A kid sat at the lush dining table. No, a kid no more; his teenage body had not fully caught up with the gaze he harbored.
The eyes of an unfortunate warrior.
He was my master and I was presenting him with the rest of the plates. He had already eaten the tofu the moment the human had taken his seat.
"Raw tuna and scallop, grilled sablefish, deepfried..."
"Excuse me, is that wine?" He cut me. "I appreciate it, but I can't drink wine."
I... that... what? Mead, then? It took me over a second to even start to understand what the young master could mean.
"Would you agree to a nectar instead?"
Crisis averted. As he ate I tried once again to warn him about the threats that loomed. He still wasn't paying attention.
But the human could not survive long in a dying realm. A month from now, a few with luck, the mana drain would turn the seeming quiet he bathed in to an unforgiving hell. Forget everyone else, he needed to be his own savior.
"Eh, what's happening outside?" He asked once more.
"Monsters."
Outside the ruins of Shiranu had revived. Water poured from the hills in cascades, filling the valleys up to the first terraces. Turning the city into an islands-dotted lake.
Cane growing on lower grounds and above, among the abandoned towers and palaces, trees with green and white foliages.
My master's magic had thrown the locals into a frenzy.
I closed the window. The teenager looked at me while finishing his fish. He had hunched forward to eat, straightened himself with haste.
"Master, the monsters are of no concern. You need to find what causes the mana drain before it consumes you."
"And how do I do that?" He asked, then swallowed his food. I brought the braised yellowtail to replace his plate. "Thank you."
"You are the only one who can find the answer. The whole realm depends on you." And then: "May I ask what your system suggests?"
He got startled, looked at me with fear and nervously smiled: "Ah, you know about the system?"
"As I understand, it is a human marvel crafted to help with your daily needs. But I am afraid it was built for a bygone era and therefore, it can lead you astray. You should not rely on it. Still, it could help me if you told me what it says."
My master was looking at me apprehensive eyes.
"Eh, I'm finished eating! Can I go out?"
"But of course, master."
And before I could say anything more he rushed out of his chair and to the garden door.
"Thanks for the meal!"
I followed him outside. His tousled hair had disappeared among the edges for a moment. He saw me, seemed nervous.
"Do you have to follow me everywhere?"
"Is there a problem?" I couldn't help but ask. "Would you prefer to be left alone?"
"Yes thank you!" He nodded and seemed to wait for me to go.
As my master wished.
I found myself back in the dining room, completely at a loss. I had been dismissed! And not a single thing felt right.
First of all, were my ornaments not appealing? I was a clay golem, I could not tell but it should work, it should. So why was my master... scared of me?
How could a mighty human fear a clay pot like me?!
Second, he didn't seem to care at all about the mana drain. Third, the seals didn't seem to work. Magic was still pouring out of him all the same. Those on the mansion had plain vanished. But understanding magic was the least of my worries.
Fourth, what could my master do? I was asking a human to break a realm-scale curse.
And I would just let him err in the garden, knowing that?
What was wrong with me!?
Still, I would not against his will. Instead, there was one thing I had to check. Inside the mansion, through the wooden doors and circular stairs, all the way to the cellar.
Someone had disturbed the remains of a clay golem on the steps. The other two still lay against the wall, in the circular room.
The place was choking, still saturated with magic. But the magic circles on the ground, instead, were inert. No other human would come from there. I touched them, tried to give them some magic, obtained nothing. Sealed in their own way.
The illegible screams engraved all around me were telling me to go back to my master.
He had left the garden.
I was a clay golem. I could detect vibrations and glad to my master's magic that was measured in the kilometer. Yet in all the noise and abundance, I had not felt him leave.
"Master!" I called like an imbecile.
Fine! It was fine! The human was invincible. Whatever crossed its path would rue the day and then some! And then! Its mana would warn the next one to not even dare.
But I had to find him fast.
A part of me wanted to conserve mana. This was my master's, his bleeding heart. Another part was busy leaping from tall roof to white towers across entire islands. Why not teleport? I was conserving mana! I was reasonably just rebuilding an entire stone bridge and running on it.
Teleportation had many flaws and this was not here nor there, my master was nowhere to be found.
"Master!" Again, to the oblivious ruins.
I landed on the grassy surface of a hill, near what had been a small library, with the thought of exploring the city's underbelly when I noticed it.
Words. On the broken wall. Words engraved.
Human. I am Veleter. Come back to Bayankam. I will wait.
No.
Who had written that? When? Monsters could talk but hardly bothered so why would they write?! What kind of sick joke was that!?
With a swipe of my hand I bleached the surface.
Back to looking for the human, only to stumble onto the same message further ahead, on a decrepit column. The etched symbols barely legible on that rough surface. Still, I took the time to make it crumble.
How many of those had been written?
There were spells to answer just such questions. I let the magic circle brighten under my feet and thin lines flow in all directions. Dozens, several dozen in a lengthy trail. Something was still busy writing them.
In moments, I was on site. Crashing near the center of the island, in a courtyard where a statue's pedestal had the first words written on it.
Human. I am Veleter.
The rest had not yet been scribbled. Whatever did that was still close. There were also spells for that but none seemed to work. All my attempts did was confirm a diffuse presence on the cloister, at the courtyard's edge.
Or on the statue itself.
Impale.
No, nothing there. Impale. Impale. Impale! Impale! Impale, impale, impale!
Before I knew it, having not moved a finger I had transformed the whole place into a porcupine fest of sharp rocks protruded everywhere. And still nothing.
Human. I am Veleter. Come back to Bayankam.
No way. Not only had I missed it, it kept writing in front of me?! That thing was a ghost! What kind of monster had that level of stealth?
"I will bring your message to the human!" I yelled.
A few seconds and I heard a rustle. The familiar shape of a caparace emerged before me. Those little legs carrying their oversized, shield-like shell.
Impale.
And once it stopped twitching, I came close to inspect the corpse. That thing had almost no mana. All it had immediately burned to hide. No sane monster would do that.
"Golem..." A familiar voice called.
The low, raspy voice of a parasite.
The giant mushroom that used to guard the mansion had fled the moment my master had emerged, and rightfully so: I would have ensured its death. Yet here it was, pestering me as usual. Too greedy to stop.
All it cared about was mana.
"The human needs your help..." It said.
I laughed out loud.
"Now I am being lectured by a parasite!" And once I was done: "I thought we were finally rid of you!"
"He is struggling with monsters..."
"He is a human! The mana your monsters use is but a portion of the excess he exhudes! And you pretend he is struggling!"
"He is calling your name..."
Mushrooms knew how to get under people's skin.
I could have asked it where my master was, but this was not needed anymore. I was already on track to meet him.
The caparace had hidden through mana depravation. My master accidentally did the opposite, creating such saturation that he could hide in plain sight without even trying. No spell could get past that natural hurdle.
So relying on brute force would not work. The mushroom, likely, had simply never left him out of its sight. But how had the caparace tracked my master?
It mattered not, because more such insects still lived and tried to carve their message for the human to see. And in so doing, they pointed the direction.
Yes, those simple-minded beasts would simply try and reach the human, then start writing the message nearby, while said human had long left. So, they went back to him again, tried again, blind to their own comedy.
Found him!
What was he doing?!
The teenager was running away from a herd of felogs. So even those feline frogs had left their sewers to join in the feast. Magic had turned those rachitic batracians into bull-sized hunters whose goiter extended from mouth to belly to their tall hunched back.
Their spells gestated in there, then burst out of their mouth.
My master barely dodged them.
He had reached the hill's terrace, approached the cliff and underneath the deep water. More felogs leaping out of the water to climb on the terraces toward him.
With one hand he lifted those up, out from the cliff and in the air, then cast a time freeze. Their bodies formed a stretched cluster of platforms on which the human hopped to reach the next hill.
He was doing fine?
The freeze stopped and his victims flew high then fell all around him. He could have easily outrun them all but instead clumsily ran until being blocked by the aisle of an old palace. Greyhounds on the roof. The diamond lizards made him stop fast.
But they saw the felogs approach and fled, leaving him alone with them. My master fell on the ground, against the aisle's crumbled pillars and shielded himself behind his arms.
A felog breathed wicked flames that engulfed my master's retreat.
Yeah he was fine.
Still, he lowered his arms to see a clay golem and the raised stone wall denying the flames.
"My apologies for intruding, master." I offered.
The protective wall I had cast cracked and collapsed before me, allowing me to see the herd of beastly frogs that rushed us.
Would my master really not fight? Oh well.
I extended my hand, palm down, and let the ground grow and stretch all the way to it before forming a diamond warhammer. A maul, I meant.
"May I be allowed to rid you of the local vermin?"
He didn't answer, watched me stop the first attacker with the handle, block the second and third ones piling on before pushing them back in one swing. Preserving mana, of course. I left my after-image behind and lunged at the felogs.
Hit and hit and hit again, listened to their bones crack and their flabby hide give way. Impale! For good measure. Before the ghost of me I had left near my master had finished fading, the fight was.
I considered the bodies around me, turned around and approached my somehow amazed master.
The teenager then got tense and I stopped. Threw the hammer away.
"Considering that the city has submerged, would you like a boat?"