Chapter 786: Soldiers in Peace (500 Words Added)
Jacob lowered both his arms as if being shy in front of the ladies. Then slowly raised his right hand and waved towards the guests.
"There are no mana threads.." Ilvanya muttered.
Vidalia was also staring at Jacob, trying to sense the source of mana flowing inside the sacrium golem.
"His name is Jacob," Damian introduced the shy golem since the silence was becoming quite awkward. "We just made another body for him. A living, intelligent relic from the Highsword dungeon. Probably last of his race."
Hearing his words just added more to their curiosity. But when he said the last line, both elves showed expressions of pained understanding. Elves, for all their powers and beauty, were also a near extinct species.
Damian gestured towards Jacob, and he walked near them. He had never kept the guy a secret from others. He wished for Jacob to live a good, long life; hiding all his life away was not exactly an ideal life. If he couldn’t protect even one golem, all his strength was nothing more than a mere joke.
"He speaks?" Vidalia asked with slight excitement.
Damian nodded, then smiled, recalling a certain memory. He remembered the time when he had created the first metal golem of his life, even with the war and everything - Vidalia had not managed to hide her feelings for the golems in front of him.
Damian looked towards Jacob while gesturing towards his own sacrium bracer, and the metal man understood the assignment. Jacob activated his receiver and typed: ’Hello! I am Jacob.’
Damian gave the guy a thumbs-up.
Ilvanya’s focus was diverted to the receiver window. Hearing reports about the simple tool and seeing it for real were two entirely different things. Vidalia, however, was still enamored by Jacob’s new shiny body. She was even trying to talk with him while admiring the detailed joints and the screwed hydraulic mechanism.
"He can see but can’t hear," Damian clarified before Vidalia got embarrassed with her attempts.
"Oh," She said, then composed herself, realizing she was about to make a silly mistake.
"It’s that new receiver, isn’t it?" Ilvanya cleverly asked, pressing for more info.
"Yes," Damian replied, "You two already know how that works."
Ilvanya smiled, "The normal version isn’t able to write, is it?"
"Not yet," Damian replied. Not bothering to explain.
"Sorry for disturbing you in this.." Vidalia’s words wandered along with her eyes as she scanned the room to figure out where they were.
"It’s my runic lab, follow behind me. I thought you were coming tomorrow. I was about to arrange a grand welcome and all." Damian said, while gesturing towards Jacob, It meant you are free to do whatever you want. I am going. Jacob could come along or play around in the runic lab, or go wander around with Toph in the large Sanctum building, and even outside.
Mostly, though, the golem just liked to spend time in the lab and play around with Toph in his spare time. Going outside was not what he liked, but he still left once a week just to accompany Toph.
"She was, I always planned to come today." Vidalia promptly replied.
That was not so friendly a tone. Clearly, she didn’t like her mother tagging along uninvited.
"Do you want to take a day to rest and get familiarized? Or want to talk about the offer right now?" Damian asked, while gesturing for the standby attendants to bring snacks and tea. Before entering his main office, Damian sent a message through the guard for Evrin and senior attendants to prepare rooms for their guests in one of the guest rooms they had in the Sanctum building.
"Let’s talk, then I will see," Vidalia replied, and Damian nodded.
With the entire floor to his name, Damian had made some changes while rebuilding the sanctum. For once, he had divided the circular space into six equal parts with medium-sized hallways instead of four parts with large hallways. There were five runic lifts now. Along with storage, the runic lab and chemistry lab, there was now a separate personal room, office, and a place where all his assistants could work.
He had created small personal offices for them in that room, all of which shared the see-through air shield large windows. At the same time, the outer common place had many writers who typed the records and Sanctum officials helping them in day-to-day research and paperwork.
His office was empty. Damian walked ahead to take his seat behind the big desk as the two elves looked at the view of the growing city, which was ever-changing. It was midday and the weather was clear and sunny. Finally, the two took seats before him.
"I presume the purpose of your visit is just sightseeing?" Damian directed the question towards Ilvanya. In the official Eldoris message, it was written as such.
"Your presumption is right." Ilvanya nodded. A lingering fake smile on her face was saying, ’What of it?’.
Damian ignored her; that was a lost cause. And focused on his favourite elf.
"The academy is almost ready. We are planning to start by the end of this month. Still some 20-something days for you to get used to Sanctuary." Damian said.
"What if I refuse to teach?" Vidalia asked back. Ilvanya’s face to the side showed hints of amusement. It must be news to her.
"It doesn’t change much; the research facility is in the academy building. I will just have to look for another Spellcrafting teacher."
"The offer still remains?" Vidalia asked.
"Of course, I offered the teaching job thinking it would be a nice change for you. And it would have also given a little starting boost to our academy." Damian replied.
"I can do it.." Ilvaya spoke up.
Damian simply smiled at the mother elf while still waiting for Vidalia’s reply. Vidalia squinted at her mother and then sighed.
"I will do it,"
With her and a few of the Highsword knights, the academy will have solid, well-known staff. Damian wished for Vidalia to have something to do in Sanctuary. Research and all was interesting, but people needed a change in pace once in a while to clear their heads.
Damian texted in the head group about the new addition to the academy. She was the one managing the academy’s things, so he had to inform her.
Afterwards, Damian had little discussion with Vidalia on how to recruit new researchers, sharing the findings, and what some of the new spells they were interested in working on. Then Damian had Valen and Celestine show the two elves the highly decorated, full runic guest rooms.
The work was not done. He still had to work on many runic machines before he could be free enough to join Vidalia and others in their research. With Jacob now fully able to do his own tasks, Damian continued his work on the jets.
Most of the design was nearly ready. The only thing Damian had yet to figure out was another, more powerful thrust system. Wind and weight manipulation could only give him so-so speed. For the jets to be superfast, which would be a necessity if he wanted the pilots to journey around the whole world, there had to be a more powerful force behind the machine.
That part still needed some thinking, but the rest of the shape and internal facilities were mostly done. Damian had even designed an armor that a pathfinder and even a mundane human could fit inside. The liquid mana storage was in-built.
One hand had the laser spell with different interchangeable modes of firing with switches, the other hand had his own custom spell that he had made way back in the Highsword Academy. The sharp-toothed, spinning air blade. There were many other spells added to it. Some of which were short-distance wormhole spell, aura-enhancing spell, the weight-reducing windforce flying spell, and even an internal heater and air conditioning spell.
He was planning to use mostly Blazur alloy, so he had kept the use of heavy spells to a minimum.
Damian was also thinking about placing an oxygen tank in it and covering the exterior with an air shield, air-tight armor, so it could survive underwater for a while and could also provide some relief in an environment with unbreathable air.
Damian worked on the jet together with Jacob for as long as he could while supervising his assistants. The big terrain-changing things needed to be done by him for the dungeon opening event, but compared to managing the thousands of little things for the event, those did not seem that hard at all.
Everin had arranged a grand fancy dinner for her aunt and grandmother. He was informed through text, and later Lucian dragged him out of the lab, and they got dressed.
The six heads were present, and so were all of the high-ranked Sanctum officials and wealthy merchants they had large contracts with, even some runesmiths who had completed large orders for the Sanctum were invited by Evrin. She and Grace, along with Souldealer, indeed were political and social geniuses; he just needed to declare his intentions, and they always prepared some crazy schemes to see the task through.
These few invitations to runesmiths were nothing to them, but excluding the runesmith guild leader while doing it, spoke volumes.