As night crested upon the tiny village once more, and the NIM-Blob checked to be certain that the owner of the structure had buggered off, it quickly slithered back inside, before splitting into eight NIM-Blobs, which promptly began searching the whole area, attempting to find where the human kept all the iron.
After an hour of fruitless searching, however, finding only a room with some coppers, tins, and a bit of bronze, the NIM-Blobs came to a startling conclusion: they had missed their shot, not to mention wasted their energy, and the human had only two ingots of iron in the first place, which it has already manufactured into who knows what.
Coalescing back outside into a singular entity, the NIM-Blob searched through its code once more, seeking a solution left behind by its wiser, old self. As the machine searched through its instructions, it began considering the possibility of simply needing to wait until the human somehow found more iron, when it finally found something near the very bottom of the list.
{If iron catalyst cannot be located in mineral form, it can still be found within the blood of most life forms besides insects. NOTICE: Last Resort Only, blood of sapient life forms such as humans is off-limits.}
And now that was something the NIM-Blob could work with, and hopefully not find itself attacked by a human again whilst doing so. With this knowledge, it began using it's full computational might, which wasn't really all that much, to think of a way to acquire blood.
In the end, it came to a rather simple plan, to conserve its energy, it would simply wait in ambush within the forest, and attack whatever it came across first, assuming it wasn't a human.
With its plan formulated, it redirected its computational power to begin moving away from the village, and back towards the nearby forest where it had first appeared. Perhaps another hawk may try to eat it? That would certainly be a fortunate event and ease its job tremendously.
Regardless of those hopes, the NIM-Blob dutifully slithered into the forest, spread itself across the ground, and went into sleep mode to conserve energy. Rather unsurprisingly, not many creatures were moving through the forest at this late hour, and it would be nearly until daylight before something fell into its trap.
But nonetheless, something did fall into it, quite literally, as a small, likely infant bunny jumped right on top of it. The NIM-Blob did not know why the infant bunny was awake and outside so early, nor did its memories tell it much as to why this might be the case. Regardless, it wasn't complaining, as easy prey was easy prey, and thus would help it more quickly grow.
In fact, surprisingly, this rabbit was basically as large as it, being only about 15 centimeters tall, according to its sensors, which made it prime prey as far as the NIM-Blob was concerned. As the infant rabbit attempted to hop away, it suddenly found a large black mass covering its feet, holding it down.
It started squealing in distress quite rapidly, as it innately realized it was in danger, but the action only proved beneficial for the NIM-Blob, as its mass crawled up the form of the rabbit, pinning it to the ground, before slithering into its mouth and silencing it.
The infant rabbit started kicking desperately as it felt its fate closing in, and multiple squeaks and squeals could be heard from a nearby bush, which the NIM-Blob attributed as likely siblings of the being it was currently taking the blood of. However, as the infant rabbit sopped breathing finally, and a much larger one came through the bushes from where the sounds were coming from, the NIM-Blob came to a realization: although this small rabbit was easy prey, it was also thoroughly disappointing prey as well, with only enough iron for about 700 more Sub-NIMs, an entirely paltry number.
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Splitting into four NIM-Blobs, the NIM-Blob rapidly undulated towards the adult rabbit and into the bush, finding a few more infant rabbits. Although they all tried to fight back, especially the adult which appeared enraged, they were unprepared for their capabilities, and the NIM-Blobs were able to simply kill them via asphyxiation as they had the first one. Silently, the NIM-Blobs took the iron from the blood of the rabbits they had killed, with the NIM-Blob in the adult rabbit splitting off half of itself back to the first one.
With this done, they considered their options for a bit longer, before simply deciding as one to wait within their chosen carcasses, for larger prey to arrive attempting to eat the carrion the NIM-Blobs had left behind.
It would be a day until activity stirred the NIM-Blobs into action, as a small group of three wolves arrived and started eating the carcasses the NIM-Blobs had left behind, only to ingest the aforementioned NIM-Blobs, which blocked their airways and killed them as well, taking a much more acceptable prize of iron from them, nearly enough for one more GHz of computational power, in fact.
With their plan of action now into motion, the NIM-Blobs would continue this pattern, ambushing and subsuming smaller prey, and using it as bait for larger one, leaving a trail of dessicated corpses in their wake, and putting the fear of Elohim in the nearby village's hunters, which swore a bloodsucking beast must have been roaming their forest.
However, the NIM-Blob didn't even know, much less care, about said rumors, as over the course of a couple days, it filled itself up thoroughly with iron catalyst to use for the construction of more mass.
As such, sluggishly due to the immense extra weight from all the iron catalyst it is storing, it moved back towards the village as night rose over it, moving with purpose right back towards the structure where it's most hated human resided. There, it noticed a rather unwelcome sight: the human was still at his forge, working away on some small piece of bronze, which he appeared to be sharpening into a small blade.
Not having time to waste, the NIM-Blob moved along the sides of the wall, inching it's way up bit by bit towards the forge's flames and carbon, the last two ingredients needed to start making more Sub-NIMs. Just as it got onto the lip of the forge however, it heard a clatter as the Smith dropped his bronze blade onto the ground, rushing towards the forge with a bellow of indignation and his hammer raised high like a warrior of ages bygone.
He ended up just rattling his teeth, as the hammer hit the hard stone of the forge and bounced back, the NIM-Blob having scurried it's way into the safety of the fire, whilst the Smith glared hatefully at it for a few seconds before, with a harrumph, suddenly leaving the Smithy.
Sufficed to say, if the man had finally decided to leave it alone to its work, the NIM-Blob had little to complain about that. Instead, it simply began working on creating more carbon nanotubes, compartmentalizing the iron within a section of itself and using another one as the main chamber for the process, where it began taking carbon from the flaming coals as well and putting pressure on the combination of carbon and iron catalyst to begin making the nanotubes.
Time passed relatively slowly, as the NIM-Blob needed to use all of it's computational power just to make sure the process goes well, making sure to keep the temperature within acceptable levels for the reaction, not adding too much iron catalyst or too much carbon, which could ruin the carbon nanotubes it was making.
In fact, it was so busy with this work, it hadn't even noticed the Smith come back, alongside another man, who was clad in a dirty, used bronze chestplate, with various other bronze pieces of equipment dotting his body, except for the weapon in his hand, which was a larger hammer made of plain iron, and held a number of peculiar, glowing engravings upon it.
The NIM-Blob didn't pay them mind, however, as it basically finished work on the nanotubes, and prepared to start making the new Sub-NIMs, when suddenly a splash of water removing much of the heat took it's attention, alongside the bronze-clad man trying to deal a blow towards the forge, before the Smith stopped him and started barking in their unknown language at the Bronze-Clad man, who stopped trying to attack the NIM-Blob still in the forge.
Seeing it's chance, the NIM-Blob quickly flopped out of the forge while the two were barking, and nearly managed to get out unharmed, before the Bronze-clad man realized what it was doing and struck towards it with all of his might, the glowing engravings on his large hammer going out as it began it's downward descent properly, to which the NIM-Blob tried to get out of the way, and the Bronze-clad man tried shifting the hammer, though failed to budge it by much with it's newfound weight.
Regardless, the hammer still managed to hit the tail-end of of the NIM-Blob, instantly shattering over 150,000 Sub-NIMs with that singular strike, sending more genuine terror through the NIM-Blob's circuits as it sped up it's scuttle towards the crack in the wall, which promptly grew a little larger as the Bronze-clad man's weird hammer nicked it, and another round of screaming came, tinted with the owner's voice, as a door slammed open nearby and the NIM-Blob quickly scurried into the night, spreading itself out among the grass on instinct.
Not long thereafter, it felt the shaking vibrations of the Bronze-Clad Man's footsteps, as he thundered onwards just next to it, his large hammer lighting up the area near him. However, through some stroke of luck, the man would end up running by without noticing the NIM-Blob, too focused upon his imagined chase to realize his prey had stopped running already.