Chapter 81: Chapter 80 – Battle golem

Noah and Tessa came out of the bedroom dressed in the elegant attires. Tessa wore a magnificent dress worthy to be envied off even by the royalty and Noah wore a costume that made him look like a true high noble master. The fabric felt very comfy and was light as a feather, however what impressed him the most, is how well it fit him, making him marvel at the mastery of the weaver skills that Tessa had. He gazed at her thinking how fantastic she was and as if reading his mind she felt elation, kissing him strongly on the lips.

"And this is not even the best I can do." She said after a kiss.

"You are amazing." Whispered Noah.

"Let's go." Said Tessa grabbing his forearm with a smile full of pleasure and walking down to the dining room.

"So, how did you meet dryads?" Asked Tessa while they walked.

"I ruined the forest they lived in and they tried to kill me for it." Answered Noah making Tessa hiss. 

"Peace dear, this was already settled. No need to dwell on it anymore." Said Noah, placing his hand on hers.

"Can they be trusted?" Asked Tessa softly.

"I don't know. If they wanted to attack they could have done that by surprise instead of revealing themselves. However, there was no need to send them to me as a punishment. Clearly Dryad Queen has some agenda she wishes to accomplish by doing that." Reasoned Noah.

"Alright. I will analyze it. Give me all the information on the event later, dear." Said Tessa coming over to the dining room's doors.  Before Noah could stretch his hand to open it, the doors opened themselves and a maid stood at the side beckoning them inside.

Tessa and Noah entered the room with Tessa not letting go of his hand and slightly tightening her hold on him, clearly ready to pull him away at any moment.

A huge wooden table that Tessa has not used for ages stood clean and sparkling with a white tablecloth over it. Two sets of plates and cutlery were placed at the two opposite sides of the table from both heads of it.

"We will sit together." Said Tessa looking at the maid. And Dahlia bowed without a word a moment later plates moved to one side of the table. Noah and Tessa raised their eyebrows looking at each other and then sat at the place prepared for them.

"Thank you." She said as they were sitting down. "However, using such a big table with just us is too much. My daughters and I are used to using the table in the small room near the kitchen."

"My apology, Madam, I did not know and was afraid to offend you by setting that table instead. I will be setting the table in the small room from now on, unless you have guests."

"Yes, that would be good. Thank you." Said Noah.

A moment later the door to the room opened again and two more maids entered the room with dishes. They put the trays covered with lid in front of Noah and Tessa, opening them and then bowed, wishing for a good meal.

"Umm girls. We did not get acquainted yet as I remember." Said Noah.

"My apology, My Lord. We had the order a bit backward because of our late arrival." Said Dahlia. "Let me introduce my sisters. This is Zinnia." She said and one of the maids that brought dishes bowed. "And this is Aster." She said next and another maid bowed. 

All three of them looked very similar, letting no doubt that they were sisters.

"Master. Would it be alright to discuss some matters while you dine?" Asked Dahlia.

"Yes of course." Said Noah.

"We have noticed that the mansion is in quite a dilapidated state. We didn't start the cleaning immediately as we were afraid to disturb you at night. We would like to ask for permission to go around and see the amount of work that needs to be done."

Noah looked at Tessa questioningly and Tessa placed her hand on his, bowing slightly and then turned to the maids.

"There are places I don't want you to get close to." Said Tessa. "I will show you around later." Dahlia and her sisters bowed.

"Yes, madam, we are aware of your important duty and have noticed the places that have barriers. We will not get close to these places without your permission. Also we shall not enter your office and workshop  without your permission as well. If you want us to clean there please give a separate order.

"Yes. That's good."

"Madam?" Asked Aster lifting her head. "We also would like to ask for permission to take care of the garden. The state it is in is very disturbing for us as Dryads."

"Yeah sure." Said Tessa.

"Umm. Wait. Girls I was thinking of using it as a sort of exercise for my friend."

"Your friend, master?" Asked Dahlia.

Noah waved his hand and the puppet appeared in the room, making the girls raise their brows questioningly. However they got surprised the next moment when it started to move.

"This is my companion. You are already acquainted with him. Last time you saw him, he was in the body of a wolf."

"This is that wolf, sir?" Asked Zinnia. Maids walked around it, looking over it with interest.

"Yes. As you can see he is not used to bipedal walking yet and can't use his hands well. I was thinking of using gardening and carpentry as a sort of exercise for him."

"I see." Said Dahlia with a thoughtful look, watching the puppet.

"Please leave it to us." Said Zinnia with sparkling eyes.

"Um" nodded Aster.

"Alright. Thank you." Said Noah.

"Let's go!" Said Zinnia, grabbing the puppets hand and beckoning it to walk with her. "We need to dress you! There are some old clothes in some rooms"

"Wait Zinnia!" Said Dahlia startled.

"It's ok. We don't need any of those old servants' clothes anyway. Also I will take care of your clothes later. As I see you all wear the clothes left by my old servants as well. I will remake them for you. Also if you need any other clothes in the future you can turn to me." Said Tessa.

Aster, Zinnia and Dahlia turned to look at her.

"Really?" Aske Zinnia.

"...." Aster just peered at Tessa silently with a look full of sparkles in her eyes.

"Madam. We can't ask you that. Arachna weaved cloth is one of the most valuable materials…" Said Dahlia.

"It's alright." Said Tessa. "You have to look presentable if you are going to serve here. And it will be a nice occupation to kill boredom. I have not weaved for anyone except my daughters for ages. I am looking forward to finally starting to make clothes for Noah and you."

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"Thank you!" Said the girls, bowing deeply.

Puppet looked around and then tried to bow as well but fell forward hitting the floor with its head.

Girls immediately lifted him up with snickers.

"My apology, My Lord. We will be more careful with him." Said Dahlia bowing.

"Oh you don't need to worry. I made its body….quite sturdy." Said Tessa with a strange look on her face making Noah raise an eyebrow looking at her questioningly.

/Come to think about it./ Thought Noah. /It's a stronger companion skill. So the puppet should be stronger than me? He doesn't really look like it./

*I feel it is strange too.* Said system. *There is something not adding up. From all the puppets only this one actually gave us a reaction.*

"Let's eat, let's eat." Said Tessa seeing Noah's strange look.

*****

After breakfast Noah and Tessa stood at the terrace leading to the garden with warm blankets on their shoulders while drinking tea and watching Zinnia and Aster laughing and teaching puppet dressed in butler-like clothes to hold garden tools.

"This cold, " Said Noah, sipping his tea. "I noticed it when I came out of the shed. It doesn't look like it's just cold weather."

"It's an after effect from amalgamation of a high amount of pure evil energy in the area." Answered Tessa. "We can't seal the pseudo core entirely as it will start to wean. But as long as it's not sealed entirely, the portion of evil energy I nurture it with, will always slowly dissipate into the surroundings."

"You produce this energy, but you do not exude any coldness." Said Noah

"Only weak and dumb monsters would exude it all the time. More or less sentient monsters would learn to control and hide it. But even then the feeling would not be the same even if I exuded it. The reason it's like that here is because when I abandoned my duties, the pseudo core degraded back to its initial state letting off all energy that was stored in it over decades. All that energy permitted the surrounding nature and polluted it."

"It is alright, Madam." Said Dahlia standing at a side from them. "With us here the surroundings will be purified soon."

Tessa nodded in acknowledgement.

"I loved this garden." Muttered Tessa softly looking at the evil looking plants and weeds that covered it like a blanket with a sad look on her face.

"No no! Look, do it like that." Said Zinnia showing the puppet how to properly use big scissors for branch cutting. "See. You chop like that. And cut off all these dry branches."

"Cut…off?" Asked the voice from the puppet.

"Yes. All nasty looking thingies full of evil energy in them. They are enemies of the nature"

"Evil…enemy….destroy?" Asked puppet

"Yes. Destroy all that harms the garden and exude that bad vibe." Said Zinnia.

"Zinnia, he doesn't understand you. Explain it well." Said Aster.

"Destroy confirmed!" Said Pupped suddenly and dropped scissors to the ground. 

"Hey what are….." Said Zinnia, seeing that puppet dropped the scissors, but stopped after seeing something strange happening to its hands. Small compartments all over its hands suddenly opened and a huge amount of mana started to emit from them

Then the puppet stretched its hands forward.

*WHOOP *WHOOP. Two flashes shoot out of its hands with two loud noises and then everything in front of it pulverized with two loud explosions throwing debris all over the place

*Pfuuu. Spit out his tea Noah

"Bwahaha." Laughed Tessa aloud. "I knew it! He really can use all the abilities of a battle golem!"

"What the hell?" Asked Noah.

"Well you see, I made it for Bri when she was studying how to use puppeteering in battle. So I decided to open her eyes on what it can truly do and went overboard with it a bit. Bri actually could not use it well with her mana amount so, she just used it as a reference material."

"So what the hell is this thing?"

"Battle golem…well puppet to be sure. Golems have a slight intelligence and can move on their own. My puppets lacked these functions as they were made to be manipulated with puppeteering. But it has magic core and mana weapons as a proper automated battle golem would. It's a weapon in other words."

"Madam. Battle golems are forbidden in the kingdom."

"I know." Said Tessa rolling her eyes. "Because their programs were easily reset by demons and they were turned against humanity that thought of fighting with them in the last demon war, mass producing them like crazy. But in the end had to fight an army not only demons but also their own golems. As I said it has no intelligence added to it. So it can't be used against us. Without puppeteering skill it's useless. Was useless"

"But it is sentient." Said Dahlia.

"Yeah, only because Noah inserted his companion inside it."

"You could have said it had such abilities." Said Noah rolling his eyes.

"I did not know for sure that it'd be able to use them. As I said. I made it as a puppet. Battle golems have an intricate circuit inside similar to the nervous system that connects its body with its brain. But that puppet only has a circuit connecting to the power core to gain energy. All abilities would have to be triggered through the puppeteering threads." Explained Tessa.

"I see. So the companion is using abilities despite not having that control circuit?"

"Yeah. Which is amazing. How does it do that?" Asked Tessa. "Can I take him apart?"

"I would rather not." Said Noah.

"Then you have to hide him properly from Bri. She will definitely want to take him apart." Said Tessa smiling.

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