Althea poured her seventh glass of coffee for the day. Being a headhunter was a pretty straightforward job. But for a company like Waywood, it was an entirely different thing.

  Aside from recruiting regular employees, they were encouraged to recruit talents that had potential to do great things. Diamonds in the rough. Gold in the stream. But it didn’t end with simply recruiting people. Their achievements would also reflect on the headhunter that recruited them into the company.

  Depending on the achievements of the people they recruited, the top headhunter would get gracious rewards.

  Unfortunately, Althea was far from being the top headhunter at the company. Finding competent people was hard enough, finding someone with outstanding talent was even harder.

  “Oh Althea, clocking in for some overtime?” Marvin leaned against the divider of her cubicle. “I guess you’ll need to if you want to catch up with me,” he said proudly, making Althea glare at him.

  He was the stereotypical asshole of the office. He had slicked back brown hair and eyes. He wore a standard black business suit with a gold tie, and he had a constant obnoxious smirk paired with his arrogant attitude.

  But nobody could deny his talent for recruiting people. Almost every year, he had recruited someone that would eventually become a head researcher. Obviously, someone getting a groundbreaking invention would be better, but that rarely happened, so his achievements always placed him at the top. Giving him plenty of benefits like his own office, while the rest of them were in cubicles.

  It pissed her off since the only noteworthy recruitment she had was Mira who was a great artifact crafter, but still hasn’t produced any outstanding results.

  As Althea continued to glare at Marvin, the chief’s secretary approached them.

  “Althea, the chief is calling for you,” the secretary informed them.

  “Oooh looks like someone is in trouble,” Marvin laughed as he walked away.

  Entering the chief’s office, Althea saw him on his desk behind a mountain of paper work. “Take a seat Althea,” The chief was a man in his late forties. His hair was a combination of black and gray hair, an effect of his age and constant stress.

  She did as she was told, taking the seat on the chair that still gave her a view of the chief through the mountain of paper work. Althea waited a few moments before the chief spoke, but before he did, he placed a piece of paper in front of her.

  “Do you know what that is?” the chief asked.

  Althea took a look at the paper and saw that it was a patent application. The chief placed another piece of paper, this one for an application for a trademark logo. The logo on the paper was a flower that was in the shape of a fan and contained a symmetrical six-lobed flower. The three petals in the outer layer drooped downwards, while the rest bloomed upwards.

  Normally, these two application forms only come together when a new researcher makes an outstanding invention.

  Althea couldn’t think of any reason the chief would be showing her this since the only person she recruited who submitted a personal project application was Mira, who already had her own logo.

  “Lucas Atican. You were the one who recruited him,” the chief mentioned.

  “Ah,” Althea remembered the young man that Leona asked her to recruit into the company to keep him close. Since he didn’t go to a university and barely had a month of experience working at a workshop, he was placed in the low priority candidates to become a lead researcher.

  If she remembered correctly, it was two months ago since she last talked to him. He had called about the video about the incident he was involved in, asking a few questions about the golem magic used. She had forgotten that she had put her name on his file as the recruiter.

  “I wasn’t informed of him applying for a personal project,” Althea said.

  Headhunters were informed whenever the person they recruited applied for funds for their personal project or whenever they received a promotion since their success is tied to their recruiter.

  “He didn’t,” the chief replied. “He completed his personal projects using his merit points alone.”

  “Pardon?” Althea asked in confusion.

  “In the few months he has been employed, he’s earned merit points comparable to someone who was worked here for several years,” the chief actually sounded impressed, then he placed a marble in front of her.

  Althea raised an eyebrow and picked up the marble. Looking closer, she could see a small humanoid figure inside of it. “What’s this Chief?”

  “Its official name is Iris: Infantry,” the chief answered. “Throw it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Throw the marble on the ground.”

  Althea was a bit hesitant, but did as she was told. Throwing the marble on the ground, she watched as it glowed purple before growing in size, forming into an armored humanoid.

  The structure of it was pretty sleek. The plating was a mix of smooth, curved plating and visible mechanical joints, making it look both aerodynamic and armored. What Althea found the most impressive was the inner frame that seemed to be traced with so much mana circuits that it was glowing.

  “Lucas made this?” Althea was in disbelief.

  “I’m more surprised than you to find out an 18-year-old made this,” the chief stood up from his chair. “The material he used is mana steel.”

  “Isn’t that hard to use on golems since you can’t forge them once mana is infused into the steel,” Althea wasn’t an expert on crafting artifacts, but she knew that mana steel wasn’t an ideal material for any artifact with a lot of parts, especially ones with complicated shapes.

  “He doesn’t need to forge it. The golem makes itself as long as the required materials are laid out,” the chief answered. “It seems we’ve derailed from the reason I called you here,” the chief turned to Althea. “I called you here to tell you that you’ll be recognized as the top headhunter this year,” the chief revealed.

  “Really? But aren’t golems like this pretty common?”

  The chief responded by holding out his hand to the golem. Althea watched in confusion to amazement as the golem glowed once again and turned back into a marble that floated into the chief’s hands.

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  “Did I mention that these are customizable?” the chief said with a smile. “Everyone on the board already placed an order for a custom one.”

  Lucas stared blankly at the forest as he sat on a foldable lawn chair, holding up a recorder to his mouth. “Test number 27 for Iris: Percival resulted in failure due to lack of mana infusion into the magic circle... again...”

  Lucas sighed. There was a limit to how much mana a rune can take before overloading, and he was already stretching that limit with the current set up he has now. But even with that, there still wasn’t enough mana to power the magic circle coming from the activation rune.

  Lucas considered having two activation runes, but all it did was split the mana being infused into the magic circle.

  “What else haven’t I tried?” Lucas ran his hand over his face before staring back at the puddle of black tar on the ground.

  While he was thinking, his phone began ringing. Looking at the caller ID, he saw that it was Althea. “Hello Ms. Althea,” answered.

  “Lucas, congratulations on your new patent,” Althea said through the phone. “I heard the members of the board are already placing orders for custom golems.”

  Lucas listened to Althea talk with confusion on his face. “I’m sorry Ms. Althea, but I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Your patent for Iris: Infantry. It was approved and is already a success. Thanks to you, I suddenly became the top headhunter of the year.”

  “... you mean my patent for a golem that used old golem magic circles?”

  “... yes,” by Althea’s tone, it seemed she realized what was actually going on.

  A moment later, both of them began laughing. It seemed that magic progressed so far that people overlook the potential applications of older magic formulas.

  “To be fair, the magic circle you use is hard to replicate,” Althea mentioned and Lucas resisted the urge to tell her that the magic circle he used came from a monster lord.

  “Thank you.”

  “By the way. Why didn’t you apply for financial support on your personal project?” Althea asked.

  “Ah... I didn’t want... to do a... presentation,” Lucas admitted.

  Althea laughed again, while Lucas sat there in embarrassment.

  Jasmine watched through the window of her room as the raid team returned from their mission to conquer a dungeon. A three-week long mission that she should have been part of if she didn’t act out and caused herself to get removed from the line up.

  Jasmine knew that the only person she could blame was herself, and even if she wanted to be angry at the guy who was the cause of her problems, she knew that he did nothing wrong. The blame was entirely on her, commander Michael made that abundantly clear.

  The sound of her door opening caught her attention, and Alliah slumped down on her bed with an annoyed expression, something she rarely saw in her friend’s face.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Jasmine asked.

  “My allowance this week was cut,” Alliah stated.

  Alliah was known as the elf princess since she was the sole daughter of a great household that carried the bloodline of elves. Which meant she had a weekly allowance big enough to feed a whole town for a whole day.

  “Why? I don’t remember you doing anything stupid recently?”

  Alliah gave Jasmine the side-eye before snickering. “This is going to piss you off,” Alliah began and Jasmine already didn’t like where this is going. “There’s a new golem line that came out recently.”

  “Iris,” Jasmine said, recalling seeing the golem line in the mage network. “The one from Waywood, but the identity of the manufacturer is confidential.”

  “Yeah. My family made an order for a customized golem.”

  “Of the Iris: Infantry?”

  Alliah shook her head. “A personally customized one to represent the family since the material that would be used is Yggdrasil’s branches.”

  Jasmine whistled in amazement. The Yggdrasil they were referring to wasn’t exactly the world tree, but a tree cultivated using elven magic, so it was the closest thing. Having someone entrusted by Alliah’s family to make something out of its branches was a great honor that could potentially be remembered in history.

  “Then why did they cut your allowance? To cover the cost of the commission?”

  Alliah cringed and shook her head. “It was because the commission was denied.”

  “Seriously? Is that crafter stupid or something?”

  “Apparently the reason for denying the commission was because the crafter wanted nothing to do with... me,” Alliah revealed, and before Jasmine could say something. “... and you.”

  “Huh? What?” Jasmine looked at Alliah with a dumbfounded expression before realization hit her. “You don’t mean...”

  Alliah slowly nodded.

  Jasmine punched a hole through her wall.

  After the fiftieth failure to make Percival’s golem, Lucas focused on mana cultivation. Using the mana cultivation he received from commander Michael, Lucas meditated for five hours every morning and three hours before going to bed. He was also trying to figure out a way to do mana cultivation while sleeping since his progress was quite slow.

  “You look oddly tired and rejuvenated at the same time,” Jared commented as he saw Lucas laying on the floor of the workshop.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Lucas responded.

  “Still working on mana cultivation huh,” Jared took a seat on one of the workbenches and began working on his own personal project, an automated storage device.

  “Yeah...”

  “I wish I could help, but all of us barely managed to form one circle,” Jared stated. “And I have no idea how I did it.”

  “Heard that one before,” Lucas replied.

  “And I heard you’re raking in money and merit points recently,” Jared mentioned. “Congratulations on your first successful patent.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think it’ll last long.”

  “It’s big money at the start, but you still get a good amount after the wave dies down,” Jared said as he pried open a can of paint. “That’s what happened with my first patent.”

  Lucas would often get a bulk order for the standard mana steel Iris: Infantry from either the military or rich households, along with occasional customized version from wealthy clients. Waywood would handle the transaction and background check on the customers to prevent any misuse of his golems.

  Lucas also handed out a very customized versions as gifts. Like the Iris: Shield Infantry that was equipped with a runic shield that disperses kinetic energy and magic power upon impact. Three of these versions was gifted to his mother. While another version, the Iris: Assault Infantry that wielded a runic gun that fired compressed mana bullets. It comes with two settings, a deter and lethal setting with the difference being the lethal option fired mana bullets that had centrifugal force to increase their penetration. One of each of these versions were gifted to Althea and Meridith, the nice clerk that worked at the Merit point exchange center.

  Lucas also wanted to give his three office mates a golem, but they told him to wait until they finished their own personal projects, so they could work on a custom golem together.

  But despite everything that he accomplished, Lucas still hadn’t figured out a way to make Percival’s golem work.

  “This is getting annoying,” Lucas grumbled.

  “This is your 81st try and you’re only getting frustrated now?” Jared commented. “If people had patience like yours, the world would be a better place.”

  “The main issue always involves lacking mana, but the rune can’t handle too much and adding more runes scatters the mana,” Lucas explained the issue.

  Jared raised an eyebrow. “Then get a stronger rune. You’re fucking rich now buddy. You don’t have to stick to low quality materials,” Jared pointed to the pool of tar at the corner of the workshop. “You’re fucking using the rarest material in the world.”

  “Technically it’s abundant, just hard to find,” Lucas corrected and Jared just gave him a flat look. “But point taken.”

  For a moment, Lucas wondered why he hasn’t considered using higher grade materials, but the answer became fairly obvious. Jared already mentioned it, he had money now, but he didn’t before.

  After a quick trip to the market and the exchange center, Lucas was heading back to the forest along with a barrel of tar.

  “Time for the moment of truth,” Lucas infused mana into the rune and tossed it into the air.

  The tar in the barrel were pulled in by the disc and some even began coming out of the ground. It began to swirl around the disc with such force that a tornado was starting to form.

  Lucas would have been blown away had he not summoned a golem to hold him down. The tornado didn’t last long as the swirling tar merged into the disc and an explosion of magic power erupted, sending Lucas and his golem flying back.

  Percival stood before him, staring him down with his glowing purple eyes.

  “Took you earlier than I expected.”