Matthias eyed the two eggs in front of him. This was not what he had planned for. At all.

After experimenting with his ability’s new additions, giving Alyssa a few tasks, and just doing some good old-fashioned experimenting for several hours the Assembler pinged its completion tone. He had opened the output tray expecting to have a couple of young Lizard-kin to order around. Wheat he got instead were two large eggs about the size of your standard vehicle tire.

“This is less than optimal,” he muttered to himself. A small bell jingled from outside the Assembler’s room signifying Alyssa had come back. Matthias had splurged a hundred NEX and bought a set of small items from the {BAZAAR} for the Fairy, including a bell she could ring when she returned to the caver. The Fairy had been ecstatic, gushing praise and thanks for the general houseware and bell. Apparently, no one had ever done that for her before.

“Come on in Alyssa, I’m just thinking over some things right now,” he said, taking a seat at his desk he had crafted from some excess stone the Golems had excavated. He thought about the room that was almost complete as the Fairy zipped in and landed on the smooth, cold surface.

“Heya Boss!” she said cheerfully, “I got some pretty good news for you!”

He blinked and looked down at the small, winged woman. She had apparently found something worth being excited about. Hopefully, it was something off of his list.

“Go ahead,” he prompted, “Wow me.”

She spiraled up in a colorful blaze of speed before stopping in front of his face, “I found a couple of large deposits of metal in the ground! I don’t know what kind it is but I marked the map out on the front wall. I also found some kind of oil pit. That’s the closest I can come to describing it. Like those tar pits on a normal terrestrial world. I figured that would fall neatly into your ‘natural resources’ want.”

Matthias perked up at that, “Yeah. Yeah, that does fall neatly into my needs for raw resources. Are any of the three nearby?”

“Yeah, one of the metal deposits is about an hour's walk away,” confirmed the Fairy as he smiled. An expedition would be forthcoming very soon. Suddenly the Fairy frowned, “Oh and you really should do something with the big pile of bodies by the front of the cave. It’s getting pretty stinky.”

He looked at her, “Big pile of what now?”

“The Golems have been stacking up those Sabretooth corpses outside,” she explained. “Those started stinking, which brought in more of the big cats. That cycle has just continued, and now you got a big pile of bodies outside.”

Alarmed, Matthias lurched to his feet and headed for the tunnel with Alyssa in tow. When he had issued the order for the Golems to hunt the big felines he was expecting them to kill anything that came nearby. Not patrol the area and kill anything they found. He had to stop them before they brought every predator in the area down on them. Or worse. Brought in a predator that they couldn’t handle.

Running, he called out to the Masterwork to follow him with any Golems that were nearby. The advanced construct complied, and soon enough a small army was making its way up the tunnel. Matthias couldn’t see the top yet, but he could already hear the sounds of fighting.

Lots of fighting.

The group burst into the open air outside of the tunnel, and what he saw caused him to freeze for a moment. The two Golems he had tasked with hunting were engaged in an all-out brawl with more than a dozen sabretooth lions, and those were the ones that were still standing. Matthias could see another dozen odd bodies strewn around the clearing in front of the tunnel entrance itself. While the big cats were an issue, they weren’t the biggest threat that had shown up. Five, gigantic, feathered lizards that stood on their rear legs were also mixed into the scrum. Only they attacked everything.

“Are those fucking Velociraptors?” Matthias asked in shock. Then he quickly shook his head. “Masterwork, take the golems and clear the area five hundred feet out from the cave entrance. Do not move beyond that area. Once the area is secure begin transporting all of the bodies down into the Assembler room. Execute! Orders!”

He drew his gauss pistol and signaled to Alyssa, “Do what you can but be safe. Do not, under any circumstances, place yourself in danger”, he ordered. The Fairy saluted and zipped off to add to the general mayhem of the battle.

Matthias drew aim on the nearest sabretooth and gently squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand but he was far more prepared for that this time. The round caused the large feline to vaporize in the middle, spraying gore across the grass. Reaching down, he cursed. In his rush, he hadn’t gotten any more solid shot ammunition from the container.

He used the selector to change the elemental type from neutral to earth and scooped up some dirt, it would do for improvised ammunition in a bind. He popped open the rear of the weapon and packed it in before shutting it and taking aim once more. He fired, the dirt and rocks acting as buckshot. While not as effective as a solid round, it still caused significant damage to flesh and blood targets. Matthias was happy that he had sprung for the elemental weapon, he would be out of ranged items without it.

Reloading with a heavier percentage of rocks, Matthias used his gauss pistol to help wear down the number of cats, although the raptors were still a problem. The Masterwork Golem had one of its smaller compatriots begin moving bodies inside as the fight continued. With his timely intervention and reinforcements though, it was quickly wrapping up. There was only a single large cat and four of, what he suspected to be, dinosaurs left.

With a trilling cry, the four lizards saw one of their numbers had fallen and chose to take off into the tall grass to head back to wherever they came from. The last cat tried to conduct a similar retreat but was caught by a nearby Golem and had its head pulped between two meaty rock fists.

Then it was over.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Breathing hard, Matthias surveyed the damage. One Golem was a lost cause, the raptors dealt significantly more damage to the construct than the big cats were capable of. It was rapidly becoming apparent that he would need at least a few combat-based units. Grimacing, he could only think about the cost for such a construct. He didn’t have any other creatures to work with right now, at least none that he could afford, house, or feed.

“Masterwork, get the bodies down into the Assembler room as quickly as you can,” he ordered as the advanced construct bent all of the Golems around them to the singular task. He saw Alyssa fly back over to him, noting that she came from the direction that the raptors had retreated.

“Hey Boss, those big lizards are gone. I followed them to make sure they weren’t going to circle around,” she reported. “They seem smarter than your average, uh, giant lizard?”

He couldn’t help but agree.

“They certainly seemed more intelligent than anything else we’ve run into yet. Pack animals tend to be a bit smarter, but we will see what happens. Hopefully, there aren’t any larger variants of those running around,” he said a bit nervously. “That would be … very bad.”

The Fairy could only nod in agreement.

“Keep scouting the area, I have a lot to get done here,” Matthias ordered, turning to his rapidly growing to-do list.

First and foremost, he needed defenses. Once those were in place he could focus on getting some combat-capable constructs going. A few at any rate. They would be expensive in terms of Power and NEX. Any large-scale expansion into those was going to be more expensive than his dwindling funds could spare.

He spent the next hour coordinating the removal and storage of the bodies. Once that was complete he oversaw the Masterwork Golem and its remaining brethren in the construction of a walled courtyard. Marking out a roughly two thousand square foot area ensured it wouldn’t be very large, but it would be big enough to conduct small-scale activities within its confines. Setting the Golems to their task Matthias went back into the cavern to get a few more of the industrious automatons.

He was more than a bit afraid of those raptors. If his Golems were going to take attrition damage, he would need more of them at the very least. But this time he wasn’t going to buy them. Oh no, he had the Assembler up and going. He was going to build them. If some {GOLEM MANCER} from a second-rate company could build these units, then Matthias was more than positive that he had the schematic for them inside of the highly advanced Assembler unit.

It took him five seconds of navigating screens to find a list of Golems so huge it made his head spin.

He quickly moved through options in the database until he found one that looked identical to the models he had bought from Creature Holdings LLC. The ingredients list was short and mostly easy to fill with what he had one hand. There was only one item that he didn’t have any of.

“Five hundred kilos of rock, twenty kilos of organic dirt, one kilo of raw iron,” he read off in frustration. He had dirt and rock in spades. But he didn’t have any iron whatsoever. He had three options to get it, he could buy it from the {BAZAAR}, he could convert rock to iron using his {POWER OVERWHELMING} ability, or he could take a trip to the metal deposit that Alyssa had found and hope that it was iron or some equivalent.

He sighed. He was not the adventuring type, which was why he was creating minions to fill just that role. But in this case, to get started, he didn’t have much of an option. He didn’t have the creature or construct power to simply order a team out to collect the metal. But he wasn’t about to risk his life doing so either.

He walked into the main cavern and over to a neat pile of excavated stone left over from digging out the hatchery. Picking up a good-sized chunk, he guessed it weighed three kilos. He targeted it with {POWER OVERWHELMING}:

{POWER OVERWHELMING}

RESOURCE CONVERSION

MATERIAL – ROCK TO IRON

AMOUNT – 3.14 KILOS

COST – 6 POWER

“Fuck it all, the Golems could have been half the price if I only had a bit of iron on hand,” he grumbled. It was roughly two Power for one pound of iron, not as bad as he had feared. But still time-consuming and expensive. He grabbed another fifteen kilos of rock and converted it all, paying the princely sum of eighteen Power in total.

Taking the iron back to the Assembler in two trips, he piled all of it into the waiting tray that had popped out. Then he found a Golem and ordered it to move the needed amount of rock and dirt for ten more automatons into the room. The Assembler could hold twenty-five hundred kilos of material at any given time, which meant four Golems could be manufactured in each batch. Tapping the selection screen, Matthias set up exactly that, queuing a batch and a half in addition to the first one. He assigned a Golem to load more material as it was needed.

Giving himself a small grin and figurative pat on the back at getting one step closer to his goals, he turned to leave but felt a small tug on his jacket. Blinking in surprise, he turned around expecting to see Alyssa floating in front of him but no one was where. A high-pitched trill caused him to look down.

Standing in front of him, barely waist high, was a small lizard-kin. It had two bright blue eyes, a frill from the back of its neck to the front of its forehead, and sported a coat of beautiful cyan scales. It stood on two legs with a short tail wiping back and forth in a lazy arc. Its hands had five digits, each tipped with a small black talon.

“Well hello there,” Matthias said, scratching the little guy on the head. It purred in delight and opened its mouth to reveal sharp teeth as it leaned into his hand, signifying that it was fully allied with him. No wild creature that just hatched would have gotten his attention in such a benign manner. No, it would have leapt onto his face and clawed out his eyes at the first opportunity.

As he pet the lizard-kin, he turned to see the second one spill out of the now-broken egg onto the floor. It immediately turned and began to eat the shell, something that he knew was not uncommon with creatures born from an egg. This one was the exact height and build of the one he was currently petting, with the exception of it having bright red scales instead.

“You are both fascinating,” Matthias said in wonder at the two creatures. To be completely honest with himself, it was one thing to see a creature in a database and tap print. It was another thing entirely to see life given to the thing that was listed. He couldn’t help but spend several minutes marveling at and playing with, with the small lizard-kin.

Matthias eventually shook himself out of his self-imposed state of awe and examined the two. They began to run around the room, chasing and chirping at one another. He would need to get them situated in the hatchery and allow them to grow a bit before they would be overly useful. He also needed to get them food. Based on their eggshell-eating tendencies and sharp teeth they were meat eaters. Something that he happened to have an abundance of right now. His backpack could only generate enough to feed one person per day. Himself.

He led the two out into the main cavern, which they had to make a quick circuit around of course, before leading into the hatchery itself. It was, as of yet, unfinished, still needing the heating element and water. But those were things that were easy enough to solve.

Matthias quickly spent the fifteen Power required to use {POWER OVERWHELMING} and enchant the floor with basic heat. He then spent five NEX to purchase an iron bucket, directing one of the Golems to fill it from the water source in the cavern and fill the bottom of the room up to a few inches below the door jam.

With those tasks being taken care of, he headed outside with his first two mobs to introduce them to the world at large. They would need some training in order to teach the future lizard-kin that were sure to be on their way. Adventuring? Matthias didn’t much care for that. But mentoring? Well, that was right up his alley.

And if he did it right then the lizard-kin would become a cornerstone of prosperity for his company.