Zach looked at the blue screen for a few seconds reviewing several strategies on what attributes he should put into the golem. Strength, dexterity, and endurance; all seemed to be attributes that he could easily gain through spear practice and general combat. It would be easy for him to gain back those attributes over the long journey to the dungeon town and depending on his luck in the dungeon, exceed them. Yet when he had reviewed that plan with Grim, Grim mentioned the hidden quest for the village when they had first donated their mana. The quest had been called Nature’s True Balance I and had unlocked some DP for him and the utility spell Mend. Grim suggested that by evenly giving up Attributes he might be able to unlock something as well. Grim and Zach both agreed it was a gamble that there would be a hidden quest or reward, and risk if they were wrong would mean three to four levels to make up the attributes not easily gained.

  So now that the time had come, Zach decided to split the difference between the two plans. Pressing each attribute once a little plus one appeared next to each category. Seeing that nothing had happened Zach went ahead and pressed dexterity and endurance eight more times to complete the total loss of twenty four attribute points. The blue screen disappeared and the dark elemental vanished from his mana pool. Zach opened his eyes to see the dim light from the moon reflected off the brown metal as it began to move.

  Like a new born animal, the golem was having trouble with coordinating its limbs. Shaking, its arms and legs twisted back and forward until a hand placed itself under it’s body and pushed itself upward. In a few more seconds, the golem was finally standing, then its skeleton frame took its first steps toward Zach stepping out of the summoning circle. As soon as its body left the circle a blue screen appeared.

  Zach dismissed the screen instead of making a choice. He needed to first imprint the skill ‘Spear’ into Hayze. So placing his right hand on the featureless forehead of the golem; he went to his mana pool. Now instead of having to go into the cold water, Zach saw the elemental Hayze as a black snake that was coiled up on the ground. Hayze appeared to be a black anaconda, while its thick body seemed to spill over with coils. Zach kneeled and focused on doing the movements of his spear form over and over again. The concentration on the skill made Zach’s right hand began to glow in a yellow light. Slowly the light collected in his hand and formed into a spear. Carefully, Zach moved his hand in front of the Hayze’s head and the elemental struck with lighting speed. In the blink of an eye, the elemental snake open its mouth and swallow the glowing spear whole. Light moved around the dark mass of the elemental, as it shuddered and black skin began to molt. The castings were translucent with a purple tint, as a few black scales turn to brown causing the elemental to have a diamond pattern on its body. The elementals long body began to rub against itself causing more of the casting fell off. Feeling bad for the creature Zach reached down and began to help peel dead skin off of the elemental as it slithered around Zach’s feet. Soon all that was left was a little patch on the back of its tail and Zach pulled off gently. Flinging the skin away Zach didn’t see the elemental open its mouth and extend its two-inch-long fangs. He did however feel the piercing pain as they sunk into the back of Zach’s calf.

  Zach screamed in pain, as the small glade in Zach’s mana pool began to change. A black boulder of granite began to rise out of the ground. Zach fell against the boulder, until the pain subsided enough that Zach could feel the cubby holes that had been chiseled out in the granite. Looking at the chiseled holes, they were little glowing runes and items inside of them. Finally, the elemental removed its fangs from the back of Zach’s calf and instead of bloody wound, the flesh and cloth were whole. Hayze slithered off into the undergrowth of the island, as Grim appeared and looked at Zach cursing and hitting the rock. Grim, dress in his usual manner, appeared in chuck taylor’s, well-worn jeans and a T-shirt that said, ‘If you type “Google” into Google you will break the Internet.’ Looking down at Zach, Grim smiled and said, “Sorry, seems Hayze wants you starting on his ability as soon as possible.” Grim offered Zach a hand and Zach took it slowly coming up to his feet and looking at the boulder.

  Limping slightly Zach as he put weight on his leg, he stared into the cubby holes and asked Grim what he was looking at. Grim pointed at the glowing spear icon and spoke. “Apparently, when Hayze imprinted you with the two skills he felt like you needed some sort of system to categorize everything you can imprint instead of trying to summon it. Here watch this.” Grim pointed at a cubby hole and a rune floated out as two screens appeared. One showed some type of Gordian Knot of runes on multi colored threads. The second screen asked if Zach wanted to imprint a point of Strength into Hayze. Quickly dismissing the second screen and focusing on the first, Zach had the idea of trying to write a circuit schematic.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  “Grim,” Zach said, “can you pull up several screens of mana paper and help me?” As several blank blue screens appeared, Zach began speaking with Grim on what he wanted. On one of the screens Zach asked Grim to draw the spell like a circuit diagram, having the threads of mana act as wires while writing large blocks for the functional parts of the spell. One sheet turned into eight, as the diagrams quickly became coded to their mana type and different inputs, while Grim placed the runes that were written on each thread to the side of the wires. Another window Zach asked Grim the copy book about runes and how they were supposed to be written into a quick search text page. As the page began to fill, some of the runes changed to words on the diagrams. Finally Zach had Grim open the function runes that housed the main part of the spell into another electrical diagram. Slowly the screen began to expand more and more as large runes were broken down into smaller ones and then into lines, resistors, switches, inductors, grounds, and a dozen more symbols. The screen was as big as a house now and hundreds of runes were next to electrical components. Zach zoomed in on one of the components and saw even more runes attached to Sources and leads, the wealth of information in the spell was incredible. “Well… I don’t see any quick answers Grim. I thought that maybe viewing a spell or a mana skill would help me see that a computer programming language was behind everything, but from the looks of it we don’t even have a machine code right now. I mean I see a bunch of gates, energy sources with feedback loops, I even see inputs, but all of it is meaningless as the runes see to govern the type of input or how a switch will act.” Zach threw up his hands in the air with disgust.

  Grim sat there looking at the schematic for a while until he finally spoke, “I don’t know about meaningless, but I do think we are going to have to build our own machine code and then programming language. Some of these inputs you were talking about have runes next to them with language stating target or chosen object. My guess is that the runes force each conduct into a specific power type that needs to be linked up.” The schematic began to change notes began to appear on the schemetic giving inputs names along with movement of data. Snatches of code and new symbols were being made that Zach briefly remembered from his college days.

  Grim sighed before speaking, “Well, trying to distill this down to a programming language is going to take a while. I now understand why runes tap into the power of the subconscious, it’s the only way normal beings could control the changes in physics while not doing a couple trillion calculations in your head. Its going to take me quite a while to piece through your college memories to come up with a working theory that you and me review.”

  Zach wished Grim a good night and brought himself back to reality. Once he did, another message appearred in front of him.

  Zach reread the message and wanted to scream and curse. His contract with his golem had started him on a path that the Gods and Goddesses had noticed. At least the blue screen said he was just being watched and they couldn’t harm him, but it still felt like someone was holding a knife to his balls. Of course, if he and Grim only focused on the Hide ability he could also gather some strength before their notice went from idle curiosity to active hunting. Zach started walking back into his cabin, listening to the heavy footprints behind him. Wanting to try and talk to Grim privately, Zach focused his thoughts on Grim. ‘Grim, did you see the message I just received. What the fuck?!’

  Zach could hear Grim’s voice as he whispered, “I told you that the servants to the Gods develop spells and abilities. So take a deep breath and chill the fuck out. It’s going to take me years of deconstructing abilities and spells before I come up with a lexicon of runes and context. We will need that before we even get close to coming up with a programming language. Besides it was only matter of time before you got their notice, you have so many ideas and concepts from your original world rattling around that it was bound to happen… Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me!”

  Zach stopped dead in his tracks waiting for Grim to say something more, yet Zach only heard the soft creaking of the golem behind him. “Grim?....” Zach said quietly.

  “Sorry, I am back.” Grim said. “Those divine assholes must have looked at my Divine Store search history and data searches, because the store just got an update after six thousand years.” A blue screen appeared in front of Zach.

  Zach pressed the Package Deals and started seeing hundreds of packages of skills, items, blessings, upgrades and everything else wrapped into 100 Divine Point blocks. In fact, the pricks even seem to copy Grim’s formatting choices on the packages, and the list kept growing. However, as Zach started to look through some of the packages he could automatically see problems. Some packages focused on skills and gear, while others had a spell and some items, but none of them were showing the slick advertisements of ‘Hot Deal’ or ‘Value of 200 DP’ to help lure people into buying one package over another. ‘Oh and they should have a little Item Bought counter so people can sort through the most common packages purchased.’ Zach thought.

  All of a sudden a blue screen opened with a bunch of writing and closed, along with the Divine Store window. “Grim, what the hell man?” Zach said, and then a new window appeared.

  

  
1. Why does activating a Golem take 24 attribute points?
   
     
   
   
     
   1. First, I took the idea of a golem from the Hebrew folklore like the Golem of Chelm. The idea that a golem was to be made from material and form. Since in my world elementals fit the nature form of their element, the form had to come from something physical of the Artificer. Not wanting to dive into blood magic, I used the lost of stats to help give the Golem “form” while the material was represented as it’s body. The mana core is a mirco-enviroment for the elemental to live in and survive. Normal Artificer’s will actually just use beast cores for their golems and won’t learn the Mana Core Creation Skill.Second, I am using the stat loss as a way to prevent one artificer from creating an army of golems that destroy the world. The reason why Zach can make up the stat lose right now is that he is low level and stat gains are easy there. Trying to do it later would kill high level stat growth. So in the end you have either a few really well built golems that can handle anything, or a bunch of low level golems that can be taken out easily.Third, I am looking for creative ways to remove stats and keep Zach from becoming OP. Granted I just gave him a whole bunch more DP, but it goes quick.
   
   
     
   
   
     


  
2. Zach is an idiot and Grim is the MC! Zach character needs to be revamp.
   
     
   
   
     
   1. There is a lot of stuff around this and if another people think this needs to happen I will, or I can try and explain Zach a little better. I based Zach off of the idea that as a middle age man that had little to no healthy interaction with women and had unreal expectation in his relationships. Zach is someone who actively has chosen not to grow up, and focus entirely on a writing a fantasy world. As such he became recluse and arrogant that his thought process was better then anyone else. Being tossed into a new world brought his ego to the front and he made poor choices in class and skills, trying to compromise on everything. The first arc was him living with those choices and coming out of his arrogance to become someone that can have a healthy relationship with Courtney and is feeling all those teenage hormones rework his thought process. The second arc, grim and him will work together, and by the third arc Zach will be a better adult then he was in his previous life.
   
   
     
   2. As far as Grim is the MC…. *SPOILER ALERT* He kind of is. Should I ever finish the first 6 story Arc’s about Zach, the seventh story arc will be about his daughter and her adventures. Grim will appear to her and help her grow and adventure as well. I hope that over the next few years that the story becomes about building a powerful family from nothing over the generations, instead of one person saving the day.
   
   
     
   
   
     


  
3. You have city building in the synopsis, but if Zach doesn’t take an act role in the direction of the city then its not really city building.
   
     
   
   
     
   1. Actually, that’s a pretty fair comment and Zach will take a more active role in Arc 3 onward.