22: Farther and Farther

[Year 20 Month 4: 1 Month has passed]

[Blessed: 5453 – 28 + 832]

Many were surprised by my recent reawakening and evolution. The councilors were rather sour, as they had begun to gather more political influence while I was gone, but with my return, that would soon decay.

Astrid and the others in my close circle were happy, but most were busy, and while my presence was pretty much omnipotent in this region, it was pretty easy to ignore me. It’s not like I talked to many or did much on the surface.

Although this was going to change pretty rapidly, with my new abilities, I felt more comfortable with expanding my reach, and since everyone already knows of my golems, I might as well use them. At least, the ones they knew about, obviously, no one had discovered the ones yet to be developed, myself included.

According to Metis, who had been keeping track of the population, the number of adventurers willing to fight against the Vexus had begun to decline, as they watched many of their friends die. This, in turn, meant that Osbert and his men were under much higher pressure than before.

Safe to say that the guards were more than pleased when my golems had filled in the gaps and begun leaving the city to slay the seemingly never-ending numbers of Stalkerhounds.

As yet, there was no sign of the Alpha Hound; nobody had seen it since its debut about three years ago, and Codex hadn’t noticed the corrupting mana spike recently, although he did note a small but steady increase.

I was a little worried that this signaled the Invasion’s Boss, but Codex reassured me that from his calculations, the corrupted mana was not enough to support such a powerful being… yet.

Pushing aside the highly concerning issue of potential incoming doom, I had been greeted by a small package delivered underground.

With a little bit of pressuring the right merchants and explorers, Sahil and Astrid worked together to scrounge the exact materials I needed for my third runic assistant.

Safe to say, I had it quickly dropped off at my main body, and with little hesitation, activated [Engrave Runic Assistant].

This time, I wanted a strategist, someone who was actually focused on the battlefield and military preparation. While I could technically do it myself, I don’t really know a lot about that type of stuff, and would rather outsource it to someone that did.

Technically, Codex and Metis can fill the role, but their processing power is slowly becoming more and more busy. Metis is taking more of an active role in helping Astrid with what basically amounts to the three settlements’ accounting. Gorn, Runehold, and the Burrow all needed some form of administration, and it was too much for Astrid to manage without the runic assistant.

I wasn’t smart enough to do everything, but I was smart enough to delegate.

As such, I decided my next assistant’s name would be Athena. It felt fitting with the intention of focusing on strategic warfare. Hopefully, becoming the ‘general’ of my growing army of various golems.

Once again, I felt another mental link establish into my growing network of runic assistants.

“Do you have any immediate orders, or may I attend to the troops?” Athena spoke in a serious tone.

I paused. She wouldn’t have much work cut out for her right now, as there were active threats. I spoke, “Right now, your duties are minimal, but I want you to be the brains of my war golems. You and Codex will be working pretty closely, however, so I expect you to get along.”

Not that I thought they really could dislike each other, while they had personalities, it was nothing more than an advanced algorithm. Having done a deep dive into all of their runic pathways, I knew that the personification I gave them was merely an illusion.

It’s kinda sad that I spend all day talking to the magic equivalent of generative AIs. Smart enough to hold a conversation but not smart enough to be like actual people.

I was still struggling with talking with Salfi and the other mortals. While I felt like I was always doing something, I still had my stretches of time where I was asleep, and it could be a day or two, or could last multiple months.

For me, it feels like a few months have passed since Inra died, and now Astrid and Penelope’s children are both only a few months away from unlocking their classes, with humans unlocking their system at the age of ten.

Mentally, I sigh. Alas, I cannot spend all my time thinking about my emotions. Gotta get some work done.

With Codex now freed up from running the battle golems, he had considerably more resources to look into my new ability [Auroric Channels]. It took a couple of weeks to see a noticeable change, but the rebalancing in ambient mana had shifted some of the beasts around. Runehold was seeing slightly weaker beasts (with the exception of Vexus), while the area where I dumped the mana had some stronger beasts begin to migrate there.

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As the region began to rebalance in mana, it also meant that some of my golems had to go a bit further to clear up the beast population, as the number of people willing to leave the walls decreased as the Vexus Invasion continued. Meaning larger and larger numbers of golems had to be deployed not only to quell the local monsters, but also the growing packs of stalkerhounds and their stronger brethren.

I suspect that the Alpha Hound has likely holed up somewhere out of my sight; if it moved too much, it would cause large fluctuations in the mana, which I could then detect if it was within 50 kilometers. It was probably just mass-producing units in some cave.

We had received the very occasional messenger that kept us in contact with the outside world, but even then, the frequency and amount of information were limited. All that we knew was that the Chosen were beginning to appear, and that many had already begun to fight the waves of Vexus.