7 Goals!

Four hours of laying in this bed and I was regretting my choice to rely on the healing mages, my body aches for a release that only death could bring. My knuckles were white as a book shook in my hands labeled, lesser golem summon. It was a creation magic that would greatly benefit my training if I was able to advance it since the golems they had seemed to be idiots on a control circuit.

Control circuits were sort of like basic AIs from my world, they could give responses to actions done by an enemy. Like a low level minion in a video game they were predictable, and easily dispatched, the only positive thing being their durability. Considering my study into mechanics, my AI knowledge though limited was probably a thousand years more advanced than what I've seen. My only problem was turning coding into a control circuit, though that might be remedied with a summon.

Those were my hopes, but feeling like your body was being torn to shreds and spasming randomly did not help with studying. The opposite was true though, studying helped me forget about the pain in my body.

I had also made a discovery, I could link up to ten actions per worker and the time would change accordingly. The downside is that I wouldn't get my rewards until all actions were complete. Currently both were sitting at 20 hours, since some squares apparently cost more when you dig from them.

I was now following a pattern, making a large 100 by a 100 squared hole two deep. This would take some time but I had faith that the castle in the castle system wasn't just a clever naming scheme. If it wasn't I needed to clear a large space for the foundation to be poured into, and a place for a basement. Why a basement? Well what castle is complete without a dungeon.

50,000 square feet seemed like a nice amount of area to work with, making the central area the hut in the center of this land. I had made a guess based on the size of the pigman, taking his height as probably around five foot which was about the same as the square itself if I find out later each of the pigmen are ten foot tall then I have a really large castle on my hands.

I suddenly had a horrible thought, of this was to go the route I was progressing it would take over two thousand days to complete just the digging alone. Pulling up my system I poured two gold into the first pigman, and one into the other. Both timers went down by about 2% each, saving me about 24 minutes in total. 2% adds up really quick when you start talking about thousands of days.

Looking at my empty gold reserves now though really pained me, I needed gold for nearly everything so far. This system is seriously going to cut into the kingdom's reserves in gold if I seriously don't think of a way to supply it with its own reserves. Sadly, thinking about myself crashing the economy by draining the gold reserves was a far ways off, but the lingering fear was still there. I didn't want to be targeted for something so stupid as ruining the economy.

Tapping my fingers on the book that brought up a good question, what were my goals?

First, kill the people who killed Nikolai and the people backing them.

Second, survive until I can become a full alchemist, no strike that. Survive until I die of natural causes!

Third, have a wife this lifetime, or at least have a child.

Fourth…

Memories of Nikolai's youth flooded my mind as I thought hard of a fourth goal, a fire flickering in the corner as his father drank down a beer.

"What is every Alchemist's goal?" His father pointed his beer at the kid, no more than five at the time.

"Immortality?"

"Wrong! Though if you find that secret pass it on to me." He took a deep swig again, looking at the kid again. "Every alchemist's dream is to pluck their leaf from the Celestial Tree."

"Why would I want to take a leaf from an old tree?" The kid seemed doubtful, head tilted still highly interested in what his father had to say.

"The other name for the tree is the Tree of Fate my child, it is said that your fate is chosen at birth by where your leaf grows on the tree. Every leaf near you someone who will greatly influence your life, but what happens when you tear your leaf away?"

"You die?"

A loud echoing laughter filled the room, his father rubbing his belly, "No son, now you no longer have fate. Now you control your own destiny, no more strings to hold you back."

I clenched my fist as I nodded, yes that would be my goal as well. Screw the world, screw my enemies, they will be the stepping stones for me to control my own fate. With what little I knew about this world, there was the possibility that this story was made up by my father. There was also a possibility that it existed too, and since my world had something similar I'd bet that there was a connection there to my old world.

"Yggdrasil." This one word, without my knowledge shook the kingdom to its core. A shadow disappearing from my room like it had never been there. Just two days of being in this world and I was already causing waves.

It was then that two robbed men came into the room, a shocked expression on both of their faces, "What the hell are you doing to your body? Do you want to die?" One of them yelled, they had never seen such an idiotic patient that would push their bodies this much after they just brought him back from death.

"Heh heh.." I awkwardly chuckled, rubbing the back of my head, "My father said I needed to go to a brothel to clear my head." I paused, letting their faces get uglier, "Thought exercising would be better for my body in the long run though. I guess I overdid it?"

Overdid it? That was an understatement, if he was healthy he would need bed rest for at least two days with the injuries throughout his body. They didn't even know how he was still conscious, the pain must be unbearable.

The two mages shivered at a thought they both had, 'Screw the father, they can't afford to offend his son.' There was no way that someone who could push their body this hard wasn't going to become someone powerful someday.

Not knowing their thoughts he started practicing the spell for lesser golem creation, small sparks appearing as a pile of rocks started to wiggle around. He could move the stones, so he was on the right track, melding them and giving them life would still take time to practice.

This small action scared the mages even more that a kid could use magic in this much pain. A mage wasn't praised for what he could do while safe, but if he can concentrate during battles and do the same acts of magic. A bedside fire mage was useless no matter how powerful his skills were.