Chapter 180: What’s in the box?

“What’s that?”

“Looks like some high-quality spirit, something the dwarves probably value more than we do.”

“Just place it on that side then…”

At the city lord’s estate Arthur and his maid, Mary were going through the gifts sent to them by the various people in the city. This was a known custom of the land so it was something they expected. Most of the gifts arrived a few days ago but the one that Arthur was mostly interested in was brought in the day before.

“Precious gems, valuable elixirs, and costly alcohol, I’m not sure that I like this painting too much though, at least they tried…”

Mary was organizing the gifts by their worth. Some of them were slightly in bad taste, like a large painting of Arthur’s father. The person that decided on it probably didn’t think that the father-son relationship wasn’t as bad.

Then there were some costly items, the merchants and dwarves did show off their wealth. While the bottle of alcohol might have seemed like a bad gift, it would probably fetch the largest price at the auction house. It was quite the rare delicious concoction that a lot of people would pay many gold coins for.

“I’m not sure what that person from the adventurer’s guild is thinking though.”

Mary looked down to Arthur’s hands in which he was holding a letter. This was the only thing they received from the adventurers guild. While the gifts here weren’t all that special, they were still adequate.

“They know their position, not like I can run the biggest business out of the city.”

Arthur just shrugged as the adventurers guild was somewhat at a different scale than the others. While he could use his name to bully the others, he would not be able to do the same with the adventurers guild. Their monopoly on everything dungeon-related was widespread throughout the entire kingdom.

Even the high nobles had to keep an eye out for the guild masters. But this didn’t mean that they had to bow down to the common adventurer, those were still nothing more than convenient workers to them.

“They could have at least sent a gift basket instead!”

Mary pouted while grabbing the last box, it was somewhat heavy but not for someone that was a tier 2 class holder. It was a regular wooden box that was nailed shut from the top. This was not a problem for Mary, she just slipped her slender fingers into the small gap at the top and quickly pried it open while the nails remained stuck to the wood.

“Oh my, this looks… interesting.”

The maid reached into the box while Arthur looked from the side. The interesting look that his retainer was showing didn’t come out often so he was somewhat intrigued. Soon the content was revealed to be some strange metallic contraption with six legs that looked like a spider.

“Is that a golem?”

“It does look like one my lord but I haven’t seen this type before…”

While golems were considered rare they could be spotted here and there. Most people when they heard the name, an image of a monster popped into their heads. They were usually large hulks in dungeons that were of a more humanoid shape. They had a reputation for being a tough cookie to crack, even more, if their golem core was not exposed.

“It’s not working?”

Mary placed the strange-looking contraption that was supposed to be a golem down on the ground but it didn’t move. Neither she or Arthur knew anything about runic golems, at most they saw some at the auction houses or ones in the banks used for protection.

“Wait, there is something in the box my lord!”

The maid reached into the box that was filled out with straw and pulled out a small booklet. This reminded her of the time she was at the Runic Emporium, there too were instruction manuals for some of the wares being sold. Just as she had suspected the instruction pointed to something.

“Look at this lord Arthur, we are supposed to use something called the ‘Remote control”

“Oh, interesting…”

Arthur was handed the instruction manual while Mary went digging for this remote control object. She stuck her head right in and after some searching, she found a smaller paper box inside this large wooden one. This wasn’t all as inside this paper box besides the remote she found a small cylinder with some glowing liquid.

“I don’t understand, what are we supposed to do with this lord Arthur?”

She asked while looking at the young man but instead of getting a reply, there was silence. When turning she noticed that her lord was busy reading the instruction manual with quite the sparkle in his eyes. This was not something that she expected to see, the young lord that she knew rarely showed this expression, only when around his mother did he ever drop his guard like this.

“I see now, this shouldn’t be difficult, could you hand me that box, Mary.”

Arthur quickly got to work on the contraption after going through the instruction manual. While he worked Mary was handed the small booklet. There were detailed drawings of everything that was included in this box along with the golem, the first thing that Arthur needed to do was place the container with the glowing liquid into the golem.

It was a bit strange for the noble Lord to be the one assembling this golem but he did look happy. There was a small screwdriver that he had to use, it opened up a small latch on the side into which he could stick the canister in. From the manual, he knew that in this canister there was mana fluid to power the golem. The design was quite simple and it would be just as simple to refill it with a new one.

This was the power source without which the golem could not function. After connecting this part and closing the latch most of the work was done. What was left now was to use the remote control. Arthur injected a little bit of mana into it and the moment he did he could see some small runes starting to glow.

There was a large red button at the right-most corner of this rectangular-looking item. When he pressed it, the golem was activated. The small eye that was at the front started glowing and the legs followed soon after. Mary moved to her lord’s side, as this was still a golem, it could very well be some kind of trap.

“Lord Arthur, be careful, we don’t know what this golem is, it could…”

“What? Do you think someone would be stupid enough to assassinate the new lord of Albrook?”

Arthur laughed as he didn’t think that he had enough worth for anyone to go after his head. No one would gain anything but the ire of the Valerian household by causing him harm. He knew that his family would be forced to send in some powerful knights to look into this matter if he ever died. For the perpetrator, this would be a nightmare as they would chase them down for daring to soil their perfect family name.

While he was chuckling his battle maid retainer saw things differently as she placed herself between her master and the spider droid. When activated the legs pushed the body off the ground and quickly turned toward Arthur.

“Calm down Mary, the instruction said that when activated the golem would ‘interface’ with whoever was holding this remote control, it would then imprint onto their mana signature.”

Mary was somewhat confused by the explanation but Arthur was knowledgeable enough to know what this meant. This remote was something similar to a control rod, but instead of having to constantly hold it, he only needed to go through the procedure once. After that, the golem was supposed to react to some voiced commands.

This was made apparent after the golem quickly went into standby mode. Its eye that was glowing green turned blue and it curled up its legs. Now it looked like some kind of sleeping spider that was ready to pounce on someone.

“The instruction said that there were some existing ‘runic programs’ but I’m not sure what that means…”

Before Arthur could press another button from the remote Mary interrupted him instead.

“Lord Arthur, wouldn’t it be better if we did this outside… I don’t think we need to be this close to the golem…”

Arthur gave out a sigh but nodded, his lady retainer was still afraid that this magical contraption could explode or something. Even if it wasn’t made to hurt the new owner, it didn’t mean that it was safe to be around it.

Mana fluid was quite known to be volatile as it was concentrated mana in liquid form. If handled without care it could be overloaded to cause a large explosion. Thus both of them and the guards that were standing watch outside relocated to the courtyard. There the servants witnessed the strange spider droid performing some tricks.

The remote control didn’t really have that many buttons but when Arthur clicked one, the droid started dancing around. Then another one made it perform a backflip which was quite surprising for a golem. These magical creations were not known for their agility, already seeing one this small was quite surprising.

This continued for about an hour until Arthur finally