Tom sat there and absently started reorganising the materials in front of him. He separated out the components he was going to use from those he wasn’t. Until his mana regenerated, there was nothing else he could do.
Explain.
The instruction from the elemental surprised him and broke his internal reflections.
Knowledge equals speed, which is good. For both of us.
“Yes.” Tom agreed out loud and then he focused on communicating everything he knew about the challenges facing them and the body he planned on constructing.
Remote Earth?
It wanted to know more about the Spell. All the details and intricacies.
There was no harm in it. Tom shared how he had used the ability. How it could destroy the launchers, create walls to stop lava and even altering it for hand holds. While he explained, Tom worked at shaping the gold wire, which was going to act as the internal energy flow system within the golem. Basically, the veins and arteries equivalent of a human.
The elemental listened and then added to his examples. Coming up with different combinations and directions, the spell could be stretched. A large part of Tom was amazed, techniques to move faster, rotating ninja disks, suffocation procedures and hundreds other. The breadth of ideas was incredible, and he made mental notes. It might take decades of practice, but being able to phase through rock using Earth Manipulation would be an excellent skill especially since theoretically it could scale to work even through tiered material.
No, Tom thought back, interrupting the elemental. It won’t work.
Why?
He hesitated for a moment as he registered the whiny tone from the usual dour and solid elementals. And the idea had been great. Why worry about traps when you could just phase through rock all the way to your destination. The elemental had even suggested changes to the golem design to facilitate the attempt by turning the form more fishlike.
There was an undertone of suspicion around Tom deliberately withholding power. Why he would have any desire to do that was a mystery. It’s not like that, he assured it. The crystals have a capacity issue. It won’t support that level of complexity. He supported the words by mentally sending across the mathematics behind his golem spell and the materials that he had available. The restriction of the mana engine and how much of the spell form the crystal cluster could hold.
Disappointment.
Sorry, he thought.
What about homing missile launchers?
Tom sent the memories he had of destroying them and assurance that at least that part of Remote Earth Manipulation could be included.
No.
What?
A flood of images answered Tom’s question. The elemental could leave the construct and destroy them personally. Sinking into the welcoming stone and then travelling to right under the launcher and then it could use its earth power to sabotage the shots. The elemental possessed the personal power, and it was something it could do easily. Better still, it would allow them to keep the Remote Earth Manipulation ability as a broad stroke brush. A more generalised capability to create a wall or to help it climb or to be used to supplement the golem’s mass.
“And it’s not about the extra experience you’ll get by destroying it personally?”
No.
Tom smiled at the belligerence; that was definitely part of the consideration, but not all of it.
Tom assessed the communicated information. It was not what he had expected the elemental to request, but when he saw its preferred layout, he completely agreed with its analysis. This method absolutely maximised the elemental’s abilities, which, given the limited resource, should have been Tom’s primary approach.
“Good idea. We’ll do that.”
Briefly, he wondered if he was being too ambitious, choosing the last stage to complete. Were the lava spitters too powerful? No unexpected feelings of hopelessness twinged, so Tom concluded that fate did not think he was being stupid. When fate was in play, he had learnt to trust his emotions. Sometimes they were the only way the nebulous concept could communicate with him.
A sudden flash of fear making him pause and not enter the cave that he later determined to have held a level two hundred Shadow Wraith or that one time he had got uncharacteristically excited about a loot portal and sprinted forward and triggered the traps with sufficient momentum to negate them.
Small decisions could matter.
Tom leaned back and examined what he had created with the golden wire. The shape he had chosen was spherical. There was no point in giving an earth golem legs and arms, at least not as a base form. A stone golem already could alter its form to a limited extent and with the version of Remote Earth Manipulation that Tom was including then the lesser elemental could definitely create limbs if needed. Plus, the nature of the stage was important. It was not like the creature would need to hold things like weapons. The entire course could be best solved by mundane locomotion and given Remote Earth Manipulation it would be like it was forever rolling down hills.
He attached the bat to the golden curls of wire. It was going to be the secondary sensing mechanism. A useful tool for the elemental.
Next, he put the obsidian inside the wire. It was not a perfect fit, but the wire had been created with space to include the rectangular slabs of stone. Tom knew he was not finished. With his magic, he carved chunks of rock off the nearby wall. He scooped up bits of rock and included it into the structure. Whenever he was not actively concentrating on a spell, he spent the time to share his memories of his last run gifting the lesser elemental with as many advantages as he could.
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With normal stone supplementing the obsidian so that the whole thing weighed over a third of tonne and since no magic had been cast, it looked like the sculpture that a toddler would make. If the materials were foam blocks, that was.
None of that mattered yet. He installed the mana engine. A touch of gold wire connected it to outputs. This was the first time his Stone Golem spell was actively used. Connections and preference on the energy allocation were created under his direction. First there was a manual override the elemental could use then an order of priority where if the energy in the main spell construct dropped below thirty percent it would get all the energy from the mana engine otherwise the split would be seventy percent to the spell crystal rising to a hundred percent in the event the main constructs power was above ninety-eight percent.
Finally, he added in the prison cage pendant, placing it in pride of place in the centre of the construction. The Stone Golem spell flexed once more to allow it to act as a home as opposed to restraining whatever it contained.
Tom smiled.
The completed framework stood before him.
He grimaced. It was ugly, embarrassingly so, but if he flexed his magic, he would have a golem.
There was more to do. He didn’t want a barely functioning monstrosity he wanted sleek and powerful.
Tom’s magic flowed out as he fixed the design. His focus slowly transformed the irregular separate pieces of stone into a single uniformed whole. Sections of the obsidian were raised to the surface to create a marbled texture on the perfect sphere he had created. Symmetrical was not always the best way to approach creating golems. Individualistic design had been proven to outperform mass produced identical constructs by almost a factor of two even after making adjustments for inputs. It was the art part of golem creation. Tom was not an artist, but he liked to think that he was around average in that field. His hands ran over the sides of the construct and grooves were cut into the rock. Intricate swirls forming to add character to the otherwise simple piece of artwork.
Tom sat back and studied the future golem.
It was now a creation he could be proud of. An artist would probably turn their nose up at it, but Tom was happy. A boring construct of a random sphere with a few interesting visual features. It was the best he could do. It looked like it had been lovingly created with hours of hard work polishing it to a perfect finish.
“Time.”
Seven minutes till stage completion.
Then he waited till his mana was full and used his own soul bound mana crystal with his mana pool to infuse the sculpture with magic and turn it from inanimate stone into a golem.
Energy crackled all over it. The gold wire guided it. The spell form he used was near perfect because of all the extra data that had been dumped into his head. It was like he had been creating golems daily for a decade.
It stood silently once his spell was finished.
“Time.”
Five minutes.
That was sufficient. He grabbed the crystal cluster and started including functionality into it. He was inserting the tier zero spell Earth Manipulation in totality to act as a base with aspect of the tier three upgraded Remote Earth Manipulation added for efficiency and extra functionality. The moment the basics were included Tom worked on upgrading specific actions. First was the ability for the golem to incorporate extra mass into it from its environment. That was the capability the elemental insisted was vital. Not only could it allow it to repair itself it could also be used for locomotion by selectively taking and releasing mass it could roll downhill on a flat surface. Then he added the concept of an animated appendage. It was nothing special, but it could thin the golem to pass tight areas or extend an arm over a crevice, allowing it to almost easily pass certain obstructions. Finally, he supplemented the information to contain the instructions to create a shield of conjured stone. That was for the lava spitter and it was a thin piece of rock that wouldn’t survive a punch but would stop multiple lava spitters.
The basic spell could, of course be adapted to do all these options, but by partially pre-constructing the spell forms the cost of the use of each of the functions was greatly reduced. It basically gave the Tier zero spell the efficiency of the Tier three version.
The elemental took the crystals and flicked through the spells.
Approval radiated from it.
Good, he thought back to it and then checked his mana. Almost one hundred had regenerated. He sunk it into the golem. It would not help much, but he hoped it would increase the magic density of the normal stone slightly. That boost might make a homing missile marginally less destructive.
“Do you control it?” he asked the elemental out loud and with his mind. Tom had built the spell form around this specific elemental having command, but it was worth confirming.
Confidence radiated back to him, and the golem shifted slightly. It didn’t even come up to his waist, but it weighed over three hundred kilograms.
You have ten seconds.
3… 2… 1
Commencing test.
Absolutely nothing happened.
“What?”
Your golem is being tested in a parallel dimension.
The sounds of trumpets went off.
Congratulations.
Your golem has successfully completed challenge number seven.
Scoring was based on time of completion.
Golem took nine hours and forty-two minutes.
Calculating reward
Tom swallowed at that message. Nine hours, the elemental had only been contracted for twelve hours. Thirty percent slower and it would have failed completely. He wiped sweat off his brow. His arrogance in choosing the latest stage had almost back fired off him.
Thirty percent slower it was closer than he had hoped.
This gets you a grade of 6.3.
“What does that mean?”
A grade of five is equivalent to full marks in the next lowest level challenge.
“So if I had chosen the golem to do stage six my score would have been lower?”
Correct.
Tom took a moment to incorporate that information. It had been a gamble to send the golem into the highest stage and it had paid off. His score even at six point three was better than what anyone choosing a less ambitious target could have achieved. He was still on track for an Outstanding or better outcome.
The world shifted.
Congratulations on reaching the ninth safe zone.
It felt like nothing had changed, but apparently, he had progressed.
You and your golem will need to navigate to the next safe zone.
Points will be awarded on the number of enemies cleared and time to complete the challenge. Points will be subtracted based on physical damage sustained by the challenger.
Challenger will be restricted to earth magic only.
The following new enemies, besides all you have faced will be added.
Cave bats.
A large bat possessing melee attacks and a long range sonic strike that can damage stone.
Rock Centipedes
Fast moving melee fighters with mandibles capable of splitting stone. Susceptible to crushing damage.
Your time starts in one minute.
The golem he had made would be very useful against the rock centipedes and spitters, and Tom would probably need to rely on his own skills for launchers and bats.
He probably should check battle strategy with the elemental.
The elemental!
Panic filled Tom. The contract he had written had only been to the completion of the previous stage.
Without the elemental it was not quite a useless lump of rock, but instead of being a useful ally it would be detrimental to his progress. He guessed he could still clear the stage. Either by clearing an area personally and then going back and puppet the golem to the new location or sacrifice his mana to summon a replacement elemental. That would work as well.
Are you there?
There was no response to his mental question.
He would summon a new elemental Tom decided and then wait for his mana to regenerate and wear the six-minute penalty that represented.