The boy was screaming and crying, while trying to hide behind Elita with her orc disguise active. She looked very uncomfortable to be in this situation. Shea squatted next to the boy and tried to calm him down while I backed away with Cyclone. I tried to keep our hands up to show we weren’t a threat but I don’t know if it worked or not. Once out of sight, I had Cyclone transform into motorcycle mode and climbed into Carnivac. I put Cyclone into [Inventory] so I could pull him out immediately if needed, and headed back to the camp.

Shea had gotten the boy calmed down enough to drink some potion and eat a little food. His name was Matthias but people called him Matty, and he was six. She couldn’t get much more out of him though. When she brought up how he got in the kiln, he just started crying again and wanting his father. Then he got mad and shoved Shea back and ran off towards the village. We all followed after him, but he stopped as soon as he got past where the border barrier would be and looked around.

Everything was still and quiet now that the Blink Birds had run off. There were still a lot of bodies around though, and several of them had been chewed on. Matty had stopped his crying and just looked around in shock.

Elita calmly slid up next to me and whispered “If you can get that barrier back up, you might want to do so for Matty and Shea”.

I listened but couldn’t hear anything yet, but I trusted Elita, so I headed to the fountain. I [Inspect]ed the device attached to it and could figure out the basics of how it worked. I could pump some mana into it to get it going again but I’d need one of the tokens from the villagers. As luck would have it, there was a body nearby so I quickly searched it to find a stone token on a string around its neck. I pulled off the token and put it into the fitted slot on the device. A little mana and...

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Oh for the love of Mike! Maybe I needed the token from the village chief, I hoped it hadn’t wandered off with the Blink Birds. I got up and ran to the house of the village chief but on the way I could hear loud hissing and the crunching of branches coming from the woods. Elita was right, something was on the way, drawn in by the smell of all these dead bodies. She’d be on guard but she could use a hand so I jumped out of Carnivac and pulled Cyclone out of storage to go back her up. I would feel bad if Matty got scared but I couldn’t worry about that right now. As my proxy shells rushed to the side of the village closest to the forest where the sounds were coming from, I worked on searching the house for the previous owner.

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The hissing got louder, and from the gloom of the forest a long forked tongue flicked into the sunlight. A lizard the size of a bus emerged from the trees, flicking the air with its tongue and looking around warily. It reminded me of a monitor lizard on steroids and covered in black and gray stone scales. I wasn’t confident we would be able to take this thing. Magic wise we had lightning, shadow, and water; I wouldn’t imagine that any of those are particularly useful against stone. Thankfully it didn’t seem particularly fast... or maybe it just wasn’t particularly motivated. Most wild animals will prefer an easy meal over having to hunt and chase something down so if this thing came looking for dead things then it would be best if we could just stay out of its way. We gave it a wide berth and kept ourselves between it and our soft, meaty friends.

“I found him!” I yelled to no one, as I spotted the village chief’s body; or at least the top half of it. The Blink Birds had done a pretty decent number on this guy and honestly there wasn’t much left. The important thing, the token, wasn’t around his neck though! Did it fall off somewhere? Why wouldn’t the chief have his token on him, you’d think he wouldn’t want it to leave his side. Then it hit me. Primus, I’m an idiot. The bodyguard might have it. I pulled the bodyguard body out of [Inventory], I actually remembered seeing a weird compartment on this guy but didn’t think much of it at the time. The thing acted like a mobile safe that was keyed to the chief’s mana. How was I supposed to get into this thing now that both the key and the lock were dead?

My proxy shells were staying out of the way of the lizard but I could hear more noise coming from the woods. It sounded like more were on their way so we cautiously withdrew from the village and back to Shea’s camp area. Shea put her barrier back up around them, they should be safe for now. I had Cyclone carefully come back into the village and meet up with me at the chief’s house. I really didn’t want to do this but I didn’t have much choice. I climbed into Cyclone and laid the bodyguard out in front of me. The safe box was located in the upper chest, just above the soul core housing. A Spark Chamber, maybe? So would this mana enriched liquid around the soul core be “Innermost Energon”? I was getting side-tracked— not the time. So this case, just above the Spark Chamber was the safe. I’d lost a lot of time already, bodyguard-kun better have that token on him or I didn’t know what I’d do.

There was no time for precision so I deployed an arm blade and punched it down into the bodyguard’s chest case. The new blade I’d installed in my main body’s arm wouldn’t have been strong enough under my own power, but Cyclone was several orders stronger than me and did the trick. The blade punched through the safe case pretty easily and then out the other side. Crap. More to repair to get this working again, but now wasn’t the time to worry about that. I twisted the blade a bit to pry open the hole till I could get my fingers inside. As I tried to rip the safe open, I ended up completely ripping the case out of the chest. I should have just done that to start with... ah well.

Once open, I dumped the contents out on the ground. Some money, folded documents, a picture of a woman and a little girl, here we go! The token! Everything went back into [Inventory] and I transformed to race through the village back to the fountain. Blocking my way, though, was the lizard. Crap! This brute was happily munching on some bodies though and didn’t seem particularly interested in my shiny, metal, aft. I took a detour around him and raced on, the fountain was in sight.

I had just enough time to spot something coming in fast from my side view before it slammed into me, knocking me silly. I transformed when I hit the ground and came up rolling into the side of a building. I shook my head a bit to clear the daze and saw a wyvern shaking its head. Clearly it wasn’t expecting me to be solid metal. I glanced up and saw several more wyverns circling above. Just one of them was a pain before, I wasn’t looking forward to this.