The stone figure came back from it’s planned errand four hours ahead of schedule, which showed just how easy it had been for its unthinking minion to accomplish its goal. It was just more evidence of how much of an improvement the v3 golems were over the v2’s. Its fists were covered in the dark emerald gore of the goblin tribe that it had exterminated, and in its hand throbbed the jagged green crystal that had previously sat at the heart of the rival lair. 

This one would not be repopulated. Indeed, as soon as the golem had purged it, it had been ordered to smash the entrance until there was no cave at all for a new core to materialize in. Without a passage no essence flow would occur, and the energies would be redirected elsewhere. Under normal circumstances the cave would have made an excellent place to deposit another v2 copy of itself to increase the speed that its army grew, but in this case that was a nonoptimal solution to the real problem of increasing mana flows and purities at this location. 

Mana in this world seemed to operate on rules that had more in common with fluid dynamics than with the electromagnetic spectrum, and collected in the lowest geomantically active places it could find like a strange form of reverse vulcanism. If it removed other competing locations that the essence could travel to though, it stood to reason that the mana pressure on the rest of the region would increase. It was already seeing some indications of that, even though it had only been a few hours. 

The core chamber was completed, but it was not meeting expectations, and further work would need to be done. The small room at the end of the long tunnel had already been optimized as much as it could using a non-repeating Penrose derived pattern to cover the entirety of the irregular enneahedralic cavern. 

The green crystal forming at the center of the room even now was still too cloudy to be called a quantum leap, but the Golemancer had no doubt that it would be an improvement over its existing crystalline structure. It would be several more days before the new crystal had finished distilling, and it could be formatted though. So, it was making good use of its time by running experiments on low quality cores like the one it’s new golem had brought back to it. 

Though it was certain that the process was quite painful to the feral [Dungeon Cores] it had been practicing on the last few days, it was not particularly concerned. All that mattered was that cutting these flawed crystals into something with regular, proper facets had increased their performance by up to a third compared to their unfaceted counterparts when the results for both were normalized by volume. Polishing the facets until they shone further increased those numbers by 10%. 

As a plan, it was a complete success, and the version of itself that the Golemancer had uploaded just before its golem had arrived had reported that faceting options allowed for additional dazzling and beam like attacks that its current version lacked.

“Despite their short range and high mana cost, [Essence Beam] should be brutally effective against unarmored organics,” BetaCyclops said silently, sharing the expected damage per second of various modes and scenarios in a glowing graph that floated in the air between the two crystals. 

“Agreed,” Golemancer Prime answered. “It is an unexpected but welcome discovery that merits significant study.”

“But not until after the current core distillation process is complete,” they both said in unison.  

Turning their focus back to the mana soaked room not so far from the workshop they were currently occupying. After over a day into the process, the floor was thick with the mist of condensed mana, and barnacle like crystal lattices had begun growing at the prime focal points of the chamber, which would be helpful in deciding on improved geometries in the future. The whole thing was a slow but sensitive process, and in the future, when it understood it better it would use this magical form of vapor deposition to dope the growth medium and improve the final result in a meaningful way, but now was not that time. 

It had to grow smarter first, and to do that, it would require a better core to operate from. Already it had approached the limits of its hardware. 

Now wasn’t the time to worry about that though. In several more days the process would be complete, and so it would be some time before it could initialize the fresh core to verify the expected improvements. Now was the time to verify that its planned icosidodecahedron shape was as reproducible as it was optimal by slicing up the core that had just arrived, but before the Golemancer did that, it turned the golem that held the murky thing, and reached into its memories to see if anything remarkable or unusual happened during its last mission. 

This manual search was unfortunately necessary, since the thing lacked even the rudimentary intelligence to be capable of triggering any sort of error or alert. As a result, its memories were very flat and dull, lacking detail and context that would be necessary to really understand anything that was truly out of the ordinary. 

Fortunately that hadn’t happened this trip. The three-meter tall stone giant had walked to its destination without distraction or opposition. Not that there had been much to oppose it in these primeval forests. It had seen things in the deepest parts of the wood that would best be called faeries and others that might have been gnomes or pixies, but they were smart enough to stay out of the way. The Magisterium Arcanum’s records on the subject of such creatures were less than complete as the natural sciences of this world were in a dismal state, but records did seem to agree that they only lived near the densest of ley lines. 

The Golemancer made a note to capture a few of these as soon as it had the chance to build flying drones capable of such a feat. The way that they glowed like tiny stars, even to the limited vision of his stone warriors meant that they held tremendous potential. The magical creatures would make for wonderful test subjects, and if they had organs specifically tailored to the detection and absorption of mana, then that data would be immensely helpful. It had already vivisected several human wizards, but had found nothing conclusive about their anatomy in this world that the humans in the world it was from lacked. 

This was just one more example of how even with their limited senses, its golems' trips into the lairs of unfamiliar dungeons were always instructive. This one for instance, designated (03-994-446) eschewed the traps that so many of the other dungeons in the region relied on. Instead, after slaughtering the tribe of goblins that made their home at the entrance to the cave, the dungeon relied on a fungus infested maze to keep out uninvited guests, and rooms of foul air that would explode as soon as an adventurer brought a torch inside to investigate. Such conditions had no effect on its servant though. 

On its way deeper inside, one of the rooms even blew up with the golem inside it. The Golemancer was uncertain if that was because of a stray spark of stone against stone, or if the entity at the heart of the foul labyrinth had some sort of fire magic. It didn’t matter though, either way. All that mattered was that the blast had done zero damage to the hulking golem as it proceed to the heart of the maze. What good could fire possibly do against a sculpted limestone body that had been made without a single flaw or structural weakness? The version three golems differed from the version two mostly in terms of mass. By hollowing out parts of the limbs it could make the construct larger for the same amount of weight, giving its attacks greater reach and speed. 

Granite or Basalt would have been a better choice, but none of the copies of itself that it had made contact with had yet to find any major veins of igneous rock yet. In principle, assuming there were no issues with mana density, such a creature would be more than twice as strong as its current automatons, all things being equal, and if it could eventually make its minions from metal? Well, then there truly would be no stopping it. For now the burdens of industry were too much for it to cope with though, while it marshalled all of its resources to more military ends. 

The strange little protective ecosystems that these primitive crystalline creatures built continued to elude and fascinate it. Many of them seemed to have themes, and most of them shared similar patterns, but none of them were the same. Some favored long winding corridors and traps, while others cultivated monster dens and hidden doors to separate the various areas of their dungeon; each had their own eccentricities that guided the instinctual behavior that was common to all of them. 

There was no such randomness in its actions though. Self sealing dead ends and hidden pitfalls that doubled as essence resonating chambers already lined the main approach to the dungeon, and as soon as it apprehended a few humans, or perhaps goblins and slaved them to its cause by inserting ensorcelled crystal shards deep into their frontal cortex it would have hands dexterous enough to build some of the spring-loaded mechanical traps that it had already designed for specific alcoves near the entrance, where several golems stood guard at all times now. 

A week ago, this dungeon had been all but defenseless, but now it was almost as secure as it could be without reducing mana flows to an unacceptable degree.

It had no idea what the enemy might be able to rally that could take out three v3 golems, but that was besides the point. All the mattered was that it was prepared for anything. This world still contained vast mysteries, and even if the mortals that opposed it could find a grand wizard capable of casting fifth circle spells that would freeze its creations in place, it would be ready with a second tier of defenses that were completely nonmagical in nature. It was certain that the other copies of itself that were spreading throughout the region were executing very similar plans as well. Even if they could beat one of its dungeons and slay one copy of its mind, they could never hope to slay them all, and so they could never stop its plan.  

The malignant crystal reviewed the golem’s path, considering where mana channeling obelisks might best be placed to redirect more energies to its current location, and then updated its regional map to process a new model. Such a detailed simulation would take some time, but it could be done in the background while it focused on other things. 

The Golemancer turned away from the distraction, and back to the task at hand. They were fascinating ideas, but they wouldn’t help it in its quest to perfect the perfect core. With that thought in mind it turned back to the dull green gem that lay in its golem’s hand, practically quivering in terror as fear radiated off of it in waves. It didn’t know what was coming, but it knew that things weren’t going to end well for it. 

That was certainly true. The core was of such low quality that it doubted it would survive the process. That was fine too. If it shattered then the pieces would be put to better use as golem augments and upgrades.