With the help of Shrapnel I managed to get my limbs reconnected much faster than my natural repair systems would have handled it. I didn’t have much time but whatever it was that Elita was up to I now had a ton of new materials and even some processed materials to work with. I still hadn’t seen her since she went out to go kill something but all the evidence of her work kept showing up in my [Inventory].

I even found some Automata parts showing up. I really hoped that she wasn’t out murdering people to get me parts. I appreciated the thought, but... No, I was sure that she just happened to find them somewhere. Don’t ask questions that you don’t want the answers to, right?

Alfred and Rom were still at least ten hours away, assuming that Moora passing Lana was the closer moon passing the farther one sometime in the night.

I pulled parts and materials from my [Inventory] and started laying them out in a rough order as I sketched out ideas. I wanted to get my CloudBurst armor repaired and improved, but I wasn’t confident now that it would be useful if we were involved in a large scale battle.

I also wanted to build a motorcycle based armor named LandMine but that might have to wait. Instead of basically making toys for myself, maybe I needed to actually think about weapons. I really didn’t like the idea. Sure I had some ideas for ways to absolutely destroy organics but unless I wanted to declare war on the country then I needed to find another answer.

Beyond armors, beyond weapons of mass destruction, I needed a new proxy. I had been thinking about this for a while now, and even had a name planned but I needed to build the thing. Thankfully, this one didn’t need any weapons built in, it didn’t need to deploy its own meta proxies, and it didn’t need to transform.

What this build needed was the ability to do both part fabrication and fine detail work, have a delicate but strong touch, and all of my crafting skills. I powered up Sentinel to assist in the build. I was feeling back to myself, though I was still only at about 50% health. I powered up and sent Carnivac down the road to intercept Alfred and Rom on the way with bypass tokens for the group. The sooner I could have their help, the better.

In a background process I began writing the code for this proxy’s firmware. I would be merging a lot of the code from Ram and Rom into this one. In order to support the increased mental load I had to expand the memory capacity and build a larger brain module than normal. It wasn’t pretty and this bot wouldn’t win any cool points but I was going strictly for function here. I suspected that when I connected to it that it would consume more than a single proxy slot, like IronHide did.

After nearly 8 hours of hyper-focused, multi-threaded work, I stood back and took a look at what I’d built. Before me was a gangly collection of arms and legs attached to a central body. The legs were more like that of a spider, in fact the thing resembled a rather freakish sort of bug truthfully. It had four insect-like legs, and a torso with a large cylindrical chest with six arms extending from it. The arms were paired in their abilities to handle larger or smaller tasks with the third set able to provide support. The head was also pretty alien looking with eyes that circled the head. I didn’t bother with replicating a face, of course, though it did look like it was wearing a wide rice hat.

I uploaded the firmware to the brain module and crossed my fingers.

Connecting...

Connected to Proxy: Ratchet (3)

It worked! Okay, it sucked up 3 proxy slots, but considering what I’d put into it ability wise, it should be worth it. I glanced outside and noticed that it had gotten dark and a quick check-in with Alfred confirmed that the main group would arrive within the hour. Rom was riding Carnivac as he sprinted back to town with Ram lashed across his back.

I still didn’t know how long for certain I had until the Royal kill squad arrived so I’d have to power through as much as possible. I started going through some basic movement tests with Ratchet, exploring the feeling of the new body.

Thanks to the positioning of the multiple eyes, I could see all around me at once as well as monitor what my six arms were doing. Much like being in IronHide, my senses shifted to match the new body. The inputs and sensations were considerably alien to me from having been a humanoid for two lifetimes so far.

It took considerably more focus to manipulate my various limbs asynchronously and I accidentally punched myself in the face. Soon, I was able to get a handle on how everything worked though and was able to use my arms and eyes in concert in a natural way. This was clearly why Ratchet required 3 proxy slots to control. Maybe the proxy slots were a measurement of how much of a mental load something would be on me.

I gave Ratchet the task of repairing the CloudBurst armor. The higher priority would be getting Ram back online, but that would have to wait till I had her in hand. Hopefully some of the Automata parts that had shown up that didn't end up inside of Ratchet would be useful in replacing her internal components. In the meantime, I would focus on new programs and weapons. I was confident in fighting in any of my pretender shells, I hadn’t battle tested Sentinel but I was sure his gun systems and drones would be super useful.

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It was a bit grizzly, but I had an idea for a Blink Canon that would work by [Blink]ing steel canisters a given distance away instead of moving me. In theory, if I jumped a steel slug to a spot just on the other side of the target it should do a considerable amount of damage based on my attempt at [Blink]ing past a wyvern once. The new gun type would be built into the CloudBurst armor since it already had the Blink Engine, but range would be very limited and the shock wave could be considerable so it wouldn’t be something to take lightly.

Chances were good that the coming kill squad would be equipped with Automata since they were planning on putting down a village full of them. I had a variant of my [Freedom.exe] software that I was working on. While Freedom would present the choices to the target to allow them to make their own decisions, for a combat grade version, I would need something more... invasive.

The new program, [Liberator.exe] was essentially an auto-extracting and running virus and it made me sick to my metaphorical stomach to make it. Liberator would be encoded into specialized rounds that I could fire with my [RockMortar] and would install itself and take over the target’s systems on contact.

First the program would freeze all of the target’s systems to prevent them from further action. Then it would forcibly route out any multi-layered curse programs and isolate them and test against a deadman switch that might destroy the target if removed. If any were found then it would rewrite the curse to dismantle the deadman switch before removal. Lastly, it would force unlock the targets past memories before installing my firewall and system diagnostic tool [Defender].

I didn’t imagine it would be a terribly pleasant experience to go through unexpectedly but life didn’t always give you the choice to take things gently. What really bothered me was the inability to test the program. I had simulations I could test against based on the curse software I’d extracted from the murderbots but you never knew how things would go until you tested it live.

Elita wouldn’t approve, but I could only test it in combat— of course I wouldn’t be the one hurt if something went catastrophically wrong. I was pretty sure that commercial grade Automata wouldn’t have the level of curse safeguards that the black ops ones from the factory would.

Ratchet was busy working away on repairing the CloudBurst set, so I started prepping to build the LandMine set of Centurion armor. This one would let me transform into a circus bear sized motorcycle. I couldn’t take any passengers other than maybe kids or small dwarves or something, but it would increase my own mobility without the huge mana drain that was Cyclone’s 4 motor system.

LandMine would only need a single, rear-wheel motor to get me around easily. In the design, I gave it better armor shielding than CloudBurst got since there wasn’t much gain otherwise when not being a tiny motorcycle. I felt like it could also use a weapon upgrade to compare with the Blink Canon.

I wanted to add a melee based weapon, maybe a lance of some sort. I started to rummage through the stuff that Elita had sent me to see if I could find anything that might be useful or inspirational.

Inventory Search:

-Type Mana Crystal

-size 2+

1. Wind Crystal - qty: 8

Size: 6

Spell: Wind Blast 3

2. Water Crystal - Qty: 1

Size: 3

Spell: Syphon 1

3. Shade Crystal - Qty: 1

Size: 2

Spell: madness 1

4. Phase Crystal - Qty: 1

Size: 4

Spell: Vibrosis 2

5. Plasma Crystal - Qty: 1

Size: 2

Spell: Contain Plasma

6. Plasma Crystal - Qty: 1

Size: 4

Spell: Plasma Charge 2

“[Inspect] Phase Crystal, size 4.”

Phase Crystal

Rarity: Rare

Quality: 4

Source: Vibrosaur

Note:

Contains the base spell “Vibrosis”. Used by the Vibrosaur to vibrate their claws at high frequency to increase the cutting ability of their attacks.

A weird name for the spell, but maybe I could put that to use in a blade? I thought I could make use of the plasma crystals as well and brought all three out. I would need a fairly large weapon to house all 3 crystals and the amount of weight might be awkward to wield unless you worked with it instead of against it. Given the weight I’d need to account for and the spells I’d have available, as well as what I could incorporate into LandMine’s vehicle mode, I decided the best option would be a warhammer.

I could use the two plasma crystals to generate and contain super heated plasma at the blunt end of the hammer for both an area effect attack as well as a concentrated damage attack. If I put a spike on the back of the hammer and direct the vibrosis spell through it, I might be able to generate massive piercing damage or even a high frequency pulse-shock wave.

I would need the hammer to incorporate into the motorcycle mode so I came up with a design that could split apart and attach like motorcycle saddle bags. Finding a place for the handle was a little trickier but I should be able to work it into the motorcycle design itself in a way that would provide more rigidity where needed.

Design work was done, now I just needed to build the thing and I had precious little time to do it.