A message suddenly resounded in Harvey’s mind. He had been idle for who knows how long. Having nothing to do and being unable to do anything were worlds apart. The former would shoot by quickly while the latter would feel like an eternity.

“I don’t really think it’s been a day. Unless they were much closer to civilisation than I thought. Or does KAOO have some sort of self-charging system?” Harvey wondered, heaving a sigh of relief, knowing that he would not lose his life.

After a short wait, Harvey could once again feel his body waking up as the sense of touch, sight and sound returned to him. The morning sun shone down as the carriage was moving once again, with everything having been packed up by the men. Looking through the schematics for KAOO’s components, Harvey came to realise that the chassis on the back is fitted with solar panels to use for slow but emergency charging. As he wondered how long it would take to be fully charged, a noticed popped into his head.

“Haah… 92 hours huh?” Harvey lamented, thinking that it would be best not to perform any more draining tasks such as matter fabrication at least until he is fully charged.

“Oh? You can speak Grakian too?” one of the men suddenly turned and asked as he heard Harvey speak.

“Grakian? What’s that?” Harvey asked, surprised at how fluent he was.

“That’s the National language of our country! How can you speak it but not know it?” the other man asked.

“Uhh.. I learnt it from listening to you. I’m a fast learner,” Harvey made up a quick excuse.

“Well whatever. You’re the first thing to come alive from the sky gift. Most of the other sky gifts we participated in only gave us rocks and metal. What are you really? We just saw you make your leg from nothing. Are you one of those legendary wizards that can use magic to heal yourself?” the first man asked.

“No.. no I’m not a wizard. Wait wizard? There’s magic?” Harvey asked in turn, shocke at this piece of information.

“Of course! Every country has a few. It’s rare in us humans, but we still have one or two wizards every decade. The demon race and Anima race has more though. So you sure you are not a wizard?” he asked once again, trying to confirm his suspicions.

“Well, where I come from, we have science, not magic. But it is understandable how you might confuse the 2. My name is Harvey. I’m a doctor.” Harvey introduced.

“Oh! My name is Grendor, he’s Hamal, and the driver there is Markus. So your country doesn’t have wizards? That’s too bad. And what’s a doctor?” Grendor asked.

“A doctor is someone who heals people and helps them recover from illnesses or injuries,” Harvey explained, not bothering to elaborate that he is most likely not even from the same plane of existence.

“Oh so you ARE a wizard healer! All three of us are blacksmith’s apprentices. Our job is to help our master with his work and at times, go out to collect scrap metals from the sky gifts,” Hamal interrupted, crawling closer as well.

“I see. Well, I hope you don’t mind, but could I tag along with you? At least until we reach the city?” Harvey asked, giving up on explaining his situation to them, which will only confuse them further.

“Not to worry. We will reach the gates before nightfall. If you just lie still, I’m sure the guards will mistake you to be part of the scrap metal pile. That way, you won’t need to purchase a gate pass from them. They tend to charge exorbitantly. Of course, if you want to leave you will eventually need to purchase one, but that’s for the future. But then again, maybe if you ask Master, he might be able to get one for you for cheap. Oh but he may make you work for it, I mean the workshop is big, but still it’s hot and smelly and sweaty and the hours are long. Then again working a few days and getting a gate pass isn’t that bad a deal. Of course you can always earn money from other means, by healing people for example. Oh but that might be a problem since no one knows you are a wizard and you’ll have to prove it first. Then again, you’ll have to take a royal wizard examination in the royal capital city which means you will need a gate pass after all, and the exam entrance fee is pretty steep, so you might need to find another way to earn money first. Going on adventures seem fine, but it is dangerous work. I always see adventurers return to our workshop with heavy injuries. Oh HEY! Maybe you can stay at the workshop and heal the injured adventurers coming in for equipment repairs! Of course, it will be slow at first, but I’m sure your name will spread. But master might charge you for using our workshop to spread your name, which means you will have to charge more for your service to make up for the extra cost. Oh no! If you do that, there might be fewer people seeking you for your healing magic and that means you will be stuck with us for even longer. Maybe you can work in the smithy to earn some cash during your free time? That might work, but I don’t know if you have any experience. And it might not be worth your time. Maybe you should stick to healing injuries after all. In the end, you can even regenerate a leg from scratch, even though your leg is vastly different from ours, I’m sure you’ll be able to do it. However, from what I’ve seen, very few people come to our shops with injuries as bad as yours. The worst I’ve seen is just a deep stab wound, nothing of the sort of missing limbs. How do you even heal wounds in the first place? Do you have to open the wound back up again? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose? If you are hurting the person just to heal him? Man, it’s gotta be really painful. I work with metal so I don’t really know much about herbs and stuff, but I heard that there are some herbs you can take to dull the pain or even make the person fall asleep! Wait… if the person is asleep, does he still feel pain? Or will he wake up if he feels the pain? If he wakes up, do you have to put him back to sleep again? If so then how much of that herb do you need to use? It will be very expensive won’t it? Hmm… maybe you can grow the herbs and sell them! Then you can make money quite quickly!– “

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“MARKUS!” Hamal yelled, which finally snapped Marcus out of his non-stop rant. “I’m sorry Harvey; he tends to chatter quite a bit.”

Harvey let out an electronic chuckle and shook his head, before replying Hamal, “a bit? I think you used the wrong word there. It should really be a LOT. I’ve observed all your conversations the past day or so. Within the three of you, a total of 34,582 words were spoken, of which, you spoke 2152 words, Grendor 1340, and Markus 31090 words. That’s almost 90% of the words spoken amongst the 3 of you.”

Grendor looked at Hamal with a shocked expression on his face, not expecting such a detailed retort from the new guy. Looking at Markus who was just about to start again, Grendor quickly shot him a look to shut him up.

“Regardless, he has been really helpful in aiding me with the process of learning this language. So thank you Markus,” Harvey faced Markus and nodded. Thinking that he needs to prioritise charging his batteries, he told the trio to stay within the sunlight for the rest of the day. They did not seem to have any problems with that request. And so, Harvey lied on his front, with his back facing the sky as the solar panels on his back charged his batteries.

The day went by quickly, and true to his words, they arrived at the gates to a small walled city by sunset. The cart made its way past the security gate with relative ease, only being held up for a short while for inspection for illegal goods. As Harvey let his consciousness float endlessly within the memory bank of KAOO, he realised that KAOO was equipped with plenty of knowledge. He had not believed Walter when he said the robot had downloaded all of humanity’s essential data, but it would seem that that was the truth.

“KAOO, I want to prioritise some tasks for the future. First, I want to finish charging your batteries. Then, I want to fabricate my left arm without letting energy levels decreasing below 50% of the main battery. Finally, I want you to develop a suitable portable charging station as well as a material bank. Calculate how long that will take and how much resources you will require.”

“Solar of course. And why is the Arm going to take 101 hours to fabricate? It took only 4 hours to fabricate the entire leg.”

“Sigh.. yea. Why the hell not? It’s not like I have anything to do for the next few weeks. Bring up the schematics for the charging station will you? I wanna take a look at it.”

And so the days passed by within the city. Harvey did not interact with anyone. He merely requested the trio to loan the roof of their workshop where he laid face down for the next 2 weeks. Charging was done within 5 days, after which the fabrication process of his left arm began at a snail’s pace. Energy was a major problem, but an even bigger issue was the lack of matter to be converted by the fabrication unit into the arm components.

However, Harvey quickly found a way around his problem. He quickly arranged to buy scrap metals from the workshop. Naturally, the owner took the opportunity to rip him off, but it had not mattered to Harvey. While 20 kilos of scrap metal would have gone for 40 Grakian Silver coins, the owner charged Harvey for 1 gold coin instead. This was but a simple matter for Harvey, who borrowed a single gold coin from the owner, scanned it and fabricated one more on the spot. Naturally, he catalogued the composition of the gold and silver coins within his memory bank under a separate folder named ‘New World Currency’.

By the end of the ordeal, his body was finally complete again. Batteries fully charged and all functions running smoothly, Harvey could finally work on his secondary objectives. He needed an efficient way to recharge himself and also to gather information about this new world he’s found himself in. Everything screamed medieval times to him, with the flame torches, cobbled streets, stone houses and primitive inefficient weapons.

His body stood out particularly obviously as he walked down the streets. Easily the tallest person amongst any race, Harvey could tell with a quick glance that not everybody was a human. While the majority were humans, they only made up a little over half the population. There were beastmen along with what he could only assume to be demons with majestic horns on their heads interacting with each other as they went about their daily lives.

Everybody on the street could not help but stare at the tall weird man walking down between the stalls. However, they quickly averted their gaze as he turned to meet theirs, pretending, very poorly, not to notice. Feeling that it would be best to cover himself up with something to blend in, Harvey began walking towards a small roadside stall with beast hides, leather and furs hanging on racks.