Dungeon’s Path
Almost There – Chapter 305

So with his plan for the next floor crystalized in his mind, Doyle begins work on what will hopefully be his first golem pattern. With that in mind, he went all out in terms of quality. The first step being the quartz core and dust.

The making of which ended up taking multiple days and many failures. Before, Doyle had just carved a pleasing shape. For this, though, he wanted something more resistant to damage, a perfect sphere.

Now, before becoming a dungeon core, it would have been impossible for him. In fact, even now, the skill needed to properly carve out a perfect sphere is beyond him. Good thing he can cheat.

Sure, the final smoothening needed a lot of precision and care. Yes, that was the point at which he failed over ninety percent of the time. However, getting to that point was reduced to a simple few minutes of cutting since he could make each new crystal exactly the same as the last.

And of course, he wasn’t actually done once he succeeded the first time. Doyle repeatedly created perfect quartz spheres until he had it down enough to focus on something else at the same time. Focus that he spent on actualizing just the right effect with conceptual reinforcement.

The effect of redirection. While not weak, the crystal would easily shatter from even a normal attack despite the fact that it would be reinforced by the golems Strength. It certainly didn’t help that the only crystals Doyle had available were quartz and amethyst.

So Doyle focused on allowing the core to transfer force to the space around it. Suspended in air or placed in rock, this effect wasn’t too noticeable. However, once placed in a piece of test clay that had the crystal’s dust mixed in? The effect was amazing as the connection the dust provided allowed the force to be dispersed even more efficiently.

Now happy with the core design, Doyle makes a couple of examples from every gem pattern he currently has despite most of them being just quartz variants. He simply wanted the system to recognize the pattern was for a gem core and not a specific type of quartz core. Though even the quartz variants provided a bit of extra challenge carving into shape. After all, their color was derived from other elements mixed into the crystal and so altered the crystal’s structure.

As this was happening, a certain person in the town was going through a change of purpose. Tess had wallowed in her sadness enough and yet after seeing her love die, was admittedly a bit put off from the direct combat they had reveled in. Others might have been put off fighting all together, but with the system and status screens? She could easily see the improvements that fighting provided. So, while a bit skittish, she definitely didn’t want to be weak the next time the reaper came calling.

Of course, she could have simply switched to ranged combat, but she had another resource to make use of. Unlike some of the other pure melee fighters, she had powered her combat skills with mana. Not that many could tell since the most obvious it got was with how easily she could use her staff to sweep.

Until now, the magic had been more of an internal thing for her. Tess hadn’t even realized at first that she was using magic, just assuming everyone had a mana pool and used it differently. After all, no one was around to tell them what worked best or even the fact that they had a choice. Not like it had negatively affected her, anyway.

In fact, to some degree it could be seen as the right choice. Among all the basic weapons, the staff was one that took well to magic. There was a reason many wizards liked to use a staff as a magic implement.

Though admittedly, most of said wizard staves tended to be a bit blinged out with crystals and focuses making the weapon less than melee ready. Tess wasn’t going to go that route. Her staff was going to remain more pure of form so it could still be readily used to hit stuff.

As for the others, and what they thought of the change? Well, she wasn’t the only melee mage so that wasn’t too strange so they rolled with it. Besides, most of them were just happy she didn’t drift away and had kept fighting.

This change was noticed by Ally, back in the dungeon, but she was somewhat distracted by Doyle. With the cores finished, he had moved onto preparing the clay. A simple enough task, helped along by the dungeons ability to fast forward things on any floor without delvers on it.

So soon enough, he had created a number of clay masses, into which he mixed the crystal dust. From there, it was a simple thing to shape them into the basic form he wanted. Short legs, two sets of long arms, and a broad chested torso. Oh, and a head.

While a golem didn’t need eyes. It did work better if you provided an obvious “this is where you are from” point on their body. Maybe some would be tempted to put the eyes on the chest, but Doyle wanted them to have a decent vision range and an actual head worked best for that. After all, without a spine or any solid bits, the golem can spin its head around in a way that would make an owl jealous.

Then, with the basic form ready, Doyle began to carve away material. He wasn’t going for a lifelike ape look, but tube arms and legs didn’t look right. Plus, he needed that clay he was carving away.

That removed clay was molded to look like armor plates and fired. Each of those plates was then carved and engraved. Which if they had been meant to work as actual armor would have been less than ideal, introducing weaknesses into the plate.

Good thing they were only meant to stylize the golem and improve its craftsmanship. Something Doyle would have to continue to work on and maybe pick up a skill for. As while anything he made would be masterwork, it wouldn’t be a master’s work and so suffer from the quality penalty.

Still, the carved plates would be a step towards removing said penalty. Though Doyle still had one more trick up his sleeve when it came to the plates. He didn’t just press them into the clay bodies.

Doyle had kept the small scrapings from each plate separate and ground each pile into dust. Now ready to attach the plates, he removed some of the clay from where a plate would go. That clay was thoroughly mixed with the dust of its matching plate. Then finally, the mixture was used to bond the plates with the main body.

Ally wasn’t certain this would do anything, mind you. However, Doyle had a gut feeling that this extra step would help the golem keep the plates in place. A minor detail except for the fact that part of the golems health was how closely it matched its original form. So in theory, if this did what he suspected, the golems would have an easier time regenerating from damage.

Ally just shrugged at this. Golem makers were one of those professions that kept their secrets close to their chests. So while she had no sources on this kind of step, that didn’t really mean much.

Either way, Doyle wasn’t one to mind the extra detail work. He had already spent more than enough time getting the plates carved just right. And it certainly didn’t help that each golem had unique carvings and even the plates didn’t always match.

Some had larger, thicker plates. Others were covered in small, almost scale-like plates. Not many of that last one though as even Doyle felt they took too much time to make.

Happy with the results, Doyle started shoving the cores into the matching bodies. Now, the placement was somewhat random, but honestly quite limited. While he certainly could have placed the cores anywhere they would fit, there were some practical limits.

Since the core needed to be connected to the golem for it to work, you didn’t want to place it somewhere easily cut off. This removed the arms and especially the head as that was already a target of priority as a source of sight.

So the core was always going to be in the central body. Though even there, it was limited. After all, placing it too close to the surface was just asking for it to be shattered by a lucky shot.

Still, there was enough space to keep the delvers guessing where the core was on each golem. Doyle didn’t even avoid placing it where the heart would be on an ape. Some would certainly target the area, but if anything that would make the other golems more effective.

To any hunter, it would be natural to try and hit such a weak point. Of course, if none of the golems actually suffered from such a hit, the delvers would figure out not to target there. Instead, by making it so sometimes that worked, delvers would be more likely to target “the heart” first. So as long as just enough golems had their core there, it would reduce the chance of every other golem having their core struck on the first attack.

And with that, all that was left was to make it a pattern, so Doyle called Ally over to tell him what needed to be done. Ally looked down at the small army of golems. ‘I still think the design is a bit weird. Nothing against it, just not something I’ve seen much of.’

Doyle, ‘Eh, people like to make things in either their image or in the image of something they know. I’m sure if you checked in on the insectkin, they would have golems similar to this. Only similar though, I don’t know if this holds true in the wider universe, but creatures tend to stick to how many limbs they have.

‘On my planet, mammals have four limbs as a general rule of thumb. It isn’t impossible for there to be a mammal with more and some deformed births do, but it is what it is. Like, we define insects and arachnids by the number of legs they have and I’m sure that isn’t a universe wide constant.’

Ally nods, ‘Fair enough. I must admit never having heard that particular idea being floated around. Though that might just be because magic loves its exceptions. “What’s that? Mammals have four limbs? Hah, good joke! Have a ten limbed mammal!” and so on.’

Doyle, ‘Probably doesn’t help that chimeras and such seem to be a mad wizards passion project. Ranking only higher than their love of underestimating their creations’ ability to escape.’

Ally laughs, ‘You don’t even know that for sure, but you hit the nail on the head! I swear a significant portion of the more mortal fae monstrosities are actually escaped experiments. They can’t help but mix in some fae since we’re like glue for that kind of stuff.

‘Anyway, you make them into a golem pattern by two methods, the dumb way and the awakened way. The dumb way is simple enough. You deconstruct a golem and try to spawn it in then repeat until it works. Nice and simple so that a regular dungeon can have a golem pattern.

‘You, of course, don’t have to suffer through the uncertainty of that method. Instead, you gather at least five golems of a similar design that would work as a single pattern. Then you deconstruct them all at once, intending to make them your pattern. The system will ask if you’re sure, and boom, you have a golem pattern.’

Doyle, ‘That sounds simple enough. Is there a benefit to using more golems?’

Ally, ‘To a point. You use more to make the pattern more generic. A good example is core placement. If you had five golems, all with the heart in basically the same place, that is where the heart will be in the pattern. Of course, part of that is intent so you could overrule it if when making them you intended it to be random.

‘It will just be easier if you have a bunch of golems with the cores spread around. For what you have here, I figure the nine you’ve made should be enough. You have a decent selection of designs such that it won’t get too repetitive while the basic shape should normalize a bit in the final pattern.’

Doyle nods, ‘Fair enough. Maybe for a later one I’ll do something fancy, but this is good for now.’