Chapter 52. Rank 6 — Part Six

I couldn’t get full.

What the hell? I was eating way too much. I even felt a little embarrassed.

After all, all the food and ingredients belonged to Rem and Sherial, and I was just eating without doing anything in return.

But the food was way too good.

And the strangest part was that I didn’t feel full at all. Sherial’s cooking was dangerously delicious.

If I kept eating only her food, I was pretty sure I’d get fat soon. Very fat.

After we finished eating, I finally forced myself to bring up the topic of the toilet and said that if they needed it, I could teleport them to the forest at any time.

Turns out, my help wasn’t needed at all.

They already had everything prepared — including a portable toilet. And not just a bucket, but something that looked like a small fortress.

Damn… I was genuinely jealous.

When would I finally get a storage skill so I could carry food and even a portable toilet with me?

I should ask Rem sometime how she got her storage skill. Well, after we deal with these monsters.

Sherial was busy with something. I didn’t know exactly what, but it was obvious she was occupied. Rem was just sitting with her eyes closed, completely still, as if meditating.

So what was I supposed to do now?

Basically, I only had one job at the moment: when Rem’s mana recovered, I had to teleport her outside into the forest so she could summon new stone golems, then bring her back. That was it.

Training wasn’t really an option either.

If I started doing Training Room tasks, I’d quickly start sweating and smelling. That wouldn’t be a problem if I were alone, but now… no. That would be incredibly awkward.

Unless Rem or Sherial suggested training together themselves.

Damn.

When I got the chance, I was definitely going to build a huge pool here with a large supply of water. Only now did I truly realize how badly this place lacked water.

"I did it," Rem suddenly said, opening her eyes and smiling.

I froze for a moment.

Unlike Sherial, Rem smiled very rarely. So rarely, in fact, that this was the first time I’d ever seen a smile like this from her. Honestly, I used to think she simply didn’t smile at all.

"Did something happen?" I asked, confused.

She said, “I did it,” but I had no idea what she could have done when she’d been sitting there with her eyes closed the whole time.

"I managed to summon stone golems," she said.

From her voice alone, it was clear she was happy.

I was completely confused.

Happy?.. But this wasn’t new for her. She’d summoned hundreds of golems right in front of me before. Why would this be a reason to rejoice now?

I looked around.

There wasn’t a single stone golem in sight.

So where were they? And why would she summon a golem here, inside the Training Room? This place was already safe.

"You don’t get it," Rem said. "I summoned the stone golems directly into the forest. Without leaving this place."

Now I understood why she was happy.

Wait. What?

How did she even manage to do that?

I had always thought the Training Room was a separate dimension. Or maybe even a different world entirely, one only accessible to me. If that were true, the distance between this place and the outside world should be enormous.

"How did you do it?" I blurted out.

"At first, I also thought this place was a separate dimension," Rem began. "After all, even time flows differently here — much faster than outside."

"But when I thought about how you use the Training Room for teleportation… I noticed a pattern."

She looked at me to make sure I was listening.

"You always appear in the center of this room. Then you move some distance inside it, and when you return to the outside world, you end up at the exact same distance from your previous position."

"So I thought — what if this isn’t just movement between dimensions?" she continued.

"When you move in the outside world, the room moves with you, always staying with you. That’s why the distances match. You’re not teleporting to some random location — you’re simply shifting between layers of the same space."

"I came to the conclusion that you literally carry this room with you," she said. "You’re not traveling to a faraway place or a separate world. The dimension you enter exists in the exact same space, just on a different layer. And if you can move so easily between these layers, then there must be a direct connection between them."

I froze, trying to process what she was saying.

"I might be wrong," Rem added calmly. "There could be other explanations. But I decided to test one thing."

"I tried to sense my golems that I left in the forest."

"A summoner has a connection to their summons," she said. "It’s very weak and vague, but I can feel every golem I’ve created. And when I focused… I realized they were very close."

She smiled slightly.

"Relying on that connection, I tried summoning new golems around the existing ones."

"And it worked."

Rem looked straight at me.

"Now I can summon golems without leaving this place."

"Got it," I said.

Though, to be honest, I barely understood anything.

The only thing I truly understood was this:

I was like a turtle carrying its house on its back.

Wherever I went, this house went with me. And at any moment, I could simply step inside.

The time had come.

The beginning of our attack against the giant monster. And all the smaller ones too.

Today, we would destroy them.

Or they would destroy us.

No — that’s not right.

If it became clear that we were losing, we would simply retreat. At least, I hoped so.

Rem and Sherial weren’t insane enough to just throw their lives away.

Rem was fully prepared. Her mana was at one hundred percent, and she hadn’t used a single mana potion today.

I teleported us into the forest.

Dozens of stone golems were visible around us, but that was only a small fraction. In total, there should have been around two thousand of them. The moment we appeared, the golems immediately started moving forward.

We followed them, and after three or four minutes, the sounds of battle could be heard ahead. It seemed the golems had already collided with the devouring caterpillars.

Soon, we saw scattered bodies of the devouring caterpillars. They stood no chance against the stone golems.

A couple of minutes later, we emerged into an open area.

And the sight was truly spectacular.

From the forest, massive eight-meter-tall stone golems were advancing for several hundred meters. On the opposite side were the devouring caterpillars — also monstrous in size. But here, there were fewer of them.

If you counted all the caterpillars across the entire territory, there were more of them overall. But they were spread across vast distances. Here, in this location, our forces dominated — both in strength and in numbers.

Whoa.

At a distance of about one and a half kilometers, I saw trees and chunks of earth being hurled into the air, raising enormous clouds of dust and debris.

Damn… the giant monster was still searching for us in that part of the forest.

Which wasn’t surprising.

Only four or five minutes had passed in the outside world since Rem and I escaped from it.

Rem ordered her golems to focus on eliminating the devouring caterpillars and not approach the giant monster. Sherial’s attack could destroy them if they got too close.

Sherial raised her bow, drew the string, and aimed at the giant monster. Apparently, a distance of one and a half kilometers was no problem for her.

But she needed time.

About twenty seconds to prepare.

Her arrow began to emit a soft glow, growing brighter with each passing moment.

The giant monster stopped.

Its enormous body slowly turned toward us, and it began to move — breaking into a run.

Even from this distance, I felt the vibrations of the ground. Powerful. Each of its steps shook the earth.

And its face…

The face of the giant monster wasn’t the same as I remembered.

Almost the same — but still different.

Last time, it had only two massive tentacles on its head, with the others much smaller. Sherial’s arrow had torn one of them off, and it had started regrowing afterward. When we escaped, the monster had almost fully recovered.

But now…

Now it had four such tentacles.

How did this damn monster grow two more in just five minutes?

Twenty seconds still hadn’t passed.

Damn, why was time moving so slowly?

Shoot, Sherial!

I wanted to scream, but of course, I didn’t say it out loud.

Her arrow was now shining blindingly bright.

And she released it.

In less than a second, the arrow reached the giant monster, and a blinding explosion of light engulfed it completely, hiding it from my sight.

Without waiting to see the result, I immediately teleported us back into the Training Room.

Right after that, Rem handed Sherial a mana potion, which she drank immediately.

I didn’t understand why she was in such a hurry to restore her mana. Even though we were all in a safe zone now, maybe she was simply uncomfortable being almost completely out of mana.

All that was left was to wait three hours.

Then we would return to the battlefield again — for just a few seconds.

I think this would be the most boring monster fight imaginable.