“Wait, they can actually do that? Can’t the king or whatever group that oversees the legal system just ignore this request?” Arthur asked, though he didn’t understand how the legal system worked he assumed that the people in charge wouldn’t be too happy by the fact that they were being opposed.
“The council high iūdicēs do have the final say on the matter, but anyone who opposes any decisions or even ideas that are circulating around are legally allowed to present their case as to why or why not that idea should be implemented. And when I say everyone I mean everyone, as long as you are a citizen of the kingdom you have the legal right to challenge without any retaliation for it.” Arthur listened carefully to the explanation Lydus gave. Clearly there was a reason why such a law existed.
“But wouldn’t that mean that you could endlessly challenge a law you didn’t like no matter how many times you fail?” Arthur asked for further insight into the law.
“Technically yes, but if you challenge something more than three times in a row without succeeding in convincing a majority of the high iūdicēs then you will be banned and outright dismissed of any future challenges of the selected law. Though very few times has anyone ever gone through so much effort past their first attempt, you would need some sort of explosive evidence after the first failure to convince the rest of the high iūdicēs that did not vote in your favor.”
Arthur just stood there for a moment thinking about what he just heard while Lydus counted out the money for the potions before handing Arthur a small pouch containing three silver coins. “Try not to worry about it, it is completely out of our hands and we have no way to change that. We just need to place our hopes onto the Archmage and pray to your god of choice to help us through this.” Arthur just nodded along as he understood that there was nothing he could do in this situation.
Since there was nothing else to deal with at the guild Arthur left and returned home and decided that he was going to continue practicing his aeromany with the exercise that Henry showed him just the day before. But on the way back to his home he was left alone with all of his thoughts. Despite his attempts to think about anything else this attempt at keeping mages from assisting the legal system in any form was gnawing at him, he wanted to do something about it but he didn’t know what he could even do. Starting a fight with someone associated with this group of nobles wouldn’t help the case, if anything that would do the opposite. Spying on them and looking for evidence sounded like a good idea until he realized that he needed to actually find something useful, and he had no idea what might be considered useful in a court of law. When he looked up again Arthur found himself in front of his house, he managed to subconsciously walk straight back without losing his way.
Arthur quickly entered his home and locked the door behind him while he found the closest empty space which he stood in the center of and began the exercise. Arthur started by conjuring up five different spheres of air in a one meter radius of himself, then he compressed the spheres down until they were a fraction of their original size. Arthur slowly began moving these spheres away from himself until they were starting to put strain on his mind and mana. Slowly he began to move the orbs clockwise around himself slowly picking up speed as he did so.
Every so often Arthur would change directions and speed on whim to try and further challenge himself and learn more in the process. This lasted about the same amount of time being around an hour of which Arthur almost collapsed onto the floor from exhaustion. After a minute of catching his breath Arthur started on with the mana recovery meditation to hopefully recover his mana a bit faster. Though the effect was basically nothing as Arthur calculated he recovered his mana at around a quarter of a percent faster than normal.
But the time that he spent doing this did allow him to think about everything that had been going on in his life, from his friendship with Calavia to his conflicts with the grouped up gangs now split apart Arthur was for the most part happy with how everything turned out. The only real sour note was the court case regarding the nobles stopping mages from helping the law, he had made a good name for himself and found a good opportunity in helping the city guard. Who knows how many others might lose such an opportunity because of some greedy nobles.
The thoughts remained until Arthur’s mana had fully recovered and he was ready to begin again. Arthur managed to finish multiple sets of this duel exercise and was already feeling a much greater speed of improvement compared to just casting tier two spells as fast as he could. But by the third set of the exercise Arthur was about ready to be done practicing for the day, his physical body and mana were both fully recovered but his mind was not.
It was well past four o’clock when Arthur was done with his magic training for the day and he decided he wanted to read through the entirety of the journal belonging to Brexius. So far he had only read around a quarter of the pages within the book, it didn't need to be an in depth analysis and Arthur did not need to determine if anything contained within was viable, he was just curious about what else Brexius wrote about aside from the flesh golems.
To Arthur’s joy past the last page regarding the full sized flesh golem was non magic related writings, specifically of Brexius writing about how his mother was trying to make him spend more time with their family instead of in his room.
7th of Felsite, 370, 3E
Mother has once again tried to force me to spend time with some of our relatives for some useless gathering. I haven’t even met these people before so why should I care about them. The only reason why I am going is because mother told me several times that it would look very poorly on our family if I, the oldest heir, were to not go with them.
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From what Arthur could gather from this proper journal entry was that Brexius was definitely a child based on manner of speech and the way he referred to his mother and family. He was most likely in his teens when he wrote this based on the desire to remain within his room and avoiding family.
Regardless Arthur managed to force the image of a teen boy cutting up human corpses for his golem experiments out of his mind as he flipped to other pages with other diagrams of things Brexius worked on. The most notable thing of them was the lack of human body parts being a requirement, clearly he learned from his previous experimental projects. The first to show up was a basic golem created entirely out of wood, it was almost cute with its black dots for eyes and its stubby little body.
From there the creations got larger to average human sized with wooden golems the size and with the proportions of an average human. This golem was also less cute and more bland in terms of appearance with the blank wooden doll aesthetic almost being unnerving. It was also far more advanced than the small wooden golem by a long shot, the description of its abilities were nothing to scoff at. According to what Brexius wrote down it was able to wield most basic weapons such as hammers, maces, spears, and axes but it could also wear armor for protection outside of what was added through the enchantment process. Brexius wrote that he personally found the most success with lighter armors as they were able to preserve the doll-like golem’s dexterity. The weapons on the other hand were more dependent upon the situation as they typically were, spears for standard infantry and heavy weapons for heavily armored opponents. Over all this golem looked to be possible the best out of all that Arthur had found so far, until he looked at the material list and his jaw dropped. It required standard grade mana stone at the bare minimum for create, enchant, and regularly use the thing. Considering just how expensive the minor mana stone was that Arthur bought not all that long ago a standard grade mana stone would cost at least one hundred gold coins.
‘That is definitely a long term goal for me. It might even take me years to reach the level of skill to do anything past the flesh golems.’ Arthur thought to himself as he looked over the enchantments inscribed on the full sized wooden golem, it was easily three times as complex as the flesh golem had been trying to make work just the week prior. Brexius was most definitely a genius in the field of golemancy, and he very likely started at a very young age if he was able to do all this as a teenager, possibly even as young as ten years old. Though he did need to account for the almost three year gap between the first entry and the once regarding the family gathering.
Continuing past the wooden golems Arthur was happy to see that Brexius continued on with creating golems, this time a golem that was about five feet tall was made entirely out of stone. The design was also quite nice as it looked to be made up of individual stone blocks giving it a very military appearance compared to the previous two types that resembled people. However due to the shape of the construct it was unable to wear any armor, though it could still wield weapons like any of the prior golems. Brexius was also kind enough to leave a note regarding the golems' creation and purpose.
9th of Hematite, 375, 3E
I have finally finished up the prototype of the stone golem that Lord Andre commissioned. I showed him the blueprints and had a small demonstration of the constructs capabilities against three of his infantry men, the result was a quick and easy win for the golem and the approval of Lord Andre along with an order for ten. I suspect that he intends to use my constructs for the rumored second crusade against the demonic forces to the east and I see no reason to deny such a request. With the money I will earn from this I should have the funds to further my research into larger golems.
This stone golem was commissioned from a Lord Andre who was most likely a noble or the rough equivalent of the time. Arthur also noticed the five year time difference between this entry and the previous showing the amount of time Brexius spent working on this stone golem. ‘The phrasing of the sentence is also different, that is to be expected after five years but this is more akin to a proper adults pattern of speech. Brexius was most likely into his early twenties when he wrote this entry leaving him a late teen when he wrote the previous.’
The pages after were mere modifications to the previous stone golem, however the only reason Arthur knew they were modifications was because it said so at the very top of the pages. The modifications were mostly indistinguishable from the others from a design perspective excluding a few examples that tried for a more humanoid look, but those attempts were quickly discarded based on the designs afterwards retaining the blocky body shape.
It appeared that Brexius eventually settled on a variation of the original that was a little less blocky allowing it to be far more agile and dexterous while retaining its physical strength. Though after the finalized design the remaining pages were blank, admittedly there weren't that many left only around five but it was a little surprising to see for Arthur who was hoping for at least a few extra things to find within the book that might help him or at least give an idea as to what he might be able to do in the future.
By the time Arthur reached the end it was around five thirty and a good time to stop and have something to eat for dinner. There were of course several things he could eat for dinner, he still had some soup from the beginning of the week that he could eat, or he could go to one of the nearby taverns and eat something there. Arthur thought back to the last time he ate food from somewhere else which was around a month ago now, with that Arthur decided to change things up and go find a tavern to eat at.
As Arthur stepped outside he took notice of how much darker it was getting every day, while it was still bright enough to around without a light if things kept up that might not be the case for too much longer. ‘If things keep going like this then within a few months it will be dark out at this time of the day.’
As Arthur continued down the roads towards the market area of the southern district where most of the decent taverns were he took notice of the reduced traffic of people. Normally by this time there would still be some people walking about whether it be because they were going out to dinner or if they had a last minute errand to run. There were still a few people but it was easily a fraction of what had been outside even the day before.
Because of this change Arthur kept his eyes open and ready for something to pop up out of nowhere, there had to be a good reason why there were so few people outside. But Arthur reached the market square without issue and quickly entered a tavern called ‘The Grey Walker’ and took an empty seat in the middle of the open room while he waited for the waitress to take his order.