Blood Shaper

“You’re excited about a training dummy?” Kay asked, staring down at the miniaturized black stone asura sitting in the palm of his hand. They’d grabbed the loot and started making their way out of the dungeon. Eleniah’s goal for them had been to beat the asura golem and they didn’t have unlimited time to spending diving into the dungeon, so their run was over for the time being.

Eleniah scoffed at him. “That’s as much as training dummy the same way you’re just an Outworlder. That’s a training golem that can be used to train at tier four levels, is capable of multiple forms of combat, is self repairing, and can even hold back so it doesn’t kill the people training with it!”

“Based on your tone I’m guessing that most training golems can’t do any of that?”

“Anyone that can make golems runs into a lot of the same limitations that you have with your simulacra, the important one here being that they’re automatically less powerful than you are when you make them. Creating a golem that can fight at tier four levels generally requires a tier five golem maker, or the use of very expensive materials. Add that in with the time and material costs of everything else that little fellow can do and you end up with a rare and expensive commodity. Golems that have been made by people and can do one or more of the functions that has exist but the more functions the pricier they get.” She reached out and tapped the statue on the head, “You could sell this for a lot of money.”

“How much money?”

“At least two or three times as much as we got just now.”

Kay pictured the large stone chest overflowing with coin, gems, and bars of metal and gave the shrunken golem an appraising look.

“No!” Eleniah snatched it out of his hand before he could react. “You aren’t selling it!” She clutched it protectively with both hands. “We can use this to train up elites in the Blood Guard and the rest of Avalon. I was going to demand one of the weaker versions of these as part of Alahna’s payment for getting you to come help, and now we have more room to get other concessions out of her.”

“Alright, alright.” Laughing, he gestured for her to give it back and when she cautiously handed it over he tossed it in his Inventory. “If they’re that useful, should we ask for some of the weaker ones as payment? If we have this one for our elites or the people we want to make into elites we could get some weaker ones for the army and lower powered adventurers and fighters.”

“Maybe? That’s something to really discuss with the collection of negotiators you brought along. They have all of Amanda’s notes on what we most want, so they’ll be able to figure out if it’s worth replacing something with one or more of those.” She glanced back with longing in her eyes. “If only it had dropped the best kind. That would have been…” She sighed deeply.

Kay blinked a few times at her. “… Attractive?”

“What? No!” She smacked him in the stomach.

“You’re sighing deeply and staring breathlessly toward where it would have been like you’re a teenage girl mooning over her first crush, excuse me if I got the wrong message from that.”

“The best version of them can train up to tier five and has additional forms of combat it can train in! Only two of them have ever dropped!” She gave him another, lighter smack on the stomach. “The level we could get our people to if we had one of those would be insane, it would make us into a world power in a few decades.”

Miri stepped in close to the two of them, “Actually, there’s only been one confirmed drop. The second one that happened around the time you left the Isles turned out to be a fake. The group who were celebrating their success everywhere actually had a tier three golem and were trying to pass it off as the tier five version so they could sell it and skip town.”

“What? That’s stupid, they’d get found out as soon as anyone tried using Appraise, let alone when someone at tier five tried to train with it and broke it into bits.”

“That’s exactly what happened, they took it to be auctioned and the auction house had someone Appraise it to verify it was what they said it was. They ended up fleeing to escape the many, many people they angered with their lies.”

“They’re lucky no one put a bounty on their heads.” Eleniah muttered.

Kay frowned as he looked between the two of them. “Are there some kind of rules about auctions here that I don’t know about? Lying about what you’re selling to drive up the price is shitty and a good way to get yourself kicked out of any future auctions, but it’s not really worth killing over.” He paused, then shrugged. “Not if you get caught before any money changes hands, at least.”

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“Oh, but money did changes hands,” Miri told him, “The instant people heard that another training golem that could go up to tier five would be available to bid on everyone who thought they might have a chance started selling things, trading favors, making deals, and taking out loans to try and get enough money to win the golem.”

“Remember what I just said? Tier four training golems are possible to find, but they’re pricey and getting one that has the same capabilities of one of the loot drops from that miniboss is hard. On top of that, unless someone is hiding it there are no tier six golem makers around right now. The only way to get a training golem as good as these that can effectively help a tier five train is from this dungeon, and one of them has dropped.” freewebnσvel.cøm

Miri nodded enthusiastically. “An anonymous tier six bought the first one, the only one, for a sum greater than the yearly budget for most medium sized nations. Even the Empire or the Concordant would think twice about spending that amount of money on anything.”

“If they were anonymous how do you know they were tier six?”

“A group of tier fives ambushed them immediately after the auction to steal the golem. They all died quite quickly.”

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“Oh.”

“Yes. When the supposed second one was announced nobles, trading houses, influential merchants, and high tier combatants all started rushing to get enough money or to pool their wealth to get a shot at it. When news broke that it wasn’t actually a golem from this dungeon of that power, on the day of the auction mind you, the adventurers who had the item refused anyone who tried to get close to it with the claim of preventing anyone from stealing it, hundreds of groups and individuals had sold property or items they would rather have kept if something of the magnitude of one of those training golems wasn’t the prize, had taken out loans that in many case had poor terms in order to get the money right then on the belief that they could use the golem to recoup the cost one way or another, or performed other risky maneuvers to come up with the cash including one known case where someone pulled off a truly lubricious heist for the money. Then to find out that it was all for nothing?” She shrugged. “The adventuring group who pulled the stunt instantly became enemies with a large number of wealthy and powerful people.” She glanced over at Eleniah. “No one officially put out a bounty on their heads, but there were rumors…”

Eleniah grunted. “Brought it down on their own heads.”

Kay cocked his head to one side. “I get it, sort of, but there can only be one winner in an auction like that. Everyone who put themselves into risky waters to try and get that golem were going to end up in the same poor positions anyway, except the winner of course. They had to know that going into it.”

“There is a vast difference between going into an auction, a competition over who can get the most money together, with assets, connections, and financial status on the line in order to try and win the auction for something the bidders desperately want and doing all that thinking that you’re going to be in that situation and having the wool yanked from your eyes at the last second to find you’ve been made a fool of.” Miri replied solemnly. “No one who was planning on being at that auction thought they were guaranteed to get the golem, unless they’re complete fools, but they all thought they at least had a chance. To find out there was never a chance at all must have been infuriating. Combined with learning that the people selling it thought everyone attending would be stupid to fall for their plot to sell a training golem two tiers lower as if it were a tier five? I can understand how angry they became.”

“I mean, I get it, but I also don’t. If there’s a chance that you’re going to lose, why put yourself into a position like that?”

Miri reached up and gently patted Kay on the shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with that, your majesty. It simply means that you aren’t the kind of person to risk too much on something that isn’t a sure bet. While those who choose to gamble on incredible odds may sometimes win big and rise to amazing heights, those who take less chancy risks are less likely to have the rug pulled out from under them to find that they’ve nothing left to stand on.”

They reached the exit right about then, and Miri asked everyone to stand close together once they passed out into the sunlight. She raised her hands and flicked her fingers outward and a quick burst of wind gathered around everyone. When it cleared they were all spotless, every bit of dirt and grime from the dungeon run completely removed.

“There, nice and clean and ready to continue the day. What’s next on your itinerary, your majesty?”

“Um,” He glanced at Eleniah. “Lunch?”

“I could eat.”

“Right. Lunch, then check in with Alahna and the investigation to see if they need us for anything.”

“Very good, your majesty. Would you like to have your meal at the palace or head to an eatery?”

“At the palace makes more sense, it’ll be easier to find Alahna afterward.”

“Wonderful!” She chirped. “I’ll arrange everything.”

“… Thank you, Miri.”

“Of course.”

Kay did his best to subtly pull Eleniah aside out of earshot of Miri as they walked away from the dungeon. “What’s going on with Miri?” He whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, something about her behavior is setting off red flags for me. I know she isn’t an eldritch fake or anything, but… I don’t know, it’s weird how quickly she’s acting all attached to us.”

“To you, you mean?” She asked, with the signature single eyebrow raise. She glanced at Miri out of the corner of her eye. “Who knows? Maybe you’re easy to get attached to. I certainly am, after all.” She suddenly looped her arm through his and started dragging him faster toward the palace. “What do you think will be for lunch?”