Strength

'Apex strength? Could I overpower a hero perhaps? Even the Great Sage?' Will thought.

Will has developed muscle and strength after living in this world, but it is nowhere near enough a hero's strength. But if he were to have an apex dragon's strength, along with the magical item that the Great Sage gave him, would his strength become unimaginable?

Taking off the scales by himself proved to be too time consuming, so he had the brilliant idea to get his Golems to do the hard work for him.

After all, if one has a problem, the answer is SLAVERY.

Before he left, he noticed that the red dragon's HP was dwindling.

{HP: 8,331/20,100,000}

His HP before was somewhere at 10,000, the fact that his HP is dropping obviously meant that he was dying from either blood loss or other reasons.

"Oops, sorry about that." Will realized he almost made a blunder. The dragon is under his curses that he placed on the net chains and couldn't move a muscle, not that he could anyway with his wounds.

Will left to go to his cave. Minutes later he came back with a chest in hand.

"Now that I know this works, I wonder how much a dragon's life will fill it up."

*BANG* *BANG*

{HP: 0/20,100,000}

Will shot the dragon right through his head twice, thanks to his bullets that had the {Piercing V} enchantment the bullet ran straight through.

Will shot him dead for one reason, to fill up souls stones.

In his inventory he had exactly 999 empty soul stones. Exactly 300 of them were now full. Soul stones are the only way for him to place {curses} on items.

One time Will grinded for soul stones and monster carcasses, before he could safely store them he got killed by a dragon. Luckily he had tested and confirmed some things before his death:

1: Empty soul stones stack, but filled soul stones do not stack with empty soul stones. The number of any item per box in his inventory could not exceed 999.

2: Any empty soul stones that are in his inventory will become full once he kills something, meaning that he doesn't have to carry soulstones on his person the entire time he is killing something which was convenient.

3: This was more of a theory, but he believes the more 'max' HP a monster has the more soul stones it fills up, or it could also be due to the difference in size.

Before Will had killed some cyclops on the third layer, and they would always fill up maybe 3 or 5 at a time. Small insects do not count because their max HP is usually 1 or 2, or it might be because of their small size.

Will was surprised a dragon on the second layer instantly filled up 300 of his soul stones. How much would an apex dragon fill up? He wondered.

12 new titanium low-tier Golems got to work by carving out the dragon's scales and storing the rest of its body in the chests. They all used enchanted titanium blades or daggers for cutting, which was easy.

Will placed 4 empty chests in front of the dragons.

"Make sure to first carve out their hearts and place them in separate chests, then do their organs, scales, and finally the rest. Make sure that both dragons go in different chests so I won't have to mix them up."

The Golems nodded and began getting to work.

Will was happy. He had food for Adaline, a new set of dragon scale armor to try out, but most importantly he could use their essence.

Will learned that the only way to make magical items is by harnessing a monster's essence, and the method is rather easy thanks to princess Harmony for having her blacksmith slaves show him the method.

Will also learned that the stronger the monster, the higher chances of getting a powerful magical item in return, and there is no other monster stronger than an apex dragon… that he knows of.

6 hours later…

Will replaced every single sentry-turret with regular turrets only this time every single turret had a low-tier Golem core in them. Now in case something attacks his kingdom while he's outside all the weapons with Golem cores inside them will take charge.

That wasn't all.

Further into the distance, one could see watch towers and they were all simple stone towers. Each tower was made entirely out of stone, standing tall at 39 meters.

Each tower was a fair distance away from each other. Will did not know how far exactly each tower was, but they were barely far enough that he could barely see the other tower while standing on top of another tower.

At the top of each of the towers was a new type of Golem he calls 'watch Golem.' Their purpose is to watch for incoming threats and be prepared ahead of time.

Each watch Golem has a human appearance, except they had four faces on their heads, three of their faces facing in different directions, while one was facing upwards.

Will made this Golem on the spot, and seeing them have four faces made him feel scared of his own creations. But he thought if he added more faces they could see everywhere without needing to move around leaving them with blindspots.

The toughest part, for him at least, was making a new custom helmet specifically for this Golem while using the [Holographic platform} because his system could not make them.

Giving the helmets the best enchantments he could, every single watch Golem could see far and in the dark.

And with watchtowers everywhere surrounding his kingdom Will could now be alerted of threats ahead of time.

"Oh, wow, nice work." Will walked toward his Golems.

The two dragon's corpses weren't there anymore, including their bones. All that was left was a bit of their shattered scales and dry blood.

"Master."

Low tier Golems could not say another word besides 'master' Will needed to have at least a mid-tier Golem to have a decent conversation.

They can understand Will perfectly as the smartest Golem is advanced-tier, one tier lower than high-tier which is the highest achievable tier he could craft at the moment.

"Take back the chests to the cave, it doesn't matter if anybody else sees you. Just leave the chest with the apex dragon scales here, I want to try something."

"Master."

Living Golems are still somehow a secret in this kingdom. Some people have seen statues of these Golems but they never move, most thought it was Will's weird hobby, but Sandra had her doubts about those statues ever since she first saw them.

It also helped that the existence of moving statues or Golems have never existed in this world.

The 12 Golems took all but 1 chests and entered the kingdom.

The villagers gasped in shock to see 12 identical moving statues walk in the kingdom. They could stare for so long before the Golems entered the inner walls.

The sun kingdom has two walls: the inner wall which is where Will's castle is along with his important secrets, and there's the outer wall, which was bigger compared to the inner wall but that is where his villagers live.

Any plans for creating a third wall was placed on hold until either the villager population exceeded what his kingdom could hold, or if Will felt like making a third wall which would be bigger than his last two walls and would cost more time and resources to make.

Will made sure to tell every single villager to never enter the inner wall, unless it's Sandra or has special permission from Will. There are Golems stationed in the inner wall to inform Will of intruders and to possibly kill or detain these intruders.

By far that is the one rule that Will has placed on his kingdom, along with no killing, stealing, etc, but those laws are really more common sense, but Will had to tell them anyways because if there's one thing he knows, is that human stupidity knows no bounds.

Sandra watched the Golems move for the first time, her mouth slightly opened. She always had her doubts about those statues until now.

'Does he have…? No, that sounds dumb, but at the same time it would make sense.'

Sandra thought of Will's abilities and how they reminded her of something.

After this day people would be talking about the statues for a while wondering about all sorts of things.

Meanwhile…

Will was wearing apex dragon scale armor. And it made him feel… the same as before.

The design was somehow the same but different, as if the scales were sturdier, longer, to anybody else they could barely see a difference, but Will had been wearing dragon scale armor for a while and he noticed these small differences.

The one thing he did miss were the dragon wings.

But with the {builder's touch} gloves he could find other methods to fly.

"I wonder how much stronger I got."

Wanting to test out his new strength, he raised his leg and barely put any pressure on his leg as he stomped it on the ground.

*BOOOOOOOM*

A large crack formed beneath his feet.

"Huh?" Will was shocked and almost fell. He barely put any strength into his leg and it had that big of an impact?

This gave him an idea.

Will ran over to the trees he had planted long ago for wood.

He hugged one of the trees and…

*CRACK*

The tree in front of him was lifted from its spot including its roots.

"Finally!" Will dropped the tree like it was nothing. He barely used any strength to pull that tree from the ground.

Will didn't mind cutting trees for wood, as he liked to destroy things and it was a great way to relieve stress.

The annoying part was taking out the stumps to plant new trees. But now Will could lift the trees from the ground without having to worry about the stump, and could place new trees.

And just for laughs, Will pulled out 20 more trees for laughs while planting more so he would never run out of wood. He even used some as a substitute for weights, and also swung them around like a bat.

There was just something satisfying about having immense strength like one of his favorite video game characters, Kratos.

Later he returned satisfied while also learning a bit to control his newfound strength. Behind him he dragged a tree leaving a trail behind him, he only did this for fun to abuse his newfound power.

'Now that I remember, the Great Sage gave me that bracelet to increase my strength. If I combine that bracelet with my new dragon armor how much stronger would I be? I don't even know just how strong I become by wearing that bracelet alone. Oh, well, I'll figure it out later.' Will thought.

There were many things he wanted to do but he was tired by now.

Returning to his room, after avoiding the villagers who came to praise him once more for killing the dragons, Will took a long shower.

Will exited the shower wearing comfy clothes. He didn't want to wear his apex dragon armor this time as he was afraid he would accidentally break something while in his sleep with his newfound strength, more specifically Sandra.

Will stopped when he saw Sandra in the room.

"So…" Sandra, who was sitting beside the bed, took a long pause. "I take it this is the 'hobby' you were talking about?"

Will thought for a few seconds before responding, "What?"

"Those golems."

"Oh, yeah."

"I guess that explains how you have so many resources to spare. You know, Will, your abilities remind me so much of… okay, I know this sounds dumb but your abilities are exactly like in minecraft. Right?" Sandra had no idea what else to describe it.

Will stared at Sandra with a blank expression on his face. She was spot on.

Without his mask Sandra could easily read his facial expression.

"You've gotta be kidding me. Am I right? I mean, I know I am but it feels so… I don't wanna say stupid, but more like unbelievable."

Sandra has seen many things that shouldn't be possible. But now her boyfriend has an ability that is nearly identical to minecraft.

"You're not wrong." Will said, no point in hiding it.

"The golems, the ability to build, growing food at an extremely fast rate, growing trees, breeding animals quickly, how did I not see it?" Sandra sat on the bed. It made so much sense now!

"I know, right?" Will wanted to laugh. He didn't get the chance to react like her because he was too busy not dying… again.

"Will, it's like reading a real life minecraft fanfiction but not really, I don't know if that makes sense or not. Man, seriously. I just don't know what to say. You're basically Steve from minecraft. What else can you do?"

She never thought about it because it's a video game, but having abilities from minecraft, or really sandbox games in general is very convenient.

"I can… Sorry, I can't tell you." Will realized that maybe it wasn't best to say.

He does have an ability he didn't feel like telling her, the ability to respawn. So far the only ones who know of his respawn ability are the elves, and perhaps some people who believe in 'rumors' about him that were spread by the elves.

"Why not? This power of yours doesn't let you talk about it to others?" Sandra felt that wasn't the case. If Will had to keep his powers a secret he wouldn't have shown the existence of his Golems, or his other incredible powers.

"No. It's because of the Great Sage's ability to read minds."

"Ohh… so that's why you never told me. I guess it makes sense. The less people who know the better."

Sandra wanted to know more about his abilities, but she also felt that he had a good reason for not telling her.

She has read and seen enough anime and manga to understand Will, and couldn't really blame him for it.

"Sorry. I want to but I feel that this is better."

"No, I understand. I would have done the same, probably… maybe." Sandra said.

"You know, Will, I never said this but your abilities are pretty cool." Sandra smiled at him.

One thing she does know about playing a sandbox game is that everything she sees here, everything Will created was by his own hand and his own hard work. Nothing was given to him apart from the tools used to create everything.

"Thank you."

"Haha, I don't think I will be able to fall asleep after learning of your 'sandbox' abilities. No, that name sounds dumb. Perhaps you can call it crafting… something, I dunno."

"Sandra, why are you so happy? You already knew I had these abilities long before, the only difference was that you now know the existence of my Golems and the fact that my abilities are exactly like minecraft."

"That's why I'm happy for you! I know how much you love that game, along with Terraria. It just makes me happy to see you have an ability you're so familiar with and that you love. It gives you a huge advantage. I really wonder how I didn't see it until now, like seriously, it's been right in front of my eyes this whole time!"

"Well, you're both right and wrong." Will added.

"Huh?"

"When I got these abilities I literally had no idea what to do at first. They are like minecraft but different, like playing a completely different sandbox game on a brand new console. The system gave me no tips or advice on how to use these abilities. I had to find out everything on my own."

"Oh, I did not know… wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute… Did you say 'system' or did I hear wrong?" Sandra almost missed what he said.

"Yeah, I said system."

"Oh… holy crap."

Sandra stood up in shock. She looked out the window as if she was pondering her entire life's existence.

"What?" Will asked.

Will has never read or even heard of a story where a protagonist has a system that aids him like Alex did. Alex did try to show Will anime and other hobbies he enjoyed, but Will never liked them. Alex understood because not everyone has to like the same things as others, just like Alex preferred watching anime instead of video games, and neither forced the other to like their hobbies or interests.

The closest Will got to watching anime was when he liked spoiling endings for certain animes or even Marvel movies that Will enjoyed, as a bit of a prank he believes friends pull on each other. Will has never had a friend before Alex so he had no idea what to do and what not to do.

Of course Alex did not enjoy it when others spoiled endings for him even if it was Will, so he got his revenge by deleting a minecraft server of his. Will never spoiled anything for Alex ever again.

"Sandra, are you okay?" Will got worried. All he said was that he had a system, like a video game system, he didn't know why she was overreacting.

Sandra does remember Will once asked her about a 'system' when they reunited. But Will changed topics and afterwards she had forgotten.

"How did you get this system?" Sandra asked. She needs to know.

"How? Well… all I remember is that I died."

"Died?" Sandra looked skeptical.

"I remember the summoning light blinding me, then I tripped on a can of soda, hit my head pretty hard on my desk or something, then I remember it all turning black for a second like a dream, next thing I knew I woke up in a forest with this system."

"Is your head okay?" Sandra asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Good. But does this system, do you know its creator or… I don't know how else to say it, has it talked to you?"

"A bit. But mostly I've been left on my own and had to figure everything out by myself."

"What did the system tell you?"

Will explained everything he could remember from the system's interactions which wasn't much to begin with.

The parts he could remember is that he was called a 'lab rat' 'he is too slow' 'he wasn't the first one with the system' and other unimportant stuff.

Sandra began asking him strange specific details about his system: did he have an inventory?

Can only he see the system? Did it give him details about things or living beings? Did the system give him weird or items that only he could benefit from? And were some of his abilities that she doesn't know of yet, perhaps too 'unfair' or too 'OP'?

Will was impressed by how spot on she was. Of course he mentioned that he had to work to unlock the inventory function.

By the end Sandra covered her face with both her hands.

"Is there a problem?" Will really had no idea what was wrong with her.

"Will, everything you just said sounds exactly like a plot from a light novel." Sandra said, still finding it difficult to believe.

She started to question whether she was even alive, or if she is just a fictitious work of some poor man who has a vivid imagination, lots of time to spare, loves video games and fiction, and has no friends.

"What's a light novel?" Will asked. If it involves reading, unless it was minecraft lore, he wasn't interested.

"It's basically… I thought Alex had told you about these kinds of things?" Sandra asked. She knows Will didn't like anime like her and Alex did, but he must have read or heard something about a protagonist having a system or being summoned to another world with said system, right?

No, he hasn't even heard of anything like that.

Sandra never questioned about the similar plots she's read where entire classmates are summoned to another world because they don't have systems, and she would have never thought those two things are related because one part is fiction and the other part is reality.

"Nope."

"I'll… tell you later. I'm just gonna shower and just… think."

Sandra closed the bathroom door, leaving Will confused and sitting on the bed.

'The hell was that about?' Will thought.

Sandra pondered about it. And she knew she was alive. She can feel it. She can think, feel, recall memories of her family and friends, taste, love, hate, doubt, but did that still mean that she was alive, inside a type of book or simulator, or have these powers, like Will's system, were always a part of the world but were always hidden?

After what seemed like an eternity of having an depersonlization derealization disorder (DDD), Sandra exited the bathroom.

'Maybe I'm just overthinking and need to rest for a day or two. There is no way my whole life is a lie. It just can't be.'

While in her deep thoughts, she got into her bed, and just noticed Will was soundly asleep next to her. He was waiting for her to finish her shower to comfort her, but she took too long.

Sandra saw his face. She has feelings for him, she loves him, she loves her father, she loves her life despite its ups and downs, but then again what kind of life doesn't have its bumps?

Sandra started to cry. She placed her arm over Will's chest and cuddled next to him as her tears fell on Will's shoulder.

'This is real. I know it is.'