'Dammit dad, as much as I love you, why did you have to give me one of your freaky puzzles? I still hadn't figured out how to open the nearly impregnable fortress you call a birthday present.'
Opening the long box I saw an umbrella, 'is he pranking me?' was my first thought, it was of a strange design that was for sure. It was nearly as tall as I was and was rather heavy. There was a button on the shaft of what was basically a staff with a spike and umbrella at the top. I pressed the button and the umbrella flipped open, there seemed to be a few more layers to the top so I pressed the button again, the second layer released from under the first layer so that three people could stand comfortably beneath it. 'That is cool but I don't think dad wanted me to walk about in the rain with some company.' I could tell there was something between the layers but not how to activate it, after touching the layers I figured it out. It was a shield, a very broad shield with the second layer, and knowing dad this was the tip of the iceberg.
I placed the umbrella down impressed, looking at it over again it was a solid black umbrella except the entire thing was made from a metal alloy that he wasn't familiar with. I held the button down and the umbrella collapsed inward, and the pieces fit seamlessly until it resembled a thick staff, this was certainly the weirdest weapon he had ever encountered, but as a healer staffs were a pretty standard weapon. At the top of the staff was a short spike and at the bottom was a gold plate, what caught his attention was golden engravings near that golden plated area, there was a piece pointing to the word "Fortress" which had a light glow. After looking around the plate there was only one other word inscribed "Whip".
Hmm 'so the fortress is an umbrella shield with plenty of hidden tricks and there seems to be a whip' he looked at the whole piece again before recalling the needle-like piece from the golden plated handle… 'or an arrow for the setting' I twisted the handle and it went to the "whip" smoothly. The entire staff began to shorten and fold in upon itself until it was no longer a staff it had become an intricate cane. The spike was still on the other end while the handle was the golden plate, there was something like a cross guard hybrid that was below the handle in the shape of a lotus flower, on two of the petals were the settings for the weapon.
Dad wasn't kidding when he said there were a lot of surprises. Wasn't this supposed to be a whip? I swung the cane and I felt a strange click from the weapon before it separated into segments, my aim was terrible as the whip struck my door before retracting back into a cane. I watched as my door broke in half, 'that is embarrassing at least no one saw that.'
Owen's cold voice came from the hall, "Young master if you would be so kind as to practice with weapons either in the training hall or outside with the guards instead of destroying this house.
After the incident with the door, I decided to stick to my mothers' training regimen that she had designed for me after I was discharged from the hospital. First was breakfast with a thirty-minute jog, then two hours of hand to hand combat training with the guards followed by an hour of cultivation. Then lunch with an hour of weapons practice for dessert, if I was honest with myself then the hardest parts of my day were breakfast and lunch. My new limbs made walking and running and all exercise harder and you had to focus on every movement, but nothing makes you feel more annoyed than having dropped your cutlery for the fifth time or cutting your plate in half with a steak knife because you judged your own strength wrong.
After taking a quick shower I decided it was time for me and that alpha to talk, he should be well enough for a chat by now. I dressed into my new robe, might as well look the part of the wealthy lord and headed downstairs, I asked a maid where they had been placed and it turns out they were in the staff housing, walking past the kitchen I have a plate of fruit and cheese made while I grabbed a sweet bun on my way out with a blushing maid following behind towards the staff housing.
While I and the cute maid were walking I asked how Rin was doing with her training, it turns out the head maid and Owen had taken a liking to her and were teaching her how to run the house, though knowing the real identity of Owen and the head maid I was certain they were teaching her the more sinister lessons she needed to learn.
We reached the Alphas room a few minutes into the walk, the maid knocked and opened the door a few moments later giving the occupant enough time to respond or make themselves decent, "sir Warren, our master is here to see you. Please ready yourself." I could hear the maid saying as she placed the plate of fruit upon the side table.
I waited a moment before entering the room, laying in the bed was a grizzled old, he had more gray than black in his hair and shadows under his eyes. He was a tad pale but I blamed that on the poison and blood loss, he was quite muscular and he should be at least 5'11 in height if the information Dale had was accurate.
"Hello Mr. Warren, my name is Alioth but I prefer to be called Aka, I have an offer for you if you are willing to hear it."
He eyed me warily, which was understandable, but he nodded his willingness.
"Good now option one, You will remain in slavery until you pay back twice the amount of debt you incurred since I bought you, 70,000 credits for the initial purchase plus the potions to cure your poison running at 20,000 apiece for 25 individuals have you just over the debt of 575,000 credits. This grows daily due to your meals, housing, training, and cultivation resources specific to your clan."
I could see the shock on his face at the current debt before he could accept the daunting task I continued on.
"There is option two, however, that may be a bit more to your liking", I paused for effect and took a drink of water before getting to the real offer, "I will forgive your entire debt, I will give you a home, I will pay your clan a monthly stipend and I will assist you in purchasing other wolf tribes like your own who have been caught by slavers. The price for this option is steep but I will allow you to talk it over amongst yourselves if you wish."
"What is the price?" his voice was deep and gravelly and full of suspicion.
I tapped my tablet and sent over the contract so he could read it at his leisure, "The price is loyalty, your clan will serve my family and protect our home. I do not expect you to go to war with anyone, we will help you all train and become stronger to protect ourselves not wage war. If there is ever a time that war is a possibility it will be discussed and the contract could be renewed for more benefits. When you are ready to decide just ask one of the maids to ask for me."
After his brief meeting with Warren, he went back to his room, sitting at his desk he began going over the basic symbols he would be using on his puppets, the first of which would be a standard warrior puppet, the AI would be finished tomorrow and Owen had placed an order to an alchemist to design and build a machine that could copy an AI and place the copy into a new crystal. The machine would take longer so he would have to wait for that particular upgrade until he had tested it out. For now, he would use a mindless puppet that would obey the order, and well that was that.
The lab would be mostly ready by tomorrow and when his experiments could begin. The rest of my night consisted of studying and cultivation with a light dinner, the next two days were similar to the first, the lab wasn't finished till the third day due to 'shipping issues' he had to order from a competitor of his fathers and they made him wait for his stuff, a small inconvenience but they wouldn't go too far, just make things a little difficult here and there.
For now, that would be a regular event but my lab was finished now and it was time to make some puppets, making the blend of materials went smoothly as it was mostly automated by the forge, thank you science, and magic for making this beautiful baby. He had gone over countless designs which he loaded into the 3D printer, he picked something that wasn't too complex, this may be his first puppet but he wasn't going to waste materials on it. Likely fail at the next part, inscribing the puppet so it would have power and the availability to move and receive commands. He didn't need it to cast spells or have outstanding moves, just protect him while he healed his teammates.
After the skeleton was created he moved it to the puppet crafting station after everything was set up the puppet hovered in the center of the station, with the journeyman set added in the puppet could be held up by one arm while the other three had special torches that carve the symbols into the skeleton. When using the station you wouldn't have to use your eyes, but your soul to monitor the carving, luckily the gold set came with an amplifier to make it easier for the crafter to focus. Unlike alchemy and forging, puppet crafting didn't have a time constraint if you needed to stop you can. The reverse side was that if you messed up during the carving of runes and sigils you could receive a backlash from the energy implanted into the runes destabilizing.
About two minutes into my first puppet, I received my first backlash and migraine by crossing two opposing runes. I continued to practice on the skeleton even though it would need to be remolded otherwise with how many mistakes I made the puppet would most likely blow up during battle, well now that is an interesting idea, exploding puppets...I pulled out my crafting journal and wrote down my errors and what I got right as well as making a note to investigate explosive puppets. While I had been tinkering with the first skeleton another block of materials rolled out of the forge and placed into the 3D printer and began cutting out another skeleton. Another great thing about my new profession was that these large chunks of materials that came off the skeleton could be placed back into the forge and make another block until we needed more raw materials.
The cycle of attempts and failures began in a vicious cycle, after he had finished his daily training he would spend the rest of the day in the lab. After two weeks of experimenting, he had brought his latest puppet to 90% completion, the remaining percent was linking the core of the puppet to the rest of the skeleton. His design had placed the core region at the base of the skull where there were two slots that would close up once they were filled. One for a gem that had enough power to keep his puppet powered for five years, and another socket for the AI so he could test his theory, if it worked he wouldn't have to harvest souls all the time for his puppets and only need to get more complex AI.
Wiping the sweat from his brow he took a break from the puppet, he had three skeletons this one was at 90% while the other two were at 70%, picking up a snack from the table he rested and thought of his parents and hoped they were alright, he hadn't met his siblings since they had already moved off-world when he was born, he had an older brother that was just like their father and went off to start his own trading union. While his sister was like his mother and went off on her grand adventure, he wasn't even sure if they knew he was alive. After enjoying his break he got back to work.
First, he brought the other two puppets to the same level as his nearly completed one, then he began on the final push, hist first attempt failed due to a rune brushing against another, so he scrapped that one and began working on the others, half an hour later he had completed his first puppet. A quarter of an hour later he finished the second puppet, letting out a huge sigh of relief he fell back onto his chair.
I was sticky with sweat but it didn't matter I had finally finished! Getting up I ran to the shower, turning back around I set the forge to make a standard armor set that I had found from the inheritance that I thought looked interesting. They called it a samurai which was a type of warrior, the word samurai was derived from another word that meant to serve, so he had set his mind on creating samurai puppets. The chassis for the samurai skeletons had already been completed, though he had to store these 'bodies' out of sight in case that shrewd maid came looking at his secrets again.
The chassis for the skeletons were made by an actual alchemist, all you had to do was send him the design and he would send you the bill along with the body. From what I could gather there was a special clay that you could mix with the corpses of slimes to create the bodies, that and probably a secret technique that he kept to himself. I mumbled to myself as I hopped into the shower, the hot water helped me to unwind after the long day, I continued my routine and studied for an hour before cultivating. Halfway through my cultivation, I could feel the bottleneck to the third class of cherub, I quickly called for Rin to come to my chambers; she was in a nightgown with a blushing face.
"Rin I need your help with something very important, there is a white bottle of oil on my desk and a red pill in the right-hand drawer of my desk to fetch them quickly!" she had a look of confusion before she hurried to my desk. I could hear rummaging before she came and stood next to me. "Alright, Rin, first open the bottle and pour all of the oil onto my wings, there is a knife on the desk you need to cut my shirt away as I can't move very much right now."
She followed the instructions and cut away my shirt before opening the white bottle, to most races they would know what the oil was but to the angelic race it was a time saver of immense value. It was holy oil created and blessed by an archon, it was always in short supply and you couldn't buy it even if you had the money, I know because my father tried repeatedly to get his hands on some. My mother found another way to get it, someone had broken in and killed an entire family for it, my mother tracked that killer down and seized all of his property. She didn't report the kill and take the bounty, mostly due to the fact that she would have to give up the oil.
My father was competitive by nature so he bought that red pill, it was called the Dragon Chases the Phoenix pill, the name was vague, to say the least. The pill itself came from before the Merge and its purpose was to increase your affinity to the elements, stabilize your foundation, and boost your cultivation. The holy oil had similar effects, he had received both of these as gifts for his last birthday but you could only consume them when you were breaking through to the next stage.
Some would argue that giving it to a cultivator with hardly any cultivation was a waste, well they were dead wrong according to my father, he believed if you took them both at the same time they would build off one another the holy oil would heal you while blessing your bloodline and increasing the strength of your talents, while the pill would give you the energy you needed to make a solid foundation and breakthrough multiple classes at once.
While he was thinking about how these things might affect him, Rin had finished spreading the oil on his wings, "Feed me the pill now." moments later he felt the soft fingers guide the pill into his mouth, a second later he could feel like he was on fire, he immediately focussed on cultivation. The pill had been crafted from both a dragon and phoenix so the burning of his body was to be expected, the holy oil was the fire's antithesis. It was like ice had formed in his wings, he was losing the ability to focus but the oil and the pill had taken over the process. Now he just needed to survive the process.