Ep. 1097 Homeward Bound Part 6 (Patreon)

That means that Jarvis will need to issue tactical orders, or I need to make a tactical golem. I didn't include tactics in Jarvis' programming, but I think he can learn it on his own. He is adaptable and should be able to learn anything that I want to teach him.

"Jarvis, do you want me to teach you tactics so you can command the golems, or do you want me to make a commander for them?"

Jarvis says "I would prefer to learn tactics."

Since that is his decision, I start explaining about tactical thinking, but I stick to small unit tactics. After all, Jarvis will only be controlling around twenty golems, army tactics are pointless. Once he has the basics, I create a chess set and play several games against him.

At first I win easily, but after that each game gets harder and harder to win. Jarvis is learning at an impressive rate, which is exactly what I was hoping for. Jarvis actually wins the twentieth game and after that he wins about half the time.

When I get bored of playing chess, I create a different strategic board game. We play until Jarvis reminds me that it is time for me to create a soulscape. So, I have him return time to normal, create the soulscape, and invite everyone.

Nothing unusual happens in the soulscape and once everyone is worn out I end it. As soon as I am out, I have Jarvis return the time dilation to five times. I don't know how the time dilation would affect a soulscape, but I get a bad feeling when I think about it.

I plan to trust my instinct and only open a soulscape in normal time, just to be safe. Since the soulscape has time dilation of its own, there would probably be a conflict between the two. The last thing I want to do is mess up time, that never goes well in any story.

With my luck, something horrible is sure to happen if I mess around with time. When I am thinking about it, even my curiosity stays silent which is a bad sign. Then and there, I promise myself that I won't do anything with time beyond time dilation.

I head outside to check on the two combat golems, who are still fighting each other. Their skills have improved quite a bit, but after fighting for so long they are both heavily damaged. I order them to stop and then have Jarvis see if he can repair them using the castle's enchants.

He is able to completely repair the both of them and it only takes a few seconds. After that, I do different levels of damage to the two of them until Jarvis can't repair them. It looks like the threshold where they can't be repaired is around seventy percent.

I take the two of them down to my workshop and repair them by hand. Then, I start making more, I am planning to have a total of twenty of them. I complete four more golems before Lin comes looking for me and drags me off to bed.

In my opinion, this is the best part about having time dilation, not needing to rush. Not only can we take our time with our fun, but I can sleep afterwards. Normally, I would feel guilty about wasting time sleeping, but now it isn't such a big deal.

I won't need to only sleep every three days, I can sleep every night if we are in the castle. Of course, it isn't actually a full night, since it isn't even two hours of real time. Still, it makes it much easier to relax now that I know I have plenty of time.

When I wake up, Lin is still asleep, but I can't be sure how long I have slept. I check the time with Jarvis and find out that I slept for about seven hours. That is plenty of time, so I climb back into bed and proceed to wake Lin up.

After a while, we head downstairs for breakfast even though it is the middle of the night. It is going to be difficult to keep track of days and nights while under the time dilation. There is almost no way to keep any kind of normal pattern with time moving so fast.

However, that is a price that I am totally willing to pay for being able to catch up. My list of things that I need, or want, to do was getting a little too long. It had already gotten to the point where it was stressing me out, but now all I feel is relief.

It turns out that the kids already woke up and ate using the table, so it is just Lin and I. Mushu, Nala, and Albion are playing, but when they notice us they come over for some attention. After a few minutes, they return to their game and leave us to finish eating.

"I wonder where Mulan is."

Lin says "She is probably in my tower. I taught her several exercises to help her control her power. She has been working hard on them ever since."

"That's not too surprising. She seemed really worried about burning someone accidentally."

Lin says "Yeah. I think she has a trauma about it from one of her previous lives, but I can't be sure."

"That would explain it. As long as she learns to control her power, that fear should fade away. Is there anything I can do to help?"

Lin says "Nope. I've got this."

"Alright. I will be in the workshop if you need me."

After getting a nod from Lin, I head downstairs and go back to making more golems. This time, I don't get interrupted and manage to finish all of the combat golems. Then I instruct Jarvis to take them outside and have them spar to improve their combat skills.

This will also give Jarvis the chance to practice controlling and commanding them. The combat golems have a standby mode, so they don't have to be active all the time. That way, when they aren't needed, they can just sleep until they are activated.

I did that to prevent any problems from them having nothing to do for long periods of time. They might not be sentient, but since they have some ability to learn I still want to take precautions. The last thing I want is a bunch of combat golems going insane and running amok.

Once the golems leave, I start crafting another golem, but this one is much more complicated. In fact, I am still not sure if I can even make the core that it will need to have. This is meant to be for Athena, but the ship's core isn't something I can match.

With Jarvis it was fairly easy to make a matching core, but for Athena I need to try something else. Luckily, Athena is sentient and has the ability to use magic, so I can cheat. At least that is the idea, to make the core something that Athena's magic can match with.