The Golem Adventurer

Chapter 24 - Preparations

It's been a few days since my meeting with Lord Selvin. Since then, I've been able to fall back into my daily routine. The damage I've sustained has been repaired, though it was odd to look at once I removed the bindings around my chest and left shoulder. When I had taken a peak at it few days after the orc battle, metal-like fibers had grown over to cover the lacerations on the frame and the chest tubing. It had started pulling it closed, molding it back to it's original form like a spider was weaving it's web on it. As it continued, even my left arm's monoplegia had disappeared and was fully functional again.

When I was at Grigor's smithy do to some shopping. he rushed over to me when he noticed the repairs my body was doing. In fact, he was absolutely stunned at what he saw.

"Arlan! The way the metal is almost like a weave... is your body made of Living Metal!?" blurting it all out, he had a delirious look on him.

I wasn't sure what he was talking about, "Living metal?"

His eyes lit up, "It's a type of alloy that can repair itself! Weapons made from the stuff is extremely rare but they'll never dull and if they break, they'll reform back into it's original form after a few days! Unfortunately that means we can't melt it down and make a new weapon instead. Any attempts to break off the blade results in the broken blade being unusable and whatever was attached to the hilt will regrow instead."

Am I really made of this stuff? I didn't even consider there was a possibility of a new kind of metal here in this world. Was this some kind of new element that only exists here? Maybe Oracle knew the answer.

[The term 'Living Metal' is unknown. This frame was constructed from various synthetic metals derived from Asturite. This alloy, after a process of applying magical formulae and programming, can be molded into various forms and use the ambient mana to maintain and repair itself.]

Asturite? From what Oracle is telling me, most of my body is artificially made from this stuff. I relayed this back to Grigor.

"Asturite? That's not a metal I've heard of," he says curiously, "But Living Metal is made using it, right? Can that thing in your head tell us how?"

[Unknown.]

So the process of making 'Living Metal' isn't known to Oracle then. Alright, where can I find Asturite?

[Cannot detect Asturite within available search radius. Any attempts to query local mining nodes has come up with no results. No mining nodes for Asturite have ever been recorded in database.]

Wait, let me get this straight Oracle. I'm made of a metal that doesn't exist? How did they get their hands on it then?

[Unknown. Access of relevant information on database is forbidden.]

This is too strange... where did they get Asturite then? Is it some kind of weird space metal? Whatever answers I want is blocked by "Classified Info" nonsense. The Old Empire's government were keeping secrets that they didn't want their general public to know. Well, that sounds familiar. Not that I have to worry about it. As long as I can heal on my own, whatever Asturite is can stay in the dark. It's not like I need it for myself.

Grigor gave me another look over, "Now that I think about it, I wonder why you're in such bad shape. While a weapon made of Living Metal can break, it would take immense pressure to do so. If you are made of the stuff, Orcs shouldn't be able to make of a mess of your body like that."

I just shrugged in ignorance at him. I don't know the first thing about this body. It just give me the itch to head over to the northwest ruins as fast as possible so I can get some answers. Maybe that's why I need these upgrades. Maybe being the <Magnum Opus> of golems wasn't all quite true. If it was, then the upgrades wouldn't even exist.