Chapter 174 The Golem And The Three Eastern Scholars
"Ah, they're dancing again today."
Despite not being open yet, Sophia Merchant Guild's store has been getting a lot of uninvited visitors at night.
Sara, in her Sophia attire, accompanied by Daniel, walked through the merchant guild's gate and into the premises. Since she had a lot to do today, she arrived at the main store earlier than the other employees.
"It looks like there are 5 of them today."
Daniel, who was completely used to this, approached the thieves in a carefree state and stopped the golems dancing around them. To disable the golems' alert mode, a specialized ocarina (magic tool) was necessary.
This ocarina was designed to only produce sound when its owner blew into it, and only Sara, Daniel, and the high-ranking employees who held the guild's keys were issued with it. Moreover, thanks to Rebecca's request, the ocarina would play a melody on its own with just a breath, so even those who were bad at playing it could use it with confidence.
"By the way, Lady Sophia, why the flute?"
"It's been decided since ancient times that a flute is needed to stop the golems. It's a stylish way, after all."
Sara said this, similar to Sedrick, as she approached the thieves.
"Ah, Lady Sophia, please don't come over here."
"What's wrong?"
"There's someone causing trouble over there."
"Oh dear. Number 1, bring the carriage with the cargo."
The golem called Number 1 quickly pulled out a carriage with cargo from the warehouse at the back and brought it over. Numbers 2 and 3 then loaded the thieves onto the carriage one by one.
Sara dug up the ground where the thieves were and buried them again, taking care of the aftermath of their capture.
"I think these people are pretty careless, so they're probably first-timers. It's worth listening to what people have to say, but if not, it's a hassle, so I'll just hand them over to the knight's station."
"I don't know, though. They didn't respond when I talked to them, so it might be a waste of time. By the way, the knight's station scolded me yesterday, saying 'Your merchant guild has too many thieves, don't you think?'."
"That's not my fault, though."
After loading everyone onto the wagon, the golems tied a wooden board to the thieves' necks with a rope. The board had the following written on it.
----
They're clumsy thieves of the Sophia Merchant Guild.
They'll wait quietly here until the knights come to pick them up.
Please don't feed them.
----
"How about this, then? No. 1, can you take then and display them near the knight's station in the central square? Just hand over this letter to the knights."
The golem nodded and received a letter that said, "Thieves captured. Displayed in the square, please collect at your convenience." Without hitching the wagon to a horse, the golem dragged it all the way to the central square, placing the wagon with the thieves near the knight's station, and handed the letter to the knight on duty.
"Again, huh? They're always so reckless. Oh well, I'll collect them later."
The knight on duty had also gotten used to it, and handed the golem a card that said "Acknowledged" and said, "You can go now."
Moreover, at first, just having a golem walk around town was a big deal, so employees from the merchant guild would accompany it. However, in addition to catching robbers many times without a pause, they can sometimes help with heavy lifting if ordered by employees, so the golems are now popular in the town. Even if a golem walked alone, the townspeople wouldn't be scared, and they would casually talk to it. It's truly great advertising.
Among the kids, the "Golem Dance" (mimicking Dojousukui) has become a boom, and at the street stalls, they're selling golem-shaped decorations and sweets in the shape of ocarinas (magic tool). For some reason, the sales of these ocarinas are also doing well, but they don't have any special effects. It's just a toy for kids, so it's fine.
As No. 1 was on its way back, an ocarina-shaped sweet was handed to it like an offering from a street stall, saying "Please give it to the merchant guild leader." It was a sweet like baby castella, and it was deliciously plain when eaten while still warm.
"Thank you"
No. 1 was a golem that could express gratitude.
"Everyone's got a great business spirit, don't they?"
Sara muttered as she received the sweet from No. 1. The ocarina-shaped sweet in the basket was warm, sweet, and delicious when eaten.
"I think it's great that the golems and Sophia Merchant Guild are being welcomed, don't you?"
Sara thoughtlessly picked one up and handed it to Daniel in front of her. Daniel's face turned slightly red, but he directly took it from Sara's hand, popped it into his mouth, and started munching away. Sara was a little surprised, as she didn't expect him to eat it directly.
"Isn't this somehow a weirdly sweet atmosphere?"
While avoiding Daniel's gaze, which was gazing at Sophia with excessive affection, Sara continued talking.
"But, I'm having trouble because I've got a lot of requests to hand it over. I need to infuse a considerable amount of magic power into the magic stone installed inside, and especially when there's a capture, it decreases quickly. I don't think an average person can handle it."
Sara called out to the golems and lined them up from 1 to 5 in the courtyard, replenishing their magic power in order.
"We've got a product delivery coming up soon at the Book Department, so you guys help out too."
"It's an honor, Lady Sophia."
Representing the others, No. 1 responded, and the other golems nodded in agreement.
The truth is, that's why she came to work early today. A large quantity of books, including textbooks, is scheduled to be delivered, and she's planning to donate some to the Academy.
Since she has golems that can handle heavy labor, Sophia Merchant Guild doesn't need to hire underlings to do the hard work. In fact, this was the measure Sara took first when she was struggling with a lack of manpower.
Creating golems that follow human orders is originally a research field in alchemy. So, Sara collaborated with Alicia the Alchemist Girl to create golems that are entirely different from the traditional type.
Golems created using traditional alchemy require a large earth-attribute magic stone as their core to operate. Moreover, when the magic stone's power runs out, the golem returns to being a lump of earth, making it almost disposable.
There, Sara created a golem using her earth-attribute magic, and by dispersing small magic stones, such as those that powered movement and enabled conversation, throughout its body, she was able to significantly reduce the cost of the magic stones.
Of course, the main magic stone that controlled its judgment still needed to be of a considerable size, but even so, the cost was less than one-hundredth of what was required for traditional golems. This was because obtaining high-quality, large magic stones was extremely difficult.
From this point on, it was Alicia the Alchemist Girl who brought forth the knowledge from Paracelsus' research materials, and the golems were able to "understand and learn human language". Traditional golems could only perform actions that people had taught them beforehand.
However, Sara's golems could understand human language, learn, and gradually increase their abilities. They could even read people's emotions from their facial expressions. Moreover, since the 5 golems shared their knowledge, if one learned something, the others would also learn it.
They could understand human and animal characteristics, natural phenomena, and predict various events based on that information. Especially since they had a lot of experience with catching thieves, they could predict with high accuracy what a thief would do next.
As they walked around the city, the golems would recognize people who entered their field of vision, instantly understanding their names, genders, ages, occupations, and even their addresses and family compositions. By predicting their next actions based on their past behavior, they could even identify lost children, detect pickpocketing, and prevent theft before it happened.
Their understanding of languages has sped up, but for now, they can only speak in awkward phrases. However, they'll soon be able to converse fluently in languages other than Avalon.
But to process and learn new information, the magic stones embedded in their bodies alone were insufficient. That's why the Sophia Merchant Guild's underground room was equipped with a massive facility for the golems.
Three units, each lined with a large number of magic stones, were prepared, and these were connected by a magic array to perform parallel processing. Each unit consists of magic stones that execute processing and magic stones that store vast amounts of information. This is the true form of the golems' collective intelligence, and it's another reason why they can't be sold to the outside world.
Sara wanted to name this system when Alicia the Alchemist Girl created it.
"Ms. Alicia, can I give a name to this?"
"What kind of name would you suggest? Actually, each unit already has a name."
"I'd like to name it 'Magoi' or 'Magi', and each unit would be 'Melchior', 'Balthazar', and 'Caspar'."
Sara thinks this is really childish, but she just can't help the urge.
"Wait, did you read Paracelsus' literature, Miss? The unit names are exactly that."
Alicia the Alchemist Girl gazed at Sara in surprise.
'Yeah, I had a hunch when I saw the Maiden's Tower facility. I think Mr. Paracelsus is probably a reincarnator.'
"I might have read some documents in the castle that stuck in my memory."
Sara made excuses to Alicia the Alchemist Girl, but her guess probably won't be wrong. And Paracelsus has gone missing without anyone finding him.
'Maybe Mr. Paracelsus came back?'
She starts thinking about all sorts of things.
"The unit's name is written here, but I can't read this scribble. Maybe it's an amazing technological idea."
When Sara read the document, it seems that Paracelsus originally developed this technology to create small golems called 'Dolls' for their brains. However, in the corner of the document, there was a scribble written in Japanese that Alicia the Alchemist Girl couldn't read.
'Can't you make a cuter doll? I'm totally moe. I wish I had the talent to make figures.'
Sara held her head in her hands.
'Paracelsus...you're really unreliable...'
Still, Paracelsus's experiment was amazing, so Sara vowed to pretend she didn't see the scribble.
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