My worker, I now knew his name now. Camron, I noticed some discrepancies in his background. He says he's from the 'Hunter' family, except when I looked he isn't listed as one of their descendance more over they are all cats. Like every cat, not a single dog, wolf, sheep, or anything other than a cat or some such. But yet he held the name, if I passed on that, his employment history was strange. Obvious a capable mechanic and engineer that can also work on robotics would be highly valued, but all his previous jobs had fired him with the vague explanation of 'Social conflicts' and strangely they always ended up paying him a ton of money as an apology? Apparently I had caught him just as he was about to run out of money and searching for a new job. Luckily I didn't have any other people for him to have social issues with.

About a week had past while the wall was built during the day, the lasers installed in the middle of the night. Well in truth the wall was built in just two days, I had to place another geothermal plant to power the lasers but that should mean it'd be safe now protected from the monsters of the forest. There was one incident during the week, Camron came out of the house in the middle of the night getting to watch as all the robot-dogs froze carrying suspicious objects through an open hatch in a particularly thick part of the wall. There was a moment where he just blinked at them, the lights on the robots illuminating him as his handheld light illuminated them. He promptly spun around waited a few seconds and spun around again, where the robots were all gone. Needless to say, the robots got a new update to their programing, while installing weapons at night: Avoid the big red dog. I was honestly expecting him to send me a message about the robots weird behavior but didn't get any.

With the walls up his daughter, which I found out her name was Sam. It's probably short for Samantha but she responds to Sam so I've just been calling her that... In my head, I still haven't actually talked to them other than through text. She had full reign now to roam within the walls, though it probably wasn't interesting as there was little in the way of greenery and shrubs. She took to playing with her robot dog, which I had at this point completely lost control of. She had pieced it back together removing the remote antenna, it had ended up forgetting everything so it shouldn't be able to find my secret base.

I'll never forget how cute her disappointed face was when she was brought to the fake secret hideout I had made for her. So adorable, the way she pouted. Sadly that meant she dismantled the dog again and reprogrammed it resulting in the loss of memory. But she really turned it into her companion, it's a robot so it doesn't really 'sleep' but it'll settle down on its belly while she sleeps. I wanted to push some upgrades into it so it'd take care of her more. As it is now, it just follows her around, I could have it drag her sleeping body from her secret hideout back to her room but no.

Moving on from her, I received a report from my worker. That one of the bots experienced a 'malfunction' and they were down one bot but that construction would be completed in another two weeks. I made sure to word it very corporate jargon something to the effect of: 'Defects are expected with new robot designs, and since you've said everything is fine without a replacement just carry on'.

I found out about that 'plasma' I was looking for. Turns out that's the military designation for it. Rather it's actually got some super complicated acronym and it was just a joke. B.L.U.E.S. Yes, blues. BLUE its a blue liquid they just decided to call blue. Short for Bio-Luminescent Ultra Energy Solution. I don't even want to think how many meetings had to happen for someone to pitch the name for this substance. I had to stop the process trying to understand of how someone goes about thinking of something so ridiculously stupid and just ordered a sample.

The same day it was drone delivered in a small box. That night it was sent down to me, where I studied it. I was very surprised by this stuff. It was a plant, an algae. No wonder it was so easy to get once I figured out what its actual name was. But it wasn't generating any mana, even shaking it didn't produce a hint of a glow that was described. I spent a few days trying to tinker with this blue goo to get it to generate power, luckily it was an algae so it was incredibly easy to grow more just drop a sample in some water and wait, if there was enough nutrients for it to grow it would. And with a lake full of water I had all the water I needed. Speaking of lakes though...

The first floor was starting construction when we suddenly got visits from the neighbors on the other side of the mountain. An armored car rolled up and strutted out an officer wearing the beastmen military uniform. She was some kind of, cat I think? Though that was only because she had whiskers on her face. I didn't recognize the type of cat exactly, its not like I keep track. Though I did note she was lacking a tail behind herself and the ears on her head we large the fur on them even longer coming to a point. She looked around at the towering walls, I noticed she looked into the lenses of at least three cameras no doubt noticing the odd number of them. My worker showed up at the gate then where I got the first clue as to what exactly those 'Social conflicts' were that got him fired from his other jobs. He walks up to the gate glances at the stern looking military officer on the other side and promptly starts flirting with her. Then I figured out why he ended up getting paid a sizable amount of severance pay, needless to say. He succeeded, I didn't really want to watch them... But I was a machine now, and my hidden cameras were all fixed in place so I couldn't look away. Luckily I was a machine now, and I could just 'forget' I ever saw it by deleting the footage. Though I noted down the incident, while I might not remember it in HD quality I remember it happened.

In the end though, I felt lucky. Lucky in that they sent over a woman he could charm rather than some guy to do whatever it is they came here for. As it is I'm glad they just packed up and left with only a cursory glance around the place. I saw one of the soldiers point at the construction bot saying how he didn't recognize them but she swatted his pointing finger and ordered everyone back into the vehicle. Within an hour I got a request from Camron for all the paperwork on the robots, the building plans and a whole host of other things. Luckily I was a machine I was able to make the documents quickly and email them all over. He sent another explaining that the military came by to check things out because they were suspicious of something so it was best to make sure all the paperwork is in tip top shape. He even told me that he managed to convince them to go away for now, but that it wouldn't work forever.

Speaking of our neighbors though, they had pulled out the giant robot I had placed in the water. They sprayed it down and were at awe, or that's what I would like to think. No, the soldiers were just as serious as ever while the egg heads shook their heads speaking about god knows what.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Maybe if that officer comes again I can sneak a microphone into her clothing... Though that's probably not a good idea. She had spotted multiple hidden cameras I had placed about she'd probably find the microphone... Wait... She knew there were hidden cameras and still... I could not for the life of me figure out her thinking. She could be testing us trying to see if we would resort to 'unsavory tactics'... Which was yes, yes he did. Which probably means she thinks we're up to no good... I could also be just overthinking it and he's just that good of a schmooze. I guess I'll figure it out later if they show back up with tanks.

Back to the camp, a gantry similar to the ones they have their mechs parked in for maintenance and for loading/unloading the pilots was constructed around the mech. It certainly didn't match their version of the mech. Improved in every way, even autonomous though it was broken. Last thing I need is them killing themselves by making some biomass fueled robot... Wait wasn't that what I was doing with the blue goo... I almost let out a cry at that fact, technically correct but not the planet eating catastrophe waiting to happen as the one I imagined.

I left them to study the thing and went back to monitoring the construction, not that I needed to. But it was satisfying to watch. I should be working on my blue goo batteries. But I just didn't want to, nothing I tried produced any power or glowed like it was described. I was starting to think I was scammed by the company and they just sold me some blue algae they collected from somewhere. I wanted to sigh again as I went back to the blues. I remembered then the last word of the acronym, Solution. A solution in chemistry terms is a mixture of multiple things. So they added something to the water that the algae grew in. It also had to be something natural...

I smiled as my research was completed. I brought out a charged mana crystal dropping it in. They just needed a little jumpstart and they started producing. Quickly the blue goo started to glow. I found I could remove the algae but it would die after a few hours and lose the magic that made it glow. I made a bucket of the solution and dropped in an agitator. The light grew immensely, I quickly surmised that the glow was the output. If I could alter the glow (turning it off) more energy would be available to be sent everywhere else. Then I could turn the glow back on when there was too much energy being produced. I smirked as my automated systems dropped the first battery blueprint into my memory, then was surprised as a power generator was shown. Then a core upgrade, mana conversion it was called. I guessed my standard core would be converted into one that used magic or partially used magic to generate power. But my motors still used electricity, so how was the mana going to make electricity to power those. Speaking of with the new core upgrade, I was now shown locked upgrades for my motors and other things. To use mana ones, vastly improved even from the ones I had improved from the market ones. But they were all locked, I needed to upgrade my core first.

A new production building dropped into my memory as well, 'Blue Algae farm'. did exactly what one might think. Grew the blue algae, and the best part. All it took to make that stuff glow was to toss in an already glowing piece of algae and it quickly spread to the entire farm. I did make sure to keep some uncharged specimens just incase I lost my supply that was growing incredibly fast. Looking back at the construction, it was actually almost done the bots were already onto decorating. I decided to ignore the regular visits from the officer, she never asked to see the paperwork when she showed up. It wasn't hard to guess why he kept flirting with her instead of just showing all the paperwork.

I went about designing a new building then. This was the spa, with my access to the underground I could easily cool and filter the water before sending it up to the bath areas. And even easier to filter it back out. I had to design a new filter specifically for hair. Well not really I stole one online and improved it, it was now self cleaning. Truly, I was using the filtered fur as fuel to power a furnace that heated the pipe re-heating the water before sending it back up to the pool. I spent a long while designing the pool, making sure the building of the spa was blocking the sight of the pool from the main building. I planted trees and bushes around the edge making it more natural looking. In the end it looked like a hidden cove surrounded by thick foliage. With the giant wall it was kind of hard to give people a view of the natural surrounding forest.

While that was being constructed I found out one huge flaw with my defenses. It was the light. As something approached the walls late at night, the cameras themselves saw nothing. But the thermal imaging showed a large wolf, invisible but still a wolf. Then once it got in range.... BAM the entire forest was lit up by the bright laser that vaporized the poor canine. At least it didn't suffer... The problem however was that it wasn't just the area that was illuminated, the entire mountain side was lit up by the laser... I had to do some quick thinking and ordered some bots to attack one with welders. Making it look like it exploded due to a mana short causing the crystal the explode.

Lucky I did so, because within thirty minutes the military was here trying to figure out what all that god damn light was... I'll have to rethink my defensive design... Needless to say, the bot with scorch marks and a missing mana crystal spoke enough of a narrative that they left the matter be. But since they were here they went and did the inspection they were here for in the first place. Since his lady friend wasn't here this time he just handed over the papers and walked them around. Of course they found the secret base of a certain girl. I swear Camron was sweating bullets under his fur but he pointed out the childishly painted robot that was partially assembled explaining what this place was.

Another report about a robot, this time destroyed and scrapped for parts but since the place was practically finished he didn't need another. In reality all the parts from the destroyed bot were all sent to his daughter for her to play with. I didn't really care honestly, I was in the middle of upgrading my core. I had plenty of the blue goo but the upgrade was taking absolutely forever. I sighed as I went about looking for some people to help run the place. I got cooks handled with my Mr. Handy knockoffs, cleaning handled with cleaning bots, I needed a greeter, someone to handle problem people... Though Camron seemed competent enough with that with the way he kept sending the military back without completing their work. Now that I thought about it, once the inspection was finished she never came back.

I mainly just needed my place to have a... personal feel to it. Less machine efficiency and have a beauty tell people where their rooms were, smiling at them, reassuring them, explaining when the bath hours were. Maybe a personal instructor for the gym. I paused a certain issue came to mind, my current worker would have issues with more staff. Especially any females that'd work here... But then I realized it actually didn't matter, if anything I wanted to try a fun solution I started filtering out any male applicants instead. I quickly started to approve people for interviews, then I remembered an important issue... I couldn't interview them... Looks like I'd have draw on the hand of chance again and pick a manager for my resort at random.

Just to mess with Camron I made sure to pick out a particularly hot girl, it just so happened she was only attracted to other girls. At least this way he would have trouble getting in her pants, unlike the officer that no longer shows up since the inspection was finished. I sent her the job offer, but it seemed I must wait as it's really late outside right now.

I checked the time for my upgrade. 60% complete.... I'll be here for two more days it seems. I hope the next upgrades don't take this long.