Unwan pushed with the last of his strength, but he still couldn't move the mechanical guardian very fast. The two arms beneath it wouldn't let him. They were acting like makeshift wheels, yes, but they weren't fixed in place.
If Unwan wasn't careful, one of those "wheel-arms" could slip out from under the guardian, and with all that weight, it would crash to the road. And what would happen after that… he didn't even want to imagine. The noise would draw people, they'd see him, arrest him, try to squeeze money out of him, and so on.
But Unwan didn't have the luxury of paying attention to those fears. He had to push this half-carriage forward and darts around to stop it before it fell. On top of that, he had to grab any arm that slipped out and shove it back under the front.
From afar, it looked simple, but the actual work was anything but. He had to gather every bit of strength he had, use it correctly, straighten the machine's direction, and still worry about his own safety. Who knew? If one "wheel-arm" slipped, the whole thing might tilt the other way, right toward him. Thankfully, that didn't happen.
Thirty seconds later Unwan's strength was almost gone, but the fountain was still far ahead.
Soon came the moment he needed to drag the arm back into place again. Managing to keep the half-carriage upright had already been hard, but stopping it was even harder. Its weight pushed Unwan a full meter backward. Luckily, he had predicted this and stepped forward earlier.
Now he was catching his breath, gasping loudly on the ground.
Inside him, something kept screaming, "Hurry! The night creatures will come. Move!"
Unwan muttered back to himself, answering like some fool talking to the air.
"Alright, alright… just give me a moment. Let me catch my breath. At this rate only this thing will kill me itself…"
He had followed the detailed plan he made to get the guardian back on its feet, and this was the result. If he hadn't figured out this method, who knows what would've happened to him.
But he couldn't rest too long. Moving each arm took thirty seconds, but preparing for it took more than a minute. Though honestly, it felt like it should have taken even longer.
Unwan slowly grabbed the heavy arm again and slid it under the guardian's leg. The process repeated, over and over, again and again. In that endless cycle, Unwan felt like he wasn't moving at all.
After tremendous effort, he finally brought the half-carriage in front of the fountain. He stared at it, breathing so heavily it looked like the next hardship might actually finish him off. The guardian's blank metal head stared back at him with no expression. Unwan stared right back.
Then he lifted one of the guardian's arms and placed it just as he had taken it. The guardian didn't do anything peculiar, only raised and lowered its arm a bit.
'What? No 'thank you'? Not even a gesture? Just a nod? Anything, you ungrateful pile of metal.'
That sarcastic thought passed through his mind, and he put a hand to his head and started laughing.
– What am I thinking… How is this scrap metal supposed to make gestures? It's just iron. Not a human, not even a humanoid.
Even as he laughed at himself, his body was barely standing. After all that exhausting, brutally difficult labor, his body felt like it was burning, his muscles felt like they were tearing. And that wasn't even all. The wounds left by that night creature still hurt, and his whole body felt like it could collapse at any moment.
The mix of pain, exhaustion, and stress had worn him down so much that he actually mistook the guardian for some kind of person in his head. And that was why those thoughts came.
The mechanical guardian picked up the arm beneath its foot and reattached it on its own. When Unwan first saw its three fingers, he didn't understand their purpose. Maybe they were for fighting, he had thought. Now, after seeing this, he realized they could do much more.
Now only the final step remained. His main goal — getting the guardian to stand and ensuring his own safety was finally within reach.
As if understanding Unwan's plan, the guardian placed one arm on the road like a pillar and the other carefully on the fountain's edge. After gripping firmly, it lifted its other arm as well. Unwan even worried that the fountain might break under its weight.
'How noble,' he thought. 'Like a child taught all his life to protect his homeland. For this guardian, this is literally life and destruction or preservation and scrapping.'
But once again, Unwan's help was needed. The guardian had lifted itself a little thanks to the fountain, but it still wasn't fully upright; even its pair of wheels weren't touching the road. The task fell to Unwan.
He needed to push the creature until it was fully upright and able to move on its own. That was no easy feat. Lifting such a heavy thing was difficult enough even without the angle. But thankfully, it was still only tilted around fifty or sixty degrees; any higher and Unwan wouldn't have stood a chance.
Unwan stepped between the guardian's two arms. He focused on one thought:
"Please… just don't crush me."
Then he pushed with everything he had. Thankfully, it was easier than the previous attempts. The guardian helped by planting its arm more firmly and gaining a few extra degrees. With that plus Unwan's strength, the machine finally stood tall.
It stood there for a few seconds, staring at him, then returned to its original pose like a statue. Unwan slowly sank to his knees, lost in thought.
During all that effort, he had been so focused he almost forgot his wounds — aside from the occasional flare of pain. The bite marks on his face had finally recovered, and the seven scars on his body only needed skin to grow over. At least he wasn't coughing blood anymore.
But this day had been brutally hard for him. The moment his head touched the edge of the fountain, he slipped into sleep.