50% of ‘The Art of Golemcrafting’ has been deciphered!

  The way ‘I see through it’ worked was fascinating. Not only had it gained the ability to detect illusions and see through them, but it also retained the previous capabilities of I See You Now, particularly those related to mana perception and deciphering. Even strengthened them a fair bit from his observation.

  Holding the ginormous stone slab with ease, Zayn parsed through it. He’d found just enough detail about the golems to make sense of them. Though he was fishing for one thing—the weakness of the Stone ape.

  Unfortunately, his dive into the deep sea of Sage’s ocean of knowledge had been rather unfruitful.

  He understood fuck all about the million theories of crafting, even with his “increased” intelligence. Wasn’t he supposed to be super smart now? Where had the points gone? Into his stomach?

  But then again, with much of the text missing, it would be odd for him to comprehend much. So the book that recorded invaluable knowledge on golemcrafting became little more than a children’s handbook in his hands.

  Diagrams were saving his ass, totally. Even a curly-haired baboon could appreciate Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings, though they wouldn’t understand the hidden alien references. Or what aliens were, for that matter.

  He too skimmed past all of them—Stone Golem, Cleaner Golem, Stone Turtle—one by one. Before the apocalypse, he was already good at recognizing patterns. Now he could remember them with just a few glances—thanks to the points in intelligence.

  Taking note of the mana nodes and circuits, he finally understood why the head and heart were the weak points of the golem. The heart was where the mana circuits joined into one, while the head stored the commands.

  On the final few pages, he finally found what he was looking for—The Stone Ape. From drafting to final form, the Sage recorded much of everything about the Ape. Though he couldn’t claim to understand it all, he got some insights into its inner workings.

  There was some particularly interesting information revealed about the Fae.

  ‘When someone among the ‘Fae’ dies, their soul is retrieved to the world tree by the one who claims himself ‘God Monarch’. He takes their past life’s deeds, achievements, and fate into account, assigning them their roles in the next life. What a child is to be—a farmer, a soldier, or scholar—is predetermined upon birth and can’t be changed unless for extraordinary, rare events.’

  “They weren’t just delusional?” Zayn felt his mind reel. So they really had their own reincarnation system? For real? No wonder thirty-three thousand of them agreed to attack one single person. Because they knew they would be reborn with certainty.

  “The thread that binds their consciousness into a single higher consciousness is known as the Life Matrix. After years of research, I’ve unveiled its secrets; altered it enough that it can be used on golems.”

  Zayn licked his lips, eyes burning in curiosity, going through the more technical parts. He eventually got the basics.

  When a golem was created, it was given a basic command, like ‘Clean the house’. Each time the golem died, it split into two offshoots with similar but slightly different commands before reforming into one. Over time, as the commands kept multiplying and reforming, the command would keep creating new variations, such as ‘Protect the house’.

  Eventually, as the commands accumulated and merged, they formed a semi-consciousness of their own. Zayn stared. As he reread the passage, his hands paused. His shoulder shook in realisation. What a mad genius!

  This guy had invented artificial intelligence without the need for a supercomputer or advanced technology. No wonder the Fae feared him so much. No wonder they sent an entire army after him.

  Sitting, he went over the diagram of the ape many times. A few points could be considered the vital points, but this one’s weaknesses were well hidden within and hard to find. He devoured all the information, taking mental notes.

  Admittedly, he could recall things much better now. Intelligence was useful, occasionally. Maybe he could put ten per cent of his points—no, no, ten was still too much. Five was good. Five was good enough. He didn’t need too much mana, anyway.

  Next, he brought out the ‘Unnamed Stone Slab’, or the ‘Sage’s journal’, as he called it, scanning its contents once again. This was much smaller than the other slabs and was deciphered rather easily, giving him a deeper insight into the Sage of Stones.

  Only now did he understand how much of a hater this man was.

  The first half of the journal contained only the secrets of the Fae people—their most powerful and secretive figures were laid bare and dissected, even the God Monarch himself.

  Ways to defeat them—gaps in their cultivation paths, exploitable techniques, and skills. The list of their enemies. Methods to cripple them financially or socially—all that dirty laundry.

  “I’ve not been hating enough.” Zayn sighed. Even he didn’t have this many scandals on Aubrin, his boss! What a pity all of them were in the past! Or he could have blackmailed them for money! A pity indeed.

  There was info on figures such as Lord Second—from the memories—and even Faeria.

  ‘Faeria of Abatorah - Born of the House of farmers, Faeria is a rare figure who transcended the limits set by the God Monarch Sylvar. She showed terrifying decisiveness and understanding of war tactics in her academy days, catching the eyes of the royalty. Later, the God Monarch adopted her as his daughter, making her one of the few ‘commoner royals’ in history.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  ‘Weaknesses: Well versed in Shadow and dimensional magic, her weaknesses lie in the elements such as order and geomancy. Occasionally flame. However, her talent—2nd dimension, a dimensional space where she can store various things, including her shadows, makes her a rather formidable figure. More analysis is required to find appropriate counterattacks.

  She has been in contact with ‘The Rose Thorn’ — a revolutionary organisation working against the interests of the emperor. Among the upper circle, the rumours have started circulating. I have forged another two fraudulent pieces of evidence against her should the need ever arise.’

  “You scary bastard.” He muttered. This guy had dirt on everyone. So cool!

  He was a fan, to be honest.

  This was where the cool parts ended. In later parts of the slab, right after he became Princess Orin's bodyguard, the texts became more about their night escapades and romantic flings.

  On one of the pages about Princess Orin, he found a writing that made him unsure of whether to laugh or cry.

  ‘Oh! You were stalking me, love? Such a hopeless romantic! You could have just asked me, though. I would have…shown you everything.’

  “That’s Princess Orin for sure. The handwriting is different." Zayn snorted out loud. Wasn’t she a comedian, too? He skimmed through the rest, finding similar additional comments here and there.

  Gross! He hated it! People in love should just go and die!

  He parsed through them all until eventually, he found the last line written on the slab, this time complete, ‘I have the ultimate weapon, but…I am not sure I need it anymore.’

  Sage was struggling to choose between love and hate…and it seemed like he wanted to let go of his hate. But of course, the Fae didn’t allow it, leading to this massacre.

  Thump

  The entire area trembled all of a sudden, as though an earthquake had happened. Zayn initially thought it was just his low blood pressure acting up. Then the trees began to shake rhythmically, and the leaves fell from high above the trees.

  One of the gravefruits fell right atop his head.

  “Ouch.” He held the gravefruit and felt the land quiver with each shuddering footstep.

  Up north, Zayn deduced. Storing the slabs inside his ring, he shot forward, slung up and down. Tearing through the gale until he finally saw a tank of a Stone Turtle breaking the trees apart.

  Stone Turtle — lv 41 (Neutral)

  Just where had that come from? He’d scoured the entire forest earlier, and they seemed all but vanished. Well, whatever.

  Grinning, he climbed down and landed in front of it. Its forelimbs were as large as a container truck, and it was as large as a small mountain. He was mesmerised, “Well, aren’t you a big monster?”

  Stone turtle - LV 41(Neutral)

  Information parsing!

  “I hadn’t expected it to work so well.” A feminine, authoritative voice exclaimed and walked out from the left. Shadows swarmed on her lithe, all-black figure. Her hollow eyes glowed eerily. “I’ve…finally found you.”

  What? Zayn shot Faeria a deadpan look. What is this woman even blabbering about?

  He decided all that could wait for later. Lightning cracked beneath his feet as he rushed at the turtle.

  ***

  Faeria remained unoffended by such a boorish act.

  On the contrary, she’d expected such from him—that was why she had released the turtle in the first place. To lure him to herself. He tended to just…rush at monsters with a dumb, boorish grin on his face.

  Foolish, certainly, but there was a charm to it; more than she cared to admit.

  He appeared far more gaunt than yesterday. Whatever Berserker skill he was using was clearly taking its toll. It was why she hated that class type with a passion; they were volcanoes waiting to erupt. Despite their use as siege weapons, she never liked having them under her command.

  “Oh?” She noticed his moves. He had changed a lot. The way he moved carried a solid rhythm now. His footsteps were firm, no longer faltering like before, confident.

  Overconfident, perhaps.

  He seemed not to be fearful of the turtle at all. Why? Did he plan on using his precious Berserker skill again? Berserker’s Rage? Was that how he fought all the time? Wouldn’t surprise her if that's why he’d shrunk so much.

  But then, she saw something that made her stop. From below the heel of his hand rose a vine—a pair of blood vines longer than his body. And he slammed down on the turtle.

  Boom!

  “Entangle!” She spat. Did she see that right? He was using Entangle—one of the base Fae skills that every Fae had to learn before they were sixteen.

  How could that be?

  Instead of wood, it was a modified version made using his blood. Had he gotten one of those skill-eating or skill-copying classes? She wouldn’t be surprised if he chose that kind of thing. It also appeared that he had awakened his Talent.

  Right, he has that cursed thing inside of him.

  Being a near infinite source of soul mana was enough to awaken his talents early on. To be honest, it didn’t seem super impressive; just something metal-related. A metal-related talent wasn’t rare at all, usually.

  He was using Entangle rather well, using it to propel himself up and down, saving his stamina with minimal movement. This was already good enough to be a sergeant. Good enough to make a small name for himself.

  But was that all he was?

  She didn’t believe in accidents. Nobody would dare to break the Covenants set by the Architect, not even the most powerful System Administrators. If he was sent here, it was for a certain reason.

  It was because he was destined.

  Though she would like to deny it, there was such a thing as destiny. Fate was real; even outside of the Fae. Everyone was born with a potential they couldn’t escape; everyone had a certain destiny they had to follow.

  That was not a good thing. Not always.

  Suddenly, she saw something that surprised her. Or rather…scared. A flicker of flame flashed through his blood, burning brightly as he struck the turtle down. The Turtle's body burned and broke a little, and the air sizzled with a burning pressure.

  He already had an aspect of [Flame]!

  “That’s impossible!” She focused. She had taken three cycles to grasp a single aspect of Shadow. And he had done it in less than a week? The first time she’d seen him, there was something related to [Wind] about him, though it was passive. She’d attributed it to some lucky encounter.

  But this was an active element he could control. The System was never generous when it came to things like that.

  Zayn suddenly stopped. His earlier enthusiasm was fading. “You aren’t being a good practice dummy.”

  What?

  The vines retracted, and out came his blood, rushing, forming a pair of blood red swords in his hand. Hmm? It was not something as simple as metallic fortification, then. He could make weapons out of his blood, too.

  Interesting.

  Another booming noise rang, cracks spread across the turtle’s body like cobwebs. With a few more strikes, he shattered each of its legs and reduced it to a mound of stones.

  She watched him channel mana into his fists, hammer down, and rip out its heart. The cursed thing wormed its way free and devoured it.

  How amusing.

  Yesterday, he’d been a bumbling idiot with no idea of the disaster he had stumbled into. Watching him fumble about had been somewhat entertaining, if not endearing. But now, he had changed so much. She once again found herself staring at her objectives.

  Help Contestant Zayn defeat the Stone Ape. (0/1)

  Help Contestant Zayn leave the dungeon. (0/1)

  Even without the objectives, she would have brought him out. But she’d have employed…some ‘forceful’ measures. But now, she wasn’t too sure.

  She met his gaze. A fire burned there, bright and unyielding. A fire of defiance.

  Faeria shrugged.

  This might prove more difficult than she had thought.