Chapter 15: Stone Golem

"You were standing out there talking to yourself for quite a while," Garrick said, giving the reins a gentle flick. "Should I be worried, or is that simply another strange player habit I haven’t learned about yet?"

"Just needed a moment," Leon said. "It’s been a long day, and it’s not even noon yet."

"Fair enough." Garrick let out a low chuckle, though it faded quickly. "You handled yourself better than anyone I’ve hired in a long while. Better than most people twice your age, if I’m honest."

"I got lucky."

"Luck doesn’t put a blade through a wolf’s skull without wasting a swing." Garrick glanced sideways at him. "I’ve watched plenty of lucky men die out here. Luck buys you an opening. What you do with it is a different matter entirely."

Leon didn’t answer that directly, watching the road curve ahead of them instead. "Why do you still do this? The escort work, I mean. You could hire younger men to drive the carriage and stay behind the walls where it’s safe."

Garrick was quiet for a moment, long enough that Leon thought he might not answer at all. "Because sitting behind those walls never suited me," he said eventually. "I had a shop once, in a town further west. Good business, steady coin, a wife who ran the ledgers better than I ever could." His grip on the reins tightened almost imperceptibly. "A raid came through when I was away on a supply run. By the time I got back, there wasn’t much of a town left to speak of."

Leon glanced at him but said nothing, letting the silence do the listening for him.

"After that, staying in one place stopped feeling like safety," Garrick continued. "Felt more like waiting. At least out here, I choose where the danger finds me." He shrugged, an old, practiced motion that suggested he’d told this story enough times to smooth the rough edges off it. "Strange way to grieve, I suppose. But it’s mine."

"It’s not strange," Leon said quietly. "Some people fall apart standing still. Others need to keep moving so it doesn’t catch up to them."

Garrick studied him for a moment, something unreadable passing behind his eyes. "You talk like a man who’s done a fair bit of moving himself."

"Something like that."

Garrick didn’t push for more, and Leon was grateful for it. There was a kind of understanding in the silence that followed, the sort two people reach not because they’ve explained everything to each other, but because they’ve recognized something familiar in the shape of what’s being left unsaid. It was, in its own quiet way, more honest than most conversations Leon had had in either of his lives.

Neither of them pushed further, and the conversation settled into an easier rhythm after that, drifting toward safer ground. Garrick pointed out a few landmarks along the way: an old watchtower long since abandoned, a fork in the road that led toward a smaller settlement he occasionally traded with, a dried riverbed that apparently flooded without warning during certain seasons. Leon listened with genuine interest, filing every detail away. Information was its own kind of currency out here, and he intended to spend it wisely.

"This stretch of the eastern road has always had a reputation," Garrick said eventually, his tone shifting into something more careful. "Merchants who’ve traveled it longer than I have talk about things moving through these woods that don’t behave like ordinary beasts. Things old enough that they were here long before a single player entered this world."

"That’s reassuring," Leon said dryly.

"It wasn’t meant to be." Garrick’s grip tightened slightly on the reins. "It was meant to remind you that confidence and carelessness look identical from the outside, right up until they don’t."

Leon fell quiet for a moment, letting the words settle. There was something almost paternal in the way Garrick said it, gruff but not unkind, the sort of warning a man gave because he genuinely didn’t want to watch someone die needlessly. It was a strange thing to receive from an NPC, and stranger still that Leon found himself taking it seriously.

"Noted," he said finally. "For what it’s worth, I don’t plan on being careless."

"See that you aren’t." Garrick’s mouth twitched, something almost fond beneath the gruffness. "I’d hate to have to break in a new escort this soon."

The sun had begun its slow descent by the time the road curved around a low ridge, and it was there that Garrick pulled sharply on the reins, bringing the carriage to an abrupt halt.

"What is it?" Leon asked, already reaching for his staff.

Garrick didn’t answer immediately. His eyes were fixed straight ahead, and when Leon followed his line of sight, he understood why.

Standing directly in the middle of the road, easily twice the height of the tallest building in Novice Village #0048, was a figure carved entirely from grey stone. Its body was broad and jagged, formed from what looked like slabs of rock fused together without any visible seams, and faint blue runes pulsed dimly along its arms and chest, the only indication that the thing wasn’t simply an unusually large statue someone had abandoned on the roadside.

Moss clung to its shoulders in patches, and deep grooves ran across its knuckles like scars carved by decades of use rather than damage. Whatever it was, it had clearly been standing on this road, or somewhere very much like it, for a long time.

It hadn’t moved. Not yet.

The horses sensed it before either of the two men said a word, snorting and stamping nervously against their harnesses. Garrick murmured something low and soothing under his breath, one hand steady on the reins even as his knuckles paled with the effort of keeping them calm.

Leon’s eyes narrowed as a new notification surfaced in front of him, cold and immediate.

[Monster Detected: Stone Golem (Boss)]

[Level: 8]

[Type: Construct]

[Innate Talent: Runic Fortification]

[Description: An animated construct bound by ancient runic script, sustained by residual mana embedded deep within its stone form. Highly resistant to physical damage. Activates defensive runes when threatened, temporarily hardening its structure against incoming attacks.]

[Threat Assessment: High]

Leon stared at the notification, then back at the towering figure blocking the entire width of the road ahead of them.

"Garrick," he said slowly, without taking his eyes off the golem. "Please tell me this is one of those things you were just warning me about."