Some time after Izuku’s brief talk with Mr. Compress, Yaoyorozu had a great idea. Although one that had a somewhat bumpy road into becoming reality.

“So, it just occurred to me…” She says after receiving confirmation that Izuku was listening to her. “... we can easily create earth golems, right? They are very cheap.”

Yes, in almost any number and any place, although they barely count as an obstacle to the attackers.

They don’t seem to be very dangerous, the beastkin just walked through them.

What about that?

“Using them for fighting is not what I was thinking about.” Yaoyorozu replies while shaking her head. “I considered making them into our workforce. Carrying things for us, fetching stuff from other rooms when needed, delivering leftovers from our meals to the Gore Munchers and so on.”

Huh, that does sound like a good idea.

But they’re kind of, how should I put it…

Malformed.

I don’t think they can carry things without spilling/dropping anything, even light stuff.

“I know.” Yaoyorozu nods. She was sitting in the [Library], of course, with an open book left alone on the table in front of her for now. She was spending most of her day either reading books in the [Library] or sleeping. While usually taking a book with her to read in her bed. ”But I realized that we can experiment with that a bit. What if we shaped the body properly before having an elemental possess it?”

Wouldn’t that just make the golem warp to resemble the elemental more over time?

“That would be the most obvious outcome.” Yaoyorozu replies. “But I think that we might be greatly surprised if we try it. The golems we’ve seen thus far appear to be vastly different from one another. It’s possible that either elementals are completely different from each other or they don’t have a predefined shape, and are merely randomly changing their possessed medium to give themselves mobility. If we create a body that’s just plain better optimized, it might take it as is.”

Okay, I think I get it.

It’s definitely worth a try.

What materials do you want to use? Earth feels a bit too soft, especially if we want them to carry anything heavy.

“I thought about using clay.” Yaoyorozu replies. “Earthenware, to be exact. It’s arguably connected to earth as a concept, malleable and resistant enough to be used to form bricks for millennia. But it’d require some work, even with your ability to manually create a kiln out of nowhere and at minimal cost. And, to be honest, I know no one who’s good at pottery.”

…

You know what, I have an idea. It’s stupid, but it’s definitely worth trying. Give me a second.

Spinner, I have a question for you.

“Yeah?” Spinner replies immediately. He seemed to be getting close to the Dungeon, enough to have clearly just crossed the river. “What is it?”

Are you, perhaps, skilled in pottery?

We have a small idea to test, and we need some clay to be formed and fired to achieve it.

“Pottery?” Spinner appears surprised for a moment. “Well, I did play a simulation game about forming pottery once, I was really bored and went to look for some obscure indie games on the internet and…”

Alright, we’ll test it then.

We’ll prepare everything that you’ll need for when you come back here.

“Alright.” Spinner nods, despite his words being clearly unconvinced about it. “But I’m really not sure if…”

Midoriya doesn’t stay around long enough to hear him in full before switching back to Yaoyorozu-san. He has decided to trust Spinner’s inhuman learning capabilities when videogames were involved.

Spinner played a simulation game about working with pottery once.

I think that we should let him give it a try.

“He played a game ?” Yaoyorozu clearly doesn’t buy it. “And he did it once ? I don’t think that it makes him a qualified potter.”

At least let him try.

He has an… interesting track record of becoming concerningly skilled in various things merely by playing a videogame.

I want to test how far it goes.

“Alright then.” Yaoyorozu shrugs. “Worst case scenario, we’ll just waste some time and materials.”

***

Assimilating the marbles that Spinner brought to the Dungeon has unlocked them not only [Marble] as a material but also [Marble Cave] as a biome and [Stone Elementals]. Or, to be exact, a single [Lesser Stone Elemental].

Oddly enough, the new biome isn’t very useful for them right now. It’s just a variant of the [Limestone Cave], although [Marble] was more valuable than the [Limestone]. Then again, it was also pretty heavy and due to that, likely not something that could be mined out of the Dungeon.

Then again, it was going to take a while for anyone to be interested in mining marble out of them. After all, good luck carrying blocks of [Marble] anywhere from their current location in the middle of nowhere.

They needed infrastructure to be able to export a bigger volume of loot.

The real question, though, was how exactly did the elementals that the beastkin brought to them allowed them to produce the elementals in any number? Well, this was irritating. Very irritating. Annoying even.

Its base stats are identical to those of the other elementals, though. They’ll experiment with creating a stone golem out of it later. For now, Izuku decides to check out Spinner's work in the improvised pottery room.

Shigaraki is there too. Not physically, but he’s definitely observing the events in person, chatting with Spinner about various games they’ve played in the past. Izuku has nothing to add to that, so he just listens.

Izuku realizes that his decision to trust Spinner was a good idea long before he gets to put the sculpture in the oven.

Spinner does that in several fragments. Torso, limbs and head. Fingers were a problem, as the parts there were just too small to properly form. At least their inner workings. As one can imagine, joints were the biggest problem.

There has to be some movement at the joints, so Spinner spent a few hours modeling them and decided to make the solid fragments out of properly fired earthenware, but leave the rest to be made from clay, in hopes of the elemental being given more freedom of movement as a result.

They’d see how good it’ll work in practice soon.

Once the firing of the earthenware is concluded, Spinner pulls out all the objects from the kiln and inspects it to make sure that there were no cracks and so on in the pottery. With that done, they had all the pieces of the golem to assemble it.

And they did.

Soon after that Izuku decided to let Yaoyorozu in.

He really wants to see her reaction to Spinner’s work. He definitely doesn’t want to see her proven wrong and himself proven right. Definitely. He’s not that petty of a person, alright?

The moment she enters the room, she immediately notices the golem strewn on the floor. It’s smaller than a human being, just tall enough to barely reach Izuku’s neck, which keeps it roughly in line with the size of the naturally born Earth Golems.

They suspect that the stronger the elemental the larger the body they can efficiently control. Which made sense - after all, when allowed to form them naturally, elementals picked that particular size of the body. And if there was no limit there, what would stop an earth elemental from inhabiting a whole mountain ?

It's lacking a face, Spinner deciding not to add it. Apparently it was a better option than giving it a face just for it to not display its emotions properly. Uncanny valley and all. Izuku decided to trust his sense of aesthetics.

It was definitely better than his own.

The body is sculpted like a piece of art. Its genderless, with vaguely androgynous built, well pronounced muscles sculpted everywhere where they should be. It could be used as a reference picture for the beauty of the human body, it’s just this realistic.

Its surface, despite being made from earthenware, looks almost natural . Almost worthy of being called ‘skin’ instead of ‘surface’.

“I… you made it?” Yaoyorozu says, her eyes wide-open and locked onto Spinner. As she does so, Izuku is quietly celebrating one of his life’s greatest achievements - being right while Momo Yaoyorozu was wrong.

“Yeah?” Spinner replies, clearly confused about her reaction. “I mean, I don’t know if it’s any good, I just did the same thing as I used to do in a game. But I think that it worked out pretty well.”

He thought that she reacted like that because it was so bad. Wow .

Yaoyorozu blinks at him, having clearly bluescreened completely. Izuku decides to step in finally.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I think that we should be happy that there was no such game as ‘Hero Society Takedown Simulator’

as then Spinner would have played it and we’d be absolutely done .

“Y-yes, I guess.” Yaoyorozu wakes up from her stupor. “I believe that I’m justified in reassuring you that yes, it’s pretty good. Very good, in fact. Are we putting a Lesser Earth Elemental inside it then?”

No need to waste any more time

let’s a fucking gooo

***

And it works.

When they manifest a [Lesser Earth Elemental] and shove it into the golem body, it obediently merges with it. And a few seconds later, the golem’s upper body raises up, before the rest of the body follows suit.

It’s not very large. But its movements are definitely much smoother and better coordinated than those of naturally-born golems. This has immediately proved to them that shaping the material before turning it into a golem had a positive effect on the quality of the resulting creature.

It was now standing upward, showing them all just how short it was in the end. Izuku of all people could look down on it! But it was definitely pretty… errr… jacked, or at least looked like that.

The idea of making joints be made of several rotating and moving parts sunk in the easily moldable non-fired clay was a truly inspired one, at least in terms of the freedom and precision of movement.

They were yet to see what influence it had on their ability to carry heavy weights.

“Not bad, not bad.” Yaoyorozu nods, only for the creature to try to walk around, in the same manner that most of the elementals and golems seemed to just be aimlessly wandering around. “Stop.”

It stops obediently. The servants were representatives of the Dungeon Lord, imbued with a fragment of their power and authority, at least in that particular department. The lesser creatures did listen to them.

“Go to the dining room and bring me a cup of tea.” Yaoyorozu then decides to issue one of the most Yaoyorozu orders imaginable. However, the golem does nothing, just stands there. “I see. It probably doesn’t understand the instructions. Let me test something.”

A few minutes later they do confirm that golems can be used as house servants - to some degree and in sufficiently repetitive tasks. While the golem had no idea where or even what kitchen was, it could learn.

Yaoyorozu proved it by showing the golem their kitchen, the cup of tea resting inside it and then having it carry said cup of tea to Yaoyorozu in order to make it understand the concept of ‘bringing something to the person who told you to do it’.

Once that happened, the golem proved capable of bringing tea to Yaoyorozu regardless of where she was at the time, with the exception of the fact that she had to be in the same place where she ordered him to bring it.

So, what’s the result of the test?

“The test has proven that the golems can be used for menial work, however it has to be a repetitive one.” Yaoyorozu replies. “It doesn’t seem capable of showing initiative, and requires everything to be described to it in detail. We would have to train every golem separately, and with a particular job in mind, but it’s doable.”

Which still leaves us with plenty of possibilities.

“It does, although I wish that it could leave the Dungeon to carry heavy weights for us.” Yaoyorozu replies. “I think that I’ll be able to train them on my own, given that Spinner will teach me how to create their bodies. As otherwise I don’t think that he can do both his scouting and working on golems.”

No, he probably can’t do that.

Shigaraki?

I’ll ask him.

Spinner, are you able to teach Yaoyorozu how to make golems?

“Huh?” Spinner’s first reaction to the question is that of complete surprise. The man was busy cleaning up their improvised pottery room when Shigaraki spoke to him. “She wants me to teach her? I’m a complete amateur in pottery!”

Spinner

Spinner my friend

my brother

my best bro for life

my forever player two

You’re not an amateur

Get it to your thick head that your ability to learn shit from simulation games is probably your second quirk as it’s certainly fucking supernatural

So, yes or no?

“I mean… alright?” Spinner is clearly not fully convinced of it, but decides to go along with it. “If she thinks she can actually learn something from me, then sure, I’ll do my best to help her.”

Great.

Go and do that then

Spinner really is something else.

I know, right?

The villain ranking he got from you heroes was a fucking disgrace

Anyway, we’ve got this figured out

Which is great

What next?

I guess we’re going to wait for a while, preferably until the beastkin show up.

I just don’t think that with not one but two hostile groups in the area leaving for too long is a good idea, especially for a long time (and all the locations like the marble quarry are way too far from the Dungeon).

Although I think that there are two more loose ends to be tied before that happens.

One of them is the blood hornets, right?

And the other is the Blessing of Carnage and Blessing of Shadows and what they really are

Yes.

… you’re going to ask Lanna about them, won’t you?

Figuring everything out in practise is great and awesome and so on

But when you have someone you can just ask about it, what’s the point of taking the harder way?

Booooooriiiiing

***

They left Yaoyorozu and her new golem to do a few more quick tests before starting her pottery lesson with Spinner, mostly about the maximum weight that it could carry and for how long.

Yaoyorozu made it clear that she fully expects the golem to break in the process, as she was going to increase the weight of the cargo until that would occur, thus telling her how much such a creature could carry.

A bit scary, but… elementals clearly weren’t even animals, so Izuku was ready to allow that much to happen.

It was only going to be the fate of their first, prototype golem. The future ones were - hopefully - going to have a lengthy and successful life, full of thankless, menial work.

Izuku didn’t like putting it that way. So he decided to ignore all of it.

“Blood hornets, ugh.” Lanna replies, with a look of disgust on her face, when Uraraka finally gets to ask her the question. “Disgusting things. If you found a hive of them in the valley, you should do your best to burn it to the ground.”

Well, ain’t that a great start

True

“What are they exactly?” Uraraka replies. “We only know that they’re something from Occasa’s domain.”

“Because they are.” Lanna replies. She was sitting on the couch in the lampades boss room, one of the others sitting on the other end of it while the last one was giving some much needed attention to the gravehounds at the other side of the room. “They’re another branch of the endless swarm of horrid abominations that she’s ‘blessing’ the Creation with. Arguably worse than the spider one that you already have some experience with.”

It’s worse than the spiders?!

Uh-oh.

“Blood hornets feed on flesh and blood.” Lanna replies. “Their stingers are armed in paralytic poison that lets them knock their victims out, before bringing their victims back to the hive where they are devoured and recycled into the wax and honey.”

“That’s… creepy.” Uraraka decides.

Izuku and Tomura reach the conclusion that it was a massive understatement completely separately from each other and without a single word.

“It gets worse.” Lanna decides to make things even worse. “They don’t operate like normal hornets. They don’t have queens to give birth to more of them. Instead they paralyze their victims, animals and mortals alike, and inject their eggs into them. When the young spawn, they begin their life by devouring their host from the inside.” Uraraka stares at her in shock, Lanna shaking her head. “They sometimes don’t even paralyze you, instead try to do that to you in the middle of the combat, so that even if you kill them all, their hive will survive. Absolutely disgusting and lethal.”

Uhm

And they don’t even invite you to dinner first?

I can tell that this one was forced.

Don’t bother.

sigh, yeah, yeah

Anyway, are we putting them in?

I don’t think that this is a great idea, on multiple levels.

Ye

“Sorry to put it that way, but it does sound a bit… personal.” Uraraka replies, completely unaware of the brief exchange between Izuku and Tomura. “I don’t want to pry, but…”

“Blood hornets enjoy seizing various underground locations for their hives.” Lanna replies, interrupting her. “This includes tombs. I had to deal with an incursion of those back in Verkvena, and while we succeeded in wiping them off, my physical body was destroyed as a result of having some of their eggs deposited in my body. The pain was horrible, even to a daemon. I will definitely enjoy seeing those abominations die.”

Yeah, I can get how that makes you hate something

Yes.

“Your masters want to put them in the Dungeon?” Lanna doesn’t let them digest her earlier words and immediately asks Uraraka the potentially dangerous question.

“They’re still considering it.” Uraraka replies. At this point she doesn’t even seem to be bothered by Midoriya and Shigaraki being referred to as her ‘masters’. “I don’t think that what they just learned from you will make them more likely to put them inside their Domain.”

To put it lightly.

Yep.

“Well, I don’t like the hornets, but I do prefer to be open about things to let your master make informed decisions.” Lanna says before sighing loudly. “Those fiends are indescribably annoying and equally disturbing, but their honey is considered a rare delicacy. Both in its natural form and as mead, and not only in the Physical Worlds. Even daemons can enjoy it. If you put a few of their hives in your domain, it will definitely make for a popular thing to be harvested by adventurers. And if that wasn’t enough, their wax has some alchemical usages as well.”

Oh?

And that’s… actually interesting.

Yeah.

Are we putting them in?

I would kinda like to try that honey.

See if it’s worth the hype.

Yeah.

Me too.

…

…

Don’t you have one guy in your class who is good with sweets?

Rikidou Satou/Sugarman, yes.

…

…

Now that you say that, I do have to admit that eating roasted meat with herbal tea for every meal, ever, has to be tiring.

And having a dedicated cook who would explore this world’s flavor palette in order to improve everyone’s morale sounds like a good idea.

I haven’t said anything, but I did think it, and now I feel as if you’ve violated my brain by your very presence inside it, stop reading my thoughts and get out

We’re both inhabiting the same brain, in case you forget

I know

And I want you out of it even more

Sigh.

Anyway, so are we putting them in? And if so, at what level?

Yes, let’s do it.

How about this: We make a new level for the hornets and put it as the new Third Level, pushing the spiders to be the new Fourth level.

We’d also switch the skeleton/lampades level around with Komori’s one, which should leave Komori’s as the last boss of the first five-level segment of the Dungeon, and with skeletons being a level deeper we should be able to improve their equipment, and they’d be the opening segment of the Elven Mine segment

Yes/no?

Yes, we’ll do that later.

Ask her about the blessings

“Blessings are exactly what the name infers.” Lanna replies when Uraraka relays their question to her. “They are a type of a spirit. They’re to space in the Physical Worlds what daemons are to their mortal inhabitants and shard spirits are to their plants and animals.”

That answer, to be honest, doesn’t answer anything.

“Could you elaborate?” Uraraka replies in their stead.

“I keep being surprised by how little you know.” Lanna sighs. A bit rude, though they definitely earned it. If anything, she was being quite patient with them. “If you put a Blessing of Night in a room, it’ll render the room extremely dark, yet with sharper shadows, which is perfectly suited for shadow magic. Blessing of Carnage, in the meantime, acts by empowering the anger of everyone in the vicinity, while making every injury bleed much faster. That’s all that the Blessings can do.”

Well, that definitely explains the N/A threat level rating.

I don’t think they can be attacked or attack anyone in return.

Kind of useless on its own, something that just buffs or debuffs everyone in the room, depending on a number of other factors

True.

But it still can be pretty useful if used properly.

Ye

The beastkin arrive two days later, and things immediately take a turn for the interesting.