The golem stumbled to stand up and was adjusting to its body. The guards were still on edge. As the golem got to its feet Sal stepped forward and put on his confident smile before addressing the golem.

“I welcome you to the world. Can you understand our speech? How about hand signals or nods?”

The golem turned to face Sal. Its voice yelled into his and everyone else’s heads telepathically. They in turned covered their ears instinctively. The sounds were gibberish to them all, but it sounded intentional. The voice also did not sound harsh despite its volume. Sal continued onward in his goal of communication and assumed that the golem was just adjusting to its new world.

“If you can vocalize quieter next time that would be great.”

The golem voiced a response this time at a normal speaking volume.

“Great. Welcome back to the world great warrior. You were gravely missed, but luckily we have been able to return you to us in our time of need. May you return to your old heights and power as a battle mage and fighter. Undead forces move towards the forest to our south and we will need your help to defeat them. Now to my other question. Is everything clear to you or do you not understand? Nod up and down for yes if you can.”

The golem paused for a moment before nodding its head up and down. It was almost silent when doing so. One would expect it to cause some metallic creaks, but the golem moved its body like any other sentient bipedal creature.

Sal turned to some gnomes sitting nearby. “Get over here learning team.” He turned back to the golem. “ I hope you will be able to speak like us soon enough. Please look through these and be careful about destroying them. The paper will break easily under your grip. It will be a good test of your dexterity.”

“I try,” said the golem finally forming its first real words.

The discussion with the golem continued for an hour. Most of the time was spent teaching the golem the language and how to read the words in the book. As the researchers spoke it picked up more words and the researchers were able to understand its intention better.

Most of the audience for the event left soon after the golem was confirmed to be working properly especially after nearly blowing their ears out. Most of the researchers still watched and took notes if they weren’t directly involved currently with teaching the golem. Zoe stood near the back watching the interactions.

‘This time is crucial for us and the golem to connect with one another and to train the golem in the ways we need to. For the most part, the construction was not going to be a problem. The training usefulness as a tool and a weapon was always and still is the variable at play still. I’m glad all of the runes I put in seem to be working. The golem must never learn of its true history and what it really is. If it can ignore the runes and forget the importance of its creators then this project will ruin us during this time of need. I’ll probably have to wait till next week to see the golem use any attack magic. If the golem can actually beat a dragon and come out of the fight with only easily repairable injuries then it will be able to fight against the strongest skeletal beasts of the undead army. I just hope it won’t fail in the last step of its training and force us to rebuild its body from the beginning.’

As the day continued the gnomes brought more books on different topics and began assessing the golem’s personality and willingness to follow commands. The initial commands were simple and followed the books it had read. Due to the source of the golem being a fractured dungeon core it picked up on information quickly and memorized the contents of the books instantly. The questions brought up tried to get the golem to think more broadly and compare the information from different books at once.

They started with questions such as: ‘What do you think about this topic’. ‘How does this substance interact with this one’. And ‘How do you feel about this’. The researchers quickly wrote down each of the answers as quickly as they came and quickly decided upon new questions to ask. Next, they had the golem memorize different monsters along with all relevant information on hunting them and harvesting material from them.

The next steps were very important as they began pushing the golem to negatively associate monsters with other bad things such as death, destruction of its being, and the death of sentient life.

Zoe was called over later in the day and was responsible for inspecting the rune stability and the integrity of related systems. Since the golem had been activated it had changed. The core had claimed the golem as its area of influence and nothing beyond it. This had caused the core to gain a deep understanding of the inner workings of its body.

“The rune work looks amazing and I’m not just saying that because I designed it originally,” said Zoe.

“You made this body for me.” Interrupted the golem.

“Yes, you could say I helped make some of what you are today. Though several others aren’t here today who helped create you,” said Zoe a bit stunned by the golem’s statement.

“Thank you. I wish I could meet them someday.”

“Maybe someday you will. Though that probably won’t be until you defeat a dragon.”

“Will it be hard? I don’t want to wait long to see them.”

“I’m not sure exactly how long it will take you to slay your first dragon, but after you do the dwarven people will be much happier. After that one of the major contributors to your creation will be able to see you and thank you in person. The dragon in the dwarven kingdom has repeatedly terrorized the people of the area and forced the dwarves to live mostly underground. Clearing the territory of the dragon will greatly help his people.”

“I will do what I must then. It is my duty. He and you have given me so much.”

“Good. Now let me see those runes on you,” Zoe continued. “The golem seems to have fully integrated itself into the metal, runes, and everything else. The core has a natural ability to build anything they claim in their area of influence or learn to create themselves. This will allow the golem to rebuild itself exactly as it is now as long as some of the underlying runes aren’t broken.”

“This will save on a lot of repair costs,” said a nearby researcher.

“But that is not all of it. Just since activating the runes surrounding movement and body function have changed slightly. The golem has learned the runes and has begun optimizing. If this can expand into the runes governing its combat abilities it could be even more powerful than we initially expected.”

“Aren’t I amazing,” said the golem after a pause in the conversation.

Zoe smiled a bit. “Yes. Yes, you are. Now, what do you want to learn about next? Would you like to try some utility magic?”

“Yes I would like that,” the golem responded in its monotone voice.

------

The process of teaching the golem continued for several days. The golem picked up magic slowly and learned a few spells along the way. It also understood a brief history of the kingdoms of each of the people of the world and some basic understanding of them.

The golem would likely never meet any civilians until its mission to fight the undead was complete, but it was better to prepare it now. The five mages that worked to activate the golem with their mana now worked with it to understand its magical affinities and how to mold its mana into different types of spells.

The first spells it learned were the base elemental spells of its affinity. Spark, water ball, form rock, etc. It only took the golem a few minutes to memorize the spells and cast them quickly. That was in comparison to the mage geniuses in the room which took at least a week to learn a new spell and cast it at the level of a beginner. These base spells were important for understanding technique and eventually creating unique spells or instant spells. This would take the golem much more practice and experience.

Due to the golem not needing any food or water and naturally drawing on ambient mana to survive it was able to learn all day and night. From the researchers' questions, they also determined that it was happy to continue to learn but did want to see the outside as was described to it. The researchers and Sal were a bit hesitant at first and used the incentive to direct the golem, but after five days of non-stop training, it was finally brought outside.