Bone Golem

"That's impossible. Nobody can touch anyone else's soul spell without killing them. Even trying kills people." A memory of a past experience flashed across her will-core. In it a man brighter than anything I'd ever seen tried to use a circuit to invade the will of a non-radiant man in worn clothing. He shuddered with resistance for a few seconds before his body tore itself apart. Each bone separated from muscle, skin tore itself into shreds, blood sprayed everywhere. Cleaning that up had left a permanent scar on Angie's will-core more than watching the process had.

What she didn't see was the cost it had on the wizard. With the pathetic way humans advanced, their wills weren't that reinforced. The only reason the wizard survived was because he used a circuit to lead his assault. Had he tried without that, both would have experienced will-rejection. Even with that advantage, without a way to mend his own will the wizard would have declined into an utter shadow of his former self. I wasn't sure if he had, but given the fact that he had tried without reinforcing his will I would assume he didn't have a way to get it back.

She was right, though. Invading a foreign will was a very delicate and dangerous process. Had that wizard tried to invade the man's will-core it would have been even worse. At that point a connection would have been established between their will-cores and both would have eradicated each other. Though…his will-core was probably much more reinforced than his will. Angie's was, so I didn't see why his wouldn't be better than hers. Maybe it would have been better for him to assault the core…no, his will would be so depleted by the time it got to the core that he wouldn't be capable of self-defense anymore. That didn't matter in my case, though. I knew better than to invade a hostile will directly. Killing them and eating the vacant will was so much better. "You worship me. Your soul rejecting my aura is impossible." Her eyes went wide. "You remember that I told you worship gave a piece of your soul to me, right?" she nodded. "How could your soul reject aura that tastes of itself?" She seemed to understand, either that or she stopped caring. Either way, that wasn't what I wanted to talk about. "Where is knowledge of magic held?"

She understood my purpose very quickly. Working with creatures that had more than a film of intent felt much better. "The wizard tower has all knowledge of magic holed up inside. Well…not all of it. The city library has some basic magic, but a lot more of it is based around other forms of knowledge. We'd need permission from the Lord to get in, though. The wizards are even worse. Getting inside would be a nightmare."

"Lead me to the library." A place full of knowledge was never obsolete. Governed by the Lord, it would probably have more information about how the society functioned, which was also quite useful for me. Maps would also be appreciated.

Angie nodded and stood up, but she realized she was still wearing most of her armor as her stomach growled. "Could we wait for me to eat something first? And get changed, maybe?" my creep held up the rest of her armor and the robe she'd worn yesterday as I built the same circuits in her stomach and intestines that the ogres had. Deciphering the brain was hard, but adapting circuits meant for goblins to work on humans wasn't nearly as difficult. "I meant a different …not hungry anymore?"

Fine. "Change clothing, then. Eating is unnecessary. Your subsistence now depends on ambient mana." I wasn't sure what other circuits I wanted to utilize from the goblin repertoire, but the ability to convert mana into nutrients was invaluable. The goblins had several redundancies in the way they built their nutrient conversion system, but that was unnecessary for me. That also freed up quite a bit of space in the middle of her torso that I could use for other circuitry. Maybe the head wasn't the best place to build a mana-core. "You also don't leak mana anymore. It appears humans have yet to figure out that spells shouldn't be circular. No wonder the powerful glow like spotlights all the time. Are you going to change or not?"

Angie hadn't left her seat on the bed since she'd dropped back onto it when I mentioned that she didn't need to eat anymore. She seemed quite unresponsive, so I had my creep clap right in front of her face. She jolted before rushing toward her dresser. "What are you, anyway? You're no goblin but you don't refer to yourself as human either."

"I was a golem at one point, but I don't think that's an accurate description of myself anymore." The horde my other creep had built was getting difficult to manage, so I started building circuits into them as well. I left their brains for further research as I was still trying to decipher them, but they all had a lot of space in their guts that allowed for a much larger mana-core. I didn't want to get too involved with their modification, though. They'd all be fed to my constructs once I finished this invasion. I did want living humans, though. Worshippers provided benefits constructs didn't.

Angie carried me to the library. I'd left the creep in the house to join the other in expanding my effective force within the city. Seeing her former master in the memory had reinforced the idea that this may be a more difficult victory than I'd thought when I decided to do it. That being would be able to resist third composite ogres, if not stop them. That meant there could be those within the city with the power to push back the third composites. The brood would be m.a.t.u.r.e ogres by the time they reached the city, but only Glrt's offspring would be third composites.

As soon as we reached the library I realized that I had to enter. The mana was so laden with intent as it leaked out of the massive doors that it was almost intoxicating. In order to realize exactly what the feeling was, I took a risk I probably wouldn't otherwise. There were only two guards at the door, both armored with heavy leather armor that made Angie's look ornamental. I sent out two tendrils of will behind them, climbed the wall until I was directly behind their heads and made tiny replicas of the spell I'd used to kill my Creator. I may not have deciphered the brain, but I knew the exact parts that would kill a person the fastest. My crystalline bullets ripped through their brain stems and dug into the nose-guards on their helmets. Their will-cores evaporated instantly, allowing me to consume their will and take their bodies. Angie was still stopped in front of the two, waiting to be stopped when she realized they weren't doing anything. The whole process had merely looked like them shifting their stance at exactly the same time.

When the guards wordlessly opened the doors she was flabbergasted. My work created no light or ripples in the mana, which violated her understanding of magic. It was also the first time seeing how easy it was for me to control bodies. She was feeling better about her decision to worship me with every act she saw me take.

Within the structure there were more guards, but none acted like they would stop her as she walked with an air of confidence deeper into the structure, getting ever closer to that intoxicating intent. After a few hallways she entered a massive room filled with shelves. Upon the shelves were the most amazing things I'd ever experienced.

It was the pure, concentrated, regulated intent. Each object was a repository of intent to immortalize information. This room had tens of thousands of these objects. I completely abandoned Angie for the first time since she'd scryed my camp. So much intent, so little will. With each book I consumed, I gained more knowledge. Knowledge of the world. Knowledge of politics, society, flora, fauna, history, fiction, concepts, contextualization, philosophy, everything I could imagine and plenty I couldn't in such a concentrated state was definitely intoxicating. I killed everyone in the building except for Angie to have more will to consume knowledge with. I could claim their bodies afterwards, but the only priority was getting all of this knowledge as quickly as possible.

If the wizard tower was like this…I was definitely taking it over. Nothing could stop me from gaining a repository like this filled with magical knowledge instead of everything else. My other bodies throughout the city started working in a fervor to make sure I was at my peak performance. I wasn't going to lose a magical library because of a lackl.u.s.ter supply of will or mana. I modified bodies to hold smaller true circuits of mana collection rather than the basic circuits I'd used previously. This made it much more difficult to separate the bodies out again, but I didn't care. Nothing would stop me from claiming all libraries and books within the wizard tower, even wasteful usage of resources.