The rest of the armory was filled with various giant medieval weapons made of the advanced black metal. There were giant versions of swords, spears, axes, daggers, maces, and halberds all lined up along the metal weapon racks. They were all clean despite the dusty room due to the unique properties of the metal they were made of. Within the glass containers were undamaged sets of armor that strewn the battlefield just outside. Kain decided to take them all, along with the weapons, instead of analysing their energy formations due to the time it would take to do so. He wanted to finish exploring the tower as soon as possible so he and Luna could explore new applications of energy and find a way back to Earth. Aside from the now-empty racks, the room was bare with nothing else in it. Kain opened the door to the rest of the storage room and gazed at the piles of boxes with odd markings across their fronts. There were so many of them that it seemed daunting. He asked Luna, ‘Hey, can you help me here? I’m trying to organize these to see what we can possibly use and what we cannot use. Use your movement energy to organize them by their lines of text.’
‘Alright!’ Luna began making piles of boxes from her perch on Kain’s shoulder, quickly stacking boxes without much issue. The two were able to make quick work of the task, stacking almost every box in the room into 7 different piles before 2 hours passed. There were only 3 outliers, one being a tall box with a human-like skull on the front, one being a box with what seemed to be an explosion to the two observing, and one very large box with only a line of strange text. Kain decided to open the boxes in the big piles first, so he took one from the first pile and cracked it open. Inside were many rolls of leather of different animals. They were all the same in shape, being large squares that could wrap around one of the lizard-like creatures multiple times. Each box was heavy, but made little difference due to Kain’s strengthening capabilities. He checked more boxes to confirm the contents of the batch and, when it was confirmed that every box had different leathers, he sucked them all into the amulet on his waist and moved on to the next batch.
The next batch, when opened, had solid rectangular blocks of black metal all lined up in perfect formation, making each box little different from a solid block of metal. He noted that the boxes he was examining were the heaviest of the bunch and all contained many solid blocks of metal. He sent them all into his amulet as well. The third batch of boxes were all filled with various wooden and metal cutlery and items that could be used in a cafeteria, like large napkins and cups. The pair agreed that they would have little use for the items, so decided to only take a few small cups for them to use and they left the rest of the items in their boxes. The fourth batch was smaller than the previous three and contained bars of three different metals in each box. One looked like copper with a similar color. The next was a rosy red and was shinier than any of the metals before. The last metal was a dull cobalt blue that was physically separated from the rest of the box with a rubber-like insulation. Checking the rest of the boxes, Kain confirmed that they all had the same types of metals in them and threw them into the amulet.
Luna spoke up before he moved on to the next boxes, ‘What were all those metals about? They seemed very different from the black metal and there was less of it.’
Kain pondered for a moment before saying, ‘Hmm… I think that it’s most likely a batch of metals needed for the internals of those robots. God only knows where they got such a large batch from though.’
‘Alright, we’ll go check some of the robots out after we’re done, okay?’
‘Yeah, we’ll do that.’ Kain opened the fifth batch of boxes, finding rolls upon rolls of extremely soft and strong grey fabric with large amounts of thread at the bottom of each box. The threads were even stronger than the fabric and were small enough for them to break skin if not handled properly. Luna theorized to Kain that the lizard creatures would have likely not been able to be cut by the threads due to their tough skin that was not as delicate as human skin. Kain agreed and, looking at his ripped pants, stored them away for later use. Kain pondered the state of his current clothes before turning to Luna, ‘Do you want me to make you some clothes when we have some free time?’
Luna looked at him, slightly confused, before asking, ‘Why would I need clothes? I won’t get cold like you would.’
‘Well, that’s true, but the fabric is very tough.’ He pulled out a roll and pulled it apart with a decent amount of strength, not causing the slightest rip, ‘See? It’ll protect you. You’ll also be able to learn about sewing, a skill I picked up back when I was a kid with my Uncle.’
Luna looked at him from his shoulder with a star-struck expression, ‘Ooh! I’ll do it! Making clothes seems like fun.’
Kain chuckled and went back to the boxes. The sixth batch contained a host of spare parts that were all made of the black metal. They were not made for the robots, but made for the upkeep of the tower like door hinges and different screws. He saw no need for them, so he left those behind. The last batch was the smallest and the lightest of the bunch. When Kain opened them, he saw that each box contained various parts and mechanisms that suggested that they were each kits used to make the smaller spider robots. At the bottom of each box was a normal sized book, which would have been a miniature manual for the boxes’ former owners, that had a picture of the spider robot on the front. Opening the manual, Kain found over a hundred illustrated pages of instructions on how to assemble the bots. The writing was foreign to Kain and writing was foregn to Luna in general so neither knew what was being said specifically, but the illustrations gave away the general concepts very easily. Despite the illustrations, however, they still had little clue on how to assemble the bots. Kain counted 42 spider-bot kits, filing them all away in his amulet.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
After filing away all of the boxes, there were 3 boxes left, all with unique symbols on their fronts. There was the tall box with a human-like skull, the box with an explosion on the front, and the large box with just some alien words written on the front. ‘So, what do you want to go for first?’ Kain asked.
‘Hmm… that one.’ She pointed a paw at the box without a picture on the front, ‘That one seems the least dangerous.’
‘Well that makes sense. No point in putting an image on the front of something if it’s not dangerous, right?’ Receiving a resounding nod from Luna, he walked toward the box and carefully opened the front panel with one of the giant daggers. The panel fell forward and they saw a library of books greet them. There were books that were small enough for a human to read comfortably, large books twice the size of a normal book, and even a giant book 3 feet tall that was filled, cover to cover, in small writing the size of the writing in the spider-bot manuals. Kain dug in, counting over 600 different books in the pile along with a handwritten letter that neither could actually read. The pages of every book, Kain noted, was made of the same fabric as the clothing was, simply reinforced a bit to allow for any reader to use the book like a paper-based book. He presumed that the lizard creatures were too strong to use normal paper, as it would likely rip in their hands, so they used the strong fabric material for durability. He stored all of the books into his storage space.
Luna became excited upon seeing the cache of knowledge, exclaiming, ‘We have books now! What’re we going to do with them?’
Kain looked to his shoulder, saying, ‘Well, I can’t read it, so I’m just going to throw it into the amulet to see what we can do with it later. If worse comes to worst, I can just use it as fuel for a fire. Unless the fabric is non-flammable, which means I have no clue.’
Luna lowered her ears, lamenting the language barrier, ‘Aww… Those books might have had the secret to making robots!’
Kain chuckled at her antics, saying, ‘Well, we already have a bunch of manuals with instructions on how to make them, so if we somehow learn the language we can read those.’
Luna responded in a defeated tone, ‘Okay…’
Kain moved to face the next two boxes. He did not like either choice, as one was an explosion and the other was a human-like skull. He debated with himself for a small while longer before saying, ‘The one with the skull must be less dangerous, so let’s open that one.’
He could have sworn her eyebrows raised because she replied with, ‘Why? A skull of any kind is not something I would consider safe in any way.’
Kain looked to his shoulder, pulling out the giant dagger once more and resting the blade on his other shoulder. He said to her, ‘Well, these things would not have seen a skull of another creature being as dangerous as a skull of their own species, right?’
‘Yeah. But maybe it's dangerous to things with a skull like that.’
‘Hmm… I’d wager that it has to do with the carvings upstairs.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, those carvings upstairs depicted very human-like creatures fighting against the members of this place. Due to that, this is either a very strong weapon to fight such enemies or a dead one of those human-like creatures.’ He looked up for a moment, saying, ‘I think we need to name these things.’
Luna looked at him first with understanding, then with confusion with the second sentence, saying, ‘The first part makes sense, but why name them?’
‘It’s tiring to constantly call them ‘Human-like creatures’ or ‘lizard creatures.’ How’s this, the lizards are Dragonoids and the human-likes are Giant Dwarves. Good?’
Luna nodded slowly, ‘That sounds good, but what’s a dragonoid or a dwarf?’
Kain made a dismissive hand gesture, ‘I’ll tell you later, but I think we should open this up.’ Luna nodded resolutely, sending the drifting shield she had been controlling to Kain’s side, ready to jump into action if needed. For his part, Kain carefully walked to the box and quickly pried the lid open. Inside, there was a glass pod with metal caps. The pod had one big red button at the base, but was otherwise unadorned. Neither could see inside the pod due to the fact that it was extremely foggy with cool mist. Kain groaned, putting the pod into his spacem saying, ‘This is either a dead body being preserved or a living Giant Dwarf being kept unconscious by the pod and I do not want to know which right now. Well, either that or it’s something else entirely, but I think we should finish here before doing anything else.’ Luna simply nodded, as she had no clue why he was so adverse to opening the pod, but simply trusted her big brother too much to question him.
They moved to the final box; Luna’s shield stuck closer to Kain’s body as he opened the last box. Inside were six large boxes made of the glass-like substance in the greenhouse. Within the boxes, there were small glowing gems that had different colors to them seemingly suspended in midair: one was blue, one was red, one was yellow, one was green, one was orange, and the last was purple. There was a note left in front of each box, which neither explorer could read. Kain put the whole thing into his amulet to keep the notes in line with their boxes, saying to Luna with a light smile, ‘Well, one more room to go.’