Bone Golem

Trgl was a natural leader, for a goblin. Her will circuit was strengthening her intent, but it was still quite weak. She announced the direction they were going and sat against the wall to await them being ready to move out, playing around and talking with Mgrt in the mean time.

Now that their intent was stronger, I taught them some basic circuits and how to know if they were made incorrectly. Mgrt instantly surprised me by not even trying to look at her circuits as she built them. Instead she built them in her mouth as it was closed. As she still wasn't good at it, this caused explosions within her mouth several times. She was highly durable, though. The circuits she was trying to build were only basic ones, so they couldn't hurt her even if she built one incorrectly in her brain and it exploded.

Trgl was closer to normal in her approach. She wrote them with her finger on Mgrt's skin until she was satisfied with how they looked before writing them in the air.

Neither had managed to built a complete circuit before the army was ready to go. Trgl grunted her assent and walked out the gate, followed by an army that struggled to keep up with her massive strides. The humans struggled the most. They were falling out before they'd even gotten far enough away that their walls were too small to see clearly.

I had mercy on them and mentioned that their physique templates had various means of keeping up their stamina and strength. Once they knew to look, they figured out how to manage the active components of their templates quite quickly. They activated each circuit, figured out the effect, and moved on until they found all of their physical reinforcement circuits. Once they had, they managed to keep up with the strolling Trgl as she wrote on Mgrt's hand before trying to make them real magic. They could even start trying to digest the information I'd shoved directly into their will-cores about how circuit creation worked. I couldn't give them skill or precision, but I could give them information easily. Worshippers were so convenient.

I was grateful no humans had figured out how to make them. They could have been a lot more dangerous if they'd possessed a linked will and purpose. It wasn't too hard to see why they hadn't, the worship rune was highly dangerous. Once it was built, if anyone touched it with their will they'd become the master of the rune and the rune's creator. That level of worship would allow the ruler to see deep into their will, but it wouldn't ensure loyalty or access without blood as a binding agent for the contract. If it was, the wizard would probably see it as some form of intimacy rune and abandon the project.

The army had no issues progressing, as they were rushing faster than any other force, but the rest of the formation had started getting bored. The third composite ogres were in the lead, killing any creatures they came across while everyone else wandered around Trgl and Mgrt playing at learning magic together at their easy pace.

The humans were excited and full of energy since they discovered the power in their bodies, but the pace had become too easy to provide them with excitement. Instead, they started ranging out to look for prey or other forms of excitement. Some stayed behind with Mgrt and Trgl, trying to learn magic, but most went out to look for adventure.

They didn't find much. The immediate area around Adrian was pretty barren. There was the forest that grew to the north and west of Adrian, but to the south and east were nothing but open plains of earth. The ground was perfectly flat, nothing moved, and every creature that approached could be felt at great distances due to their effect on the ambient mana. There were so surprises, nothing exciting.

Instead, many of the humans decided to create their own excitement. They organized into forces and fought each other. The battles became much more violent once I explained to them that since they'd solidified their will-cores I could repair their bodies from utterly destroyed to perfectly usable without them dying. At that point, their battles became utterly brutal, never stopping until one side had been completely eviscerated. Surrender was never an option, nor was retreat.

At that point, Trgl noticed one of the fights and was getting ready to stop it when her blood started boiling. At that point, the combat became her training method for her army. She finally used the authority I'd given her to actually command the army. She used it to organize a game, but I didn't mind. It was combat and there could never be too much combat training. Her method of fight till ya die, think about it, then do it again wouldn't result in as much polish as Euri's training regimen looked to be or the training exercises Adrian CMXXVIII had her army doing, but Trgl's army would be made aware of any weaknesses they had in a very brutal fashion. They'd build their own combat styles from the ground up based on their own capabilities. It could be that the result would be weaker, but the users would know it better. I wasn't sure which method was superior, just yet.

The numbers of each team were equivalent, but the distribution of creatures within each were far from equal. The food ogres never paired up with humans and several teams only allowed only humans in their ranks. The human-only teams rarely ever won and never won against a team with a third composite ogre in them, but they put up a good fight. As I saw their defeats, I was getting a picture of their future growth. They were on the bottom now, but that wasn't going to be the case forever, I was sure of that much. The teams with third composite ogres were showing signs of complacency before the first day was even over, while the human-only teams were only getting more aggressive.

Trgl's force was the most brutal and violent. Many had learned some circuits for offensive use, especially the hounds in her team, and they used them to devastating effect. Another benefit was that theirs was the only team with five third composite ogres. While her team would be the perfect place for complacency to grow, the opposite was true instead. Trgl was acutely aware of the fact that I was watching both her and Mgrt closely. She knew that if ever there came a day when her team lost, that would be the day she was no longer commander. She didn't use the authority much, but she loved that she could. The primary reason she feared losing command, though, was the threat of someone else stealing Mgrt from her. It was a mostly baseless fear, but it kept her motivated so I didn't mess with it.

As the fighting and competition became more strenuous, the divide between each team grew. When night came they all slept in the single army formation, but there was distinctive tension within this force and borders between teams that were upheld. Each team camped in their own location, shared equipment, and never moved into the domain of any other team. I would have put a stop to it, but I could see the progress they were making. While they weren't as magically proficient as Angie's army, they were more dangerous overall. Not only had they gained a lot of battle experience, they were eroding their fear of death.

The first couple of battles had been non-lethal. Once Trgl took command, every battle was lethal but a lot of the soldiers had been hesitant. They'd fought and killed, but always with the fear that those they killed would come back and kill them in recompense. That fear stayed through the first several "deaths" they experienced. Especially the human-only teams that regularly lost even their most skilled members. In those teams, their fear of death was expunged very quickly, and they immediately started implementing tactics that required sacrifices. They started winning more once they accepted death as the outcome of every battle. After losing several times, most of the armies started learning how to fight through the fear of death.

Trgl's approach was unique, though. She had Mgrt kill her and killed Mgrt repeatedly once she saw how the teams the held on to their fear were starting to lose. She hadn't ever died in a battle, but she destroyed her fear of death all the same. Learning from her, her team followed suit, pairing up and killing each other until they didn't fear it anymore. In such a way, they kept their edge and remained undefeated while simultaneously learning and taking as their own the terrible threat of an enemy that didn't fear death.

The competitive spirit of the game had the potential to turn this army into a hotbed of betrayal, but I would never let that happen. I had direct access to all of their will-cores, so I could see any seeds of division before they festered into sedition. Had the tension grown to such an extent that it started threatening the cohesion of the army, I would have stopped it. I didn't have to because while they may compete for the best team in the army it was always as a part of being in my army. Tension and competition were good, divisiveness would be eradicated with extreme prejudice.