the god-slaying war threatens to destroy the world, who had the luxury to uphold those laws?
Naturally, all kinds of madness ensued, and injuries and the massacre of civilians were among the horrors one could frequently witness.
It was only natural that the Lord of the Clock Fortress appointed a few more knights along the way.
What I’m looking for are the first six knights who arrived in this land alongside the Lord of the Clock Fortress.
But just because they were the first six knights doesn’t mean they’re exceptionally strong. Other knights are just as powerful, and they all have the gears of the Lord of the Clock Fortress embedded in their hearts, just like everyone else.
Either way, defeating those six knights will allow me to gather all the parts needed to challenge the Lord of the Clock Fortress.
“Jonah. Do you want to fight more? We’ve already gathered all the needed gears.”
“No, we still have one left.”
“One? After defeating so many knights?”
“Hehe. Want to hear about it?”
The reason I’m searching for the first six knights, not just any of the others, is simple.
To truly fight the Lord of the Clock Fortress.
The one summoned with the emblem of other knights is surprisingly not the real deal.
It’s a sort of avatar where the main body has sent down only the spirit.
Of course, even such an avatar can display full power, qualifying it as the guardian of the floor, but…
In any case, the rewards differ.
The normally summoned avatar of the Lord of the Clock Fortress is indeed powerful since it’s controlled directly by the Lord, so the rewards aren’t bad as is.
However, defeating the real body yields much better rewards.
The chances of acquiring divine powers increase, and there’s plenty of materials to gather, leading to more money.
But my goal is more about the first subjugation rewards.
What I’ve defeated so far is the Lord of the Clock Fortress, yet since it’s not the real one, defeating the real body will add the first subjugation rewards to that of the Third Floor’s guardian, which has already been defeated multiple times.
That’s right. It’s the guaranteed power.
“That’s basically the reason.”
“…Is that really true?”
“Yes! At least I believe it’s true. I’m about to find out.”
“Okay, I understood. But is there a way to distinguish the original knights?”
“Of course there is!”
Actually, it’s nothing special. The first knights have been active for much longer, so their armor design differs from that of newly created knights.
“Lydia will probably see it if she looks closely. Right now, they all look like they’re from an old design, but… there are some that have a strange vibe.”
“…Now that I think about it, there were those. Instead of wing patterns, actual wing decorations or shoulder pads that should be curved but have sharp horns on them.”
“Exactly! Those are the ones!”
“I get what Jonah is saying. But there’s one thing I’m worried about.”
“What is it?”
“We’re not the only ones fighting on the Third Floor. What if some other adventurer catches them first?”
“Don’t worry. The original knights are meant to ‘always’ exist.”
The ones I’ve defeated are probably regenerating somewhere.
Lydia looked at me incredulously as if trying to wrap her head around it.
“Does that even make sense?”
“It makes sense for the Third Floor. Like I mentioned earlier, this place has never really been cleared properly yet. The goddess might be getting a bit anxious too.”
Well, to be precise, it’s a setting I inserted for the convenience of the plot.
To ensure the protagonist succeeds this time too, even in a place where other adventurers have already subjugated the Third Floor multiple times, I wanted to demonstrate the protagonist’s uniqueness.
That’s why I inserted this setting. Since I killed the protagonist, all the rewards prepared for them should go to me anyway.
As I casually made the sign of the cross, Lydia nodded with a dubious expression.
“Okay, I understand. So how are you planning to find the last one?”
“I don’t know.”
“?”
“I really don’t know! Can’t we just wander around and it’ll show up?”
“…”
Lydia sent me a silent look. It’s harsh, I admit. It’s true I seem to be stirring up things without any plan.
But it’s not as if I have no confidence in my instincts.
“Benny and I don’t have that precise searching ability.”
“I never expected those two to have such abilities from the start.”
I pulled out the goddess statue from my bosom, snorted from scratching it, likely due to the 150 gold worth of offerings I made to it, its surface looking rather shiny.
I poked the sides of the goddess statue with a pointed tone.
“Can you guide me to the last one? I mean, you’re the goddess, right? You can’t say you can’t do even that. I made an offering!”
-…
Naturally, the goddess statue remained silent. But somehow, I felt like the little head of it was sweating nervously.
Before long, a stir of divine power indicated a strange intuition that seemed to lead in one direction.
“Hmm. Good job.”
I gently patted the head of the goddess statue and returned it to my bosom.
With Lydia and Benny looking incredulous, I confidently started walking in the direction I had received the revelation.
“Let’s hurry! We’re bound to meet soon!”
To cut to the chase, we found it quickly and captured it just as fast.
*
At the final floor’s door, I arrived with six different large gears in hand.
The tightly closed door had six slots conspicuously embedded in it, identical to the parts I just extracted from the Heart of the Gear Knight.
As I examined and placed each one in its proper slot, Benny tilted his head.
“I can’t tell the difference. What’s the difference between the ones taken from other knights’ hearts, and what’s the correct order to insert them?”
“Oh… They really don’t look different at all. The gears inserted in the hearts of other knights are perfect replicas of these. So their strength doesn’t differ much either.”
However, despite that, the criteria for distinguishing originals from replicas are simple.
“It all comes down to time. In alchemy, the history contained in an object is considered a material in itself, right?”
“I’m not well-versed in that field… But I do understand the philosophy that everything in the world has value, hence everything can be alchemized. So time is probably one of those things.”
“Exactly. If you compare them side by side, the gears of the original knights are noticeably older than those of the others. Especially the teeth part has worn down.”
“Now that you mention it, it does look that way…”
The scholars of Pangrave couldn’t have been ignorant of this. However, they probably only understood this for discerning how long an entity had been around, like a tree’s rings.
“Now, please look back at this door once again.”
The massive door, which must be three times my height, intricately engraved with complex patterns, hinted at a device made of gears and chains inside.
How should I put it? It felt like a skeleton clock sold on Earth turned into a door?
“It’s a beautifully constructed mechanism that fits perfectly, but… don’t you feel a strange dissonance in this slot part?”
“I don’t feel anything.”
“Yep. I don’t feel a thing.”
“?”
No way, can’t they see the difference?
Of course, it’s a difficult thing to articulate as it’s a subjective feeling, and it is merely described as a slight sense of dissonance in the settings.
Is it really that hard to see this difference?
While I was tilting my head, Benny continued seriously.
“I think Jonah’s senses are more refined, and that’s why you’re noticing it?”
“Really?”
“Regardless of strength or knowledge, Jonah has sensitive senses. It’s rare to gain enhanced senses as rewards from the labyrinth, but Jonah often receives boosts to specific senses.”
“That’s just how it goes.”
To consume sound-absorbing footsteps, I had forcibly heightened my senses. It made sense that they grew over time as I continued using them.
“If we can’t sense it but Jonah can, it could be something only someone with heightened senses can detect.”
“Hmm. That does make sense. The dissonance I feel is more about my instincts rather than concrete evidence.”
Realizing how I perceived that dissonance, the world became clearer, and I instinctively understood where each gear should fit.
Instead of the back-and-forth comparison I’d been doing before, the gears slid seamlessly into place as if possessed.
As I inserted all six, the mechanism began to hum with a crackling sound, and with a rumble that shook the ground, the door slowly began to open.
“This is finally the start.”
“Jonah. Need help?”
“No, I’ll try to handle it alone for now. If it gets tough, I’ll ask.”
“Got it.”
Nodding briefly, I stepped forward, balancing my greatsword on my shoulder, leaning my weight forward as I entered slowly.
A dark chamber. Suddenly, lighting began sequentially illuminating from the door to the deep end, revealing a vast room.
What should be the Lord’s throne now had a massive metallic claw set upon it, with a round tank placed atop it.
Inside the tank filled with green liquid floated a naked woman curled into a ball.
“…Is that the Lord of the Clock Fortress?”
According to guild information, her appearance surpassed that of the Gear Knights, resembling something out of a mech show.
Of course, since I was facing the real body, I knew it wouldn’t be that exaggerated. But I didn’t expect such a disparity.
As I maintained my tension and approached the tank, the lights illuminating the throne room suddenly turned red, and thick steam burst forth from either side.
Chiii—!
Then the wall opened, and out sprang six sleek, mechanized figures.
It was the Lord of the Clock Fortress, just as pictured in the guild’s information.
“For crying out loud!”
A boss battle with a sixfold event is a bit much, isn’t it?
