Book 5: Chapter 32

Book 5: Chapter 32

“You’re excited about a training dummy?” Kay asked, staring down at the miniaturized black stone asura sitting in the palm of his hand. They’d grabbed the loot and started making their way out of the dungeon. Eleniah’s goal for them had been to beat the asura golem and they didn’t have unlimited time to spending diving into the dungeon, so their run was over for the time being.

Eleniah scoffed at him. “That’s as much as training dummy the same way you’re just an Outworlder. That’s a training golem that can be used to train at tier four levels, is capable of multiple forms of combat, is self repairing, and can even hold back so it doesn’t kill the people training with it!”Nêww chapters will be fully updated at novelhall.com

“Based on your tone I’m guessing that most training golems can’t do any of that?”

“Anyone that can make golems runs into a lot of the same limitations that you have with your simulacra, the important one here being that they’re automatically less powerful than you are when you make them. Creating a golem that can fight at tier four levels generally requires a tier five golem maker, or the use of very expensive materials. Add that in with the time and material costs of everything else that little fellow can do and you end up with a rare and expensive commodity. Golems that have been made by people and can do one or more of the functions that has exist but the more functions the pricier they get.” She reached out and tapped the statue on the head, “You could sell this for a lot of money.”

“How much money?”

“At least two or three times as much as we got just now.”

Kay pictured the large stone chest overflowing with coin, gems, and bars of metal and gave the shrunken golem an appraising look.

“No!” Eleniah snatched it out of his hand before he could react. “You aren’t selling it!” She clutched it protectively with both hands. “We can use this to train up elites in the Blood Guard and the rest of Avalon. I was going to demand one of the weaker versions of these as part of Alahna’s payment for getting you to come help, and now we have more room to get other concessions out of her.”

“Alright, alright.” Laughing, he gestured for her to give it back and when she cautiously handed it over he tossed it in his Inventory. “If they’re that useful, should we ask for some of the weaker ones as payment? If we have this one for our elites or the people we want to make into elites we could get some weaker ones for the army and lower powered adventurers and fighters.”

“Maybe? That’s something to really discuss with the collection of negotiators you brought along. They have all of Amanda’s notes on what we most want, so they’ll be able to figure out if it’s worth replacing something with one or more of those.” She glanced back with longing in her eyes. “If only it had dropped the best kind. That would have been...” She sighed deeply.

Kay blinked a few times at her. “... Attractive?”

“What? No!” She smacked him in the stomach.

“You’re sighing deeply and staring breathlessly toward where it would have been like you’re a teenage girl mooning over her first crush, excuse me if I got the wrong message from that.”

“The best version of them can train up to tier five and has additional forms of combat it can train in! Only two of them have ever dropped!” She gave him another, lighter smack on the stomach. “The level we could get our people to if we had one of those would be insane, it would make us into a world power in a few decades.”

Miri stepped in close to the two of them, “Actually, there’s only been one confirmed drop. The second one that happened around the time you left the Isles turned out to be a fake. The group who were celebrating their success everywhere actually had a tier three golem and were trying to pass it off as the tier five version so they could sell it and skip town.”

“What? That’s stupid, they’d get found out as soon as anyone tried using Appraise, let alone when someone at tier five tried to train with it and broke it into bits.”

Miri reached up and gently patted Kay on the shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with that, your majesty. It simply means that you aren’t the kind of person to risk too much on something that isn’t a sure bet. While those who choose to gamble on incredible odds may sometimes win big and rise to amazing heights, those who take less chancy risks are less likely to have the rug pulled out from under them to find that they’ve nothing left to stand on.”

They reached the exit right about then, and Miri asked everyone to stand close together once they passed out into the sunlight. She raised her hands and flicked her fingers outward and a quick burst of wind gathered around everyone. When it cleared they were all spotless, every bit of dirt and grime from the dungeon run completely removed.

“There, nice and clean and ready to continue the day. What’s next on your itinerary, your majesty?”

“Um,” He glanced at Eleniah. “Lunch?”

“I could eat.”

“Right. Lunch, then check in with Alahna and the investigation to see if they need us for anything.”

“Very good, your majesty. Would you like to have your meal at the palace or head to an eatery?”

“At the palace makes more sense, it’ll be easier to find Alahna afterward.”

“Wonderful!” She chirped. “I’ll arrange everything.”

“... Thank you, Miri.”

“Of course.”

Kay did his best to subtly pull Eleniah aside out of earshot of Miri as they walked away from the dungeon. “What’s going on with Miri?” He whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, something about her behavior is setting off red flags for me. I know she isn’t an eldritch fake or anything, but... I don’t know, it’s weird how quickly she’s acting all attached to us.”

“To you, you mean?” She asked, with the signature single eyebrow raise. She glanced at Miri out of the corner of her eye. “Who knows? Maybe you’re easy to get attached to. I certainly am, after all.” She suddenly looped her arm through his and started dragging him faster toward the palace. “What do you think will be for lunch?”