Gauntlet didn’t feel many things. That wasn’t a fault, but rather a feature. Golems didn’t have emotions, it wasn’t a part of their design. His master, Array King Dane, had once tried to give him free will, and that had been the most painful moment of Gauntlet’s existence. He had lasted for about all of three minutes before he attempted to self-destruct.

Looking back now, the reason was apparent. He wasn’t designed to feel or want anything. He was just meant to do, and when you threw the responsibility of free will onto something that was not meant to have free will, there would be adverse consequences.

Humans and all other lifeforms took their innate desire for self-preservation for granted. Gauntlet sought to exist because he was meant to exist. He didn’t need things like fear and happiness, he had purpose. His purpose, which was written into the very core of his being, was to obey his master. Plain and simple.

He didn’t live for joy or happiness or because he felt some strange compulsion towards life. He lived because he must obey his master. If his master perished, he’d wait for a new one to come along, they almost always did and he would obey that new master instead. It was a simple and logical existence. You did as you must.

Life, however, was not so well engineered. The way Gauntlet saw it, life was a self-replicating chemical reaction meant to continue till the end of time. But the more complex and multicellular it got, the more it seemed to deviate from the purpose. Germs were happy to grow and multiply, no matter the cost, but humans? No, they would bypass those genetically ingrained desires and search for something else, something greater.

Gauntlet didn’t know what this something else was, but he didn’t have it, nor did he desire it. As soon as he was freed from his innermost purpose, he also lost his reason to exist. But humans were different. Every single minute a human managed to exist seemed to be an amazing miracle of effort to Gauntlet. They were strange, guided by those feelings that seemed to cause them an infinite amount of both joy and hatred, but unable to live without them.

That was why they needed their Dao. Daoless immortals always went insane, well, except for his own master, but he was a rarity. Humans needed purpose, more than that they needed freedom. The ability to live and grow, and feel, whatever that meant.

Which was why he was surprised when his master brought those new people over to his holdings. At first, they were strange. He would be going about his daily chores and they would stare at him. He didn’t care. He was a golem and golems don’t care about anything besides their orders.

The issues came when they tried to help him. He didn’t need help. He was more than capable of doing the things that needed to be done, but they helped him anyway. Gauntlet would have felt insulted if he could have felt at all. But he couldn’t, so he just watched helplessly as the seven maidens rushed to clean up the house and help with the food preparations.

He didn’t know what to make of this. He was a golem, he was meant to serve. But these girls, these people, who were designed to think and have a will of their own were so without purpose that they had to take his instead. And they smiled at him too, as if to taunt him for being without orders.

Gauntlet of course was unaffected by all of this. A little confused, but not displeased, not in a human way. Displeased in a more object-like way, like a ball that was rolling down a hill suddenly slamming into a rock and having its momentum stolen.

"Hello, Gauntlet," one of the girls called out to him. This one’s name was Xi Lu, and she had made a habit of greeting him every time he walked by. Gauntlet nodded towards her, as a decent object with manners would and she smiled in turn.

"The Honored Master is having us go out to the old village later today. I don’t know what he wants us to do, but he said we need some form of experience to hammer us out into people."

Gauntlet looked at the girl and nodded. She didn’t seem to require anything more than that from him, just a nod and she’d go on talking for hours.

"I don’t know what we’re supposed to do, but I hope I can do it well. I would hate to be useless, you know. Well, I’m sure you know, you’re a golem. You have to be useful or else, huh?" She spoke giggling to herself.

Gauntlet nodded once more.

"I don’t know what we could even learn from that place," Rin Wi said, inserting herself into Xu Lu’s monologue.

"It’s all just mortals down there anyways. It’s not like there’s anything they can teach us."

"Well, honored master Bill has asked us to go down there to help around, so I’m sure there’s a good reason for it."

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That wasn’t true. Gauntlet remembered his master had specifically asked them if they wanted to go. It was a question, not a statement, but these people didn’t seem to know the difference.

"Well, it's what the Honored Master wants," Rin Wi commented. "No use in disagreeing with what he wants."

"I’ve been thinking about that," Xi Lu spoke. "What do you think he wants from us? I mean, we haven’t been doing much since we’ve gotten here and he never asks us to do anything."

"I don’t know Xu, but hopefully he’ll tell us soon. I can’t stand just sitting around all day and doing nothing."

"Do… Do you think he wants…you know?"

Rin Wi shook her head in response.

"No. Mei has already offered, and he has shown no interest in any one of us."

They both sat there, anxious for a moment, trying to figure out what they could do to be useful. If Gauntlet were a person, he might have burst into a frustrated rant at the scene. He had been there when Mr. Bill had told them to be their own people. He had been there when Mr. Bill told them not to worry about his needs. He had watched them nod to the speech his master had given about freedom and being no one's but your own.

And yet here they were, completely ignoring everything the man had said to them. It was amazing really, to be able to call yourself a servant but be so blind to your orders. But that was the way these people were.

The rest of the maidens came in only moments later. They were all dressed a little differently than they regularly were. They were in mortal clothing, which was far different from the normal fabrics they usually wore. Their higher realm cloth often shimmered with qi and added a layer of beauty that even Gauntlet was forced to note, but this time, the dull gray and green garments they wore almost made them pass for mortals.

"Well, we’re off. Have a good morning Gauntlet. Good luck with your duties," Xi Lu called out to him as they left.

Gauntlet nodded, watching them float into the air from a distance. Once he was sure that they had left, he turned around and started walking into the forest depths. He spread out his senses, looking to see if any eyes were peering down upon him from a distance.

He felt a few. A stalking shadow leopard. A thin leaf-like mantis was also observing him from a mile away, but they both scattered as soon as he pushed his senses against them. The divine beasts had settled into the forest's ecosystem, and a lot of them had even added to it with their presence.

The trees had started growing here for the first time in a long time. The trees here were somewhat native to the region and had their natural height limit, but with the presence of the divine beasts, even the plant life had started to show signs of strengthening. It was slow for now though, but it would only be a matter of time before the natural qi density affected the rest of the environment.

Gauntlet walked on a somewhat worn path. It was somewhat worn because Gauntlet was the only creature who walked through it, and unlike humans or animals, Gauntlet didn’t just meander through the same general direction. He stepped on the same spots, with the same pace, and the same weight, every single day. The only hint that it was a path were his crater-like footsteps that trailed through the foliage for miles on end.

Eventually, Gauntlet left the forest. Well, he didn’t leave in the traditional sense. He was still in the forest but in a different set of space-time. His master had been the one to set up the layered space-time array, and Gauntlet was the only one who could access this level of it, aside from his master of course.

In front of him, stood a giant set of doors with numerous inscriptions on them. They were oval-like in their form and made of some strange type of wood. Gauntlet stared at those doors, doing as thorough of an inspection as he could. After a minute, he gave a small nod and kept walking through the sub-space.

He trodded on until he finally reached his destination. In front of Gauntlet was a giant glowing orb, easily the size of a small house. It would have blinded any mortal with its brightness and the heat would have cooked them in a matter of minutes.

But it shouldn't have. It wasn’t supposed to be this bright. Gauntlet reached out with his hands and shot a large blue ball of energy toward the thing, instantly the two collided, and in a mish-mash of yin and yang patterns the energy settled down into a calm pool of nothing.

Qi was everything. That was what his master had said. Qi was life and energy, It flowed through reality like water flowed through a river. There were higher and lower forms of qi, but it was all just a different level of refinement for the most part. But Laws weren’t just qi, no they were different. They were closer to an idea than actual qi. If qi was the water in a river, then laws were the deep grooves of the earth that shaped them.

Gauntlet looked again at the heart of the array, studying the effects of the collision. The array was supposed to be able to take in laws and recondense them to fit its own needs, but it was still a child for the most part. It should have been able to think, and it could to a small degree, but it would overindulge itself in certain ways and it was Gauntlet’s job to keep track of that, at least until it could think on its own.

Gauntlet would wander the valley during the nights and collect any condensed laws the beasts had left behind. Concepts here, light understandings there, and he’d keep them on hand for the array. This was the first time he had to intervene. That was both a good and a bad thing. On one hand, it meant the array was aware enough to choose just what to eat, on the other hand, that meant a lot more work would be needed fine-tuning it until it got a grip on its diet.

He would have to notify his master of this.

The array twisted and turned in strange dimensions. He felt it reach out and touch him for a moment, before pulling back and focusing on itself, and in a rare moment of humanity, Gauntlet wondered. What would this thing, this array, be like? Would it be like him, clear and purposeful, or like humans, strange and emotional?

Gauntlet’s torso heaved, giving the golem’s equivalent of a shrug and he moved forward.