“Like hell we will. We are going to level three. You three can fight together but it’s in that area unless you want to feel hell.” I said glaring at the three elementals.
Brock told them what I said since he had an old dwarf helmet on his head. They quieted down instantly and we planned how we would do it before leaving.
After everything was planned out we left the workshop and headed towards the area with the higher level drones.
It was interesting to see the designs of the drones. Some were bulky while others skinny. They had swords for arms, or some had mini-guns. It was impressive how diverse the clockworks could become. If all these were released on an army or something it would be interesting.
Of all of the robots we saw the miners were definitely the scariest for close combat.
When we got into the aggressive zone, the miners took a turn for the worse getting extra armor and better drills made for combat instead of simple mining.
“Welp this is it then. Let’s have fun with these guys.” Bulk said stretching for some reason.
“How can you say fun? Really, men, you all think the same.” Ena complained.
“Yay! We get to break these things!” Nova shouted, raising her arms in the air on Proto’s back.
When Nova yelled that I looked back smiling only to see her sniper finish coming out and she simply aimed it one direction away from us and let loose.
BOOM!
The spinning drill bit stake shot out almost glowing red from the heat. I looked at its path of destruction and it dug its way through three large miner drones like butter and two more knights while getting slower until it fell out the other side of the last one.
Nova was laughing but everyone else was slack jawed. I opened her status window just to be sure but yep, a full level from killing all those. Now she was the same level as Bulk.
The big sniper was put away while she grinned and pulled out her rifles from her arm. She noticed the difference instantly as it slid out.
“Thanks bro, for the better toy.” she said and looked down at her protector. From its arms she made it pull out the mini-guns in its arms. It bent forwards and leapt forwards as she left us behind and started shooting.
“Really, that girl has some problems.” Bulk muttered.
“Ever heard of those people who gain a different kind of personality when doing a certain activity?” I asked.
“Yeah, I read some light novels with that why?” he replied.
“Nova is definitely like that.” I said
The others started to chuckle.
The elementals took their full form and got ready before leaving to train together away from us. Bulk pulled out his swords and took a battle pose before running towards the nearest drone and hacking away at it.
I went with him, but I took a boxer's fighting pose. I trained with this style for some time to help me vent my anger which has helped me a lot in the long run. At the end of the day, I calmer that’s for sure.
As I reached my target who was already targeting me, I put my back into my straight right.
-60 (Critical)
(-60) 240/300
The punch left a dent with the imprint of my fist. I pulled my right fist back and sent my left fist at the same time right into the same spot doing 30 extra points of damage.
-90 (Critical)
(-90) 150/300
So it’s true what they said. Hitting either a vital spot or with enough force depending on your opponent could get two criticals in a row. Not only that if you hit the same spot in series, you do extra damage.
The robot I was fighting was a knight style robot with a circular upper body and normal arms and legs but both bulkier than Bulk and me.
A few cracks were already appearing from the dent.
It didn’t mind it and ran at me while swinging its right arm at me. I ducked and with an uppercut backed by the rise from me ducking put a bit extra strength in the punch. I also hit the same spot which crushed its entire shell causing the gears in its body to go flying.
-150 (Fatal)
(-150) 0/300
When I looked at Bulk, he had sliced two robots to pieces already and while Nova was making a line of destruction as she bombarded the robots with bullets.
I frowned at my slow pace. Turning to the next robot, I ran at it before pounding it then ran to two other robots hitting them and making them agro me.
I started pounding them and received damage myself, but I destroyed them by smashing them to pieces.
After finishing these three, I looked at the others. I couldn’t think of catching up to Nova, but Bulk had killed nearly 15 already. When I looked at the elementals, I saw them trashing a large group with AOE skills using their element manipulation skills.
Raining fire and rising earth.
I was getting pissed so I pulled out the grenade launcher. I removed the case I had and pulled out a new one. Let me say that consumables have no level restriction.
I still the new bombs into the ammo chamber and get them in place.
I aim the launcher high and shoot 3 shots right into the middle of the robots.
BOOM BOOM BOOM!
With three massive explosions caused by the bombs dozens of robot parts went flying around.
With only that I leveled up once from that.
Explosive Remote Activated Bomb (Consumable)
A small bomb made to activate by remote control or through transmission. The bomb is made with low quality gunpowder and has a blast radius of 8 meters. The shock wave caused by various bombs going off near each other can cause damage to those nearby.
Damage 600.
Since the robots had around 300 durability. This worked best for me. I simply walked through the crowd of robots rushing me and fired off bombs all over the place before backing off and set off the trap when the bots were over them. This was rather fun. I quickly caught up to even Nova, but she made sure to use her sniper to get rid of a good number with a single shot.
As the sun set, we finished up and headed back to the workshop after clearing out about half the robots in the third section and six of us reaching level 35.
Victor PoV
I had a really bad headache right now. The reason is the massive pile of robots that were destroyed by six people.
The elementals and the three clockworks had cleared out the third area as if they were playing around. I was finally understanding why they got the fame. The strongest group, the Clockwork Crew. They definitely held to their titles, those guys are monsters.
To clear so many drones to level up more than 10 levels, they cleared out nearly all the level 26-35 bots and part of all the higher level ones. Even the highest level players would say it was crazy.
“Well you passed level 30 in a day. Can’t deny what I said. Where are you guys staying?” I said.
“We will be leaving when we load the ship with our things.” Bulk said.
“No new body?” I asked.
“Going to build it in the privacy of my ship.” Techno texted.
I nodded and with them we pack my stuff and then got to their ship. They load a huge amount of stuff on the robots they have and take it to the docks and load it into the caravel ship they had gained from Gaia.
They still had to go back and retrieve the rest.
“Going to get Rust before we leave.” With Techno saying that he left with his sister riding her robot running behind him.
“This will end very badly.” Bulk said solemnly.
“How so?” I asked confused.
“Two reasons, Rust does most of Gaia’s work, and two Techno likes pissing Gaia off.” Bulk said.
It didn’t take much to understand exactly what he was going to do, and I frowned when I thought about it.
Techno PoV
After running a good bit of the way, I reached the government house. I went in followed by Nova who had to leave the protector outside. We reached Gaia’s room which was open with her on the PC and luckily with Rust bes
ide her assisting her with documents.
“Rust, we are leaving.” I said.
“Really, already? I thought you would stay longer. Well I can’t stop you, still to think you would go so fast. Hope you visit often.” he said.
“What are you talking about? Bro came here to pick you up and take with us.” Nova said bluntly.
“Wha!” he exclaimed.
“Finally time to get away from this place. Hurry Rust get my things and let’s disappear fast. I don’t want to sign another paper.” Gaia said from behind the door.
“No way. It’s not good to be so irresponsible o great Queen of the Clockworks. Just like Lyra, who I might say hates her position, you need to suck it up and get your work done by yourself. Now let’s go Rust.”
“Wait.” In a moment she was off her seat and holding my shoulders. Her eyes were glowing red.
“I...will...not...be...left...back…!” she said in a menacing tone.
“You...will. And you will let me go.” I said and shake her off. “You coming Rust?”
“Sorry Techno but the work here is very intense for Gaia to do by herself. I’m the most efficient clockwork in regards to organization here. I will stay, if you need anything, we set up communication stations in our cities. You can call me any time. If you need something urgent I think Delta can make the connection faster.” Rust replied.
“I can very well do that. I can directly connect you guys as well if needed but I won’t do the service for everyone in the nation so don’t ask. Best get used to using the communication stations.” Delta said.
“Just call.” Rust said.
We nodded understanding as we looked at Gaia who had faintly glowing eyes. Damn it must suck being queen but she chose to be it, so she had to deal with it like all royalty do.
We picked up the protector and headed back to the ship. I informed the five who were there that Rust would stay in the city and the reason. They understood and we fixed the ship before setting off into the world to who knew where.
CHAPTER 8 Body Building
Victor PoV
Well now this is nice. Who would have thought I would join up with the Clockwork Crew and adventure with them? I always figured Techno to be the quiet type of guy who would want the least amount of people possible.
Still, he had the other clockwork, his sister, her three familiars and now me. All of us players, before he had Rust but because of his duties it's now a pure player party.
Once we set off, Techno let Bulk put the ship in any random direction and let it fly. He got me and brought me downstairs.
We stopped in a metal covered room and in the back was the turtle forge he made way back then. Knowing what kind of furnaces are made now, that thing looked pathetic compared to what it once was before the time laps.
“Help me make parts to upgrade the forge. I know you already have an idea of how to make this thing better.” he said.
“I know how to make that thing burn hotter than it ever will in your hands. If you already have spare parts, we can do that now. Also, I'm letting that thing remain mobile. To have a portable forge out in the dungeon would be like I'm a healer or support and I need that thing.” I said.
He nodded and left the room before returning with a large box full of gears then went back and brought pipes. Once more and he brought metal plates before he bowed slightly like a butler showing the entrance to the ballroom.
I chuckled before grabbing the gearbox and lifted it just as easily as he did and dropped it next to the inactive forge.
I pulled out all my tools and put them all on the table.
We spent the next six hours rebuilding that turtle. When it was done, we used a metal that was being produced using the extra fire golem cores that were produced in the city.
I was able to learn a bit of it thanks to my previous influence. The skill is called elemental blacksmithing. It’s almost like alchemy but with smithing.
Techno said he couldn’t get alchemy, but I also got that since I heard it would allow me to process monster parts for blacksmithing.
I couldn’t teach him like an NPC, but I showed him the process and he did some of it by himself until he got it.
It’s kind of hard to level this skill up without learning a bit about potion making or having a lot of monster stuff so we left it alone but he did use quite a number of his stored fire cores to learn the skill so we gained a bit of fire iron.
Fire iron was at least 50% more resistant to heat and wouldn’t melt unless it was under massive amounts of blue flames for a very large amount of time. I think the melting temperature was around 3000 degrees Celsius. Iron melts at 1200 Celsius more or less so with this kind of protection we could ramp up the heat inside to near volcanic.
With the forge ready for mass production we had it start melting the iron to make steel. Though we had steel parts, we needed to build the skeletons of the bodies Techno was making for himself and the others.
We started with his body.
He sent me a blueprint schematic of what his body would look like. To tell the truth, it was two bodies we were making for him.
One was his main body which would be a pure mechanic while the other a knight class made purely for combat.
I laughed at the models because they were both based on gods.
When I thought about the clockworks I'd seen up until then. Unless they were robots, we always chained ourselves to the human shape with two arms and two legs.
What Techno wanted to do would definitely make him one of the top players. He also showed me the blueprints for Bulk and Nova’s upgrades and what we would do with the other.
Nova’s looked a bit scary seeing the weapons he was going to add to her, not to mention the massive remodel of the protector to support her. It could be said that he was making a completely new protector model specially for her.
Bulk’s had a bit more of a comic twist to it. It reminded me of a Spiderman movie I watched near the end.
I couldn’t wait until we put him in that body. Animal styled robots were really strong.
With our plans thought out we moved on to the skeleton.
We needed to be careful with exactly how much earth cores we used in the metal. We wanted to make a tougher skeleton so we could make more lightweight bodies. Golem cores were known to make metals stronger without making them heavier or too hard to work with. Since we were using trace amounts so that the level requirements don’t increase, it would be easier to say we were trying something similar to making steel while adding an extra ingredient.
If we put too many powdered cores then the metal would change too much, just like cooking. Not too much salt or it would come out bad.
I already knew how much for both fire and earth golems cores since I had enough time to learn that in the forges at South Gate City.
The cores were ground into a fine powder and with a pinch I threw it into molten iron that was already liquid from the heat. With that we made the turtle start eating coal and start mixing the coal and iron into steel.
While that happened, I prepared molds for the skeleton. The first body would have Techno’s real-world size but with a lightweight knight like body armor to hide the tools inside.
A clockwork skeleton is rather simple, but Techno made it a bit more complex to improve flexibility and work more like humans.
The skeleton would have a lot more smaller parts than the normal one and the wiring would pass through them like nerves. This was mostly to protect wires from the gears. We would then connect them with ball joints.
By the end it would be an extra strong steel skeleton.
We got to it and started making all the parts.
We worked through the night making the parts and building them. The skull piece was also made, and the wiring was done then. We added hooks to hold the body and passed the wires to keep the body from falling apart.
We then began building the gears with the steel gears onto the body. Small hooks were placed to get the first few o
n, then we added the plates and started the rest.
Techno let me continue the body and he started making a new engine.
We spent one more day on this body. The gears weren’t made too complex. It was more so than normal but by maybe 10 or 15 extra gears than normal in every body part.
It wasn’t too hard to make it.
I finished as night fell and Techno finished his engine as well. The engine he made was rather impressive. It looked more like a car one with pistons, but it worked with steam pressure since the pistons weren’t so tense that the pressure wouldn’t push.
We installed the pipes and then took apart all the tools from his current body.
We installed new swords since they don’t take up much space and put the rest of the tool on his arms.
Besides the swords no other weapons were placed.
His first body came out looking like a scaled plate armor impersonation of the Indian god Yasha.
The four-armed god that uses spears.
I switched his motherboard with his new body. When he finally came online again, he checked his stats.
He said he was only 10% away from his old stats which was probably due to the size.
These were the stats he showed me. The only thing that was better was toughness which was 5% away from the original and his dexterity which was higher than the original.
Status
Name
Techno Gear
Race
Clockwork
Class
Mechanic
Level:
35
Free Stat Points
54
Durability
1,075/1,075
Energy
400/400
Strength
88
Agility
68
Toughness
105
Dexterity
115
Intelligence
89
Wisdom
95
Charisma
30
Leadership
The Return Page 7