Nox's POV:
Hello, my peeping brainworms, Nox here to tell you some unfortunate news. Sadly, I am back inside my formerly destroyed pink nightmare of a palace. Now, you might be wondering why I have chosen to return to a place so dreadful it serves as a strong argument for burning this incompetent empire to the ground before the three stooges does. Well, the answer is, I'm not. I'm actually heading to harvest stuff from my garden. Hence, I am using the secret tunneling systems I had my golems dig along with the rest of my secret basement to reach the garden without having to spend another second inside that pink monstrosity than I have to.
*Roar*
"Hey, boss? What was that noise?" Meathead asked.
Oh yeah, I also decided this would be a nice time to do some quick mastering and teach my kids some stuff in person. So, after a quick trip back to the forbidden lands, and a short unflattening of Slowpoke who had somehow turned himself two-dimensional, I brought the kids out for a walk through my underground tunneling system to stretch their legs and do some child labor.
"I'm pretty sure that was one of my prototype flesh golems!" I answered.
"Flesh golems? What are those?" Wimp asked.
As I recounted my struggles with trying to create a flesh golem incorporating all the different cultivation cores and qi-canals and -types without exploding every time it absorbs a new cultivator, Wimp seemed to be getting giddy with excitement at learning of a new form of golem separate from the school of enchantment magic. Meanwhile, Meathead and Slowpoke seemed to be doing some bonding with Crybaby as ever since I started explaining the intricacies of fusing living bodies together, they have been clinging to him with disturbed looks on their faces.
"S-Senior?! The boss is just making this up, right? He wouldn't really-?"
"That's 'SHE' wouldn't really whatever you were gonna say, mister!" I corrected Meathead, as I was wondering if maybe I rewired his brain to work better, he'd remember my gender.
*ROAR*
*CLANG*
"AAAAAHH! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!" Slowpoke shouted, overreacting to one of my failed prototypes, who were trying to hug and eat him through the bars using their fused forearms.
"Bad Charly 1 2 3! Slowpoke's not food! Bad!" I said, as I grabbed the designated acid spray flask hanging on the wall across from his cell, to punish them for misbehaving.
*Spray**Spray*
*Roar*
"No! Bad! Don't give me lip young heteromorph!" I said, as I sprayed more acid to slightly shave down his biomass.
*Spray**Spray*
*Whimper*
"That's better! Here! Have a treat!" I said, as I rewarded them with a healthy meat snack freshly procured from my ethical meat farm.
Once Charly 1 2 3 finished eating their fill, they settled down and took a nap.
*Sigh*
"Master, could you try to turn down the body-horror in front of my juniors!" Crybaby complained.
"Hm? It's not like they haven't seen worse at summer camp?"
"Demons don't lurk around in a creepy tunnel and they're not rabid animals that'll tear your head off and eat it given the chance!"
"Haha! Wait, you're not being serious, right?" I seriously asked.
As I was getting some very not joking vibes from my eldest, the very disturbing thought of him having a very fundamental and very dangerous misunderstanding about demons popped into my head.
*Sigh*
"Also, Shinji just pissed his pants in fear and is now clinging on to me like a scared cat and is refusing to let go of me!"
"Huh? Uh, yeah, sure!" I said, snapping my fingers to teleport Slowpoke off of Crybaby's leg.
I then grabbed the pale stinky boy by the nape as I carried him along, while I was going over things in my head.
"Huh? Wait a minute?! What was that?" Crybaby asked, confused.
"Hm? What was what?" I asked, sending the confused ball back in his court.
"No swapping him with a horny monster or an ankle restraint! Not even a demand for payment to remove him! You just removing an inconvenience free of charge with no catch or pranks? That's a little too easy! I don't buy it?" Crybaby asked me with a suspicious look.
"We're here anyways!" I said, paying him no mind as I opened up the hatch disguised as a garden fountain.
"Hm?"
Once everyone was out of the hole in the ground, I closed the hatch again, then threw my stinky Slowpoke into the stationary outdoors garden-bath to get away the stank and snap him out of this fear paralysis thing he has going on.
*Splash*
"AH! COLD!"
"It better be cold! It's frost tear water created using a death finger crystal as a catalyst!" I said as I pulled him out before he turned into a full-on ice sculpture.
"Shinji? You okay?" Meathead asked.
"Sh-Sh-Sho c-c-cold!" the partially frozen Slowpoke stuttered out.
"Master?"
"Yeah, yeah, there is an inferno igloo over by the magma-devil-roses he can warm up in!" I said as I pointed towards the blazing igloo surrounded by flowers with grinning monster mouths in the distance.
*Sigh*
"Kenji? Could you-?" Crybaby asked Meathead.
"On it!" Meathead replied as he made a small fire circle around Slowpoke.
Seeing one of my kids trying to burn down my garden in all of the 1 minute of being here, I pulled out my trusty pain stick and began putting out the fire.
*Bonk*
"AAAAAHHH!"
"DON'T JUST GO LIGHTING FIRES IN SOMEONE ELSE'S GARDEN YOU, DUMBASS!" I shouted at the idiot who just scorched a circle into my purple amethyst grass lawn.
"B-but, it's already on f-fire?" Slowpoke said as he shakily pointed at the blazing igloo.
"That's a contained fire plane! Yes, Wimp?"
"What's a fire plane?"
*Bonk*
"AAAAAHHHH!"
"She was just asking a question! Don't you think the pain stick was a little excessive?" Crybaby said, after I bonked his sister.
"It would, if this wasn't the umpteenth time I've had to explain this because this numbskull empties out her head of anything golem unrelated every other week!"
When it comes to golems, Wimp is by far my best pupil. In some respects, she might even be better than Crybaby, and he has already graduated from Nox's Magic Academy. This is because unlike any of my other disciples who only learn what they must, she goes above and beyond as she not only takes extra lessons whenever she can, but she really thinks about the knowledge she's given and try to expand upon it in her own time, conducting her own little experiments. I can teach one lesson and she learns three, but that only applies when it's got something to do with golems. In anything else, not only does she fall behind everyone else, but she consistently forgets even the most fundamental in a matter of days. The only way to somehow get her to remember is if you can somehow find a direct connection between what you want her to learn and her interest in magic puppets, and as great a teacher as I may be, I don't have the time to think of ways to turn everything into golems.
"Everything into golem?" I muttered as I just realized the very simple solution to Wimp's lack of memory space.
"What?"
"Hm? Oh, nothing! Anyways, I'll be doing some one-on-one with Wimp for a bit, so Meathead and Slowpoke, you can do whatever so long as you don't destroy my garden! Crybaby, you're in charge of keeping them from destroying slash being destroyed by my garden! Now off you go! Shoo!" I said, as I pushed the trio into the spatial hopper berry bush that conveniently just popped in front of us before kidnapping them.
"Hey! Wai-!"
*Pop*
"Ugh! Wh-Where did they go?" Wimp asked as she finished groaning in pain.
"Hm? Uh, I think about a kilometer that way! The Spatial Hopper Berry Bushes randomly teleports around in spatial planes like this, absorbing stuff like this amethyst grass we're standing on which contains minor amounts of the spatial element!"
"Uhhh, okay!" Wimp said with a blank stare, most definitely having already forgotten most of what I just said.
*Sigh*
"Wimp, come with me!" I said as I led her towards my barren rock garden.
As much as I hate the pink nightmare in the background, legally owning such a large plot of land has its perks. If not for the share scale of the gardening space I have, I would be hard pressed to make all this out in the wild without any rando's suddenly breaking into plunder and destroy.
"Boss?"
"Wimp! Do you know why I brought you out here into this desert?"
Wimp just shook her head.
"Earlier, you seemed very interested in flesh golems, right?"
"Yes!"
"Even if they aren't the same as enchantment-based golems!"
"I never knew there was another school of magic that had golems!"
"Well, are you interested in seeing a live example of a none-enchantment golem?"
Wimp nodded with stars in her eyes.
"Good, because there is one here! Can you see it?" I asked.
At my words she took a look at our surroundings, filled with nothing but sand and rocks, before turning to me.
"Is it invisible?"
"Nope!" I said as I stamped a red x on her forehead.
I then grabbed her hand and dragged her on to one of the rocks sticking out of the sand. I then put my fingers in my mouth as I whistled for these lazy rocks to wake up.
*Whistle**Rumble*
"Whoa!"
Shortly after, me and Wimp were lifted up high, giving us a better view of my garden from atop the head of the giant bipedal rock man that just arose from the sands it was sleeping in.
"Look Wimp! Everything the light touches is mine!" I proclaimed as I showed her the world.
"Wh-What is this thing?!"
Of course, rather than my amazing collection of miniature chaos planes, Wimp was more amazed with the giant moving rock we were standing on.
"This, my Golem obsessed girl, is a 'Rockman'! The original golem!"
"A Rock-man? Original?"
"In ye olden times, back when enchantment magic was taking its first steps, these stoners here were the inspiration for the standard enchantment golems you know today!"
"How does it move? I don't see any enchantments anywhere! How do you control it! What can it do? How fast can it-?"
"Hold your question-shaped horses there Wimpy my gurl! I had a point I wanted to raise here! A Rockman isn't the same as a regular golem, because they aren't crafted with magic, or at least not in a traditional sense!"
"Huh?"
"Rockman are natures golems. They are semi-sentient rocks born from nature as a result of specific environmental forces, phenomena and conditions coinciding in just the right way, which I have artificially recreated inside this garden of mine, or to put it simply-!" I said, as more Rockmen emerged from the sands.
"You're growing golems!" Wimp muttered, finishing my sentence.
"Correct!" I said as I stamped a green circle over her red x.
"This is amazing!"
"Yes, but to set this golem farm up, I needed to study nature and its countless biome and intricate ecosystems from top to bottom, because if one little thing is off than this would just be a big waste of time! Everything can be used to create a golem, from the earth below your feet, to the stars in the sky, they can become components of an intricate machine that you can command, but to do that, you'll need to know a bit of everything first, not just enchanting! Do you understand!"
"Yes!" Wimp said, her eyes shining like purple stars in excitement.
Seeing I had sufficiently hoodwinked, I mean, motivated my disciple to try learning about other stuff than enchanting, I was satisfied with this little detour. As I was about ready to get off this thing, I picked up Wimp, held her towards the sky and began to sing.
"NANT INGONYAMA BAGITHI BABA…!"
And then I chucked her off this living mountain.
"NOT AGAAAAAIN!"
I then snapped my fingers to signal the Rockman to let me back down to the ground safely, feeling satisfied after throwing my cub off a cliff.
*Snap**Rumble*
As the giant rock people dug their way back underground for a nap I walked over to the Pillow Rock boulder that had caught Wimp's fall. Once she had managed to climb her way out of the weirdly soft stone, we started walking back to the spatial plane at the center of my garden while answering Wimp's questions.
"So, there are energy veins inside their bodies allowing them to move!"
"Right! That is why managing the elemental energy balance in the environment is an important part of growing a Rockman! Hence, why we walked out of the earth plane and back to the spatial plane rather than teleporting back!"
"Uh? What were those again?"
"…! Oh, right? I forgot to explain it earlier!" I said, as I put away the pain stick I nearly hit her with.
"Phew!"
"So, do you remember what a chaos plane is? Or do I need to explain that too?"
"Uh, like that place you took us camping that one time?"
"*Sigh* A chaos plane is a general term for anomalous biome! Most of the time they are caused by a high concentration of elemental energy gathering in one spot for a prolonged period of time, altering and mutating the environment in the process! There are other things that can cause it too, like clusters of dead souls for example, but these are rare! Anyways, part of what makes chaos planes so chaotic is the instability caused by minor discrepancies that tend to pile up, like sudden fluctuations of energy concentration, imbalances of different energies that intertwine, you know that kind of stuff! However, occasionally there are certain stable chaos planes where the naturally occurring phenomena show a level of consistent predictability. For example, around this time of day every day, there should be a portal opening up over there leading directly to right outside the soul plane we are heading to." I said, as a spatial distortion formed where I pointed before a clear portal connecting the spaces manifested.
"So, is that why we walked here instead of teleporting? To avoid leaving traces of elemental energy that could clash with the rest of the biome?"
"Correct again! Stable chaos planes like these tend to specialize in one specific energy as it's harder to balance multiple elements without causing, well, chaos! While just a little teleporting around isn't particularly dangerous given how stable my garden is, there is no point in unnecessarily adding to the possibility of an unforeseen phenomena by casting spells everywhere! Though, if you have to leave some trace amounts of energy somewhere, it would be preferable to do so within the plane corresponding to the element, or in an energy recycling zone like the ice magnet fountain from earlier that collects and stores ice energy! This won't outright eliminate the risks since you're still messing with the energy balance, but it will minimize the imbalance! Also, on a plus note, certain spells and qi attacks can be strengthened a smidge in the right environments, so that's fun!"
"I see! So that's why you hit Kenji earlier! He was spreading his fire element inside a spatial plane!" Wimp said.
"Well, that, and the fact he was ruining my very expensive purple lawn!" I replied.
We then took the communal portal to the next destination. Unfortunately for me, that destination is directly in front of the pink nightmare, which is part of why I brought Wimp along today, so I could make her do my chores, I mean child labor, I mean help out around the house, I mean-.
"Damn it! I can't think straight with all that pink in front of me!"
That fashion disaster is just so distracting. Every time I look at it, I feel like I'm a bull being taunted by a red blanket just begging for a good thrashing.
"Hm?"
"Hold up! Just let me put on a blindfold real quick! Okay! So, today I will be sharing with you a secret family recipe for golemancy! So, before we start, I need you to undo your telepathy group chat with everyone!"
"…? Okay!"
"That also means the ones inside your body!"
"Their new bodies haven't been completed yet!"
*Sigh*
I then brought out a black jar covered in demonic symbols to suck the souls out of my girl's body and seal them up tight.
"Okay, there! Now we can talk in private!" I said, having just pickled her ancestry.
"Boss? What did you just-?"
"I just extracted the souls squatting inside you and relocated them to this jar here until we're done talking!"
"…? Okay!"
"Just so you know, I left your old man intentionally!" I said, as I partially pulled out his spirit for better telepathic communication.
'So, are you expecting me to ask why you left me out?'
"Do you know why?"
'…!'
"That's what I thought!"
"So, why did you?" Wimp asked me.
"Because I trust him not to bail on you!"
"Huh?"
"Wimp! The brain network you have going on with the rest of your golem grand pappies! Why are you part of it?"
"It's a way to transport info-!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah! But why are you at the center of it? Why are you so vital for it to work?"
"Because I've got a brain! Uh, sorry, that came out wrong!" Wimp apologized to the old ghost.
"No point in apologizing to the stupid!" I said, dropping some wisdom on her.
'I am dead, not stupid!'
"Well, you must be pretty stupid if you died! Hm? I'm getting flamed for that comment!"
'…?'
"Flamed?"
"Hm? Don't worry about it! What I meant to say is you must be pretty stupid if you don't have a brain! There, I think that'll quiet the voices a bit! No? Okay, moving on! What I will teach you today is an alternative to borrowed brains!"
"Huh?"
"In other words, I'll be teaching you how to make an artificial brain for ghosts that actually works just as good as a regular one!"
'Huh? Wait?! WHAT?!'
"Ouch! Don't yell!"
'Oh sorry Aiko! Anyways, that's not possible! You can't create an artificial brain! Believe me when I say my family has tried to recreate a human brain before, but it is too complex to be recreated using enchantments and even if it was possible, the final product would be impractically large and delicate!'
"And that's why you're 3rd rate!"
'What!'
"Even a 2nd rate magician like me knows that size can be adjustable via spatial compression field, or don't you know how to make those?" I said, poking fun at the 3rd rate enchanter.
'You!' He said, angerly.
"Boss? Are you going to teach me the enchantments to make a brain?"
"Hm? Oh! Eh no! While I do know how, but that's still a bit too advanced for you! Even Crybaby doesn't have a comprehensive enough understanding to wrap his head around that noodle yet!"
"Even Senior Alex couldn't do it?!" Wimp said, shocked.
'Hmph! Regardless, whether your claims of creating an artificial brain with enchantments are true or not, from the sound of things, you are saying you have another much simpler method un-reliant on enchantments, correct?'
"Yip-eddy-yip-yip, and so, before I tell you anymore, I'm warning you now! Do not let your compadres know you have this knowledge until you don't need them anymore! You understand?"
"Huh? Why? Shouldn't I tell them? If we made them a brain, they wouldn't need to borrow mine all the time!"
"That's the point! They wouldn't need you anymore!"
"Huh?"
"Tell me Wimp? What do you think your value is to them?"
"Uh?"
"If your family tree all suddenly got the ability to think and act effectively without you right now, how many or rather, how long do you think it would take before they all leave you to die?"
"What are you talking about? They wouldn't do that!"
'No, she has a point!'
"Huh?"
"Wimp! Remember, they aren't just golems! They're people! People with their own priorities, wills and desires! Right now, the only thing tethering them to you is the fact that they would never survive in the outside world on their own without you! Without a brain to speed up their processing speed, they'd be little more than sitting ducks for the first person or beast to find! Why else do you think they all huddle together inside that inheritance site whenever one of your predecessors died! They're terrified of being caught with their pants down and so they find safety in numbers within their territory for a home field advantage! If not for that, your ancestors would have personally come to escort you to that crypt after your old man kicked the bucket, isn't that right?" I asked our slimer.
'…!'
"Grandpa?"
'*Sigh* I wish I could disagree, but she is correct! While I can't imagine all of them would abandon you if you called for help, there are a lot of our eldest ancestors who are not concerned too much with the wellbeing of their descendants! If they truly acquired a method to operate effectively without you, it's not impossible that some may leave and never return!'
"Right! So, it's within your interest to keep this on the down low! You understand?"
Wimp nodded.
Moving on, I took Wimp to just outside my crimson grass field to get started on the child labor sweat shop I've got planned for her.
"So, what are we making?"
"You are going to make this!" I said, as I pulled out the pre-prepared red grass ball covered in ancient demonic inscriptions.
"What's that?"
"This is an old invention of mine, 'Crimson Heart Ultimate Collector of Knowledge model: Y'!"
"That's a mouth full!" Wimp said.
"I was going through a phase when I came up with the name! You can just call it Chucky for short!" I replied
'That just sounds weird!' Slimer said.
"So, how does Chucky work?" Wimp asked.
"Curses!" I said.
'Is something wrong?' Slimer asked
"No! I mean, it operates on magic curses! So, let's begin todays lesson on Curse magic!" I said, as I pulled out my professor monocle and a whiteboard from spatial storage.