Nyx

Crushing the oozes had proven an easy enough task. The largest had even dropped a pattern, she knew her master liked collecting the patterns of monsters he killed. So, she cleaned it up and placed it before him. He would hopefully be happy with the gift when he awoke again. She had crushed them with ease, true, but she hadn’t come out unscathed.

Her armor had been melted in several spots, and her already red flesh had blistered and flaked. She was using all the essence she could gather from the ooze monsters to repair herself and her armor before they were attacked again. sadly, it didn’t look like that was going to be an option. Coming down the tunnel, behind the acid oozes was a fleet of small security drones. P.C.D.s her master called them, and they flew towards them with obviously ill intent.

Well, there were only six of them at least. Her wounds hadn’t healed all the way, but she doubted their puny guns would hurt that bad. Rising to her feet, she looked at Benjamin’s still comatose form. She hoped her master was doing what he needed to, she didn’t know what that was, but it wasn’t her job to know, her job was to keep him safe while he did whatever it was, he was doing. The ring of her sword hitting her shield echoed down the tunnel, as she rushed to meet the newest challengers.

* * *

Benjamin Vryce

Benjamin sat in his meditation chair, trying not to look at the screen into his forest world. He had given control of the screen over to Ice, she was to learn more about the world, while he worked on getting them off the station alive. So far, he wasn’t having much luck. He knew what he wanted to do; he just couldn’t seem to make it happen.

He held the pattern of the female kobold, her image projected out onto his soul. He didn’t have the room in his soul to add any new patterns of size, but he was slowly working on that problem. He was cycling his essence from his core into his soul, along the lines that he had created by accident when he absorbed the chaos essence. It was a slow process, but eventually he was sure his soul would be strengthened and grow.

Until then however, he wasn’t able to bring any new patterns into existence in that way. so, instead he was trying to activate the kobold using creation cores. The other World Lords did this regularly. Benjamin assumed, now, that was because their souls were filled with their most valuable patterns. That they didn’t have room for them all, so they just powered them up and let them go. Well, if they could do it, so could he…in theory anyway.

He even had her original core and everything, it should be a simple matter of combining the two. He looked at the kobold, she still had the four tentacle arms reaching out of her back. Like the blue king, she had born these machines so long that they had imprinted themselves onto her very being. That gave him pause, and made him think. She hadn’t had those when she had first been created, perhaps her original core wasn’t powerful enough to handle her creation, with the added limbs.

Opening his case back up, he looked over his options again. the two kobold cores, the blue king’s core, goblins, squirrels, ants…he selected a dire squirrel core. he had five of them, and figured that losing one wouldn’t hurt anything. Besides, he knew that the ants wouldn’t cut it and didn’t want to waste a goblin core for a little extra essence.

Placing the two cores together, he concentrated on them. It was difficult, now that he used combined essence for nearly everything. To focus purely on creation essence for this working. He managed however, and soon had the two cores merged together into one larger core. He thought he could even feel the pattern that had been used, to contain the essence as a core. That would require further experimentation and time to figure out, than he had now. A project for later then, right now he needed to focus.

Benjamin tried to will the kobold female into being, using the newly enlarged core as the power source. This time, he could tell that it was working. The questioning feeling that he had always gotten before, came again. Having gained more experience with patterns, he was now able to understand what was happening. This was like an ownership transfer.

Maybe it helped that he was the third World Lord to own this pattern, but he could tell that when he bound the pattern it was changing to suit his needs. He could see or perhaps feel, the Erlking’s and then the Shipwrights marks on the pattern, he was overriding what they had wanted and replacing it with his own desires. The best example he could think of was like changing the locks when you bought a new house. it was the same house the last owner lived in, but their old key no longer gave them free rein.

So, when he was prompted to assign her role, he kept it simple. He imprinted her with loyalty, and the desire to protect him and his. Benjamin felt bad as he essentially forced this creation into the role of meat shield, but he didn’t have the luxury of giving her more personality. She wasn’t bound to his soul, so a death was likely permanent, unless he was able to recover her pattern and core. If she was going to only be usable for a short time anyway, he might as well get the most he could from her.

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Before the questioning feeling ended, his conscience got the better of him. He added a name and the ability to grow as an individual with time, while still remaining loyal and prioritizing his protection. This way, if she did end up living passed today, she wouldn’t be a puppet forever. Benjamin just didn’t have it in him to enslave living beings completely.

He watched as the pattern disappeared from his void space. Leaving only an outline, that also vanished from his sight. the kobold had been animated into reality, she was still his creature to command, but she was an individual, and could live separated from him as well, not reliant on his continued essence to maintain her form.

His eyes wavered as the image vanished from his void space. Memories of dreams now dead, boiled up inside of him. A goblin girl, and her remaining clan all given creation cores. Living forever in a small safe village, where no enemies could touch them. his knuckles whitened as they gripped the case tightly, the ten goblin creation cores inside a further reminder of his failure.

“Peace, my rider.” Ice said from beside him. “They may be gone, but they lived full lives first and went to rest with grey fur and many pups with pups.” Her tone was reassuring, and eased his thoughts.

She was right, for him and Ice it had been only a few short months, but for Grace and Honor it had been a lifetime. A lifetime full of happy memories with children and grandchildren. Taking a deep breath he blinked the moisture from his eyes, not that he could really cry in this place. He knew the memories had affected him more because of the still open screen, looking into his world.

“Well, Ice.” He said once he was under control again, “are you all set in here?” The pair had talked over the plan ahead of time, he would keep her active in his void space and give her control of the screen. She was too big to fit in the small tunnels anyway, so she could learn what was going on in the world he had created while he battled across the station.

“Yes, Benjamin.” She replied, “as long as I can remain awake and the screen stays responsive. I will scour the world for all the creatures I can find, we must learn what is in the acorn world before we can improve things.”

After that, a few more words and a final nod saw Benjamin fading back into reality. The sight that greeted his eyes wasn’t what he had expected to see, but in hind sight he supposed he should have expected it.

* * *

Nyx

The six original drones were replaced with twelve. After another hour or so, six more drones arrived. Only, these ones were accompanied by one of the juggernaut class security drones. It was a quadruped, appearing much like a ruin beast, or dire boar. There was a gun mounted on its back, but the drone didn’t bother with it and charged directly at her instead.

Nyx sighed; she couldn’t dodge because the beast would hit her master. So, knowing it was going to be broken again, she raised her shield to intercept the juggernaut drone. When they met, there was the now familiar crash of metal on stone. The demoness was flung backwards as her shield came apart in her hands, but the machine’s charge was temporarily stopped.

The lenses that served the beast for eyes had been damaged during the collision, and while it reoriented itself, Nyx climbed to her feet again. she wanted to capitalize on her enemies misfortune, but the six P.C.D.s were closing on Benjamin and Jade’s unresponsive bodies. She knew a few shots wouldn’t kill either of them, but she was tasked with protecting them, besides her master’s work might be compromised if he were interrupted.

She couldn’t fly in the tight tunnel, but her wings filled up the small space nicely. She grunted in pain as the small flying drone’s guns impacted with her outstretched wings. They were strong though; her new body could take a few hits from these weak guns, before she was put down. the biggest problem with fighting these drones however, was that their deaths gave no essence. So when she smashed her sword through one dragonfly like drone after another, she got nothing for her efforts but a chipped sword.

Dropping the final drone, she turned her attention back to the lone remaining foe. The juggernaut had regained its balance and was gearing up for another charge. Her shield was still broken, and she was using her available essence to heal her injuries, so she couldn’t resummon it. Her horns were out of the question for the same reason. She had just resigned herself to a frontal assault, where she went all out and hoped for the best, when the situation changed.

The kobold woman, whose death the ogre had stolen from her, had just rematerialized in the hallway. She was right in front of Benjamin, so it was obvious what had happened. Hopefully that meant that he was nearly finished. The lizard woman took one look at the situation, and launched herself at the juggernaut. All six of her arms flailing wildly, two still held shields and the other four daggers.

Not wanting to waste the opportunity, Nyx dove in after her. Stabbing with her sword for everything she was worth, they had to bring it down before it started moving again. Thankfully, the kobold was fresh, as she hadn’t been fighting nonstop for hours and was able to put on a good showing for herself. Before long, the two women had ripped the boar looking drone to pieces.

Battle finished the two women moved apart, eyeing each other warily. Neither was quite sure what the other would do, and Nyx for her part didn’t want to be responsible for breaking her master’s new toy. Though, after giving the kobold a once over, she had to admit breaking this one would be more difficult to make happen than just saying it.

The sound of Benjamin clearing his throat eased the tension between the pair. Nyx looked at him; he was holding her ooze pattern gift in his hands and looking around at all the scrapped bodies and ooze puddles. She looked around as well, pride in her eyes. She had done her job quite well, if she did say so herself.

“Master,” she said with a bow. “I hope you were able to accomplish all you hoped to, I watched out for you as ordered.” Upon lifting her head to look at Benjamin again, she collapsed.