Chương 39: 39 Loop 1 Part 19

Both golems went still at the same moment. They looked straight ahead, their stone faces fixed in the distance.

"The activation was successful," the Keeper said.

"Are they ready, or are we still in the part where I pretend to understand what's happening?"

"They are active," the Keeper said.

"Readiness implies intent, and they do not possess that."

"That feels like a flaw."

"Yes. It is a limitation of soulless golems. They can follow instructions, but cannot choose what to do with them."

"So if I tell them to carry something, they'll carry it."

"Yes."

"And if I tell them to stop, they'll stop."

"Yes."

"And if I tell them to stand there silently and not ask me follow-up questions, they'll do that, too."

"Yes." I liked the two golems already. They continued staring at nothing with absolute dedication. I nodded slowly.

"Walk," I commanded. I put a picture in the golem's head: walking to the left. The golem on the left walked to the left, one foot in front of the other, with slow, even steps. When something blocked its path, it picked the obstacle up, moved it to the side, and then kept walking. When it reached the far wall, it stopped on its own. Interesting. The one on the right hadn't moved. I needed to direct my commands better if I wanted both to move at the same time.

I looked at the one by the wall and commanded, "Walk back." It started toward me.

"Stop." It stopped two feet from its original position, immediately, as soon as I said stop.

"Go grab that stool." I pointed at the stool. It nodded toward it and walked over, grabbed it above its head, and returned to its position, just like I imagined.

"Put it down." And it put it down. The first few commands were exhaustingly successful. They worked, but I had to put in the effort to make them work. The hard part was that the words were only half of it. But it opened several doors in my mind, and most of them had comfortable chairs behind them. I pictured the room clean. Not perfectly clean. I wasn't a monster. Perfectly clean rooms were suspicious and usually belonged to people who alphabetized socks.

I pictured crates against the wall, batteries in one place, tools on the workbench, anything sharp away from where I might eventually want to nap. The golems moved. And as the golems lifted things above their heads and placed them down, a new idea came to me.

"Stop." The golems stopped mid-pickup. I liked how easy it was to command them.

"Come here." Both golems walked toward me.

"Carry the chair I'm sitting in to the center of the room." They slowly picked up the chair with me in it—slightly unevenly, given the weight, I assumed—and carried me over to the center of the room.

"Put me down." They lowered the chair. I was already getting used to this. I would never have to cast a movement spell ever again. I just needed to make sturdier golems to get around things like Frollarts. As much fun as having two golems was, if I wanted to wake up the other two, I needed more mana. Which meant I either needed to meditate or I needed to sleep. And considering the fact that it was almost 10 p. m., maybe, if my internal clock was correct, I was about due for a nap.

I gave a mental thought to my golems and said, "Organize." They immediately got to work. They were loud. There was a lot of noise, stone footsteps on stone, stone grips on wooden and metal crates. They didn't seem to have a volume switch, no matter how many times I sent thoughts of them being as loud as a mouse, or said "quieter." But I quickly succumbed to my grandest desire. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

I woke up a few hours later with a crick in my neck. The room had changed while I slept. It wasn't perfect, exactly. But it was cleaner. The crates had been stacked against one wall in square, joyless columns. The empty mana batteries sat in a row along the floor, each one placed the same distance from the next. Tools covered the workbench in straight lines. Books had been piled by size—which was interesting, to say the least. The two golems stood in the middle of it all, waiting.

They had simply finished the work and remained there, available for more work. It was an attitude I found both alien and deeply useful. It was like having two Finns who didn't ask whether I had eaten, slept, or processed my trauma. Truly, civilization had peaked.

"You did all this while I slept?" They didn't answer. Perfect. I wasn't sure how long I'd been sleeping, but when I awoke, there was a notification waiting. I sat up and stretched, trying to get my bearings. From the way my stomach growled, it had probably been around five hours. It was a good, long nap, but not a full night's sleep. I wondered when the last time I'd gotten one of those was. I cast [Ex Nihilo Caseum] and started munching on cheese as I checked the notification. [LEVEL UP] Enchantment: Level 55.

Huh. That was weird. I hadn't gotten any prior level-up alerts, so I'd just assumed 50 to 51 was some insurmountable task. I asked Keeper about it, assuming she would know.

"No, you would not have gotten those alerts," the Keeper said.

"After you hit level 50, the alert notifications automatically change. You will be informed every five levels. After 100, every 25. After 250, every 50." I liked it. A little less effort every level-up. I mentally sent the notification away and was about to get to work on the golems when the Keeper continued talking.

"55 in Enchantment," the Keeper said.

"That's unusual for a second-year student at MIRKS. Most students your age sit between 30 and 40."

"So what if I'm ahead? Enchantment's the easiest class to use. I don't get why everybody else doesn't. Like, seriously. Anything I cast is basically permanent. All the other classes are a waste of effort in comparison." The Keeper's golem shrugged. And then I got to work. The remaining two golems went so much faster now that I knew the process. The spells came out of my wand one after the other, as fast as I could manage. [Recursion I] and [Cascade I] keeping my mana pool above 0 as I cast.

I aimed the command at both remaining bodies." [Wake]." The spells flowed so much easier this time, and the third and fourth golems woke up one after the other. Now I had four golems. They stood in a rough line against the wall, like I'd assembled a very small, obedient army out of stone. I liked it.

"Walk to me," I said, thinking the thought to all of them at once. They walked almost in unison toward me. They stopped in a loose semicircle in front of my chair and waited for the next command.

"Front two, carry the chair at the front. Back two, carry at the back. One hand, one chair leg each." Four was so much better than two. The chair came up level, all four corners lifting at once. I crossed the study sitting bolt upright with my arms crossed.

"Faster," I said, mostly to see what would happen. They took off. They rushed me around the small—admittedly, small—space in less than fifteen seconds. I let them carry me in a loop around the now-organized room, the first two having fixed everything while I slept.

"Put me down in the center of the room," I said when the lap was over. They were gently, which I hadn't specified—and which I chose to take as standard operating procedure. Once I was back on solid ground, the thinking started. How could I use this to my advantage? Then my face went sour. As cool as the four golems were, they were limited. Oh, sure, I could do a lot. Just giving them the ability to carry things.

Don't get me wrong, I planned to abuse the fuck out of this, but I had a dragon-sized objective looming in my future. Quite frankly, this wasn't going to get me out of it.

"How do I get a soul into one?" I asked the Keeper. She didn't answer right away. She was over by a workbench, tinkering with something I couldn't see.

"You're asking the wrong question."

"Am I? Seems like you're just delaying giving me what I want."

"You are still speaking as though a soul is a component," she said.

"As though it can be lifted from one place and set into another because the new shape would be useful to you."

"That's not what I meant."

"Perhaps not. But it is what the question means. A soul is not a tool, a core, or a missing piece in a better chassis. A soul is a person, or close enough to one that I will not let impatience pretend otherwise."

"That feels like a personal attack."

"It is accurate. You are not callous, Lazlo Yarrow. Your concern for your uncle proves that. But concern for one soul does not grant you authority over another. A soul-bound golem is not a slave, nor is it a servant. It is a companion in need of kinship."

"I get it," I said.

"Mostly. You think I'm asking for instructions on how to shove a person into a statue and call it a labor-saving device. I'm not. I'm not going to mistreat golems just because they have souls, but aren't human. I haven't even mistreated these ones." I gestured at the soulless automatons.

"You have not had the opportunity," she said.

"That's bleak. That's a genuinely bleak thing to say about me."

"It is an observation, not an accusation." I crossed my arms.

"You know, for someone who's currently living in a rock because I went to the trouble of giving her a body, you've got a lot of wrong opinions about my character." The Keeper's golem went still in a way that was different from its usual stillness. The workbench noise stopped.

"You did not give me a body," she said.

"You gave me a vessel. There is a difference, and you are old enough now to understand it even if you choose not to."

"Feels like splitting hairs."

"It is not splitting hairs to the thing being split." She didn't answer right away.

"But I will allow that it was kindly meant. I have not had hands in a very long time." I didn't have anything clever for that, so I didn't say anything at all.

"Fine. If you want the method," she said, "you already hold the key. It is easy to tell that you've already used [Soul Tether] on your uncle somehow."