While continuing his journey towards Martes, Alex left the main roads and the direct lines of travel in favor of taking the time to continue improving his skills. The opposition he had seen was making him rather nervous. What he lacked was the confidence and tools needed for a fight like he was expecting. For all the numbers he had encountered, most of the battles and engagements he had were simple. Three Groves was more an assault on the town hall than a battle for the city, there hadn’t been multiple objectives or enemy strongpoints. Certainly, no expectation of a continual engagement with an organized enemy with presence outside the immediate area. Trenton was a scavenging mission, he didn’t really have real world examples for that, it was more of a game where the player encountered random trash mobs and had to avoid the big bad and large-scale fights.
If there was a more conventional and hostile force in the wasteland and they came to blows the whole dynamic would change. On the surface it would be just a longer series of single battles, no different than what he had done before. In reality it was a whole different ball game, that force would have actual infrastructure behind them including command, and if the creatures building the dam had been an example, ways to counter or eliminate his golems. Even if his golems remained largely unchallenged, they would more than have the capacity to wear him down, pure attrition on both mental and physical fronts. It would become vital that he could remain concealed, strike from multiple places and prevent such a force from concentrating and surrounding him.
As a part of his efforts to remotely control golems he ran into a serious problem. The ‘Control Limit’, the number of golems that an operator could possibly control before the whole spell series broke down, and possibly the controller’s brain melted. The studies were unclear, but the increasing complexity began to get exponential at the highest levels rather than linear. Somewhat shockingly it was poorly researched, it seemed that no one had bothered due to the nature of golems and their controllers there was little point in worrying about how many golems a person could simultaneously control when there was no conceivable reason for it. One person commanding ten golems was actually worse than five people commanding two each. That pretty much eliminated any desire to expand on that line of thought for the lands he was in. Those who had the skill to command golems were valuable enough that it would be inconceivable for them to operate totally without support.
Alex really wanted to stay ahead of the game in terms of planning, he had come up with a three-step solution to the issue of control limits, for him it appeared that twentyish golems was going to be his limit. A hard limit, not something he could really do much about aside from work with it, loopholes might be different.
It was a numbers game, and twenty was not enough. Not if he managed to piss in these guys Wheaties, while he had no intention of going to war, much of which was purely practical, operating without support he needed at least the option to expand his forces.
Step one was to increase automation of his Golem’s actions, he was combining two very similar systems of thought for this. A BFT (Blue Force Tracker), the real-world military solution for many game mechanics. It tracked the battlefield, very useful for commanders, though he admitted that guys like him on the tip of the spear mostly used it like a glorified GPS. This was basically a strategy game’s equivalent to knowing where your forces were and what they needed, saw, and reported. His goal with this was to reduce commanding groups of golems performing mundane tasks to reports on a screen, then he could set waypoints and orders without having to actually control the golems manually. It was the macro scale of letting his golems fight how they pleased. It also placed the control burden on a construct like a magical computer/interface rather than on him, loopholes see... The problem with control limits and the reason his was so high was because he wasn’t controlling every step and motion, he could theoretically have as many golem connections as he wanted. Making them work was a different story.
The second part of step one was to expand on the preprogrammed actions and put in a system for responding to situations, luckily this particular bit of magic was highly intent based rather than actual programming. Much of what he was doing was based on games like Graviteam Tactics or other military simulation games where the player had little actual control over their units. He could set up some formations and behaviors to give overall orders but had little direct control. He had no problem maintaining the connection to as many golems as he could make. It was control. The modern solution was to improve the AI and that was what he went with. Have his units update an interface, and he would command them through said interface, only jumping over for fine control when it needed his personal supervision. This way he could rotate golems, he might hypothetically have one hundred golems but only be personally controlling/ commanding twenty or so at one time, while the others followed the preprogrammed orders. Largely he based this off what he ‘knew’ about the similar field of necromancy, they could control massive hordes of idiot undead just by giving intent commands to the ‘animating’ force. While he couldn’t do the exact same, he could fake an intelligence in his golems though well thought out commands and priorities.
Step two was increasing production and reducing costs for each golem, even after all the time he had been here Alex ‘only’ had twenty-seven golems. That included his arial and ground recon units, several replacements for his core fighting forces. Most of those replacements were golems that he had been behind on updating with design changes. Factor in the level of cores he was using and the twenty golems he could control were already a far harsher demand than if they had been ‘leveled up’. Still there was no way to continue, unless he managed to make the construction time and material cost manageable. The high standard he had for his core forces was not sustainable, taking several weeks to a month to produce a fighting unit. Then have that unit drag him down with updates and optimization further slowing productions queues, just no. Not feasible for the long-term production in the numbers he needed.
Step three was probably the hardest mentally, he needed actual disposable troops. Expendable units whose losses wouldn’t hurt him. One of the unfortunate realities of war and battle was losses.
Aside from his recon units, currently his golems were only expendable compared to him. The unrecoverable loss of any of his fighting golems would be incredibly painful, so far that had been avoided by careful planning and the quality of his golems compared to the opposition. These would need entirely new designs, cheap and easy to produce while maintaining a certain level of effectiveness. It would be a very fine line for Alex to walk. This might not be possible, even as he was thinking on step three it had a pipe dream feel to it. Oh, he would try but getting the costs low enough to be usable might not happen. Honestly the best he could probably hope for was to make his processes for construction more efficient. The harsh reality felt like him trying to build his own personal army of golems was going to fail. At the same time, even if it did fail the goal of optimizing production was still worthwhile.
That was another thing filling the background, a longer-term project he was working on while building proper heavy infantry for his main line, and while he continued grinding skills repairing and creating basic magical creations. While continuing to expand and update the functionality on his spare golems and the portable base. One of the dwindling crystals received a quick and dirty build plan before he forgot. Lacking the time and desire to get too creative he threw an image of battle droids from Star Wars down as the basis of his cheaper disposable units, B1s, B2s, and commandos. They would definitely change later once he got the time to actually design and build them properly, but for now it was good enough. The idea behind them was just to keep in mind that they were going to be expendable. If nothing else it was a set of designs, he might be able to use/sell when he got to civilization, he just couldn’t see using his personal golems for commercial use.
Time to get back to the heavies.
~ * ~
Alex was frustrated. Again. “How come in books, movies and anime, the protagonist just whips out some crazy shit like its easy. Why can’t that be me? This should be simple, just take Aegis’ design and remove unnecessary parts and fill in the cockpit. That can’t be too hard right? Wrong. Fucking, fuck, piece of shit….” Falling into a five-minute bout of swearing and stomping around, Alex talked himself though the process again and again. An outside observer would doubt he was speaking any language, probably assuming the rabid monkey was just making random noises.
He had reached Martes over two months ago and was now circling the city unwilling to enter without the heavy troops. Even taking the much longer way here, going slowly, and clearing out a few of the smaller towns. He still didn’t have the design complete. Much less production.
Three Groves and Crystal Lake had been anomalies, the other towns he ran into ranged from poorly ‘defended’ with only a small number of monsters to completely abandoned with only a few of the wasteland’s occupants there. He had wasted several days the first time he encountered an empty town convinced it was a trap, only to realize that such a thing was probably the norm for a town in the middle of nowhere.
It wasn’t like he had been lazy or idle, the bastard long days on this planet and the lack of anything resembling entertainment meant he was working for a good eight hours a day each on different projects. Each. Eight hours on fixing stuff up and studying, another eight hours of working on new golems, another eight hours of working on general bullshit like the inventory, and his current golems. Leaving eight hours for sleep and any other crap he was doing. Because he was going slow, and because he could do a lot of this work from inside Aegis, he was able to zone out while traveling. Still, he was putting in the man hours. But nooooo… the damn heavies still weren’t done.
He had largely caught up on other stuff in the meantime, his spare golems were up to standard at least. He also managed to integrate a new weapon on the golems. Still no luck on a ‘good’ ranged option, the current atlatls being underwhelming if somewhat effective. This was a flame thrower, mounted under the arms of the golems and in the mouths of the dogs (because fire breathing dog). A ‘simple’ mix of fire, wind, and force magics that produced an underpowered (not sticky) flame that projected about thirty feet from the golem. Now it was just fire blown towards the target lightly contained in a weak cone of force, much inferior to a fire mages actual cone of fire. But for monsters and crowd control it would do just fine, that and its slightly underpowered nature meant his golems were immune was a plus.
His inventory was now much cleaner and mostly cataloged, no major revelations but it was a task he could check off his to-do list, and now that it was mostly complete all he had to do was stay on top of it. Five-ten minutes after each place he looted and it would be back to complete, with how good he was getting at multi-tasking and the habit he was likely to do so without much conscious thought from now on, just another background task inside his stompy suit, taken care of when he had nothing else to do.
His base was becoming more than just build-a-block, and actually had some personality and the beginnings of real useful capacity, beyond being a hidey-hole. Each block was roughly the size of a small RV camper, or a normal two car garage (one with room for the cars only, not those ones that had room for extra crap. Yes, he was salty that his own garage back home lacked that bit of usefulness). He had about two feet of solid steel on every side reinforced by struts, cross braces and beams. Within the walls was a sheet of magically created and banished water on the off-chance radiation might be an issue, it had an air lock for an entrance. Hermetically sealed with the same air filtration and generation as his suit, structural reinforcement and repair enchantments (in case anything tried to get through in the long term by burrowing or using acid), as well as minor curses to kill off such pesky things, and copies of the mana enchantments in Alessa’s tower (to equalize the ambient mana and make it comfortable) though much less refined. Add in climate control and, whether submerged or in a vacuum or surrounded by toxic gas, this shelter should allow him to survive. He had also covered it inside and out with every single concealment and mental defense enchantment he could find. Adding more space was a matter of creating another room and using the precision of his necklace to drop it precisely in place, wait a minute for the enchantments to purge bad shit and he had another room, in whatever direction he wanted on top, below or to the sides. Utilizing enchantment schemes to streamline production. He had one of the larger storage devices only for this one thing. While he wasn’t there yet he figured it was a matter of time until he had a method of keeping everything in the room in place during storage, for now he had to place things down as needed unless he purposely built it into the room, linking it as integral to the room itself. Lights, wall mounted tables and chairs the occasional sink was a far as he currently got, but he was making progress. All powered by separate cores.
All of this and he still hadn’t gotten the fucking ‘simpler’ heavy golems working, to call that frustrating was an understatement.
Part of this was a poor approach on his part. He had been thinking of a downgraded Aegis rather than an upscaled Eins. Aegis was designed to wrap around and protect a squishy human, as such it was overengineered and had a stunning number of needless parts and design considerations (for a normal golem anyways). While not pointless he ended up restarting from basically scratch after he got to Martes. This time he used Eins as a base and began work on scaling the frame up, this had the advantage that Eins had been built as a traditional golem without human considerations for joints, the need to breath and impact resistance. At least now he was making progress again instead of being stuck on how to alter Aegis’ design to ‘normal’ golem standards. Ironically the reverse problem he had while making Aegis in the first place. Sometimes attempting to work smarter not harder bit him in the ass, he was using something he had and already worked rather than exporting the concept to a more suitable platform.
Martes itself was a rural city, seventy to eighty thousand people. Small compared to Trenton with no skyscrapers, its ‘downtown’ largely made up of three to six story buildings with the taller ones being rare. Spread out and kind of cozy in an empty post-apocalyptic sort of way. Alex had plenty of time to scout the city out during his circling, arial drones and packs of wolves doing reconnaissance.
Alex wasn’t being lazy or idle, the town itself had a population of both dregs and beastlings warring it out into a stalemate, along with the usual assortment of wasteland creatures. Luckily, they were fighting on the population side of town and not the industry and shopping areas he was interested in. This presented an interesting problem for him; it was also an opportunity.
Alex had been thinking about his build, a lot. Some might say excessively, they would be idiots and likely not in his situation but still... While he practiced on his own both fighting forms and general fitness. Because why wouldn’t you in a hostile world where getting separated might mean certain death. He wasn’t confident as a fighter. Against people, especially untrained or your general thugs, he felt good about his chances. Against trained and equipped opponents not so much, training only got you so far. As such he wanted to limit his personal engagement times with the enemy, but how was he going to do that and get what he needed when he had to gather up the materials in person. Aegis also counted here as it was still possible that the golem would get overwhelmed. An example was at Three Groves where he had his golems bring everything to a collection point.
That was inefficient and for all his golem’s strength they lacked cargo capacity, so as things currently stood, he needed to be there in person. Making exploitable supply lines wasn’t something he was interested in, nor did he want to limit the functionality of his golems by having them physically carry materials. He had a whole new appreciation for the existence of storage devices, when he considered these things.
According to his logic about his build and keeping his abilities and potential in mind. He needed to find a way for his golems to operate completely separate from him, leaving only the link in place. To perform hunting and scavenging missions while he sat at base and drank coffee like a good commander. He could of course build cargo golems, and he probably would at some point. Like after he reached civilization. He had upped the priority on space/dimensional magic so he could make his own storage devices, and the necessary knowledge for items that stored large spaces in other large spaces. He was even making slow but noticeable progress. He discarded this early in his studies as the usual overpowered bullshit space magic could do was hard locked behind true bastard levels of study, like several PHD’s at a minimum. Making storage devices hadn’t been a concern and that was about the only useful thing that he could do with that particular form of magic without far more specialized study, not that he had those study materials in the first place. As it was, he was ‘studying’ space magic by attempting to recreate the designs for a storage item.
For now, he had three of the thirtyish he collected at the facility completely empty, as well as a good three fourths of his necklace available. It was a crap ton of material that he was largely unable to use for the moment. On top of that he had two completely empty golem storage bands, one if he stored all his available golems but he had no reason to do that.
There was a test he needed to run. One that might just solve this conundrum. His build and current plans meant that he was going to force himself off the board, him and Aegis. He needed to get his golems to do the work for him, more so than in Three Groves. If the worst came to pass, not being able to do anything useful without being physically present was too much of a risk.
The test was simple. Put and link a storage device to a golem and see it could loot, auto loot would be better but that was something to work towards. If he could link to the device through the golem, then he could control it to loot what he needed without ever leaving the comfort of his command center. For the test he laid out dozens of objects, mundane and enchanted, raw materials, processed materials, big and small. Everything he could conceive of that he might need his golems to loot, frames that lacked their activation core, parts, partially enchanted frames powered by cores but inactive. To test a golem band, he placed active golems with multiple orders. Some would resist being stored, if possible, others wouldn’t. Some of the golems would have him focusing on them while others were on standby.
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He was going to test both at once, if he could get them to work, he personally never had to enter the town to get what he needed, the overwhelming flexibility this would give him had him dancing at the possibilities.
He would still be with the golems just to be able to reinforce the expeditions as currently the loss of a golem was too large a setback at this point, it was the principle. The whole reason he chose Martes was for golems, parts, materials and knowledge. He wasn’t going to leave active frames behind just because he didn’t have a golem storage device handy. He had already seen several frames scattered about. They would probably be able to go in a device as he doubted they were active, but what if they were?
The tests were a success as the golem scooped up everything it needed. The failures were expected, an actively resisting golem couldn’t be stored, that fell in line with expectations. The complicated part was the mana cost. Over a distance it actually drained him to get the golem to collect that drain increased with distance. His solution was to fully link the device to his golem, via more cores. When he started the tests he was using the golem as a relay rather than having the golem use the device. He would use the cores to power the looting, the same as a golem’s active enchantments. So ‘he’ wasn’t looting but the golem was, it also meant that the storage item was linked and couldn’t be accessed or stolen while on the golem. He had no idea if that was important but leaving that loophole open was unnecessary.
To keep these important items safe, he buried them deep into the chest cavity, he also added lift points to those golems so if the baggage golem went down others could easily grab it and run. Unfortunately, something about the linked cores, the ones he used in most of his golems to preserve his higher quality materials until he gained confidence and skill, well they just didn’t work here. All his single cores were combat cores, he still hadn’t found a use for the generalist cores from the tower, it felt like a waste to use them in combat, he was planning to use them as workers if he got production facilities online. But only single core golems could use the devices.
A second test after these modifications worked quite well in his opinion. The only thing left was a combat test, so he got to work on the heavies again. Eins, Zwei, and Drei were modified to carry the items even if a device wasn’t currently installed, other than Aegis they were the most suitable and had single cores. They were the current toughest golems he had, and the way things looked he didn’t want them on the heavies as they would be too slow to flee. Also, the point of heavies was to fight and tank damage, they weren’t designed for this role.
The bone golems were too fragile, and they were his most easily replaced and replenished in terms of materials. All of them had linked cores as well. After the overengineering of his portable base he was low on processed steel, it was amazing how fast a few thousand tons of steel was used up when he made it thick enough to resist multiple T-Rex’s using it as a trampoline.
With a basic plan in place Alex entered his shelter and wandered over to the workshop module. Inside he had placed down several workstations, the mandatory planning boards, a few chalk boards, a tool station, and several racks for the golems. Cranes and suspension equipment, all currently muscle powered but he was working on getting power up and running (it was part of his training to fix up the magical items and technology he scavenged). A couple of heavy-duty tables and work benches/ stools were filled with the partially completed golem parts.
Alex tried where possible to use premade materials things like screws and other useful shapes, rather than doing everything from scratch. Work smarter not harder, at the same time he also went very far out of his way to not use the last bits, he might need to make his own screws and bolts having a pristine reference was always good. He was still shaping mostly by hand and with magic, but a few of the tools and other purely mechanical stations helped to speed the work up. With nothing left to do he buckled down to continue grinding out a workable and repeatable design for his heavies, a large part of the problem was updating the design. He could likely just build a golem faster, but doing so repeatedly and consistently was a problem. He wanted to make them standardized so he didn’t have to fuss with differing issues with each one.
A forge room would help, but so far, he hadn’t gotten it up and running. He did shift a few extra hours to the heavies but sometimes you just needed to put in the raw time. Sighing, he got to work.
There were numerous small towns and villages surrounding Martes almost all of them within 1-2 days away at his golems travel speed and the time he spent on the move, usually 12- 16 hours. Doing the thinking type of work inside Aegis. To avoid wasting time Alex cleared these places, most of them having small populations of either beastlings or dregs. Likely breakaway ‘clans or tribes’ that had survived long enough to find the minimal shelter they required for long term survival out in the cold unforgiving wastes. It didn’t really help them once he showed up, few of these even had the larger variations he had seen in Trenton or Three Groves. Luckily, he also avoided finding any ominous objects of doom in any of the towns. He just had to clear them out and loot.
He tested his golems in these places sending them in on their own, usually Eins, Zwei or Drei leading a group of bone golems with recon. The other two stayed with Alex holding the perimeter and in position to extract the group if things got hairy. The only time they had to meet up was to empty the storage device, or if repairs beyond the basic enchantments were needed. That usually happened if he added unnecessary addons in his continuing attempts to improve his golems. To some extent he felt he was reaching the limits of his golems and their frames for his purposes.
Emptying the golems inventory was a matter of touching and transferring the contents into another device. He usually did that then went through the process of sorting on his own, it avoided any issues with transferring the items one at a time. He also played with the idea of rotating the golems, or hot swapping the storage item all of these worked but it was more convenient to just move everything into his necklace and move on.
It would be another three months before he had the heavies completed to his satisfaction, he had saved a few nearby towns to test them before the deployment into the city.
The final design of the heavies was large ten feet (3m) tall bulky, thick metal covering joints and areas of attack, they would have to crouch and turn sideways to enter normal doors, even sideways they barely fit. The golems were fine in hallways, thick armor plating, especially on the shoulders as he expected them to be presented to the enemy. At least when dealing with non midget sized opponents, most Dregs and beastlings being shorter than Alex himself and he wasn’t exactly the tallest guy around. He gave them the same claws and blade arms as his other golems, but these were backup weapons. The heavies were the first golem he made with an actual handheld weapon rather than integral, he didn’t see a point in removing the utility of hands and fingers. Unlike the others he wanted to give them a tool, he was thinking of those bastards at Crystal Lake. The ability to use weapons was one of the defining features of humanoid creatures. Something he hadn’t used in his golems until now.
The weapon of choice was a polearm, halberd to be specific. A wide axe blade on one side, a heavy hammerhead on the other with meat tenderizing points to focus the damage all topped with two and a half feet of sharp spear tip. The other side needed a fat ball of metal as a counterbalance, it doubled as a weapon but that was largely incidental. Overall, the weapon was too large and heavy for a person to use. When not needed the golems would ‘sling’ them onto their backs freeing up their hands, again the just unfair flexibility of the joints, and precision making this almost video game character easy.
The point of the heavies wasn’t killing potential although they definitely had it, they needed to be a front line pinning the opposition in place drawing attention. They needed to be a force that had to be dealt with, and one that took a long time to handle. The ability to keep opposition at range was also quite handy. Then his other golems would enter the fray ripping into the flanks and rear. Getting into the formation, disrupt it and break them up, then the heavies could get stuck in crushing the remainder with sheer mass.
That was the idea… or you know… the heavies could just pulp the opposition too quickly for him to set up anything fancy. Alex was watching that very thing happen right now, the two operational heavies were literally walking over the beastling forces in this town. A charge and controlled swing had cleared the road in front of them, the rest of the beastling forces collapsed. Despite how heavy the halberd was each golem handled the long weapon with one hand easily, the survivors of the first swing fell to the off-hand’s claws and blade. Those that didn’t get out of the way were often just stomped to death, the heavies moved with inhuman speed for their size and their joints allowed for anime levels of flexibility. They were still somewhat slow on the human end of the spectrum but for thousands of pounds of metal they were quite zippy.
They were not fast on the move, nor were they particularly maneuverable once they got going. Cornering at speed wasn’t going to happen, but they tore through the enemy formation like an anime villain through disposable good guys, all speed and raw power in the fight. Definitely not slow or clunky.
The short ‘fight’ left his others with nothing to do but clear up the ‘routed’ enemies. By routed he meant those the heavies hadn’t killed yet, they wanted to flee just hadn’t had the time to process it yet. They never would, as the other golems hit them like Eins had that one group during his first action.
Scattered enemies were his light and medium golems forte, killed in passing. Using their tireless nature, speed, power, and even greater flexibility to gain total local superiority.
If Alex had any fucks left to give for the creatures in this wasteland, he might have felt bad for the poor things. Of course, he didn’t, too many days being chased by these beastling fucks to have any sympathy. No, he just felt good, they were dead and collected, the golems moved on leaving only blood stains and the occasional part that he couldn’t be bothered to grab.
It did bring up a minor point though. The heavies didn’t leave much for him to harvest, shattered bone was too much of a pain to use for bone golems. More than a few cores had been destroyed as well. Definitely a fighting force and not a hunting one.
That scene repeated itself a dozen times throughout the day, with the engagements getting smaller and smaller. The heavies didn’t even bother to dodge, they could barely be bothered to put the thicker plates in the way most of the time. Knowing that even if the attack landed full force, it would do nothing. The bigger beastlings, ones that his light golems had to parry, and his mediums had to be a little careful of were no problem, attacks stopped by sheer size and weight. The golems had something resembling threat awareness, they kind of knew which attacks they needed to be careful of. The oldest cores like Eins had were much better at this but even fresh cores understood something about how the cores were made. That strange link Alex and his golems had bled over into the newer cores when he made them.
~ * ~
“Golems tested. Major issues fixed ready to get this on… Just need to find a place to call a command center.”
Alex had returned to Martes, with two heavies operational and another two already being worked on, he was ready to enter the city and begin his search.
Near the industrial area by a now dried up riverbed seemed to be the best option. A few boats that he could scout out, as well as a five-story parking garage. He was likely going to set up camp in the garage’s third floor, high enough to be an issue for monsters but low enough that Aegis wouldn’t care if he had to jump, without being exposed on the roof. He could control the entry points, enemies had to come from above or below using the ramps and any that came though the sides should be easy to deal with.
Unlike a normal party of people Alex and his golems didn’t need formations. In fact, being spread out was better most of the time, the advantage of mobility and a lack of blind spots combined with supernatural toughness. The open sides of the garage would also allow more direct observation of the city. The scouts, maps, and other documents from Three Groves had made the planning easy. Alex already knew where to send his golems; he had already planned out the route. He was testing his command ‘software’ with this, he was disassociated from his golems it was just like watching a movie through their senses. He had two functional command decks built, one was inside Aegis and the other was a table inside his base. He wanted them to go through the route he set up and perform the actions he needed. He had marked several items for looting, and during the travel he would mark several more.
The party consisted of Eins, the two heavies and his bone golems (Vier, Fünf, Sechs, and Sieben) Zwei and Drei remained with Aegis. The rest of his capacity was taken up by the scouts, it was the same party that took Three Groves plus heavies. He didn’t want to overload himself, so he kept the numbers within his reach. (Four light golems, two heavies and a medium)
He had decent results; the problems came with things like fine manipulation. Looting an entire box or picking up the bodies was easy. It required no more effort than a video game. Open the drawer and loot the contents not so much. Alex had no way of giving the golems the ability to determine or think on their own, a phycologist might say they had a subconscious but not a conscious. No ability to make independent determinations outside of their function. A golem would walk right past valuable items unless told to pick them up, a person would see them and make a decision.
That wasn’t really a problem, he wanted the golems for mass looting, he would deal with the fine details through the direct controls rather than the indirect method he was experimenting with.
The golems first went to the docks, clearing out the buildings nearby. Then they dropped several large rocks to the riverbed, it would suck to find out that it wasn’t dried out only to have his golems jump in and sink. Quicksand was possible, along with a frozen crust covered with dirt over time.
That turned out to be unnecessary, but it wasn’t like it took a lot of time. “It’s only paranoia if they really aren’t out to get you, otherwise it is justifiable caution.” Alex mumbled to himself. As far as he was concerned this whole place was out to get him, therefore he was not paranoid.
The boats didn’t hold anything interesting, not even stuff worth looting. Rotted and rusted to almost nothing, the hulls weren’t worth taking, and any mechanical parts had long since succumbed to time and the elements. The dock buildings hadn’t been any better, not surprising as the town didn’t have much river trade and the docks were for fishermen.
The golems moved on. Alex was almost dancing as they picked up the first golem frame. It took a serious effort to stop from ordering the golems back so he could check it. He did resist, better to complete the mission rather than risk it for something so unnecessary. He was heading for the industrial area to clear out the local golem manufactories. Located on one of the main roads, and concentrated he figured it was the best place to start.
Three dozen additional frames were added to his collection, a good amount of additional equipment. Including some actual enchanting tools, something he didn’t have. A large variety of parts meant to be swapped out, a good number of cores. They were dead and would need mana and time to get the enchantments working, but they were there.
His stocks of gems and crystals were looking much better. Civilian golems were apparently for the rich. They were fancy, with decorative stuff added on. Smaller and less powerful generalist cores were almost overwhelmingly plentiful. Stashes of weapons and armor for golems were in several shops, mostly decorative. Others had what appeared to be intact and potent enchantments.
Unfortunately, and in line with expectations, he couldn’t just activate the frames or the cores. They had some sort of magical locks to prevent theft and misuse. Alex was confident he could get around them… eventually. The frames were mostly in terrible condition, he wouldn’t trust them until he had a chance to get a look, many were going to be complete write offs. He was more interested in what the design and enchantments they had used were, at worst the material wouldn’t go to waste.
Not surprising was the lack of anything active. Too much time had passed for there to be much hope. All in all, a good first day. Alex had searched out and cleared about 1/20 of the area, going slow and being slightly pickier with what he looted. Tools, equipment, and books had a higher priority than many of the fames he saw laying around.
The few bits of resistance were easily crushed. Mostly the scavenger species dogs, spiders and the like. The heavies dealt with these as easily as they had everything else so far.
He would take the time to carefully and systematically clear out most of the city. After the industrial areas was the ‘rich’ part of town, then the shopping centers, administrative locations, and lastly, he would take the time to go through the living areas. Again, he had little hope of clearing the town of monsters but he wanted to get as much as he could from the place.
It wasn’t all good though. There were legitimately worrying places inside the city. At least four dead zones, places that had no activity and worse everything that went there apparently died. They looked like mass graves with the number of skeletons and bodies, the creatures he saw that wondered in never came out, some died immediately. Just fell over dead.
Another part of town had those amphibian things from Crystal Lake, they were new. Or had just started to spread to the surface. Alex figured that there was some kind of underground water way they followed to get here.
The presence of a few of the creatures that had been manning the dam at Crystal Lake made him suspect invasion over the things just being more wasteland nonsense, it felt too coincidental.
~ * ~
Days passed as Alex had his golems scour the city for useful ‘things’. He had mostly accomplished his goal here. A rather large stockpile of goods was beginning to clutter his storage devices to completion, and he hadn’t made enough headway to begin making his own.
His examination of the picked-up frames and the collected cores was improving his crafting by leaps and bounds, almost every time he got to work studying them, he would end up banging his head on the table. Some of it was the methodology used on the cores, others were design changes for the parts. The parts themselves were of dubious usefulness but the information they contained was a true treasure. Equally important were the manuals and guides that came with the golems or had been found in the stores. Just fabulous.
He left the weapons and gear for the golems alone just storing them for now. Some of it might be better than what he had, but he did want to make his own. The practice and reference material being far more valuable than putting them to use, for now anyways.
He had added a halberd to Aegis after seeing them in action, he still had little desire to engage personally but if it happened, he wanted to stack the deck.
A useless but far more important find came from a music shop. Locked in a safe was a book of somewhat specialized magic. Memory magic to be precise. It allowed the user to enter their own memories and transfer them to a crystal. Mostly it was useless because it focused on a very specific type of memory, that being music, reverse engineering the spell for general memory was likely possible but not important.
Memory magic was heavily regulated because it was dangerous, both to society and to the individual. This, however, had been sanitized for civilian purposes. You could record music with perfect recall, as well as images and feelings onto a crystal. The feelings’ part wouldn’t work without a custom setup, the music store hadn’t had one.
Alex wasn’t interested in the feelings part anyways, what he wanted was an ipod/mp3 player. The silence unless he was talking to himself was annoying. Alex pretty much liked all types of music, his preference was for rock, some jazz gave him a headache, and a good chunk of the hard corps rap pissed him off. Classical and opera were ok, had to be in the mood for it.
The biggest problem was that it wasn’t a workshop if some music wasn’t loudly playing while you banged away at a project. Didn’t matter what it was, it was a proven fact that music made the work faster and more efficient (total lie). Just as proven as painting things red made them go faster.
Well regardless the sheer morale boost Alex had when he listened to some of the shop owner’s favorites totally made up the somewhat annoying time, he would spend mastering this magic and the insane number of crystals that would have music videos on them. It was a thing… and it needed to happen. The changes to his to-do list were entirely coincidental. He needed that efficiency bump, he definitely wouldn’t be caught singing and dancing in the workshop, or rocking an air guitar, or drums, or any other imaginary instrument he didn’t know how to play. Probably.