CHAPTER 122
They finished breakfast, chatted and then the alarm that Tom had set went off.
It was his five-minute warning.
His leisure time was over. The preparation activities before the dome came down had been carefully timed to create a sequence that would give them the maximum benefits for when the battle started. His big-ticket items, the Elementals he planned on summoning and Harness Meteorite were on a timer and then upgrading Golly could only occur once the abilities cooldown passed.
Impatiently, he settled down on the prepared ritual and confirmed his mana was full, but it was not time.
Seconds ticked by. He checked again and there were still two minutes left.
Summoning the elemental earlier than needed was wasteful.
He played with two of his ever-present rounded stones. While his brain pondered what was to come, he tossed them from one hand to another.
Elemental first, that was a given, and then later today he would get his first chance to boost the completed golem. The four days were unfortunately calculated off elapsed base and not a midnight reset that would let him use the spell earlier so everything was going to be rushed like before the first event.
The question was when the time ticked over what should he attempt to enhance?
The mana engine was the single most critical piece of the setup but Tom remembered what it had taken to repair it. He shivered at the memory of that complexity. All he had been doing was a deep cleaning. If cleaning it was beyond him… What would it take to upgrade? The repair had been a clean, and it had almost failed. His abilities had been completely inadequate and that had forced the intelligence to take it over for him because despite it supplying the raw power and detailed instructions he had lacked the finesse to finish the last step.
What would upgrading a mana engine look like?
His stomach twisted at the thought and he chewed lightly on his inner cheek, which was something he almost never did.
The complexity!
Fuck! What would that look like?
The question echoed in his head.
The complicated flows of positive and negative energy and his incompetency. He had failed to start a tier two engine. Even if he assumed away the upgrading bit Tom knew enough about the intelligence that his threshold bonus connected him to to know that it would expect him to restart the engine after it was upgraded. If the tier two had been a failure, how much arrogance would it take to imagine a similar attempt on a tier three being successful? More arrogance than even he possessed to be sure.
Tom still recalled when it had stepped in to save him. That mocking pity it had felt, that brief burst of support, it would not happen again. That had been a one off, throwing a bone to a useless mutt on the street along with the hope of never seeing it again. He had overreached by accident and because there was no intent in the mistake it had helped him. It had bailed out his ineptitude once, but it wouldn’t do it again.
That mind behind the ability expected him to learn. To it he no longer possessed the shield of embarrassing ignorance.
Future upgrade successes would depend on his skill and Tom realised that would drive failure rates up. For the mana engine having seen the previous cleaning process Tom knew a failure would not be the engine remaining tier two, it would be broken immediately after and remain useless until the threshold benefit of Stone Golem triggered once more in four days to give him a chance to fix it. That was if it was even left in a state where repair was possible. Tom could see a failed attempt destroying the component for ever.
That was the cost of reaching too far.
With a broken mana engine, the golem would be useless for what was possibly a community shaping fight.
No.
He couldn’t risk it… but even if he didn’t need the golem for later in the day, Tom was not willing to fool himself. Upgrading the mana engine was way beyond his current expertise.
What then?
His mind cycled through the options and he knew he should have already decided. After all, he had played with the choices enough in his head for days.
Prison?
Nope! The lesser elemental didn’t need anything more.
Control orb?
It was one of only two, tier one objects in the construction so upgrading it to tier two made sense but… It would not help win the event and he knew that anything he did should focus on killing the monsters about to be thrown at them. With the fate invested and the general competency of everyone around him whatever challenge came their way should be one that they could meet, but there was no point in tempting oblivion.
The upgrade he did now might be the difference between someone dying and surviving. He was not betting petty cash here. Lives could be on the line.
Maybe the stone that formed the crux of the golem?
If he upgraded anything, it would have to be the internal basalt. Putting a higher tier rock around a lesser tier version would create instability which limited his options. That would give him a marginal impact on Golly’s offensive capability mainly in its ability to survive more attacks.
Yet…
Hao was hard at work creating tier three stone. It seemed short-sighted to waste that boon.
One of the attack components?
Maybe. A thought too occurred to him. “Evie? I’m going to upgrade my golem later. What component should I enhance?”
“Mana engine.” Everlyn answered instantly.
Tom chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“First thing I ruled out.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because it will fail. My skills aren’t good enough.”
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Everlyn didn’t dispute his assessment. She just nodded. “Yeah, that process looked hellishly difficult. Something simple then. Not that giant crystal eye.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it casting a tier 4 spell? I don’t believe that will be any easier than the mana engine.”
“True.”
“Sabatons are out too for the same reason. Which leaves you with the Earth Manipulation crystal or the Beholder eyes. And maybe the stone. Or can’t the spell do that?”
“It can.” Tom confirmed.
Everlyn looked thoughtful. “I know Hao will upgrade the stone for free eventually, but didn’t that ability you use grant you a lot of power? Upgrading stone at least magically is costly, so the stone enhancement is your biggest bang for buck. Plus, it’s the first line of defence and second of attack.”
Tom nodded.
“Bringing forward the upgrade of all that rock has to be a good idea.” Everlyn continued. “It will certainly grant a greater bonus to combat efficiency than those other parts.”
Tom grimaced.
Her eyes narrowed. “Let me guess, there’s another reason that won’t work.”
“I need to tier up the inner stone first. That means two upgrades before you see material benefits.”
“Then I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation? There is only a single upgrade that can boost battle effectiveness and it’s probably the easiest one to do. The earth manipulation crystal.”
Tom considered what she had said and couldn’t’ believe he had been talking himself around in circles. It was obvious. “You’re right.”
She patted him on the leg. “Of course I am. You know, after you’ve shot down my first three ideas.” She laughed. “I was bound to get it right–”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Of course it was, but I understand you needed to talk it out. Next time, it’ll be easier if you just come out with all the restrictions at the start.” Her features went unanimated for the fraction of a moment, as she probably checked the time. “It’s time. Good luck. Have you changed anything?.”
“No. The checklist is the same. First, and by that I mean immediately I need to summon the elemental to run the golem, then use my upgrade spell on Golly, follow that with harness meteorite and then finish on getting a lesser lightning elemental right as the dome comes down.”
“Sounds busy.” Then he saw the mischievous look in her eyes. Everlyn held up her hand and examined her fingers. “Well, I’ve got a few hours to kill. I might see if I can get my nails done.” She winked. “They’re getting a bit chipped.”
He snorted and then switched his focus on the spell casting. He didn’t want to get any of this wrong.
After a deep breath, he focused his magic engaged with the class summon wisp spell and his title to boost it at the same time. Then the energy concentrated to a point and half broke into the elemental plane.
Not yet, he reminded himself as he resisted pushing all the way through. I still need to find the previous elemental.
His senses strained, and he located the thinnest thread of energy. He followed it, keeping the connection to the earth plane but not breaking through. It was bleeding points of mana per second, but that was unavoidable. His positioning changed until he was right on top of his target.
So far, so good.
The experimental contract they had put in place was working.
Tom plunged fully through the membrane separating the physical plane to the earth elemental one and opened his mind.
A single flicker of sapience greeted him.
It was the lesser elemental!
His lesser elemental!
Their ploy had worked.
The contract was ready, unchanged from the first time, and he pushed the offer across. The elemental didn’t hesitate to accept and a moment later the deal was done and it came into the physical reality. Excitement bubbled through its mind and it freely shared images of goblin heads exploding and the rush of intoxicating experience that occurred to it with each head.
More?
Tom laughed and deliberately didn’t do anything to imply that he wanted it to land upon him. Instead, he focused on it moving to the ground.
The elemental did as directed and he sighed in relief. Tom remembered perfectly how heavy it was. “More?” Tom teased out loud. “We don’t know yet. Hopefully, it’ll be something that you can fight.” Mentally, he sent over all the details and plans they had put together. Then the elemental shot off to enter its home within the golem.
Tom waited until it was settled. Join me. Don’t kill humans.
Know all ready. The golem responded, with the elemental equivalent of it sticking its tongue out at him.
He sat there, letting his mana regenerate as the golem wandered over and waited near his feet.
Harry reappeared and professionally refreshed the mana ritual.
“Still trying to leach the maximum amount of experience off me?”
“Of course.” Harry answered without hesitation. “I would have to be an idiot to stop putting these down. I know the windfall won’t be as grand this time, but just in case.” He shrugged. “I’m hoping you hit above fifty percent.”
Tom laughed at that. “It always depends on the enemy. If they’re dumb enough to mass up for artillery to destroy them, I’ll earn lots, but I doubt we’ll get any more waves of that type.”
Harry went off to make sure everything in the camp was functioning. He was becoming one of those invisible people that you never noticed till they stopped doing their job and then you realised how much they were doing behind the scenes.
Tom sat and recharged his mana crystal while a crowd congregated around him. Tom had announced nothing directly, but Everlyn had clearly been talking because every single crafter had gathered, including all those who were fighter specced but moonlighted in crafting as a secondary profession.
It was time.
He placed a hand on the golem and focused on the item that he wanted to enhance.
“Remember to call out instructions.” Ran Seong instructed softly. He looked at her and she smiled encouragingly. “The more you say the better off we’re going to be. Talk about the process as much as you can.”
Tom nodded. “Big turn out.”
There was amused laughter. He saw Sonya on one side Hao on the other. Joline watched him with her usual intensity.
They were all here.
Dozens of people observed him intently. Tom cleared his throat. “There’s no guarantee this will work, but I’m giving it my best go. There’s a crystal in the golem that contains an inefficient version of the tier zero Earth Manipulation spell. I’m going to upgrade that. As you know, the ability lets me contact an intelligence that takes me through the steps to do the upgrade. I hope that you’ll be able to benefit from the wisdom. Now–”
“Wait.” Ran Seong demanded. “Do you have any reagents?”
“What?”
She dug into her pockets. “I’m a leatherworker, so I don’t have much.” She pulled out a couple of semi-precious gems. Others understood what she was doing and there was a flurry of activity and pretty soon a small pile formed in front of Tom as various crafters put items down. It contained bits of precious metals and numerous gems some of which even glowed with power.
Ran Seong caught his eyes. “We don’t know if we need this, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. If you required any of them, just grab it. We can discuss compensation later.”
Tom felt like slapping his forehead. He remembered the crystal from the challenge trial. It had three large gems in it and at the time he had even worked around the lack of space across the three crystals. What contained the spell currently was far smaller than the jewellery in the challenge trial. Of course upgrading would require supplementary material. The intelligence used his abilities. It wasn’t about to create something from nothing.
“Thanks. I should have thought of that.”
“You’re not a crafter,” Ran Seong said quietly. “That you’ve got access to a crafting aid this powerful is a travesty of justice.”
Tom frowned. “I can see how you could think that.”
Ran Seong laughed. “It’s the green-eyed monster talking. Like all of us, I’m envious and annoyed because I feel you won’t leverage this as much as you could.”
“I’ll try,” Tom gestured at the people gathered. “Making it open for everyone to watch is part of it. But I’ll also fight my instincts to only focus on personal improvement. There is a lot of value in turning Go…” he hesitated. “My golem into the strongest fighter possible. It may not come naturally, but this is a path to power and for the sake of ranking points I won’t abandon it. I’m now a hundred percent dedicated.” None of the crafters watched him seemed convinced. “Unfortunately, the fundamental lesson I learnt in the tutorial is that if you want magic items don’t bother learning how to make them just go out and bash enough things, until the system rewards you with what you want.”
“Oh, I liked that strategy, too.” Ran Seong agreed immediately with a small laugh. “But I loved creating stuff the more traditional way. Plus, if I make it myself I have slightly more control over what I want. Why use a legendary chain sword poorly when I can turn it into an epic bastard spear and leverage the fighting Skills I already possessed.”
“Hurry up,” Joline interrupted primly. “We really don’t care about dick measuring stories.”
There was a scattering laughter.
Tom’s eyes quickly washed over the crowd. He was surprised at how many looked at Joline with annoyance. Given that almost everyone watching was a crafter of some type he had expected her to have more support. Then again, Michael had mentioned that the crafters were split between Ran Seong and Joline, with most of Joline’s supporter base being the remnants of Jeffrey’s.
The golem sat on the ground in front of him.
This was it.