Chapter 6

After observing the blood construct for a moment, I realized the problem of breaking the bones in the bodies wasn't actually a problem. The blood construct could freely manipulate itself. So long as there was a bone construct, it could reform the bones that constructed it to whatever shape it needed. There was a problem of a bone construct having different runes than bones did, but that was an issue for later. There would be pieces left over, which would be enough for what I wanted. Hopefully.

If not, it wasn't like there were no other bones in the world. With these constructs able to alter their shape, I could simply allow the constructs to eat all of the next victim except for the bone construct. As it happened, I had two more victims right here. The larger one hadn't established a sense of loyalty and Glrt had such a short attention span I didn't trust the vow of loyalty at all.

Accepting the bone breakage as inevitable, I built multiple circuits to allow each core part of the bodies I'd already discovered to coalesce into their own constructs. Since the process was the same, the drain on my will was much less than it had been with the blood construct.

The flesh construct was the first to follow my intent. Different from my expectation, it simply tore around the inner structures instead of pulling them into breaking. As it slid across the ground, the hair construct fell free, winding together and out of the way. It was extremely small, in comparison to the others.

Next another ooze left the body, coagulating into a tiny glob that seared the earth and plants it passed. I called this one the rot construct as it was something that ate everything else. It was probably the main driver of the next phase the bodies would have degraded to.

Last was the muscle construct. The flaccid muscles adhered to the harder ones as they ripped free of the bones, shattering many of them completely. This one was the most energetic of all my constructs. Each body left shattered remains as the muscle bunches rolled into an spherical amalgam and awaited further intent. I make sure to stabilize the mana-consumption and remove the coalescent intent from each before returning my attention to the shattered remains of bone.

I could barely contain my excitement as I was finally able to learn what the runes would be for the core component of my body, apart from will. I was a little bit too eager and tore a few into even smaller pieces due to infusing far too much mana into intent patterns.

A tiny portion of my will made sure to double check that all the runes that I'd learned for the viscera still worked for the constructs. I wasn't sure if I was happy they still matched or sad I couldn't learn new runes. Unfortunately, the runes I'd learned for the shaman body only didn't work at all anymore. Apparently whatever piece of the shaman that allowed those runes to function was now gone. I tried giving them more mana, just in case it was a problem of having been dissolved into a much larger mass, but no amount of mana elicited even the smallest reaction.

By the time I finished learning everything I could and built my bone construct, Glrt had entered a similar semi-dead state to the other one. I was still curious about such a state, but their will-cores were too weak for me to learn anything from them.

That minor annoyance was merely a distraction from my primary issue; I still couldn't move my bones. There was an option to simply fit my bones into the bone construct and move that way, but I really wanted to prove the utter inadequacy of my Creator by proving that every function of my rebuilt body was not merely superior to his, but utterly perfect. I was still limited to the basic design, but it must be the best possible iteration of said design. Even my original form had been far too superior to my Creator to make worship viable, but justifying my ridiculously intense reaction required me to be so vastly superior that his worship of me was more than simply reasonable, but also inevitable. Still being bound to flaws in his design and the chains he'd built into me proved that conception false.

Unfortunately, I still couldn't form my body in a mobile fashion. The bone runes were useful in manipulating bones, and I could manipulate my body through a constant application of bone runes, but that would be a massive drain on my mana. I needed something else. Something…I didn't yet understand. A method to form a body without altering any of the circuits that covered it. A perfect iteration of his design.

I put that out of my mind as I decided to tackle an issue I did understand before trying to fix one I didn't. I turned my attention to my constructs. They were all complete, apart from circuits to allow them to form will-cores and mana-cores. Did they really need will-cores, though? I could control all of them. Even if they did produce a will-core, my will would be far more powerful than all of them combined as a necessary measure to keep them in check. Why let them form will-cores at all, in that case? If I was going to function as their will-core anyway, why bother giving them an unnecessary addition that could cause problems in the future?

Instead of allowing them to create will-cores of their own, I would function as their will-core. That meant I needed to find a way to connect all of them to my will-core. It was a circuit I understood very well because it was on each of my bones. The problem was that my bones would degrade if separated from my will. What they needed was more than simply a link to my will-core, keeping control limited to my will alone, I needed a link with the power to keep it open. Power to connect the circuits directly to the will-core itself with no delay of processing or distance. Power to allow a single will-core to be in multiple places at once. Perhaps, multiple iterations of the same will-core? If I combined the link circuit with the mana-core circuit…what would happen? Would it drive the mana directly into my own will-core? That wasn't possible, though. The will-core was different from mana. Would that simply drive the mana that would be generated into a core into my own mana-core? No, the link was to my will-core. There was no direct link between my mana-core and their link, so it shouldn't work that way. Connecting something to my will-core without knowing what would happen was dangerous. It could destroy me...but it could also give me what I wanted.

No way to know without trying. I started with the least important of my new constructs, the rot construct. It was smaller than a single one of my femurs and looked like a smaller version of the blood construct. The blood construct didn't destroy the earth or plants it passed over. The effect was weak, probably because the construct was weak, but it was something with potential. It was so small, though, that it's destruction wouldn't cost me anything.

As soon as the circuit activated, I felt a very strange sensation. It was like I was two places at once. Like my will-core had actually been moved into the rot construct while remaining in my primary body. Interestingly, my processing speed had also increased. That was very interesting. The processing within the rot construct was much slower than in my primary will-core but it was an addition.

Another interesting thing was that I understood how the constructs could gather their bodies. Their will was wound into their bodies in a way that mine was not. Only looking from the outside did I realize that I had to actively shove my will into each of my bones to keep it connected to me, which was the wrong way to go about it. If I had been connected to each bone as I was connected to the rot construct now, I wouldn't have the problem I did now. It was easy enough to fix, though. I simply widened each of my link circuits with my bones to make them more similar to the one in the rot construct. Euphoric, I did so to each of my constructs as I dissolved the earth-skull and gathered my pieces to stand as my Creator had. There was still a learning curve, as it took twelve collapses before I managed the right shape, but I'd gained my primary purpose! I was now a being capable of moving itself! I had removed the first fatal flaw in my Creator's design! One step closer to perfection.

My will-core was also so split that I could safely modify the core circuit without putting it in danger. That was the best part. I immediately started reforming my core circuits, ridding myself of the final vestiges of my Creator's inadequacies.