It felt wrong to break out of my habit of cleaning the hunting grounds around the city, but due to the fact of how slow Tihana's group was, I had no room to do it when we returned. There was a lot of storytelling since everybody wanted to know how the rest did, so we had a nice gathering in the city center.

It lasted till dark, and then we all returned to our homes.

I was fighting with thoughts to take a break from hunting to maybe focus on crafting a little bit more, but it felt so damn wrong to lose who-knows-how-many days, but then I had this genius-level idea, which struck me, and I did decide to follow my got and go with it.

From the time perspective, I can tell you, that it wasn't that smart. I wish I would first check the prices on the skills, before committing to hard to this...

For a moment I was even tempted to use the crystals from ghosts I still had in my vault, but I managed to calm myself down.

The next day came quite soon, and I once again started it quite early. A few minutes after midnight.

By the time the boring came, I was already finished cleaning up everything but to achieve this clear speed, I had to really try hard. Tihana's group was already preparing themselves for departure towards the orc territory, so I just informed her, that everything else was already cleared by me since they wouldn't be able to make it anyway.

I brought with me 83 491 600 points in crystalized form, which combined with what I had put me at 153 579 200. Not enough, but at least I could work with it, because my plan was to go all out into the crafting classes and make a bunch of golems that would clean the hunting grounds for me, so I could spend the free time working on items or spending with my family. Genius, right?

Getting a new upgrade for the sapling was gonna take a lot of time anyway, and I was, frankly speaking, tired of repeating the same routine over and over again, not having time for anything else.

I invested some points in getting 'Metal manipulation III', 'Knowledge of runes', 'Rune-graving' to the fifth level, and 'Runification' to the sixth. The price tag on that was 133 000 000 points. I also got a notebook and a pencil. Then I went to the workshop to work a little.

I didn't want to start doing anything proper yet, because I knew that my skills in a few days would get way better, so it would be a waste of material and time to begin creating something I would throw a week or two after.

I could, though, create some designs for golems. I started with sketches. I had this idea in my mind of an around three meters tall humanoidal titan with a head similar to a rhino. I wanted to arm him with a war hammer and a battle axe.

It was obvious that making something durable enough to continuously hunt the bosses, would take me a lot of time, because I first needed better skills, so I wanted him to be nimble, so he would be able to avoid attacks. His skeleton then had to be designed in a way to move swiftly.

"Like a Damascus steel", I kept saying to myself. "Nimble inside with a hard shell on top."

I based my creation on a human skeleton, but I added springs in the ribcage. I also changed the skull to make it assembled from parts instead of a stiff frame.historical

I wondered for a moment if I could do the same with the limbs, but I didn't get any good idea so instead, I began working on the outer shell. I had this idea of a composite armor, that could slightly move, banding itself to absorb the damage.

I was already able to make some fancy things thanks to the runes, so the armor even at my current stage could be quite decent, but I still preferred to wait.

The making of the sketches took me a few hours. When I finished, I focused on designing words. The composite approach to armoring had the benefit of infusing each separate part with different words, so there were quite a number of combinations.

I had many ideas but decided to explore only a few. Those were the simple, basic ones I knew I was going to use no matter what.

First of all, the most outer part of the armor had to be as tough as possible to endure any impacts. I for a moment worried about how I should deal with the elemental attack, which could damage this outer shell easily if I focused only on impacts, but there was an easy solution to the problem, which I quickly found.

A barrier that would trigger itself if the temperature shifted, or there was some projectile incoming toward my new toy in the making.

Obviously, my golem also needed to move swiftly, so I decided to give him shoes that could produce bursts of air, for quick and useful acceleration in moments of need. I also wanted to implement something for flying, but I didn't have anything good I could make at my current level of skill, so I just noted it for the future.

I was probably gonna work for much longer, but suddenly I heard a voice, which made me switch my retention from the notebook.

- Dad? - asked Carmelita.

She came to my workshop with Leonel. Both had their equipment taken off, which meant they had to return some time ago.

- Mom send us to tell you that the dinner is ready - said the boy.

He was trying to desperately have a look at my notes but also tried to do it in a way I wouldn't notice.

- What are you doing? Some more equipment? - Carmelita asked, seeing what he was doing.

It was a nice gesture from her.

- I'm making a golem. Well... Preparing everything to make one - I explained, then quickly collected my things. - Let's go eat.

We then began our journey back to the house. Obviously both bugged me almost to death to find out more about the puppet I was gonna soon create.