“Shit! It's a mage!” The woman shouted to her remaining ally as she drew her short sword from its sheath and pressed herself against the stacked crates. The older man ignored her or just didn’t hear her and continued to try and save the younger man who was now bleeding from his wounds.

The woman slowly peeked out from behind the crates to see what the mage was doing, but she hastily pulled her head back as three more of the small darts whipped towards her head. Luckily she was quick enough to avoid them, but the three loud thunks they made as they hit the wall behind told her just how dangerous they were.

“Hey, we need to get out of here.” The woman said as she slowly walked up to the older man and the corpse of the younger man. The older man looked down at his hands now covered with the blood of the young man from trying to save him, but it was pointless to try. The mage specifically targeted him to kill him and without any medical equipment he had no way to patch the wounds or even stop the bleeding.

“Are you even listening to me? We need to go now, forget about him, he is already dead!” The woman was about ready to slap her remaining ally across the face when he quickly stood up and nodded for her to lead. Slowly the two began walking back towards the entrance while next to the stack crates. They hoped that they would be able to slip away from the mage and alert their superiors to deal with it.

As the two were about halfway down the ‘corridor’ the man behind her suddenly let out a sigh. She quickly turned around to shush him and tell him to keep quiet when she saw someone standing where they were just a few seconds earlier. She couldn't really tell anything about this person from a distance but they were wearing clothes instead of actual armor.

Then suddenly the older man she was just travelling with collapsed to the floor with three darts made from earth sticking out of his back. She looked at the darts for what felt like forever but was only a second or two and up to the mage who then began walking towards her. She panicked and began running towards the front doors, but as she was about to round the corner of the stacked crates she felt something tugging at her leg and preventing her from running. She looked down and saw a rope or vine wrapped around her leg made from what appeared to be dirt that prevented her from running.

She looked up and saw the mage slowly walking towards her while they conjured up more darts to kill her. When the mage was just a few meters away she managed to determine that the mage was a man and he was dressed in some very nice clothing, the overcoat something she would envision on an alchemist. But she didn’t get very long to process this information as three darts struck her in her chest with the pain slowly overwhelming her senses.

**********

Once Arthur was certain that all three of the gang members were dead he wiped away all the blood and pushed them into his dimensional bag, he managed to get them all inside with only a little difficulty. Thankfully he managed to limit the damage upon them to a minimum so they would be good specimens for his flesh golem experiments.

With that out of the way it was time to see what the gang was keeping in this warehouse as it appeared to be very valuable and in large quantities. Arthur picked up one of the boxes at random and brought it down to the ground, he then conjured up a stick with an end that was flat and that he could fit under the lid and push down to lift up. Inside was a dark green plant that looked a lot like dried grass in bundles.

Arthur picked up one of these bundles and looked it over, if it was some sort of herb or ingredient for potions then it wasn’t something he was familiar with. Out of curiosity Arthur conjured up a small flame on his right index finger and held it up the this bundle and watched it burn, like he expected it burned and gave off a lot of smoke as it did so, but unluckily Arthur breathed in some of that smoke and began to feel a little weird.

Arthur’s senses dulled slightly and he felt a little unbalanced, this short moment of it caused him to drop the burning bundle and lean on the wall to steady himself. Arthur quickly walked away while the feeling slowly dissipated and he didn’t feel unbalanced.

‘That was weird, I don’t know why this gang has a warehouse full of crates of that stuff, but it needs to go and from what I just saw fire will work very well.’ Arthur walked to the exit as the bundle he dropped burnt out and the smoke from it lingered in that air. At the exit Arthur turned around and casted the Fire Wave spell on the nearby crates engulfing them in flame.

The flames quickly took hold of the crates and Arthur helped it along by helping it spread to several other crates and continue on from there. Due to the dryness of the warehouse and close proximity of the crates it was of very little difficulty to do so. And as Arthur was about to leave he decided to drag the other two bodies inside the warehouse, that way he didn’t need to bring them with him or dispose of them himself.

As Arthur made his escape from the area the fire had spread from the crates to the inside walls and began burning the structure from the inside, by the time Arthur was home the fire could be seen through holes that had been burned out by the blazing inferno. Some gang members that were in the area took notice of this and attempted to put out the fire as others went to report the situation to their superiors, but it was of little help as nothing could put out the fire at this point.

Arthur on the other hand wasn’t thinking about the fire anymore, he was more interested in testing a second prototype of his humanoid flesh golem with some fresh specimens. Starting with the body of the young man around his age Arthur cut open his stomach with a conjured knife and removed all the organs before he moved on and cut off all the skin and mussel. With his recent experience with condensing a skeleton into a smaller size doing the same this time took a lot less time and mana with far more successes than before. After around twenty minutes the human skeleton was around the same size as a dwarf and ready for assembly. With the mussel and sewing needle and thread Arthur quickly reattached and layered the mussel on the skeletal frame, however he left the chest area open to reinsert the useful organs being the heart, lungs, and kidneys.

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The open chest also made inserting the veins again much easier as he didn’t need to cut open the body at as many points to insert them, most of the upper body and thighs were quickly done but the lower portions of the legs, head, and hands were a bit more time consuming but Arthur was confident in the end result. Now all that needed to be done was to enchant the kidneys and add the artificial blood.

The process of enchanting the kidneys wasn’t all that hard as it didn’t require all that much ink or complex symbols drawn into it, as such it was quickly returned to its spot and reattached. Now Arthur needed to create more of the artificial blood for this type of golem, although despite looking it over several times he still didn’t understand what exactly it did. It might help regulate its temperature but Arthur wasn’t so sure of that. The blood itself was simple to make, it just took roughly twenty minutes for the whole process.

Pouring the artificial blood into the veins became a lot easier when Arthur realized that he could use his skill in hydromancy to control it enough to prevent spills and direct it towards the open vein.

Once he was done with that he closed up the open chest with the use of a needle and thread as well as a small amount of restoration magic he knew to help keep it together. Now it was time for the actual enchanting of the whole golem, this would be what actually gives it full motor function and control allowing it to walk and perform tasks it is given.

But before that Arthur chose to have an hour long break to both recover his mana and rest his mind for a moment. He has been practically doing nothing but working all day, so why not have some time to relax. Since he was a little hungry Arthur got himself a small bowl of soup that he heated up, it wasn’t quite lunch time yet so Arthur kept it small but it would be enough to put the hunger he was feeling out of his mind for now.

Arthur decided he wanted to eat his soup out in front of his house, it just so happened that the warehouse was in the same direction so he could just look up and see if there was any smoke in the air. As he stepped outside off in the distance he saw some black smoke, but given its lack of thickness it was likely that the fire had begun to die down or was just smoldering. ‘I wonder how the gang is going to react to that, since I took these three bodies of those three with me and any blood or evidence of me being there should have been destroyed by the fire. They should be suspecting that the three they had assigned there were spies and destroyed whatever they were storing in there. They should be able to somewhat recover the other two bodies and figure the other three did it.’

Little did Arthur know that he practically single handedly started a gang war between all the remaining groups that once made up the Black Eye gang. The group that Yufur was leading and was formerly under Kelile was the one who controlled the warehouse, and with its destruction they were determined to find out who was behind it. Yufur called a meeting and brought along fifteen of his subordinates for protection as did everyone else, during said meeting he launched accusations at most of the groups who in turn launched their own at each other. Soon the meeting devolved into one massive argument with everyone declaring themselves independent from everyone else and leaving to be on their own.

*********

Upon finishing his soup Arthur stood up and stretched his arms and legs before he returned inside to finish up the golem. With the bowl and spoon on the table Arthur had his hands free to continue. Since the unfinished golem was assembled on the slab Arthur didn’t need to move anything, and since he performed a basic enchantment on the kidney the minor mana stone was already in its slot ready to be used.

Fetching the magic enchanting ink from his bag that sat on a nearby chair Arthur used his skill in hydromancy to paint the lines and symbols that would act as the instructions for the enchantments. From what Arthur understood it worked like one large spell with many different what if scenarios and since it was imprinted into the material which in this case was flesh it wouldn’t disappear or erode without significant damage.

Slowly over the course of half an hour Arthur painted all the lines and inscribed symbols on the exposed mussel of the flesh golem, and when he was finished he took the journal of Brexius out in front of him and followed the chant of the spell with his eyes as he performed it just to be certain that he did not make any mistakes as that might have been the reason why the initial golem wasn’t working properly.

Slowly over ten minutes the symbols and lines formed from the ink began a dim glow like last time, although it was a bit brighter this time as if the mana was more concentrated through those mana lines compared to the last time.

When Arthur finished the spell the glow went with it, Arthur stared at the golem with anticipation in his eyes as he wanted to see if his creation would rise this time. Soon the right hand began to twitch and it slowly began to move the rest of its arm as if it were stretching old mussels it hadn’t used in some time. Although it didn’t move much past that aside from the eyes that moved around lazily, it was like it didn’t have the mental strength to move any more than that at once.

Arthur tried poking it a few times all over to see if it would react to any form of interaction, to his disappointment it did not. Arthur was also considering the possibility that the golem was blind as even when he waved his hand across its face within its line of sight it did not appear to see it.

‘Well this is unfortunate. I still have no idea if these improvements are because of the fresh corpse I used to create it or because I did something else different this time. I’ll have to try again tomorrow and see if there are any notable changes either for better or for worse.’ Arthur sighed and dragged the golem over to his alchemy room where he left it to slowly run out of mana and turn off, once that happened he intended to take it apart and dispose of it.

Although he did intend to try again tomorrow that didn’t mean he needed to decide which corpse to use then as well, since he has the free time he might as well take a look at them both and decide, or at the bare minimum think about which one.