[Weakness Enhancement: Guardian – You sense the aura of a Guardian. Entering attack power enhancement state.][Weakness Enhancement: Harmonizer – You sense the aura of a Harmonizer. Entering attack power enhancement state.]From the gimmicks that followed, it seemed the golem was exactly the same as last time—no modifications. The golem's HP melted away easily, the mechanics were smooth and familiar.Then, the golem’s two arms lifted. The next mechanic: .I moved toward Gang Jaegyung and used a protection skill. Just like he’d predicted the first time, the moment when the golem slams both arms down onto the ground was a shared-damage mechanic. (Grief must be shared, or some nonsense like that.) I also popped a survival skill in advance, just in case.As completed its cast, the golem slammed its arms down with tremendous force. Our characters were launched into the air again—and then the golem grabbed Gang Jaegyung’s character with its right hand.It’s supposed to be random, who gets grabbed. Why the hell does he always get taken when I’m trying to watch the damn medic interaction?I muttered inwardly as a silhouette of a moth appeared on screen. I hit the spacebar with the right timing. The pitch-black silhouette filled with color and began to glow… then fluttered its wings and vanished.Then, a special interaction cutscene played: my character tossed away his shield, gripped his sword with both hands, and rescued Retaking a Class. I was worried they’d skip it for fast-tracking, but luckily it played properly.—"No matter how many times I see that, it’s still so good."Gang Jaegyung’s excited voice flickered past. I looked down at his character, now collapsed on the ground, and began pounding on the golem again. But the unease in my chest wouldn’t fade. If anything, it felt worse ever since the mechanic had triggered.Something was missing. The golem was slightly ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ different from what I remembered. But I couldn’t pin it down. No obvious changes—nothing to point at. I kept thinking about it so deeply I even got hit by one of the golem’s basic attacks without realizing.—"You're not paying attention, are you?"Gang Jaegyung scolded me, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling.So in the end, I asked him for help.[Party] Honeybread: Doesn’t[Party] Honeybread: something feel[Party] Honeybread: off?[Party] Honeybread: No, not off exactly[Party] Honeybread: more like[Party] Honeybread: something’s kinda[Party] Honeybread: empty? dull?[Party] Honeybread: that sort of feeling[Party] Retaking a Class: ??—"Empty and dull, huh?"Gang Jaegyung paused after reading my fragmented chat, sent between skill casts.He seemed to study the golem for a moment, then said in a pure, clueless voice:—"I don’t know?"Uncle, you said this guy was observant? Doesn’t seem like it to me.[Party] Honeybread: You call[Party] Honeybread: yourself a bodyguard[Party] Honeybread: tsk tsk—"Come on, the golem isn’t even someone I’m supposed to guard. Why would I notice stuff like that?"[Party] Honeybread: Show a little care—"There are people I’m supposed to care about, you know…"[Party] Honeybread: What[Party] Honeybread: who?[Party] Honeybread: you cheating on me??—"What are you even talking about? I meant your HP bar, okay?"[Party] Honeybread: So[Party] Honeybread: you only look[Party] Honeybread: at my HP bar[Party] Honeybread: when you see me?[Party] Honeybread: Is that all I am to you?[Party] Honeybread: You bastard—"...To be honest, with percentage-based DoTs, a 140k HP pool is really tempting."[Party] Honeybread: You bastard for realWhile I was distracted joking around with Gang Jaegyung, the golem suddenly raised its remaining left arm high. I hadn’t noticed anything strange until I realized it wasn’t auto-attacking anymore. Panicked, I stopped typing and popped another survival skill.Just in time. The moment my survival skill activated, the golem slammed its arm down. Both our characters were launched into the air—again, it was a castless .Normally, two casted versions of the mechanic come first, and the third one is castless. But this time... our DPS was too good. The golem's HP dropped too fast before the second casted could happen, so it skipped ahead and used the no-cast version with no warning.The golem grabbed my character with its remaining left hand. Thanks to the survival buff, my HP stayed fairly stable.I was fine. What mattered now was Gang Jaegyung.—"I just have to press any key in time, right?"Last time, we missed the medic’s special cutscene because of Gang Jaegyung’s ridiculous mistake. Who would’ve guessed someone could fail something that simple? To make it worse, the Saint + Medic pair was rare, so no one had even uploaded a recording of the interaction.Gang Jaegyung had been pretty devastated too. Said he missed the prompt because he hit Enter twice and sent a chat message by accident.So this time...—"...Got it."With a crisp keystroke, a butterfly in radiant colors appeared and fluttered around my character—then vanished.The golem’s left arm, still holding my character, reached its peak height. Right before it could slam me into the ground at high speed, Retaking a Class opened his scholarly tome.A flurry of pages burst out of the book and danced into the air. Each one was covered in strange letters and mathematical formulas.One by one, the letters peeled off the pages like stickers. They began to form into shapes, like a puzzle being assembled—and the shape they made was... a golem. Specifically, a miniature version of the Golem of the Earth.When the glowing green letters solidified, Retaking a Class clenched his fist and punched the letter-formed golem arm with all his might——and at that exact moment, the real golem’s left arm shattered with a thunderous boom.The green-glowing letters immediately faded and vanished into the air as if they’d never existed. Retaking a Class casually dusted off his fist like he’d really thrown a punch. Meanwhile, my character, freed from the golem’s grasp, landed lightly on the ground and gave a small nod of thanks toward him.Holy shit. That was actually badass.[Party] Honeybread: wow—"What kind of formula was that? Was it something we actually know?"I was about to type that was sick, but ended up backspacing. Let me have a moment to process it first.—"You don’t know? What do you guys know, anyway?"Watch your mouth, dude. You’re gonna get pelted in chat again....Wait, why didn’t he ask me?[Party] Honeybread: why didn’t you[Party] Honeybread: ask me?—"...Why didn’t I ask you? Do you really want me to?"The underlying tone was clear: “As if you’d know. Why bother asking?”My blood pressure spiked.[Party] Honeybread: you wanna die?—"Why? You know something?"When I snapped back, Gang Jaegyung’s tone shifted to curious—like he dared to hope.[Party] Honeybread: nope—"Knew it."[Party] Honeybread: lolI was a humanities major, and math was the only subject I didn’t ace on the college entrance exam. But who needs math when you only use it to manage money? It’s not like I was planning to go into engineering or anything. I only got pissed because he assumed I obviously didn’t know, like I was stupid or something.While we were bickering, the golem began casting . A tank-buster skill. Last time, Gang Jaegyung had to stack eight layers of stress debuff just to keep up with the healing during this nightmare.But that was only because it hadn’t been necessary.Last time, he failed the minigame, and the golem still had both arms—so it hit twice. But if you succeed at the minigame and destroy one of its arms, it only hits once.In the end, Gang Jaegyung’s stress debuff stack was self-inflicted.This time, since he didn’t have the debuff, we killed the golem much more quickly. When its HP hit zero, the golem crumbled apart and collapsed, its body shriveling and dry.But even as it fell, I still felt that nagging sense of absence. That something should’ve been there, but wasn’t. A small thing—but noticeable.—"That thing you said earlier, about it feeling empty or dull."Right on cue, Gang Jaegyung brought it up again.

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