A Dragon’s Curiosity

 

Concurrently, the seven springs of elemental energy in the underground throne room represented a physical display of Nisha‘s cultivation and nourished the world by drawing upon the outside world and channelling it inside her body.

Once the mana and aura circled through the environment and completed a circle, it exited the space and returned to the outside world.

Because Nisha‘s body obtained the aura and mana in a very wide diameter, there was no energy storm around her body while it captured and released enough mana and aura to sustain a small world.

In fact, her soul released a greater, albeit tiny, amount of energy than her body took in, the energy increased as it interacted with the [Inner World].

As a result, the mana and aura concentration was greater inside the Dharnas compound, where Nisha often stayed for prolonged periods of time.

It made the house and land around it a better place for cultivation compared to the estates neighbouring them, but it was not immediately noticeable, as the change happened over a prolonged period of time.

Therefore, most of the time only the central island functioned properly as it enjoyed the benefits of being close to the source of Nisha‘s powers, the seven springs.

Eisen moved around in this place and found both the skills left behind by the goddess as well as the relics from Nisha‘s grandfather.

Aside from growing and learning about the world, the floating armour studied [Golem Control], which also helped it learn the language.

Due to its physique as an elemental, it did not need to eat or sleep, giving it ample time to study the difficult concepts carved on the trunk.

And with the breakthrough in cultivation, it finally had enough mana and aura to put them into use, though it was a fairly difficult ordeal to find a suitable medium.

It had finally succeeded in controlling three chess pieces when its master looked for it and found out what it was doing with her treasured relics.

 

Nisha closed her eyes and tuned out all distracting thoughts and the noise of the outside world as her perception sunk into the totem carved with the profound meaning of the [Golem Control] skill.

When the elf had traded for an opportunity with the Goddess Bael before, she wished for a method to make use of her time more efficiently, as there were really too many matters she had to attend to.

If the dragon picked up a convenient skill to manage her time better, it would really help her in many ways.

Strictly speaking, the green haired twin goddess did not disappoint her either, as the set of skills she left behind did offer many hands and included a method to split one's attention and train the skill holder until doing two or three times at the same time was nothing but child‘s play.

Unfortunately, nothing came for free in this world and [Golem Control] alone did not make a big difference, it was more of an entry skill to facilitate the following skills.

On top of that, learning it was quite difficult too.

Before Nisha had a breakthrough in her cultivation, it felt similar to having a bowl of knowledge, yet her vessel was too small to contain the complex mana and aura operation methods given by the skill.

She needed to view the knowledge in four or five portions when trying to understand the core of the skill, which increased the difficulty of learning it by four or five times as well when the connections between the topics mentioned in the skill got broken apart due to the elf viewing them in parts.

Perhaps a true genius versed in abilities of similar nature could grasp [Golem Control] at a cultivation rank even lower than the third rank, but for Nisha, the returns were not enough to make her allocate a big portion of her time trying to master the skill.

Luckily, the first great divide in cultivation did not only mark the difference in breaking through, but also the qualitative jump in power after making it through.

Whereas the correct concept about golems and puppets eluded her before and the knowledge was rather fragmented, the young girl with the prowess of a fourth rank mage managed to visualise the complicated patterns more easily this time around and difficult questions were no longer a roadblock for her.

In other words, her vessel had grown after her rise in cultivation and her mind got stronger.

 

Since it involved the inheritance left behind to her by her grandfather, Nisha studied the core method of the skill for a long time with her brows furrowed.

The more ancillary side topics included all the necessary knowledge to prepare a golem body, although they were useless without the core skill to animate it.

From carving the body, inscribing the fundamental channels and carving the necessary spell arrays, to sourcing suitable materials and appraising the quality of the ingredients, the stump-like plant recorded all of it clearly.

Perhaps the dragon was still clueless in the related fields before taking a look, yet after committing the skill to memory, it was safe to say that she was half an expert in the matters that were useful for creating a golem, the core skill given by a goddess was nothing that could be found in a local skill library, it‘s quality was much higher overall.

Whether it was clay, wood or metal, they were no longer strangers to Nisha and it was only a lack of hands-on experience that separated her from being a true expert.

After the elf performed some trials and went through the process a few times herself, she was confident that she would gain entry level mastery over [Golem Control].

On top of that, she also found out why Eisen failed to perform the skill earlier.

The familiar amassed most of its knowledge of the skill in self study and before its master broke through, so it was not unusual that the floating armour had a gap in its knowledge.

Reading the entire core method and the auxiliary contents once again and confirming that she memorised it word for word, Nisha turned around and looked at her familiar.

Perhaps Eisen also accepted that it was at fault and that its punishment was not uncalled for, yet it still hesitantly floated in the distance and did not want to come closer before ascertaining the mood of the master.

After studying the skill and figuring out that the chess figures were unlikely to be damaged due to this incident, a lot of the rage that occupied her thoughts subsided and Nisha worried that she might have lost her head in the spur of the moment and overreacted.

Although the floating armour was a bit of a good for nothing and did not offer its help like Little Lia did in her daily life, the elf still signed a contract with them and was determined to treat them as her companions and not like they were master and slave.

 

People and monsters with the life and death element were really too rare, aside from the Hall of Life and Death at the Seven Stars Church, Nisha had not met anyone else aside from Eisen that shared her element and it had accompanied her all this time.

Noticing its careful movements, the dragon put away the last grievances in her heart for having her artefacts touched without her permission.

 

After she spent quite some time memorizing the skill, Nisha figured out why Eisen previously failed to replicate his achievement with a wooden medium as the body.

Due to the armour learning most of the information before reaching the fourth rank, it must be said that the familiar was quite compatible with the skill, or it would not have made any progress at all.

Nevertheless, the gaps of knowledge from the incomplete understanding showed when it tried to use a single material to accomplish a complex task.

Instead of directly addressing the living armour, she picked another tree and cut it down in a similar fashion as before.

Picking off all the small branches, a sturdy trunk was quickly peeled from the bark and cut into uniform shape.

After the preliminary steps, the elf entered the underground cave nearby and studied the formation of crystals around the springs gushing with elemental energy.

Due to studying them for a while, the dragon noticed a pattern in the appearance of the crystals.

Close to the spring source, excessive mana and aura eventually condensed into crystal seeds, which quickly sponged up the overflowing energy to grow.

Based on proximity, the mana gems were purer in nature the closer they were to the eye of the spring and eventually ended up with mixed properties in the boundary between two sources.

And if they were nourished long enough, the mana gems obtained a boost in quality and turned into mana gems, which were many times more valuable than crystals, but they also took a longer time to form.

Since the life and death, darkness and fire springs were several times stronger than the other elements, most of the gems came from these three and the gems covered more area around them on the walls of the cave.

Plucking a mana gem and a mana crystal of decent size from the area of the life and death spring source, Nisha returned to the clearing with the skill saplings and sat down next to the wooden trunk.

With her finger clad in fire aura, the elf carved a circuit from the [Golem Control] skill, which had several designs to adapt to different materials.

After making sure that the lines were not broken anyway, Nisha picked the mana crystal and placed it into the middle of the trunk, connecting it to the array with a new line.

Finally, she set the mana gem on top of the trunk by carving a corresponding half sphere so that the gem itself was secured firmly, yet still extended above the wood.

 

Satisfied with the simple and improvised golem prototype, Nisha gestured towards her familiar so that the floating armor would come closer.

“Give it a try. You should be able to use this.”

Apart from the main medium, a suitable spell array and aura channel was required to animate a golem and give it the proper form to move around.

Wood was rather cheap at the lower ranks and often plentily available, making it not a bad choice when it came to crafting the base for a golem.

Eisen hurried over and inspected the trunk, which was not dissimilar from the one it requested to demonstrate its achievements.

It did not understand why the additional items were needed, but orders from the master were absolute.

Putting one gauntlet on the half exposed gem at the upper body and another one on the crystal in the core, the familiar once again created thin threads of mana that roamed around the wooden trunk.

Unlike the previous attempts, the thin mana no longer aimlessly spun around, it quickly found the carved formation and followed the channel beneath the surface according to the diagram drawn by the elf.

Instead of scattering and damaging the wood in the following breakdown, the circulation speed of the mana sped up and completed a big cycle around the wood.

Afterwards, a connection between the mana crystal and the magic circuit formed and Eisen’s outline began to dim as the intensity of the mana threads grew in proportion.

Within a short frame of time, the familiar fully disappeared and the mana gem on top of the golem prototype lit up with a soft glow, where a considerable amount of mana gathered.

Due to the last part of the circuit starting up, the mana threads no longer flew around in a random manner and converged on the path set by the array carving.

From the mana gem, the energy wandered around the top half of the trunk, reinforced the wood and arrived at the mana gem on top, which acted as the sensing organ and central command node for the golem, and then descended towards the bottom half of the trunk.

 

With Eisen taking over the golem, his awareness transferred to the mana gem and took over the operation of the golem.

As the familiar wished to move, the inscriptions stirred to life as the mana from the control node gave the command to move.

Aura welled from the wood and mixed with the foreign mana, powering up the inscriptions towards the outer parts of the golem prototype.

Intent and energy combined under the complex arrays and inscriptions and the base material began to warp.

While the trunk thinned, short stubby arms and legs grew from the bottom and the sides of the wood, giving the golem the appearance of a short treeman.

Cautiously moving his newly formed limbs, the familiar tried to move its body in various ways before remembering the original intent behind obtaining a physical body and turned towards Nisha, its master.

Bowing deeply to the point where Nisha worried the treeman would fall over on its face, Eisen manipulated the upper part of the golem.

The exposed mana gem sank downwards and hid inside the wood while a simple wooden face reminiscent of a tree spirit with hollow eyes and simple features appeared.

Due to being an elemental, the floating armor usually lacked a physical body to make sounds and the animated armor lacked vocal chords or other organs to produce sounds.

After obtaining a method to obtain a body and communicate with the master, Eisen had been overeager and rashly touched the treasured relics of the dragon without much thought.

“Am … sorry …”

Accompanied by deep rumbles, the voice of the golem resembled two wooden blocks rubbing and hitting against each other with a low timbre.

Nevertheless, the familiar properly conveyed its intention.