Rlyis glanced between Lassim, the two elemental companions, and the swirling, darting fish within his mana. "Now how do we mimic this," she mused, her gaze intense, "we’ve tried to program something like this with our advanced construct’s system but we’ve still been unable to get anything close."
She looked to Eno, who was studying the tiny fish as they shimmered within Lassim’s energy. "Perhaps we’re thinking too mechanically," she said, her voice picking up in excitement. "What if… what if intent can be infused through emotion?"
Lassim’s brow furrowed. "Emotion?"
Rlyis nodded. "Yes. It’s not unheard of—there are instances in cultivation where strong emotions can influence the nature of a person’s power. Lassim, have you ever been in a situation where your cultivation power reacted more strongly to the situation you were in because of how intense your feelings were?"
Lassim thought carefully and remembered back to the time when he took Sirium and Lustria on that trio mission where Lustria almost died. Back then, when he had rushed back to the sect with her in his arms, the storm cloud that always appeared with his cultivation grew massive and reacted to his emotions. It covered practically the entire distance from the mission site to the Myriad Spirit Academy. "Yes, I do recall situations like that happening in the past," Lassim stated after remembering those early days.
"What if intent is similar? We could try it out, create a construct while focusing on a single, powerful emotion. Rage or anger, maybe?" Rlyis contemplated.
Eno crossed his arms, "You think a strong emotion alone would carry over to the construct’s behavior? It’s possible…. We haven’t tried that approach yet."
Lassim watched as Rlyis’s gaze turned sharper, "Even if it’s not the answer, we’ll never know unless we try," she said. Her face set on the idea as she turned to the workbench, selecting a blank array plate and a few body materials.
Without hesitation, Rlyis began assembling the core components of a small, simple lightning-based construct. "We’ll start with a basic combat construct, one that will follow attack commands. But I’m going to focus every ounce of emotion I have while I engrave the arrays, pouring that energy in to see if it makes any difference."
Lassim watched along, intrigued despite his skepticism.
He watched as Rlyis carefully prepared the materials. She then closed her eyes briefly, centering herself, and when she opened them again, her expression had darkened with a deep-seated anger, as though recalling a long-buried memory.
She drew a deep, ragged breath, and her hand hovered over the engraving tool. "Rage. Rage. Rage," she murmured, almost as if chanting to herself.
Each stroke she carved into the metal was charged with her concentrated anger. She worked in silence, every line seemingly a little jagged and shaky due to the emotion she was channeling, her face almost set in a scary scowl as she poured herself into the process.
Lassim could feel the tension in the air, the surge of energy that seemed to build with each stroke. Rlyis’s emotion felt almost palpable, a heavy, fiery presence that seemed to sink into the plate with every mark she made.
After some time, Rlyis straightened, stepping back to examine the completed construct. She exhaled sharply, the anger that had filled her expression melting back into her usual calm. "All right," she said, her voice slightly hoarse from the effort. "Let’s activate it and see what happens."
With a nod, Lassim channeled a spark of his mana into the construct, watching as the lines lit up, humming with power. The construct took shape, its form coming to life as it absorbed the energy. Rlyis issued a simple command: "Attack that training dummy."
The construct complied, moving forward in a mechanical, precise motion. It attacked the dummy that stood against the workshop’s wall exactly as expected—swift and effective, but nothing more.
There was no sign of awareness, no extra aggression or independent action. It simply followed the programmed instructions, with no indication that it had absorbed any of Rlyis’s intense emotion.
Rlyis sighed, a hint of disappointment in her eyes as she watched it return to its default stance. "I’d hoped… but maybe emotion alone isn’t enough," she admitted.
Eno gave a sympathetic smile. "It was a good attempt. The idea had merit, but intent might not work that way. It is a higher tiered concept usually reserved for the highest levels of Spirit Warriors, so trying to figure it out early just to bridge the gap of constructs ahead of us in our own cultivation should be challenging. Constructs also still rely so much on the programming in their arrays, and it seems like there wasn’t anything extra to guide it outside those commands with just extra emotion added."
Lassim looked thoughtfully at the construct. "I think Eno’s right. Emotion is powerful, but maybe intent comes from something more specific." He paused, staring at the fish in his mana, then added, "I don’t think it’s that simple."
Rlyis turned to him, curious. "What did you feel back when you fused your elements? Do you remember?"
He cast his thoughts back to the moment he had first fused his elements. Lassim nodded, and she gestured for him to explain.
"I wasn’t focusing on any particular emotion," he said slowly. "It was more like… an idea or a want? I knew I wanted to create something new, something that would help me move forward in my hopes for a new fighting style and attack that suited me. My whole current goal is to find a set of attacks in my own style that I can have and refine to be as powerful as possible."
Rlyis touched her chin thoughtfully. "A want… so instead of an emotion, it was almost like you were envisioning an idea?"
Eno nodded, "That’s interesting. That actually makes sense with our current understanding of intent—it could be less about raw feeling and more about a directed aim, something that’s almost like a wish or a hope."
Rlyis considered this, and a small smile crept over her face as a new idea began to form. "Then, if we’re trying to recreate intent in a construct," she said slowly, "it might not be about feeling something intense while creating it. Instead, maybe it’s about giving it a ’purpose’ from the beginning, like a focused vision of what it should be capable of."
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She looked back at the failed construct on the table and nodded to herself. "Yes… a wish or a hope embedded in the array design to complete it!"
Lassim’s curiosity grew but he still felt it wasn’t the whole concept or would work. "You can try that, but I’m still not sure if it’ll be enough though."
"Well," Rlyis said, her excitement building. "If I engrave this next construct while holding a vision of what I want it to accomplish—then maybe that will influence its behavior. We can only try."
Lassim nodded, watching as Rlyis prepared a new set of materials for another construct attempt.
He could sense that they were getting closer to something significant, but he hoped that this change might hold the key to a breakthrough in the project, despite his misgivings.
Rlyis cleared her workspace of the leftover parts she had used for the emotion construct and then she picked up her engraving tool as she sorted through some ideas.
This time, she approached the task with only one thought in her mind—Guard. If this idea construct could guard instinctively without extra instructions, it might prove this theory.
Lassim and Eno watched quietly as Rlyis began to etch new lines onto the various metal skeleton parts. Some were a mix of different parts from the thick-body construct’s prototypes and some other models Lassim wasn’t familiar with.
Rlyis simply worked with her mind focused on a clear image of what she wanted the construct to accomplish.
After a while, Rlyis set down her tools and took a step back. She looked at the idea construct thoughtfully, then gave Lassim a slight nod.
"Let’s test it," she said simply.
Lassim stepped forward and placed his hand on the plate. With a steady pulse of mana, he activated the construct.
The lines on the construct glowed, its form materializing with a soft hum, and for a moment, Lassim thought he sensed a slight change in the construct’s activation that seemed different from the failed emotion construct.
Rlyis issued the command to the emotion construct she built that was still on standby without doing anything else to the newly built construct or even adjusting any of its parameters, "Attack."
The construct moved forward, striking the idea construct this time instead of the dummy as it had before. There was no added ferocity still to its attack, no hesitation—just pure, clean execution of the command. It returned to its stance, still and awaiting further instructions.
The idea construct completely and utterly failed at any sort of defense. It just stood like a log or a tree and took in the attack. It did nothing to adjust or better absorb the blow or do anything that might suggest it had something like "guard" intent in its personality or makeup.
Rlyis exhaled, her expression a mixture of contemplation and resignation. "Nothing different," she murmured.
Eno, studying the construct, finally broke the silence. "Maybe intent just… isn’t something that can be embedded into arrays this way. It may be that we’re working with tools too limited for what we’re trying to achieve or we have to infuse intent in some sort of other way."
Rlyis crossed her arms, her eyes narrowing as she absorbed his words. "Possibly," she replied, her voice quiet.
She looked down at the two constructs, then back at Lassim’s mana, where the tiny fish still swam, seemingly filled with a unique intent of their own.