The sudden appearance of the golem had started him and Rick immediately circulated his Mana and readied himself to cast Hot Hands.

‘Is it a sentinel protecting Sol’s study?’ Rick had a worrying thought. The golem was small and stout golem only came up to his knees, but Rick did not let down his guard.

He immediately took crouched his legs and lowered his back, ready to pounce at the first sign of aggression.

But the golem did not move even a bit. Its hollow eye sockets stared back at him motionlessly.

Seeing no movement from the golem, Rick slowly relaxed. He walked around the golem and inspected it. The golem had stubs for its finger and toes and overall had a rough and round appearance.

Without breaking off the spell, Rick slowly reached out with palm towards the golem from behind. If the golem made any advance towards him, all he had to do was to speak the words and cast the spell Hot Hands.

Carefully Rick inched his palm towards the golem’s head. Inching closer, the tip of his palm touched the golem’s head.

At first, nothing happened, but once Rick placed his entire palm on it, the entire body of the golem lit up with runic patterns starting from his palm. There was a soft golden glow emitting from the entire surface.

Rick immediately pulled his hand back startled. But the golem was already activated.

The golem turned around and bent his knee to kneel before him.

Ding

[Congratulations!]

[You have acquired a Common Ranked Earth Core Worker Golem.]

“Wow! That’s amazing!” Rick exclaimed. The golem was not there to hurt him, it had instead sworn loyalty to him.

He felt a wave of exhaustion rush over him, which he assumed due to the final release from all the tension. Rick immediately took out the Lemegeton. He had to make sure he had all the information about golems.

[Golems]

Created by breathing life into an inanimate object. It is created with a spirit-core which forms the basis of its strength. They are obedient creatures with limited sentience.

There are two classes of Golems, worker golems and combat golems.

Worker Golems are created for performing laborious tasks which its creator can delegate it to. Combat golems can be used by the creator for participating in battles but requires a higher cost of production.

There are various ranks of golems determined by the intricacy of the runes, the core and the material used to create it. Higher rank golems have greater sentience and greater efficiency.

[Common ranked golem]

They are the golems created from Grade I spirit beast cores. It can be designed for a low-level combat golem but it is best used as a worker golem.

Common Ranked Golems use the elemental nature of the beast core as the material…

Rick read through the information available and it only now hit him how useful the knowledge of runes would be. It was not just useful for creating talismans; it was even the basis of creating something as wondrous as golems!

Till now most of the things he had achieved were through sheer luck of having stumbled across the Lemegeton, but if he could create a golem army, he could finally claim the power to be his own!

“So how do they work?” Rick murmured while flipping to the next page. He knew that they worked, but it was now in his nature to read all the ‘terms and conditions’ for everything. Besides, this nitpicky nature had come in handy until now, so he had no intentions of dropping it.

The room was well ventilated and enough light spilt into the shack for him to read. He sat on the chair and busied himself with reading everything he could find.

The only sound was that of the rhythmic flipping of the pages. The runes on the golem had faded away and it stayed in the kneeling posture. While Rick was busy reading, Pip woke up and without bothering her ‘mommy’, jumped out of his pocket and trotted out the room.

After a long time, Rick was finally done reading through all the information about golems he could find.

Golem creation was a hard task. He had to craft the runes of spirit beast core allowing it to take the shape he wanted. Generally, even a Common Ranked golem would have about twenty runes on them. Drawing twenty runes on the golf ball sized core itself was a daunting task in itself, but what made it even more complicated was that finding a spirit core itself was a difficult task.

Standing up Rick walked up to the kneeling golem and touched its forehead. Again, the golden rune lines lit up on the body of the golem lit up and the golem came back to life. As the golem titled its head up to look at Rick, a wave of exhaustion overcame him again forcing him to release his touch.

Rick now knew that the exhaustion he felt was from the sudden mana drain required to activate the golem. With his current [Mana] stat he speculated that his limit was only one golem at a time at best.

The golem would draw [Mana] from the host to start functioning. Thereafter it would draw Mana from the surrounding to sustain itself, but Rick would have to maintain a constant connection with the golem which inevitable depended on his [Stamina] stat.

Rick maintained the connection for as long as he could, but less than five minutes later, he exhausted all his mental strength and cut-off the connection. The golem immediately shut back down.

‘Maybe higher tier golems are easier to control,’ he mused knowing full well that higher tier golems would also require greater Mana to activate which he did not have.

“So do you have other secrets?” Rick asked looking at the Signet on his hand. He correctly deduced that Sol had created all the golems with the Signet as the link.

Every golem would need a link with the host to allow it to draw Mana for activation.

Each golem had a rune on it that corresponded to its Owner. This way the golem would only respond to only its owner’s Mana and a random person would not be able to suddenly steal and command the Owner’s golem with just a casual touch.

As Rick tried to catch his breath from the mental fatigue, a notification popped up,

Ding

[Congratulations!]

[You have unlocked the [Concentration] stat due to the continuous exhaustion of mental strength]

“What happened all of a sudden,” Rick mumbled. He touched his right temple to call up the system screen. He first checked the [Concentration] stat.

[Concentration]

It is the quantification of the mental stamina the host has in using Mana expanding tasks.

The base stat for an average human is at ten points

[RICK HANIQUE]

Strength: 12

Stamina: 10.2

Concentration: 16

Perception: 8.1

Vitality: 2.3

Agility: 13.2

Mana: 11

The system would calculate the stats based on the average human before the Heaven’s Dictate. Checking his stats he realized the [Stamina] stat had actually decreased while there was even a new [Concentration] stat as well!

“Oh! That’s handy,” he smiled. With this new calculation, he could determine how much his mage abilities were developing separately from his physical body.

“I need to find a way to increase my Mana and at the same time find more of the spirit beast cores.”

He extended his palm towards the golems and spoke a single word, “Release!”

The earthen body of the golem immediately collapsed and the Earth core landed into his palm. As he looked at the spirit core, a new goal idea was taking shape in his mind. A plan to become stronger on his own strength, to create a golem army!