Following that pull that drew me to make my room, I found myself in a stylized top-down view of my domain. I had the room I had just finished, the three more natural caves headed to what I assume is the surface, and the cave running down to what I believe is marked as my core room, a small blue dot indicating my location in that room. I played with the view for a moment, seeing exactly how far I could go and what my limits were.

A little experimentation later, I found that if I was present and claimed territory, I could always view it, however, the unclaimed territory would stay in the last observed state, greyed out by default unless otherwise requested. As valuable as this was, I headed back to the room and zoomed in, mentally navigating to my template for the golems.

『Item usage』

Yes

No

Naturally I picked Yes.

『Item usage』

『Skill acquired!』

{Grants the ability to customize or specialize golems}

{Grants the ability to modify golem subroutines and virtual intelligence}

{Unlocks the ability to research [Normal Golem Template]}

I looked at the ability to spawn golems or spawners and investigated the difference between the two. It was pretty straightforward, individual spawning golems meant that the cost of creation was almost nothing, and customization was cheap. A spawner was costly, and modifications to the golem after placing it were very costly. I could also not modify the golems that had been made by a spawner.

I elected to make 6 golems from the basic template I had, stationing 3 in the room while the other 3 split up into each of the tunnels with a simple task, to investigate the tunnels and the outlying areas.

Spawning the six golems drained me some, and with no reference to what my limits were, I could only estimate it to have taken a quarter of what I could do. With that information, I spawned another golem in the chamber I was in, and started flattening the floor out where I was to be uniform.

I found, unfortunately, that in my freshly spawned state, my body was not as strong as I had expected, and any effort, regardless of how small, was a difficulty.

I commanded the golem I had made to come over and pick me up, using my shaping abilities to make a chair for me to rest on while I kept a thread of my consciousness watching the ever-growing tunnels towards the surface.

And then one of the golem icons went red.

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I focused my attention on it and was surprised by the results.

『WARNING』

Extreme cold?

That couldn’t be correct. I tapped into the visual stimulus of golems 5 and 6 to check if they had experienced similar issues.

Unsurprisingly, they had almost as soon as they had exited my territory.

Fields of white as far as their visual systems could focus. They were already growing sluggish, and a quick calculation determined that they would exit useful parameters well before returning to the caves, so I had them push onwards. I found the one jutting feature in the cold with nothing else to distract them.

A single tower, mode of some kind of grey material, covered in snow.

And then those golems failed.

I started racking what I could only call my databanks, since these weren’t memories by any stretch of the imagination, to try and find a solution, or at least, some kind of mitigation to the cold problem.

I had a few methods that came up that were possible with my limited capabilities, but had serious drawbacks.

I could replace the hydraulic systems with a direct drive, as I have the motors already, though it would require a total redesign of the lower body to handle the additional bulk.

I could also go for a pneumatically operated system, though it would need a pump to generate pressure to operate, which would add significant bulk as well…

Both options call into question the viability of the bipedal design for exterior use, as while I can power the systems, I would need to overhaul the design of the lower half entirely for both options, and if I’m doing that, I may as well call into question the entire design and the philosophy behind it, these are clearly not equipped for this environment.

I mentally reached out to see if the system would respond to a query to create a specialized golem for the environment outside and to my surprise, got a response instantly.

『NOTICE』

I sighed to myself and tried again, specifying that I needed a golem for the extreme colds outside, that had an extended range, and most importantly, could explore the local environment.

『NOTICE』

『NOTICE』

Finally, I had a proper direction.