[Kraugel's POV]
Kraugel was hunting the surrounding monsters for levels when he spotted a strange, eagle-like creature.
He looked at it for a moment, and it stared right back without flinching. He wanted to test whether it was friendly, so he came at it with the intent to attack. It fled. A passive creature, then. But he wanted to know more about this strange eagle, so he chased it at full speed.
The eagle moved far faster than he expected. He had to go almost all-out just to keep up. Eventually they both reached a clearing, and the eagle suddenly stopped and turned to face him again.
He wondered why. Before he could approach it, something completely unexpected appeared in front of him.
[Fasten and Suture]
Difficulty: S
The Golem King Daz has sent many eagles out to observe the world, but only those he deems worthy truly gain his attention, and the chance to take one as a familiar. Daz asks you to take this eagle with you as a familiar, so it can watch your progress. It has seen something in you that draws its attention.
The eagle will evolve and grow stronger as you do. Become strong enough, and it may become something irreplaceable. Beware: with the Golem King's influence around you, you will be more likely to encounter stronger golems.
Clear Conditions: Meet or exceed the Golem King's expectations.
Rewards: ???
The quest made him smile, mostly because of its rank. A familiar that grew alongside him would be interesting, to say the least.
He wondered who this Golem King was. He thought he'd heard rumors of someone, or something, returning from underground around the time the kingdom was announced to be out there somewhere.
He put the thought aside and motioned for the eagle to come to him. It flew down and pressed its forehead against his. A notification told him it was now soulbound to him.
The eagle settled on his shoulder like it had always been there. It weighed almost nothing.
Kraugel looked at it for a while. It looked back. Its eyes were black and very calm.
He'd been the number one player in Satisfy for a long time now. People followed him everywhere: rankers who wanted to fight him, guilds who wanted to recruit him, fans who just wanted to be near him. None of them ever stayed long. None of them could keep up.
The eagle had kept up. He'd gone almost all-out, and it had kept up.
"I'll call you Vigil," he decided.
The eagle tilted its head, as if considering the name. Then it took off from his shoulder, rose into the sky above the clearing, and vanished. Not flew away. Vanished. Its gray feathers had shifted to the exact blue of the afternoon sky.
Kraugel stood in the clearing with his head tipped back, searching the sky for something he knew was right there. He couldn't find it. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he laughed out loud.
When he went back to hunting, a faint shadow kept pace with him from far above. Every so often, when a monster was about to come at him from a blind spot, a single sharp cry came down out of the empty sky.
[Daz's POV]
Finally. I have a cameagle with Kraugel.
What surprised me was that he only had the swordsman class, even though he's the number one player in Satisfy. He's bound to change classes at some point, so I don't regret it at all. He might even take my swordsman golems to a whole new level, or show them swordsmanship from a perspective other than Piaro's.
When I told every golem who uses a sword, they were thrilled to have someone new to observe. I set up the first viewing in the great hall, with Vigil's feed, which Kraugel had apparently named it, projected on the wall like a movie screen.
It turned into a seminar.
"His footwork is wrong," Gladius said, five minutes in. "No, wait. It's not wrong. It's... it's deliberately wrong. He's baiting the monster to step there."
"He's not using any skills," one of the rare swordsmen said, sounding almost offended. "Why isn't he using any skills?"
"Because he doesn't need them," Jarn said quietly. "Look at the angle of the blade. Every cut finishes in the guard for the next one."
"Sir Piaro fights like a storm," Torva said, writing furiously. "This man fights like a clock."
Fenrir didn't say anything for the whole hour. When it ended, he went to the training yard alone and practiced the same single cut from the feed four hundred times, until it finished in the guard for the next one. Then he went and found Jarn to show her.
Jarn and Fenrir sat next to each other to watch the first feed. Very close next to each other. Neither of them said a word for the whole hour. Crimson caught my eye across the room and did something with one ear that I'm pretty sure was a wink.
I should give those two a push someday.
Some time passed. Grid went back to his wife and his guild, and things in the Golem Kingdom were going great. The city, or rather the metropolis at this point, was almost finished. The surface city was nothing compared to what we'd built underground.
Hell, one of my construction worker golems reached a unique class and might actually become a legendary construction worker.
It was the one who'd measured my workbench. I should have known. He'd been the first on site every morning and the last to leave every night. He'd re-measured every wall the other construction golems built, and quietly fixed the ones that were off. He'd even put up a sign on the main road that read 'NO HAPHAZARD BUILDING.' Nobody knew what haphazard meant, but nobody risked it.
It boggled my mind when the golem, who I named Zuriel, told me he'd received a quest to make the Golem Kingdom one of the 'Wonders' of Satisfy.
"A Wonder, Father," he said, with plaster dust in his hair and the most serious face I'd ever seen on a golem. "The voice of the world thinks we can build a Wonder. I would like permission to take a very long time."
"Take as long as you need."
Because of that quest, we were actually only halfway done with construction. I let Zuriel take over from there and lead my other construction golems, in hopes that another golem of mine becomes a legend, even in a class I'd never expected.
That got me thinking. I started making golems of other classes too: fishing, farming, mining, botany and more.
I'd thought I wasn't limiting myself. I was. I'd only been making the kinds of golems I thought could reach legendary rank. There was no reason for that. There's no limit except the one in my own head. I should make whatever I want, and only stop if it's counterproductive.
A whole new world opened up. I shut myself in my crafting room for a while, and only came out for meetings or to check on Fenrir and Juliet.
A farming golem came out of it who sings to the crops. A fishing golem who has never once caught a fish, and is completely at peace with that. A botanist who cried when the first flower bloomed in the underground gardens, and then apologized to it for crying on it.
A miner golem who refused a pickaxe and dug with her bare hands, because she said she could hear the ore better that way. Pick, the goblin foreman, was deeply offended by her. Within a week they were best friends.
And a cook. I'd been meaning to make a cook since the city rose. He came out round and cheerful, with a ladle already in his hand, which I definitely didn't sculpt there. He spent his first day very confused, cooking for a city full of beings who don't technically need to eat.
By his third day, he'd worked out that they didn't need to, but they really liked to. By the end of the week, there was a line around the block outside his kitchen every evening. Martimer brought her hammock so she could wait in comfort.
I loved every single one of them.
It got to the point where, at my next public meeting with most of my golems, they staged an intervention.
Martimer stood up at the end of the long table, cleared her throat, and unrolled a scroll. It reached the floor. Then it kept going, across the floor, and out the door into the hallway.
"A petition," Martimer announced. "From the people of the Golem Kingdom. To the King. Requesting, and I quote, that he 'please, please, PLEASE take a break.'"
"How many signatures?"
"All of them."
I looked down at the scroll by my feet. I could see Torva's neat, slanting handwriting. Izarail's, in letters an inch tall. A paw print, probably Crimson's. A tiny scratch mark, definitely Pick's. Next to it, all on its own, a single, small, very firm period.
And near the bottom, in purple crayon, a wobbly drawing of a stick figure in glasses lying in a hammock, with the words PAPA REST written underneath. The S was backward. Juliet is fifteen now and has perfect handwriting. She did it on purpose, because she knew exactly what it would do to me.
I'll take care of myself in real life, obviously. But in the game, I'd been doing nothing but making golems for a long time. I hadn't had a real 'break' since I took Juliet out to level.
So I agreed. And the first thing on the agenda, by popular vote, was a spar.