"Mariposa, would you please?" the blacksmith asked, pointing at the three tenderized men lying at the side of the road. He handed her a bottle of potion. The golem knight shrugged and walked over, pouring the bottle of low-quality healing potions on the three.
The dark, reddish liquid splashed in the faces, healing some superficial bruises. The three slowly came to, mostly from the liquid splashing in their faces, not its healing properties. They wheezed and coughed as their rattled brains tried to make sense of the situation.
"Did you attack that caravan? Why did you do it?" the golem asked coldly, extending the order to wake these guys up and adding interrogation. Their slower-than-usual brains needed a moment to process the words of the foreign figure.
"How dare yo accushe ush of susch atroshitiesh?! We game looking for the young- for the caravan when shey didn't arrive as scheduled!" the leader with the now lopsided, broken jaw exclaimed, slurred but indignantly.
"If there was someone specific you were looking for, be honest. I inspected all the corpses before the fire," the slender golem stated concisely. She had no intention of playing along with their lies.
"You did!? Was there a young girl, wearing the robes of a boy, among the corpses?!" one of his men blurted out desperately, crawling toward the golem knight.
"A-Mu, what are you doing! The ladies' travel has to remain a secret, his companion scolded him, blurting out even more. Mariposa looked at the two and at the leader who looked at them grimly, without speaking up. She came to the conclusion that these guys were not the perpetrators.
"There was no such person among the corpses," she assured them and then turned around to return to the carriage.
"The Ma Family must have done this and kidnapped her," A-Mu mumbled between sobs for his young lady. "That meansh shere wash a mole. How elshe would they know?" their leader mumbled, barely understandable.
"Mariposa, did you find out what happened?" Mina asked when the golem knight returned to the carriage.
"It seems that an important person, a young girl, traveled with this caravan under disguise as a boy, but a hostile group found out and kidnapped her, Lady Smith. Those guys came here when the caravan didn't arrive on schedule at their meeting place. " The slender knight gave a summary of her conclusion. Hiding her satisfaction at being addressed as such, Mina looked to Seth while the golem stood at attention for the next order.
"Should we not help out a little?" the cat girl asked. The blacksmith pondered for a moment. They were on vacation, and he really didn't want to get involved in the problems of the locals. Master Mountains had exhaustively warned them how easily things could spiral out of proportion in this place.
Still...
"Mariposa, would you like to help save the girl?" he asked the golem knight. it wasn't like they had to act themselves. That was the job for these guys. Seth's stared at the expressionless helmet and waited for the nod that inevitably followed.
"Alright, take Búho along and send out Abeja to drive the carriage," the Tower Master gave his command, and the gate to Legion opened again. Mariposa entered and was followed by two more of the new generation golem knights.
Buho was a massive knight, close to three meters tall. Seth had created it from a pure-blooded troll, a dungeon boss that roamed free after his dungeon in the abyss broke. Now he was covered in bright silver armor painted with the sigil of Minas Mar. The terrifying thing about Buho was that he could move very fast and was completely silent, despite his size and the armor.
Abeja, on the other hand, was another slender golem knight like Mariposa, but she wore a somewhat insectoid frogmouth helmet. She was originally a Hobgoblin of Kozdam. She wore an estoc and a swordbreaker on her belt. The reason he asked for her was simple: Only she and Mariposa were small enough to be covered by the carriage's illusion spell.
"Buho, you follow Mariposa; she knows what to do. You know our travel route. When you two are done, catch up to us. Abeja, you will drive the carriage from now on," the blacksmith gave his orders. Abeja nodded and moved to get on the coach box.
"Take a couple of these for those guys and the way," Fin added and threw a package of healing potions toward Mariposa. Before the slender golem could react, Buho had already moved without making a sound, deftly catching the potion in his massive hand.
"I guess we can continue then?" the blacksmith asked, intending to leave the two golems to their own adventure. The road was free; they had sent someone to help the girl, and nothing stopped them from going on.
Once the girls nodded, the carriage began moving again, driving through the gap opened by Ceniza, the passed by the destroyed carriages still lining the road before leaving this incident behind them. They returned to the soothing taktaktak of the carriage, as their vehicle sped up to reach speeds rivaling a normal car.
"How do you think those two will fare?" Mina asked Seth about the two golems they had just left behind. Although the Mariposa and Buho were lv79 and lv.81 respectively, they were not invincible in this world.
"Hmm, I'm confident they will do their job well," the blacksmith answered after giving it some thought. " Buho has good tracking skills, as far as I remember, and Mariposa is quite smart. I think they will find the girl, and even if they face a situation they can't deal with, they will probably be able to run away," their creator gave a fair evaluation.
"I still think we should have flown," Fin complained, slowly being swayed back to sleep by the gentle sways of the carriage rocketing over the road, as she leaned against Seth, somewhat hugging him,
"Don't fall asleep again; we should be reaching Taoyuan Village soon, then we can sleep at an inn," Mina cautioned her from the other side. Taoyuan Village was a small town on the way with a renowned bath house.
Another reason they were not flying was small relaxing stops like that. Although flying vessels were a thing in this world, they usually belonged to powerful cultivators or big sects. They would draw a lot of attention stopping by in a small village in one of those.
"Do you think those guys were from there?" Fin suddenly asked, meaning the three stooges. The other two perked up. Considering what Mariposa had said, they might have waited for the caravan that the girl at Taoyuan Village had.
Maybe it would have made sense to give everyone a ride and only split with the golem at the village. Thinking about it now, there were a couple more problems the golems would have to deal with. Most cultivators had some form of flight, like flying swords.
The golems didn't. Tracking and, most importantly, catching the perpetrators would be a lot harder. But those were problems the golems and the three stooges would have to deal with on their own. The trio filled the journey with idle talk and games when the carriage finally came to a halt again.
" Abeja, why did we stop?" the blacksmith called out from inside.
"We have reached our destination, I think," came the answer from outside.
When they stuck their heads out the window, they saw smoke on the horizon.