Capra waded slowly through the tall grass of the forest until he spotted a [Blue Moon Rabbit] not too far ahead of him.

“Found you.” Capra whispered, as he slowly began the hand motions for [Chaos Bolt].

The rabbit was only five or six meters away from Capra when it perked up its ears to listen, but it heard nothing and continued to nibble on some grass.

This particular [Blue Moon Rabbit] was strange to look at. Different parts of its body seemed to have gone through separate natural disasters. The hairs on its front paw were fluffed, the fur on its back was scorched, its head was dripping water, and its tail was covered in dirt.

Its condition led one to believe that it had either fought a squad of multi-elemental mages, or had one too many run-ins with a [Chaos bolt]... but as Capra finished his incantation it soon proved to be the latter,

“Chaos Bolt!” Capra shouted, and the rabbit immediately dashed away— but it hadn’t reacted quickly enough. The combined momentum of its run and the [Chaos Bolt] sent it hurtling through the air a few meters before it crashed into a tall pile of grass.

System Notification: Chaos Bolt inflicts 23 electric damage.

System Notification: You have slain [Blue Moon Rabbit]. Awarding Exp..

Capra had been hunting for close to an hour and a half now, and this was the 20th [Blue Moon Rabbit] he had killed. After every kill Capra would meticulously skin the rabbit, and by this point Capra had become rather efficient at the task. Whereas before it took him roughly two minutes to skin a single rabbit, now he could do it in one— so Immediately after the beast died Capra went to work on skinning it.

So far –with the exception of the first [Blue Moon Rabbit] – all the remaining rabbits had provided Capra with normal hides and meat once skinned— which was a nice boost to his [Beginner Skinning Mastery]. In fact, Capra calculated that with his last kill he’d level up his [Beginner Skinning Mastery], and as he put away his harvest the system chimed in verifying his estimate.

System Notification: You have successfully skinned [Blue Moon Rabbit]. [Proficiency gained]: 5.

System Notification: Beginner Skinning Mastery (level 0) becomes Beginner Skinning Mastery (level 1)

Awarding +1 Dexterity.

“Good.”

Capra stood up. He was done hunting and skinning for now, so he stretched and made his way through the tall grass.

Not too far from Capra was a big boulder, it was about two and a half meters tall and behind the boulder was a deep chasm.

This was a special area Capra had found while hunting Blue Moon rabbits.

Although the rabbits were lazy creatures, they would become very aggressive when awake, so Capra needed a safe zone to avoid encountering too many at once, he had marked out potential safe zones in his data log but eventually he settled on the boulder. He also made note of where there were any rabbit warrens because by knowing where a rabbit warren was Capra could spawn camp [Blue Moon Rabbit]s if he wanted to.

The boulder was safe to rest on because the rabbits couldn’t reach its top. As an added bonus there were several [Blue Moon Rabbit] warrens nearby, and Capra could use the boulder to engage the rabbits safely or retreat at will. He also discovered that some rabbits would come close enough that he could attack them from the boulder without fear of repercussion, but of course the creatures weren’t so stupid that they’d just let themselves be killed. Well, not all of them anyways.

After walking out of the tall grass, Capra immediately climbed up the boulder and sat on it. The boulder gave him a good view of the forest; however, Capra had to be cautious because the chasm behind it proved to be a considerable safety risk.

Once while resting from his hunt Capra decided to test the chasms depth.

He found a fairly large rock, played with its weight by tossing it up and down for a while, and then he threw it down the chasm and waited. A minute passed… then two… then three…

Time slowly trickled by, but the rock never hit anything and the resulting silence gave Capra all the information he needed to know.

But that was neither here nor there.

Capra took out a piece of rabbit hide, and a piece of rabbit meat. He raised his hand, and magic sparked to life above his palm as he cast [Enchant]. It was time to begin his tests.

…

In the early days of Chaos and Fame when players were still learning about enchanters, many big guilds and the corporations that backed them ran tests on the basic [Enchant] spell. The goal of these tests was to discover if material quality affected the resulting enchantment, and to determine the limits of what could and could not be enchanted.

In the beginning the guilds didn’t invest much. They would give enchanters some copper, silver, and gold bars, and the enchanters would do whatever they could with the aforementioned metals while writing down the results.

Reports included tales of copper bars sprouting feet and walking away, or the occasional silver bar gaining an intelligence boost it could do nothing with, and sometimes a gold bar would catch flames. These effects — with the exception of the copper bar that sprouted feet— were fairly standard, although the guilds had no idea how to replicate them.

Still the guilds persisted, and even increased their funding.

It was the non-standard outcomes that made the guilds put a much heavier focus on enchanting. Once, a guild enchanter had managed to give a copper bar the properties of a gold bar. It was an interesting enchantment, simply titled [Act like Gold].

[Act like Gold]: This item will behave as if it is made of gold.

When tested, the guilds found that the copper bar behaved as gold would under heat, pressure, or if used to form an electrical conduit. This actually wasn’t very useful, but it gave them hope. What if there was an enchantment called [Look like Gold]? Or [Act like titanium]. How powerful would a guild become if all their nooby copper weapons looked like gold, but were as strong as titanium?

That idea propelled the guilds to invest far more heavily into enchanting. They were determined to crack the code and this became the first cold war of the Chaos and Fame era.

As the cold war progressed the guilds became more and more desperate. They had made very few discoveries, and overinvestment had left many of them in dire financial straits. The cold war was becoming a battle of attrition, and nobody wanted to lose.

Eventually, an enchanter succeeded in making a piece of silver as hard as titanium, but once again, this effect could not be replicated, and when the guilds discovered that basic materials didn’t seem to affect the consistency of the [Enchant] spell they decided to go down a darker road.

There was no rule that said that guilds or players had to use inorganic material for enchanting, but up till this point in time that’s what the guilds had done. It was natural after all, most people frowned at the thought of dissecting or enchanting a corpse, but the guilds no longer would.

They decided they would begin using hides, corpses, and a mix of inorganic material and organic material to enchant with.

Through their experiments the guilds learned that material quality – be it organic or inorganic – could and would affect the results of an enchantment. The stronger the base materials were, the stronger the resulting enchantment would be. This was particularly true about materials from higher level monsters; however, the guilds still had no control over the enchanting process... and as a result two guild cities were lost.

The Fedock guild had managed to patent an enchanting method which allowed them to create intelligent golem cores. Golemancers already had the magic necessary to create golems, but the golems they made had to be directed and controlled. The enchantment they discovered removed that issue.

The enchantment was called [Autonomy].

[Autonomy]: This item has been granted a will.

The [Autonomy] spell didn’t give golem cores the ability to move on their own, but it gave them the ability to think, respond, or react to circumstances if they were properly equipped. To make use of this enchantment golemancers would place cores into empty golem husks, and before the golem core could gain control of the husk, the golemancers would cast [Forge Golem]— melding all the materials together and binding said materials to their will.

This resulted in the creation of highly intelligent golems under the control of a golemancer.

As a result the Fedock guild became very powerful. The golems they made behaved like NPCs, and these golems only grew more powerful and intelligent with time and caster levels.

Later as the Fedock guild grew in power they attempted to make the ultimate golem in order to maintain their advantage over other guilds. In order to do this they used the corpse of a raid boss called [Goliath]. A giant thunder wielding ape.

They equipped Goliath’s Corpse with precious metals and alloys, and when everything was ready they enchanted the necessary golem core and socketed it into Goliath’s chest… but that was when disaster struck.

A golem core was like a heart and a brain all in one. If the core was destroyed then the golem was destroyed, so to avoid giving the Goliath golem any glaring weaknesses the Fedock guild invested a third of their guild’s yearly income into making the golem core.

The Fedock guild had long since discovered that the will given to a golem core by the [Autonomy] enchant was dependant on location, circumstances, and materials used. The first golem husk to be equipped with an enchanted golem core assimilated the golem husk very slowly, and afterwards it adopted a very gentle demeanor.

A few more tests showed differing results. Sometimes the golems would assimilate their husks and become very prideful. They would become so prideful in fact, that they would go off on their own and do whatever they wanted to and in the worst case scenarios they would become outright hostile and have to be put down; however, the [Forge Golem] spell corrected all of these defects, so the guild stopped researching into the effects a golem husk would have on the developing personality of a golem core.

That was a fatal mistake.

…

The Goliath corpse –unbeknownst to the Fedock guild – contained the the hate and resentment of Goliath. In a way it was like the rabbit Capra had hunted, but far more powerful, and far more deadly.

Fedock has assumed that the golem core they created would assimilate into Goliath’s corpse slowly, but they had used very valuable materials to make it, and the instance it gained [autonomy] a monster was born.

The golem assimilated Goliath’s corpse almost instantly and despite just being born it was fiercely intelligent. It killed all the golemancers on the scene and freed the enslaved golem cores within its reach.

Fedock tried to fight back, but they had given it a body that was too strong, and its golem core had been made nigh invulnerable. It retained all of Goliath’s abilities like [Seismic Stomp], [Hell Gaze], and [Mountain crusher], but it also gained new abilities of its own. Among its abilities, it was exceptionally adept at communicating with other golem cores. It could gain control of, or free a golem core from hostile control easily and this made it the natural enemy of all golemancers. It was a predator, unleashed in a city full of its favorite prey.

It used its power to turn wave after wave of golems against their masters, and in a matter of days Fedock became a ghost city.

The being titled itself Denedra, and with the immense capacity for growth given to it by the [autonomy] enchant, it became impossible to fight against. Fedock attempted to fight it several times, but each defeat was worse than the last, and eventually their guild city had to be abandoned.

With time Denedra gained the capacity to make golems of its own, and to improve its body, and because of that the City of Fedock became a lost and ever expanding territory. Many excursions have been made to reclaim it, but none have succeeded to date.

Suffice to say that enchantments involving the presence of anything organic had a way of turning on the enchanter... and that was exactly what Capra was intending to do.