To handle the heavier arrowhead, my new exploding arrows needed to be sturdy, so I used some of my valuable Greythril stores. The arrow was light, yet strong enough to handle the job. The problem was it lacked the flex a normal arrow needed to fly straight when fired from a bow. So, I needed a compound bow that fired an arrow through a midpoint near the handle and as a result, didn’t require flex. Luckily between Ara and myself, we were able to come up with some normal arrow alternatives we could use until Ara could design a decent compound bow. They were still wooden arrows but with a heavier arrowhead. We had a limited number of wooden shafts so we had to use them sparingly.
That got my blood moving with excitement, I couldn’t wait.
Those types of arrows needed a certain amount of smarts to know when to activate, otherwise it became too difficult or dangerous to control. Which brought me to the second part of my design, the smarts. The core contained AI components that could be used in golems. A golem was classified as any inanimate object given animate abilities or intelligence. A golem could be a nanobot or a ten-story behemoth, as dumb as a rubber stamp or as clever as a supercomputer AI. The Creation Core held a variety of intelligence ability skills that created various thought processes. Some were quite complex, and I could only understand a small part of the skill coding before I became totally lost. Descriptions in the explaining text writeups were quite thorough in their descriptions. Ara would also list the drawbacks of that level of intelligence, ability, or skill for me. I realised the endless usefulness of golems and I wanted to keep it as secret as I could.
There might be a misunderstanding in how golems work. For instance, a lump of iron made into the shape of a golem would not move if it lacked the mechanism for motion. Since an external force could be applied to a golem, motion was possible. It required the necessary joints to make it moveable of course and that’s where Ara helped. With all that exciting stuff happening in my brain, my shift quickly passed.
The next day the heavens opened, and it rained continuously, a steady downpour of water the entire day. As an extra security measure against flooding, I put in water drainage trenches in the platform to prevent any internal flooding as the platform was essentially a large rainwater collector.
That morning we planned to head out west. I’d spoken to the team and considering our previous successes I wanted to try out the magnetic bars again. After all, it would be better if someone else could collect the iron next time. We took one of the horses with the intention of hooking up the bars to the horse. We would then return three hours later, have lunch, and swap the horse with the fresh one. That way the horses didn’t get overly tired.
Within fifteen minutes of leaving the base camp we had our first marsh bullfrog attack. There was little warning but at least we noticed the frog approaching in large jumps and it didn’t seem to be wanting to slow down either. Every time the monster landed there was a huge splash as if it were trying to scare us away. Something about the attitude of the creature implied it wasn’t interested in eating us. Our team had however prepared for that occasion, Hana was already firing arrows from the time we spotted the bullfrog, but the arrows didn’t seem to stall the frog at all. At the last jump the bullfrog leapt up into the air aiming for the horse.
Tobias physically stopped the bullfrog in the air, as it came down, he slammed the monster with a hard blow using his shield. The monster was a heavy creature. The impact from that shield which would have flattened a human, but it merely knocked the bullfrog temporarily off balance and onto its side. That was all Aliz needed and stabbed the bullfrog under the soft part of its chin between the eyes right through its brain. The frog didn’t even twitch, it was instantly dead.
“Thank goodness we noticed that monster coming.”
“Ah guys, I think there is another one approaching.”
My presence sense was also picking up far more heading directly towards us. I warned them,
“We need to head back to base camp and quickly.”
They must have heard the urgency in my voice, but again they were wonderfully proficient. No time wasted needlessly arguing, they simply reacted. Even if we moved as fast as we could, we would not be able to get back to basecamp without having to fight the bullfrogs and each delay meant more bullfrogs arrived. The next bullfrog reached us, and a similar pattern ensued where Tobias pushed the monster aside and Aliz made the kill. Hana kept her sword handy as her bow wasn’t having much of an impact. I would have liked to put the bullfrog into storage but there wasn’t any time.
Three more frogs were incoming before we managed to reach the ramp of the basecamp when the attacks suddenly stopped. It was just as well because Tobias and Aliz were looking a bit tired. I was perplexed, the days before we had no issues and then suddenly a mass attack today out of all days. Was it related to the weather somehow? Hana’s good insight pointed out that it might be the magnetic bars that was attracting the frogs. But if that was the case, why didn’t we have any attacks on the first day?
It dawned on me that the first day we tried it was after the earlier adventurers had cleaned the area out from bullfrogs. Well, that made a lot more sense, we were then just lucky on the first day. When we arrived back at the basecamp the bullfrogs disappeared after I put the bars away. That meant that the magnetism of the bars attracted the frogs which would not help me find iron ore. We couldn’t do both mining and avoiding bullfrogs. The range that the device attracted the frogs seemed effective over quite a large distance. I still wanted to get enough leather from the bullfrogs for the shoes, but I couldn’t do both that and mining.
I discussed my findings with the rest of the team.
“I tell you what, after lunch let’s bring in every bullfrog we can to the basecamp. I’ll disconnect the ramp from the entrance, and we can work in dispatching them from on top of the walls. That way we can safely clear out the area first.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
One of the benefits of sorting them out now, was that the following day we were less likely to bump into bullfrogs again. That information picked their spirits up. Unfortunately, there was one more excursion into the chilly water, I wanted to get those bullfrog bodies we just killed into my transfer storage.
We would see if my theory about the magnetism was true when we were back in the water. We didn’t need any horses to help us bring in the bullfrog carcasses because I dropped the bullfrog carcasses into the same transfer storage receptacle. We collected all the bullfrog bodies without so much as a single incident although we had a few electric eel encounters. Meanwhile I picked up iron ore and marsh stones where I could along the way.
After our return and once we warmed up a bit, I suggested that we activate the magnetic bars for just a few minutes then deal with the incoming hoard a bit at a time. I think they really liked the idea of the bullfrogs coming to us when and where we wanted. But before I did that, I handed Hana about twenty specially made arrows. They looked a bit different from the rest because the head looked somewhat thicker. These were simple golem arrows that once fired would launch like rockets into the target. After penetrating the animal, the arrow’s head would create a small steam explosion. When I explained it in private with her, her eyes opened wide in amazement. Yep, we had a pyromaniac in our midst because it turned out that Hana just loved explosions.
When I took out the magnetic bars and left them laying on the platform the effect was almost immediate. A deluge of bullfrogs arrived. I stayed close to the magnetic bars until my presence sense showed there were enough bullfrogs on the way then I put the bars back into transfer storage. The first bullfrog came in from the east.
“I suggest we wait until this one reaches the wall.”
I suspected it would park there while trying to keep going forwards, just like small frogs which didn’t have a lot of intelligence. As expected, the first one arrived and couldn’t progress any further but kept trying to get up the wall. The water depth at the wall was more than five meters deep which meant that the frog wouldn’t get a foothold to jump, and its heavy body mass stopped it from being able to launch far from inside the water.
“Hana, you go first.”
She aimed the first of my special arrows and fired. A fraction of a second afterwards the arrow shot out a jet of steam that launched itself straight into the head of the bullfrog penetrating halfway the length of the arrow. Then followed a dull thud as the arrowhead exploded inside the bullfrog’s skull and it immediately stopped moving.
“What?”
Everyone stared at Hana.
“I want those arrows!”
Corey suddenly realizing what hitting power those arrows had.
“I can only hand you three.”
You little liar Hana.
“Sort this lot out first and I’ll make enough for both of you.”
Was I imagining things or did Aliz look just a little jealous?
There was no time for planning, the next bullfrog was about to arrive on the south end which was a bit more complicated because that was the entrance for the ramp. The last thing we wanted was the bullfrog using the entrance ramp for access. Anticipating that, I previously used the earth from the ramp to seal up the entrance gate until we had sorted out enough bullfrogs to collect.
Cortez nominated Corey to fire at the next bullfrog. She fired one of the arrows from Hana with the same explosive effect. The bullfrog drifted lifelessly in the water. Laughter from Corey rang out as the team danced joyously around with her.
“Um, I hate to break a party, but there are a lot more bullfrogs arriving.”
In the end twenty-five bullfrogs lay dead around the basecamp.
There were a few close calls. Tobias couldn’t hold back any longer because a sword wasn’t of much use from the top of the walls, he felt frustrated just sitting there watching. I guess he felt that he needed to contribute after Hana and Corey had so many successes or he just wanted to get into the swing of things. Before we could stop him, Tobias launched himself off the walls onto a live bullfrog like a rock onto an iceberg. The falling blow not only stunned the monster, but Tobias’ sword penetrated right into its skull killing it instantaneously.
That went well but Tobias was a bit heavier than most fighters with all his armour on. The bullfrog tipped over like an iceberg in the water and Tobias fell into the water just like a rock.
As he was sinking, watching the surface of the water lifting further and further away, he was mentally kicking himself for doing something so stupid. If it hadn’t been for my using water skill to bring him back to the surface and keeping him afloat, until someone could get a rope to him, we may have been holding a funeral instead. When I asked him afterwards why he jumped he simply said he forgot in all the excitement that the water was that deep.
I then had the icy task of collecting the bullfrog bodies and putting them into transfer storage. I now had over thirty bullfrog bodies.
Following on my promise I made more explosion arrows for both Hana and Corey after they sacrificed a few of their arrows to me. We then did a second and final round of bullfrog collection for the day. By light fall we finished, and the ladies had completed a hot bath while the men prepared dinner. I decided that I would leave the ramp disconnected until the next morning. I was still a little uneasy about how quickly we were able to pick up bullfrogs but at least our minds had forgotten for a little while the issue of the direwolves.
“Hey Shane. How is it when we used those magnetic bars of yours that we didn’t have to fight off one electric eel?”
Corey asked an interesting question. She had a point.
“I suspect that the magnetic bars chase them away.”
“Stuffed if you do, stuffed if you don’t, you mean?”
“Yes. Although I would like to experiment a bit. If I use smaller bars it shouldn’t attract the bullfrogs, but it might chase away eels.”
At least that was the theory. I would hopefully get an opportunity to try.
When asked to explain how the arrows I made for Hana worked, they simply shook their heads as I gave them the theory behind it all. They did ask me to make a few more arrows for them which I did there and then, they were totally fascinated by how I made them and stood so close to me to see what I was doing that I had to continuously ask them to step back and give me some breathing room.
That night I again worked on my golems. What I wanted to create was a means of collecting all the EE stones in that vast amount of water. To do that I needed a Creation Core equivalent. A sub-core dedicated to making golems by absorbing EE out of the water and using any marsh-iron ore and EE stones materials placed on it. As protection from the creatures that would no doubt have an interest in my golems as prey, I put in a flame skill that lit my golems up like a bonfire. I also planned to use one of the higher intelligences for my golems so that they would know what to do in certain cases.
The next morning, I proposed that we have a break the next day before heading back home, something they all happily agreed on. The sun was shining in its glory again, and we had a good session mining marsh-iron ore and EE stones.
That night we ate barbequed bullfrog meat, which was particularly good and tasted like chicken, and watched the sun setting over the water. It was truly a good moment in our lives. I viewed these people who were laughing and joking with me as family because I didn’t have existing family or friends in that world.
We managed to collect so much Marsh-iron ore that we must have broken all records. I hadn’t added the total amount yet, but we had close to twenty tons.
We all headed into bed for a good night’s rest. Since I was going to spend a bit more time working on that golem issue of mine, I offered to take the first night shift. For the first time, Tobias and Aliz spent the evening in the same room. Ah, why was I not surprised?
I didn’t see anything between Cortez and Corey so I would be really surprised if something happened there. Hana spent some time next to me on a chair I made for her. She eventually headed to bed and I sat for the rest of the night on the watch shift. I continued to quietly work on my golems with Ara. Ah, that’s the way I liked life to be.
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