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The journey, after the initial fall off, was actually not that bad. Not pleasant by any means, resembling a roller-coaster of which one could hear the suspicious sounds of screws loosening fro, but it was manageable. It was also short. A few seconds after Lock had actually adapted to the free-fall he was experiencing, while holding on to the dead-weight that were the twins, he already found himself gently spat out of the ground and landing on a soft patch of grass. Sadly the grass was also wet, and thus his backside was now experiencing an unpleasant coldness, reminiscent of stepping out of a shower directly into a chilly winter day.

Lock stood up, having dumped the twins on the grass now that their arduous escape from the dungeon was over. Looking around he determined that they were currently residing on a small grassy hill. A vantage point from which he could see Abrakshana, the city they'd just fled, in all its night-time glory. A surprising amount of light was helping illuminate the city. Looking upwards he found the moon and the stars, also shining down brightly upon him. The moon shone a hideous yellow, instead of the thematic red that he'd been expecting.

A retching sound made its way to Lock's ears, and he turned around to see that Mia had thrown up in her apparent unconsciousness. He was just about to go over to her and turn her around, she was lying face-down, when an earth-golem materialized from the ground and gently nudged the Ninja into a position where she was lying on her side.

“You're still here?” Lock asked, slightly groggy.

The golem nodded.

Lock noted that it had grown smaller. It was only about seven feet tall now. Had it compacted itself to hold more mass in a smaller volume, or had it needed to shed some mass to facilitate their transportation?

“You aren't going back to the dungeon?” Lock asked it, as the golem continued to stand there between the sleeping forms of the twins.

A shake of the head.

“Won't it collapse without you though?”

A shake of the head.

“Good. If I may ask, where are you going then?”

The golem raised a hand and pointed it towards him. Lock moved a bit, to check if the golem was not indeed just pointing at Abrakshana, and he was just standing in his way, but no, the arm followed him.

“So what, you'll just follow me wherever I go now?” Lock asked, a dull pain beginning to spread behind his temples.

A nod.

Lock was too tired to deal with this. He'd been awake for more than 20 hours at this point, had been involved in a fight, then a chase through the dungeon, and he was pretty sure that he was beginning to experience the fatigue that came whenever one put too many stats into an attribute too fast.

He'd gained eight free points, and he'd dumped all of them into Endurance during the course of the night, on seemingly instinct. He knew that he should stay awake, make sure that the golem wouldn't kill him in his sleep, but he was honestly too tired to do anything but lay down on the soft, if wet grass, and close his eyes. He knew he wasn't thinking clearly. However that realisation and and the urge to do something about it faded away quickly once he made his way into the realm of dreams.

-/-

What greeted him once he'd opened his eyes in the dream-world, was as for the last three weeks, an idyllic forest clearing filled to the brim with interesting and beautiful flowers. A large apple tree dominated the clearing's centre. Under it one could enjoy a pleasant shade, to shield oneself from the slightly too harsh sun. The black-haired girl, whom he had named Ankh was already lying there. He made his way towards her, the wind pleasantly ruffling his hair and the rustling of the grass caressing his ears.

He lay down next to her, shaking his head at her cheerful greeting, “play?”, and pulled her on top of him, hugging her for all he was worth. Thankfully she'd managed to make her hair lose whatever attribute it was that had previously caused him to die in his dreams whenever he touched it. Which was good, since he especially enjoyed touching it. Running a hand through the inky blackness, which acted more like a very compacted gas than any hair he'd ever touched, he allowed himself to relax.

Ankh's pleasant smell of “whatever death smells like” soothed his mind, and he eventually muttered out a complaint about the day he'd had. Ankh recognized the prompt and took it upon herself to query further, which caused him to regale her with the tale of today's exploits. The meeting with the twins, forcing them to dress like you know, actual, normal, people. The visit of the dungeon. Going through the Gate to confront the Castouts. The enjoyment he took from killing them. Ankh smiled and listened all the while, until he came upon the part with the earth golem, who had... Sworn him his allegiance? She propped herself up to pout directly in his face and then petulantly started rubbing her head into his chest. “I know that golem thingy, but I'm not letting him in. I'm the only one for you. He's just a machine, stupid, stupid, stupid.” She grumbled.

Laying his arms around her Lock gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead, managing to calm her down. He put up a hand, the apple tree being kind enough to respond to his silent request and extending towards him a branch with a bright red apple attached to it. He plucked it off and put it her hands.

Her mouth extended wide, revealing a row of sharp and serrated teeth. She made quick work of the apple, finishing it in three quick bites, eating even the core. She licked the juices off her hands after her mouth returned to normal proportions.

Lock went back to stroking her hair. “Regarding the golem, you don't need to let him in here. I just want to ask however, if 'he' is trustworthy.” Lock said.

Ankh angrily rubbed her face in his chest again. “Yeah. He's yours now.” She eventually admitted.

“Good. Good. That's all I needed to know.” Lock said, contemplating the new information for a few minutes. “How about we play a game now, I've had some inspiration recently in coming up with a new one. I call it. Chasing through the dungeon.”

-/-

Many factors contributed to waking Lock the next morning. The sun blaring directly onto his helmet and making it uncomfortably warm. The urge to go to the bathroom. His growling stomach.

It all made for quite an unpleasant awakening. Thankfully, most of the problems could quickly be dealt with. He stumbled over to a few trees surrounding the hill that they'd been transported too to relieve himself. Pulled out a tiny bottle filled with nutrient potion and quickly chugging it down. The helmet, he pulled off.

The only reason he'd put it back on after killing Light was due to being afraid whatever transportation the earth golem had, would cause him to lose it if he didn't.

All of his immediate needs dealt with he returned back to the small huddle of twins and golem.

The twins hadn't roused themselves yet. Which was bothersome, since he wanted to go back into the city and change his clothes, maybe enjoy a nice hot bath.

Wait, he still needed to dig out the documents that Light had buried in the adventurer training ground.

Also about entering the city. He looked at the golem dubiously.

Not only was such flagrant use of magic not allowed within its walls, some adventurer's might even recognize the hulking golem.

He would need to either let it wait here and go in, buy something to cover it, or send the twins to do it for him.

Which he couldn't do until they woke up. He considered for a short moment if he should just kick them awake right now, but decided against it. Let them sleep, one last nicety before they never saw each other again.

Rather than bother overly much with the twins, his gaze drifted upwards towards the earth golem who was still standing there as still as... a rock. He still had a few things he needed to confirm about the beast, and considering the fact that it was only capable of communication via nods and shakes of the head, this was truly going to be an inspired interrogation.

Sighing he walked over to the hulking golem, and sat down in front of it. “Sit.” he commanded, and watched as the golem went down into a kneeling position reminiscent of the Japanese seiza.

Lock sincerely hoped that this wasn't another rendition of 'I was reborn into another world as a dungeon boss', and that his probable new subordinate wasn't a weeb.

“Alright, I'm going to be asking you a few questions now, and with few, I mean a lot. First of all, am I correct in my assumption that it was me saving you that brought you into my empl-?”

_/_

It took two hours for the twins to start arising, Tia being the first. It was amazingly timed to be quite frank, Lock was starting to run out of questions for the earth golem. Oh, there was still definitely more that he did not know, but he couldn't quite think of a way in which to phrase the inquiry after two long hours of asking questions that were answerable by either a yes or a no.

Maybe he was simply too distracted by the things that he did now know about the golem to think of ways to find out more?

Probable, he had discovered a great many things after all.

Firstly, the golem was now his. This particular stroke of luck he had to thank the creator of the golem for. The man had had the foresight to consider his greatest creation becoming lost to him, due to his own death, a dungeon call, or whatever. Thus he imbibed within the golem a fervent wish to find a new master if it was ever cut off from its original one.

The criteria for selecting a new master was in this case, 'the first guy who helps you, ya feel me'. Considering that Lock had saved the things life, this more than fulfilled the criteria for helping.

Secondly, he had learned that the golem had indeed lost some mass through his escape out the dungeon, and that the damage was irreparable, the only earth actually capable of being absorbed being the earth of the other earth golems in the dungeon. A place that Lock had no chance of sneaking the golem in to, to replenish his reserves.

Thirdly, the golem had no sense of self-preservation. If Lock's command of 'get me out of this dungeon' would have killed it. It would have still gladly gone through with it.

The fourth thing that he'd been able to confirm about the golem was the most interesting one. Namely that its stupidity, or recklessness was something that could be counteracted if enough time was invested into the task. This was possible because the golem was not an algorithm, but an artificial intelligence. It was self-learning, the only problem being naturally that while it could learn, it was by no means smart, and it was by no means easy.

The creator had thankfully, or less so, created a backdoor for this issue. One that certainly explained why Ankh had claimed that the golem was waiting just outside of the boundaries of the little paradise that she'd created for Lock.

The golem was capable of connecting to its master, on a spiritual level, and infer his commands from there. The bond would strengthen with time, diminishing returns naturally being implied. Thus, perhaps in a few years, once the bond had solidified into perfect understanding of its new master on parts of the golem, it would be capable of acting on Lock's unsaid demands. For example if executing a command would require the death of the golem, and Lock had simply been stupid in issuing it, it would communicate the consequences of the command. If however, Lock issued the command, fully knowing that the golem would die, the golem would go through with it.

The bond between it and Lock was at the moment in its infantile stage, which basically meant that despite being rid of the twins after this mission. Lock was now still on indefinite babysitting duty if he actually wanted to enjoy the sweet fruits of having control of a not so insignificant in strength servant any time in the future.

Lock wondered what the title of his adventure in this world would be if it were a book. Probably something like, 'Becoming a glorified babysitter in another world'.

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