I shook my head and headed back toward the hideout with my group, while the soldiers dragged Grid off and the Mero Company's people pretended very hard that they'd won something.
We were halfway to the forest before I asked.
"Torva. At the end there, when you said you wouldn't be inferior to him. Your eyes did something."
She walked for a while without answering. Her mask was tilted down, and her hands were clasped behind her back, the way she stands at the anvil when she's waiting for metal to cool.
"I decided something, Praetor," she said finally.
"What did you decide?"
"That I'm not his copy." She said it quietly, like she was trying the words out. "You made me from him. My class came from him. Everything I know, I learned watching him. But a copy only ever reaches where the original stops. I won't stop where he stops." She glanced at me through the mask. "Is that allowed?"
"Torva, that's the whole point."
She didn't say anything after that. But she walked a little faster, and I'm almost sure I saw that golden glint again.
That reminded me that I needed to furnish the place, so we detoured to the auction house. Most of the NPC stores had closed because of the competition, and the guards the Mero Company had hired kept hauling shopkeepers in on made-up charges.
Eh. Not my problem. I'm sure Grid can sort it out.
Furniture shopping with golems turned out to be an experience.
The first problem was beds. I went to buy a dozen, and Martimer asked what they were for.
"For sleeping."
"We don't sleep, Master."
"You rest, though. When you're not hunting."
"We stand in the corner."
I looked at her. I looked at the mental image of my golems standing in the corner of a dark cave for hours at a time, waiting for me to log back in. Then I bought two dozen beds, and nobody argued with me after that.
The second problem was that, once they realized they were allowed to want things, everyone wanted something. Martimer wanted a hammock. She'd seen one hanging in a merchant's stall and couldn't stop looking at it, the way a cat watches a bird.
Joul wanted a mirror, so she could see whether her hair was coming in like Martimer's yet. Shade didn't say anything, but she stood in front of a rack of throwing knives for so long that a shop assistant got nervous and offered her a discount.
Torva wanted a better anvil. Of course she did. I bought her the most expensive one in the auction house, and she carried it home on her shoulder for six kilometers, through the forest, without being asked, humming.
When we got back, Martimer's team went back to leveling in the dungeon, after several head pats and one hammock installation. Torva went straight to her smithy.
She prefers to call it a smithy rather than a workshop, since it's set up only for blacksmithing. I don't mind. She hung a little wooden sign over the door that says SMITHY in letters she carved herself, in case anybody gets confused.
Even better news: the goblin golems were halfway through the second-floor layout I'd given them. I went down to check on them, and found the rare goblin, the one with the epic pickaxe, directing the other six like a tiny foreman.
He'd scratched a mark into the wall at the end of every tunnel they finished. When I asked him what the marks were, he pointed at himself, then at the pickaxe, then at the marks, and grinned with every one of his very pointy teeth.
He was keeping score. I named him Pick on the spot. He has never once let any of the other goblins forget it.
I started furnishing the rooms they'd dug out, and did some mining myself to fine-tune the corners. Then I rested on a couch I'd put near Torva's smithy.
The couch was a mistake, by the way. Within a minute of me sitting on it, Torva had finished the blade she was quenching, wandered over "to inspect the upholstery," and was somehow sitting on my lap again. I'm still not sure how. I blinked and she was there.
While she was 'inspecting the upholstery', I pulled up her stats, and noticed something strange. She was putting everything into strength and vitality, with only a little in dexterity.
"Torva. You're a blacksmith. Dexterity makes better items. Why are you dumping everything into strength?"
"It felt right, Praetor."
"That's what you said about the greatsword."
"And was I wrong about the greatsword?"
She wasn't. She'd made a rare greatsword with it the week before.
"If you only rely on crafting for dexterity, it'll take you much longer," I said. "At least keep them even."
She considered this very seriously, sitting on my lap, while I patted her head.
"I'll keep them closer," she said. Which, I found out later, meant she put exactly one extra point into dexterity, and the rest into strength.
She hasn't been wrong about that yet, though. So I let it go.
A few hours of work on the second floor later, I noticed through the cameagle that something was happening at the prison in Winston. I called everyone who was in the hideout to watch. It turned into a whole event. Martimer brought her hammock in from the other room and hung it between two support beams for a better view.
Grid, Huroi and Khan were breaking out.
It was not elegant. Khan was too old to run, so Grid half-carried him. Huroi kept stopping to give speeches to the other prisoners about the tyranny of the Mero Company, until Grid dragged him by the collar. At one point all three of them hid in the same barrel, which should not have been physically possible, and the guards walked right past it.
"He has terrible perception," Torva said, "and terrible luck, and he is somehow going to be fine."
"That's Grid," I said.
They made it out. Shade, of all golems, let out a very small breath of relief. When we all looked at her, her face didn't move, and her eyes very clearly said I was worried about the old man.
Grid also mentioned a production method for orbs during the escape, while complaining about how much money he'd lost. Huh. I didn't know blacksmiths could make those. That's worth remembering if any of my golems ever come across one.
That same day, I got production methods for golem horned rabbits and dire wolves, from drops in the goblin dungeon's lower floors.
I made the first rabbit that night, just to see. It came out about the size of a house cat, with a single spiraled horn and big, soft ears. It looked like something you'd put in a gift basket.
I took it with Martimer's team the next morning for a test hunt. A boar charged the party. The rabbit hopped in front of it.
The boar is no longer with us.
Martimer laughed so hard she sat down on the forest floor. The rabbit hopped back to me, sat at my feet with its horn dripping, and looked up at me with the most innocent eyes I have ever seen on any creature, real or made.
A dark smile crossed my face as I imagined a hundred of them. A thousand. A small, delicate-looking horned rabbit annihilating a crowd of monsters, or players, while they were still saying aww.
At that moment, the strongest rabbit ever to wreak havoc on Satisfy was conceived. But that's a story for another time.
The dire wolves came out exactly as dire as advertised, and much friendlier. Every one of them tried to sit on my feet. I let them.
So I got started on my wolf and rabbit legion, which would rule the world. Ha ha ha ha!
Martimer said I looked like a cartoon villain. I told her that's what I was going for.
When I logged back in after a real-life night, the hammer in the smithy was still going.
I didn't think anything of it at first. Torva works all the time. Then I checked the time she'd started that sword, and realized she hadn't stopped since before I logged off. Or the time before that. Or the time before that.
Four days. Four in-game days, without putting the hammer down once.
"Torva."
"Almost done, Praetor."
"You've been 'almost done' for four days."
"Then I'm very almost done."
She brought the hammer down one last time, and the voice of the world spoke.
[Title acquired: Unbroken Determination]
Earned by working on weapons for four days without stopping.Dexterity +400.
She read it, nodded, put the four hundred dexterity points away like loose change, and went right back to putting everything else into strength and vitality.
I didn't bother her about it this time. I couldn't think of a good reason to. Four hundred dexterity for not stopping. Of course that's how she'd get it.
From what I could tell, Huroi was the first player to get a second class. He must have gotten it as part of a quest when Grid broke him out. I wonder if golems can get a second class? That's something to experiment with once they reach a higher level.
I logged off for the day, satisfied with the finished second floor and the start of the third. Downstairs, I made myself dinner in the quiet kitchen, and for the first time in a while, the quiet didn't bother me. I spent the whole meal thinking about what color the rabbits should be.
[Golem Chat]
The golems had discovered, entirely by accident, that they could talk to each other without speaking. Joul had found it first, by thinking very hard at Martimer about a funny-shaped hobgoblin. Within a day, every golem with a mind of its own had joined.
Daz did not know this channel existed.
Torva: I wish to report that the Praetor's lap is the most structurally sound seating in the hideout.
Martimer: You've been on his lap?
Torva: Twice. Three times, if you count the couch inspection.
Joul: what couch inspection
Torva: I inspected the couch. The Praetor was on the couch. It was very thorough.
Martimer: I've been running dungeons for two days straight and I've had FOUR head pats, Torva.
Torva: I made an epic pickaxe. Make an epic pickaxe.
Shade: .
Joul: shade is that a period
Shade: ..
Martimer: That's a very angry period.
Torva: I accept her challenge.
In the bottom corner of the second floor, Pick the goblin foreman heard all of this, because the channel wasn't nearly as private as anyone thought. He decided, very wisely, to scratch another mark into the wall and keep digging.