I wander back into the mansion. Finding my way to the kitchen, I eventually come across a slightly rotten pickle. Hmm, that should work for my experiment.

I use Possession on the pickle. I feel my entire existence being squished into the small phallic shape. It’s similar to being sucked down a very small vacuum tube, and if I were claustrophobic then I would be terrified.

Alas, I am not.

Interesting. While I’m inside the pickle, everything is dark; I can feel nothing. This is most likely due to the pickle being a vegetable and not in possession of a nervous system.

Projection, on the other hand, allows me to fly away from the pickle, but only about three feet. A small red tether also links me to the pickle.

Now, here’s an important question: What do I want to do?

I really don’t do much. I lived my first life mostly peacefully, dying to help my friend. I lived my second life uneventfully, dying to a plague. Now I’ve been given a third chance, but I’m stuck where I am. I can still interact with the world, somewhat, but I don’t even know if people can see me.

And just to add insult to injury, I’m stuck on this property. This extremely large property on the edge of the country’s capital.

I guess I may as well just mess around with the estate until something changes. Level some skills. Maybe buy some too.

————————————————————————————————————

Right. So…it took five hours.

It took five hours for me to clean the entire mansion with my telekinesis.

I mean, it did rank up again, so I’m at about 800 pounds.

I did find some goodies like the Duke’s personal treasure room. Guess what? It was hidden behind a bookcase in his room.

The man kept a ton of gold, silver, copper, and platinum coins in there; however, I was interested in something else. A set of inscribing tools.

Runic Inscribing is essentially programming with magic. Specifically, object orientated programming. I would say this is a great boon, but the tools are a fancy set, made for showing off and not using.

Anyway, long story short, I bought a Carpentry skill for 10 points. An axe into the forest brings be a sizable log for me to whittle down with my several knives at my command.

I strip the long into thin yet sturdy rods with notches for interlocking. I create some wheels for pulleys and joints. I attempted a omni-directional joint, but my skill is nowhere near good enough to make one of those.

I make a torso and a mask. They’re just a concave plank and a massive hollow log. The feet and hands get much more intricate parts. And numerous too.

So yeah, I’m making a puppet, but this looks pretty average.

[ Through repeated actions skill: Carpentry(Minimum, Passive) has ranked up to Carpentry(Minor, Passive) ]

Confiscating some leftover threads from the servants’ quarters, I wire the limbs together. It…takes a while. There are a lot more joints than I remember making, but they each have a pulley and simple joint to which they need a wire.

Now here’s the hard part. Yeah, all of that work was the easy stuff.

I’m in the back of the mansion. There are several loose pebbles here, but I need certain stones, and they need to be of certain size. Shape is tough, but I can whittle them down if need be. It would be amazing if I had some gemstones—especially mana-infused ones—but the only ones I have are lodged in the furniture; I don’t want to damage them too.

Let’s see…some limestone should be good. It’s soft enough for me to whittle, and it has a good Earth and Water connection. Those combine to form Life Magic and that should add some vitality to the puppet.

I would like some obsidian and topaz, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Using the pickaxe and knives, I attempt to make disks of varying sizes. I fail a few times with a some missed swings, or too much power.

In the end, I did get some limestone fragments that could pass for circles…if you squint hard enough.

Now, I just have to place the disks on each joint and pulley, then inscribe them to work in tandem with the main motherboard I’ll have to make, then I just have to figure out how to connect them.

It’s at times like this when I miss having Stack Overflow.

————————————————————————————————————

Alright, now for the finale. I must Possess this adequate puppet.

I really need to spend some more time on this demonic-looking nightmare, but that’s a problem after I figure out if my assumptions work.

My soul shifts to fill the wooden container, aura flowing into each limb and ligament. The magical motherboard sends a small pulse in reaction to my mana. Sending one back, the cycles begin sending pulses of mana throughout the puppet- No, rudimentary golem—in an initialization process.

I slowly, methodically, prop myself up, slipping slightly under the unfamiliar feeling. I quite literally am incapable of feeling anything, and I have to eyeball all my movements. There also seems to be a delay between my thoughts and the action performed.

I jump around and stretch a bit to test this body’s limits. Hmm, another problem: the mana between my soul and the motherboard gets a little muffled, so any action will be slightly less than what I want. Perhaps it’s due to the power supply also being the I/O bus, namely me?

And now, a brownout leading into a blackout as I run out of mana.

The body collapses as the magical particle no longer circulates and moderates function. It’s…strange feeling locked away in here.

I un-Possess the body and hover above it slightly. Hmm, so basically movement only and sight as the only sense. I can’t exert more force than I like nor stretch the body. I can’t speak nor use any of my five senses, par sight, but even that leaves things to be desired.

Mainly basic sight actually. Yeah, I wired some rubies I found into the mana network, but they just act as mana ultrasonics, revealing only the basic shapes of things that possess mana and exist in the physical world. I wouldn’t even see other spirits with this.

Oh boy. I have a lot of work cut out for me.