The Era of Gods

If this were a game, the only ways to improve skill proficiency besides skill points would be through relentless practice.

Ever since his descent, Lin Xiao had been working nonstop, constantly digging and chiseling earth and stone. The technique he acquired from the Tower of Truth had become even more refined. He could now skillfully knock out clearly edged, square stones from the overall underground rock layer.

At first, the stones were very rough, their edges jagged and uneven as if haphazardly chiseled, and overall, they weren’t squared.

Now, the edges of the stones had become somewhat smooth; though they still had minor bumps, at least they no longer cut the hand, as there were no sharp edges. Even the shapes had become distinct cubes, with the angles within a few degrees of perfect right angles, sitting steadily on the edge of the excavated tunnel, unlikely to topple.

When a person is completely focused on a task, time flies by, and efficiency is at its highest.

By the time he had dug another hundred meters or so into this seemingly endless layer of rock, it was already the second month, and he felt a slightly stronger scan from the Plane Will than last month brush past him.

Luckily, he was too far from the surface, and the Earth still blocked some of it, making it much fainter by the time it reached him.

It wasn’t until then that Lin Xiao stopped and began to dig laterally, taking another dozen days to carve out an underground base larger than the previous one.

This time was different from the last; there were no living facilities, replaced instead by a huge workshop.

“The world is dangerous. I need to make some self-defense items,” he said.

Standing in front of the workbench at the center of the vast workshop, Lin Xiao, with hands on hips, recalled all kinds of knowledge related to the Mage system within the Tower of Truth. Given his current situation, the best and easiest way to enhance his strength was to create Construct Puppets.

That is, Golems. Puppets are a type of Golem; in some places, Puppets are also called Golems, with no significant difference other than the terminology.

Taking into account the materials he had, the only Golems he could opt for were Wood Golems, Clay Golems, and Stone Golems.

Unfortunately, after digging so deep and forcefully through the rock layer for hundreds of meters, he had not found any veins of ore, so he was speechless.

Although the Spell of Matter Transformation allowed him to transform other matters into those he needed, with his current abilities, he could only convert small amounts of key magic materials, such as the Mithril Quicksilver necessary for setting up the core array for a Golem, while others like steel, despite being less draining than Mithril, required too much to be feasibly converted on a large scale.

No sooner had he spoken than he made his first attempt with a Wood Golem, as it had the lowest requirements and the materials were the cheapest.

He first went up to the surface to gather another batch of wood, carrying it back to the base and picking a log with a diameter of 1.5 meters and a length of about 10 meters to place on the workbench.

He ran his hands over the log, exploring it back and forth, then cupped his hands around a particular section and tapped it lightly.

“Thud, thud, thud…”

Just six knocks were enough to split the log, thick as a round table, its break smooth and even, seemingly cut by a knife at first glance.

“Good enough!”

Although far from perfect, it was already quite miraculous that he could split it with his hands like this.

Then, he adjusted the shape of the log section to match the body size he had envisioned for the Wood Golem.

The size could remain the same, with a diameter of 1.5 meters and a height of two meters, suitable enough. He just needed to smooth the surface to facilitate the drawing of the array later, and the places where limbs would be attached required some refining to ensure the limbs could rotate without hindering each other once assembled.

Next, he split another log and carved out two thick pieces of wood, each with a diameter of 30 centimeters and a length of 1.5 meters, and used a Shape Spell to fashion them into leg shapes.

He also used the Shape Spell on the remaining two pieces of thick wood, but instead of hands, the tops, where palms would be, were directly fashioned into sockets to accommodate a large axe and a Thick Wooden Shield.

Given the Wood Golem’s pitiful flexibility, expecting them to wield a variety of weapons in battle was asking too much. It was better to transform their hands into weapons from the start.

In his mind, this contraption was a disposable commodity.

Lin Xiao didn’t even intend to use them for long; they were just to practice for now, to create a few as cannon fodder. Only after he had mastered the process would he start making more powerful Stone Golems.

Indeed, he had no interest in making Clay Golems. They weren’t much different in Combat power from Wood Golems, their only advantage being easier to shape and more flexible since their limbs could be directly molded from clay.

Once all the basic limbs like arms and legs were prepared, Lin Xiao enchanted each Golem, only imbuing them with Sturdiness +1, while the Wooden Axe received an additional Sharpness +1, and that was it.

He wanted to enchant more, but the wood material limited him to only Rank 1 enchantments.

Afterward, it was time to draw the arrays on the Golems, which required a small quantity of Mithril, a certain amount of Magic Mercury, and a few gemstones.

He lacked all of these and would have to rely on slow Matter Transformation to procure them.

Fortunately, he had been contemplating making Golems for a long time and was well prepared; every night before sleep during the past month, he had used the remainder of his spiritual power and Mana to convert these materials, and he had accumulated some by now.

Benefiting from his mastery of decent Creation Laws, he had a great advantage in this regard, not only did it consume less spiritual power and mana to transform, but the efficiency of the transformation was also higher.

In fact, Lin Xiao would have preferred to directly use the Creation Rubik’s Cube for transformation, which at most would consume some Creative Power and would easily convert a large amount of resources.

But he didn’t dare, and he wasn’t sure whether using the Creation Rubik’s Cube to suddenly transform a large stockpile of rare resources would be detected.

The Creation Rubik’s Cube would definitely not be discovered; even powerful True Gods couldn’t detect it, so how could the Plane Will of a mere minor plane possibly do so? The main concern was whether the sudden appearance of a large amount of rare resources in this world would be noticed.

He dared not do something uncertain for the time being and could only wait until the completion of the First-Level phase, or perhaps try it out if it was discovered prematurely.

Anyway, the current demand was not high, and his own transformations were sufficient.

First, he transformed mercury in a special way into Magic Mercury, then crushed and ground the gemstones into powder, melted the Mithril, and mixed the three to make a special batch of Magic Ink, starting to etch golem-specific arrays on the Wood Golem’s body.

This wasn’t difficult; not to mention his previous attempts in his own Divine Realm, the Wise Goblins there had long begun trying to create Golems, especially since Alemente had even created Armored Golems. These experiences were recorded in the Tower of Truth, and as the master of the Tower of Truth, Lin Xiao naturally could obtain these experiences and techniques.

It took him a full two hours to meticulously craft a complex Golem Array, painting a complex pattern with black-blue magic ink on the crude Wood Golem.

The thing was super complex and extremely draining, but it was also the most important part. Just crafting this array took longer than all the prior preparations combined.

Finally, he flipped his right hand over, and a tiny point of light emerged in his palm, which was the Spirit Core he had casually collected from a beast he killed two months ago, perfect for use as the core of a Golem.

First, he erased its innate spirit will, and then he executed the Golem Enchantment.

This Golem Enchantment varied in different ranks and types, each corresponding to different Golems. For example, a cumbersome Wood Golem like this one used the simplest warrior-type Golem Enchantment. Once enchanted, the Spirit Core would carry a standard set of Wood Golem behaviors and Combat Systems.

Once enchanted, it was fixed; if a Diamond Golem used a Wood Golem core, after success, the Diamond Golem’s fighting style and behavioral protocols would be those of the most basic Wood Golem.

The final step was to insert the tiny Spirit Core into the body of the Wood Golem. He reached out and pressed his hand on the top of the Golem’s head. Invisible ripples flew out from his palm, quickly spreading throughout the body, and the black-blue magic ink drawn array lit up with a faint magical glow, slowly fusing into the Golem.

As a peculiar sensation arose, and a sense of presence spread from the Wood Golem, Lin Xiao knew that this Wood Golem had been successfully formed.

“Yes!”

He breathed a sigh of relief.

A successful formation meant a good start.

He then tried to control the Wood Golem according to the instruction manual, ordering it to perform various actions including patrol and combat.

The Wood Golem he created was quite large, standing over three and a half meters tall; the main body stood two meters high with a diameter of one and a half meters, one hand holding a Thick Wooden Shield and the other wielding a large axe, an imposing figure indeed. As for actual combat power, Well-

Being made of wood, its temporary combat power was acceptable, but it couldn’t last long; it would have to suffice for now.

Casually commanding it to guard the entrance, Lin Xiao took a short rest before starting on the second Wood Golem.

The following week, he spent more than eighteen hours a day in his workshop, averaging one Golem every three hours. Accounting for accidental damage and increased speed as he became more proficient, he produced a total of forty-one Wood Golems that week.

Most of them were cannon fodder, but he modified ten by replacing their weapons with hammers and shovels.

With cannon fodder at hand, he finally felt somewhat at ease. If he encountered a powerful Giant Beast again, even if he couldn’t defeat it, he could use them to buy time to escape.

That day, he sat at the workbench, resting while pondering his next plan.

With enough cannon fodder, he needed to produce the stronger Stone Golems next. This was more difficult than the Wood Golems, and the required resources were also greater.

However, space in the underground base was becoming scarce with so many large figures around. Although the ten Wood Golems with hammers and shovels were expanding the base on the other side, their efficiency was…

Take it slow!

There was no rush.

Time passed as he pondered, experimented, and hammered away daily.

Initially, the noise of Wood Golems smashing and shoveling stone was alarming, but over time he grew accustomed to it.

One day, as he stood in front of a giant stone nearly three meters high, shaping it into a vaguely humanoid form, he suddenly heard a shrill, strange scream. He quickly raised his head in surprise, his first reaction was that they had been robbed.

Then, it immediately dawned on him that this was an underground base with all exits sealed; they couldn’t have been robbed.