“Fan!” Colby yelled. He dove his hands into the salty brine, pulling out the fan Core Construct from hopefully not his watery grave.

  “Fan! Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

  Tiny noodle-like limbs sprouted from the plastic support. Weakly, he signed, “I’m a-okay. But it looks like the others weren’t my biggest fans. I think I’m all washed up."

  Cheesecuzzi sprouted noodle-like limbs of her own, smacking her face.

  “Will you live? Are you damaged?” Colby asked, ignoring the disrespect from the hot tub.

  “I am just tired. I require rest.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, I’m The Fantastic Cheese Fan.”

  Colby chuckled. So that’s what it was like to be on the receiving end of that line. It seemed like Fan would live. But who knows how long he had been submerged within Cheesecuzzi? And when his hands plunged into the hot tub, the brine was ice cold, as if she hadn’t switched on the heater.

  He’d have a word with all of them later, but first, he had to look after Fan. He placed the soaking wet Core Construct on Stove, right next to one of his burners. A puff of flame erupted, annoyed about the dripping wet mess on him.

  “Not now!” Colby snapped.

  He grabbed a dial and twisted it like he wanted to rip it off. “Keep the flames on until Fan’s dry. Or else.”

  Stove didn’t object. A constant stream of fire shot out from all three of his burners, heating up the area around Fan and draining Colby’s Mana.

  “As for all of you,” Colby said.

  He turned around to face the mobile Core Constructs, only to find them missing.

  He did not have the patience for this. Colby stomped up to Smart Waiter and forcefully pulled down his hatch. Inside, the delivery system held out his signs, obstructing whatever lay behind them. No matter how hard he tried to peer past, all Colby saw was the extremely unhelpful and frankly annoying message, “Nothing to see here.”

  “I am not in the mood, Smart Waiter. Put down your signs. Now.”

  Sheepishly, the Core Construct lowered his two signs, revealing the mobile Core Constructs tucked away within the metal confines. Their backs faced him, hoping that the classic, ‘If I can’t see him, he can’t see me’ trick would work.

  It did not.

  Colby reached inside and pulled out the mobile Core Constructs. He brought them close to his chest, hugging them tight as they squirmed in his grasp. When he placed them down on Stove they became still as Core Constructs with zero personalities. Their backs still faced him, pretending that they hadn’t noticed him yet.

  Colby folded his arms and cleared his throat.

  No reaction.

  A hot puff of air escaped his nostrils as he walked around Stove. As he did, the Core Constructs slowly rotated such that their backs were always facing him. When he moved the other way, trying to catch them off guard, they, too, turned the other way.

  This was beyond annoying.

  Colby ducked, sneakily waddling around Stove before they realized what he was doing. He popped back up with his arms crossed. This time, he glared down at their faces, not their backs.

  “Who would like to explain what’s going on?”

  Noodle-like limbs immediately snapped towards Cheese Bowl.

  The glass bowl looked at what he thought were supposed to be his brother-in-arms—sister-in-arms in Temp-tation’s case. He threw his arms up in outraged betrayal, only to sheepishly lower them when Colby leaned in close.

  “So, Cheese Bowl. Care to explain why I found The Fantastic Cheese Fan submerged inside of Cheesecuzzi?”

  “No?”

  “I’m not asking. I’m telling.”

  Limbs trembling at a rate that would make Cheese Press jealous, Cheese Bowl signed, “He just wouldn’t shut up. It was just bad pun after bad pun after bad pun. Even after the cheese was dried, he just kept on going. We couldn’t take it anymore, okay?”

  “That’s it?” Colby raised his voice. “That’s why you did it?”

  The mobile Core Constructs meekly nodded, eyes lowered, not daring to glance up at him.

  “That is a horrible excuse, and I am disappointed in you all. You’re lucky that Fan’s still functional. If I catch any of you doing something like this again, I will not hesitate to subject you to the worst torture imaginable.”

  “You’re going to deconstruct us?” Cheese-lander asked.

  Colby shook his head. “Even worse. Now apologize to Fan.”

  They raised their heads and turned towards Fan. He was still soaked with a puddle of brine formed around his base, even though Stove was shooting flames out at his maximum output. Following Curd-Cutter’s lead, they all bowed and apologized in unison.

  Fan glanced over at Pottingham as dripping noodle-like limbs signed, “A-pot-logy accepted.”

  “See!” Pottingham yelled, turning towards Colby. “This is what I mean.”

  Fan turned his attention to Temp-tation. “Sorry, it was too tempting.”

  “See!” Temp-tation yelled, throwing her hands up at Colby.

  Then Fan’s eyes blew over Cheese-lander. “Looks like I need to start filtering my words.”

  “See!” Cheese-lander yelled. This time, all of the mobile Core Constructs threw up their limbs in unison.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Okay, I get what you’re saying. It still doesn’t give you the right to drown a fellow Core Construct.”

  They lowered their hands and looked down at their legs, slowly rubbing them. “We know, but we were desperate.”

  “Again, it still doesn’t excuse you. And Fan, maybe tone it down with the puns unless there’s cheese to dry.”

  “Sure thing, boss.” He looked over at Curd-Cutter. “I’ll cut it out.”

  “See!” Curd-Cutter sang.

  “I don’t care!” Colby yelled.

  All of his Core Constructs flinched, even Smart Waiter, Stove, Cheesecuzzi, and The Cheesetastic Fridge. As for Cheese Press, he was shaking at light speed right now. He couldn’t remember the last time he had yelled at his Core Constructs, not even Stove—the most troublesome Core Construct.

  “I don’t want anything like this happening again. I want all of you to stay here and make it up to Fan. Then once he’s dry, you will bring him over to Cheesecuzzi so that she can apologize. Got it?”

  All of the Core Constructs vigorously nodded. They rushed forward, surrounding Fan, giving him pats along his base, blades, and body.

  While they learned to play nice, Colby diverted his attention to something that would hopefully help calm him down: creating an aging Core Construct.

  He grabbed the dried wheels of Gouda and brought them down to the cave-cellar mix, placing them on the pine wood rack.

  As he looked at the cheese, Colby parsed through whatever knowledge his parents—mostly his father—had blessed him with.

  When it came to making an aging Core Construct, there were two options: speed up the aging process or reduce the aging time. Though similar, they were actually vastly different ideologies.

  Here’s how Colby understood it.

  Assume there was a man jogging around a track. Speeding up the aging process meant that the man shifted from a jog to a full-on sprint. With more potent intent, he’d no longer be running; it would be like riding a horse around the track. He still covered the same amount of ground, but at a much faster rate.

  As for reducing aging time, rather than running faster, the man would cut across the track through a shortcut. Though simple in principle, it was actually the more complicated method. If the man were caught cheating, he’d be disqualified, rendering the aging moot. Plus, the more complex the cheese, the longer the track and more requirements needed—like having to pass through a certain number of checkpoints in a specific order.

  His parents had opted to master the first option: speeding up the aging process.

  And apparently, they had multiple dedicated Core Constructs just to age cheese. That was how much effort was required to reach their level of craft.

  His mother used ‘torture’ to coerce the cheese to age faster. As for his father… Well, he hadn't disclosed his method.

  At least not his current method.

  Apparently, near the beginning of their cheesemaking careers, his parents had taken ‘speeding up the aging process’ quite literally. Through methods unknown to him, they attempted to literally speed up the aging process through essentially localized chronomancy—or time travel for short.

  It was a massive failure. The Mana required to operate such a Core Construct was enormous, let alone the intent necessary to create such a uniquely powerful Core Construct. He wouldn’t be surprised if even the top Arcanist struggled with such a concept.

  Thus, they abandoned the idea. Instead of forcing time to move at an accelerated rate, they chose to accelerate the processes behind aging cheese.

  There were multiple processes happening at the same time, but perhaps focusing on the two major ones would be a good starting point.

  The little workers that his father had mentioned were essentially microbes—teeny-tiny little organisms, and enzymes that broke down the cheese and transformed it into yummy, tasty bits.

  And naturally, over time, the cheese would also lose moisture through evaporation, concentrating the flavor and transforming the cheese’s structure, essentially making it tougher.

  So how could he encourage these processes to work faster?

  An incentive program? Like a four or even three-day work week instead of five—if they even understood the concept of weeks?

  What about a performance bonus depending on how fast and well they work? A work-from-home option? Flexible work week?

  None of those ideas seemed very microbe, enzyme, or moisture friendly.

  Did he have to be friendly? He could always travel down the same route as his mother, becoming an evil cheese queen.

  They had to work all day, every day. Rest was a privilege, not a right. If they slowed down by 1%, a whip would… whip them?

  This was hard. Being evil was not in his blood—unless it was, but it just hadn’t been awakened yet.

  Technically, he could form a Core Construct and channel the intent to speed up the aging time, and let it take on whatever form it deemed most suitable, but that was too random.

  What if he gave that time machine idea a shot? Somehow it seemed easier than being a slavemaster. It was just speeding up time. How hard could it be?

  If he had a clock and manually rotated the hand, it would technically speed up time. A bad idea now that he put in a second of thought into it. For cheeses aged in the timespan of years, he’d have to sit there, manually twirling the clock thousands upon thousands of times. That’s not even mentioning how it might affect his whole Core instead of that localized area of cheese.

  Plus, it’s not like aging cheese meant that you left it in a room for months, then came back to delicious perfection.

  It was like caring for a newborn child. You had to regularly flip and turn the cheese, and for some types, even brush it down with special ingredients.

  That meant he had to turn the clock, stop, walk over to care for the cheese, then repeat until how many times it took until it was considered aged. That didn’t even factor in the Mana consumption or how it might cause his whole Core to age, not just the cheese.

  This was harder than he thought.

  Should he pursue the time travel Core Construct or something similar to his parents?

  Logically, it was whatever his parents were doing.

  But think about it. How could he surpass them if he always followed in their footsteps? And the best way to surpass them would be to accomplish what they could never achieve.

  A time machine for aging cheese!

  The clock idea was a bust. So, what other ways were there to tell time?

  A watch? That was just a hand clock. Sun dial? That was just a sun-powered clock that worked half the time. Hourglass? Sand clock. Candle? Fire clock.

  This was getting him nowhere.

  Maybe he should focus on the ways to show the passage of time.

  Colby walked around the cave-cellar mix, searching for inspiration. All he found was an ego boost at his first successful Core Expansion. The place was beautiful, though he couldn’t have done it alone.

  It was thanks to his father’s scrapbook that he had managed to make such a detailed expansion.

  Scrapbook?

  That might work.

  His parents had made one for him and his little sister, Brie. It was filled with page after page of photographs, capturing moments as they changed and grew.

  The scrapbook offered a glimpse into the past. But if he flipped it around, it’d offer him a glimpse into the future.

  It was a bit unorthodox and definitely a stretch, but it just might work. And if it didn’t…

  Colby turned around, making sure that none of his Core Constructs were here. He knew how to get rid of evidence better than them.

  Bending down, Colby placed a hand on the rocky terrain, which melted into a pearlescent goo that stretched and snapped to his hand when he stood back up. Below, the area where he had torn a piece of his Core returned to that natural rocky stature.

  Colby began molding the goo, channeling intent through it. A scrapbook. One that documented cheese as it aged. Not just any scrapbook, a scrapbook that would allow him to glimpse into the future. A scrapbook that allowed him to manipulate time itself in a localized area.

  Imbuing it with as much intent as physically possible, Colby took a step back. The shiny goo faded, revealing an upside-down, brown paperback book.

  Paper limbs sprouted out as he waved hello.

  Odd. He didn’t remember giving it a personality. The minor details were a problem for future him. Let’s test this Core Construct out.

  Colby grabbed the book and walked over to a wheel of cheese. As he focused on it, words appeared on the cover. They were upside down, but tilting his head, they read, “Moments of Gouda.”

  That was something. He didn’t know what it was, but it was definitely something.

  Colby opened the scrapbook to the very first page. On it was a photo of the wheel of Gouda that he was looking at, with today’s date. The page next to it lacked any photographs, but it did feature tomorrow’s date.

  Did the Core Construct fail? Did he actually just make a regular scrapbook rather than one that could jump through time?

  All of a sudden, a photograph of the wheel of Gouda materialized. It looked almost identical to the one on the first page. Before Colby could take a closer look, a huge surge of Mana entered the scrapbook.

  It was just like when he made the Core Expander Construct. All of his Mana, even though he had a larger capacity with a Tier 1 Core, was drained, eaten up by the scrapbook.

  To the untrained eye, the Gouda looked the same, but now that he had gotten a closer look, comparing it with the two images on the scrapbook, Colby was certain. The Gouda had been aged by one day.

  While amazing, it was too risky. All of the Mana in his Core just to progress a single piece of cheese by one day? It wasn’t worth it.

  How much Mana would it take if the cheese required to be aged for years? And that was just for a single piece of cheese. How much Mana would be consumed if he wanted batches of cheese?

  The time-travelling idea wasn’t worth it now that he had tested it out for himself. No wonder his parents had abandoned it. It pained him, but this was how everyone improved their craft. They prototype a Core Construct, and if it doesn’t meet their needs, they deconstruct it.

  “Sorry, little one,” Colby said.

  Before he could get rid of his new friend, the mobile Core Constructs barrelled down the ladder and into the cave-cellar mix. They had experienced the large drain of Mana and wanted to know what in Gouda’s name had Colby done.