“I mean… maybe?” the fairy said, thinking it over. “It looked like a dragon. It was breathing smoke like a dragon. It didn’t have wings, but it was huge. Like bigger than this cavern huge. It was hanging out attached to the side of the island. Maybe it was just resting. I don’t know really, I’ve only ever heard stories.”
Matthias stared at the magical scout as she continued to spew forth words in a never-ending deluge. After a solid minute of being stunned, and Alyssa failing to shut her trap, he reached over with a finger and placed it over her mouth. The digit practically covered her entire head, but the move got her attention and successfully stopped the endless march of words she was producing.
“Stop,” he said simply, causing the fairy to snap her tiny mouth closed with a tiny, but audible, clack of teeth on teeth. “Explain more thoroughly. Start with where we are, then categorize the creatures you saw from largest to smallest.”
She nodded and he removed his finger. “Right. Sorry Boss, I got excited,” she apologized. Then she cleared her throat and started again.
“We are on a floating island. Looks like we are over some kind of gas giant or something. If there is land down there I can’t see it, even with my enhanced vision and skills,” Alyssa began. “There are lots of islands around us too, some lower than us but only a couple higher. No idea how to tell how large they might be, or how far away they are. Too much distance and no frame of reference.”
She paused, saw he was following along, and continued, “I traveled in one direction for about a hundred miles or so. After I got to the edge I flew directly upwards, but the air got thin really, really fast. I was able to see that this clearing was about halfway to the center of the island. So I want to call it roughly four hundred miles across. Give or take.”
Matthias nodded. “Right. Floating islands. Gas giant. Lots of space and a few different biomes. I’m tracking so far. Now, about the creatures?”
“Some kind of lizards on two legs. Large claws with a big talon on each foot. Lots of feathers. Maybe… two to three meters tall?” she explained, uncertain. “They were fast. Mostly lived in the jungle area that was sunk into a part of the island I flew over. Lots of other critters down there too, but those were the most dangerous-looking ones.”
He nodded so the fairy continued, “The plains have these big cats… oh like that one,” she said, pointing to the giant, and very dead, sabretooth laying on the ground. “They wander in packs and remind me a lot of much bigger lions. Then we have that weird ass forest. Somethings in there. I don’t know what, but it gives me the creeps.”
“Hmm. I agree, but it didn’t seem hostile. It just laughed at me and left me be,” Matthias said, shoring up Alyssa’s belief the forest was a very, very odd place. “Maybe we can reason with it. Maybe not. Anyway, what else was there?”
Alyssa nodded her head, “Right. When I got to the edge of the island I saw the giant sleeping lizard. Based on the stories I’ve heard; it very much resembled a sleeping dragon. I couldn’t be sure though, I've never actually seen or met one before. So it’s hearsay.”
“Fair enough,” he admitted. “Did you see any villages, towns, or cities? Any signs of technology in use?”
The scout shook her head, “No Boss. Nothing. I haven’t explored the entire island yet, not by a long shot. There’s a possibility that there are a lot of small villages or even a small city out there. It’s a lot of ground to nestle a good-sized settlement into.”
“Yeah. Yeah, there is,” Matthias said, lapsing into silent thought. Looking up suddenly he said, “Keep looking around. Come back at night, I don’t think it's too safe here. You can, apparently, cover a lot of ground at one time, so it should take long for you to explore everything.”
But Alyssa surprised him by shaking her head, “Sorry Boss, that’s not true. I moved fast, but I was excited. I noticed these biomes and environments in passing. I was moving so fast I only caught a few things, saw a few creatures, and found the edge. If you want an in-depth scouting it's going to take a lot longer,” she corrected, drawing out the word.
“Also fair. Ok, you do what you think is best. You are the explorer after all,” he acquiesced. “Just be sure to return at night, or if you run into a threat of some kind. I don’t have the resources to rescue you just yet, so your safety rides completely on your own sound judgment.”
“You got it, Boss!” Alyssa said, snapping a salute and buzzing off into the plains.
Matthias sighed, hoping that the scout would be ok. She had been a fairly cheap hire, but she seemed enthusiastic and honest, two things that couldn’t really be bought with NEX. Good employees were difficult to come by, and she certainly seemed like a good one. He had no desire to see her hurt or killed while in his employ.
He turned back to head inside when he heard the stomping of feet coming towards him from the other side of the rocky formation. Blinking, and wondering if there actually was someone else on the island, he was surprised to see the Masterwork Golem and its assistants tromp around the corner at a brisk jog. One of the golems was missing an arm, and they all seemed a bit beat up, but the Masterwork had its hand curled around a small round object.
“The fucking coin,” he breathed. “That was fast. Job well done,” he said as the Golems came to a halt in front of him. He then issued their new orders. “Your helpers can return to the tasks that I have outlined for them, but you need to take that coin down and set it in the middle of the cavern. Then wait for my instructions.”
The Masterwork Golem nodded and turned to walk into the mouth of the tunnel. Matthias turned his attention to the Golems that had accompanied it, as the automatons had already turned to get back to work. Blinking at their damaged state, he was struck by a sudden bout of irritation. No construct of his was going to run around looking like it just got beat up.
That was just unprofessional.
“Any of you that are damaged in any way line up here in front of me. All undamaged units may return to your issued tasks,” he ordered curtly, immediately causing three Golems to line up where he had indicated.
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Matthias examined them thoroughly. The first golem was missing most of one arm and its chassis was cracked and heavily damaged. The second had scorch marks on it, from what he could only guess. But it looked bad and thus was unacceptable in his eyes. The last Golem, however, he nearly wrote off entirely. It looked like it had a building dropped onto it and was so badly damaged it was barely functional.
“What the hell did this to you guys?” he wondered aloud. He hadn’t encountered anything during his brief travels that would have been able to do this. Then his eyes flared in understanding. “You walked through that river, didn’t you? That’s what did this?” The nearly armless Golem shrugged as if agreeing with that assessment.
That warranted further investigation at some point.
If he could harness the power of that river, maybe somehow imbue it into various items, weapons, and constructs, then he could create a vast array of valuable things to sell. He wouldn’t just be limited to creatures… no. No, he wouldn’t sell them piecemeal. He would equip his creatures with those weapons and items and sell them instead! A complete monster that could do battle in a package!
“Battle monster? Monster in a package? Battle Beast?... Monster of Battle!” Matthias said, at last, grinning at this absurd naming sense. Then he put the thought in the back of his mind. Targeting each Golem, he whispered {POWER OVERWHELMING}. One by one he repaired his loyal workers, restoring them to their pristine states. Surprisingly, it didn’t cost much. A total of four Power. A Power each for the first two, with the nearly completely broken Golem costing him two. Checking his balance, he nodded:
{BALANCE SHEET}
REMAINING POWER – 158
NEX BALANCE – 205,000
DENOMINATIONS
10K GOLD NEX BAR– 1
1K GOLD NEX COINS – 52
500 SILVER NEX COINS – 327
“Good. Return to your tasks, let me know if anything else comes up,” he said, turning and heading back into the cave.
It didn’t take him long to get back down to the cave proper. He arrived to see the Masterwork standing next to the coin in the center. He walked down the small incline, mentally notating that he needed to have stairs put in at some point. Arriving in front of his premier construct, he tapped the coin with his foot and said, “Crate Four, Warehouse Nine, unpack.”
Stepping back rapidly, he ordered the Golem to stay by his side. The coin began glowing, growing brighter over the course of several seconds before it started expanding. All too soon a huge container was present in the middle of the cavern. It took up a large amount of space, causing Matthias to frown. They needed to unload it in its entirety and get the container stored again. Keeping it out like this was not an effective use of the space that he had. Nor did it look good.
“Let's get this unloaded. I… I don’t entirely remember what was in here, to be honest,” Matthias admitted more to himself than the Golem that was staring at him. “Separate out the boxes inside by type of material or item. Take the Assembler out last, it's in the box in the very back. Be extremely careful with it. When you take it out place it along the back wall.”
Nodding, the Masterwork Golem got to work. While the Golem did its job, Matthias would be focusing on something else entirely. Walking back over to his desk he picked up the stone bone he had created. Using this as a template he would be able to create a mold fairly quickly and begin producing these parts in the Assembler. He would need the complete skeleton first.
He spent the next four hours meticulously crafting a full skeleton. It looked humanoid, at least when he took a step back to examine his very expensive pet project. However, that was far from the case. To begin with, the bones were much, much thicker than a human would possess. They had also been reinforced using auxiliary bones that Matthias had placed into the skeleton manually.
The upper arm bone was made of three intertwining bones connected by spurs. He had found this was lighter than a solid piece would have been and retained the flexibility and elasticity that a solid piece lacked. Granted, it was made out of stone to begin with, with alterations to it by his ability of course. But the improvement he had made to just this one section improved the overall design considerably.
Matthias had spent nearly forty Power on this before realizing he had spent a bit more than he had planned. His study of the structure hadn’t taken any more Power beyond that but had gotten him absorbed in analyzing his creation. Finally, he had to stop and give his mind a rest. Realizing he hadn’t checked on the Masterwork for a while he looked up and whistled at what had been done.
Sitting up he stepped back from his desk. He left the partially formed skeleton on the table and turned to check on the Masterwork Golem. What little had seen had been impressive, as the items had been neatly organized by type in rows of boxes, crates, and containers. The Assembler had been unboxed and set up by the far wall, right where he wanted it.
The Masterwork now stood silent, waiting for its next set of instructions.
Walking over to the Assembler, Matthias ran his hand down the heavily inscribed metal of the machine. Assemblers had changed the game when it came to magical and menial manufacturing for the corporations. No one he knew actually knew who invented the machine, just that it appeared at some point well before he became indentured to Trion.
An Assembler was a marvel of magical and mundane engineering, containing enough spell forms, rites, runes, and tri-power batteries to build anything as long as it had the proper materials to do so. But that was only the machine's face value and its immense construction cost. No… the real value was the internal database that each machine housed. Anything that an Assembler had built, taken apart, copied, created, or even summoned was stored within that database. This made each one of them borderline unique as they were used for various functions. While the database could be removed and copied, this destroyed the machine, making it a rare occurrence.
The one that was sitting in front of Matthias was one that he had procured through great personal cost. He had lost several friends to the scheme. Permanently. He had also nearly been killed himself. But he had acquired and successfully hidden an Assembler that contained a database housing the information for most of the creatures of labor that Trion used. There were fifteen designs within it, each immensely valuable to sell. And with his ability to modify any creature he made? Their value would skyrocket.
He just needed a source of power now to run the machine, and he would be able to really take the first step towards independence. Walking over to the larger crates that had been organized, he found the equipment section. Looking through the labels he located what he was looking for. A large black and white label with the Trion logo that read, ‘Tri-Phase Generator’.
“Get the other Golems down here and excavate a thirty-by-thirty room with a ten-foot ceiling. Then move the Assembler and this generator into it. Put them in opposite corners,” he ordered as the Masterwork jumped into action.
The advanced Golem sprinted up the tunnel with a speed that surprised Matthias. He hadn’t been aware it could move that fast. Shrugging he turned back to look at the generator. It too, was a work of technological and magical art. The Tri-Phase Generator took all three primary forms of magical energy, Mana, Miasma, and Aether, and pulled them into itself from the world around it. It then combines, converts, and outputs those magical energies as pure energy capable of powering anything imaginable.
Granted there were more efficient and effective forms of power generation, but they were usually resource-heavy in terms of maintenance, construction, and or their fuel was absurdly expensive. The most powerful energy generation that he knew of was an Elemental Tap. An Elemental Tap was an absurdly expensive machine that drew from the basis of all realities itself, the Elemental Sea, to generate power. So much power that it was nearly impossible to use it all, requiring vast infrastructure to already be in place or risk going critical and exploding.
Shaking his head Matthias turned away and watched the Golems march down the tunnel. Something that complex would come later.
Much later.