Free Web NovelChapter 232: Chapter 202: New Demon Vision Channel
"Do Golems need to eat?"
Zog asked Furin, watching in confusion as the Agumon devoured steamed buns.
"Theoretically, no."
"Then what is it doing? That’s my lunch!" Zog pointed at the Agumon, tattling to its creator.
"You’re the one who wrote in its monster profile that it likes to eat."
"Is this really about its profile? Shouldn’t the real question be where the food is going?"
"Oh, that’s a little design feature I added. I figured its stomach was empty anyway, so why not use it for storage? I carved a preservation Rune inside. A lot of Mages use Golems to store things," Furin explained with a straight face.
"Oh, for storage, huh? Storage..."
Zog thought the function was actually quite convenient. ’Wait a minute, how do you get things out?’
He scanned the Agumon, his gaze unconsciously drifting downward.
"You didn’t go crazy and give it an excretory system, did you?"
"What kind of twisted idea is that? Of course not! It doesn’t even digest!"
Furin couldn’t comprehend Zog’s train of thought.
"Then how does it get the stored things out?"
"It spits them out, of course."
"That’s not much better, is it?"
"Doesn’t your Treasure Chest Monster spit things out too?" Furin felt Zog was being a ridiculously hypocritical Dragon.
’A Dragon who gets everything by having a Treasure Chest Monster vomit it out has no right to be disgusted by her Agumon.’
"Besides, Agumon is way cuter than the Treasure Chest Monster!" Furin pointed to the Treasure Chest Monster in the corner of the room, which looked completely innocent.
It was strange. The Treasure Chest Monster didn’t even have a face, just a mouth, yet it still managed to look innocent.
It had even gotten to the point where a niche, but not insignificant, fan group for the Treasure Chest Monster had formed on the forums.
"My Treasure Chest Monster doesn’t store food, though!" Zog was appalled. ’How can you compare storing food to storing other items?’ "Spitting out food is just disgusting!"
"Look at you, pretending to be so picky. When you were a hatchling, fresh from the shell, didn’t you have to eat meat your mother chewed for you? At least Agumon doesn’t chew it."
"This feature has to be removed from the final version," Zog declared, rescuing the rest of his lunch from Agumon’s mouth.
Furin looked very disappointed.
Compared to its counterpart in the animation, this current Agumon was still far behind in terms of abilities.
It couldn’t actually talk, only play a fixed voice pack that included classic lines from the animation and recordings made by the player, though the number of recordings was limited.
The device used for recording was, of course, the Digital Monster Machine.
Its intelligence wasn’t high either—probably on par with a smarter breed of dog. Even so, it could execute far more commands than a traditional Golem and could even learn new ones. The commands a normal Golem understood were all pre-written during its creation, which was very rigid.
As for the evolution that had left Zog completely stunned, it wasn’t a real transformation. The Golem’s functions weren’t that advanced yet.
It was simply an Illusion. They couldn’t very well create a real Battle Tyrannosaurus Golem. Even without any Skills, its sheer size would make it incredibly dangerous.
They were making toys, not weapons.
But seeing an Agumon that could run, move, spit little fireballs, and play with him already made Zog very happy.
Designing the entrance to the Digital World as a home game console... what kid could possibly resist that?
"How long would it take an Ordinary Mage to create a Golem like this?" Zog asked.
He specifically emphasized "Ordinary Mage," since a normal person could never match Furin’s efficiency.
"An Ordinary Mage... would probably need ten to fifteen days," Furin replied after thinking for a moment.
"What if each person was only responsible for making one part of it?"
Zog was, of course, thinking of turning Golem production into an assembly line.
"That’s not very feasible. Parts made by different Mages might reject each other when combined."
"Hmm, then we’ll have to go the high-end, custom-order route."
Running too many product lines at once, production capacity would always be an issue.
But that was fine. The price of a Digital Monster Golem was never going to be for the mass market anyway. Slapping a "custom-made" label on it would better suit the tastes of the nobility.
The product for mass sales would have to be the Digital Monster Machine, which would perfectly fill the market gap as the popularity of Yo-Yos and spinning tops began to wane.
The Magical Device version of the Tyrannosaurus Machine displayed everything in full-color animation, a far better effect than the original’s black-and-white pixel blocks.
The production process presented no difficulties. The Zog Group was already well-versed in making this type of product.
"So now we just have to wait for the animated show to premiere, and then we can start a full-scale product rollout."
As for the animated show, Zog chose to either outsource it or acquire a new team.
This was because Zog’s main animation powerhouse was still fully committed to the Tom and Jerry project, so the Digital Monster animation had to be contracted out to an external team.
Ever since Tom and Jerry became an overnight sensation, many artists who were interested in animation as a medium had begun their own experiments, producing quite a few works.
There was still a huge gap compared to Tom and Jerry; after all, every second of that show was made by burning through cash, and these emerging small teams couldn’t possibly afford such costs.
But the animations they produced were decent enough to watch. The themes were mostly absurdist comedies with animal protagonists, traditional stories, or manga adaptations.
No matter the world, anime and comics were always inseparable.
Their skill level should be sufficient to produce *Digital Monster Adventure*.
Even though an episode was over twenty minutes long, producing ten episodes combined probably wasn’t as much trouble as a single episode of Tom and Jerry.
First of all, the frame rate was much lower. To save on costs, many animations would hold a single drawing for two frames, or use two drawings across three frames.
