The noble races are practical. They put their faith in things that can help them.

The Elves, I've heard, worshiped the massive beasts who defend their forests. The Dwarves, from what I've read, had a religious dogma centered around machines and engineering that built their civilization. Humans, perhaps as a result of our more ancient history, have a habit of praying to anything that will help to us. If that happens to be the Lord of Light, or a blue snake living in the middle of the wastes, west of the city?

Who in all the hells am I to judge?

-Unknown

Chapter 37

[Snake Report]

Time is moving along.

I didn't used to care much, but it's really tough to ignore time passing recently.

I've had to toast quite a few wanna-be Dungeon-hunters. Most of them were smart enough to run off.

Some of them were not.

I don't feel nearly as much guilt as I used to, which is worrying. If I had to describe it, I suppose I would say that I am starting to feel a bit like an evil dragon, protecting my giant pile of treasure.

I really do have a pile of treasure. That doesn't help.

Not sure.

Maybe dragons are just misunderstood, and they just want to be left alone.

But, there have been some other recent developments.

The Eastern defenses the Empire had in place over by the evil looking mountains... well, they broke.

Badly.

I think.

I don't get the paper delivered, so I don't know the exact details on what exactly happened, but I do know that I lost over a hundred Golem within the first month.

Tactics were adjusted, hoping that larger groups of Golem would be the answer. Which lead to another fifty or so during the second month ending up destroyed.

Twenty during the third.

Progress, sure, but I could feel them winking out. Their notifications were coming back to me like snapped rubber-bands each and every time, and there were so many battles... it was almost constant.

Recently, there have been some huge conflicts, sometimes involving upwards of fifty Golem at once, against numbers I don't even want to consider.

I am not some reincarnated genius who commanded troops and fought in wars.

Of the human memories I have left, some computer games are pretty much as close as I get to understanding even a little bit of what is needed to deal with entire armies of enemies.

Safe to say we are not winning.

One hundred percent certain we were getting some good hits in, and the Golem are getting better at retreating back for repairs, but we're not winning.

This is just one more reason why humans are awful. Not only do they cause me endless problems, now I'm stuck cleaning up their messes.

Thankfully, it's mostly to my benefit.

Mostly.

Losing Golem left and right is not good, but there's no better way to grind skills than combat. And each rank increase improves all my Golem in one swoop.

They're quite clever, now.

My mining teams and I were forced to repurpose our work for effectiveness. We had to take a few days to adjust, and we were outpaced by the losses early on, but as the ability continued to advance, things started to flatten out. As replacements were built, we started to catch back up, and are now poised to overtake.

A main shaft down the center of the spiral hall had to be carved out. I plotted the opening near the sanctuary and multiple pulley systems had to be put into place.

It's a good shortcut.

Deeper mining was consistently reaping greater rewards, but with Earth Magic I could only manually do things while I was physically present. It required constant attention, and was keeping me from being able to work elsewhere.

The Golem mining crews seem to know solutions to basic problems. After a quick demonstration and a few basic orders, things were moving quickly.

[Greater Sentient Golem: Rank 46]

Each rank up helps a bit more, making them just a little more capable. They know a lot about random subjects I honestly don't. The skill must give them access to the information somehow.

Unfortunately, it seems that "Greater" is as far as this Skill is allowed to advance. At least, for the moment.

Improvements are constant, so I remain optimistic even if we have to push this skill into the triple digits. Eventually, it should shift to something even better.

Probably.

I've yet to run into a skill that's completely capped out. Even my Earth Magic can still increase, though it's not quickly.

Unlike Earth Magic, the Golem Skill is basically a group effort. With hundreds of teams out hunting trouble, the rank increases are steady. Overall strategies have shifted, too. I found some recent success with most of their numbers being focused in the areas near and around the highways. These areas draw in monsters and Constructs like moth to flame, and both are always looking to attack human convoys that travel along them. Which, in turn, is providing a reliable ambush opportunity for the Golem to strike, and a wealth of experience and materials.

Stolen Construct cores, for example. If I break them down into fine powder and repurpose them, and they can be recombined into functional* Golem cores.

(* = The Golems created this way immediately try and murder me, but early results are promising and experiments are ongoing)

Monsters are less useful, but some do have small cores similar to what I've been able to mine in the Dungeon, only with a far greater density of mana. Using these harvested cores when creating Golem has, thankfully, not lead to problems.

At least, not yet.

Due to results with Construct cores, some extensive testing was applied. Far as I can tell, these monster cores are safe. Just in case, though, the units are limited to operating the mining and pushing carts. Always with a normal Golem in close proximity.

But every functional Golem helps.

Current forces are finally recovering, and the number is ticking up bit by bit by the day. Presently, there are around four hundred Golem, and I'm hoping to have another four hundred in a month. The mining operations are really what this all hinges on, and even as successful as that's been, these numbers still might not be enough.

[Holy Ground: Rank 20]

No longer a "Lesser."

It's a weird ability. One of the few left behind by the Large Frog God, it's been the easiest besides the Golems to improve. I've been trying to expand with it, and have found it really just soaks up mana, so I've had to be cautious not to overdo things.

As the skill increased, I figured out there are some tricks which make it useful.

Whenever something happens in my "Territory" I know about it.

Simple as that.

If a monster walks in, or if a human shoots an arrow and it lands in the dirt: anything like that I know right away. Almost like having extra senses, they're improving the higher the ability ranks.

Any magic I use within my territory seems to use a little less mana, too. As far as I can tell, it acts almost like a mana stockpile that builds up overtime, so it's not more efficient, but it helps cover the cost. So, this is good for helping increase the number of Golems, as I tend to use a lot of mana in the process.

It's a nice and unexpected bonus.

I'm guessing there is an upper limit to how much mana I can drag out of the soil this way, but I don't think I've come close to it yet. The indirect nature of it means that I have to run my own reserves empty to even try, and that would be dangerous when there's so many things trying to kill me.

The point I was trying to make, though, is that when something passes through the range of the [Holy Ground] ability, I know about it. Because of that, I've been hyper-aware that there are an increasing number of earthquakes.

Big ones, deep beneath the surface. They rumble through like storms, every day.

I think the Dungeon is shifting around, and I doubt the result of it doing so is going to be good for me. Best guess is that there's some sort of major attack on the way.

Which is trouble, because I'm not nearly as prepared for that as I'd like to be.

It doesn't help that the rest of my "Inheritor" abilities are still basically useless, either.

[Lesser Miracle: Rank I] - Granted by [INHERITOR] title.

[Lesser Possession: Rank I] - Granted by [INHERITOR] title.

[Lesser Divine Blessing: Rank VII] - Granted by [INHERITOR] title.

[Lesser Future Sight: Rank I] - Granted by [INHERITOR] title.

[Lesser Eyes of Familiar: Rank III] - Granted by [INHERITOR] title.

That's a lot of stuff in the list, but none of it has been helpful.

Miracle doesn't seem to work. If it does something, I've got not clue what. Guessing it's a super-heal, but I'm not inclined to hurt myself badly enough to find out and Golem are not good test subjects because they're not alive. Well, not made out of flesh.

Possession seems to be a total dud. I don't even want to go into detail on the experiment I tried with a captured spider. Attempting it on the Golems did nothing.

Divine Blessing doesn't seem to do anything. It's been increasing, but I have no idea why. Which is strange.

Future Sight might work, but I'm not sure how to use it. All it does is give me a headache.

Lesser Eyes of the Familiar...

Well.

It works.

I don't know how to use it well, but it does work.

Just imagine if you could, randomly, see from the eyes of a frog.

Any frog.

Anywhere in the world.

What an amazing power.

Only problem? I mean that literally: any frog.

Any.

In the entire world.

I can't figure out how to get it to choose one I want.

So, it's the stupidest one by far.

I'd been hoping to use it on my Golem, as they're shaped like frogs, but I've had no success, and it's not fun to have a hard perspective shift each time I use the ability to some random place. It leaves me feeling distracted and vulnerable.

The only other point of note, is that the [Spirit Attendant] ability has increased.

It's now listed as [Greater Spirit Attendant: Rank I]

Which has me a bit worried.

I don't know how that could be possible, and I'm a little concerned that [Voice of Gaia] is trying to feed me false info.

That could be dangerous, if that really is what's happening.

I've had a lot of time to think about these things, considering the Golem crews are able to mostly work without me. All I have to do is take a few hours of my day to stamp out more of them with the available materials. So, apart from that, I've been trying to take some time to cool my head.

Which means either watering the tree, or try to fix Gorf's core.

Rocky survived pretty much by luck. His core was in deep and they didn't get close enough to it. Given more time, I think they would have, but the humans stopped after they broke all his limbs off and rendered him helpless.

Gorf wasn't so lucky. He and the others were blasted open by some sort of long-range spell, and then finished off with a hammer.

Unlike the others, he was so bulky, he almost survived.

Almost.

All of his core's pieces were still contained inside his chest, which was not the case for the rest.

I have these pieces back in place exactly how they were before. I just can't figure out how to easily put them back as one whole piece.

Cores don't respond well to Earth magic.

If they did, I could probably solve the Construct problems with ease. Unfortunately, they're extremely resistant to my tampering.

I can interact, a little, but the amount of mana it takes is just... not reasonable. If I'm running my tank empty trying to merge some pieces together... safe to say I've got a lot of other uses for mana at the moment. I need a better solution, or a heck of a lot of patience.

Of course, the only methods I've found for success with are starting from scratch.

Which is not what I want for Gorf.

A new brand new Golem would not be the same "him." So I've been opting for the patience route.

This is a project I keep coming back to.

I couldn't save Imra.

Every single day I think about it, and every single day it makes me furious.

I couldn't save her. All I can do is take care of the tree that marks her grave.

Gorf, though, I just might.

One piece at a time.

Sliver by sliver.

This core is going to get put back together.

I am going to rebuild him.

Faster, better, stronger.

I have the technology.

And I'm thinking big.