“How was your travel? As I see you are fine I suspect you could handle… every occasion.”

He knew what was going to happen. Well for giving us a hint even against his own neighbors it shows his sincerity with full force.

“I gave them a final warning. Every tribe has at least one survivor to tell them I will not attack if they do not attack me. Let us hope they are sensible.”

“...Well you try to be accommodating, even if your margin is rather small to only let so few go. I can not judge you, as they attacked you first. We work on a similar principle, but are not that ruthless.”

“I can understand you not liking my heavy handed approach. It might be seen as rather extreme, but if they do not even have fear against me, they will come back. Being gentle for them to accidentally touch my bottom line might be worse than what I did now. I really do not want to just eliminate whole Tribes, but have no qualms against it.”

“I see. We see things rather differently. While we often fight and kill each other on the Steppe, we never fight until one Tribe loses all of his members. At the worst one tenth of the losers side will be killed, then they just rob the losers belongings and leave. The back and fourth hones our skills and also our tactics.”

Well that explains their rather strong phalanx and coordination against Lindwurm but… This is the totally wrong way to go at different kind of battles. Cavalry was King until Mortars and Cannons were everywhere. This is…

“You are going to lose against the angry Metal with those Skills.”

He was surprised. Indignation and even a bit of rage is flickering in his old but unwavering eyes.

“Let me explain. Your fights are all against people. You will have no problem with similar infantry or Cavalry, but the angry Metal will be completely different. Do you know the reason the enemy lost against me?”

Red Horn shakes his head. He is interested but also worried about my next words.

“Our side had a gigantic Monster at our side. This monster just broke through the phalanx and ran directly into the back line. Attacking the back is then countered with a pincer approach, but our Monster could just bury itself and come right out of one of the flanks destroying the pincer maneuver.”

My words hit hard. He could imagine the slaughter himself. There is not much to say how something suddenly breaking through the Front and bulwark to just vanish when it got pincered is a nightmare to fight.

“With the whole chaos and all eyes on the Monster they not even noticed the infiltration in their lines until it was too late. The angry Metal will most likely use strategies you will never have even heard of before.”

“What can be possibly those strategies be? I have lived a long life and fought hundreds of battles myself.”

“How about flying creatures armored in metal? Dropping Bombs right on your fighters. Another strategy is using catapults to throw their heavy armored close combat fighters right into the middle of the Army? Moving giant citadels just walking right over the Tribes and grinding them into mush.”

“Do not ridicule me! How can such a thing be possible?!”

“We are talking about moving metallic beings. Can your metal move on their own? I myself have used a strategy you never thought about, as gigantic Monsters are normally not usable for you. The angry Metal will be something, that defies your own rationality.”

Still looking slightly angry at me Red Horn starts to think. With the time we are silent the guards sometimes looked inside the tent, as we were rather loud before and now way too silent.

Sigh “Those are things talked by a maniac. But maybe there could be some merit to think of impossible things, as this Enemy will be rather strange.”

“Red Horn… I came from a World, where those things are definitely possible. There were metallic birds, flying through the air and letting hundreds of bombs fall. Gigantic structures just moved right through buildings and were hard to even destroy with their own weapons. People would fly inside those metal birds and jumped from far above the clouds out of them to only fall slowly by means of a giant cloth on their back. Their bows were shooting faster and more precise than anything you could imagine. I do not want to bring you fear, but you have to think differently if you want to beat whatever is on its way.”

Primal Fear. That is what I can see in Red Horns eyes. I might have told him too much, but it needs to be told to shake him awake from the simple thought of fighting like they used to.

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“So we are doomed…”

“Who said that? I talked about my World. This World is different. What is coming might be something similar, but if we have more information it would help us immensely. Also I am here. I know some of the old tricks of my World, even if they are maybe a bit dirty in your eyes.”

“So we have at least a chance, if you help us. I always knew you are dirty, but I do not care, you are nice otherwise and we will not judge you by what you do elsewhere, but how you behave between us.”

Again with the maybe compliment/insult. I just take it as a compliment…

“Thank you?”

“You are welcome. Now please let me rest, I am rather tired, as these old bones can not stay that long upright anymore.”

With that our talk was over. Nothing can be done for now. I have to analyze all the different pieces I found. Hopefully I can break the Robots shield soon. I need a better look inside.

…

“Is it this animal Father?”

“Yes, this is the right one Claw Nine. With this I should be able to work on what I am trying.”

I pat the girl on her head. She brought me a special kind of lizard I needed. The Lizard People are all quite different, but have some traits of specific animals roaming around the Steppe. As the Steppe is wide, there is an abundance of life here. Some life does not even make sense to be here.

It is like a Zoo just exploded and everything just thought ‘here I now dwell’. Maybe the Kingdom which was here had many Zoos and everything just mingled together? Mysterious…

Putting the animal through the Ring I immediately take it over and create enough blood to make a sizable core. While I am at it I test the feasibility of making the taken over Lizard into a monster and… Water, of course it is water. The normally dry living Lizard became an amphibian reptile Monster. It even can create webbing between the claws at wish. Nice!

While it looks different I just work with that one for the time, as already three days were coming and going. The Claws all have found some animals, sometimes the ones I need, sometimes something I could investigate later.

Snow and I just slowly walk back to the Crater, enjoying the slow trip as I need to work on converting what I have gained. The elves are already converting into first a new body for me and second being dissected.

I have no way to find something that might work on these bodies, so I just see how I can increase my medical knowledge on living tissue transplant from one to another Elf.

With these experiments I can later reattach new limbs on people who have lost them in my Village. Luckily there is not such a need for now, but better be prepared than having to fumble to get enough knowledge, when the Patient is bleeding out.

...I am feeling like I am doing something wrong here… Whatever, might be my imagination. Lets improve my knowledge on how the bodies work and think about that maybe later.

…

“These are the new Members Null?”

“Yep. I really thought, they would become something different, but here they are.”

“They look strong. What is wrong with them?”

“Yeah, they look strong and also are. Just for Lizards of those rather earthy tribes to become something like a fish…”

Yeah, in front of us is the first test on fusing the lizard Monster with the lizard People. What shocked me was the quick fusion of the Core and body. Even the Spirit afterwards had no problem with the fusion to make them stable.

What I have got was what I am seeing right now. Lizard People are now looking rather fishy. Giant shimmering scales grew on their bodies, bendable but hard to break. On their back is a foldable giant fin with barbs. Those barbs are not poisonous, but somehow I can only ask for how long.

They also got the retractable skin between their fingers which end in razor sharp claws. Their mouths look like elongated piranha mouths or like a barracuda with way too much teeth. Their eyes have a second skin to keep them moist out of water and can retract it inside. For Voids sake they have not only lungs but even GILLS!

“For now you can live in the cistern I have made under the Castle. I need to make you an appropriate place later. It would help to know how you like your environments to create the perfect place for you.”

“Yesh, Mashter.”

Oh and they can speak. Their new mouths makes it hard for them to communicate without a lisp, but are a way better result than Loopy. Do not worry Loopy, you will always be my silly assistant cleaning up after me. I even started to like his strange humming when he mops the blood on the floor.

The whole travel back needed a little bit over a week and after we got attacked by relentless hordes every now and then we sent the Claws back first through the Ring and dashed right to home. Exactly the time, when the new Family members opened their eyes and stopped rampaging in the tanks.

The others are still growing into their new forms. The whole experiment shows me how to create hybrids better. With the new insight I might give a homunculus some new traits while growing. A simple infusion with prepared cells should create a new way to form their bodies.

…

I call the new elvish body Beta. His potential is rather low in my opinion, but he is flexible, agile and has rather keen senses. With tests I even found out I can dislocate nearly every bone in his body without damage to any tissue and fold him like he is a piece of paper. He can go through ridiculously small holes. If his pelvis fits, everything fits, and he has a small and bendable pelvis.

Red, I am sorry, but you are now with Twin in the closet for maybe later use. The voices in Betas head are way more lenient than yours. And his are just the voices of the wind like the poor deceased Boost the Storm Wolf heard, before he died.

Wind affinity might be the go to for Elves. Maybe I can find other uses for Patch and Work, the two Elves where I switch parts over and over to see how to improve myself… nah, those two are already close to death anyways, the last experiment will just see how they will react to a more creative approach.