Getting up and stretching, I frown at the darkness outside. ‘Needing less sleep is nice and all, but it kinda sucks waking up to it still being night time.’

Walking into the bathroom, I take a shower today instead of using Clean. Something about the process just feels like a better start to the day, even if magic is faster.

Still feeling the alchemy bug today, I figure I’ll make some golems instead of potions. Adreanell still has my corrupt crystal golem core I think, so I’ll need to make more cores anyway.

Walking downstairs to feed the slimes, I ponder on what kind of materials I should make my golem cores out of.

‘I could do a glass core pretty easily with Geomancy, but that just doesn’t seem powerful. I wonder if I can make a golem core out of an aspect crystal? They’re so small though, I couldn’t make a very big golem out of that. Something to try still, I suppose.’

Feeding the slimes quickly, they all still seem to be enjoying their toys. There are three new eggs in the pens, all neutral this time, so I name them Emils, Solomon, and Plort.

“Welcome to the world you three!” Handing them some slime pellets, they happily eat the food and return to their playing.

Checking the bottles, there’s another one filled with neutral slime, so I store that away. The red and blue slime bottles are almost full and the purple one is about 2/3rds of the way full.

My plans for the day don’t include any potion-making yet, so I walk out of the slime pen room to find Colt. He’s out in the garden, tending to the various plants. Specifically, he’s frowning at how sparse the vitaleaf and magetongue plots are.

“Mornin’ sunshine.”

“Lucas, it’s literally still night time. What did you do to these plants?” He indicates to the plots in question.

“Uh, made a lot of healing and mana potions?”

“Lil P is pissed at you, be more careful with the plots next time, okay?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll let him pick them for me then. Anyway, I’m planning on making some golems today. You wanna help? I’m trying to brainstorm ideas for what to make the cores from. We could even potentially pick some new materials to make the bodies from.”

“Oh, sure. I wouldn’t mind a break from practicing magic. What about your aspect crystals? Those might make good cores.”

“Well, they’re kinda small so I’m not sure we could make very big golems out of them.”

“Is there any way you could make them bigger? Maybe fuse a bunch of the same crystals together or something?”

“I can’t- You know, I haven’t actually tried. That’s something to consider.”

Going through the back door into the kitchen and through to the alchemy room, Colt and I consider how to combine the aspect crystals into a bigger one. He notices the pestle and mortar.

“What if you crush up a bunch of the crystals together? Maybe then you could… I don’t know how, but combine them from dust?”

“Hmmm, maybe using my blood as a binding agent? I think a mix of my Insight and Adept Alchemist Talent is telling me that we’re going in the right direction here. Something feels right about this process.”

“Well, we can try that then. Palemetal is good at taking on aspects anyway if Argo’s description is anything to go off of. Let’s do it. What aspect would be good for a golem though?”

“Well, I’d like to do guidance, because that would probably give a higher command total but…” Glancing over at the diminished plot of Hermes Sandal, I smile awkwardly at Colt. “I may have uh, used a lot of that too, making flight potions.”

Colt sighs deeply. “Okay. What about… recovery? That would probably give the golem some level of auto-repair, which would be useful in the long term. We have plenty of hydrabeans too.”

“That works for me. Let me just convert some of these then.” Grabbing a whole set of nine hydrabeans, I focus on ideas of recovery.

Watching a wound heal, slowly closing over time.

Even simpler ideas of recovery, like breathing and heart rate going down after you recover your stamina from a run.

Activating Gift of Prosperity, I realize condensing them all down to aspects at once may have been a bad idea. Small crystal orbs spill onto the floor, plinking off of it.

“Oops. Might have made too many. Forgot I’m at a factor of three crystals per refining now. Might as well make it a rounded thirty instead of twenty-seven though.”

Grabbing one more hydrabean pod, I convert it into three more crystals. After Colt and I pick them up off the floor, we make sure they’re all high quality. We have no clue what would happen if we mixed qualities.

Colt creates his own mortar and pestle which I enchant for him and we set to work grinding down crystals into dust. It takes us a little over an hour to grind them all down into a fine powder. It’s quite the sizeable mound at this point.

“Ready?” Colt looks to me.

“As ready as I’ll ever be. This is gonna need a lot of blood.” Using Hemomancy, I cut through my skin with a blade of blood and pull the silvery white liquid from my veins.

It’s absolutely as uncomfortable as it sounds and I keep a steady flow of MP converting to HP to regenerate my blood. With what I believe is a sufficient amount of blood, I let the wound close and regard the floating orb of blood above my hand.

Colt offers a large stone bowl with the powdered aspect crystal in it. Lowering the orb of blood into it, I make it spin until I can’t control it with magic anymore as it’s too integrated with the aspect of recovery.

Using a stone rod to stir up the rest, I have what amounts to a paste of blood and crystal dust. “Well, this is nasty. What now?”

Colt cups his chin in thought. “Hmmm. I kinda hoped that this was all we had to do. Maybe feed some of your mana into it?”

“Oh. I could try refining it again. Maybe it’ll work.”

“Sure, try it.”

Touching my mana to the mixture, I activate Gift of Prosperity once more. There’s a rather blinding light that emits from the mixture, causing both Colt and me to shield our eyes.

Once the brightness dies down, we look in the bowl to find a large, smooth, teal crystal orb, about the size one would expect a fortune teller’s crystal ball to be, maybe just slightly larger.

“Woah, it worked!” Lifting it up, I Inspect it.

Large Aspect Crystal

Quality: High

Traits: Rapid Recovery

Description: Through a process of catalyzation and refining, a large number of recovery aspect crystals have combined into one significantly larger orb with enhanced properties.

Level up! Due to combining a large number of aspect crystals to form a large aspect crystal for the first time, your Talent: Adept Alchemist has reached (7/50)!

“Plenty of space for you to enchant on, that’s for sure.” Colt runs a finger along the smooth surface of the crystal. There are some small defects inside the crystal, but it’s only high quality so that’s to be expected.

“Yup. What should we make the golem’s body out of?”

“Well, we’ve used clay before and that always works well. We could do a trial run with that and make it a new body later if need be. It’s easy enough to swap out a core.” Colt shrugs.

“True. You wanna make a body for it while I enchant this golem core?”

“I can do that. Anything I should know in particular when making it?” He pulls out a notepad and pencil from his personal pantry, ready to take notes.

“Hmm, general use for now, I can always tweak the enchantments later if I need to. You said you wanted a waiter right? I also figured maybe I could send this golem to the Shop to pick stuff up or even to help out with building. If we make it strong enough, it should be able to do some heavy lifting others can’t.”

“Got it. A focus on strength and stability then.” He begins to make a few sketches on his notepad as he walks outside. “See you in a bit. I’m gonna search the earth for some high quality clay. Let’s try adding your blood to the clay once I’m finished too, kind of like we did with Lil P and my blood.”

“Sounds like a plan, see you later.”

Turning back to regard the orb, I can’t resist rubbing my hands over it like some fortune teller and cackling madly.

Settling down from goofing off, I sit on the floor with the orb in my lap and begin to inscribe. With how versatile my enchantments are now due to the smaller size of lines, higher precision, and ability to “inject” them deeper into the material, I decide to truly get fancy with this one.

Putting a huge emphasis on mana efficiency as this is such a large core, I add complex but efficient mana network runes. This golem will be lifting and moving things a lot of the time, so I add enchantments for strength.

The aspect crystal is surprisingly receptive to enchantment, it takes very little mana to engrave it.

It innately has recovery, so I put less of an emphasis on durability with this golem core. A large portion of my enchanting becomes dedicated towards the golem’s intelligence level.

Researching runes in my enchantment book, I find plenty relating to golems that grant them higher command counts and a small level of intelligence. Curious, I unclip Argo and prop him up on a plant plot in front of me.

“Hi, Lucas!” The anchor chirps happily.

“Hi there, buddy. I’m making a golem!”

“I’m a golem!”

Laughing, I pat the anchor. “Yes, yes you are. You’re a very good golem. I was wondering though, how are you able to talk? The golem whose core you’re made from never talked.”

“Ilmarinen added enchantments so I could talk! Wanna see?”

“You can show me?”

“I think so! Hrrrrrrrrrr Zzzrzrrttzttztzt”

“Argo, what are you doing?”

“Making working noises!”

“Show me the enchantments, please.”

“Okay!” Several deep, complex inscriptions rise to the surface of Argo. Studying them, a lot seem to be composing Argo’s overall AI, but I find the ones for speech in there as well by cross-referencing them with my enchanting book.

Using those as an example, I try to mimic them to the best of my ability. It’s hard because they’re extremely precise and complex. There’s a level of skill there that I simply haven’t reached yet.

Determined, however, I keep at it, trying to make this golem as intelligent as I can possibly manage. Simply because I want to see if I can make it smarter.

Just like how Lil P seems to have some level of intelligence from Fae blood being added to his clay, I’m hoping my own blood will help to carry the process too. I’m just not sure if adding my blood will be too much of a security risk for revealing myself, depends if the description indicates its presence or not.

Practicing adding speech gives me hope that I’ll be able to grant Lil P the ability to talk too.

Argo and I chat while I enchant. It helps me keep focus, strangely enough. If I try too hard, I end up distracting myself and messing up inscriptions and having to redo them. Talking to Argo lets me fall into a sort of flow state.

Time passes and eventually, sunlight comes through the window, gleaming off of the core I just finished.

Level up! Due to working hard and researching the ideal enchantments you need to create a higher intelligence golem than you have previously, your Talent: Adept Enchanter has reached (14/50)!

“Woah, Argo. I gained three levels in Adept Enchanter from making this core. Apparently, hours of work pay off when you really try hard at it!”

“Lucas, you make me the proudest anchor! I am clapping with happiness!”

“Argo, I just thought of something. You’re technically part golem core, right?”

“I am the best golem core!”

“I’m inclined to believe it.” Chuckling at his ego, I pat the metal. “Maybe next I can have Colt make you a body we can put you in sometimes so you can walk around.”

“That would be amazing! I would not have to tell you my actions if you did that!”

“That’s the part you’re happy about?”

“Yes! You move me, Lucas! I am your weapon and your protector! Ilmarinen told me so!”

“Did he now? Well, how about we check out this core and see what it’s like?”

“I am excited to meet my sibling!”

“Alright, well let’s Inspect this.” Focusing on allowing Argo to read the description, if that’s even possible, I wonder if he’s even capable of reading.

Large Aspect Crystal Golem Core

Quality: Very High

Traits: Rapid Recovery, Highly Efficient Mana Flow, Durable, High Strength, High Command Capacity

Description: This golem core has been created from a large aspect crystal of recovery. This aspect will allow whatever material the core is placed into to recover similarly. A heavy emphasis of the inscriptions on this core has been for efficient mana flow. The core is somewhat durable due to durability inscriptions. The body this golem core is placed into will gain high strength due to inscriptions on this core. Due to the largest emphasis of the inscription on this core being for intelligence, the golem made from this core will be capable of performing 20 medium complexity commands or 10 high complexity commands. This level of intelligence will also grant the golem the capability of speech, which it will develop over time.

“Huh. I didn’t even realize ‘very high’ is a quality type. I guess both times I’ve reached excellent it was through Magnum Opus after all.”

“You did great, Lucas! It’s amazing!”

“Can you actually read this?”

“Nope! I just know what it says!” Argo seems just as happy regardless of his reading capabilities.

“Argo. That’s called reading.”

“Oh. Lucas! I’ve discovered something amazing. I can read!”

Facepalming, I shake my head and laugh.

“Well, this golem is really smart and it will be able to perform a bunch of commands, so it’s gonna be really useful. I wonder if Colt is done with the body…” Hefting Argo up on to my shoulder and storing the core away in my hold, I walk outside to find Colt.

Argo chatters about having a new “sibling” while we look for Colt. He’s just around the side of the house, on a new platform of stone that wasn’t there before. Several iterations of golem body parts are spread around him.

From the size of everything, this golem will be about as tall as Colt, maybe even a little taller.

“Hey there, all done with the golem parts? Looks like you… experimented quite a bit.”

He looks up from shifting some clay around with his magick. “Oh. Yeah, I was just feeling creative and you were busy so I decided to make some options.”

He spends a few minutes explaining the different parts to me and lets me choose the ones I think will be ideal.

For now, my plan is to have the golem help out in reinforcing the walls or building homes, so I choose some sturdy legs that will be able to support a lot of weight, a more slender body that should provide lightness to the frame while still being able to support it, and strong but dextrous arms that will be good for grabbing and lifting heavy objects.

The head shape is a bit more simplistic, Colt avoided realism to stay out of uncanny valley so people aren’t freaked out by the golem. The head is oblong with simplistic features including eye holes and a small smile. Golems don’t actually need sensory organs aside from eye holes.

“Well, I just need to spend some time enchanting these parts. I’ve done a lot of this before so it shouldn’t take me too long. Oh, and could you find those bags of holding? I think it would be useful if the golem has those to carry materials around in.”

“Yeah, I think I know where Becky left hers, and I’m pretty sure I know where I put mine.” He walks away, head tilted slightly upward in thought.

Putting all of the golem parts in my hold, there’s actually enough to make three golems overall.

Setting up in my forge, I clear some space on the floor by pushing the table off to the side.

Generating a small amount of clay in my hand with Geomancy, I decide to test first and see what effect my blood has on it. Cutting my hand with Hemomancy, I allow a small trickle of blood to pour on to the clay.

The blood sinks into the clay, integrating it and glowing with a soft white light. The clay’s reddish brown color shifts to something closer to a pale beige. Inspecting the clay, I frown when I note that it mentions it’s been imbued with Palemetal Blood.

“Well, that’s definitely out of the question to do then. Ilmarinen said I need to be careful about revealing that I have Palemetal Blood. Let’s see then… maybe I can power up the clay by imbuing it with an aspect crystal or two?”

Walking into the alchemy room for a moment, I convert some more colossus mushrooms into strengthening and growth aspects and crush them up into powder. Using Gift of Prosperity, I pour mana into the powder and sprinkle it over the clay golem parts.

As the sparkling powder touches the clay, it sinks in, causing the part to glow briefly. The clay shifts to a deep red-brown color after the glowing subsides. After integrating enough of the powder, I finally settle down to enchant.

The aspects of growth and strengthening feel like a good combo for the recovery aspect that makes up the core of this golem.

Hopefully, it follows my intent as I work the enchantments and will grant it some abilities to strengthen its own body, grow parts to reach farther places, and even simply recover stronger than it was previously.

The clay already feels stronger, it’s less malleable to my touch and holds enchantments more easily.

For the legs, I focus on enchantments to improve the supportive strength of them so that this golem can lift extremely heavy objects and support that weight. Adding in plenty of mana networks to hook up to the core, I make sure these are complex yet efficient, just like the core.

This golem won’t be the fastest ever, but it will certainly be strong. Finishing the legs off, I find some lengthening enchantments that can be toggled on and off with a mana switch rune so that the golem will be able to activate its growth aspect to elongate its legs and reach higher up places without needing a ladder.

Moving on to the body, I set up efficient networks to lead to the rest of the body parts as well as some strengthening enchantments to compliment the aspect of strengthening within. The rest of my time working on the body goes towards making sure it can also support heavy weights well.

Working on the arms next, I emphasize lifting strength and high mobility in my inscriptions alongside more efficient mana networks. Using a similar rune setup to what I did for elongating the legs, I allow both the fingers and the arms of the golem to grow longer and shorter as needed.

Working some specific enchantments into the fingers, I make sure that even while in their extended form, they will retain a high level of dexterity. Overall, this golem should function well as an efficient builder.

The head is an interesting experiment for me. Adding some enchantments similar to what I did on the golem’s core, I make sure that I hook them up to the core properly through the body to allow the golem the ability of speech.

Hopefully, with the aspect of growth within the clay, this golem should be able to learn and grow in its communication skills. Argo has an aspect of growth within him from the star reaper mole crystal and his speech skills grow all the time, not to mention his own abilities like being able to fly to me now.

With everything complete, I call for Colt before I insert the golem core. He walks into the forge room, two bags of holding in hand. “It’s ready?”

“Yup. Just need to put the core in now and name it.”

“Okay, let’s do it!” He looks excited to meet our creation.

Inserting the core, the clay seals around it, integrating the core into where I enchanted for it to go in the center of its body.

Laying my hands on it, I pulse mana through to awaken the golem. Though the golem’s form is built strong, it also has a somewhat slender physique which certainly makes it look more feminine in shape. “I think I’ll name you… Karie.”

The eyes light up teal as the golem sits up from its supine position on the floor. “Karie.” The voice is even slightly feminine if a little monotone.

Level up! Due to creating a fully integrated runic network within a golem body with specified functions to fulfill the tasks it is created for, your Talent: Adept Enchanter has reached (15/50)!

For reaching your third Talent milestone in Adept Enchanter, you have been awarded applicable stat points to Intelligence, Attunement, Willpower, Insight and + 90 XP. In addition, you have been awarded one Perk Point! Perk Points can be only spent on a Perk that came from the associated Talent.

Level up! Due to the completion of a significantly higher complexity golem with more distinct functions and intents than you have previously, your Talent: Adept Alchemist has reached (10/50)!

For reaching your second Talent milestone in Adept Alchemist, you have been awarded applicable stat points to Dexterity, Intelligence, Attunement, Insight and + 60 XP. In addition, you have been granted the Perk: Extended Longevity.