[5 fragmented entities have been detected!]
[Processing…]
Raddan didn't even mind the robot-bitch's incessant shouting this time; he was enjoying himself too much to let it annoy him. Seeing all the little golems gather in front of him like this gave him flashbacks to his glory days.
The things he would do to these guys… the different things he could forge them into once he figured out how their genome sequences worked… it was enough to make him die all over again from excitement.
"Test subjects?" They shouted one after the other, like a confused kindergarten choir.
Raddan stared down at them in slight dissatisfaction. "You keep repeating that. Is mimicry the limit of your intelligence?" he sighed.
It would've been even more exciting if these creatures showed actual 'thinking' capability.
Despite his claims of being a genius, even he would need a little help with experimentation if he wanted to gather significant knowledge without wasting another decade in a lab…a lab he didn't even have yet, for that matter.
"No, it's too early to draw conclusions. After all, you are all on the biological level of infants."
One of the baby golems stumbled towards his legs. "Biocolocal lev-lev!" It shouted proudly.
"Ahh, almost," Raddan sighed. "It seems that even your mimicry isn't perfect."
Another baby golem stumbled forward, this one a glassy black shade, with a slicker, sharper frame than its siblings. "Biological…"
Raddan perked up. One of them was already showing promise.
"...Biological lev-lev," it finished.
He sighed. "Well, I can work with that."
He crouched over to inspect the black golem. Based on its features, he suspected that it had been born from a shard of obsidian. Whether that had anything to do with its slightly higher intelligence would require experimentation to confirm.
"You are the most promising of my test subjects," he said, pointing to the obsidian baby.
"As such, you are now my favourite, and will be the first to receive a name... and likely all of what little love and attention I have to give."
The obsidian golem turned to its siblings. "Love and attention!" It repeated.
"Love and atten-atten" The others shouted back in excitement.
Raddan shook his head. "Not the rest of you."
However, that did nothing to stop their chanting; they didn't seem to understand the concept of rejection just yet. But like any great parent, he would soon teach it to them.
"I dub thee, obsidian 1…" he said grandly, before pausing. "No, that's a little too long for a name, isn't it?" he realised, before another name came to mind. "OB1 for short, then."
"OB1!" The baby golems cheered.
[A fragmented entity has been evaluated and named!]
[Processing…]
[Entity 'OB1' has been added to mineral commune!]
[New mineral: 'Commune Saturate' has been added to Mineral Conversion]
[Invoke mineral name for more details.]
'Commune saturate? That's an odd name for a mineral,' Raddan thought to himself.
As the baby golems continued celebrating their sibling's new name, he decided to investigate.
[Loading information screen....]
───── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ─────
『 Commune Saturate』
[Mineral rarity: Unique]
[Description: Facilitates evolution of named members within mineral commune.]
[Restriction: Mineral Saturate is specific to commune member's mineral make-up. Commune members will always be one evolution level below main host.]
───˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋───
'This talk of evolution intrigues me. I wonder what method this… system plans on using to achieve it,' Raddan thought. After all, back on Earth, it had been one of his fields of interest. Sadly, human science and all its sham scientists had taken simple gene editing and slapped the title of 'evolution' onto it.
Not Raddan, however. Until the day he died in that lab, he never once claimed to have successfully evolved a creature. That honour remained with Mother Nature. A truth that often bothered his genius.
'Perhaps if I see it happen, I may be able to reverse engineer the process and do it myself…'
Just then, he heard a clinking sound coming from below.
"Name?" It was one of the baby golems, grey like a common rock.
"Ah, you. You were the one who failed to say biological level, weren't you?"
The baby golem drooped its head, stepping away from Raddan.
"Ah, so you understand when you've disappointed me?" he asked. "Good. Disappointment is an excellent teacher," he said thoughtfully. "Perhaps there is hope for teaching you, yet."
The baby golem plopped to the ground and opened its mouth wide.
"What… what are you doing?"
An instant later, it let out a loud wail, like a mix between a crying baby and a stone crackling under pressure.
"Stop that right this instant," he warned.
The other baby golems stopped celebrating and turned to their weeping sibling. "Biocolocal?" they whispered, letting out low whimpers as they surrounded the weeping golem.
"No. Don't you dare," Raddan warned.
Sadly, he lacked the experience to know that stern talk was among the best ways to make babies cry even more.
And then it began. The babies wept in unison, rolling on the ground, crying.
Raddan held the side of his head, staring in defeat. He tried to think back on how people would usually stop babies from crying. However, nothing came up; he'd spent much of his life locked in a lab, after all.
'I'm not cut out for this,' he thought. He wanted test subjects and lab assistants, not infants that he had to raise.
'If I leave them here and come back later, will they have grown by then?' he considered. Sure, leaving babies alone would've been a crime back on Earth, but no one was here to judge him. Besides, there were no laws on golem-baby ethics.
'At least my precious, OB1 isn't being a nuisance,' he thought, staring at his favourite. OB1 was munching on a shard of obsidian, watching the situation with a little too much amusement.
"Wait, that's it. Food."
He scanned his immediate surroundings. 'That saturate should be something similar to food for them...' he thought quickly.
'But they have to be named first, drats.'
However, naming wasn't the real issue here. They had to be named and evaluated. And although Raddan had been a scientist in his previous life, his specialisation was bioengineering, not geology.
"Okay, no. The great Raddan will not be defeated by a high-school level geology quiz," he whispered to himself, locking on one of the baby golems.
It had a translucent crystalline appearance, with a patch of purple on its head. He somewhat recalled seeing it before on Earth; however the constant crying made it hard for him to focus.
"Cease your incessant wailing, I can't think!" he shouted in frustration. This led to even louder wails.
Laughter echoed from the group of babies, and Raddan grunted, turning to the source.
"You find this amusing?" he asked. "OB1, you tread on thin ice," he snapped, watching his favorite roll on the ground in laughter.