Chapter 2
HOLE DEEP HOLE
“Welp, here it is,” Sergeant Withers said as he gestured lamely at a stone door embedded into the cliff face of a small hill. It blended in with the surroundings, recognizable from plain stone only by the seam where the door met the wall. He went up to the door, knocked on it softly, and it was cracked open almost immediately by a haggard looking man wearing full plate armor without the helmet. His armor was mismatched, as if he had bought each piece from a different artisan, yet there were no openings in suit, the disparate pieces of the ensemble each fitting together surprisingly well. He was clearly an adventurer, a sort of government sponsored mercenary who had more control over the jobs they wanted to do than the average soldier.
“By the bloody nose of the beast am I glad to be done with this crap!” the adventurer swore loudly, throwing open the thick door the rest of the way. “Time to go, team! We got everything tossed through the transport hoop?”
“Aye aye captain,” responded a tough looking woman as she trudged out the door. “We got everything stowed.” Her loadout was somewhat more cohesive than her boss’ as she wore a set of chain mail over a padded jacket made of beast leather and had a crossbow and a mace attached to her belt
“Excellent,” the man said in visible glee. “We’re glad to see you again Sergeant Withers, are we ready to head out now?”
“Likewise Mr. Sanderson, but before you go do you have any updates on the dungeon? Private Stone here is your replacement,” Withers said respectfully as he nodded his head at Igmail.
“Nice to meet you, Private Stone,” Sanderson said somewhat impatiently. “The dungeon made a heavy push last week trying to break through us to the surface, but it seems to be resting at the moment. You’ve arrived at the right time for a little peace to get set up.” By this time Sanderson’s full team had arrived behind him. It was six members strong, and all but one of them were jittering with impatience. The last one wore the robes of a mage and seemed to quietly long for the cave.
“One more question before you go; is it really that bad? I’ve never been on dungeon duty before,” asked Igmail nervously.
Sanderson snorted at the question while his team exchanged pitying glances among themselves. “Yeah, I can tell that last bit. Boy, imagine being stuck in a hole with five other people with only one bed between the lot of you, on constant guard for potential attack, and, worst of all, a drought of alcohol of any kind. For three whole months in our case. This is the closest approximation of Tartarus that a person can find. Good luck!” Sanderson said with a cheery wave, already heading back into the city with Withers and his trainees in tow. Before they left ear shot, Igmail could hear Sanders saying something to Withers that sounded a lot like “So, is this dude sacrificial or is there something…” Igmail just sighed.
Suddenly finding himself alone in the forest, Igmail hurried to enter the bunker and shut the door, quickly evaluating his light crystal lit surroundings. There wasn’t much to look at. He was standing in a rather small room, with eight foot ceilings and about two hundred square feet of space. All the surfaces were made of stone, scuffed and crumbling in a lot of places. There was a cot in the far corner, pushed against the wall, and a small oven in the other far corner. The oven was about a foot in diameter, circular, and made of metal painted black.
Near it was also a faucet stone and a stone trough. When provided mana the faucet stone would pull water from the air and condense it into liquid form. Despite the room appearing air tight the faucet stone was unlikely to run out of water to condense because the room was rather similar in temperature and moisture to the forest it was built in. To put it simply, the room was HOT, and so humid Igmail felt like he could drink the air.
That was about it for the main room. Most of the floor space was open, which Igmail welcomed, as that’d make it easier to work his magic. Additionally, there were two doors leading out of the main room, though one of them was merely cordoned off by a curtain. Pulling back the curtain Igmail realized it was the bathroom, containing another stone tub for bathing and a hole in the ground for… um… bodily waste disposal. Looking into it, Igmail was equally relieved and horrified to find that he could neither see nor smell the bottom.
The other door actually had a stone door set in the wall, and it opened by sliding to the side. Doing so took significant effort even for Igmail’s super human tier three body, and he discovered a hole with some stairs leading deeper into the earth behind it. Recognising it as the entrance to the dungeon, he decided to slowly and quietly slide the door back closed. Well, he didn’t have much of a choice on the ‘slowly’ part, the door was heavy, but he did his best to be quiet.
When he was done Igmail went and flopped down onto the cot. His feet hung off the end. He felt something hard pressing against his head and reached back to discover his promised transport hoop in its ring form. Slipping it on, he sighed heavily before mustering the motivation to get started.
“Well, gotta make those gorillas. Might die otherwise,” Igmail muttered to himself with a sigh as he rolled out of the cot and onto his feet. Looking around the room again, he decided to take the stone for his golem out of the back wall, taking into consideration the fact that the bathroom and the dungeon occupied the left and right walls respectively. He rotated his cot so that its length lay mainly along the wall on the left and performed some simple stretches as he stood in front of the expanse of bare wall he had just created.
He started with some meditative breathing, preparing his mind for the semi-fugue state of his ability. Then he felt for his soul, letting his consciousness expand deeper into himself, past his physical body and into the spiritual. Before him hung a sphere of shining blue stone, striated with darker stone at random intervals. He drew deeply from his mind, drawing from his well of will, and formed a hand with which to grasp his spirit.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Upon contact he felt his body dissociate from his mind, instead being directly guided by the power of his soul. He placed his hands on the stone in front of him and drew mana from his soul to send into it. The mana penetrated the stone, saturating a roughly person sized chunk. He watched, a passenger in his own body, as his mana manipulated the durability of the chunk of stone at its very edges so that it fell away from the wall under its own weight. His body lowered the chunk of stone to the ground and began to shape, his efforts fueled and assisted by the constant stream of mana pouring out of his soul.
This was when Igmail’s mind started to get involved. As Igmail’s hands shaped the stone into the form of a gorilla and Igmail’s soul increased the malleability of the stone to make it possible, his mind was imbuing this lump of stone with his will. He poured a constant stream of his mental strength into the stone, piggy backing it on the mana, and used it to teach the stone just what its job would be. First and foremost was movement. He used his will to teach the monkey how to stand, walk, run, and sprint. Swing and jump and grab and stab. By the time this was done the lump of stone was looking vaguely gorilla shaped, with a thick neck, long, powerful arms, and broad shoulders.
At this point Igmail’s spirit diverted some of its mana from making the stone easy to shape and instead started reinforcing the golem, making the stone less crumbly and tougher while Igmail’s body went on to shaping the details. He used his thumbs to give the impression of eyes, his fingernails to form the eyelids, and his palms to shape the muscles. Igmail’s mind then started to teach the stone how to fight. He poured all his experience fighting with a spear into it, the stances, forms, attacks, and blocks he was taught by the army. The ability to perform and recognize faints, and the best ways to position oneself. How to work with and lead a team of other similar combatants.
About four hours into the process, Igmail’s body was done with its work, the gorilla having been sculpted to perfection on the outside. So fine was the detail work that Igmail could see the individual hairs on the gorilla golem’s body, with rippling cords of muscle hidden just beneath. As the formation of the golem moved out of stage one now that the external appearance of the gorilla was done, Igmail's soul diverted all of his mana to the task of forming its internal structure.
Igmail’s spirit started with the skin, making it more malleable but not softer so that it wouldn’t shatter when it moved. Then came the muscles, solid stone given elasticity so that the golem could move with all the weight and power a one ton gorilla made of stone should have. Incidentally, because the golem had no need of interior organs, its core muscles were absolutely monstrous. It never skipped core day.
The bones were next, mostly mimicking that of an actual gorilla but much stronger. The joints came afterwards, connecting each bone with sockets made of stone modified to be very slippery and smooth. This prevented too much wear and aided quick movement. All the other systems a gorilla possessed were extraneous to the needs of a golem so they were replaced by more muscles and bones. During this whole process Igmail’s mind had continued to pour his knowledge of combat into the gorilla golem, folding his will into every square inch of his creation, soaking knowledge into every molecule of his craft.
By the time another six hours had passed the body was fully formed so Igmail’s spirit switched fully to improving what the gorilla already had. Igmail’s mind also switched tasks, and started informing the gorilla of its tasks. He crystalized a structure of pure will within the head of the gorilla, programing its behavior. Priority one: Go into the dungeon and keep all monsters from reaching the surface by killing them. Priority two: cultivate your strength when not fighting. Priority three: bring the bodies of everything you kill to the stairs. This continued on and on, forming a complex logical matrix inside the gorilla’s head that informed and guided its every decision.
By the time eleven and a half hours had passed Igmail had a fully functioning golem laying on the stone floor in front of him. Now just came the last part of the process, the step that made it a patron type ability: power on loan from an external source. Igmail would bestow a portion of his own spirit on the golem, letting it borrow some of his capacity to generate and manipulate mana. This would be the golem’s animating force, allowing it to act independently for as long as its vessel was whole.
For this last step Igmail started to come back to himself, his mind once again delving inside himself to visit his stoney spirit. Using the last dregs of mental strength he possessed, Igmail formed a chisel, and with one decisive blow cracked off a large chunk of the bluish black orb that represented his soul. A flash of pain overcame him and combined with the absolute exhaustion he was experiencing to make Igmail lose consciousness for an indeterminate amount of time. When he came to his senses the gorilla was already gone, but the chunk of his soul that resided in the gorilla served to inform him that it was already off killing stuff in the dungeon, as did the spear shaped divot in the wall where the golem had shaped its own weapon. Reassured of his safety Igmail simply crawled his way over to his cot and went to sleep.
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The gorilla didn’t have a name, only a purpose. His job was to delve and kill and protect and grow, and he didn’t bother with any thoughts beyond doing his job better. When he awoke from the haze of creation the master was asleep on the floor, so he simply grabbed a weapon from the wall and went to work. He entered the dungeon not two hours after being born to put that weapon to use.
The dungeon was dimly lit but that wasn’t a problem for the gorilla. His sense of sight was mana based, so he proceeded confidently down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs he encountered a cave-like room, with bowed out walls and spears of stone thrusting from the floor and roof both. Various mana empowered mosses were scattered around the room, giving the room what little illumination it had. There were several tunnels extending from the room but the gorilla decided to thoroughly clear the room he was in first, as doing otherwise would be compromising his master’s safety.
He panned his mana powered gaze across the room, his master’s essence fueling his perception and locomotion, but noticed no monsters. However, there were several clusters of stone spears that could conceal one, so he carefully inspected them. The gorilla was on his third cluster when he encountered his first monster. The gorilla was peeking his head around the stalagmite quietly when he saw a mole creature idly chipping away at the floor. Having not alerted the dog sized creature to his presence, he rushed around the spears of stone and stabbed the creature with his own spear, the muscles in his arms providing all the force they could muster and his hips twisting to provide yet more.
His spear penetrated right through its skull and shattered when it hit the ground underneath. ‘I'll need to make a better one,’ the gorilla thought dispassionately. He picked up the corpse of the large mole and hauled it to the stairs for his master to retrieve later then got back to work murdering. He’d already cleared the first room so he chose the leftmost path and started shaping another spear as he walked.