Chapter 17
ESCALATION
Igmail stood up from his long held position and evaluated his new workforce. For all that his golems showed a surprising amount of independent thought, their purpose in life still remained executing his will. He literally couldn’t make his golems any other way, either they served him or they didn’t exist. He’d tried different variations of release on Toto, either ordering him to do what made him happy or otherwise attempting to give him any desire greater than that to help him, but they had all failed. When it got down to it, it was hard wired into each gorilla golem for them to seek his betterment first and foremost. They were always most content when they were being helpful to him.
That being acknowledged, what was he going to assign thirty five new super golems to make them happy? When Champion had come to him with this request he had only been thinking about honoring the wishes of his faithful summons, not the logistics of how to now keep thirty five extra pseudo-people occupied and thus happy. At this point it was getting kind of awkward. Igmail had been standing and looking around for at least a minute, and everybody was looking at him as if expecting a speech.
‘So… um… What do we do now?’ he asked Champion.
‘I don’t know boss. What do you need done?’ replied the melancholy looking gorilla.
‘Hmm. I need a nap, and I need to be safe, and I reckon that… I don’t know either. We got two-ish more weeks before we are recalled. What can you achieve in that time?’ Igmail continued.
‘What if you were to recall the rookie squad, the ones who had only reached the seventh floor when we left? They can guard you along with those three, and the rest of us can do more dungeon delving. That is what we were made for, no?’ Champion wisely suggested.
Igmail had a small epiphany at this moment. He took a second to think through what Champion had suggested, and came to the conclusion that he was really dumb for not thinking of it before, though he had the tiredness as an excuse.
‘That makes tons of sense,’ sent Igmail through the spiritual bond. ‘You don’t need me to tell you how much you all are advantaged in dungeons, what with the untiring resilience thing and the stoney composition of the surroundings. How about this; Champion, organize three teams of twelve, and put yourself on one. Two of my current guards will switch places with the defense focused newly Awoken, and in that way I’ll be protected, and the rest of you can go back to doing what you’re best at.’
‘That sound good to you boys?’ Champion asked the room.
‘Sho’ ‘nuff,’ ‘Sounds good,’ and several other variations of acceptance resounded across the room. It was in this manner that three of the surrounding dungeons learned of Samurthabec’s pain.
----------------------------------------
It did not sound good to Champion. Thirty five virtual newbies he would have to lead didn’t sound good at all. He was hoping, waiting, for the opportunity to go back to solo pasting monsters, try out his new strength and all that, but then this got dropped in his lap. He couldn’t complain too much though. As much fun as it was to go it alone, leading the next generation of golems always had a larger overall impact, and he could be content with that.
Champion was simply the best gorilla shaped soul imbued stone construct for the job, so that was the job he did. He started by consulting the Shattered Legion on the strengths and weaknesses of the golems they shaped, and based on that analisis, formed the three teams of twelve, placing himself on the weakest. They had all started at tier four, a benefit of the exotic materials used in their creation as well as the significance involved in their ritual of creation, so weak was a relative term, but still.
He also pulled the third member of the surviving guard team and made the progeny of Messenger stay back to ferry the transport hoop between the different dungeons, a small concession to logistics that Champion would have rather avoided. It took less than a day for Champion to sort all this out, and then off to the races it was. The long absence from all the rest of the dungeons meant that they had had time to refill, so all three teams were starting from scratch, but even then the difference was staggering.
The North team, Champion’s team, had managed floor thirty five by the first week, only to discover that the North dungeon only had forty floors by the middle of the next week. The fortieth floor boss ended up being a giant badger abomination with tentacles extending from its spinal column, very vulnerable to the golems at range. No casualties were taken in the entire delve, and the team ended up back at the bunker with a whole day to spare and several hundred pounds of dungeon core dust.
South dungeon experienced a similar victory. Their dungeon was only thirty floors in total, so they ended up back at base even earlier than Champion’s team. They had to fight a hyperdense slime for the core, but they had figured out the slime-crete powder trick on the way down and it was super easy.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The West dungeon ended up being the largest, clocking in at forty five floors, and they were only on floor thirty eight when the South dungeon crew finished. They ended up needing a hand from the South dungeon crew to get it done in time, but they managed to slay the arachnid final boss before the time limit ended.
In this time Igmail had focused on expanding his bunker downwards, domesticating the entire first floor of the dungeon into a large empty square. With most of the hollowing out done for him, the nearly tier five stone alteration specialist had no trouble with it. Igmail also created an additional four golems, all of which joined his guard team. This brought the total number of golems that Igmail controlled up to forty eight, with almost all of them being tier four.
The day before Igmail was set to disembark from his home of six months he looked over all he had accomplished and reflected over a bowl of perpetual stew. He had Champion with him at the table, the golem having come to receive his next set of orders.
‘So, what do you have for us boss? Anything specific we should prepare for?’ the always murder minded golem asked.
I’ve got no idea,’ Igmail said. ‘Do you have any concept of what we have here, what we’ve achieved here? Ninety percent of people never make it past tier three. Ninety. Yet we got forty tier fours just chilling in our basement. At this point, I don’t think that command will keep viewing you all as disposable, it seems more likely that our current success would persuade them to let me keep direct command. I mean, they gave a tier three six months of dungeon suppression duty, likely in the hopes that I could just hold on, yet I come back with most of four dungeon cores and an entire platoon of tier four golems, not to mention you.’
‘Things will be so different for me when I get back,’ Igmail continued. ‘So much better. For all my conjecture about how the military will treat us, my contract ends after this assignment. Whether or whether not they try to pull you all into service I’m free from active duty. Only in extreme circumstances will I have to ever again act on the military’s behalf. Not to mention, I’ll be rich, rich enough to retire on the spot. You guys have really done me a solid on that front; your efficiency really is astounding. All this time you all have been killing several times more monsters than the average adventurer party in a day, and yet you possess none of the overhead costs.’
Igmail’s eyes glittered with imaginary gold as he continued. ‘No equipment to buy, no healers to employ, the military has handled all the kill processing. It’s astounding when it comes down to it, just how much my life has changed in just six months sitting in a hole. I’ve got no idea what my life will be when I get back, much less yours.’
‘Boss,’ Champion said to get Igmail’s mind back to the present. ‘I mean no disrespect, but I was just thinking about the trek back to the city.’
“Oh,” Igmail vocalized in embarrassment. ‘Remind your people to look up. There are more monsters there than most would expect.’
----------------------------------------
Toto was having another odd day. The wall was nearing its completion, just one lagging segment left to go until it was finally finished. He could see it in the distance, the slightly curved yet completely wall segment being held upright as several mages struggled to position it in the correct spot. That wasn’t so odd. What was odd was that the monster attacks had resumed. All throughout his time on patrol Toto had been hearing about the strange lack of monster attacks, yet only now, when the wall was this close to completion, did the monster attacks start to come in with the expected frequency.
All around the newest outermost walls thousands of tier threes and hundreds of tier fours struggled to keep the monsters off the wall before its enchantments came online. He could hear the rare tier fives preemptively decimating large groups of monsters some distance from the wall, but that still left a lot of loosely packed low tier monsters trying to sabotage the construction at the last moment. For some reason, whether it be the piles of monster cores scattered around the inside perimeter of the wall or the ritualists that accompanied them, these monsters seemed extra desperate to pierce the city’s newest layer of defenses.
Eventually, however, it came to an end. The mages finally managed to properly position the last segment of the wall into the large trench, and the earth shapers finally melded that segment into the rest of the wall. Almost as if sensing their defeat, the monsters ceased to attack within the span of a couple minutes. It was at this point that the enchantment activation ritual started. All around the wall monster cores were transformed into mana and said mana was poured into the wall, complex runic patterns blooming from several different places. Behind Toto, hovering above the center of the city, was a spec that was orchestrating the whole thing. Chains of pure mana traveled to and from these new runic blooms, spreading and growing according to the tier eight’s power.
Toto could feel the sheer power flooding through the wall, his newly tier four soul paling in comparison. It was an empowerment of monstrous proportions, and it took several hours to complete. Afterwards Toto observed as the wall was subjected to a battery of tests segment by segment, each one being occupied by a platoon afterwards. It took a whole day for the wall to be verified safe, and the excitement within the city grew by the hour as it did.
That was the day Toto learned of wall festivals. To celebrate the expansion of the city and the prosperity that it would bring the city, the council of Flourish invited everybody out into the newly claimed land for a massive party. The golem watched with interest as food stands and game stalls were set up over the course of an hour, and watched with special attention the enchanted poles set in the ground which played music. Though most of Igmail’s golems were all but deaf, Toto had spent years refining his hearing, in part because he thought music was a pleasure to listen to.
It was an especially enjoyable day for Toto, getting to listen to the sounds of music and laughter emanating from the festival as the outer ring filled up throughout the day. The festival had reached its zenith with the sun when his patrol route took him back inside the wall, but to Toto’s joy, he could still hear the excited commotion through the arrow slits.
Until he couldn't.
Until the dreadful clatter and scratch started.
Until the screams scattered his happiness.
The first thing he did was check the situation outside. The second thing he did was flee, running to the nearest upwards ladder and flinging himself as far from the wall he was on as possible. He desperately began to cry out through his soul even as he raced calamity to Igmail’s parents.