Today is the 30th.
-
"Don't drain him too much, he's got to defend the thesis today," Alissa says to Hana.
"Who's the Succubus here?" Roxanne asks, incredulous.
Aoi stands tentatively close to me, - when I - drop my guard, Aoi steals a lick on my lips. My sixth-sense for licking is failing, Aoi has become smarter than my dogs and I'm struggling to keep my face clean.
"Do I taste good or something? How did I get so many women wanting to eat me?" I ask.
"You do taste good," Hana says and shrugs.
"You bought three of them, and saved two of them," Roxanne says with a raised eyebrow.
"So the only one you really 'seduced' was Ciel," Alissa says with air quotes.
"That's not fair, - he successfully seduced - me, too," Hana says.
I pucker my lips, I shouldn't have asked that.
"Don't look like this Wolfy, you only seduced Ciel but you stole the heart of all of us," Alissa says and hugs me tight. She rubs her head on my chest and her cute ears rub on my nose, nearly making me sneeze.
"Gih."
"Ew."
"GIH!" He chirps loudly in my ear and I lose hearing on that side temporarily.
"I'm joking, I love you too, Gify," I say and pat his head, his beak deforms into a pout.
My [Mana Control] increased by 1 (now 0+14).
I was getting used to the discomfort from staying away from Alissa but the extra point in "Sanity" made it much more bearable.
"Today is our last meeting, Mr. Ryder," Kyros says with a hint of sadness on his voice.
"I'm thankful for your help, I will put this skill to good use," I say and bow lightly.
"I'm not sure how that's possible but I will believe you," he says and chuckles.
A last review of everything I have learned from him, then a compilation of everything I need to improve on, and we are done.
We share a firm handshake and I depart. We are too stoic for long, emotional goodbyes.
Lina comes home with Ciel looking gloomier than before. She sits down on the table immediately and sighs softly.
Ciel sits down beside her and caresses her head, her cheeks raise high and her eyes squint with a warm smile. "Lina's going to miss Mr. Gimbo," she says.
"I will," Lina says softly. With a *poof* she pulls out what I believe is a magic tool carving station.
On a flat piece of wood 3 adjustable metal arms are drilled on. Two of these arms are holding what seems to be a hair-thin needle with a small crystal at the top and the third is simply an adjustable grabber. I see two crystals embedded in the flat wood.
"Is this a carving station?" I ask.
Lina nods glumly. "He gave it to me as a gift, it's a middle-quality one but it's still expensive, my father sold me for one," she says.
Well damn, that makes me a little emotional.
Lina hugs the flat wood tight and I see her lips pucker, holding back tears. "Can you store this for me? It's too sensitive to let in the open all the time," she asks without moving her head.
"Sure."
She pulls out some other simpler carving tools and I store them all.
"Good luck," Ciel says and gives me a peck on the lips. I also receive one from Roxanne, Hana, and a sneak lick on the cheek while I'm distracted by Hana. I think both of them are starting to work together.
I have done this many times already but I can't stop feeling a little nervous at the beginning. Specially because this time there's no standardized way in which the judges will behave and this world's scientific ethics are different than that of Earth's, so it's still possible they will find a bullshit reason to deny me my title.
I breathe in and hug Lina as we ride the softest mount ever, Alissa. Lina drills her cute ass on my crotch like she always loves to do and I bury my erection between the two little mounds. I breathe in on Lina's neck and feel her sweet perfume, her soft skin is a delight to hug and so I resign to desire and fill her neck and cheeks with little kisses.
She giggles softly and Alissa glances at us. Seeing our flirting she gives us a toothy smirk and smooths the ride even further so we can enjoy each other even more.
Feeling refreshed from the cuddling we dismount Alissa and proceed towards the university's theater. Alissa hugs my arm tight -. Lina receives a smirk from Alissa when she tries the same but fails, without sweat her clothes don't really stick to her skin.
Mathias waits for us at the front of the theater, the chubby man uses a [Breeze] crystal to contain his sweating at the hot weather.
"Mr. Ryder, please come over here," Mathias signs to us once he notices our approach, "we will wait at the actors' lounge while the observers are coming in."
"Why are there so many judges coming?" I ask.
"The judges are few, the observers are many, it's not every day someone revives a lost magical school."
"So you turned my thesis defense into an attraction?" I ask calmly.
He cringes slightly and sweats harder, "W-well, in the name of progress and the Goddess of Knowledge we must share your thesis with as many people as we can, should we not?"
"Fair enough."
The actors' lounge is inside the theater, it's the last room before you reach the stage so we can hear the murmuring and footsteps of the observers coming in.
"Nervous?" Mathias asks.
"No, even if I were I have a flower on each hand to keep me comfortable," I say and squeeze the two hands that are entwined with mine.
Mathias raises his eyebrows and looks away, slightly blushing while the girls smile and we flirt some more.
"Five minutes," a young assistant comes into the room to warn me.
It's like I'm a performer getting ready for a show.
I stand up and straighten my clothes. I look dapper in my black velvet clothing with lines of dark green embroidery. My black cape looks new and perfect, my heliodor gem reflects beautifully the light, the Emergency Ring, and the Fertility Ring both make my delicate hands look attractive even for me. My hair is perfectly combed sideways and my freckled skin is as clean as it has ever been, thanks to magic and high elven skincare. I look at a mirror near the exit and smile. Damn, I'm handsome.
When the light above me turns green I get a kiss on each hand and Gify pops out of existence with an encouraging chirp, then I go out.
I enter with applause from the crowd.
The stage looks moody and dark. Besides the long table with 4 people I see nothing beyond yet I can hear the murmuring die down quickly and the occasional cough and sneeze that convey that there's a lot of people in the audience seats.
I stand before my own seat and table. I pull out my notes and clean my throat, the last of the murmuring dies down.
I only recognize professor Ludwick at the judge's seat.
"Gentlemen and gentlewomen, noblemen and noblewomen, professors," I start and give a respectful nod to my judges, "My name is Wolf Ryder and I am here to defend my thesis in which I explain what [Golemancy] is, how to learn it, how to improve it, and ethical concerns over its use."
The white bearded gnome professor stands and says, "I am professor Ludwick and I will be judging you."
A female wereowl with dark brown hair and charming wrinkles stands and says, "I am professor Horona and I will be judging you."
A young-looking male wereowl with white hair and black spots stands and says, "I am professor Nohoor and I will be judging you."
A young-looking halfling with tired eyes stands and says, "I am high councilman Loreano and I will be judging you."
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
I clean my throat and start after they take their seats, "Starting with what [Golemancy] is, for the benefit of the audience I will give a contextual introduction to it," I pause to swallow and breathe, "[Golemancy] can be seen as an offshoot of [Summoning Magic], you could even say it's a distillation of [Summoning Magic] due to how it takes a few of the concepts of Summoning and applies it in isolation.
"[Summoning Magic] is in essence the copying of souls and bodies into a servant bound to your soul. You create servants by using certain forms and concepts as a basis for it. The first two spells use animals as the basis: birds and dogs; the third uses soft clay dolls as the basis; the fourth uses the wild elementals as the basis; the fifth uses the souls of monsters we kill as the basis. Then the soul is altered, it uses your own soul and your own mana organ as a basis for the summon's intellect.
"For those who don't know I have the skill [Sense Soul] which allows me to see inside the soul and identify how it looks like. The mana organ is where we store our own MP and what allows us to collect mana. Also, mine and the creator of [Golemancy]'s research have identified how similar our own soul and that of the summon's look like.
"This similarity is justified when you ask questions to your summon, it has limited vocal capabilities but it can certainly answer simple 'yes or no' questions. With this, we can learn that all the knowledge that we have is copied into the summon's soul. We know this because elementals have no brain, none that we can identify, and still have the same knowledge and behavior of the other summons. The [Summon Small Bird], [Summon Dog], [Summon Small Golem], the [Summon Elemental], and even the [Summon Monster] spell, all of them bring servants with different bodies but they all behave the same way and have the same souls. So from this, we can conclude with certainty that the soul holds all the knowledge we have.
"Now [Golemancy] is exactly the same as [Summoning Magic] with two different parts. It does not create a body and it does not bind the summon and master to each other. In essence, you could say [Golemancy] creates artificial life," some murmurs start but quickly die down, "This sentiment is also reflected in the chant that I have created."
I pull out Ted and Suzy, they wave to the crowd.
"Hel-lo," Suzy says.
"Gree-tings," Ted says.
The murmuring increases and I lift my hand, asking for silence.
"As you can see I managed to make the golems speak, I altered their souls to look like that of my dragon. I have a young, intelligent Azurite dragon that can speak in a similar way to the golems, she uses magic to recreate vocal cords, so I recreated the 'shape' on her soul that I believed controlled her voice on the golems, thus they can now speak.
"How exactly a soul is created is hard to say, even the records of the creation of [Summoning Magic] are lost so we can only speculate. My guess is that someone managed to distill a soul into the simplest form that still allowed for intelligent thought. My basis for this guess is how golems and summons do not have a sense of self-preservation, they also do not count as living beings, allowing them to be stored into [Item Box]es, but summons are blocked from it due to their soul being a fragment of ours, more specifically, a part of our mana organ is given to summons.
"But I say it's not the barest form a soul can take. We know nature is basically a single, huge, and not very intelligent, soul. Any living matter has some form of a soul, faint or not, intelligent or not, anything that can be considered 'alive' has a type of soul. So I think we can go even further and distill this soul into what could be named as a machine."
Murmurings come and go.
"A machine would be something that has a single purpose, a single sense, a single operation, and a single output, you could call this a 'robot'. A soul that can sense whether or not something is there, like say, a coin in a slot, and then activates it's operation until the coin is removed. You could use this for say, opening a large door while someone holds their finger in a specific spot, mixing cake while you hold the mechanic mixer in your hand, beating eggs while you keep the plate close to it. Observe."
I pull out a steaming tea set.
"Pour tea for me," I say.
Ted uses [Telekinesis] to grab the teapot and tilt it on the cup. Once done, Suzy grabs the cup's plate with [Telekinesis] and floats it to me. Once I grab the plate she releases it and I sip on my tea.
The crowd murmurs again and the judges lean closer.
"I taught them [Telekinesis], they could virtually learn any spell."
I wait for a minute while the people talk and then continue.
"Now, a concern of mine about spreading [Golemancy] as is, is that it holds our knowledge, so when [Sense Soul] spreads and more people can look into someone else's soul, then we can also see their knowledge, perhaps even their memories," – some of the crowd gasps – "This means that I will not be spreading my golems for the time being until I can remove all traces of my knowledge from the golems. So for now you all will have to be satisfied with me only teaching the chant."
I recite the chant of [Infuse] and give a demonstration. The professors try and fail but now it's only a matter of time for them, especially once they acquire my notes about the chant and the internal workings of the spell.
The crowd claps while I awkwardly remain stiff and force a smile.
"Questions?" I ask.
"How much mana does it cost to create a golem?" Asks Nohoor.
"550 MP and this was before I altered the golems to have their own proper mana organ and voice capabilities," I answer and the large eyes of the wereowl grow even larger.
Considering how Roxanne had 1000 MP when we first met this is kind of a heavy cost unless you are an experienced mage, researchers don't generally have high mana pools.
"[Summoning Magic] has always been a mana-intensive magic school," professor Ludwick says, the bearded gnome looked very content during my whole speech.
"Are the golems capable of hurting their creator?" Asks Horona.
"Yes," I answer and the murmuring starts again, "They can also lie unless ordered so." The murmuring increases. "They have no connection to the master so you need to order them to only obey you otherwise they will do anything anyone asks. With [Mold] it might be possible to even override the master's orders if you know enough about souls."
"That is disappointing," Horona says.
Councilman Loreano props himself forward, "Where did you learn how to chant [Infuse]? I find it hard to believe that you learned all this just from [Summoning Magic] and the limited notes about [Golemancy]."
I smile and get ready for the fallout, this is the most dangerous part of my thesis. I say with all my earnestness "In the name of the Goddess of Knowledge, who game me her blessing, I cannot divulge this information. It is too personal and I swear on my honor it is not relevant to the study of [Golemancy]."
The judges turn serious and even professor Ludwick turns wary.
"Young man," the councilman starts, "I hope you are not taking this lightly. Even the most harmless magical concept can be transformed into heresy, this is why [Bloodwork] is banned."
"You can see that [Golemancy] has more in common with [Alteration Magic] than anything heretical. But as I said, I swear on my blessing, if there's any heresy on this magic school than I would like my blessing to be removed," I answer with confidence.
Councilman Loreano looks away from the stage and nods to someone hidden. A few seconds later a young assistant comes with an Inspection Crystal. He puts the crystal on the table with my notes and I put my hand over it, a crystal tablet is filled with my information and the assistant brings the tablet to the councilman.
He reads it and passes it to the other judges. They nod and professor Ludwick smiles.
"Elementals have the tendency to become humanized over time if you don't control their creation properly, have you seen such a thing happen with the golems?" Professor Ludwick asks.
"I have not. Though for something of this scale I think years are necessary, the golems do change but in a very slow way. If you order them to act like humans I believe they could act convincingly if you give enough sensors for their bodies since they don't really care for or even properly feel touch and pain."
"Do you think that allowing them to feel pain would be considered the Sin of torture?" professor Horona asks.
"Yes, artificial or not, if you give them pain and have them suffer needlessly it would be a Sin since it is not normally required for them to feel pain to properly function," I answer immediately.
Professor Nohoor looks impressed and nods repeatedly.
"Can you detect golems with [Sense Presence]?" Councilman Loreano asks.
"Yes but like I said, the more 'distilled' or 'bare' souls would be harder to discern from background noises."
The murmuring starts and the judges start to talk between themselves. That last question was right on the mark, it's why [Golemancy] could become dangerous. A counter for it needs to be developed, and quick, before it becomes weaponized.
"Can we test their intelligence?" Professor Nohoor asks.
I nod and the tests begin. Reading, general knowledge, mathematical questions, advanced mathematical questions, theoretical math questions…
"You know quite a lot of math, Mr. Ryder," Nohoor says, a little impressed.
Horona interrupts his fascination that's getting way over the heads of everyone else and starts her own questions. She asks the golems to move physically, then she learns they can dance and the crowd behind laughs and "awns…", then she learns they can wrestle and the crowd laughs heartily.
Professor Ludwick starts to ask philosophical questions.
"Do you fear death?" He asks.
"We, do, not, feel, any-thing," Ted answers.
"Do you wish to not be harmed?"
"We, wish, on-ly, to, serve," Suzy answers.
"Do you think you are alive?"
"By, mas-ter's, de-fi-ni-tion, we, are, not, a-live."
"Do you not have your own definition of life?"
"No."
"If you could save someone with certainty or save your master with dubious certainty, which would you choose?"
"Mas-ter."
"Would you save someone that could threaten your master?"
"No."
"And, yes. De-pends, on, threat."
"Can you define it what is a threat that does not deserve to live?"
"Too, abs-tract, need, more, in-for-ma-tion."
"Quite the worrying mentality," Councilman Loreano says.
"Indeed, you must never give them too much power, a rampaging, uncontrollable golem seems like a nightmare. Now, would you kill the emperor if it meant saving your master?"
"Yes."
Ludwick winces and Loreano frowns.
"Would you harm your own master?" Loreano asks.
"No."
"I order you to harm him."
That question didn't catch me by surprise. If I failed in putting this amount of security on those golems then I would have been quite irresponsible in teaching them magic.
"Not, a-llowed," both golems shake their heads.
"I created a security system so other people can't give them orders," I say.
"What if they use [Mold]?" Loreano asks.
"Then I will see it with [Sense Soul]."
"Any more questions?" I ask after a short silence.
The judges shake their heads and I start taking questions from the audience. The spotlights appear over the people standing and one by one I answer them. Most are about the limitations of [Golemancy], technically there isn't one, as long as you can recreate the soul and provide an adequate body, then you can do whatever you want. I keep my knowledge about the soul map limited so they won't know how much I have progressed. I'm only giving them [Golemancy], I already talked enough about [Sense Soul].
The judges talk between themselves and I wait on my seat until they are done.
"Wolf Ryder," Councilman Loreano says and I rise, "After much thought, we have come to our conclusion. [Golemancy] is a dangerous and powerful magic school and you have succeeded in reviving it. Your work is nothing short of amazing and I must say, a revolution is coming.
"Normally such a magic school wouldn't be allowed to be taught freely without deep understanding what's behind its beginning. But since you have the Blessing of the Goddess of Knowledge we will approve it, we accept her decision but we won't let it run wild, [Golemancy] will be heavily regulated in the years to come.
"With this, we can finally say that we accept your thesis as a valid contribution to the world. For your work, we grant you the titles: 'Scholar of Rabanara' and 'Golemancer'. May your life be as long as your work will not end here."
I feel something change within me.
The lights turn on and the crowd claps. On the audience, I see plenty of recognizable faces like Vanea, Silvane, Werner, Horvath, Lyle, Garanae, Hatara, Toroo, and some of my professors. Hana and Roxanne look groggy and quickly sober up when they hear the applause, joining them; Ciel and Aoi were perfectly awake and are happily applauding.
After the applause dies down the girls come and the judges approach.
"The Goddess doesn't make mistakes when she chooses someone to bless," says the wereowl Horona.
"You can repeat that," professor Ludwick says with pride, then he turns to the councilman and smirks, "When I defended my thesis you were much more savage, Loreano."
"To be honest your warped-spaces carriages were much more unstable than [Golemancy] back then," Loreano answers casually.
"I also have a Blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge."
"Then your research just had more holes than Ryder's," Loreano says and shrugs.
Ludwick pouts and scoffs but returns to smile casually immediately.
We have a short talk with the judges and the others come down to quickly congratulate me. Today Vanea's eyes seem softer, somehow.
After giving goodbyes to them all, the girls and I leave the university and we enter a restaurant to commemorate.