Or not? Even after several moments of just waiting with bated breath for the beam to envelop me, I felt nothing… Even the agonizing pain that had afflicted my wings suddenly disappeared without a trace. It felt like my wing had returned to a near-perfect state once again. I was confused as to why this was the case, but I was even more confused about why I never felt the large beam hit me.

After a few more moments of waiting, still nothing happened, and I opened my eyes to investigate why this was the case. The moment I did so, I saw a large solid spherical thing right in front of me. It was perfectly motionless and suspended in midair, even though gravity should be pulling the thing down. It was a dark gray color that stood out from the general color scheme of the room.

I looked around the room again to try and figure out what caused the beam to either miss me or not affect me, but instead of finding any clues about this particular topic, I ended up observing something even more mind-boggling. The entire room turned into varying shades of gray. Previously darker-colored objects like the blue binding of some of the books turned to a darker shade of gray, while the light-colored things like the dried blood turned to a lighter shade of gray.

‘How is it possible for a room to suddenly shift colors like this one did?’ Despite being on the verge of death a couple of minutes ago, I couldn’t restrain my desperation for information on at least one mystery that I had encountered in my time in the dungeon. ‘Perhaps how isn’t the thing to ask, rather, why did the room change color? Surely this isn’t some kind of gimmick that this dungeon is implementing this deep.’ As I was thinking to myself, a feeling of lethargy started to overtake my body. I presumed that this came from the exhaustion that typically accompanies a battle, but I wasn’t entirely too sure.

I’ve felt the kind of tiredness that follows a battle many times in the past, both in this life and my past life, but it has never been this acute before. It might be because of the difficulty of the battle, or perhaps I was feeling relieved that my life wasn’t over yet.

‘On that note, what happened to the beam, and what is this large spherical object in front of me?’ I flew up to get a better view of the room, which had turned grayscale. By doing this, I saw that the object previously in front of me was not a sphere, but some cylindrical-shaped object that extended all the way to the golem’s eyes. I also noticed that even the glowing red gem that made up the golem’s eye had lost its red glow and was a light gray.

As a result of these two discoveries (mainly the first one), I had a sudden revelation. ‘The thing that was right in front of me was the beam that the golem fired that had somehow solidified and stopped right in front of me. It looks like the golem is continuing to fire that laser given its stance and the fact that the laser originates from that gem, but nothing appears to be happening. The solid isn’t growing any bigger and no beams are traveling toward me. In fact, nothing in this room is making a single movement, not the golem, not the beam, not the beast automaton, and not even the bookshelves that were violently trembling a moment ago due to the landing of this giant metal golem. It’s almost as if time has stopped…’

An intense headache overtook me and snapped me out of my thoughts and back to reality. I grimaced in pain and closed my eyes, trying to mitigate some of the discomfort of the headache. The pain only lasted a few seconds and disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. Opening my eyes again, I saw that color was slowly returning to the world, as more and more patches of gray began to regain their initial colors.

When all the colors fully returned, a thunderous roar echoed through the room as the beam that was previously stationary resumed its motion, disintegrating the parts of the floor it touched. It tore a canal into the floor before somehow disappearing into the wall behind me. The area of destruction included where I was previously flying before the world had turned gray. The continuous beam lasted for several seconds before the golem stopped firing it.

I saw the red gem in the golem’s head turn to my new location before emitting an ominous red glow. I immediately tried to get out of the way that the golem was facing, now that I knew what was coming, but it kept reorienting itself so that the red gem was pointed right at me. I increased my speed further, yet somehow the golem’s tracking was always able to follow me. I grew a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to dodge the beam, but I didn’t give up hope. I tried to push myself even further and increase my speed past my previous limits. In the end, I was able to slightly increase the speed I was flying, but the golem could still perfectly keep the gem aimed at my location at all times.

Despite feeling a sense of disappointment that my efforts effectively did nothing to improve my situation, I didn’t give up and strengthened my resolve to increase my speed even further. Right as I was about to attempt this, the golem unleashed the beam of energy that it had been charging up this whole time. The beam ripped open the floor as it shot toward me, or rather toward where I was a few seconds ago when the golem shot the laser. Despite the massive radius of the beam, I was able to dodge it because it was fired at my past location rather than at my future location.

‘Aha, so that’s the limitation of this golem, it can’t predict where I will be, it can only fire at my current location at that time. I could definitely exploit this limitation, but the question is what would be the best way to do so? There are many things I can think of, but which one would lead to the best outcome.’ I thought over the multitude of options that I had for a few moments. While I was doing this, the gem embedded in the golem’s head started glowing again. This time, I was not too worried about the laser because I knew how to dodge it and because I still had some time before the golem finished charging up enough energy.

‘If my estimation is accurate, then it takes roughly 45 seconds for the golem to gather an adequate amount of energy for its attack. That’s plenty of time to decide on a plan of action.’ I stopped flying forward and just levitated in place, confident that I was not in any immediate danger, in order to regain some energy. All of a sudden, I heard something whistling through the air at high speed toward me. That something was a large cannonball that was shot by the beast automaton that was standing to my left. I hurriedly dove down closer to the ground to dodge the quickly incoming projectile. Upon recovering my composure, I focused my vision on the beast, and once I did, an idea instantaneously entered my head.

‘What if I flew in front of this beast automaton right as the golem is about to shoot the laser? If I do this correctly, there is a high chance that the beast would be scrapped or at the very least, gravely damaged… Out of all the ideas that I had, this one seems to have the greatest benefit. If this plan succeeds, which is highly likely, then only the golem would be left, meaning it would finally be a one-on-one battle. I should have about 15 more seconds before that beam is fired and it will only take 5 seconds to reach the beast golem. It’s best I stall for another 8 or 9 seconds so that I can catch the two automatons off guard with this plan. Going too early gives them some time to react and counter the plan while going too late means that the beam would not hit the beast.’

In those few seconds, the beast had already reloaded another iron orb into its cannon and was preparing to fire it at me. Another second later, the projectile was launched out of the barrel of the cannon and straight at me. Instead of dodging laterally like I had before, I moved toward the cannonball. At the last second, right before I collided with the projectile, I slightly dove down, bringing myself under the cannonball and heading right toward the beast golem. The beast golem was recovering from the slight recoil it experienced from the cannon and could not completely react to my dive. Once I was right in front of the beast, a thundering sound came from behind me and a bright flash spread across the room. Even without looking at the source of those two sensory details, I knew what it was.

I readjusted myself in midair and flew as fast as I could to the side to avoid the beam. Mere milliseconds passed before I felt a large shockwave hit the back of my wings. I shook slightly, but I was able to retain the altitude at which I was flying. When I no longer felt the shockwave, I turned around to check the results of my plan.

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The beast was still standing, but the metal that composed its body was starting to fall apart. Cracks were scattered all over the metal and some areas of the beast were now entirely devoid of the metal exterior. The most notable thing was that the chest of the beast was no longer protected by anything, revealing a brightly glowing blue gem that already had many scratches on the surface of the gem. It looked like one more contact with literally anything would totally shatter the gem. Additionally, although the beast was still standing, it was visibly running low on energy, and even standing was becoming taxing for it.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, I dove toward the exposed gem to end the beast robot and turn the tides of the battle once again in my favor. Despite nearly being out of energy, the beast still tried to resist the attack by slashing me with its fractured claws. Unfortunately for it, I was too fast for it to resist and my beak crashed into the gem, shattering it into countless pieces. The raised arm of the beast weakly fell to the ground and it toppled over on its side, never to stand up again… Now there was only one more enemy left, and for the first time in the entire fight, it was a one versus one.

At this point, I was piling up exhaustion and it felt like I could collapse at any moment. In spite of this, I remained steadfast in my goal of clearing this dungeon. I quickly began to think of ways that I could prevail over this moving pile of metal.

‘The first thing I have to do is disable that laser mechanism. If I don’t do that, then I’d have to constantly deal with lasers being fired at 45-second intervals, which could get very dangerous if I am right in front of the golem or in the middle of an attack. The question is, how can I do this? Currently, my only two attacking options are my talons and my beak, but neither would be a good choice in this situation. Both of them require me to get closer to the golem, which is incredibly dangerous given that it could use those giant hands to swat me out of the air. If not those two, then what?’ Then I suddenly remembered the sword I had attempted to throw before.

‘That’s it! If I can carry the sword and make it right above the golem, I should be able to drop the sword and hopefully shatter the gem. For this to work, the golem has to be able to turn its head, which hopefully it will be able to.’ While the golem again started to charge up another beam, I flew to where I had dropped the sword and attempted to pick it up with my talons. It was harder than when I had tried this before due to the immense exhaustion that burdened my body. After a few seconds of lifting, I finally managed to pick it up and began to fly up while carrying the sword.

As a consequence of carrying the sword, I was vastly slower than I was before. Normally, it would have taken me about 10 seconds to reach the golem from where the sword was, but now that I was holding such a heavy object, it would take me around 30 seconds to reach the golem. Combined with the time it took me to lift the sword in the first place, I would have to dodge one more beam before I could put my plan into motion. Despite my reduced speed, I was still confident that I would be able to dodge one more beam. I continued to fly up until I reached a satisfactory height. As I was ascending, the golem tilted its heading to keep its gem trained on where I was, thus fulfilling the prerequisite of this plan. I smiled as I began to fly forward after having reached where the ceiling previously was.

Seconds after starting my flight forward, the golem unleashed the beam. The beam quickly approached me and I realized that I wouldn’t be able to make it out of the radius of annihilation in time. My confidence was unfound and I felt a sense of defeat and dread overtaking my body. Part of me still desperately held onto some semblance of hope, hope that something like what happened the first time the golem fired the laser would happen again. No matter how unlikely it was, that part of myself couldn’t stop wishing for it.

Unfortunately, this time, the world did not go gray and the beam was still traveling right at me. This time, it seemed that there was nothing that would save me from this bleak situation that I had put myself in… Why had I tried to carry that sword? Where did my confidence come from? What made me think that I could conquer this dungeon despite only living in this body for about a week now? Thoughts of regrets ran rampant in my head and my body froze up. The only thing I could do was look as the beam slowly headed toward me.

‘Heh, I guess it’s true that everything seems like it’s going in slow-motion when you are on the brink of death.’ I sorrowfully remarked to myself. With nothing else that I could do because I was also in slow-motion, I just watched the beam, waiting for it to engulf me. ‘It’s taking its precious time to reach me. My wings are starting to get tired after flapping this much. Wait, flapping this much?’ I looked at my wings and saw that they weren’t flapping in slow-motion, but rather at regular speed.

‘Huh? Am I not in slow motion? Then why is the beam going so slow?’ While I was still moving at my regular speed, the beam was still slowed. ‘I shouldn’t waste the chance that the world has given me. Come on body, move.’ I willed my body to unfreeze and I soon regained complete control over my body. The first thing I did was obviously move out of the way of the beam by continuing to move closer to the golem.

By the time the beam reached where I was before, I was just on the edge of the effective range of the beam. The beam did not harm my body, but a few of my feathers were scorched off. I paid these lost feathers no mind as I didn’t feel anything from losing them and simply flew forward. Once the beam had completely passed me, the world returned to its regular speed and I felt my exhaustion grow even more. The exhaustion caused me to falter in the air for a second before I regained my composure and resumed my flight. The golem once again started to channel energy into the gem.

While it was charging, I spent around 32 seconds making it to the golem, a few seconds later than I had estimated because of the sudden pang of tiredness. With around 13 seconds left, I was now hovering above the golem’s head, while the golem was tilting its head to look straight up at me, leaving its gem exposed to my planned attack. I released the sword and flew as fast as I could away from the golem predicting something catastrophic to happen. From behind me, I heard a shrill sound of something shattering. Seconds later, a massive explosion came from behind me where the golem was. From that sound I knew that my prediction had come true, the sword interrupted the flow of energy by imposing itself into the gem, causing that energy to become unstable and explode.

When the explosion happened, I was still in the air, but I was unharmed because I had reached a point that was out of range of the explosion. After ascertaining that I was safe, I turned around and observed what damage was done to the golem. It was still standing, but just like when the beast was hit by the beam, parts of its body were devoid of the metal plating that had covered it before; additionally, many parts of its body were scorched. Again like the beast, the explosion somewhat exposed another gem that was in the chest of the golem. It was a gigantic spherical yellow gem that had a diameter of about 40 centimeters. However, the gem was still covered with another layer of some kind of semi-transparent metal, which is how I could tell the details of the gem.

This late layer of defense proved very troublesome to me because I had no way of piercing through metal. My beak and talons could dent or perhaps even scratch metal, but I wouldn’t be able to fully pierce it. On top of that, it was still too dangerous to get in close enough to use either of them. By this point, I was running out of ideas and options. I tried to come up with more, but I was interrupted by a loud sound that came from the golem. I focused my attention back to the golem and saw that it had taken its first step forward toward me, and was beginning to approach me.

I speedily looked around the room for anything that could finish off the golem, and my eyes settled on the beast automaton’s fallen body that I was coincidentally hovering next to. What caught my attention was that the canon was pointed at the exposed chest of the golem. It seems that when the beast fell onto its side, it landed on a pile of fallen books, tilting it into a perfect position to hit the golem. Next to the base of the cannon, there was a single red button, which I assumed to be a manual firing button in case something went wrong with the automatic firing mechanism. This all seemed like too big of a coincidence, but I wasn’t going to complain about my sudden burst of good luck.

I hit the button and a cannonball rocketed out of the cracked barrel of the cannon toward the open chest of the metal golem. I heard a loud crunching noise followed by a shattering sound, and soon, the golem fell to its knees before completely falling onto the ground, motionless, without having a chance to use its large body and hands to attack me… The ground shook slightly when the golem toppled over, causing the cracked cannon to splinter into pieces completely.

The fight was now over… and my eyes were growing heavy as exhaustion overtook my body. No longer filled with adrenaline, my eyes began to close as everything began to fade to black. I managed to see the large gem in the middle of the room turn into a different color. Then everything went dark and I lost my consciousness…