When all the fuss and excitement of their delve had calmed down Logan took the darkmetal objects from his storage space. He was sitting on a workbench fashioned for working wood and clay. A lot of people, especially the ones with an artisan-type class had formed a semicircle around him. Logan had never been afflicted with stage-fright, as he had to deal with red carpet and paparazzis since childhood.

“You don’t mind them at first, you know,” Logan said to Tumor as he thumbed the darkmetal spear’s shaft on the table. “You keep telling yourself that they’re just doing their job and all that crap.”

[It seems your sentiment has changed since.]

“They’re just too shameless,” Logan said. “One guy disguised himself as a cop to get close to me and Frey when we were on a holiday in Venice. That didn’t end so well for him once we found out…”

[I would assume you were not in a disposition to play nice?]

Logan chuckled. “You’d assume correctly. “Ok so this is your body, so you’ll just tell me what you want.”

[What I want…?]

“Well, yeah?”

[You are asking me to conjure up a complete list of specifications? Design, properties and abilities?]

Logan stopped thumbing the material. “What’s the problem?”

[How am I supposed to come up with all of this?]

There wasn’t exactly a petulant tone to Tumor’s messages, but it was certainly frustrated. Logan smiled. “Well it’s not that hard. You can approach it from a fully problem-solving perspective and add your own flair to it later.”

[My… flair?]

“Well you know,” Logan said. “Your own thing. What makes you, you.”

[Perhaps we should start with something I am more comfortable with. Function.]

“Sure. What do you have in mind?”

[There are a couple of options. I could, for example, become a factory.]

“A.. wait what?”

“What’s Tumor saying?” Freya asked as she brought Logan a cup of water.

“He wants to be uhh… A factory.”

Freya froze in her step, turned to look at Logan, mouth slightly ajar, and tilted her head. Then she blinked twice.

“You know what,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “I think I’ll go check on how our little saplings are doing…”

“Look what you did,” Logan said, biting down a grin. “You scared her away.”

[I think it is perfectly reasonable for me to become a factory!]

“Yeah, uhh… Let’s circle back down to that later. What else you got?”

[Well, perhaps there would be restrictions to being a factory which I would not enjoy. You did suggest that the road to personhood is exploring things that you enjoy.]

“Well everyone eats, shits and dies,” Logan said and shrugged. “But if you like baseball, red wine, and get angry at phone salesmen, you have something of a person. What do you like and dislike?”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

[I dislike it when you don’t let me use exact measurements.]

“Mmmhmm.”

[I’m not sure what I like. I like pie. Could it also be things that I think I would like?]

“Yeah, for sure.”

[I think I would like to move and explore. I do want a body. Why do I want a body? Because I want autonomy. I want to have conversations with your friends.]

“Well, let’s start with that,” Logan said and adjusted his posture on the block of wood he was sitting on. “So you want to be able to move and talk. How should we go about it?”

[I am aware that you are not able to produce a flight enchantment for now. That means my most ideal forms of movement are gliding and rolling.]

“Okayyy,” Logan said and [Transmuted] the spear into a perfect sphere, about the size of a human skull. “Let’s start with that.”

[I do wonder if a sphere or a sheet is the optimal baseline form for me to exist. It is obvious that we will cast the liquefaction enchantment on my body, so that I can transform it at will, when the need arises.]

“Duh. It’s sphere,” Logan said, with the utmost confidence.”

[Running simulations…]

[...]

[Damn it, you were right. How did you possibly know.]

Logan smirked. “Did you know that a famous chess player was asked how he determined his moves? He said that he would instantly know the answer to a move, but he would have to sit back and calculate if he was truly right. Turned out most of the time he was. So what I’m trying to say is that I’m kind of a genius.”

[What you are trying to say is, that you are lazy and you are leaving the calculation to me.]

“What can I say,” Logan said. “We make a good team. This sphere big enough?“

[Let us use it as a template. It might not hold all the enchantments I would like to have, but we must also consider the Numa economics. I think we should actually go heavy on the enchantments and have my body inert most of the time.]

“Like an ace up our sleeve. I like it. “So let’s think about what you need. An anti-friction enchantment, that’s a given. It’s probably a good idea if we can give you some kind of propulsion. Maybe magnetism?”

[With my class, I am able to move an object such as the Armor autonomously. We will run tests of course, but I believe as long as there is a Numa charge, I can maneuver. What I would need are ocular devices and a way to communicate.]

“Eyes?” Logan said. “Probably a mouth too?”

[That would be delightful.]

“Huh,” Logan said, nodding to himself as he weighed the sphere. “Maybe we can fashion a prosthetic eye and mouth and enchant them?”

Logan took the head of a pickaxe and split it into two bars. He was first about to make a single eyeball, but that would have been beyond foolish. He produced a small shape and used [Mass Produce] to create 30 small spheres, the size of a ballpoint of a pen.

[Skill Level Up!]

[Mass Produce level 11]

They had plenty of Numa for now, but it didn’t hurt to be prudent. One eye, two eyes. With processing speed of Tumor, more the merrier. Tumor said nothing, but Logan could sense the AI was pleased.

Logan also made a prosthetic mouth. It was a silly cartoonishly large pair of lips, but hey, maybe it would work. First Logan enchanted the eyes.

“Make these eyes give vision to anyone who is connected to them or otherwise using them. Make them work with just a touch, and without all the necessary optical nerve stuff. You know. Just touch eye, magically give vision to brain. Yeah.”

[I really wish you would let me help with these horrible prompts.]

“Listen. Spellcasting is more art than science, and you’re definitely not there yet with the bliss of limitless self-expression.”

Logan didn’t get a level up of any sorts, but he could see a faint glow of blue on the black bead he was holding. Immediately on top of his regular vision, a panoramic three-sixty view of the surroundings was superimposed. It came with a serving of a particularly juicy slicing headache.

“Gah!” Logan toppled over at the pain and instinctively squeezed his hand shut. The wild cacophony of visual inputs was replaced by a blissful darkness.

[I take it all back. This is perfect!]

“You okay, Logan?” Someone asked from the crowd.

“I’m fine,” Logan said and waved a hand from the ground. “Tumor. What do you mean by perfect?”

[This was beyond my wildest imagination. By failing to impose restrictions to the enchanted eye, you gave it a panoramic view. Oh, the possibilities. I have the processing power to parse through even twenty of these kinds of inputs. It will finally give me ocular acuity, that is precise enough. Please proceed to give the eyeballs specific properties, such as microscopic view as well as a spyglass view. There are also other properties…]

*

[Do not forget about the heat sensing.]

[Attribute Level Up!]

[Potency: 36]

[Actually I need two eyes with a microscopic view. One that has a zoom range of 1x-20x and another with a zoom range of 50x-100x.]

[Logan. You forgot the night vision. Remember. Night vision and heat sensing is not the same thing.]

[Attribute Level Up!]

[Focus: 32]

[And an X-ray vision.]

[Sub-class Level Up!]

[Enchantment level 33]

“Damn,” Logan said and swiped a sheen of sweat off his forehead. “That one took a lot of Numa.

[I assume it will also consume Numa considerably fast. But it will not need to be often used, and it will save your life eventually.]

“Aren’t you going to give odds on that?”

[How about a 100%?]

Logan laughed. Then he slouched and rested his head on the table for a while. They were finally done with the eyes. Logan had been working for two or three hours now and he was completely beat. Long gone was the audience, as their little village actually needed things to be done. The dusk was setting in and a merry fire was already crackling with fish on sticks leaning towards it.

Logan could hear the laughter and smell the fish. It enticed him and he wished he could join in.

[You can join in, you know.]

Logan shrugged. “This is useful work for the whole village. And besides. It’s going to be more fun when you’ll be sitting next to me.”

Logan could feel Tumor liked that answer. It felt like a warm smile.

[Well then. That is my eyes done. Perhaps we can work on the mouth today until you are rendered useless by your fatigue. Tomorrow we have a slew of combat and utility suggestions I want you to go through with me.]

Logan smiled wearily. “Then break time's over.”