CHAPTER 123
It felt like the entire camp watched Tom as he reached out his hand, stretched an index finger forward to touch the stone.
There was nothing special about it. With a flick of his mind, he could separate it from the golem.
Trumpets went off in his head.
There was no excuse for further delay. Exactly four days had passed. He engaged the threshold skill made available by his investment in the levels of Stone Golem. There was no resistance, no pushback, the ability bridged the distance separating him from the special entity that oversaw the skill.
Tom knew there was a chance the intelligence would ignore him. There was one of it and who knows how many thousands who had reached the threshold level in Stone Golem that this entity needed to support. If it didn’t have the capacity to help, it would ignore him, and they might have all gathered for no reason.
“You!”
It was a word that was expressed without language. A basic acknowledgement with more than a small amount of mockery. An acknowledgment of their past interactions and all of his awkward incompetency. Tom knew in that instant that it did not believe he was worthy of contacting it, but the mind recognised the simple universal truth that he would continue to do so.
Rules bound both of them.
I want to learn. He sent to it, hoping it would make it feel better. The intelligence did not acknowledge him and instead linked through his senses to the golem that he had created. Almost casually, it assessed what he had built. Its mind found fault in… well, everything but particularly the spell form that held the construction together. The components parts were barely considered beyond an acknowledgement that sometimes all a caster could do was use what was handy… but the spell form… Tom wished that he had spent weeks polishing it both before finalising the cast.
That way it might have got an E in the mind’s opinion instead of a fail.
The time wasn’t available. He thought defensively back.
It ignored his weak excuse and its attention focused on the part of the golem that he wanted to upgrade.
The intelligence paused as it calculated the best way forward. At its bidding, he flexed the spell form around the small piece of jewellery. Spinning the energy through the gem to see the interactions and understand the problem.
Then it had a solution and Tom felt its gaze once more flick over the different components and pause for an instant at the control orb. It seemed like it half approved of the outsourcing he had passed onto the elemental.
“You have moderate wisdom.”
Tom’s brain did not crack under the backhand compliment, but sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Now you work.”
An immense pressure built on the outside of his mind. Instinctively, he fought back.
“Relax let it through.”
It’s harder than you think. He shot back at in frustration. He was worried if he relaxed his shields the energy would reduce his brain to mush.
The force increased.
Relax.
He couldn’t. The pressure kept increasing.
Cracks formed.
His shields shattered.
That immense force had the freedom to do whatever it wanted. It could flay his mind effortlessly or make him cease to exist. For a horrible moment, he was completely helpless.
Instructions of what to do to upgrade the component were imprinted into his brain.
The pressure vanished.
Tom shuddered at the tremendous power.
The intelligence focused next to him and an intense source of energy appeared.
Temporary Mana Crystal - Tier 3.
This mana crystal will last till all the energy is expended, or the upgrade is complete. Power can only upgrade the tier 1 spell storage crystal to tier 2.
Total mana available- 2000
The restrictions were absolute, as there was still a link to the entity. Only something that would find the two thousand mana meaningless could steal it.
Tom licked his lips and tried to work out if there were any potential exploits to use the mana crystal for a different purpose. Like what would happen if he was attacked while upgrading. Would forming a shield to protect himself so he could finish the upgrade count? The answer was it depended on the mood of the controlling mind and how it valued him.
Unfortunately, it depended on whether he was a rising crafting genius and Tom knew exactly what the intelligence thought of him. It would be decades before he got any leeway, so for now he would keep himself to the straight and narrow and that crystal was solely for upgrading.
The instruction that had been burnt into his brain contained six distinct steps and he groaned a little at the complexity detailed, but there was no point arguing.
“Six steps to upgrade,” Tom told them with a voice that sounded rusty from misuse. “I’m going to need volunteers to help with every step.” The intelligence had viewed those gathered to watch as resources and had set out the pathway with the assumption that they would help. It had deliberately minimised Tom’s direct role beyond being the workhorse for magically funding the effort.
Part of him was mortified by that decision, but the practical part that liked shiny things welcomed the choice. The less he was directly involved in the process the more chance he had of this being successful.
He cleared his throat to focus everyone’s attention on him. “First step is to prime the jewels and the metal that we’re going to incorporate to set the stones. We’re aiming to upgrade to the peak of tier two, which requires significant processing capacity. We need to prime the five additional gems we are adding to get them in tune with the current jewel.”
Like an old style narrator, Tom read off the script and the crafters jumped into action. A lot of the instructions he gave created murmurs of surprise and appreciation. The method of priming the jewels, for example utilised the existing gem as the base of the spell. At a metaphysical level, you would superimpose the empty gem with the target that you were duplicating. You would balance the power fluctuations while pumping energy into the crystal until it was identical to the target and then you would separate them. And just like that, the gem would be primed. The metal was harder, but used the same principles.
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The surrounding crafters discussed the process in hushed whispers.
‘Genius.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought of that.’
‘Who would even consider that?’
‘Extraordinary.’
Then, when physically constructing the new jewellery, the intelligence rejected the standard design that would have all six of the gems able to lay flat on the neck and instead created a central hub that each of the six gems spread out from so their outer edges sort of formed a sphere. Not only was it more efficient it was a space saving process and required less metal. ‘Function over form.’
‘Pay attention to the symmetry.’
‘Are those metal nubs part of balancing the magic?’
‘Obviously.’
Tom smiled at that and went through to step four. “Now we need to make the separate jewels into a single unified piece.”
“Haven’t we already done that?” Ran Seong asked.
“No,” Hao told them, supporting Tom instantly. “If I released energy in a gem, it would only echo in the singular gem rather than throughout the entire construction. I think Tom means to forge them so that if I did that it would echo through the structure.”
“Correct. It’s also one of the few crafting problems that can be solved almost a hundred percent by the application of power. My favourite type.” Tom joked. “Excluding the energy requirement this is the easiest step. Watch carefully.”
Fifteen hundred mana poured out of his hands, funnelled from the temporary mana crystal the intelligence had primed for him. Even with his burst casting, it still took almost ten seconds to channel completely.
The mind that had been mostly monitoring what he had done tsked in annoyance at how slow the energy had been spent.
“Now I need to compress.” Tom told them, ignoring the temperamental overseer.
Tom, with his mind forced it to consolidate. This was the only step that he was expected to do himself. He suspected that others could have helped, but the instructions had contained nothing that he could use to form the basis for the multitasking. The intelligence watched, and Tom struggled to control the massive energies he had summoned. His spell slipped slightly and power leaked out before he plugged the leak.
Ran Seong added magic to his.
It was like a dam had broken and more and more of the crafters stepped into help. With their mana in the mix, they were allowed to bring their will to bear on the problem he was trying to solve. Power crackled and the intense mana was compressed until it was right up to the surface of the gem. Then they held that position and they could all sense the internal structure of the magic within the piece of jewellery altering.
The force that had been resisting his pressure, the intrinsic magic of the gems reduced and then suddenly all the power that they had gathered collapsed inwards and went through the Jewellery. It was like it had gone into a black hole and was gone. Not into the piece they were creating or leaked into the atmosphere. The energy just vanished into nothing.
The intelligence that had been watching like a hawk suddenly relaxed and Tom realised it had been ready to interfere if he stumbled.
“Thanks Ran Seong and all,” Tom said humbly. He much preferred them saving him rather than the intelligence that was babysitting his process. The more he could do to get on its good side the better. “I believe that was a common failure point and your intervention at the last moment saved the process. I think in the future if we’re doing this as a community you should probably ensure you have larger error margins for that step.”
He could see the crafters nodding. They would have felt the same thing even if they could not feel what the intelligence was doing. They didn’t need to know that Tom had in fact had a safety net. It was better for the community if they thought that they had saved the attempt.
“The last two steps are complicated but less risky,” Tom told them. “First, we expand the spell that has been inserted. We do this by creating a visualisation ritual.”
“That’s my job,” Harry joked, and Tom ignored him. “In the future someone’s going to need to buy the ritual but for today I have a single use charm.” He pointed at a glowing patch of air that had been gifted to him for this attempt. There was a crack of energy as he activated it. The energy created glowing lines in the ground that he recognised as a ritual. Then he linked it with the artefact and with a whoosh a hologram that depicted the structure of the existing spell on the jewel snapped into existence. “This ritual allows you to see how your spell is structured and then modify or replace it.” Tom mentally fiddled with the spell and the design changed to show the empty space that their expansion of the jewellery had created. A higher level spell could be inserted into the extra space, technically a tier two spell, but Tom knew that was something that could be fudged.
“In addition,” Tom continued. “To visualise the spell structure, you need a volunteer who knows the spells you’re trying to incorporate. I have the highest levels in both the base Earth Manipulation and the Remote version, so we won’t use anyone else today, but usually most of you will get a third party to do this.”
Tom took a moment to send his versions of the spells into the spell visualisation ritual. The contrast between his versions and the one currently trapped in the gem was incredible. The level of detail in Tom’s spells was an order of magnitude higher.
“Now we reconstruct the spell from the three options we have available. We could discard the existing spell and insert our own, but you’ll note the custom bits.” Tom pointed at them. “They integrate the spell better with the jewellery. We want to keep that, so we’re basically carving out the current core and inserting our new version while leaving the already created linkages alone.”
They spent another five minutes shifting around components of the spells effectively cutting and pasting between the version to ensure they got the best build possible. Keikain and Sven added their more practical earth magic expertise to the mix.
Finally, the spell structure was complete and then it was a matter of all the crafters to drip feed mana into jewellery to bond the spell to its new shell.
“Perfect.” Tom declared.
The item was now peak tier two. The final step was to incorporate it into the golem’s spell form.
This was easier and something he had a significant amount of experience with. The crafters helped with mana, and it was easy enough to finish the improvements.
It was done.
The intelligence vanished from his mind.
Tom theatrically collapsed on the ground, clutching his head.
“Success no?” Ran Seong asked.
“Very much so. But tension headache. I need a minute.”
The old young lady laughed, but despite the physical age it was the chuckle of a grandmother, not a girl. “Ahh, our young prodigy has discovered that crafting is harder than bashing.” She patted him on the shoulder. “All wise crafters understand this. You’ll recover soon.”
Tom playfully swatted the hand away. “I get it.”
He looked at the golem and smiled. The teasing, the headache, the fact he would get screwed on the cost of replacing the jewels he had used. It was all worth it. The elemental in the golem was feeling out the complexities of the new spell it had available to it.
Appreciation radiated across the link to Tom along with more specific calculations. Earth spikes would be boosted by forty-eight percent. Self-repair capabilities by twenty percent. The earth shard missiles’ range of sizes had increased, boosting their overall efficiency by a similar amount. Complete combat effectiveness would be boosted by nine percent.
No, he admonished the elemental gently. Yes, against the Goblins. Against the world? Tom radiated his doubt. Against the random stuff out there, then who knows.
Tom could feel it thinking about that and then a flash of embarrassment and a refusal of the elemental to voluntarily connect to his mind.
A little less than nine percent, Tom mused that over in his mind. He hadn’t expected a single component to push the golem to a new stratosphere, but when he had upgraded the base and incorporated extra material, the capability of his war machine would continue to rise.
The crafters had departed, and the leaders of the fighters gathered around him to replace them. Legen, Michael, Rahmat and a couple of the other self-assigned battle leaders crowded around him to discuss strategies yet again.
They immediately launched into a planning session. Tom only half listened to them. They discussed the different categories of the monsters. What they would do against a dragon type and the tweaks from a dragon to a roc to a lightning roc.
Formations and plans.
Everlyn was involved heavily. Burrowers would need a different treatment to humming bird like threats. They began to go around in circles and he cast harnessed meteorite. The five spinning rocks manifested over his head stilling the conversation for only a moment.
Then they kept going.
“I thought we agreed to all this yesterday.” Tom complained suddenly.
“No harm in repeating it.” Legen said cheerfully. “After all, we do not know what we’re going to face.”
“See enemy kill enemy.” Tom quipped.
“That’s the standard plans, but the ones where we need to scatter first are the important fringe cases to remain aware of.”
“Its true Tom.” Michael agreed. “For the elites, this stuff might not be important, but for the rest of us it’s life and death.”
“I know, but we covered fighting trolls yesterday, and this is the second time today.”
“Trolls are dangerous.” Legen said unapologetically. “Now if everyone is comfortable about trolls, let’s confirm we are all on the same page regarding fast moving slimes.”
He tuned them out summoned his lesser lightning elemental when it was time and then followed everyone else up to their starting location. The entire battle council was here. Everlyn or Jingyi would spot the enemy. They would discuss the first stage of the battle plan before all of them would scatter to spread the news to those who weren’t influential enough to attend this meeting.
Then, when the fighting actually started they would rely on their honed instincts to keep themselves alive before they made their enemies dead. This was a fight against the equivalent of seventy rank sixteens. Even if it was a favourable matchup, no one thought it would be an easy battle.