Chapter 15

The Potential of a Golem

“Eeh, so let’s begin the session of Kehma’s excitement from bathing in Meat-chan’s pee-pee…”

“Wait a sec. That’s a very spiteful interpretation of what happened. It was an accident, judge!”

As for the matter of peeing being leaked to Rokuko, the dungeon master ordered her to be quiet about it.

Since she instantly quieted down, he decided to make more golems today.

“Meat, bring me a bit of clay. The same amount as yesterday.”

“Yes.”

So, Meat remembered how to leave the master room and left holding the shovel.

Which reminds me, I wonder how much work the clay golem (mini) got done?

… Right, there was something to confirm first.

“Hmm, let’s see here…”

Bringing out the dungeon surveillance monitor from the menu, he checked the room the golem was ordered to dig through. The clay golem (mini) was desperately scratching the wall. How praiseworthy. But wouldn’t it not advance at all like that? The clay golem’s hands aren’t strong enough for the surface rock of the wall.

I was thoughtless. It’s no good without a pickaxe huh…

“Hmm, it’ll continue on as is endlessly unless you tell it to do something.”

“How long will it continue to work for?”

“Eh? Well, probably until its mana expires right? It’s a golem after all. Though because it’s in the dungeon where mana gathers thickly, it’ll never stop you know?”

That’s amazing, that it doesn’t have any maintenance costs is seriously amazing.

I nearly fainted at how much its performance exceeded my expectations. Wouldn’t it be fine even if I just leave everything to the golem and go to sleep?

“No no Kehma, the Golem can’t work decently. It isn’t even digging a hole though you told it to dig one, check it out.”

“Hm?”

I looked at what Rokuko pointed to on the monitor. Yeah, the clay golem (mini) is scratching the wall… huh?

Looking closely, something felt out of place. The Clay Golem (mini) was clawing at the wall.

However, it’s hands were wearing out. Using its hands to grate against the stone wall damaged them, but it foolishly didn’t stop digging. It did nothing but continue trying to dig.

“That’s awful…”

“Right? Golems are stupid you know. I don’t need to say it, but it won’t do anything else. So it will continue trying to dig a hole even if it can’t.”

Yeah, awful. That is awful.

However, I’m thinking of something very different than what Rokuko is.

I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.

For now I’ll tell the golem to return and wait on standby temporarily. I’ll fix its hands.

“I-I’m back…”

Meat returned, carrying the clay and breathing heavily.

“Welcome back Meat. Good job, excellent… now then, time for an experiment.”

Since Meat brought the lump of clay, I accepted it and used [Cleanup] while patting her head.

It was a simple apology, but right now I want to try something out for a bit.

While thinking that, I used the [Wow] magic, [Create Golem].

I poured in magical power while kneading the clay.

*

“… Well, is it finished?”

“What, this?”

I created a golem the size of my palm that ‘only’ had three arms of different lengths.

Inserting a shaft into the center of a palm-sized bowl-like container, it was a golem with three needle-like arms stretching out from the axis.

“No no no, how is this a Golem? No way, eh, what’s with its shape?”

“It’s a [Clock], a [Clock].”

Right, this is a [Golem Clock]. After assigning numbers to each of the three arms, I ordered each of them with [One rotation every sixty seconds] to the first arm, [One rotation every sixty minutes] to the second arm, and [one rotation every twelve hours] to the third arm.

In other words, they were the second hand, the minute hand, and the hour hand. It turned into a clock that would keep working so long as its mana continued.

… Adjusting the time was a hassle though.

By the way, when I realized that the hands didn’t even need a normal shape to begin with, they turned into needle-shaped arms right away. Though the clock was entirely clay, you wouldn’t think it was a Golem at a glance.

“A-a golem with a shape like that… Wooow, Kehma, you’re ignoring common sense.”

“What’re you talking about after summoning me from another world? How the heck would I know this world’s common sense?”

Even so, it was surprisingly easy to make a modified golem.

Moreover, since it was just arms without almost any joints, or maybe thanks to excluding the function to process vague orders, I used considerably less magical power. Feels like around tenth of what the clay golem (mini) used?

“Well, what now? If you wanted to see the time you could look at the menu you know? You didn’t even need something like this.”

Now that I think about it, the dungeon master could make the [Menu] display the time…

“… I’ll give it to Meat. Yep, I just made this for the sake of experimenting anyways. Since I learned from it it’s not particularly useless.”

For that reason, I gave the [Golem Clock] to Meat as a gift.

And, though I noticed it… now that I think about it, Meat was still barefoot and wearing rags for clothing. Oops.

I immediately spent DP for [Cheap Clothing (Dress: 8 DP)] and [Cheap Shoes (For Children: 10 DP)], as well as [Knee Socks (White: 70 DP)].

Then, when I noticed Meat didn’t have ‘them’ on when I saw her change, I quickly bought [Girl’s Underwear (20 DP)]. That was dangerous.

Though it took a bit of DP, I got another set.

It wasn’t a problem having one set of clothing including underwear but it helped.

Their materials weren’t bad, I wanted to deck her out with cute things eventually when there was a lot more DP though. Ah, Rokuko too.

… Or rather, I wonder. I feel like knee socks arbitrarily improved her somehow.

She’s already worth about three and a half goblins. Is she a luxury good?

I hung the [Golem Clock] around her neck using a [String (5 DP)].

When I said I was giving it to her, she looked at the [Golem Clock] motionlessly.

Do you like it? Though I thought that, she didn’t know what kind of thing it was.

Right, she was a slave, she probably doesn’t know about a lot of things… yep, I’m going to start teaching Meat various things starting tomorrow. But Rokuko-

Wait, rather, what is Rokuko even doing? Is she doing anything? Let’s change that a bit. She’ll do it instead of me.

… That won’t work. She can’t see anything but the future of her Goblin Paradise.

*

I mended the hand of the clay golem (mini).

I turned one of its hands into the form of a shovel made of stone since it was specially made. It was pretty easy after giving it a go. After changing the shape of the clay and pouring enough magical power into the stone, it quickly took the shape of a shovel.

… Revised clay golem (mini), ver. shovel hand!

It made sense that the clay required less magical power to process than the stone. If it was a human-sized golem, it’d probably be fine to just give it a pickax if the Golem was made from clay from the start.

After experimenting with this clay golem (mini) as a prototype goes well for a while, I’ll probably make a human sized version of it. Though it was long and tedious to call it clay golem (mini) each time, I didn’t know if it was even a clay golem anymore since its hand wasn’t made of clay anymore.

So I decided to name it. Since it was a golem made for trial purposes, an experimentation-like name would be good.

“Alright, you are Tester. Tester is your name. Got it?”

Tester, formerly known as clay golem (mini), understood what I said and nodded.

I then ordered Tester to fetch clay from outside of the cave again.

It’ll probably come back with about a basketball’s worth of clay. I wonder if it would bring enough materials back before I wake up from sleeping?

… It won’t stop moving inside the dungeon, but I wonder about how long it’ll last outside of it? I should look into that.