/- - - - - -\
+ Geomancy Level 19
+ Pyromancy Level 15
+ Aeromancy Level 12
\- - - - - -/
Within the apprentice section of the mages guild library Arthur looked over his improved skill levels with weary eyes. He had been forcing himself to focus almost entirely on his magic for a week with only a single day off that he still used to continue with alchemy and a short lunch with Calavia. He needed something to do, something interesting and possibly dangerous.
‘I still have that recommendation for the mercenary guild, I bet I could easily find something interesting and dangerous that would also earn me some money. From what I understand it would be a lot of what I did when I was working under Captain Tasius.’ Arthur thought to himself as he was reading over a pamphlet that the mercenary guild kept by the front entrance of the local branch.
The pamphlet went into some detail regarding what the guild could do for those wanting to join as well as those who might require their services. The guild would take a small cut of the fee paid while the rest would go towards the mercenaries who performed the task, in addition to helping their members find work the guild also protects its members in a legal form as well.
‘It doesn’t sound all that bad, the only problem that would arise would be that many of these jobs would require me to be away from home for days at a time. I'm not exactly sure how I would pay Gaelin during this time or if he even has a job outside of what I pay him to do. If I do decide to join I should probably give him a heads up to find another job for when I am gone.’
Suddenly Arthur felt a light tap on his shoulder and turned to see Calavia standing next to him. “Hey Arthur, do you mind if I take a seat?”
“No, go ahead.” Arthur smiled and he moved to the left so Calavia could sit where he was.
“So what are you reading?” Calavia asked as she sat down at the table and practically leaned over on Arthur to get a look at the pamphlet.
“It's the pamphlet for the mercenary guild. I’m considering joining for something interesting to do.” Arthur said as he lightly pushed Calavia back to an upright position.
“Really? It is quite a dangerous job being a mercenary, I would know since I was a part of the guild in the past. I might not make as much money as I did before, but healing the sick and injured is a lot safer than fighting bandits and monsters.” Calavia practically recoiled as she sat straight up. “And besides, there are many interesting jobs that revolve around magic research that are far less likely to get you killed from a stray arrow. You have the authorization and the skills to do so now since you became an apprentice within the guild and learned hope to cast tier two spells.”
“I really don’t want to take part in any of the research projects that are currently offering positions. Most of them seem dreadfully boring, like the one about rock formations from extreme heat and all that. It sounds like it would take years upon years for them to actually learn anything about that, and right now it's just a theory with no proof behind it.” Arthur practically sighed when he finished speaking his mind regarding that particular research project, if they wanted to learn more about rocks they should just ask dwarves, they literally live surrounded by the stuff.
“You don’t need to join that one, but there are other far more reasonable research projects that are hiring and they would be more than happy to hire someone like you.”
“Look I appreciate the help, but I need to get out there and do something with all the magic I have learned. I want to use the spells I have learned to fight something even if it is only a once a month thing, at least I would have used them for something.” After Arthur finished speaking the conversation went quiet as Calavia avoided eye contact.
But just as Arthur was about to go back to reading his book Calavia spoke up. “If you do decide to join the mercenary guild please be careful and only take jobs that you are most confident that you can take on. And if you are offered to join an expedition or anything like that just decline, those tend to be the most dangerous.” As she finished she turned to look Arthur in the eye waiting for him to answer.
“Alright-” Arthur said after a moment of silence. “-I will do my best to stay safe and I won't take any jobs that might pose an unknown danger.” At that statement Calavia speared to calm down a bit as her shoulder relaxed. “And besides I still have a few things I need to work on before I go and become a proper mercenary.”
“Really? You’re working on something that requires more attention than becoming a mercenary would currently allow? Must be some powerful potion you are brewing, did you find an old powerful recipe that will grant you an enhanced mana capacity?” The something that Arthur was referring to was of course the flesh golem and working out all of the kinks it had, as the current one had a habit of dropping fragile objects such as the glass bottles just a little too hard for his liking. But The assumption Calavia was making was good for him as well as it gave him a proper scapegoat.
“You will have to wait and see when I am done.” Arthur smiled devilishly as Calavia begged him to let her see who it was currently working. Arthur of course refused and repeated himself until she calmed down.
***********
Arthur continued with his experiments and created another three rat flesh golems. Each time he performed the process he felt himself become more and more knowledgeable regarding the anatomy of the rats and by extension how to properly construct the golems with their parts. As such his third golem was perfectly capable of standing and running on its own and possessed improved motor controls compared to the previous two. It also was a faster learner and understood more words at a time, a small problem with this golem was the inability to learn more than fifty words at once. When it would reach that number it would essentially delete the words it knew the longest and replace them with the new ones. But the fifty words was an improvement from the last two that could only remember ten and twenty five respectively.
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The fourth golem was roughly the same in terms of physical capabilities but was far more intelligent that the previous ones. It understood more than the fifty words the previous one could and was able to somewhat interpret the instructions it was given to account for certain obstacles or changes.
The fifth and final golem created by Arthur was likely the best one so far. Given all his practice in assembling and enchanting the previous golems this one was by far the strongest and smartest of them all. Its mental abilities were comparable to a real animal rather than a mindless object like the first and second golems and it possessed the ability to think for itself like the fourth one as well as make decisions without any input from Arthur. He proved this by placing a glass bottle on the edge of a table just enough that it would fall over if given even the slightest nudge. While the fifth golem was watching Arthur tapped it and pushed it over the edge, the bottle of course shattered on impact and the golem ran over to see what happened. Arthur then placed a second bottle on an edge and the golem rushed over to grab it and keep it away from the edge.
The behavior was quite simple yet it showed that the golem was more than able to make simple decisions for itself based on information it had been provided with prior. Since it knew that glass bottles were important it went out of its way to stop anymore from breaking. It was excellent progress for Arthur because it marked his capabilities as an enchanter and golemancer to be enough to move onto the small humanoid flesh golems that Brexius moved onto after he was done with the rats.
/- - - - - -\
+ Enchanting Level 1
+ Golemancy Level 1
+ Anatomy Level 0 (New)
\- - - - - -/
Thankfully he had three human bodies that he could work with in his dimensional bag, while they were within it they did not start decomposing like the ones that he buried in his backyard. Those ones were all far too decomposed to be of any use. But for the time being Arthur wouldn’t have much of an opportunity to conduct his experiments and continue learning from the work of Brexius as he noticed the gang that had been harassing him for ‘protection’ money has been keeping a few people around to watch him.
They didn’t make any moves against him, but they were watching him. In total there were about five people at most watching his house and it was starting to make him uncomfortable. So far they had kept their distance but Arthur really didn’t want to risk one of them breaking into his house and finding something incriminating about him.
Arthur peeked through the window at one of the gang members that was keeping watch of him. It was a human woman wearing a ragged and faded blue shirt without any sleeves. About one hundred meters away a human man was leaning on a building with something in his mouth as smoke rose from his general area. He also appeared to be carrying a large bag with him. Everyday that man would arrive at that spot and stay there until about dinner time when he would leave. Throughout the day several people would walk up to him and exchange some money for whatever he was keeping within the bag he carried around.
‘I don’t know what they are doing but I am betting that it is most certainly illegal. The man might not be here to watch me, but the others that rotate around probably are. They must have taken notice that I killed the last two groups that they sent over here, now they must be trying to gather information on what I am capable of. But that raises the question of what they are going to do next.’
Arthur had been watching what they were all doing outside his house for several days now, this allowed him to notice several things regarding their behavior and how he could exploit it. ‘The one with the bag always goes in the same direction when he leaves at dinner time, odds are he is going back to the same place every night and that is most likely where he is living. If I can follow him back there I can ambush him and find out what he is doing there everyday and I can interrogate him about the gang he is a part of. The only problem is that the others are always watching my house.’
Never before has Arthur been so annoyed by the actions of those he could easily kill with just a flick of his hand, but he knew that rushing in head first wouldn’t solve the problem of this gang, as the last time he got into a position to deal with them was by being smart and avoiding a direct fight. If that lesser gang member hadn't shown up and forced his hand he could have easily killed them all and disappeared.
‘First opportunity I get and I am following him. If his friends so much as blink for too long I will be out of here and following in his footsteps.’
Unfortunately no such opportunity was present by the time the man with the bag left his little corner and returned to wherever he lived. The other gang members swapped out with some others that he recognized from prior in the week and continued where their allies left off.
Arthur forced himself to resist the temptation to just walk over and shove a Large Earth Spike through their skulls just to be rid of them and instead continued practicing the levitation spell that he had been working on over the last week.
Whenever he had some free time from working on his flesh golems he would try out the levitation spell. So far he had made some progress in casting the spell, but the difficulty of the spell derived from maintaining it for a period of time. The reason it was hard to maintain the spell was because to keep a human levitated above the ground absolutely required a lot of mana and aeromancy. The weight of the object being levitated would also further increase the burden on the caster.
So far Arthur had made some progress in using the spell upon small objects such as rocks and firewood he kept by the fireplace. But when it came to levitating himself it wasn’t quite the same as he weighed far more than a rock or piece of firewood.
But for the time being that was unimportant, Arthur now had something new to work on. He needed a plan to follow this outlying gang member and find out what he is up to during the day.
‘Clearly he is selling something to these people. But I have no way of knowing what it is, and I highly doubt he would be willing to tell me, since I have worked with the city guard I am betting the gang knows about that and has informed all their subordinates that are within the area of who I am and not to approach me. If they haven’t then they are idiots, but given how quickly and efficiently they have established themselves here I highly doubt that is the case.’ Arthur began to click his tongue out of frustration at his current predicament. ‘The only way to follow him would be to leave without any of the gang members noticing and waiting nearby until he leaves, but the problem with that is I have no way to become invisible or hide myself from them. The only other option would be to kill them and hide their bodies when he isn’t looking.’