“Básicamente, tu dibujas símbolos que representan un concepto, en este caso la radiación, le añades magia, y entonces los símbolos cambian esa magia a un efecto”

I was showing the nephilim how to do runic enchanting first, since he said that trying to teach me golemancy would probably take a while. Next I tried to demonstrate how runic enchanting worked, changing the radiation rune. First, I made lines spiral outward from the radioactive symbol, making it similar to the sign newscasters use to represent hurricanes, with the radioactive symbol as the “eye” of the storm. Next, I copied the rune on the other side of the spearhead, reversing the direction the arms spiral in.

“Nuclear Aether Storm Spear: this spear, based on the aether blight spear, was modified to become more viable against that which is resistant to radiation. It no longer gives the irradiated debuff, instead the spearhead cloaks itself in nuclear fire, giving the radiation burn debuff as well as dealing extra fire damage against targets. This fire damage pierces through effects that grant resistance to fire damage, however immunity still prevents half damage”

A quick flourish later and the spearhead was covered in a raging blaze of multicolored fire. Oh look, I leveled up runic enchanting. Wait, fuck my feat points were at 69 and I didn’t get to make a joke about it...

“Entiendes?”

The nephilim nodded his head, seeming to contemplate how to use this knowledge.

“Como le añades la magia?”

Ah, almost forgot that part. I showed him the x2 rune, explaining my theory on how magic came from the potentiality of information, and how that rune meant either 1 or negative 1. It appears that quadratic álgebra may have taken a bit longer than expected to explain, but he did understand it pretty well, for someone who was born in the medieval period.

“Increíble, usted a pensado directamente en el origen de magia, en vez de enfocarte en sus usos…”

“Gracias?”

To be honest I was raised to think like a scientist, trying to figure out where something comes from first to figure out where it can go. It always worked well for humanity, helping us find ways to do things better instead of blindly following only what’s directly in front of us.

Anyway, next was learning golemancy!

“Para animar a un golem, primero escribes una oración de instrucción pidiendo que quieres que hará el golem. En el caso de los guardianes que encontraste, su oración pidió que ‘defendieran estas tierras de cualquier cosa que salga de esa puerta, destruyendo lo impuro como una flecha disparada por un arco celestial’. Esto causó que ellos atacarán cualquier cosa que salga de esa puerta, acercándose y brincándole. La parte difícil del proceso es la oración de animación, cual se necesita para que el golem se anime y actué la oración de instrucción”

The nephilim then molded a small figure from dirt, writing a word on its chest with a stick. After word he began the prayer of animation

“O dios misterioso, el todo y el único, el principio y el final, el alfa y el omega, digna a esta imitación de tu creación con aliento, para que trate de llegar a su hogar celestial”

And then the little figure began to jump repeatedly…

“Aquí escribí la oración de instrucción como ‘brincar’. Esto es una oración muy simple, así que la oración de animación también puede ser simple. Lo más importante de la oración de animación es el número de los títulos de dios que llegas a usar, y como la unes a la oración de instrucción. En este caso el ‘llegar a su hogar celestial’ se refiere al acto de brincar”

I noticed a few things from that demonstration. The energy needed to animate a golem is proportionate to the complexity of its programming, that they use what is effectively a very high level programming language, and perhaps most interesting of all, it seemed very similar to runic enchanting. I hypothesized that the “titles of god” served a similar purpose to my own mana generating runes, with the later half of the prayer connecting the magic to the golem itself.

Of course I began an experiment of my own. I summoned up an earthen figurine using elementalism, typing rock onto its forehead and ‘follow Aether Cael’ as its instructions.

“By all of the solutions to the cubic root of x to the power of four, animate golem: rock”

I thanked the nephilim for what he taught me and walked away…

The golem followed.

On my way back to the main fantasy part of the dungeon, I came across even more guardians, this time they let me past without issue even though they had the same programming as the last ones. In hindsight, they’re programmed to attack anything that comes out of the gate. Once I was inside the gate, I began to alter the programming a bit. This time, instead of a sentence, I made it more of a flowchart, this time designing a combat protocol. It had 4 basic moves, approach, sidestep, retreat, and strike. It would repeat these moves semi-arbitrarily, with each move having a given chance of being selected dependent on the circumstances, namely distance from the opponent, the opponents reach, the damage it has taken, the damage the opponent has taken, and its position relative to obstacles around it. For each situation, it would act out a different sequence, recording which sequence works best and remembering that for later. This should, theoretically, allow it gain experience in combat. Powering it up, I decided to try training. I designated myself as an enemy. It tried punching me from much farther than its little arms could reach, and it was adorable. Then it tried backpedaling, sidestepping and finally approaching. Then it struck, which I blocked with the shaft of my spear. Then I poked it back, and it tried to approach again and start attacking. It seemed to be forming a neural network, checking if it could reach me before attacking, approaching and attacking. When I raised my spear this time, it actually sidestepped right before the spear hit, and I received a very strange message from prognosticator…

“Combat mastery skill has evolved into Combat Master by the users creation”

I’m not entirely sure how, but creating that program for the golem seemed to affect my own skills. The changed skill had an identical description, so I don’t know what exactly happened. I did notice that the various things I wrote on the golem were changed, going from the elaborate flowchart to a square labeled “combat protocol”. Beginning the training again, the golem was much more skilled. I actually had to block more and more, occasionally pushing it back. I began to notice a small outline of the golem, predicting what move it would make. Then I moved to counter that, and the golem changed his move in response, which I then moved to counter, which then prompted it to change its approach, etc…

eventually I moved a bit too late, allowing the golem to land a solid hit to my gut. And then this happened…

“Unarmed combat mastery level 1 unlocked, combat master skill leveled up”

The golem unlocked a skill for me. At least I assume it was a golem, since I certainly wasn’t fighting unarmed…

So I made a few training weapons out of the stone, as well as using my stealth skills to sneak past the guardians and grab some wood and plant fibers. A sword, some daggers, an axe, a bow and arrow, a shield, a hammer and a halberd. I grabbed one weapon, and the golem was handed another, and we sparred for a while. Soon enough, I got the mastery skill for both weapons, and then went onto the others. By the end of it, I noticed that no matter what weapon it was, they had several similarities between them, very obvious similarities. Namely, hit the other guy with the pointy bits, hit them where they’re vulnerable, and hit them hard. It was knowing how to do that with the weapon in your hands where mastery lied. Right before we got to sparring with the last set of weapons, we were interrupted by some unexpected guests.

An almoravid war party. They were armed with maces, whose heads were shaped like cubes, the faces bent inwards to make the edges and points jut outwards and deal maximum damage. Looks like there was a reason for the guardians beyond this door.

On the bright side, I was getting tired of sparring with my golem. While the almoravids began to charge at us, I shifted myself from enemy to ally, and I set the almoravids as enemies. I was holding my halberd, and the golem a war hammer. I wasn’t able to make massive swings since it was cramped now that we weren’t the only ones in the cave. Instead, I used it more as a spear, knocking the raiders down and then using gravity to generate the force behind the finishing swing. The golem just went to town, smashing through armor. The blood from the almoravids started to flow towards me, just like the black slurry did before. You’d think I would be disgusted, but compared to the black slurry, this was a bubble bath. Soon enough, I got the notification I was partially expecting.

“Halberd mastery unlocked, hammer mastery unlocked. halberd, spear, hammer, sword, dagger, shield, bow, unarmed and axe mastery have been subsumed into weapon mastery. Weapon mastery evolves into weapon master, weapon master is consumed by combat master”

Why was I only partially expecting that? Because I knew that unlocking a bunch of weapon masteries would give some general weapon mastery skill, but I was not expecting it to randomly evolve and be immediately eaten by weapon master.

Anyways, I dropped my halberd and grabbed my spear since it was enchanted. Then I began tearing through the raiders, leaving giant burnt holes in them. Soon enough the last one was down, and I recieved another message.

“Combat master leveled up x9, prognosticator leveled up by x9”

That’s a nice bit of level ups, but why did prognosticator level up? And why couldn’t either level up just one more, I mean seriously, 99/100 feat points?!

Either way, I continued down the passage, coming across a little outpost. Based on the fact that everything was in Arabic, I assume it was almoravid. There were pictures of the goblins, the nephilim, the Ojáncano, the dragonflies, and even of a little girl. The Ojáncano and dragonflies had a circle mark over the drawing of the creature, while the nephilim, the goblins and the little girl had their pictures crossed out.

“Prognosticator, what is this?”

“I can’t just magically translate stuff, I need context. It’s easy enough to figure out what something is, like the species of a monster or the qualities of a magic item, that’s open to anyone if they know how to look, but to find out what a set of writing means is impossible without some kind of context. In this case the only thing I could tell you is that it has to do with the creatures of this dungeon, and that the ones the almoravides control are circled whereas the ones they are fighting are crossed out”

Well then… this raises a bunch of questions…

“Prognosticator, are you… sentient?”

“Prognosticator isn’t sentient. I am your skill spirit, Prognosticator is more like a job than an entity. I actually serve as both the prognosticator and combat master skills”

Well then…

“Are you trapped in there?”

“I know what your asking, and the answer is the same as asking you if you’re trapped in your body. I’m not an independent entity, I’m a part of you, a split personality if you will. You drive around the meat bag, I make sure you don’t accidentally lead us off a cliff”

Ok…

“Why the outburst now and not at some point before? I’ll admit I suspected it after you said you’re welcome that one time, but seeing how little you actually spoke, I assumed I was imagining stuff”

“I gain more consciousness the higher the levels of the skills I govern. Once they reached a combined level of 20, I could actually converse rather than statically repeat what I found”

“Well, thanks for all the help you’ve given me”