God of Zero Cost

Ethan stepped over a ridge of cracked limestone and dropped his heavy linen travel pack against a smooth, shaded boulder at the edge of the wadi floor.

He didn’t hesitate. He unbuckled the leather straps of his Medjay jerkin, pulled the clean linen ranger tunic over his head, and set them carefully on top of the pack, out of reach of the dirt.

He reached into the base of the pack and pulled out a stiff, dark wrap of cracked leather: his tattered, heavily caked Yotzer apron. He shook it out, knotted the rough flax cords tightly around his waist. Grabbing his bronze trowel, he stepped bare-headed and bare-footed directly into the cold, dense mud of the drying stream bed.

He stood at the center, staring down at the glowing quest prompt on his interface.

Ethan read the first line again, his palm trembled as he helm his bronze trowel. Prove his Oman craftsmanship.

If he wanted to advance his class, he couldn't just slap together a loose pile of dirt. He needed to pour all his skill into the golem. He needed to build the absolute strongest, sturdiest human golem he could possibly muster. I can't skimp out on the details, I need to shape the best possible golem I've ever made in the game. Something even better than the Mk II.5. A true Magnum Opus.

His eyes drifted down to the second verse. To shape out of the ground—the Adama—an Adam...

The relation between the soil and the man was clear enough. But then his gaze lingered on the next word: בְּצַלְמוֹ (be-tzalmo). In his own image.

Ethan stopped. He let out a slow breath, looking around the empty, sun-baked canyon loop. My own image. What did the game consider to be his true likeness? A boy from the Chinatown slumps? A university dropout? A gamer? A potter or a Medjay?

He walked a few paces away to a stagnant, shallow puddle trapped between two grey river stones. He dropped to his knees on the damp clay, leaning over the water. The surface ripples settled, casting back a reflection under the harsh glare of the sun.

An Asian man's face stared back at him.

Ethan traced the image with his eyes. The deep, heavy dark circles beneath his eyes had visibly fading. His jawline was sharper, and his shoulders looked broader and tighter than he remembered. The strict routine of his real-world bodyweight workouts and the healthy nutrious food he was finally able to afford were showing up in the game.

His mind drifted to the final word of the poem: יֵאָבֵק (Ye'ebaq — wrestling).

Ethan paused at the word. He knew grappling from his Judo days in school. Grip fighting. Weight distribution. Balance and leverage. Those were the key fundamentals that unlock devastating throws and leg reaps. But what does it mean in the game?

He pulled down his Linguistic Genesis Engine, scrolling back to the B-Q tab where the characters ב (Bet) and ק (Qof) were logged.

Two words, so similar that only differed by one letter.

Ethan tapped on Extension 03.

Ethan narrowed his eyes. He pictured two men locked in a brutal close-quarters struggle, their feet digging violently into the earth, stomping on the topsoil until a thick cloud of fine dust (אָבָק Abaq) billowed up around them. They wrestled in the dirt until their bodies were completely caked in it, their individual shapes blurring into the very ground they fought upon.

"Huh. A mud man that looks like me, raising dust clouds as he struggles and rolls around in the dirt," Ethan mused.

Memories of Judo Newaza came flooding back to him. Of the four ways to win in Judo, only one was by a devastating throw to the ground. The remaining three were pins, chokes and joint lock submissions. The domain of Judo Newaza.

"Let's do this."

Ethan dropped to his knees, using his palm and his bronze trowel to claw through the sand and iron-rich mud. The cool, dense silt squished thickly between his bare toes as he shifted his stance. His passive [Structural Analysis] activated as his manual extraction speed scaled up.

He worked like an old-world artisan, using the heels of his hands to forcefully compress the wet clay, kneading out every air pocket to ensure the mass was perfectly solid. His lower back throbbed with a deep, continuous ache from repeatedly bending over to hoist massive, dripping armfuls of mud out of the trench, but he didn't slow down.

As his trowel began to carve out the rough curves of the chest and torso, Ethan stopped his hands hovering over the wet clay face. I could make its shoulders wider. I could give it a straighter nose. But if I make it perfect, is it still me? Or am I creating the person I wish I was?

He shook his head, clearing his mind of the vanity. He stood up, walking back and forth between the shallow puddle and his work, comparing the proportions line by line. The brief walks gave some relief to his aching lower back, letting him stretch his spine and roll his shoulders between building the arms and the lower leg columns. He deliberately packed the clay thighs thick, anchoring the base like a pair of solid stone pillars.

By the fifth hour, Ethan stepped back, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps.

He was completely covered in the work. Wet red clay was caked up to his elbows, and his bare chest and apron were covered in a thick layer of fine, white Abaq dust that had risen from the dry sand during his long hours of digging.

He looked up, and his movement froze.

The construct standing before him was terrifyingly uncanny. A sudden, cold sense of dread lingered in the air as he stepped around the base.

He was looking directly at a perfect, mirror image of himself—the exact same height, the exact same shoulder width, the exact same face.

But it didn't breathe. It didn't blink. It was just a silent, massive shell of cold red earth staring into the canyon walls.

Ethan swallowed the lump in his throat. He dipped his right index finger into a fresh puddle of wet silt, stepped up to the blank clay forehead of his creation, and carefully traced three characters from right to left: אֱמֶת (Emet — Truth/Life).

The final sweeping stroke of the ת (Tav) sank into the clay.

The wet clay around the word dried instantly, turning stone-hard. A low, hollow tremor vibrated from the center of the construct's chest, and the heavy mud fingers of the Adam gave a sudden, violent twitch.