Chapter 6: Call and Response

Chapter 6:
Call and Response

GOLEMS. Conjured Earth soldiers. Powerful yet silent servants with absolute loyalty toward their creator. Furthermore, they lent a consistent advantage in spellcaster vs. spellcaster battles, so they were even implemented by national armies.

Frankly, golems were the sole reason why, among the twelve attributes, the scum-level Earth attribute made it into the ranks of the “Four Cornerstone Attributes of Spellcrafting.” If the Earth attribute somehow lost the ability to create golems, no one would bat an eye when it got dragged off its throne.

Notably, this creation spell also deviated from the fundamental tenet of the Earth attribute—its creations lasted. As such, it was considered abnormally overpowered compared to the other Earth spells. It was, in fact, a spell from the ruins of the old world.

In Introduction to Spellcrafting I, the author Luvel Zairein had this to say about golems: “They are valuable.”

For this man to say such an uncomplicatedly positive thing about the Earth attribute, golems really had to be extremely valuable. Still…kind of a backhanded compliment, all things considered.

In any case, in Introduction to Spellcrafting IV, well over half the content was dedicated to explaining the spell Create Golem.

As Earth spells were treated like trash by Zairein, if I had to describe the thickness of Introduction to Spellcrafting IV, it would be “super thin.” I know I’ve already expressed this disappointment, but please understand that without this chapter on Create Golem, the book would be so thin that it would blend right in with the light novels in Comiket.

“All right, let’s make a golem!” I made that snap decision despite my lingering fear of the atrocities I had committed every time I’d cast a spell.

Of course there was no way I could resist the temptation, having seen the value a golem could produce. But there was something else that drew my interest.

“Silent servants who follow the commands of the spellcaster.”

Isn’t that just like a pet dog? I want one…

I was starved for socialization, so I was reaching my limit. This wasn’t because I particularly enjoyed socializing. Rather, as a bookworm, I could remain cooped up inside with a good book. I wouldn’t even mind not seeing anyone for several days. But that was when I was in my world, a place I knew well.

Here, I didn’t know my left from my right. I was totally unprepared. Common sense and most of what I’d ever learned couldn’t be usefully applied to any of the problems I’d encountered. Moreover, even if I wanted to discuss these issues with anyone, there was no one around.

I mean, outside of the “Boy Meets Skeleton” incident.

These invisible traps and evil shadows have haunted me since I was summoned…

The loneliness exceeded anything I could have possibly imagined. It wasn’t at all like when you spend your first night alone after moving out of your parents’ home.

***

With Introduction to Spellcrafting IV in hand, I stepped away from Zairein’s hideout. I stopped when I reached a small opening past the trees. With some distance between here and the house, I wouldn’t have to worry about damaging it if another Create Pebble calamity were to occur.

“Hngh…let’s get started!” I rolled up my sleeves and pumped myself up.

This may come as a surprise to you readers, but I was not currently wearing my lame pajamas. When I searched the house, I had found several pieces of clothing in decent condition. Some of them were damaged, while some were still wearable. There were even some that I didn’t know how to put on, once again underlining that I was in another world.

Anyway, that day I was wearing an outfit composed of something that resembled a dress shirt and pants combo from my original world. On top of that, I wore one of these wizard-looking robes. You know, the ones that open in the front. At a glance, it looked similar to an Inverness cape, if not exactly.

But then again, this was a sketchy claim, as I lacked any fashion sense in my original world. I didn’t even know the difference between a robe and a gown. Hopefully this outfit was considered fashionable somewhere?

At any rate, I think I resembled what a spellcaster would typically look like in this world. And it was all thanks to the gracious blessing of the affluent Sir Zairein that I could wear such a high-class robe. I might even have looked like one of those Imperial Master Spellcasters.

Then again, that handsome bastard Zairein’s limbs had been longer than mine, so the hem was a little long…

Clad in my dapper spellcaster getup, I ran my eyes across the book’s pages.

“Let’s see… First, I need to create an earth doll that will act as the base for the golem, right?”

Base… In other words, the golem’s main body. If this were a military-grade golem, it would require a special type of stone armor to be fitted on top of the base, but for a pacifist like me, that was irrelevant.

I took a deep breath.

Concentrate… Imagine the golem’s base shape.

Although I didn’t know the form golems typically took in this world, I wanted one shaped like a buff knight. I was a boy, after all. If I had to make a golem, I wanted it to look like a badass.

Imagine a dauntless armored knight.

Incidentally, my grades for art and crafts in elementary school were terrible.

“Form Base.”

The area of the ground I was concentrating on silently rippled. From there, fine particles of dirt rose and converged in the air, gradually forming a humanoid shape. Slowly, they came together according to my mental image.

Most importantly, no absurd tornado of mana erupted from me like when I tested Create Pebble on top of the spell circle.

I can do this. So far, so good. I can…succeed!

“Done…”

Towering in front of me at two meters tall was…not a knight, but a mannequin.

I-I tried really hard, though. I used all of my crafting ability. I feel it…the ceiling of my abilities… Whoa, not the time for that.

I couldn’t get distracted; it would cut off the mana supply and cause the golem base to crumble into fine grains of dirt in the blink of an eye, just like the boulder I created with Create Pebble.

I moved on to the next step.

Focus my mind…

“Reduce Weight.”

This spell nullified the weight of an object created from Earth spells. It was a support spell designed so that physically weak spellcasters could utilize a larger quantity of dirt and rocks than they would otherwise be able to handle.

In this instance, a golem’s base was sizeable, so if left alone, it would be too heavy for the golem to move by itself. Therefore, this spell was used during the initial design phase to render its weight more manageable. Although, it seemed you couldn’t reduce the weight infinitely and the limit differed per person. What a strict world…

Well, whatever. This golem was just condensed dirt, so it couldn’t be that heavy. I probably didn’t even need to cast the spell, but I was faithfully following the procedure as written in the textbook. I’m a serious guy, after all.

“All right. That’s the groundwork taken care of.” While ensuring I didn’t lose my concentration, I double-checked Introduction to Spellcrafting IV. Still looking good. Actually, it was going suspiciously well, given my track record.

All that was left was to input a short and simple command. Once that took effect, the golem would animate. The book provided several examples of these commands, and I randomly chose one from the bunch.

“Command: Advance ten steps.”

The mannequin—er, I mean Golem No. 1—began to creak into action. The dirt-colored golem raised his right foot and took one step.

“Oh—oooh! A-amazing…!” I couldn’t say why I was so moved.

Golem No. 1’s powerful footsteps continued, one after another. What a promising stride! This guy was definitely powerful!

“All right, all right! Go! You can do it!”

I was going all-out, cheering Golem No. 1, and he was accomplishing his task magnificently. Right as he hit his ten-step mark, he slowed to a halt.

In the next moment, Golem No. 1 turned into fine grains of dirt…and crumbled away.

“W-waaaaah! Golem Number Onnneeeee!”

Well, that was to be expected. It wasn’t like I had failed or anything. The spell’s execution was a success. This was just the fundamental tenet of Earth spells: Once the spellcaster’s supply of mana was cut off or the creation had fulfilled its purpose, the creation would crumble.

The command “advance ten steps” that I gave to the golem during its creation had been fulfilled. Therefore, the mana allocated to Golem No. 1 had been depleted. Golem No. 1’s existence was only worth those ten steps. Earth spells were just like that.

Flagging under the weight of loneliness, I stared at the pile of dirt that used to be Golem No. 1.

I wondered, even though this land was usually warm, why I felt so cold…

***

“I guess the key really does lie in the command…”

After fulfilling its command, Golem No. 1 fell apart as per the fundamental tenet of the Earth attribute. This was the expected result as stated by the book, so the experiment was a success.

However, this wasn’t a golem that demonstrated “deviance from the fundamental tenet of the Earth attribute,” as described by Luvel Zairein.

Deviance.

That word meant that unlike other objects created with Earth spells, which disintegrated once their supply of mana was cut off, golems wouldn’t. Real golems, not those meant for training, didn’t decay. But besides this fact, no further explanation was offered in Volume IV.

I searched through the study again to find anything that could serve as a reference, but I only uncovered one book with a title related to golems.

Golems really weren’t part of Zairein’s main research, huh…

I pulled the book off the shelf. It was extremely thick, and the cover read: The Study of Golems’ Detection Crest and Its Application to Spell Circles.

Authored by Tetheo Madith. Hmph…I suspected the content of this tome was slightly different from what I was looking for. Furthermore, judging by the title, it was probably exceptionally complicated. In fact, the title was already pushing my translation ability to its limit. What the heck was a Detection Crest?

I flipped through the book. Just as I thought, my translation ability had completely gorillafied and I couldn’t read a word. This was painful… No! The truth was that bastard Zairein’s study was just useless.

I had no other choice but to figure this out myself. After all, I wasn’t easily broken.

***

I made several more creation attempts up through that evening. As a result, I got all the way to Golem No. 5. All of them were short-lived and crumbled away. Still, my work wasn’t completely fruitless. I followed the example in the book word-for-word for Golem No. 1, but for No. 2 and onwards, I started testing various commands. What I discovered was that if the command was too long, it wouldn’t work.

With a long command, the spell would misfire and the golem wouldn’t animate, even if the contents of the command were simple. Conversely, as long as the command was short, the spell activated no matter how complex and abstract it was. For example, the command “Please fetch a lot of purple fruits” worked despite its conceptual focus.

Ah, by the way, the purple fruit was the glorious cranberry-apple, my current and favorite food source.

Still, according to the introductory book, creating a golem depleted much of the caster’s mana. Therefore, it wasn’t the kind of thing one could make on a continual basis…but I didn’t seem to have this limitation. I felt like as long as my concentration lasted, I could pop them out all day. Far from running out of mana, I couldn’t even feel it being drained.

I sometimes forgot my profession was that of the “Sorcerer King,” and I had been chosen for it based on my absurd amount of mana. At times like these, I guess it helped to be an evil king destined to destroy the world.

I looked up to the western sky to find it dyed a resplendent gold. I needed to prepare dinner soon. The next golem experiment would be my last for the day.

“Then I’ll start by creating the base.”

When you create five golems in a row, you end up getting the hang of it. I decided to create it in the fine garden at the back of the hideout. I often passed through that area to get back to the house, whether it was to search the study or grab some food. During those times, I thought about trying my golem experiments there. Seeing how smoothly my experiments were going, I didn’t think I needed to worry about Create Golem producing an explosion anymore.

But at that moment, my eyes suddenly strayed from the garden ground. I noticed something white sparkling in the light within the dense foliage.

“Eh? What is that?” I walked toward it through the trees as if magnetically drawn.

The lustrous mystery object stood shadowed by the trees. It was a lone, pure-white stone pillar. That sublime snowy hue left me captivated as the pillar loomed in silence. It was roughly three meters in height and one meter in diameter, and it possessed an ethereal, transparent beauty that left it feeling eternally out of place.

“Why is this pillar here…?”

I lightly tapped on and examined it, but it appeared to be an ordinary stone. Nothing strange about it. It looked a little like the kind of abstract object rich people place in their gardens.

After gazing at the lovely pillar for some time, I was suddenly struck with an idea.

“If I made a golem out of this, wouldn’t it look super luxurious…?” An immaculate white golem base would be unbelievably impressive.

Since I could now make golems so easily, I was starting to get a little fast and loose with the process. I wasn’t thinking too deeply when I decided that my new golem would be made from this white pillar.

“Form Base.”

The pillar dispersed into white particles and began to dance in front of me. It felt like I was in the middle of a glistening winter illusion. I slowly channeled my mana as it kneaded the particles together. Gradually, the mass formed the base of the golem.

“All right…”

The end result was a pure white golem that stood at a towering 1.9 meters tall. It still resembled a mannequin, like the others, but I had to say I’d gotten the hang of creating these guys. A mannequin was nevertheless a mannequin, so the design was rather rudimentary, if polished. Still, he looked pretty strong.

Also, compared to the pillar’s original size, the body was quite compact. Furthermore, this time it wasn’t a dirt golem but a stone one. It was definitely necessary to properly lessen the weight.

“Reduce Weight.”

I carefully performed the spell I had repeated numerous times already. Yup, no problem this time either. I gazed at the magnificent golem base and let out a deep sigh. “Now comes the hard part.”

I had several drafts for a command that would prevent a golem from collapsing. At the very least, I knew it couldn’t be a completable task—otherwise the golem would fall apart as soon as the command was fulfilled.

In other words, I needed a command that could be executed but never finished. Something concise that could be observed and constantly maintained.

My thought was to start vague and gradually make the command more specific. In short, I planned to try out various short abstract commands like “Serve me forever.”

“Command:…”

Now then, what should I command? Since “Gather a lot of fruits” worked, any abstract order would be fine so long as it could actually be executed. At least I had as many chances as I needed, since nothing would happen if the spell didn’t activate.

Right, there was no need for me to think so hard. As long as the contents of the command didn’t diverge too much from my ultimate goal, I could spit out whatever came to mind.

“Obey me…?”

No dice. Ah well. As a cultured man, I didn’t want a slave or servant. Though I didn’t make golems because I wanted a conversation partner, either.

What popped into my head at that moment was my dumb dog back home. Now I wondered, though… I thought that he saw me as his owner, but he was more or less a free spirit. What exactly was he to me? He definitely wasn’t a slave or a servant. When he disliked something, he made his displeasure known. When things got troublesome or when they didn’t go my way, I would ignore him and read a book and he would run around in the garden. But at the same time, if I really needed him, he would stay and listen. And if either one of us were in danger, then…what would you call that kind of relationship?

Ah, there it was.

“Be my partner forever.”

Silence enveloped the area. At first I thought the spell had misfired and casually planned my next command. Then I felt the air—no, the whole atmosphere—tremble.

If I recalled correctly, this feeling was identical to the one I had when I broke the seal on the Grand Stone Gate. I had cast spells several times since then, but I hadn’t experienced that same atmosphere-vibrating feeling since that moment.

It was immediately after this feeling that it happened. I felt something forcibly being sucked out of me at a frightening pace. Last time, I used the crude example of releasing a fart. This time, it wasn’t anything so meager. My power was being drained at a frightful speed. Was the power my mana?!

The torrent of power barreled toward the white golem in front of me. It flooded into the golem’s form, which stood in icy contrast to the ferocious surge of mana I could feel beginning to circulate within the golem’s body.

It wasn’t visible; I could only sense it. But it was…s-siphoning off too much…!

As I continued bleeding vast amounts of power, my consciousness gradually darkened.

***

Let’s start from the bottom up. At that time, I was gravely mistaken about golems.

As the introductory book had explained, golems were a topic of research at national military facilities. They were the subject of an academic discipline both advanced and complex. Therefore, there was absolutely no need for an introductory book to go into the nitty-gritty specific details of golem creation, which would be lost on a novice. And anyway, the main author of the book, Luvel Zairein, didn’t appear to be an expert on this subject.

Therefore, the spell Create Golem described in Introduction to Spellcrafting IV was as simple as one of those monthly subscriptions that send people parts so they can build their own walking robot. I only knew how to create the base of a golem, nothing more.

However, I unknowingly bestowed upon that petty base an inordinately demanding command akin to “Work like a near-futuristic sci-fi robot.”

As such, this assembly-kit toy was forced to become a futuristic robot. Furthermore, the absurd amount of mana I had at my disposal as the Sorcerer King was imbued in it with brutal force. I assumed it would turn out to be a dud like my other experiments.

But I was unaware of other, hidden factors at play. A multitude of complex happenstances intertwined to beget a change that surpassed human understanding. Was it all coincidence? Or was this something that should be called destiny?

A simple, lifeless, disposable base of a golem.

A command that wasn’t supposed to work.

A gentle Sorcerer King of Earth.

And finally, a sorrowful witch’s—

I blacked out.

***

I woke up in bed and wondered exactly how much time had passed.

So sluggish. My entire body suffered from an unimaginable exhaustion. I slowly blinked. I felt dead. It was impossible to even get up.

Come to think of it, where was I? I could only move my eyes as I observed my surroundings; I took in the faint damage to the walls and concluded that this was the interior of a dilapidated home.

Ah, that’s right.

I remembered. I was inside the bedroom…of a dead evil summoner…in another world…

Gradually, I came to my senses. No, wait, wait. I knew I was inside that bastard Zairein’s hideout. But what was going on? I had just collapsed in the garden. How did I warp all the way in here?

And something else had been bothering me for some time now. A white mannequin was observing me from the side of my bed. I could literally feel his gaze. I was really being looked at. Ah. This guy was probably the golem I had created from the pillar.

He should be Golem Number…ummm…what number am I up to?

“Are you the one who carried me here…?” I asked, but the white golem was silent.

Actually, instead speaking, he slightly moved his body in response. He tilted his head as if to face his ear in my direction. Based on that gesture, he had to possess some intellect.

My experiment was a success! I was ecstatic, but regrettably, my body was still too sluggish to move. I didn’t even have the strength to pose triumphantly.

I did know that I couldn’t have crawled into the bed in my current state. Knowing my personality, I probably would have only made it to the entrance…and passed out right there. No doubt my new golem had brought me here and seen to my well-being.

I see. I’ve solved all the mysteries. Wait. Doesn’t that make this golem a super-nice guy?!

My regard for my golem instantly shot up.

“I need to give you a name.” A fine partner required a fine name. That was my style. And as names stick to someone for life, they’re precious.

Let’s see…umm… What should it be? Well, it has to be cool, duh. And a golem-like name would be good, too…I think.

“All right, I got it. Your name is Goltarou!”

Yeah. Simple yet sensible. A masculine name with a nice ring to it.

I slowly raised my upper body from the mattress and took in my creation. The pure-white golem I named Goltarou stood soundlessly beside the bed. Did my words really reach this guy?

“Hey, Goltarou.”

Ah, he properly faced me. Seemed like he did understand. In that case, I had to introduce myself. First impressions are important.

“Thanks for looking after me, Goltarou. I hope we get along well. My name is—”

My name is… My…name… I froze. An inconceivable realization had consumed my entire mind.

“What is…my name?”

I didn’t know it.

***

Since when? Name, family…

I was perturbed to discover that every defining memory I had about myself was littered with holes.

Thinking back on it, I had already sensed something off when I created Goltarou. When I was thinking about what kind of relationship I wanted with my golem, I recalled my dumb yet reliable pet dog. I clearly remembered how he would wag his tail whenever he ran to me and how his eyes would sparkle whenever I called his name.

Yet, at that moment, I couldn’t remember what that name was.

Now that I thought about it, the reason for my unnaturally faint connection to my original world might be a kind of self-protective psychological reaction to the danger of being thrown into an unknown world. Right. I might well be even more devastated if I started ruminating on the people precious to me in my original world who were terminally out of reach.

I had completely overlooked dozens of tiny feelings of distance and discomfort as I desperately adjusted to my dizzying change of scenery. But those discomforts all pointed to one truth: After being summoned, I had forgotten my own name and family.

With this revelation, one name popped into my head—that of the summoner, Luvel Zairein. This was entirely that guy’s fault! Him writing that he had planned on controlling me to destroy this world threw me into a mental minefield so packed with danger that I couldn’t help but miss some of my problems for all the detonations.

While I had so far managed to avoid the most dangerous of them—the spell that would destroy my memory and overwrite my personality, the horrid Soul Transcription—I did still get caught up in the hypnosis trap that had led me to the lip of that cave. Did that summoning circle in the field have some other manipulations embedded in it?

When I thought about how the inside of my head had been meddled with, I stumbled over the baffling nature of how I could understand this world’s language. To begin with, how did my translation ability benefit that bastard Zairein? I mean, he was planning on completely overwriting my memories, right?

Speaking of benefits, was there one to be gained by making me forget my family, myself, and even my dog’s name? Especially the dog bit. I highly doubted there was any purpose there.

Seriously…I didn’t get it.

However, my ability to quickly adjust my thinking was one of my strong suits. “Well, I can’t do anything now that I’ve forgotten.”

Besides, it could just be temporary amnesia. And to be honest, my current situation didn’t allow the time to worry about inconsequential things like my own name. I mean, if I acted carelessly right now, I could die.

I realized then that I had been procrastinating and distracting myself by playing around with golems since I had lacked companionship, when I really should have been working to get out of the basin. My food supply wasn’t infinite.

In any case, I decided to describe various things in my original world to Goltarou with the added intention of reconfirming my own memories. People say that an effective method for organizing your own thoughts is to voice them for others to hear.

As such, I diligently began to talk to Goltarou.

***

“And that’s how I found myself in this world. My only keepsake from my original world are those lame pajamas over there.”

Goltarou listened intently to my story. I still wasn’t sure he truly understood my words, but when I mentioned the lame pajamas, he turned his head to look at them.

Looks like on top of being able to comprehend language, he was seriously paying attention. What a nice guy.

As I described my original world, I analyzed the full extent of my memory loss. As I had guessed, it wasn’t exactly that I had just forgotten everyone’s names. Rather, the erasure seemed most focused on those close to me. Furthermore, the closer the person, the vaguer my memories became. I couldn’t recall, in order: names, faces, etc.…

What truly frightened me was that my memories of my parents and siblings were so vague that I couldn’t be sure they even existed. Conversely, I could easily recall the names of the Japanese prime minister and famous actors. And when it came to my dog, it was only his name that I didn’t remember; I could easily recall the names of other dogs.

That reminded me. I thought I had a cat as well, but likewise, I couldn’t recall his name. What exactly were the parameters of this strange phenomenon?

I also remembered great figures of history. Halfway through my story, I ended up straying off topic for some reason and lecturing Goltarou about Tokugawa Ieyasu. However, Goltarou continued to listen as I went over the creation of the Edo shogunate. He was too nice.

Or maybe…this guy’s super serious. Do you like Ieyasu that much? No, wait, wait. Your face is too close, Goltarou!

With his face so close, I finally noticed the strange pattern on his forehead. It wasn’t that big, nor was the design too complex. It looked like an upside-down triangle, or possibly some kind of character. I didn’t remember carving such a strange pattern when I created his base. Maybe it was etched there when the command activated?

“Hey, Goltarou. This thing. What is it?” I traced the pattern on his forehead with my finger.

Goltarou faintly trembled.

Oh? Even the way he reacts to me playing with his face is like a dog!

In that case, I had to fiddle with his forehead until he surrendered and learned who the boss in this family was, just like one does with pets at home. Oops, I don’t want you to misunderstand me. This definitely was not meant to torment my adorable golem. It was a necessary process to determine our hierarchy.

“Oh, do you not like being touched here? Ha, you can’t stop me. Hey, hey.” I lightly poked Goltarou’s forehead. Each time my finger touched him, Goltarou trembled a little.

Hee hee. For such a large body, he has some cute reactions.

Of course, if Goltarou really hated this, he could brush me off or avoid me, but he didn’t. Although he looked up at me with a lightly defiant air, he was at my mercy. Even this reaction was incredibly dog-like. I was convinced. There was no doubt that golems were dogs.

Suddenly, I noticed my continual forehead tickling had made Goltarou go a little limp.

“Oops! My bad. My bad. I went too far.” As I apologized, I gently patted Goltarou’s head like how I would pet my dog. “Ha ha. Your head’s surprisingly rough!”

This was probably due to my crafting ability. Forgive my inability to create something smooth!

Goltarou continued to stare attentively at my laughing face. Somehow, my mood began to lighten. Even the weight of my body seemed to fade, though it didn’t feel like I could walk yet.

But it really did feel good to have someone to talk to.