Chapter 9: Golem

Chapter 9: Golem

As it turned out, there had been an entire meeting room behind the third door in the corridor. It was that strange mixture of state of the art and messy that spoke of a hurried construction built using a significant amount of funds.

A solid looking metal table, surrounded by extremely comfortable chairs stood in the middle of the room while one of the walls was completely covered in eight massive screens, each showing a different angle of the room where they’d be summoning creatures.

Next to the door stood a metal structure, folded up it was clear even in this state that it was intended to be some kind of barrier. That being said, Isaac didn’t have the foggiest what its purpose was. After all, the actual door to the former storage space was, as far as he could tell, stronger.

“I believe you all know why we’re here. Two days ago, the world became quantified. People gained the ability to treat the world as if it were a video game. Along with that came monsters. Not ones that randomly show up, but ones we create for ourselves. Now here we are, researching precisely those monsters. I won’t lie to you, this will not be a simple or safe task. But it will also be the greatest and most impactful task that currently exists. I am honored to be undertaking it with you.” Baily made a short little speech, making Isaac smile a little.

The Professor, as Bailey would simply be known in the future, was only ten or so years older than Isaac, though you wouldn’t know it most of the time. Isaac liked to make stupid jokes even when doing so was incredibly inappropriate. Bailey was just ... plain ... mature. Except when it came to situations like this. This was one of those occasions when he betrayed his inexperience as a professor, giving a speech like that without prompting. After all, he’d become one less than seventy-two hours ago.

“I’m guessing that means you have a fully fleshed out plan?” Amy asked.

“I do, in fact. We’re going to start by summoning a weak creature without any special powers and observe it for as long as possible.” Bailey explained, then summoned a [System] page with a wave of his hand. Clearly, he'd spent a lot of time reading the manual.

Summoning List (Earth)

Name

Material Cost

Mana Cost

Slate Golem

Tier 1 Circle, SlateThe original appearance of this chapter can be found at Ñøv€lß1n.

10

Lesser Earth Elemental

Tier 1 Circle, Dirt

25

Animated Garden Gnome

Tier 2 Circle, Ceramic Shards

50

Earth Elemental

Tier 3 Circle, Dirt, Rock

75

Lesser Rock Golem

Tier 3 Circle, Rock

100

Granite Golem

Tier 4 Circle, Granite

125

Rock Golem

Tier 4 Circle, Rock, Iron, Dirt

150

The Crusher

Tier 5 Circle, Titanium, Iron

250

“What are those crates for?” Isaac wondered out loud.

“Storing the bodies of any creature we kill. Those aren’t refrigerated, so we’ll have to stick to inorganic creatures for now, but Professor Bailey says well get refrigerated ones tomorrow or the day after.” Amy explained as she handed him a chunk of slate and one of the markers.

They headed into the actual ritual room with their tools. It was a little smaller than the meeting room, after all, it hadn’t had to store a lot of material, volume wise. But a Tier 5 circle could easily fit inside without any problems. Not that they’d be using one, mind you. The kind of monster that required a circle of that Tier would tear through lead and concrete walls like soft dirt. And even if that ended up bringing down the building on top on it, it’d probably survive that as well.

A gesture from Isaac not only overlayed an image of the required circle onto the ground, it also made said circle visible to everyone. He could have easily drawn one out from memory, but that wasn’t something a person should have been able to reliably do after two days at most.

They went to work and the circle rapidly took shape. Two minutes later, it was complete and Isaac placed the chunk of slate inside.

“Alright, please double check that the circle is perfect, then charge it and get out of there.” Bailey’s voice rang out over a speaker Isaac quickly located in one corner of the ceiling.

Isaac obeyed, looking down at the ground one last time. Spotting any mistakes would have been child’s play though, given that there was literally an image of the correct version overlayed. A mere thought was enough to drop the pittance of ten mana needed to charge it into the circle and then, the two of them beat a hasty retreat.

Well, Amy did. Isaac just matched her speed. He knew from experience that there was literally no way for that thing to randomly trigger and dump a Slate Golem in their laps. But Amy didn’t have the same certainty. All she knew was that they’d just taken all the actions needed to call a dangerous creature into this room, a creature the likes of whom had been seen on the news, killing people. Even if the instructions had said that one could charge up the circle and then activate it after getting a little distance.

In fact, those were some of the only instructions available on the process of summoning. The point of what little was written down was to ensure that it seemed safe, with options to get the hell out of dodge before the creature appeared, and the like.

What wasn’t written down were issues like the fact that leaving a monster in place for too long would result in similar creatures appearing without humans needed to conduct the summoning.

It was just as well that the people Isaac had chosen to work with were so careful. Sufficient caution and preparation would easily let one avoid most of the pitfalls baked into the Summoning System. Unfortunately, very few people were that cautious, which was why there had even been a problem in the other timeline, after all.

The heavy door slammed shut behind them with a bang, closed by hidden motors that had clearly been activated from the meeting room.

The meeting room was in a state of incredible tension and excitement, with everyone staring at the screens on the wall, showing the ritual circle glowing a soft, pale blue. It was something that even the most basic video editing program could have created, hell, there were probably some chemicals you could use to replicate that effect.

But this was no movie, no video game, no fake image born of the mind of some author or screenwriter and brought to life by a talented artist or editor. This was real life, something that was occurring a mere ten or so meters in front of them, even if they were only indirectly seeing it.

Something entirely beyond the normal was happening, a preternatural effect likely none of them had ever seen before. Something they’d heard about on the news, whose aftereffects they’d seen, but now, they were doing it.

Isaac decided to just wait a couple of minutes and not interrupt their moment of wonder. Once that time was up, however, he decided to break the silence.

“So, should I summon it now?” he asked, calling up the relevant [System] screen so everyone could see it.

Would you like to activate the summoning circle and summon [Slate Golem]?



“Do it. Ok, moment of truth time.” Bailey said breathily, voice incredibly exited.

“Sure thing. [Activate Summoning Circle].” Isaac said. While verbal [Skill] activation wasn’t necessary, it tended to be rather helpful while working together with other people to let them know what one was doing.

In the middle of the room, the intricate circle of runes dimmed in a flash. Nothing seemed to happen for a mere moment ... and then the hunk of slate in the middle of the circle seemed to explode, dark grey particles being flung around. The space between the particles began to rapidly get filled in with more dark grey stone until a stout creature stood there.

A grinding of stone echoed through the room as it pushed itself to its feet. The slate golem stood around a meter tall, but it was also at least half a meter wide and deep, with a head that looked like a squashed sphere, attached without a proper neck.

“My God ...” Bailey whispered.

The Golem began to walk towards a corner of the room, every step taking several seconds to complete. It might have been a tough looking being for a summoning cost of a mere ten mana, but it was so slow as to practically be harmless.

“How do you think it’s moving?” Patrick asked, voice at a normal conversational level. In other words, far louder than the hushed voices of the others in the room.

“It sounds like it should be damaging itself with every step, but there isn’t any dust flaking off. Also, it clearly doesn’t have any visible musculature or anything comparable. What is it using to provide locomotion?”

“Magic?” Amy suggested, sticking her tongue out when Patrick turned to her.

“I’m being serious here.” Patrick told her sternly.

“Yeah, me too. Magic is apparently a thing now and while we don’t know how it works, what we’re doing now is trying to understand just what it is. Then we can say ‘it moves via magic, as per so and so’s effect and’-“

‘Thud’

Amy went silent and stared at the monitors.

‘Thud’

On the screen, the Golem was visible punching one of the room’s corners.

Raul spoke up, nervousness creeping into his voice.

“Uh, that’s the corner closest to where we are, isn’t it?”