Alex stopped at the top of the ridge overlooking the town. He had been observing the place since his first fight. Now he paused to go over why he decided to finish it off, it was something he told himself to do when he got the chance. A method he thought up to prevent his mind from becoming stagnant and to avoid approaching every situation with the same mindset.
He had been afraid of the Dregs learning how to counter him; thus he avoided pitched battle picking off stragglers and isolated patrols. He had taken the crucial first steps in remote operation of his golems and taken measures appropriate to survival out here in the wastes. Was there any reason to continue? He thought to himself. He could just leave… nothing was stopping him, and there was no ‘real’ reason to kill the Dregs. Materials? He had too many to deal with already. Position? He wasn’t staying. Revenge? They hadn’t hurt him. Training? Already done, staying further might be counterproductive. Especially if he was dealing with a different type of monster. That had already happened with the beastlings in the city. He still didn’t know the name of that place, but he was too prepared for beastlings and gotten ‘caught out’ on occasion when he encountered other monsters. The Dregs were an example he expected them to react in the way beastlings did.
Testing grounds? Now that had some merit. He could use this relatively safe and stable place to test new golems or designs. Alex knew he needed to start specializing some golems, beyond those for scouting. Golems designed for the long-term slugfest or for quick agile attacks, ranged attacks or even stealth. That he could do anytime though, was he going to sit here trying to make specialty golems for situations that might be completely different than what he encountered. No. He knew what he needed so he could work on the run. He needed more experience to get that right anyways.
Why did he want to kill the Dregs in the town? Well… he still needed things that he could find in the place. Mostly they pissed him off by existing, he also needed a win. Mentally that is, it felt like he had been running and losing since he arrived on this planet. That wasn’t strictly speaking true, but it didn’t change the feeling. Yes, he had survived and that was a win in and of itself but he hadn’t defeated anything significant yet. He didn’t feel like he had won. He had only survived, winning was required in order to thrive. And he needed that win, so these creatures that hadn’t really done more than get in his way were going to die.
Nodding to himself he moved down with his golems to get to work.
Re-clearing the town up to the main road had been easy, less work than the first time. The dregs had already formed up before he arrived. He had attacked in the same way he had previously, largely controlling his golems by sight. As the stare down outside the town hall began this changed. It hadn’t been easy to let go of old habits. Even after making Aegis Alex had still mentally operated as he had before. The whole point of Aegis was to let the golem do the work, so why had he still been acting like a fool? He was trying to use the golem like a person might use power armor, controlling it directly instead of like the commands he gave to the other golems.
Now outside the Town hall he let go. His mind mostly separated from his body shifting his perspective to more of an overhead view. Much like a strategy game, with him as a ‘hero’ unit and the other golems like commanded troops. On top of that he also ‘knew and saw’ what each golem’s senses perceived. The overhead view was from his flying drones.
He started by having his golems unleash volleys of javelins at the Dregs blocking the still destroyed gate. Once he was done dealing with this place, he needed to begin designs for more niche golems, particularly one designed for long-term fights. For now the generalist golems were better off if he could aggro the Dregs into attacking in the open. Last time he had let himself get bogged down before wearing the defenses down.
Each javelin had tremendous force behind it, and he was having his golems unleash them at point blank range. The hardened and sharpened stone projectiles tore through the lightly armored and densely packed creatures. It was more devastating than Alex had predicted each golem generating far more force than he initially thought possible. At the same time it was disappointing, he was used to machine gun fire, the rate of fire for each golem was low and the projectile didn’t tear through multiple enemies. He sat back and waited, adding more ammunition as each golem ran out.
“If they want to stand here and die, I’m not going to complain.” He whispered to himself.
The more that he killed now the fewer he would have to deal with inside in a more brutal upfront manner. It pained Alex to admit, but for now he was a blunt instrument. He hoped to become a precisely wielded one but he was still blunt, without the variety of golems he really had limited options for actually dealing with things. It was time to stop fucking about and acting like he was still in the military with a large number of options for dealing with threats. Especially when on the offence, and not concerned with immediate survival.
It didn’t take long for the largest member of the guarding Dregs to get fed up. Alex had avoided targeting the creature, on the one hand if it kept all of the Dregs in line and not attacking him he was basically getting free kills. On the other hand if it ordered the attack the Dregs would likely commit more fully. Killing the thing might have a similar effect, or it might make the creatures scatter and then he would have to hunt them down. In any case the large creature let its anger control it, it ordered a charge out from the gates into Alex’s waiting arms.
First, his wolves retreated onto Main Street forming a blocking force of two on either side. Then the real killing began. The bone golems rushed the flanks, being lighter and faster than the metal counterparts. They performed an intricate dance of attack and retreat, then the hammer blow from the literal tons of metal crushed the disorganized center. Thus began the long drawn out second stage of the battle.
Bone golems charging into small groups fighting like a pack of wolves picking off a few then falling back to cycle charge, allowing other golems to hit the exposed parts of the formation. The smaller formations of dregs got bowled over and massacred, individuals were picked off in passing. Killed by almost negligent swings from the golems. Eins, Zwei, and Drei were much the same although slower, they crushed the main body through brute force. A rock placed in front of the gate, they moved as a unit back and forth falling back only to begin their version of a cycle charge all over without remaining in one place. Since the Dregs could not get past them in a steady stream they broke up into smaller groups. Groups that were easy for the others to deal with. The wolves were picking of those who decided to flee as well as the small, disorganized groups that came from outside the perimeter.
Aegis was also involved. This time Alex didn’t waste time trying to control the golem. He had started to think of Aegis as powered armor rather than the golem it was. He monitored its actions the same way he did the others. Only a slight bit of extra attention, just because it was the hero unit of his group. Not that it mattered he had severely underestimated Aegis’ combat potential. Aegis was a beast, significantly bigger and heavier than any other golem with the armor and strength to prove it, combined with the redundant enchantments he placed powered by separate cores.
Nothing stood before the golem for long, like the first time Alex really unleashed Eins. Aegis was faster and more precise than its appearance belied. Aegis was everything Alex wanted for urban combat, a walking tank. Every swing of the arms crushed bone and sent the dregs flying in broken heaps. Claws ripped through the ranks with ease. The armor laughed. The attacks it received barely causing scratches in the metal, sheer bulk mocked heavy blows as the almost twelve tons of armored metal monster shrugged attacks off. The leader of the dregs tried to get to the golem only to be killed when Drei crossed in front of it, a backswing nearly taking the creatures head off. No Alex was not looking for a duel, nor did he fight with some code of honor requiring the leaders to combat each other. Kill and move on.
In the end it was the enduring nature of his golems that proved to be decisive, tough, unfeeling, and tireless. Even after Alex himself began to lose his concentration and fine control the golems continued to follow his last orders. The fight itself had taken hours beginning at dawn and drawing to a close near to dusk, the light from the constantly overcast sky dimming. It also had moved from the main street to inside the parking lot, all the way to the foot of City Hall. Periodically, when not engaged Alex had been hoovering up the mountain of corpses from around the group, partly to keep them clear and partly because being able to pull them into his storage item was an infallible dead check. Living creatures could not be stored. Now that the battle was coming to a close the slightly ragged bone golems were finishing off the creatures that remained. For Alex the cries and screams of the wounded passed right through, leaving him unaffected. Not wanting to waste time now that he had depopulated the town, he began the long and drawn out process of cleaning up.
He could of course just move on and check the town hall first, but it was a bad habit to get into. Hours of walking around killing off wounded and the stragglers that had broken, sweeping the parking lot. The process of looting had drained his mind to the point that he literally just collected things; no thought was given to usefulness he just swept it up. The entire area had been more thoroughly looted than a Fallout 4 player collecting junk. Rocks, debris and rubble managed to find their way into his necklace. If he hadn’t been so exhausted, he would punch himself for the nightmare of inventory management he created.
As it was by the time he was ready to breach Town Hall it was the middle of the night. Rather than risk entering in his exhausted state, Alex planted down the hub for his base. Then he got to work repairing golems. Since he left the walls up it was a small matter to secure a temporary base in the parking lot. Tomorrow he would get his answers about this town, then loot the remainder before moving on.
~ * ~
The next morning Alex, now recovered from the fight, walked up the stairs to the town hall. The interior was… normal at least as far as he could tell. Aside from the obvious monster occupation, and the still weird feeling of walking into a 1950’s building with a bunch of outdated equipment and non-digital files. The main area was torn up but by this time Alex was used to it and just went mostly into autopilot looting everything. The occasional dreg was around, just hiding, including children.
Not being a genocidal maniac, he left them be as long as they stayed away and didn’t appear to be a threat. He wasn’t here to kill everything, there wasn’t any point to trying. The top floors all four stories didn’t yield much, at first he was beginning to think this was a bust and aside from the mental perspective he gained it was pointless to have even fought over this town in the first place. There were two exceptions on the main levels. The first was the mayor’s office, it had a full set of maps for the nation he was in.
Almost crying at the find, he looked them over, this included a helpful you are here notation for the town. The local brochures and advertisements for the area, even some preserved help wanted listings. The town had apparently been in a bit of economic trouble and the pile of information he found had been stored in a preserved case for projects. The whole plan was obviously pointless now, but it included all the information the town, Three Groves, felt was necessary. He didn’t really care about the name or most of the analysis’ involved, it was the careful notation on the maps that caught his interest. Not only were the areas around the town listed but so were the products they produced or needed, a truly comprehensive study of the whole Empire. Nilfstrum, the nation that used to be here was called Nilfstrum. Handy to know if he ever needed to communicate, but the notations were more important.
It could not be understated how big a find this was. The case he found this information in had been sitting in a safe, one of those large monstrosities that a government official might use to hold ‘sensitive’ but not classified documents or items. A big old safe on one side of the office. After it was emptied, he threw the safe itself in his necklace as well. The document case itself was an odd thing as well, it was a rare (according to his reading) type of storage item. It actually did function much like an inventory or similar to a mage’s true grimoire. It had dividers that could be created or removed each leading to separate storage spaces that divided up the total space. Which was a truly enormous size, about as large as a good size warehouse, for paper and documents. It took a little while for that to sink in, but this one case could store just stupid amounts of information. Plus, it had the capacity to divide itself up nearly infinitely within the available area, much like the true grimoires that might look like a normal book but had far more pages than first appeared. The reason for the rarity was the lack of use for most people it just wasn’t worth the time, effort, and materials to make. It wasn’t hard per say, just niche and for the same amount of effort one could create a generic storage item that wasn’t limited to documents.
After ascertaining that it contained what he needed/ wanted from this town he fit it into one of the few boxes from the underground shelter, one that allowed spaces to enter and exit other storage items. He had probably spent too much time looking through the document case as it was. It was time to finish the search and get out of town. The second big find was an intact records office, the mundane crap stored here wasn’t the point it was the listings of proprietary information, designs, schematics and material processing information. The Nilfstrum Empire had used crystals to store information, including but not limited to things like their equivalent of a patent office, and the basic design a function information of almost all their basic technology. The records office was a back up for the informational systems of the empire, including its information.
That alone made the whole process of taking this place worthwhile. Alex had lacked severely in the foundational stuff, and it was slowing his growth to a crawl. The city he started in, Trenton, had none of this available. Either the storage enchantments that protected the information had failed or he wasn’t able to get to the location due to monsters. The magic collage was one example, the ‘library’ had been a complete bust. Entirely rotted out, nothing to collect or see.
Aside from the proprietary information stored for government use, most of the available information was a crude ‘internet’ in that people could go and look up needed information or request a copy. Combining that with the government’s records and a person looking for information as a government employee, they didn’t have to run all over the place looking for basic information.
Then the other shoe dropped. The basement of the place contained an unpleasant discovery, in his opinion just to balance out the incredible find up in the mayor’s office and records room. A ritual circle that was clearly drawn in blood, surrounded by altars containing sacrifices. In this case dead dregs. The ritual had been interrupted by the fighting as it was slowly draining down to nothing, sputtering like a dying enchantment. In the center was a blood red jewel, about the size of a fist, set into a fixture made of blackish violet metal. It was converting the raw mana from the sacrifices into something else, then focusing that new crap into different portions of the ritual. One seemed to be sending the energy to a closer position, and the other more significant flow was to a distant place.
…Or Alex could be completely wrong, it wasn’t like he was an expert in mystical bullshit. Honestly, he was tempted to just turn around and leave. It wasn’t his problem, and it seemed like the sort of thing a protagonist in a novel would just pick up and have serious issues arise or find out that it was an important thing that just got lost by selectively incompetent villains. Or worse it was an important thing that competent villains had placed as a part of a much larger scheme… That he just so happened to interrupt.
The feeling it gave off was what decided his next course of action. It gave off an eerie other worldly feel, oily and nasty. The something it was doing was ‘creating’ a semi toxic atmosphere, it reminded him of the description of the negative mana wave that killed of the empire. Also felt similar to the purple, wrinkled fuck that killed him and started all the bullshit he was dealing with. Not the same but still a vile feeling. So, he did what any stupid protagonist would do and snatched it. This object went into one of the few crappy storage items he found. He had collected quite a few, but they were not really worth mentioning, just a few cubic feet of space about the size of a backpack but more portable. Almost all of them had been collecting dust in his inventory. They had been too inconsequential a space to disrupt his necklace, and the only other significant storage he found had been in the underground shelter. The rest just got hoovered up like the basic jewelry they were, swallowed by the enormously more powerful necklace. The weakness of these spaces was intentional, to avoid issues with more powerful objects, once again reminding Alex that the people here were not stupid. That the magic was mindbogglingly complex with few truly hard rules.
That he had discovered this at all was a result of his meticulous and ongoing inventory management sessions. Slowly going through everything and examining them, only to update an increasingly detailed list. By now his original necklace given by Alessa was growing full, that had actually shocked him considering just how large the space inside was. He was taking the time to manually create an actual inventory. The other high-capacity items that he had taken were being used to store specific types of material, a lot like a game inventory that separated items based on type weapons, armor, and so on while he was using his main necklace as a general storage. It was a long process.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
That cheap ring held the ‘cursed/evil’ object was going on a golem. No freaking way was he putting that back in his inventory, and no way was he putting it on, in or near one of his more powerful creations. The extra precautions to avoid it being tracked only made sense to him. If it turned out he was being paranoid so be it, but if not he wanted to be able to deal with the inevitable magical bullshit.
Once the object was removed, he watched as the ritual died suddenly glad, he had literally no reason to stick around. While hunting down remnant dregs he had looted the town. It was time to leave, he wouldn’t want to be that protagonist that got dragged into things when a big bad showed up.
As such Alex and his golems ran out of town, following the main road. When he settled in for the night he would examine the documents and map to decide where to go next, also need to consider his golems and study schedule.
~ * ~
Having gotten a good distance away from the town in a two-day full sprint journey. Not stopping even at night, Alex stopped the golems. He placed down the base station on the road and blended the ground and sand over the top concealing it from view either from the air or in the distance. Then he recalled all of his golems except for the arial units inside. The location looked slightly odd but blended well enough to be difficult to find.
It was time to sit down and think. “Goddamn, who would have thought that I would spend this much time sitting around thinking when I get isekaied? No fun adventures or training montages. Nope not even crunch time for those slice of life types where I’m just grinding crafting skills. No perky girls, or jackass’s shouting ‘do you know who I am!’ I want a refund, or this better be the low point and the rewards for escape suitably awesome.”
The first thing he did was pull out the maps he had seen, along with any other related information. Since the base was basically an empty room he spent the time pining up all the documents he thought were important for planning the next step. Then Alex meticulously recorded then copied no less than four separate copies of everything. Storing them inside Eins, Aegis, his bracer and an additional spare lying around in his storage device. On the golems they sat in small compartments he hollowed out in their frames. The information about where he currently was and where he was going was not something he wanted to get lost. If all that failed, he was too screwed for it to matter. Then came the uncomfortable part. The analysis of that plot device he found, no matter how he looked at it, the jewel had to mean something and be important. Now he didn’t bring it out, that wasn’t the point. Its presence had to have some meaning though. He would conduct his study using the recordings his golems made.
To start, the dregs didn’t have the capability to set something like that up. He wasn’t underestimating the creatures when he thought this. He fully expected that if they had magic users they had potent abilities, but he hadn’t seen any. For that matter he hadn’t seen much in the way of magic enemies since his arrival, not of the spell slinging type. So, who created or provided the jewel and the ritual? There was only one answer… an unknown.
What that was he had no way of knowing but he could be cautious. The effect of the jewel was a spreading of nasty mana, miasma that poisoned the area around it in a way even literal poison wouldn’t. Most of the energy gathered by the ritual was sent to what he assumed was the hub. He projected an image on the map, his version of using dry/wet erase markers on a laminated surface. The direction that energy flowed was towards the mountain ranges to the east. The rest of the miasma just kind of dispersed in the area around the ritual. He had been traveling in a northwesterly direction from the city of Trenton when he encountered the dregs. All of this appeared on the map arrows showing direction and marking to symbolize the spread of miasma.
Symbolize because he had no fucking clue as to how far or what it did. He left town heading west, away from both the miasma and the primary drain of the ritual. That still left a lot open for interpretation. Hell he didn’t even know if the item was placed there with a purpose or if the dregs had just found the thing.
“Question 1 is this a natural phenomenon or not? Or is it in response to such a thing? No, its too deliberate, and it doesn’t look like it was something left behind that the dregs were using for some reason. Question 2 is this ritual beneficial or detrimental?” After thinking and considering for a bit. “Detrimental the miasma even though not in great quantities does not appear to be helpful. Question 3 what does that mean for the one(s) who made it? Best to consider them as hostile, I can’t think of a reason why someone would do this to benefit the region, themselves certainly, but I don’t want to be involved in this nonsense. Question 4 what do I do about it? If I wanted to remain uninvolved, I should have let it be. I’m not going to destroy or study the object, just going to let it sit around. Make it a ‘fuck you’ to that group because the energy and reminder of the purple fucker pisses me off. No need to fuck with it otherwise. Get it to some people who might know what to do with it when I get to civilization.”
Alex was going to consider the force behind the jewel as hostile, meaning he wasn’t going to head into their territory. He also had no grudges or reason to risk offending them. If it was a unified force, he was in way WAY over his head. Thousands of dregs to guard and power a ritual in the middle of nowhere, without adult supervision. Yeah just no. On the map numerous other towns and cities lit up. The miasma was spread by the jewel, assuming it was connected to others and that this was like terraforming or desertification then the territory controlled by this group was massive. Almost the size of the U.S., the group also had some control over the monsters if the dregs were anything to go off of. They had been actively using the thing, so he was willing to bet they had been controlled to some extent.
The hypothetical territory he drew cut him off completely from the mountains and the rest of the continent leaving only ocean going as an option. The west coast had vast coastlines, if he could get a boat or ship sailing around might be an option. At the very least it was a better choice than picking another fight with the group to the east. It was almost certain he had the hypothetical borders fucked up, also possible that this was the work of a small group or even an individual. Entirely possible that no one cared about him traveling the marked territory. Also, a risk he wasn’t going to take just yet.
The other reason he was happy to divert from what he considered his best bet for civilization (on the other side of the mountains) were the military bases on the coast. As part of the plans, he found in Three Groves he saw that several bases and towns nearby supplied material for golem crafting. The big one was a town known for its golem production. Another was the primary military base for golem operators and their training.
If it was anything else Alex would never have diverted in such a manner, his goals remained, get to civilization and hopefully settle in for a somewhat quiet life. To do this he needed strength, and resources. Both locations offered the possibility of premade cores and frames. More importantly they were places where he had a very high chance of getting his hands on specialized information. Designs, techniques all for the taking well worth the normal risks and when he considered the potential opposition…
The generic plan in place for where he was going Alex moved on to the second part. What was he going to do with his golems? Aegis had definitely proved the value of what it was, the frame had taken next to no damage in the fight. Minor dings and small gouges in the armor, compared to the other golems it was negligible.
While doing his training for the assault on Three Groves Alex theory crafted about his golems. Now he sighed as he took several blank crystals out and shaped them, slotting them into his bracer and generating new designs for additional golems. He created a crystal for light, medium, heavy, and super heavy golems. The light golem crystal quickly filled with his design for the bone golems, and all the scouting units. The medium filled with a nearly identical design made of steel like Eins. These were the basic golems he was already using. In the heavy crystal he transferred Aegis’ design with notation to modify for non-operator use, it would be the template for his heavy golems. Brutes the type of thing that couldn’t be deployed indoors, for fear that the sheer weight of the golem would collapse the floor. Until now he had no real need for such a golem.
All of Alex’s golems were created with versatility in mind he didn’t have the knowledge or the resources to craft perfect counters for every situation, so he stuck with decidedly average golems. He could have made them bigger or tougher, or faster, or more damaging but that would diminish what he wanted them for. Until the battle of Three Groves what he needed were scavengers and bodyguards not soldiers. Fast and tireless, capable of getting pretty much anywhere in the city, not hulking bruisers designed to take on armies.
As for Aegis he wanted the ability to up or down scale for his personal protection, he tentatively had plans for a version in each of his categories starting with a much more compact version that he wanted to be more along the lines and size of bulky plate armor, a pure fantasy ‘light’ version (with his current knowledge and skill especially with the fantasy metals this option of a golem suit that he could fit under loose clothes so that he would never be without immediate protection was a fantasy) but he kept it in mind. The super heavy version, well the closest thing he could think of was a dreadnought from 40k or maybe a small MechWarrior. Large enough for him to be sitting or standing in a cockpit of some flavor.
As he traveled, he would work on getting some functional heavies going, as well as get some sort of magical attacks for his golems. He was thinking a combination of fire, wind, and force runes with one or more supplementary cores would give him a flame thrower he could place on his golems. Other options were not really feasible. Too much of any element when integrated might damage the integrity of the frames. Heat was not good for steel, not in cycles and it might ruin the temper screwing up the hardness or flexibility. At the same time fire was pretty universal as a ‘fuck you’ or ‘fuck off’ signal.
Alex carefully repacked the paperwork into the case. The next thing he did was unpack the ‘for dummies’ books and documents he got from the records room. Since leaving Alessa’s tower he hadn’t really had time to practice general crafting, everything he did was related to the golems. He felt this was stifling his growth, keeping his horizons narrow. He would begin to work on the damaged appliances he found. Repairing them at first, before he made his own from scratch, then moving on to making better versions. At the very least it would give him other types of problems to work on. New runes that needed to be used in different ways.
He had lacked the time and resources in the city for this type of stuff. Also had no reason to make things when he was already largely self-sufficient. Would making a better blender help him out here? No, but the concepts and runes he learned and practiced might. It was also a hobby, something to take his mind off of everything. He had remained diligent practicing and studying every night, but once he got out of the city a good amount of the immediate tension vanished. He was now mostly doing these things out of habit rather than diligence. His mind nearly revolted at the idea of yet another session of crafting like with Aegis. He couldn’t do it.
The fixing up of smaller appliances would also give him real insight into how he could get the machinery he had ‘tactically acquired’ up and running. He needed a forge at the very least, doing everything through mana manipulation was getting old. Spending days shaping a chunk or raw steel into a proper shape having to remove rust and the like through a combination of mana and brute force scrubbing, just no. A smelter and forge were absolute requirements, he still had the two generalist cores from Alessa’s tower. Two potential workers to help him with forging, not to mention his other golems.
The heavies and other types would be made when he got to them. He would be working on these new projects but without an immediate need he felt in no hurry. He was reasonably confident that in the 2–3-month journey to the coast he would have them ready. He wasn’t going to go into either place without them, even if it meant sitting on the outskirts until they were done. On the way he would check the towns on the back roads, avoid anything that looked like a city.
Not perhaps the most daring of plans but well he was planning on checking out other small towns. More looting was never a bad thing, and it might give him a better idea of the hypothetical forces he was up against.
At the end of the day, it seemed inevitable that he would have to turn around and head to the mountains. Getting on a boat in a world of monsters, no thanks. All to sail to an unknown port. In seas that he didn’t know. Seemed like a quick way to commit suicide. He wasn’t even sure he would be comfortable on a river much less the ocean.
If the ocean even still existed. The magical fuckary of this world was strong after all.
~ * ~
It didn’t take long for Alex to get himself off of the main road, and onto paths that were more two lane back roads, he did stick to properly paved roads mostly because anything less was difficult to spot. He also had no interest in getting anywhere near the cities that the main roads led to. Trenton was still a scar on his psyche even the larger towns were mostly avoided. A part of him hurt at that the potential loot that he gave up on. Considering how much he had gained in Three Groves, he may have lost out on a great deal of good stuff. On the other hand, no matter how he looked at it he didn’t have the inventory to be picking the wasteland clean. The necklace had a huge capacity, roughly equivalent to a large ocean-going container ship. Additionally, he had about thirty storage devices from the shelter in Trenton each with the capacity of two maybe three large home improvement stores in capacity.
Quite frankly a ridiculous amount of space and he was actually filling them up. The shelter had been the primary place he gained material from, but Alex needed to start being more decerning on what he grabbed. Especially when it came to processing, the number of corpses just cluttering his inventory was retarded. Thousands of Dregs and tens of thousands of beastlings, the assorted mountains of miscellaneous bodies. He really needed to start breaking the corpses down into things he had a use for and discarding the waste. That included inanimate material as well, on numerous occasions he had simply collected rubble or debris just to get it out of his way, then never dumped it out.
Basically, he was at the point all gamers despised, a nearly full inventory that needed to be uncluttered. Too far from any merchant or vendor to clear out so it was getting close to time to start discarding items that had less value to make room for more useful things. It didn’t help that he found numerous lesser storage devices just lying around. Making him wonder what other useful items he may have overlooked. He was keeping some debris just for study, and broken glass was around so that he could repurpose it once he got a smelter going.
So, even the trash in his inventory was becoming a hoard. Documents were stored on the off chance a civilization might be interested. He wasn’t totally clueless, even monster materials might have obscene value beyond the cores. The extra equipment was easier, even his relatively untrained eye could spot the difference between scrap metal and something that might have been produced by the Nilfstrum empire. A large number of the best vehicles found while in the city also filled a great deal of space. It was, at least for him, difficult to start culling the hoard in his inventory without some idea of what others might find valuable. The best he could do was spend time disassembling the blatantly obvious stuff, he had devoted a few hours every day to pure inventory management.
He was getting a list on his larger crystals that resembled an incredibly full EXCEL spreadsheet. Along with the maps he was making he felt that he had more than enough to offer, when he got somewhere. He was seeing several secondary places he wanted to hit after the golem production and training facilities, including other military installations. He very much doubted that others were as meticulous as the mayor of Three Groves. Other than a few places that produce more crystals and jewelry he was eyeing some mines and refineries.
He was growing slightly short on crystals in particular, due to his habit of using them as a recording medium. They made paper feel redundant, he had no desire to find and sort blank paper just so he could record information only to inevitably lose said paper in the clutter. He already had some issues with labeling and sorting his crystal records.
In any case his journey was taking him somewhere called Crystal Lake. Yes it had some ominous vibes, just due to the relation to a certain horror movie. It also had a reputation for crystals as the lake produced them, so since it was on the way to the coast and the primary objectives of Golem facilities he was going to check it out. Collect some crystals hopefully the ‘seeds’ that those crystals grew from, the only reason crystals were not farmed like crops was due to the availability of them in places like Crystal lake, the abundance made commercial creation pointless.
A few days later and he had his answer, and the answer was a resounding NOPE.
The lake was still there which made it the first large body of standing water he had seen since his arrival. Parts were frozen over, and others had been cut through. The town was populated by water monsters looking like fucked up hybrids of deep sea fish sometimes on two legs. All long pointy teeth, bioluminescence and overlarge eyes. Multiple different species, including humanoid, all swarmed over the town. The buildings were covered in slime and sludge that didn’t freeze. Egg sacks, and at least three different groups vying for control of the town and surrounding areas.
The lake itself was now black with a brackish brown near the shore, and more closely resembled sludge than water. Large shapes could be seen further out, occasionally breaching or disturbing the surface far away from the shore. Three parts were in the network of rivers heading to the place. One coming from the north probably an in flow from the mountains another meandered its way to the coast. The third was a ‘man-made’ path diverting water down and back towards the west.
Right now he was viewing the area through a drone, and the group handling the ‘man-made’ diversion had him nope-ing out. A new species of monster, also intelligent and humanoid. Tool using, wearing crafted armor, organized and under a banner. Aside from some banners/markings that to Alex looked like clan or tribe indications, there was a unifying force behind them.
Alex had no confidence in the engagement, his drone was picking up magic from the large ‘battalion’ coming from the armor and weapons. The gear appeared to be made out of materials he couldn’t use yet and even to his inexpert eye looked well crafted. With the focus they were giving the construction it felt like part of a large-scale plan. As a fourth group fighting over the lake it was problematic to say the least.
As for the lake itself there was plant life around the area, mostly combinations of hardy looking desert, tundra, and northern arctic plants. He wasn’t a biologist, they looked like they belonged. If they didn’t have some sort of disease, making them appear warped.
No, despite the need for more information about the wastes and its inhabitants Alex was going to give this a hard pass. He was already marking his map with danger symbols. He wanted more crystals for his library. To transfer all the information from books and records into a more user-friendly format, however getting into a fight with opponents that looked capable of taking his golems on one-on-one was not on his to-do list. It made his prospects about sea travel look bleak as well, some of the shapes he had seen in the lake looked larger than most large ships(ships he could man and possibly control). Certainly larger than any vessel he was comfortable piloting.
Sighing he had the drones that observed the area leave, not going directly back to him, just in case they had been spotted. He would only rendezvous when they reached a larger town, a place he could check them over for trackers as well as blend in getting lost in the area. These drones had been thirty or so miles (48.3 Km) from his location, and now he had to keep them away from his location and look for something following.
All-in-all he figured that he could reconnect with them at the city of Martes, one of his primary objectives. Which was near the military base he was targeting. The city was large enough to get lost in, and had a reputation for producing good civilian golems and the associated material and parts.