Clover wheeled through the empty halls of the hospital, reliving his memories of the first night of the apocalypse. So much had changed - he barely recognized himself anymore.

He almost laughed at how terrified he had been to fight that first Bone Rat. The small injured monster was nothing compared to what he had to face now. As he was now, he could probably end that fight in a couple seconds with [Mana Bolt].

That went for anything else that could still be lurking in the hospital. Earlier a group had cleared all the monsters out of the buildings. Of course, their work wasn’t fool proof; there could still be a few monsters lurking. It was unlikely for there to be anything dangerous left in the hospital other than the tree, but Clover had a plan to deal with that specific nuisance.

Even if he did meet a monster in these dark halls, he was prepared. With his last remaining golem by his side, Clover felt confident in his ability to handle himself.

Retracing his original path, he slowly made his way back to his room in the hospital. On the way, he passed the house that had been awkwardly teleported into the hallway. He smiled. This was where he had hidden from that strange Bone Rat, and where he had eventually found the flimsy knife he used to kill the aforementioned monster.

Still, the mystery of intelligent monsters was at large - what made them so different? Why had that first Bone Rat completely ignored him? What had it been searching for? There weren’t any clear answers to either of those questions.

He continued down the disjointed hall, noting how the effects of the System’s seemingly nonsensical reshuffling of reality were more pronounced here. Random objects were periodically scattered across the floor, and a blender was wedged in one of the many holes in the wall. It was shocking how much he had missed on his initial journey with Claire. Compared to now, he had been practically blind. His increased Perception made that big of a difference.

Finally, he passed a familiar desk and reached his hospital room. He didn’t particularly want to go in, but he needed to get the charger for his wheelchair. He didn’t have a choice; running out of battery wasn’t an option. He wasn’t yet at the Level where he could overcome his lack of mobility. Clover took a deep breath and opened the door.

The room was almost exactly how he remembered it, minus seven unsightly additions to the floor design. Tree branches possessively wrapped around his bed, covering it in a canopy of bright green leaves and thorns. On the ground, the broken and twisted corpses of seven Bone Rats rotted, killed by the mysterious tree for daring to approach. Luckily, it seemed the magical tree had worked out all its aggression on the monsters because it did not immediately attack him. Which was quite the improvement compared to last time.

His wheelchair charger rested in the back corner of the room, further than he was willing to venture. Fortunately, he had come prepared. Clover fished a bar of chocolate out of his pocket and handed it to his golem. Everyone liked chocolate - it was a fact. So, with that information in mind, he figured he could appease the monster with an offering. Well, he wasn’t sure if the tree was a monster. It didn’t have a blue box over its head. But the basic principles of the matter still stood.

Bob the Elephant grabbed the treat with his trunk and trotted into the room. At the same time, Clover kept his distance, ready to retreat at a moment's notice. Last time, the plant hadn’t been able to move very quickly, but he didn’t want to take any chances. Worst case scenario, he would run away and find a charger somewhere else.

As the elephant-golem placed the candy bar on the floor, the tree’s branches stirred to life, curling toward the interloper into its domain. Leafy wooden tendrils crept forward and curiously snatched the chocolate bar. Investigative, it shook the chocolate bar up and down, trying to figure out what Clover had given it.

After poking and prodding it, mirroring Clover’s rigorous scientific testing methods, the monster determined the strange square wasn’t a threat. Branches parted, and a hole in the thorny cocoon surrounding his old bed formed. The tree placed the gift under the sheets next to his phone. Then it sealed the barrier, hiding its possessions behind a layer of green.

That greedy bastard stole my phone! Clover internally fumed - the next time he saw the damn tree he’d burn it down. Unable to retrieve his prized possession, Clover sent his damaged golem to the corner of the room to retrieve the charger.

On the way, he noticed the clock hanging on the wall. Like before, it was cracked down the center, with its hands frozen at midnight, eternally marking the precise time the System descended. However, with his increased Perception, he could now see that the clock hands jittered slightly. The time on the clock would creep forward as normal, and then it would violently slam back a fraction of a second on the clock face whenever the hands were about to reach twelve.

The clock was truly peculiar, but he didn’t have time to inspect it further because the task ahead required his full attention. Besides, the clock was probably just broken by the System’s initial reshuffling of reality.

He fumbled about, remotely controlling Bob the Elephant's trunk. Really, it was harder than it sounded to pull a charger out of an outlet with an elephant appendage.

Finally, it came free.

Congratulations! Golem Control has reached Level 10.

“Well, thanks for not eating me,” Clover politely said to the tree. He waved as he rushed out of the room, not wanting to push his luck any further.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the tree’s leaves vibrating. A wave of mental force swept across his mind, infecting him with a familiar tiredness. He wanted to sleep. It felt like he was in a cozy bed, nestled under warm sheets. Involuntarily, he slumped in his chair.

His heart pounded, flooding his veins with adrenaline, not letting him fall asleep. With much less difficulty than before, he blinked and shook off the effect. Practicing repelling the corrupting ice that fought to destroy his golems prepared him surprisingly well for dealing with mental effects.

Clover shut the door and rushed down the hallway, away from the threat. He promised himself that when he had fully recovered, he would deal with the tree. It was too dangerous to be kept alive. Though a part of him was weirdly reluctant to agree with that plan of action.

Without much fanfare, he entered the parking lot and rejoined his group. They sat around a grill, cooking up some chicken and chatting. Most of the perishable food needed cooking - either to be eaten right away or to extend its shelf life. As the group that brought back the food, they got first dibs on it. The perks of being successful.

“Welcome back; did you find what you were looking for?” Jeb asked.

Clover nodded. “And some things I wasn’t looking for, too.” He held up a tennis ball. He wasn’t sure why he had picked it up from the hallway, but he felt compelled to do so. It would be a waste to just leave it there.

Claire handed him a plate full of chicken. “If you were looking for food: here’s some. I made it myself.”

Clover stared at it, counting the pieces. He grinned. The life-threatening task of retrieving the food had earned him four chicken legs, penciling out to a rate of one chicken leg per hour of dangerous work. Not exactly a good return on investment. But that wasn’t a completely fair calculation; they had brought back enough food to feed a small army. Along with what the other groups had brought back, they should stay well-fed for a good while.

He bit into the slightly burnt and unseasoned meat. It was the best chicken he ever had.

He simply sat around the grill for a while, talking and eating. But, however satisfied he felt, he couldn’t bring himself to fully enjoy the moment. The incessant need to progress ate at him, constantly nipping at the back of his mind.

He excused himself as a group of workers constructed a more industrial grilling setup.

…

“Clover, check this out,” Adam said as a golem made of wood and stone rolled up to him. Clover raised an eyebrow; the pale child had certainly chosen a strange design. A smooth wooden wheel with intricate axles connected to a pair of meaty stone arms in the center of the structure. He wasn’t sure if it could be classified as a sculpture anymore.

Clover put down the sculpture he was working on and poked the finished golem.

“I followed your advice, but even when I gave my sculptures names, they didn’t jump up to Uncommon. But then I had an idea: What if I mixed two different materials together. After twenty hours of working at it, I finally got it to work,“ Adam excitedly explained. “What do you think?”

Well, it was a totally out-of-the-box design - nothing like what he had expected the boy to make. Just looking at the thing was giving him ideas for new golems - some latent creative power leaking off on him.

“It’s super cool; it must have been quite a challenge to force such an exotic design on the System.” He scratched his neck; for his first time making a golem, it was impressive that Adam could fight off the corrupting ice well enough to let such a strange design go through. Or, he could have let the System do all the work - that was also possible. “Oh, and how fast can it roll?” he added, almost as an afterthought.

“Kind of fast.” The mixture of wood and stone clumsily rolled around, using its arms to push itself faster and faster. The golem wobbled a bit, then stopped. “I’m still not good at controlling it yet. And actually, it wasn’t that hard to make. When I took direct control, only a snowflake or two fell.”

“What?” Even making a basic golem had initially been a struggle for him - the corrupting ice’s assault had been relentless and constant.

“There was practically no ice.” Adam tapped his fingers. “It’s not like I got a totally better deal than you. I barely can see the tethers you talked about - they disappear once they get a couple inches away from me.”

Clover’s mind raced. Were their Skills somehow different? Did their choice in Sub-Skills cause a divergence in the reward for completing the Class Skill? No, that wasn’t the case. After comparing blue boxes, they found that the System’s description of their Skills was exactly the same.

Strange. It seemed Clover had encountered another oddity - a shocking amount in one day. After talking for a while longer, they didn’t come to a concrete conclusion. It was a mystery why [Golem Creation] operated differently between the two of them. Though, the conversation did reveal an interesting fact: it was possible to reverse and stack the effects of [Softening].

Somehow the idea to try something like that had never occurred to him. Now that he knew, he was eager to test it out if the same held true for [Hardening]. Clover certainly hoped it did.

The two said their goodbyes, and Clover returned his focus to his golems. Since he had returned from lunch, he had made two, a dog-golem, bordering on the limits of small, and a tiny bird. He had also repaired a majority of the damage done to Bob the Elephant. It was slow work, but it was something he had to do.

His conversation with Adam had brought up a lot of questions, and after thinking on the matter for a moment, it became apparent that magic worked differently for different people. Paul’s Bing, Bong, Bang method didn’t work for him, and naming sculptures didn’t work for Adam. Determined to get to the bottom of this conundrum, or at least make a start, Clover closed his eyes and located the blue tethers binding him to his golems.

Without any strong leads to go off of, he simply sat and observed the connections, noting their appearance and their slight movements. Out of the three, Bob the Elephant’s connection was the thickest - a darker shade of blue. Whether that was because the elephant-golem had existed for longer or because it was a higher rarity than the others he wasn’t sure.

The link connecting him to the dog-golem twitched again. He chose that for his next target for observation. He watched for a while, learning its patterns and movements. Under his careful attention, he noted that the connections were a two-way street. Of course, they were predominantly used for him to send orders to his golems, but whispers of information followed back toward him, as well. He listened carefully, delving his consciousness into the tether. The whisper turned into a song. Obscured by a rolling static, similar to what he had seen and heard in his dream, the movements of energy within the tether painted a picture of the golem’s surroundings.

Using that weird sense exclusive to golems - a mix of sight, touch, and echolocation, he felt about finding a shoe connected to a leg. He opened his eyes. Oh, it was his shoe.

Congratulations! Golem Link has reached Level 7.

Clover closed his eyes and returned to the link, listening to its song once more. It was flighty and delicate; if he pushed too hard, it would fade away. Slowly he improved, growing more adept at sensing the golem’s immediate surroundings.

Congratulations! Golem Link has reached Level 8.

Congratulations! Golem Link has reached Level 9.

As the range and detail at which he could sense things increased, different flavors of Mana revealed themselves to him. Of course, there were the lines of magic coursing through the golems themselves - they were the easiest to sense. Cold and electric, they were amicable to his touch and machine-like in their work.

On the other hand, the Mana in the air eluded his weak and imprecise observation. Whenever he felt he had a handle on it, it would suddenly change, hiding itself away in an indistinct mass of possibility. One moment it was hot, the next, it was cold - an endless mess of contradictions.

Congratulations! Golem Link has reached Level 10.

Congratulations! Golem Link has reached Level 11.

Congratulations! Golem Link has reached Level 12.

Clover expanded his view, pushing his mental faculties to the limit by listening to the song of all three tethers at once. He grappled with the strain as a synergistic effect appeared. The rippling waves of feedback the golems emitted bounced off each other, forming a more complete picture. Slowly, he adapted, his senses sharpening further.

He practiced maneuvering his golems around simple obstacles without opening his eyes. As they got farther away, the difficulty increased, but if they were near, it was a very much doable task.

Congratulations! Golem Link has reached Level 13.

Congratulations! Golem Link has reached Level 14.

Congratulations! Golem Link has reached Level 15.

At this level of proficiency, he found that he could copy the golem’s way of perceiving the world and have the touch-aura effect originate from his body. Though, it was much more difficult to do. It required his complete concentration to only catch a glimpse of his surroundings.

He frowned as he blindly felt around in the dark.

At first, he doubted what he sensed; after all, he didn’t feel cold in the slightest. But as he took a metaphorical second and third look, he was forced to accept what he saw. Jagged chunks of ice-cold Mana, identical to what appeared when he manually used [Golem Creation], hunted at his edges, roughly pressing down on him. He gulped.

The world, or at least a portion of the Mana in the atmosphere was actively trying to remove him from existence like an unnatural golem. So far, it had been unsuccessful, blocked by an almost imperceptible barrier, but who knew how long that would last. Knowing his luck, not long enough. This couldn’t be normal.

Congratulations! Golem Link has reached Level 16.

Congratulations! Golem Link has reached Level 17.

*New Skill Created!*