Ep. 1046 Dealing with the Empire Part 5 (Patreon)

I take the five books and head over to sit down next to Lin at her table. Lin greets me with a smile but she doesn't stop working and I try not to disturb her. I pick up the first of the books and start reading, hoping for some good information.

Unfortunately, the first two books are just repeats of the information in other books. The third book is better and has some new information on golem cores. When I finish the book I hand it to Lin and ask her to make two copies.

Lin says "Two? Why two?"

"One for your library and one for me. I have decided to keep a few books in case I need to refer back to them. Oh, you also don't need to bother with the golem books in this library, I am checking them."

Lin says "Alright."

Lin makes the copies and puts one in her pouch and then hands the other to me. After putting the copy into my pouch I start reading the fourth book. It ends up being all about golem cores and the enchantments for them.

Most of the information in it is nothing new, but there are a few new ideas. It is also helpful in that all the information is in one place, so when I am done I have Lin make copies. Then I move on to the last book, but before I can start reading it Lin complains about being hungry.

Lin was planning to just eat from the pouch, but for a change of pace I take her to the restaurant across the square. Both the service and the food are as excellent as I was expecting. After we are done eating, we return to the library to do a little more work.

Lin skims through a couple of more books while I read the last golem book. It turns out to be all about weapons and offensive enchantments that golems can use. So, I have Lin make two copies and then we head back to the castle together.

Lin immediately heads into her tower to add the new books that she copied. I head down to my workshop and also put my new books away, but the amount of books I have looks sad. In fact, the entire room looks rather empty and nothing like a workshop.

Wanting to fix that, I first create a few tables and then a set of shelves. The tables still look kind of plain, but since I don't need tools there isn't much I can do. It helps the room look better once I unload all the metals from my pouch onto the shelves.

Thinking of Iron Man, I enchant one of the tables to maintain an illusion. This way I can create an illusion of the golem that I want to build and let it float there. It isn't exactly something that I need, but it will look really cool in my opinion.

Just as I am about to try it out, Lin comes down the stairs to see what I am doing. I didn't tell her about the workshop, so she takes a good look around when she enters. Not that there is much to see, but she is nice and doesn't say anything about it.

I head upstairs with her, then I open up the soulscape and invite everyone. This time I am in the mood for something a little different, so I help the kids take on human forms. Then I recreate every amusement park that I ever went to and merge them together.

At first everyone is confused, but it doesn't take long for them to start to figure things out. Once that happens everyone starts running around like crazy trying to experience everything. Everyone has a lot of fun and no one stops until they are completely exhausted.

Although, I do end up regretting my idea because Lin is still tired when I end the soulscape. She is so worn out that she falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow. However, seeing how much fun everyone had I don't regret it too much.

Since Lin is asleep, I enter into my meditation and start working on my core. I am still using two techniques at once and it is quite a bit easier this time. Although, I still have no idea why these two techniques work together when the others didn't.

*DING*

Core Upgrade Progress Completed!

Congratulations! You are now rank 10!

Rank 10: HP +500, MP +500, Primary Stats +100, Evolution Points +3!

That was even faster than I expected, using two techniques is faster than just double the speed. Now I just need to finish this rank to find out what is next, but I am worried. If it is like becoming a sacred creature, there will be a bottleneck that I need to break through.

Without outside help the bottleneck is probably going to be really difficult to deal with. However, the chances of me finding someone who can help me with it are pretty much nil. Considering I don't even know the name of the next level, how could I search for someone at that level?

In the end, I am just going to have to figure out a way to break through on my own. I will just have to wait until I get there and see how bad the bottleneck is. For now, I just keep working on my core with two techniques until I feel Lin wake up.

Core Upgrade Progress: 28%

Luckily, when Lin wakes up she is in the mood to make up for last night. After a while of fooling around, we get out of bed and have breakfast together. Then Lin leaves to head to the library and I get ready to start experimenting.

The first thing I want to do is play around with the theoretical joints, but I can't do that yet. Before I can do that, I need to play around with the metals I have and look for alloys. I need to pay attention to strength and flexibility to determine what will work best.

However, thanks to my ability to control metal with mana, it is much easier to experiment. This is also where my forge comes in handy because some metals react differently when heated. Playing around while looking for new combinations is actually really fun for me.

After I have exhausted the possible combinations I move on to creating the joints. Luckily, with my ability, even when the experiment fails I am able to recover almost all of the resources. However, just as I am really getting into the experiment, I feel the castle gate being opened.

At first I am annoyed that my experimenting is being interrupted, but then I realize that it is Almort. So I rush outside to greet him and see what news he has for me. As soon as he spots me, Almort holds out a chunk of what looks like white stone.

Almort says "Even with my authority, I was only able to get permission for you to look at it for an hour at most."