Out to Mine Rocks

Kyros was startled at Calaminus's deduction.

"What do you mean by this?" Kyros asked.

"It's like this... Have you ever considered what it's like to be a god? To see things differently? To have powers that you don't understand? Why do you think the first Nephilims that were born died immediately? It was precise because of that! You have such great power, power to shake the universe itself, and if you were left to be born by yourself with all your powers, you could destroy this universe, or just like those kids, kill themselves!"

"Then this temple is teaching me how to be a Nephilim and is allowing me to slowly and mortally understand my powers?"

"Exactly!"

"Then my previous life of suffering was intended. It taught me to be a mortal first..." Kyros realized it.

"Yes. That's the point! The temple is a manifestation of your soul! No wonder the Temple Core was so powerful! It turned out, someone took a huge chunk of your soul and programmed it to be the temple! Your powers of creation, the manifestation of energy, and so on are being handled by the temple and are slowly being unlocked to you! That's why you were able to program your soul using those Programming Languages! Normal people can't program their souls like that! And if they did, they'd mess up because they would code it incorrectly!"

"Code it incorrectly? There is such a thing?"

Calaminus looked at Kyros and wanted to slap him. But Kyros was right. Kyros had yet to make any mistake in his codes. If Calaminus tried to do that, he'd probably get various syntax errors.

"Bruh..." Calaminus ended up uttering Kyros's insane INT stat.

"Anyway, I get it now. That answers a lot of mysteries. For now, it seems that I just have to slowly learn about this temple and understand who I am." Kyros then held out his hand and brought out the Basic Earth Core from his inventory.

He also summoned the Shadow Familiar and the Shadow Ghouls. And finally, Kyros held the Earth Core, and then a small bright glow of bright brown enveloped the Earth Core.

Two figures emerged from the ground below. It was as tall as an adult man but shorter than the golems he fought, and Kyros couldn't help but look at the stats of the creature.

---

Soil Golem

Using the Earth Core, a semi-sentient and weak Golem is summoned to do the bidding of its summoner.

Strength- 85

Magic- 0

Dexterity- 47

Vitality- 85

---

"Weaker than those Clay golems but strong enough to harvest ores and do the heavy lifting! Nice!" Kyros smiled.

"I wonder if I can upgrade the Earth core the more Stonic Creatures I kill?" Kyros wondered.

Kyros then began to move, and his summoned beings also went their ways. Kyros kept looking at the markers. The Shadow Familiar was sent to search and detect any enemies that wandered nearby. The Shadow Ghouls began to move towards some of the markers to pick up the small rocks and dig some up using their paper-like claws.

The Golems moved towards the places where a large concentration was discovered. Kyros knew that it was an ore field and ordered the Golems to begin harvesting.

Kyros was seated near the entrance as he concentrated on commanding the numerous summons.

[Eyes of the Supreme General skill acquired.]

[Micro-Management skill acquired.]

The notification popped up, which caused Calaminus to be amazed.

"Woah. Eyes of the Supreme General is the skill that only the best mortal Generals have! With that, they get a mental image of the battlefield for a certain range. To think you have this naturally!" Calaminus explained.

"But what is Micro-Management?" Calaminus wondered.

All of a sudden, the vision that Calaminus saw through Kyros changed. He no longer saw the sight of what Kyros was supposed to see. But he saw a large black screen which displayed Kyros, the golems, and his shadow ghouls.

"Woah. You've turned your view to become a real-time strategy game!" Calaminus was shocked.

"Oh? This became a skill?" Kyros smiled.

"What did you do?"

"I was trying to look for a convenient way to control multiple summonses and realized that this was the best way. I believe your other incarnation called it RTS games?"

"Yes. Real-Time strategy. That means you can command yourself, right?" Calaminus asked.

"I don't know." Kyros focused and selected himself on this large screen.

Kyros appeared, and several strange icons appeared. The skills of his items and his own skill Pronto appeared on the side which he could select. He tried to control himself through the skin, and his body moved automatically.

"Very interesting." Kyros was amazed and began to explore the functions.

Through the large screen, Kyros was able to control the actions of his summons and himself. It allowed him to set commands such as mining and picking up stones. Most of what Kyros could see on this screen were pitch black. There were parts of the map that had a black overlay, and he could see the terrain and the tunnel but couldn't see what exactly was happening over there.

"Your vision is interesting. It uses a fog of war that is common in RTS games. Those are the black areas that are unexplored. The slightly darkened areas are explored areas, but of course, you don't know what exactly is happening to those areas."

"I get it." Kyros did more experiments.

When the Golems of the Shadow Familiar would move near these black areas, the area would slowly reveal itself. If his golems or the Shadow Familiar could move, he could clearly see behind the darkness. But when the Shadow Ghouls would move, Kyros could only see a strange outline that didn't even reveal the terrain.

"I need to strengthen my link with these ghouls of mine." Kyros sighed.

As for himself, Kyros has been controlling it to move and pick up the small rocks nearby. He had borrowed a small bag from the warriors and was using it to fill the bags. But as Kyros was able to see everything at once, he was able to make and issue quick commands for the creatures to bring small stones back.

"This is... amazing. This is far more superior to the Eyes of the Supreme General. They would only have a form of mental picture of this, but you can actually see everything! If you have a way to link with your army just as you do with these summons of yours, your military prowess will practically go through the roof!"

"Good. I need it with the coming wars." Kyros smiled. He then turned to focus on controlling his summons.

The summons began to work. The golems mined while the Shadow Familiars and the Shadow Ghouls were picking up the rocks that they could find.

Suddenly, a notification appeared in Kyros's vision.

[Lifeforms within 500 meters from the temple detected.]

"Oh? The temple can do this? Interesting. I wonder if there is a way to make my body do the same thing..." Kyros began to move and used one of the abilities of the Cloak of Darkness.

Darkness covered Kyros as he activated the skill [Dark Cloak].

Kyros then moved towards the direction where the humans were.

A group of mercenaries could be seen.

"Humans? Well, it's about time. Looking at this, this should be some hired scouts to look for the Uncle Aron since he disappeared for more than a few days." Kyros mused. He exited his view as he commanded the Shadow Ghouls to return to prepare to attack the humans.

At Kyros's orders, one Shadow Ghouls began to attack and wound the humans. The humans tried using various means to attack the shadow ghoul, but they found no attacks or magic could damage these creatures.

"Ah! Kill it!" The mercenaries tried to slice the dark, paper-like creature only to have their attacks pass through.

"I can't hit it! It's passing through!" One mercenary that specialized in hand-to-hand combat tried punching it, but his fists passed through.

"Hmm. You need Haki to use it." Kyros smiled as he activated Dark Wielder, which coated his arm with a shiny dark-purple color.

"Wait... What am I saying?" Kyros frowned.

The mercenaries couldn't attack the shadow ghoul. Although Kyros was controlling the Shadow Ghoul to not kill the humans, it did do some severe wounds on the humans. Kyros even allowed the shadows to slash away the bags of these humans to obtain their loot.

Soon, the wounded group began to retreat as the Kyros allowed the remaining shadow ghouls to attack and harass the humans.

With the entrance well-guarded, Kyros continued his loud mining activities. Hours and hours passed, and the group was able to send most of the rocks and place them right at the closed door leading to the temple.

After four hours since Kyros left the group, he began to move further towards the unexplored area of the mountain. He found an underground river and rejoiced.

"Finally. I can take a bath! I guess I should lead my Uncle here tomorrow before I meet with my father. I have to make a good impression." Kyros smiled.

As he moved deeper into the depths of the tunnels, Kyros discovered that while the temple could only mark objects within two kilometers of where it was, anything within fifteen meters from where Kyros would be marked. And even if Kyros managed to move away from the area, the markers remain.

"I guess these markers save the locations in the darkened area of the map, but if I move away from it, the markers remain. I'm guessing these markers mark the last known location of the items, so if the items were moved, it wouldn't be reflected..." Kyros analyzed his capabilities.

Soon, Kyros had a large pile of stones in the area, and finally, it was time to go back. It had been six hours since Kyros began his work.

Kyros tried to see if he can see what was going on in the temple area. The vision changed, and Kyros could see and even hear the actions of Aron and the mercenaries who kept training inside the temple.

"The loud training should mask the sliding sounds of these rocks. Good." Kyros smiled. He held on to the bags that he managed to steal from the mercenaries and readied his entrance.

Kyros opened the temple, and the temple immediately detected the rocks that slid down to the entrance.