I had more questions than I probably had time to ask. I needed to know everything about the system I could, I need to know how to get stronger, I need to know how to stop titles from messing with my head, I need to know how this city and the wider world works, I need to know how to stop people messing with my soul, I need to know how to not get smitten by a god...the list goes on and I haven't even managed to go through them when the door opens and Nym walks into the room, the same clerk outside the door waiting with a commercial smile.

"Hello Alex, I trust all was well with your registration. You have your symbol i can see, let's go get you a body to put it on."

"I can't wait." I wasn't even lying, I felt naked with my core out in the open and I was pretty much at the whim of anybody walking by if Nym wanted to she could just throw me at a wall until I cracked and I couldn't do anything about it. A body sounds good.

We left the guild building and Nym had another small exchange with the guards on her way out. The sun was rising and I realised I hadn't even internalised the fact that it was night. I had no trouble seeing immediately around me and I had been rather distracted but I couldn't help but chide myself. I need to pay attention to what is going on, I'm not safe right now and I wouldn't be until I was on my own and given some time to figure myself out. I cast whispering wind to Nym.

"Where are we going to go for my new body?"

"Well we have a few options, nothing is going to be open for at least a couple more hours so I suppose it doesn't matter which. I have been given a budget, it is generous but it will not be enough for anything metallic that is of reasonable size so your options are wood, stone, clay or maybe flesh if you really wanted to but it wouldn't be an impressive animal. If you wanted wood then Crafted Creatures is the place, stone or clay then probably the masons and I suppose we could visit a butcher for flesh. I'm sure you could use other things but I don't really know that much about golems."

Crafted Creatures was out fo the question, absolutely no way and I didn't really want another flesh body. I don't know what the difference between a clay and a stone golem so I decided to ask.

"I think clay golems tend to have better fine motor skills whilst stone golems are tougher and stronger. If you're planning on being an artist or some kind of craftsman I would suggest clay, if not for most things stone is probably better."

"Stone it is then."

Like I said before, I wasn't an artist and I don't really have plans for any kind of craftsmanship. Nym took off walking again and I tried to decide what my next question would be. Eventually, I decided on asking a vague question to see if she would offer up information I wouldn't have thought to ask.

"What can you tell me about this system, levels, skills, stats, evolution points, everything?"

"Evolution points? Of course, you are technically a monster. I'll try to explain what I can. The system governs all, the gods as well as us. It causes monsters to spawn, it is believed to be the origin of mana and it allows us to grow stronger than we ever could without it. Everything has a race and the stats for each race are slightly different. An elf with a 10 in dexterity will be faster and more graceful than a human with the same 10, for example. I don't know how it changes for every race but gnomes have better intelligence, dwarves toughness, orc have strength but a weaker intelligence and humans have a lot of variation. As far as I know for golems it varies even more. We have two sets of stats but you have three. Your multipliers can change with your core and your body but your soul will just as fixed as ours."

"Non-monster races receive classes rather than evolution points, that's most of the sapient races although some, like goblins and golems, are still considered monsters. Maybe because they are not always sapient. Classes are awarded based on someone's skills and action. One cannot just be a swordsman, they would have to train with a sword to a certain point, they would have to work their body to be strong and tough, they would need to spar and fight. A miner would need to mine, a farmer farm and so on. Classes will give skills and statistic points as you level.

You can level by performing tasks that the system deems as significant. Most jobs that someone would be willing to pay someone to do will provide some amount of experience, even just menial labour. More complex and difficult jobs will provide more experience. Another way to earn experience is to kill things, this is why often soldiers and adventurers who brave the dungeon will be the highest level people you come across.

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For you, it will be a little different. You will not get a class and instead, you will get evolution points, you can use these to modify yourself and to be better and stronger than before and to buy skills and traits. You can get evolution points by either levelling up or by draining the cores of the monsters that you might find in the dungeon. There might be other ways but I'm honestly not sure and you would know better than me what your exact options for spending them are.

Traits are usually something people get at birth, although you will be able to get them though EP, and usually provide some form of effect on the person. They aren't always beneficial and they often come with drawbacks if they are strong but most are inconsequential. There are families that have strong traits that they try to make as powerful as possible from generation to generation and they can be quite scary.

No-one receives skills until they reach level 10 except language skills. Which is probably so that children can learn to speak without having to get a job although most people will reach level 10 by age 8 or so as the system grants them experience for things like learning to walk and the like. Before level 10 any progress towards a skill will instead raise your affinity to it, making it stronger when you are finally able to attain it. People who train magic from being children often make more powerful mages, not just through practice but because of their affinity for the skills.

Skills usually develop faster during what is known as the newborn stage, depending on the race there will be a period of time where the person will learn skills faster or train affinity faster. This time starts at birth and can range from a few months for the fast developing races to decades for races like elves. I'm not sure how long it will be for you since you weren't really born so much as summoned but I'm sure you have been informed how long it is if it isn't over?"

"I was told it was about a year I think."

"More than I would have thought, usually you are far too incompetent to actually get any use out of this stage but for you, it could be invaluable. I think that's about everything, the system is slightly different to everyone depending on the soul so that you can best interpret it. Mine is shown to me in the light of my goddess so that I may know what is available to me, yours may appear differently."

So it didn't look like a game for everyone then? I suppose it would make sense that this would be the best way to show me all of this information, it is the closest thing we have on earth to all of this. I picked up on a few more things that I wanted answers about from that spiel too. Nym was actually a pretty good exposition fairy it seems.

"You mentioned a dungeon and cores?"

"Yes, the dungeon is an entity that lives beneath the earth, some believe that the dungeon itself is our world and there is merely debris over it. Regardless, it is, in essence, an underground system of tunnels and rooms. The mana in the dungeon is many times more potent than it is on the surface and monsters there grow stronger and more dangerous. The dungeon is far too deep for most to travel to but there are occasional places where one can enter a dungeon. There is some kind of natural spacial magic involved that I personally don't understand but it is possible to teleport to the dungeon through these entrances.

For the most part, where there are people you will find an entrance. Diving into the dungeon is a driving force of both the economy and the strength of the people so it is rare to find a town or city far from one. The closest one to us is at a small garrison several miles north of here, though you will have to enter the adventurers guild to go down there and they won't accept you until you are at least level 20 and can hold your own in a fight. Too many people have died down there from just rushing down in the hopes of glory.

Some of the monsters in the dungeon will develop monster cores due to the higher mana levels. Those cores aren't like a golem core, that contains the soul that powers the golem, they are a solidified form of mana that forms inside a monster. It is possible that a golem could also have a monster core. As you are a golem you will be able to drain these cores for evolution points that you can use to fuel your growth, I warn you though that that route can be expensive. The demand for cores is high as we use them to power out enchantments and as sources of mana for potions and mages."

She paused for a moment to catch her breathe, she had been speaking for quite some time and I was pretty sure we would be at the mason's fairly soon. I asked her a few more questions in the meantime, learning how I would be able to find work if I wanted it as well as how to interact with the locals without getting myself in trouble which was basically just to be nice and not to disrespect people.

She also promised to teach me to resist the effect of titles after I had my body but couldn't help me with my soul problem. I had thought as a priest that would be her domain but apparently, any magic relating to changing a soul was a massive taboo and was highly illegal basically everywhere. It wasn't long before I found myself standing outside of a large, red brick building with that was apparently the shop of one of the better Mason's in the city and that Nym had found out had a few golem bodies for sale.