Chapter 810: Golems and Curses
After leaving the common hall, Adam crossed the schoolyard. Fellow students shared breakfast on wooden benches.
Their debates over the last lesson faded behind him as he entered the adjacent building through the ground floor, climbed the spiralling steps, and was the first to arrive at Diane’s classroom. Through the open door, he saw the same cluster of desks, separated into four sections by a cross-shaped platform. The area he had destroyed during Diane’s challenge bore no marks of their conflict. Only the new cloth covering it gave it away, its dark surface pulsing with a light slightly brighter than the rest.
"Ah, the classroom destroyer." Seated on the platform, Diane chuckled at him. "Did you come up with a new method to blast the building? I’m just kidding, but I wouldn’t have bet on you being first after your premature departure last time. Take your seat. We’ll start in ten minutes."
"I wouldn’t have bet on it either." Adam raised his eyes to the ceiling, sighing. "But I stumbled onto a specific subject in my studies that might require a teacher’s insight."
"Specific, you say?" Diane rested her burned cheek in her palm and leaned closer. "I wonder what."
"Golems," Adam entered to stand in front of her. " Not the miner models. The antique kind that is no longer produced."
Diane stepped down from the platform with a thoughtful "Mhh." She walked to him, tied his loose necktie and smoothed his hair. Then, she nodded. "You look better like that."
He stepped back, rolling his eyes, ruffling his hair, and untying his necktie. "About my question?"
"Golems, yes, yes." She shrugged. "A boring subject on which I have limited expertise. I do remember we once replaced enforcers with weaponised golems. Imagine a lawful force that never tires, never rests, and never stops roaming the streets."
The corner of Adam’s lips curved. "Did it fail?"
"Quite the opposite. They were efficient..." She sighed, her voice growing weary. "So efficient that almost the entire noble district would have ended up in prison for minor crimes we usually ignore. When you can negotiate with humans, golems don’t care about hows or whys. They only follow the protocol engraved in their matrices without judgment or hesitating to use lethal force at the slightest resistance. Dissident factions rose in opposition, and civil war almost broke out. The project turned into a sad fiasco, and we repurposed the golems to simpler tasks like mining."
A thoughtful frown creased Adam’s brow as the story echoed in his mind. Golems only carry their mission with implacable efficiency. Was there something he could exploit there? Unlikely. Unless... he figured the golem’s mission. But what could it be? Neither he nor Desmond saw what it sought to protect. But if he found out, couldn’t he force the construct on the defensive by targeting it?
He shook his head. Early conclusions—baseless and dangerous. He needed more, a real weakness in its working, not abstract possibilities.
"Did my answer give you food for thought?" Diane’s voice cut through his analysis like a blade through silk.
"Thank you." He nodded, then moved to his desk in the left section.
However, the discussion wasn’t over for Diane. "If you understood, give me a practical example of why golems can’t replace humans. Ten points if you’re correct."
Without considering the question for more than a second, he simply replied, "If a man kills another who’s planning to share magical technologies with the population, is he guilty of murder or a loyal citizen? Humans would have dug into his motives, studied the implications, and then delivered judgment. The golem? It would have executed the man the moment he tried to resist the unfair arrest."
"It seems like a personal story," Diane took support on his desk, her eyes locked with his.
He merely shrugged. "Not really. Just heard about someone who once shared his research on enchantment with the rest of the world. His kingdom caught and executed him for treason."
"That’s why your example is so specific yet accurate. You’ve earned your ten points." She sat back on the platform, grinning. "Oh, simple curiosity. What was this man’s name?"
"I doubt you’ll find anything about this minor character." Adam watched his hands for a moment, the mythical hands he inherited from the genius enchanter. "Durgrim."
For a moment, Diane gazed at him. Then she shrugged. "I’ve indeed never heard of him. Alright." She clapped, her attention shifting to the door, where students waited with impatient frowns. "Get to your seats. We’ll resume training where we left off last time, then delve deeper into how we might counter long-range curses."
Pairs of students showed their diligent training under Diane’s watchful eyes. She corrected their mistakes with patient care until her head snapped toward Adam.
"Want another go?" She smirked, and he rolled his eyes.
Though the other students hadn’t spared Adam a word, they had begrudgingly recognised his strength when he almost blasted the building to smoking dust and when he won Haldris’ competition. They shook their pale faces, loud gulps echoing through the room.
Jonathan stepped forward, his ink-stained finger on Brad’s trembling shoulder. "Though it’ll surely be an interesting spectacle, we’d rather continue with the next part of the lesson instead."
Adam waved his hand dismissively. "As he said."
Diane curled her lip in feigned disappointment. "To think I prepared five curses. A pity... Very well. Back to your seats, students."
After they all sat in the right section of the class, she continued with a quizzical tone. "Who can tell me the requirements to cast a long-range curse?"
As usual, Jonathan raised his hand, and she ignored him to interrogate other students first. Only when they all failed did Jonathan answer.
"The caster needs a medium—locks of hair, blood or anything related to his target. This will stabilise the aim but not guarantee its hit. Therefore, he’ll need to perform a ritual with clear chanting in an ancient language that favors curses. Depending on the potency of the affliction, the ritual can take up to several days."
Diane nodded. "That’s what’s scary about curses. A correct ritual will make them unavoidable. The target dies nine times out of ten without knowing what killed it, and even noticing it was a curse doesn’t help trace the caster. Ten points for your perfect answer, Jonathan."
Elliot raised his hand. "Only one survives? Isn’t that too low?"
"Who said one survives?" Diane’s grin turned unsettling. "That’s the one who knows he had been afflicted, struggles for a few hours, then dies all the same. There are no precise records, but I guarantee that anyone beneath the magus rank will die. So, how can you beat the odds?"
A heavy silence fell over the classroom. The earlier academic curiosity had been replaced by a chill, visceral understanding of the threat. Jonathan’s perfectly recited answer now seemed like a death sentence. Brad nervously tucked a stray strand of hair behind his ear, as if suddenly aware that any part of him could be used as a weapon.
Elliot, who had asked the question, looked pale. "So... there’s no defense?"
"I didn’t say that," Diane corrected, her grin softening into a knowing smile. She let the tension hang in the air for a moment longer, ensuring she had every student’s absolute attention. "I said a correct ritual makes it unavoidable. The key to survival, therefore, lies in disrupting the ritual before it is completed. You beat the odds by ensuring the curse is never cast upon you in the first place."
She paced slowly along the cross-shaped platform.
"There are many methods, the most obvious being to interrupt the ritual if you ever learn you’re being targeted. You can either kill the caster or overwhelm his chant with deafening noises. The second method is to protect your homes with wards. Efficient, but can’t block the more powerful curses. At least they’ll weaken them enough to give you a few hours to find out the culprit. The third is what truly interests us—we change the rules."