"Perhaps I should have made it smaller after all," Anlal mumbled to himself as he sat alone in his room. Before him, on a mahogany counter, lay a wooden doll the size of his forearm. It lacked a head, with the chest piece making up most of its body. Its limbs were just separate pieces of wood that connected to the chest but could move independently when needed. The wood itself was covered with intricate lines and symbols which had been carved into it, the lines themselves being coated with a silvery powder.

Anlal lifted his hand and pressed the tip of his index finger to the center of the dol's chest, where several of the lines intersected in a circle. A soft glow appeared at his fingertip and slowly seeped into the doll, causing the silver power to emit a weak blue light. The light spread along the lines and when it covered the whole circumference of the doll, it sprang to life. Its arms — which lacked hands and instead had rounded edges — pressed off of the desk and the doll rose to stand on both its legs.

He waved his finger to the right and the doll shakingly followed. To the left, and the doll took a couple of steps to the left.

Anlal nodded his head in satisfaction. It wasn't of the best make, but he could control it as he wanted. The first golem that he created in this new body worked as intended — although its size might pose a problem. He couldn't move this thing around when someone else was nearby, and it was too large for him to hide it in his clothes. He hadn't had many plans for it to begin with — he created it more to assure himself that he could than anything else — but it would be a shame if it didn't come to any use after he spent the last four weeks working on it in secret. He'd been too ambitious when he first began work on it, intending to add a few features which he later realized would be problematic with the materials he had access to. Due to this, he'd made it larger than originally intended.

The doll itself was carved out of the armrest of one of the chairs that he 'accidentally' broke, while he'd used some of the silverware the servants brought for him to eat with to do the actual carving with. The silverware hadn't been sharp — one of the reasons as to why it took him so long to create the doll — and he'd had to have been careful not to arouse suspicion from the servants when silverware started disappearing left and right. Thankfully they didn't have much reason to suspect him of much, and he'd been able to hide both the doll and his 'tools' behind the bed or the mattress depending on the time of day and when the servants cleaned his room.

He'd also spent a painstakingly amount of time grinding the silverware against each other to get enough power to use in the creation of his little golem. The silver hadn't been completely pure, but it was pure enough to work as a low-grade conductor for his mana. Sadly he lacked both the mana capacity and the materials to bind a spirit to the golem and make it completely autonomous. Even a low-grade spirit that couldn't do much more than follow simple commands was too much.

Instead, he'd had to satisfy with using his own mana to control the golem, which — in effect — really made it no more than a child's toy.

But it was still a worthwhile project to have spent his time on. He'd made certain that he could still control his mana as he wanted. Both the dimensional-aligned mana that he used for his ordinary spells — paltry though they may be at the moment — and the neutral-aligned mana that he'd mostly used when creating this particular golem. Now he also knew that his experience and knowledge as an artificer were still applicable in this place and that he wasn't stuck with only using his dimensional magic.

After controlling the little doll and forcing it to move around for almost a full minute, Anlal finally released it from his command. It stopped glowing and fell into a heap on the table. Grabbing it, he walked over to the bed to hide it. One of the servants should arrive sometime soon.

Just performing that small act with the golem had cost him almost a quarter of his mana. It wasn't quite as draining as casting his dimensional spells, but it was still far from practical. It had taken him almost three months just to acclimate this body to the presence of mana inside it, which was why he only recently could begin working on increasing his mana capacity. Sadly, it would take much time before he could come close to the level he was at before his original body had been weakened by the curse that afflicted it.

He'd gone through this process before and had guided some of his disciples through it, so at least he knew how to go through it efficiently. That would save him some time. In his previous life, the size of his mana pool had kept increasing until he was in his thirties. That's when he had reached his capstone and the increase had tapered off somewhat. Although there were others that had more mana than him — everybody's limits differed — he'd been well above the average mage at that point.

From his current estimates, he might be able to reach that point again sometime in his late teens or early twenties — assuming he was diligent in his practice and nothing unexpected happened. Following that estimate, he should be able to use magic more freely in another year or two, although it would still be a while before he could cast any of his more trying spells by himself.

Considering all of this, Anlal laid down on his bed and waited for the servant to come and knock on his door. They still came to check on him now and then during the days, but he'd managed to convince Lady Arndal that he didn't always need someone watching over his shoulders like a hawk. She was a stubborn woman and it had required performances of acting he wasn't particularly proud of, but success was success. It didn't do for him to remember bothersome details.

The woman herself didn't seem too comfortable with the situation, but she was happy enough with his current condition in general that she let things like this go now. She had even decided that it was time to introduce him to the rest of the Arndal family today, which was why he was currently waiting for the servant to come and get him.

While he had originally been slightly averse to the idea of meeting this boy's family already, he'd eventually agreed to it. His control of the language had improved further since his meeting with the Villette girl last month and he had to admit that he'd grown slightly curious as to the rest of this family's members. The only other one he had met was the boys' father when he originally woke up here, but that wasn't much of a meeting.

After ten minutes or so a knock sounded out from the door.

"Young master. The lord and lady call for you." a voice rang through from the other side of the door.

Anlal pulled himself out of his thoughts and got up from bed. It was time to meet the family.