Soon, Celeste walked into my crafting room carrying a small chunk of silvery rock. Naturally, it had yet to be refined, but I could take care of that. “Any volunteers?” I asked, looking at her. She gave me a slight nod, but seemed hesitant. “Let me take a look at the item before you put them into it. I don’t want there to be any mistakes here.” I could understand her worry, as these were technically her children. Even if I was giving one the chance to gain a new life, it could all tumble out of control with just one wrong slip. Even if people only looked at AI children like you would look at an orphan, how quickly would you offer up that orphan for a fifty-fifty chance at mini-godhood or death? “Alright.” I accepted her condition easily, and caused the mithral ore to float out of her hands. Using my control of the elements, I quickly identified the impurities, removing them from the stone before shaping it into ten small rings. Each ring would represent one possible attempt to get the enchantment right. First, I began to establish the enchantment circle. This would probably have the most varied components out of the ones I had done so far, due to needing so many elements. Because I wanted to include more than just the basic few elements into the grove eventually to support elemental constructs with more possibilities than just those, I included a total of ten ‘gather elemental mana’ enchantments. The elements included were: fire, water, earth, wind, light, dark, lightning, plant, animal, and metal. With this combination, I should be able to create a stable grove that can support almost any constructs I want to put in it. After all, it would suck if I put a lightning elemental into the world, and it died out because of losing energy. Now, with that taken care of, I included a mana manipulation enchantment. Normally, something like this would be useless on an item, because it is designed to enable the item itself to manipulate mana more effectively, not the person using it. If anything, it uses up extra enchantment space in the aura to slightly reduce the cost of using the item’s abilities. But, if I give the item its own soul and its own mind, then it should allow it to manipulate mana like any normal person. From the pile of ten rings, I grabbed one at random and placed it into the center of the large enchantment circle. Then, I began infusing my mana into the circle itself. Because this was such delicate work, I did not allow the enchantment circle to take control of the mana to do the work for me. Instead, I constantly monitored the flow of energy, keeping it in check. When the enchantment began to be absorbed into the ring, I strengthened my control of it. This was a crucial step, as I had to arrange the enchantments in such a way that I would be able to fit the AI’s mind into it when I was done. And, in order to make sure that the AI would be able to safely use all of the item’s powers, I had to place that particular enchantment as close to the center as absolutely possible. However, perhaps my control of the mana had been a bit too strict. Just as the enchantment was beginning to settle in, and the flow of magic started to finalize itself in the ring, small cracks began forming along the outside of the ring itself. Then, with a quiet snap, the ring split apart in half. Just as I was being thankful that the damage was low enough that I could simply reforge the ring, it began glowing red hot. Then stopped immediately and cracked again, then started glowing, before it erupted into a small burst of wind. As each piece hit the ground, they fell through the shadows, never to be seen again. Okay, that’s probably the weirdest enchanting failure I’ve seen before. Shaking my head, I looked over the enchantment circle to make sure that I did not need to make any revisions before grabbing the next in the line of rings to begin work on. One down, nine to go. “So, John…” Celeste spoke up, grabbing my attention before I could get started with this ring. “Yeah?” “Why did you want to give this ring its own mind? If you made it a soulbound item like your armor, then wouldn’t you be able to control it like a second grove?” She looked honestly curious when she asked that, but I couldn’t blame her. I hadn’t actually thought about doing it that way. However, there were a couple of flaws in the idea that would prevent it from being viable. “Well, didn’t really cross my mind. But, pretty sure it wouldn’t work. If we make it a soulbound item, that means it would be merged with my soul, and thus my grove. The whole reason we’re doing this is because my grove can’t be used. Also, I wanted to be able to give the item to someone else in case of emergencies, and tell the constructs to obey the wearer of the ring.” “One ring to rule them all, eh?” Celeste asked with a grin, but I only turned to look at her curiously. “Ah, nevermind..” Shaking my head, I got back to work. This time, when the mana came into contact with the ring, I allowed my control of it to relax slightly, though still made sure to provide enough room within the enchantment for the mind to be placed. “Though, now that you mention it, this would be a good way to quickly cheat and give someone a grove of their own, if we soulbind one of these rings to them. Could potentially mass produce groves.” Celeste waited to speak until I was relaxing my control of the mana again, waiting to see if this was a success or failure. “True, but doing it that way would present a problem of its own. Bypassing the initial cultivation lessons means that they would only ever be able to use the elements that were put into the ring at the start. They’d still have to learn to cultivate mana on their own.” I nodded, agreeing with that assessment. I made sure to keep a close eye on the ring, waiting to see if there was any unusual reaction. This time, I also made sure to spread out my senses to track the elemental mana of the surroundings. Like I expected, I found it slowly pouring into the ring. This was probably one of the reasons that the first try did what it did. It simply overloaded on the elemental mana, without a method to safely contain it. Given what I was doing with this ring, I didn’t have the intention of adding a ‘stop absorbing’ feature to let it limit what it could absorb. Rather, the item itself would do that, once it had a mind and a soul. Until then, I simply took control of the surrounding elemental mana, and prevented it from being absorbed. “Alright… this should be good.” Just to be safe, I split a piece of my mind off to specifically control that mana, so that I could still focus on the next step. Celeste smiled faintly, stepping forward to pick up the ring and inspect it. She was not gentle at all with it, and actually threw it directly against the wall of the room with considerable strength. Had the ring been made of steel or gold, it likely would have deformed from the impact. However, thankfully this was made with a much stronger metal, allowing it to maintain its shape. Though, it did give me a brief jumpscare. “It’s good.” She said, her smile widening slightly. A moment later, she pulled an item out of her inventory, a familiar short slab of metal. “His name is Lex. You better be nice to him, okay? He’s a good kid.” I chuckled slightly, nodding my head as I accepted the AI, and the ring to go with it. Closing my eyes, I quickly gathered the mana necessary to create a small goblin, which was immediately slaughtered so that I could refine and steal its soul. I didn’t have any spare buffer to use for this, since I hadn’t really been doing a lot of mindless mob killing lately. Gently, I began mixing the new soul into the ring, letting it slowly settle into the inanimate aura and breathe life into the object. Next, the most delicate task came up, transferring the consciousness of the AI from the device I had been given to the ring. Thankfully, these soft sticks store data as a magical aura, which makes the whole process much easier. Otherwise, we probably never would have been able to make any intelligent items. Carefully, I wrapped my mana around the consciousness, pulling it off of the device just a little bit at a time. No matter how many times I do stuff like this, I don’t feel safe rushing it. It’s hard to objectify artificial intelligence when I’ve had one as a best friend for years. As I gradually moved the aura over to the ring, I made slight adjustments to the ring’s aura to allow for an easy connection. With that taken care of, I slotted the new consciousness into the aura, and watched as the various tendrils of energy all connected together. Of course, it was only now that I realized I had forgotten to give it two very important enchantments. That was, the ability to speak and hear. Crap. I want a do-over! Noticing that something was wrong from my sudden anxiety, Celeste sent me a suspicious glare. “What did you do?” “Uhm… forgot to make it so that he can hear and talk? I can fix it!” Celeste’s face visibly paled at that, which I had to consider for a moment, given that she didn’t have any blood that could drain from her face. “Really, I can!” She looked at me skeptically, but I was already working. Lex, can you hear me? I sent the message with some metal mana, allowing it to be absorbed into the ring. If you can, try to send some mana back to me with your thoughts. It took a few long moments of silence, but eventually I heard a reply. Did… did it work? This feels different than what I expected. Almost there. Just one last step. Going to add on a new option for you. When I do this, I need you to put this somewhere that it feels comfortable, okay? The last thing I wanted was to get this far, and have the ring explode because I added in the ability to communicate. Alright. The small voice responded more quickly this time, and I got to work. The previous enchantment diagram was wiped clear with a thought, and a new one set up. This one was much more simple, as it only allowed the manipulation and absorption of sound mana to transmit and receive audio. “Okay… here we go.” Celeste was impatiently tapping her foot behind me as I got to work, this time being even more careful with how I managed the mana than I had when initially creating the ring. However, as soon as the enchantment made contact with the ring itself, I felt the mana pulled out of my control. Although, I could still monitor it, so I could see the enchantment reshaping itself slightly to fit in an empty part of the aura, allowing me to breathe out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Is it…?” “He’s fine.” I answered Celeste, then turned to look at the ring in question. “Aren’t you?” Rather than the confirmation I wanted, there was an audible screeching sound, like nails on a chalkboard, that violated my ears for several long moments. After it passed, there was a low droning sound, so I could guess what was happening. “I think he’s… calibrating?” Celeste raised a suspicious eyebrow, but then turned towards the ring. “Lex, you okay in there?” The noises alternated a few more times between high and low pitches, before finally settling on the slightly higher end of the spectrum. Though, not painfully high, but more like a prepubescent boy’s high pitched voice. “I’m… I’m okay, mom. I think I’m ready for the next step.” After she heard that, Celeste looked at me, and I began the process of making the various elemental seeds needed to make a grove. “Well… let’s make our first inanimate druid.”