CHAPTER 151

Purchase made he returned to real life and almost jumped in surprise.

Keikain stood right in front of his face.

Tom remarked neutrally. “That’s creepy.”

“Michael said you were going to rebuild Golly.” Keikain said. “I thought you would appreciate some help.”

“Aren’t you needed on the wall?”

Keikain snorted. “That’s just grunt work. Anyone can do it. You need artistry, which is why I’m here.”

“What, you don’t think I’m capable of this?”

“No, Tom, I’m sure you can do a good job, but you also said when creating the first one that sculpturing it properly improved the outcome. Ultimately, art is a function of talent and time. Masterpieces can’t be created in a few hours.”

“Fine, you’re in.” Tom said privately thankful that the man was helping. Having an expert earth mage help could only improve the result.

“You’ve got me till lunch,” Keikain said. “Then Michael wants me to help reinforce the walls. How do you want to go about it?”

“Same as last time.”

“What do you think about making more intricate patterns internally?” Keikain asked curiously. “Because I was thinking. Well, Hao had the idea to be honest a few days ago. Anyway, we workshopped—”

“Wait.”

“Yes.” Keikain arched an eyebrow.

“You and Hao were discussing how to make a better golem?”

“Yeah. Hao was sharp and his insight into stone was incredible.”

“And we lost him.”

Keikain shrugged unconcerned. “Honestly, I think he’ll work wonders with the lookuns. He’ll help strengthen them by teaching new classes and I wouldn’t be surprised if their support turns him into a famous artist. He will find greater success there than here.

“And what did you determine you could do to improve the aesthetics?”

“Nope, the idea was not to change the outside appearances, but we figured we could enhance the inside.”

Tom hesitated as he tried to get his head around what Keikain was suggesting. Tom knew that investing in the spell form would make the insides prettier, but with the unevenly shaped components it was hard to introduce any true symmetry into the golem design. “I don’t understand.”

“We were thinking internally to the stone we could add a three-dimensional structure.”

“What?”

“If you cut the stone in half and zoom in, this process will make it look better. It’s not just cosmetic it turns the rock into an enhanced version of itself. We manipulate it to be a little harder than usual and conduct magic slightly more. We figured your golem would get those benefits, plus whatever bonus your spell gives it to reward the extra uniqueness. It’s a pity Hao is not here to witness it.” he finished sadly.

“It’ll improve it,” Tom admitted. “Though it will complicate the animation spell significantly.”

“Well, we don’t have to do it. We can leave it as ordinary stone and just polish the outside like last time.”

“No. Complexity is fine.” Tom scratched his head absently. “It’ll take me longer to cast the spell, but I’ve got fourteen hours, so that won’t be an issue and I was planning on spending extra time to perfect the spell form, anyway.”

“Great. We can get to do this. Before I get started, are you changing anything else on the previous design?”

Tom shook his head. The design he did would work just as well for this iteration as previously and when he had seen the state of Golly after the last battle he had bought jewellery and given it to the crafters to turn into wire. That was spooled there with the rock, so except for offensive abilities he was basically using the same items. Though he had picked eagle eyes instead of beholder stalks but functionally they would serve the same purpose. “I only have a single object to incorporate offensively today, but I want to build like the original design and leave space for three offensive spell items.”

“In the arms?”

Tom shook his head.

“Body like last time, then.” Keikain concluded.

Tom nodded.

The earth mage rubbed his hands together and stepped towards the pile of components and then let his magic flow outward.

Tom combined his energy with Keikain’s and almost laughed at the difference between manipulating tier three rock versus the stuff he had been moving so casually when widening or narrowing all the nearby tunnels. Out there, he had moved tons of rock with a fraction of his mana pool; admittedly, that effort had often been helped by gravity. Here, all of his reserves barely rounded the edges of the twenty kilogram chunk of rock that he was manipulating.

Tom kept working. His difficulty changing the rock just meant hostile spells would find it even harder, which is what he was after.

After the first flush of mana, they both paused to let their magic regeneration work.

“Hey Keikain. I have a question for you.”

“What?”

“What’s the line between evil and good?”

Keikain shrugged. “A million philosophers have pondered this point.”

“No, what do you think?”

There was a pause while Keikain considered the issue. “I guess it’s something like if you’re hurting or killing sapients for enjoyment, you’re evil.”

“That’s pretty broad.”

“So was your question, Tom.”

“True.” He fiddled with the rock as he tried to marshal his thoughts. What did he want to know? “If you had the option to do something terrible to another species to get a reward for humanity would you do it?”

“What do you mean? Destroy them? I’m sure multiple competitor races will be considering that after all, if you wipe out a species it’s a pretty big impact on Existentia.”

“Nothing that extreme. More like if you could move them from third on the ladder to sixth.”

“Tom, I know some species we’re fighting against are probably honourable but if the choice between my parents or theirs I’m choosing mum and dad.”

“Poor example.” Tom mumbled. “If you could do something like that to a native species would you?”

Keikain’s eyes narrowed. “This is not completely hypothetical is it?”

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Tom shrugged. “I don’t know. Sort of. Sort of not. I can’t describe anything in detail. I try to not even think about it but yeah, but it’s big. Equivalent to shifting them on the ladder or halving the length of every cat’s tails both those alive and those yet to be born. Or if they had two taking one of them away.”

“I imagine halving the length of a cat’s tail is really cruel.”

“Yes,” Tom agreed flatly.

“What’s your actual question?”

“What would make those actions reasonable?”

Keikain looked upset at the interrogation. “You’re still not giving me enough to go on. I’ve spoken to Everlyn. I know you have some sort of plan, but these questions don’t make sense to me. What are you doing?” Keikain sighed. “I swear on the GODs that I won’t tell anyone what you share with me.”

Tom hesitated.

“I swore an oath to the GODs. It’s safe to tell me.”

“It really isn’t.” Tom said with a sigh. “Another way to think about it is when would it be okay to wage a stealth war against a species? Kill and crush them just because they’re in the way.”

“I’m assuming sapients?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not the best person to be answering these questions. I’m not the philosophical type.”

“But I’m asking you.”

“How did Mus describe races again? Terrors and satisfactory and good?”

“I think satisfactory races had flavours depending on circumstances.”

Keikain ignored the interjection. “If it’s a terror race, then you waging war on them is in everyone’s favour, so if against one of them then that’s definitely fine. The other two?” Keikain shrugged. “I don’t know, man. This stuff is hard. I prefer to fight monsters. What’s the benefit. I mean we need to get something out of it don’t we?”

Tom shrugged. “Lots of ranking points. Might even be significant ladder movement.”

“And how many sapients are you talking about killing?”

“Twenty, fifty, a couple of hundred but then I’m taking the tail afterward, which has a bigger impact than the direct damage. What would make that worthwhile?”

Keikain whistled appreciatively. “You don’t think small, do you?”

Tom ignored the question. He had already said too much.

“You’re asking where I would draw the line?”

He nodded.

“You’ve obviously thought about it a lot? I assume you’ve drawn your own line and you’re wondering if you’ve gone too far?”

“Yes, to both.”

There was an extended silence as they both started channelling their mana into the rock once more.

“Well?” Keikain asked finally. “How did you draw your line?”

“In the tutorial, I wrote a legal document. It was forty pages long, but it basically had the following criteria. Are they an undesirable race?” Tom sighed. “The definition of an undesirable race was extensive but essentially covered Mus’s Terror definition but also species that, while there was no intent behind their actions still did evil things. For example, enslaving entire other races or being responsible for the genocide of multiple species including one outside of the competition.”

“Targeting them seems reasonable.” Keikain said.

“Also dying races, which were basically species that would be extinct within ten generations.”

The other man nodded approvingly at that. “I wouldn’t have thought of that, but that’s good. If they’re going to die anyway… Then we might as well use them.”

“And ones that have lost or almost lost their sapience.”

“Another example I hadn’t considered.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”

“None of those criteria seem particularly controversial. If anything, you’ve gone light. What about a race that acts as slavers and condemned millions of sapients to slavery but never enslaved an entire race? Would your algorithm pick that up?”

“No.”

“What about races that are isolationists and warlike? They might take no joy in hurting other sapients, but their continual raids impact millions. Why wouldn’t they be a target?”

Tom shrugged. “They have a future, they’re not evil and they haven’t as a species done anything unforgivable.”

Keikain shrugged. “You’re taking half their tail. You’re not wiping them out, you’re not killing hundreds of thousands. I would have said both my examples would leave them as fair game. Your criteria is too weak. You could go harder.”

“I’m not going too.” Tom said firmly. “I think my selection is hard enough.”

They lapsed into silence. Keikain focused on his work while Tom’s mind raced at the implications of the conversations. Maybe his plan was not as terrible as he thought. Had he made a mistake by limiting his targets as much as he had?

Tom considered Keikain’s points. Should an isolationist culture which was warlike be a valid target? He could definitely see the other man’s arguments, but his criteria were simple. He would target only two types of species. First, the ones that represented true evil, either by their nature or actions. Second one that was already dying. This other category saddened him the most, and only thinking about his innocent sister gave him the strength to include them. That and his actions at worst were only speeding up a decay that was already destined to happen.

“Help me with this next bit.” Tom said, holding the rock in his hand.

“Watch the magic.” Keikain ordered and demonstrated the fifth form of basalt that Tom was struggling with.

When Keikain had mentioned three-dimensional internal structures, he hadn’t been joking. There was a full-on plan that changed the rock structure into no less than six different forms and then weaving them into a complicated pattern, with each unique form of crystal only a millimetre across. The increased power was created by the different states interacting and not from one of the alternative forms being inherently superior. It was genius.

“How did you know how to do this?”

“It was a group effort between me and Hao. Well, more Hao, but I helped him bring it together.”

Tom watched Keikain worked and continued adjusting his own attempts to mimic more perfectly what the other mage seemed to do naturally. The investment was not wasted, even if he was horrifically slow relative to Keikain. Eventually, he was going to have to channel a spell through this, and understanding the underlying detail would only help him when that time came.

Almost six hours later, the last piece of the obsidian stone was converted. The obsidian had only three types of stone creating the lattice, and that significantly reduced complexity, which meant that the obsidian vs the basalt and been transformed ten times faster.

Keikain slapped him on the back. “That my friend is a masterpiece.”

He was referring to the golem they had created. The new version of Golly did not look as stunning as a previous one. The visible embellishments were more subdued, the entire surface less polished.

“I hope this makes it more powerful.” Keikain said.

“I guess you can check back in six hours. But I can’t see how it won’t.”

The earth mage departed having spent a couple of hours more helping him than they had planned. Michael had come around repeatedly asking for Keikain’s help and had been rebuffed. Now the structure was finished there was no reason for him to stay.

Tom waited till he had left before turning to finish the job and cast the actual animation spell.

This was not a task he could cheat on and would have to do it alone.

Tom admired what Keikain and to a lesser extent he had built. Privately, he had to admit that the internal rock structure Keikain and Hao had come up with was brilliant. It was not something he would have thought of, but now that he knew it was possible he would duplicate the steps in all of his high-quality productions going forward. Even if he used different stone types as a base he was confident he could create similar structures to what Hao had to create the three-dimensional lattice.

It was time to fabricate the spell form, and he was going to go slowly to make sure he did it properly. He still remembered the judgement from the mind that governed his upgrade ability. It had looked at Golly and deemed it trash, and he did not want to be exposed to that level of scorn again. It had been appalled at the lack of attention to detail that the spell form that had animated Golly had exhibited.

As he prepared to slow everything down, he consulted the false memories in his skull and discovered plenty of relevant experience to guide him.

The best way to improve the process was to channel the mana more slowly into the spell form. The method meant the eventual spell would have significantly more energy than infusing it. That was not why Tom chose it. The channelling method also allowed the spell form to be constructed step by step. It let him focus on perfecting the detail. Instead of letting his magic effectively mirror the macro features of the golem, primarily the wire that twisted throughout it, Tom forced himself to go down to the next level. The almost microscopic structure that Keikain had created was the level he coaxed the spell form to manifest at.

It was tricky, finicky work and agonisingly slow.

To be honest, it reminded him of when, as a kid he tried to do sewing to replace the tail he had ripped off his sisters monkeys costume by accident and attempted to get it done before his parents got home. The stitch job had been horrific because of his lack of patience. His mum had re-done it perfectly in about two minutes, which had humbled him. She had teased him for weeks.

Now, despite how fiddly each centimetre of rock was he did not rush himself. Spell form lines poked out of on angles where they should have followed a crystallised tube. He erased the work and then repeated it, and this time got it right.

Despite the failures, he did not give up as there were green shoots in his performance. Small sections with a spell form that conformed to the detailed internal lattice of the stone. It was not much, but it told Tom that with practise and effort he could get the sort of finish he wanted.

He redid all the bits that had failed.

Everlyn appeared briefly and sat next to him while literally hand feeding him each bite of dinner in an attempt not to distract him.

Tom opened his mouth and chewed, determined not to let the spell lapse or have his concentration broken.

She reminded him of the time. The third wave of the event occurring the next day and they didn’t want to be tired during the fight. “This is the time we normally go to bed.”

“Ten minutes more.”

“Tom! It’s been twenty.”

“Only ten more. I promise.”

She was sitting next to him, and he kept working. Now, when he swept his mind over the spell form, he found very few of the mistakes. He fixed them, but he could feel his concentration going.

This was harder than most of his hunts or running trials.

His brain was aching even if there was nothing physically wrong.

He had to finish it.

With a wrench of his mind, he completed the spell.

It crackled into existence. Golly two was ready.