The ceremony was underway by the time I got there, it seems that Vincent, Teo, and Laura had all conveniently done their graduation ceremonies early in the morning, early enough that no one came to them.
'I appreciate the gesture, but I don't like the message I'm being sent.' I initiated a conversation with Spirit for the first time in a long time.
'What? "Mess around and I'll ruin your life" or "Don't fail me or you will have hell to pay"?' Spirit's rhetorical question reassured me that I my mind wasn't playing tricks on me
'I'd say both, but I'm mostly worried about the third one: "I own you."'
Spirit was about to reply when Larry called out my name and motioned for me to go on stage.
I told my golems to follow, and be grandiose about it.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, Ingen of Gond has more than earned his place as School Prodigy!" Larry placed a medal on my neck, nearly triggering my self-preservation instinct.
'The fuck is a School Prodigy?!'
"He has shown excellent craftsmanship in his designs in all fields of creation, has had the highest grades and stage throughout his years, and has broken two records in the field of Golemancy!" Larry paused to catch his breath.
'Oh! I get it, he's talking me up so I can get into a good collage.' I thought in the brief window between Larry's sentences.
"The first stands before you! He made his Knight series golems in four days! The second lies on his nose, his glasses have an enchantment strong enough to discern up to 80% of the flaws in armor!" At this point, some people started to doubt the reliability of the Headmaster because he was, in essence, ranting loudly about one student.
I quietly reminded him. "Uh, sorry, but I got it up to 90%" I looked away, ashamed of my boasting.
'I also upgraded the logging function to read the cores of unknown people and name them, but that's beside the point.' I thought at the same time.
"You look like you doubt me." He stated the obvious, leading into his next sentence with poise "So we shall see. After today's Ceremonies, we will conduct a combat test with the golems and Ingen will show off his enchantment."
'I feel like I just got sold out to the baron, but if I can get either the king or the resistance on my side, he won't be a problem.'
"Back to the ceremony." Larry took a brush and a bowl from a small nearby table. "Hurh, Geth, Adus, Nue, Adus!"
He drew a complicated runic sequence in the air and the brush became a warm red. With stokes like a master artist, he closed his eyes and painted something on my forehead. Then his eyes started to glow behind their lids.
"You will henceforth be acknowledged as Ingen Meiung!" A voice that was not Larry's came out of his mouth.
His eyes turned back to normal.
"Welcome to adulthood, and congratulations on being granted a last name, not everyone gets one."
Larry stood back up, shook my hand, and handed me a certificate of education. I stood there blankly for a moment until my Telespeak pulled at my consciousness.
'This is your cue to fly off the stage.' I heard the mental voice of my dad on the other end.
I unfolded my wings and took off to the other side of the room, landing just before the door with a landing that would put superheroes to shame. I left through the front door and had my golems leave through the back.
"I don't know exactly what just happened, but I have to fix the Eneru inefficiency problem on the golems before the test." I organized my thoughts under my breath.
'I am so screwed if these golems perform below standard.' A little panic settled into my mind.
I flew to a meetup point I set for my golems and started to work with them.
"They probably have less than thirty minutes worth of energy in a fight fully charged, but they've been sitting around for three and a half hours, so I'd give them ten minutes in a fight, which is basically nothing when fighting any other golem with decent armor."
I started to recognize the inefficient 'veins' I had designed. Some of them were so close to the surface of the golem that they directly leaked Eneru out of the golem.
"Sorry Sir Plien, I will have to shut you down for a minute so you don't feel what comes next." The golem put his fist to his chest and obediently shut himself down.
I placed my hand on Sir Plien's and an eerie blackness flowed, focused on his index finger, after a moment of slow decay, the alchemical fluid started to drain out in a trickle.
'I have to clear the fluid out before I start messing with the veins.'
My sub-affinity, decay, came in handy when draining the golem.
'Hey, Orin, could you grab me some wood to replace some of these muscles, I'm going to have to waste some to save the fluid.'
Orin popped out of my shadow and I used Rift Garden to send him to the Tree.
Soon I had a bucket of alchemical fluid, but I couldn't get it all out normally because it doesn't flow, then I realized something and it made me facepalm.
I used intuitive manipulation to force the rest of the fluid out and I started work. Since I had gotten a good night's sleep it was trivial to see where I had to fix things. I pulled up the spirit paper for my spectacles and had Spirit use it to write in a line to calculate how long my golems could stay in a fight as well as a way to isolate stats.
It took me five minutes to fix my obvious mistakes, but that left ten minutes before the contest, and I didn't even know what it was yet. I opened a portal with Rift Garden and let Orin back through with a large board in his jaws.
"Works, Plien is done." I set it next to the golems and shut down Sir Fultz.
This time I decayed the index finger and started using intuitive manipulation immediately, putting the fluid from Sir Fultz into Sir Plien, which saved me a step and was much faster. I studied my mistakes and found more in Fultz, he was built later in the night.
"This is going to take a miracle to pull off, but if I do it, it would cement me as the best young golemancer in school history."
'You already are dumbass!' Spirit mind-sighed 'You live in the boonies, Teo is the only notable golemancer to come out of here other than you. Golemancers are rare enough that big academies will commonly not even have a workshop for them, it's already a miracle you got one here. Why did you think that you and Teo were the only two golemancers?'
'That makes sense.' I cut my response short, I didn't have much time.
I finished reconstructing the veins and was manipulating the fluid into them when I heard a commotion behind me. Teo had apparently gotten into a fight with Vincent. A voice came into my head without going through my Telespeak.
'Hurry up, I can only distract them for so long.' Teo's mind-voice was just like his real one.
I followed his advice and finished up before the fight ended.
"Inspect: Statistics: Eneru Efficiency"
Displaying single attribute... Scanning... Done!
Eneru Efficiency: 39% (10 hours until sleep mode) (1 hour sustained combat)
I reactivated the golems and gave them most of my Eneru.
A message appeared on my specs
Sir Plien: Warning: [Overclocked] Increased effectiveness at the cost of decreased coolant efficiency.
Sir Fultz: Notice: [Overdrive] Has adapted well to an influx of energy, increasing effectiveness until extra energy is depleted.
Larry approached me. "You ready?"
I sighed "Yes."