It was one thing after the next when it came to money. Every copper penny I got went towards growing the farm and my levels. Each little bit brings me closer and closer to pulling my cash flow from negative to positive. That process was now building a house outside the town walls.

  The neighbors were sick of Tems howling at night, and the best solution they came up with was for us to move away from everyone else. Most of the time, the farmer would be much farther away from the town or vilge they supplied. That’s what made them such delicious bandit bait. I was given enough time to build another one-by-one room, but that put more things into perspective.

  I absolutely needed defenses now. I thought of the strawmen golem as a stopgap until I could build something better but right now I had nothing protecting me from having my throat slit in my sleep. That moved up the process of making the straw golem a bit. Tems worked with some of the other vilgers who pitched in to help build the new home, as I gathered the supplies to make the golem.

  It had also been long enough for my grape seeds to get delivered, but they got delivered into the town over. Thankfully, more than one person heads there on business every few days, so I just gave my purchase slip and the money to buy the seeds for me, and could stay in the vilge. The cores I had to build around all had something wrong with them. All of the cores in my head were perfectly shaped, like a spherical ball or an eight-sided diamond.

  The ones for sale were all misshapen things too small to function, but that’s the problem with thinking out of the box. I had to choose which I thought would be best at moving wicker around. I decided on the least lumpy core, which happened to be one of the smallest. I needed blood, which was the easiest thing to secure for the ritual. I also needed the body and a gold piece. Once again, I was reminded this was experimental and could be a giant waste of money.

  The process had taken up about the same time as a half dozen people took to make a house from scratch. First, I made the golem's body from corn husks, but I ran out, so I needed to supplement with anything I could get my hands on. Weeds, any wicker baskets I could buy for cheap, and straw for stuffing his chest cavity. The truth was that animating a golem was just a ritualistic version of animating an object. The core would function as the brain of the creature, while the gold piece with my name carved in it, pced in his mouth, would function as the power source.

  The difference in prices was needing both a bigger and more perfect core and more gold as a power source. The cheapest instinctive recipe taught to me required a gold ball about the size of five gold coins to be the power source. That, plus an actually useful monster core, and you could see why the price dramatically rose. The core I got was a throwaway one, not even worth using on anything other than grinding to dust for a weak enchant. There were no enchanters in the vilge, so one of the vilgers made a trip when they gathered up a bunch to sell at once.

  I scratched out the ritual with a stick around the golem before pouring in the monster's blood. Someone managed to bring back a monsterized boar, which is where the blood came from. Making sure everything was done perfectly, I scratched out a star before turning it into a sun symbol and moved another symbol an inch or two over. I decided it was finally good enough.

  I poured my mana into the ritual, and the animation magic spun to life. The golem had no visible signs that it worked even after the ritual had shut down. The moment of truth came when I issued my first command. We had already determined his name as well. “Hunk, move one step forward.” The golem did as I commanded, as his leg went out and began to crumple under his own weight.

  Shit! SHIT SHIT SHIT! I rushed over and began to reinforce his body as he kept moving and tearing it apart. I said fuck the original design and reinforced it with some sticks. It wouldn’t be as heavy as an actual wood golem because you use full heavy logs to make it. My golem was slimmer and taller than most. It makes him almost appear human at a gnce, where you could definitely tell a wood or stone golem from anything else.

  Spending the rest of the day just going through a list of different commands, I finally get a good routine so he won't trample crops id out for him. It was impossible to test his fighting style, but I needed something even a child could understand. Running at the enemy with your spear pointed in their direction was the simplest strategy I could devise.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as my golem was finally built. The next day, right as we moved everything out to the new home, I heard a guard yell from behind me. “Goblins! We got goblins coming in!” A hundred goblins came running towards my field, and I just panicked. A call was made to get the mayor, but I wasn’t paying attention to it. I could only see the giant goblin slowly walking towards my field.

  At that moment, I think I suffered my first panic attack. My heart races as I see the creatures for what they truly are. A bunch of pests. Like the bugs I got on my hands and knees to kill or the rats and other vermin, my mind didn’t go to running this time. My mind went to protecting my field. Before I could issue a heads-up, the golem rushed towards them. The goblins were obviously scared by the giant creature, and a few began to run away.

  The hectic battle of guards killing goblins who tried to pick pnts and run away only hit its peak when the giant goblin, maybe a hobgoblin, finally entered the battle. The female beastwoman(whose name I learned was Silk) cshed with him, but it was clear he was stronger by at least a tier. His frown turned into a smirk as I heard the very broken words come from his mouth. “Pretty! Me beats you and mates you okay. Then me’s takes the goods foods. Me sorry if not hold back.”

  All of us shuddered at his words as I saw Silk falter for the first time. It was another strike that knocked her weapon out of her hands and possibly her defeat when my golem, who hadn’t done much of anything, barreled into him. The golem might have been fifty pounds altogether, even with a spear pointed at the boss goblin, there was no possible way for him to deal damage. It was enough to distract him from the blow as Silk took advantage of his opening.

  Grabbing the weapon from the ground, the moment he turned back towards her, he got an eyeful of a sword. The goblin reeled backward from his injury as he defensively swung his weapon. Even now, I don’t think Silk could take him, but she didn’t have to. We bought enough time for the mayor to show up. Like a lightning bolt, he showed up on the battlefield, sprinting at the biggest one.

  A spear thrown off-handedly struck a goblin going for a distracted guard as he closed the distance in a second and cleaved into the fat goblin. His monster core was exposed to the world. The body crumpled to the ground, and I noticed a few things. The brief gnces of the mayor when he wasn’t in the forest or at his house didn’t do his heroic, handsome visage any justice.

  At least six feet six inches tall, the mayor/sheriff held a dramatic pose as most of the goblins began to flee. The next thing I noticed was the core that was exposed. It was perfect, that core would be worth four gold minimum. It made the core in my golem look like dogshit as it was the only thing I could focus on. The final thing I noticed was the injured guardsmen and my trampled field.

  I couldn’t help but begin to cry. I was sixteen after all, and it felt like all my hard work was undone in a matter of days. How the fuck was a farmer supposed to grow crops when shit like this happened in the first few months they started? Even though I felt like I could recover, most of the field was wiped out. At the very least, I wouldn’t have any cash flow coming in from anything above ground.

  The mayor gave me a little smile as if to say I did well before he motioned for Tems, Silk, and me to follow him.