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  I nodded, agreeing with that assessment. I made sure to keep a close eye on the ring, waiting to see if there was any unusual reaction. This time, I also made sure to spread out my senses to track the elemental mana of the surroundings. Like I expected, I found it slowly pouring into the ring. This was probably one of the reasons that the first try did what it did. It simply overloaded on the elemental mana, without a method to safely contain it.

  Given what I was doing with this ring, I didn’t have the intention of adding a ‘stop absorbing’ feature to let it limit what it could absorb. Rather, the item itself would do that, once it had a mind and a soul. Until then, I simply took control of the surrounding elemental mana, and prevented it from being absorbed. “Alright… this should be good.” Just to be safe, I split a piece of my mind off to specifically control that mana, so that I could still focus on the next step.

  Celeste smiled faintly, stepping forward to pick up the ring and inspect it. She was not gentle at all with it, and actually threw it directly against the wall of the room with considerable strength. Had the ring been made of steel or gold, it likely would have deformed from the impact. However, thankfully this was made with a much stronger metal, allowing it to maintain its shape. Though, it did give me a brief jumpscare.

  “It’s good.” She said, her smile widening slightly. A moment later, she pulled an item out of her inventory, a familiar short slab of metal. “His name is Lex. You better be nice to him, okay? He’s a good kid.”

  I chuckled slightly, nodding my head as I accepted the AI, and the ring to go with it. Closing my eyes, I quickly gathered the mana necessary to create a small goblin, which was immediately slaughtered so that I could refine and steal its soul. I didn’t have any spare buffer to use for this, since I hadn’t really been doing a lot of mindless mob killing lately.

  Gently, I began mixing the new soul into the ring, letting it slowly settle into the inanimate aura and breathe life into the object. Next, the most delicate task came up, transferring the consciousness of the AI from the device I had been given to the ring. Thankfully, these soft sticks store data as a magical aura, which makes the whole process much easier. Otherwise, we probably never would have been able to make any intelligent items.

  Carefully, I wrapped my mana around the consciousness, pulling it off of the device just a little bit at a time. No matter how many times I do stuff like this, I don’t feel safe rushing it. It’s hard to objectify artificial intelligence when I’ve had one as a best friend for years.

  As I gradually moved the aura over to the ring, I made slight adjustments to the ring’s aura to allow for an easy connection. With that taken care of, I slotted the new consciousness into the aura, and watched as the various tendrils of energy all connected together. Of course, it was only now that I realized I had forgotten to give it two very important enchantments. That was, the ability to speak and hear. Crap. I want a do-over!

  Noticing that something was wrong from my sudden anxiety, Celeste sent me a suspicious glare. “What did you do?”

  “Uhm… forgot to make it so that he can hear and talk? I can fix it!” Celeste’s face visibly paled at that, which I had to consider for a moment, given that she didn’t have any blood that could drain from her face. “Really, I can!”

  She looked at me skeptically, but I was already working. Lex, can you hear me? I sent the message with some metal mana, allowing it to be absorbed into the ring. If you can, try to send some mana back to me with your thoughts.

  It took a few long moments of silence, but eventually I heard a reply. Did… did it work? This feels different than what I expected.

  Almost there. Just one last step. Going to add on a new option for you. When I do this, I need you to put this somewhere that it feels comfortable, okay? The last thing I wanted was to get this far, and have the ring explode because I added in the ability to communicate.

  Alright. The small voice responded more quickly this time, and I got to work. The previous enchantment diagram was wiped clear with a thought, and a new one set up. This one was much more simple, as it only allowed the manipulation and absorption of sound mana to transmit and receive audio. “Okay… here we go.”

  Celeste was impatiently tapping her foot behind me as I got to work, this time being even more careful with how I managed the mana than I had when initially creating the ring. However, as soon as the enchantment made contact with the ring itself, I felt the mana pulled out of my control. Although, I could still monitor it, so I could see the enchantment reshaping itself slightly to fit in an empty part of the aura, allowing me to breathe out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

  “Is it…?”

  “He’s fine.” I answered Celeste, then turned to look at the ring in question. “Aren’t you?”

  Rather than the confirmation I wanted, there was an audible screeching sound, like nails on a chalkboard, that violated my ears for several long moments. After it passed, there was a low droning sound, so I could guess what was happening. “I think he’s… calibrating?”

  Celeste raised a suspicious eyebrow, but then turned towards the ring. “Lex, you okay in there?”

  The noises alternated a few more times between high and low pitches, before finally settling on the slightly higher end of the spectrum. Though, not painfully high, but more like a prepubescent boy’s high pitched voice. “I’m… I’m okay, mom. I think I’m ready for the next step.”

  After she heard that, Celeste looked at me, and I began the process of making the various elemental seeds needed to make a grove. “Well… let’s make our first inanimate druid.”

  Chapter 35: One Ring to Rule them All

  Creating the elemental seeds was an easy matter for me at this point. All it required was a moment of concentration to gather the necessary elements nearby, and condense them into a small, spherical shape. Though, for the earth element, I had to use a tiny chunk of my grove, due to that mana type being rather sparse on a spaceship. However, it still only took a few minutes before the Essence of Nature, the main ingredient to establish a grove, was complete.

  Next came the tricky part. Normally, the prospective druid would use Nature Magic to channel the energies from the Essence of Nature throughout their body, letting it merge with them at an inseperable level. However, from my understanding, one of the key differences between intelligent items like Lex and a Deus Ex like Celeste was that intelligent items were incapable of gaining their own skills. I wasn’t entirely sure why myself, but it likely had something to do with the differences in their souls, and that they did not possess their own bodies.

  As such, I needed to use my own Nature Magic, along with my Soul Arts, in order to help channel the energy from the essence throughout the small ring. In the worst case scenario, this could cause Lex to explode from an excess of energy being channeled into him, like the previous ring experiment. To prevent that, I focused on taking it slow, far slower than I had when I was establishing my own grove.

  With my magic, I split tiny strands of the merged elemental energy off of the essence, sending them into the ring and carefully tied it together with the ring’s aura. Even for me, this felt incredibly risky, but the potential rewards that would come if this succeeded were even greater. Especially if the elemental army that I wanted to create later became a reality.

  This process lasted over half an hour, and the aura was starting to slowly change. The essence wasn’t entirely used up yet, so I couldn’t afford to quit at this point. I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if I did stop before the grove was fully formed. Would I have the chance to try again, or would doing so only hurt Lex?

  I did, however, slow down by quite a lot. It took another half hour before the remaining third of the essence had finally merged together with Lex’s aura. Letting out a sigh of relief, I wiped some sweat from my brow that had accumulated, and took a step back. What came next would determine whether or not this was all for nothing.

  “Lex?” I asked, cautiously, waiting for hi
s reply. Celeste stood next to me, looking between myself and the ring resting on the ground.

  “Yes…?” A somewhat pained voice came in response, drawing a worried gasp from Celeste. I can’t imagine that the process was easy on him, but he was brave enough not to cry out. That, or he was too distracted to be able to activate the voice function.

  “Are you alright?” Stupid question, but one that needed to be asked.

  “It… feels different. Better now, but still different.”

  “Try focusing your mind inwardly. There should be something different.” Moment of truth…

  “What… what is this?” His voice seemed to tremble, sometimes flickering in and out as if it was hard to focus. “Mom, is this what you meant? There is… something inside me. It looks like a big rock.”

  Celeste quickly let out a sigh of relief when she heard Lex’s words. “Yes, that’s right. That’s what we were hoping for. Now, you can go back to absorbing the elements, but try to focus them into that space. It should slowly start to grow.”

  While intelligent items couldn’t get skills, they were still entirely capable of having affinities. But, that wasn’t because of any strange reasoning like ‘they were sentient enough to have it’. Rather, everything, living or dead, had an affinity with some kind of element. It just usually lacked the degree necessary to actually manipulate the element. As for Lex, his enchantments should make it easy to boost his affinities to the point where he can easily control the elements given to him. That’s what I’m hoping for, at least.

  “Alright, mom.” I hear his voice calling back, and can feel the mana shifting in the room. Again, I focus on the ring, ready to stop the flow of mana if things start to look dangerous. However, that doesn’t seem to be an issue, as the mana appears to vanish as soon as it comes into contact with the ring.

  I nodded my head slightly, relaxing my guard for a moment. “While you are absorbing the mana, try to send some of your own back out, as close to what you absorbed as you can. That should help you improve your abilities.” This was the most basic fundamental of cultivating mana, so it was important that he understood it.

  Lex did not respond to the information I gave him, but I felt a slight shift in the mana around us. Upon inspection, Lex was now both absorbing and releasing mana in alternating motions, as if breathing. I let myself nod slightly, accepting this method of circulating his mana. Turning to Celeste, I gave a reassuring smile. “We’ll need to watch him for the next few hours to make sure nothing bad happens, but after that he should be good.”

  Celeste had a somewhat stiff smile as she answered. “Right… Once we’re sure everything is safe, would you mind taking him down to the planet? He’s never seen anything of the real world outside of scanned images, and I’m sure the mana quality would be better down there.” It was obvious that she was more concerned about the former information, and had only supplied the last bit as a practical excuse.

  Again, I nodded my head. “Alright. In the meantime, can I get you to make an AI for me?” When I asked that, Celeste looked at me, confused. “Not a complex one like Lex and the others. A very basic AI, like a blank slate. One that barely has a consciousness. I need to analyze the aura of something like that for a technique I am working on.”

  Celeste furrowed her brows when I explained, as if the request was especially difficult. “It’s… not really a problem.” Something in her voice suggested that she was uncomfortable with it, and she apparently heard that thought in my mind. “It’s just, you’re basically asking me to make a mentally handicapped child on purpose, you know?”

  When she explained her discomfort, she turned to face me directly. I couldn’t really refute her words, though. In a way, that was exactly what I was asking her to do. The AI were her children, and asking her to create one without complex reasoning would be like asking a mother to intentionally have a disadvantaged child. What mother would want something like that for her baby?

  “I didn’t think of it like that.” I shook my head, trying to think of another way to get what I needed. “If that’s not possible, how about making a few soft sticks for me to analyze the different auras of a few of your other children? I just need to understand how consciousness works, on a magical level, what its basic structure looks like.”

  At that, Celeste’s expression softened slightly. “I can do that easily enough.” With that said, she turned to continue looking at the lonely ring in the center of the ground.

  It was around that time that I realized, I never received any window or prompt about the completion of the ring. Surely, I should have at least gotten a window to name it, like I did every item I created. Yet, that had not appeared once during this whole affair. Is the ring not ‘complete’ yet? Do I still need to do something else? Or is it no longer considered my creation, now that it has a mind, a soul, and even a druid’s grove of its own?

  Actually, I just got bored waiting for you to be done, and missed the timing. Here you go!

  Please name your item.

  I stared, unblinking, at the window for several long seconds. I had to admit, being forgotten was not on the list of reasons why I thought that window hadn’t appeared yet. After recovering from my shock, I slowly entered the name I had wanted to give the ring all along. Once that was done, I cast the identifying spell that Sharon had come up with shortly after we started our journey.

  Ring of the Elemental Army

  Durability - 50/50

  Possessing Soul: Lex

  -Special Options-

  Personal Grove(??)

  Innate Mana Control

  Elemental Mana Control(Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Light, Dark, Lightning, Plant, Animal, Metal, Sound)

  Elemental Integration

  Ego Level: 11

  I was slightly surprised by the information that had appeared. First of all, the question marks that were listed next to the grove. Does that simply mean that the user doesn’t have access to the grove themselves, so its size can’t be listed?

  More importantly, however, was the next two lines after that. The various enchantments I had laid out to give the ring had apparently been consolidated into ‘Innate Mana Control’ and ‘Elemental Mana Control’. Even Sound was listed there, and I had only given the ring the ability to manipulate sound mana to project a voice. Is this an effect caused by creating the grove? When I was tampering with its aura to integrate it all together, did it also merge the enchantments?

  This was definitely an unexpected effect, and I wasn’t sure whether it was something that was good or not yet. On the bright side, it should provide a better basic control of those elements. However, it means that Lex needs to learn how to control them from scratch, because it lost the enchanted abilities I had put in to teach it.

  Finally, there was the ‘Elemental Integration’ line, which I did not understand at all. With just the name of the enchantment given, I couldn’t figure out how it worked, or what the requirements were. I’ll need to get someone to do a more detailed identification spell later. As for the ego level, that line was normal, and something that was included for any intelligent items when they were identified.

  An item’s ego level was, quite simply, its character level. If an item had a level five soul, it would have a level five ego. Since this is what level Lex ended up as, then that means only eleven levels of pure souls were transferred from the monster that I had killed. From now on, its level would increase whenever anyone equipped it and killed something. Unlike regular ‘characters’, a living item could not gain an increase in stats when they leveled up. Instead, they were more similar to the Deus Ex in that they were able to purchase enchantments that would be applied to whatever item they were.

  I could only assume that Elemental Integration was the enchantment that Lex had bought with its eleven levels, though whether it understood what it meant or not was another matter entirely. With the unique circumstances behind its existence, there may not have been many options for it to choose from, or there could have
even been too many. I would have to ask him myself after I let him adjust to cultivating mana for a while. There was still a lot to learn about everything that was going on in this crazy new world, even after all we had experienced so far. Why do I feel like I’m always telling myself that?

  Either way, Celeste and I patiently sat at the side, maintaining a constant watch over the new Ring of the Elemental Army, also known as Lex. Neither of us said a word to the other, not wanting to distract the mind held within the small item.

  Chapter 36: Hi… High God

  After waiting for a while, and deciding that Lex’s situation was stable, both Celeste and I were immediately relieved. Honestly, this whole thing had been one big gamble, so it would not have surprised me if everything blew up in my face. The theories behind it were all solid, and there was no real reason why I should have failed other than unknown variables. But, given past performance, unknown variables are a constant problem.

  “I need a vacation.” I muttered under my breath, glancing towards Celeste next to me. “Mind letting the girls all know that we’ll be heading down to the planet? It’ll give everyone some much needed time off the ship, and you already said why Lex should go down.”