The Return

by Nathan Valerio

20

  Luck

  50

  He started trying to move the second pair of arms behind his normal pair. The arms were like normal ones but he had trouble with them since we don’t normally have them.

  “You can make programs, right? Why not design a software to help out? I’m sure your processor can all be remodeled to allow you to use it.”

  We left that for later. We finished taking apart the huge knight and removed its arm and shoulder area.

  Next we made new skeleton parts and replaced the old ones. Then while I built the new parts, he made a new engine for that body as well and remodeled the weapons.

  He also took some weapons that were left lying around the storage and began setting them up.

  I was kind of scared of the combat robot. The thing was nearly as heavily armed as what he planned for Bulk.

  We finished off the weapons as I finished the skeleton parts. We replaced the parts and then remodeled the torso so it could handle the three pairs of arms we were making. Yep, the knight he used was being converted into an interpretation of Asura. That thing was scary that’s for sure.

  Each arm held a sword while they had different weapons as well. The front pair had rifles. The middle pair had mini-guns similar to the protector and the back arms had a grenade launcher which opened around the wrist similar to the rifle. All the arms had the pressure punch as well. It had scary power.

  With his mechanic class in one body and his knight in another he was going to clearly take combat to a whole new level with these two bodies.

  I’m sure he was already preparing his programming skill as well to get the extra arms working.

  Once the body was built, we replaced every gear with steel and plate as well. All in all, the body turned out to have nearly 20% more physical stats than he originally had. To make things stranger, scanning the body brought up a status window.

  Status

  Name

  Techno Gear

  Race

  Clockwork

  Class

  Chaos Knight

  Level:

  35

  Free Stat Points

  54

  Durability

  1,210/1,210

  Energy

  400/400

  Strength

  118

  Agility

  91

  Toughness

  132

  Dexterity

  126

  Intelligence

  89

  Wisdom

  95

  Charisma

  30

  Leadership

  20

  Luck

  50

  What came after completing that caused me to laugh. I really liked being around these guys.

  You have helped build set robots.

  A set robot is a pair that works in unison with one being the main body used as a support unit and another body used for combat.

  +1 level blacksmithing

  +3 strength

  +4 Intelligence

  +4 Wisdom

  If I could help it, I wouldn’t leave Techno’s team ever. This guy attracted unique events.

  We moved on to Bulk. We had the earth golem take the helm and told bulk to log off for about two game days. I was kind of getting tired already, but I knew Techno wasn’t. We took Hino, the rhino bot he had and Bulk’s current knight body.

  We took apart both robots and mixed them.

  The rhino’s torso was changed into a structure similar to the knight’s and equipped. The legs were reinforced and made with a mechanism that would change its form to match the rhino’s natural leg so it could charge at full speed.

  We went all out and finished at the setting of the second day after telling Bulk to log off. At that point I also needed to log off and go to sleep. It was nearly five days I was in the game and was starving and sleepy.

  Techno continued putting finishing touches to the weapons.

  When I returned, he had already finished up Bulk’s body, made Nova’s body and was finishing the protector.

  Bulk got a new class called rhino knight. It was similar to the gorilla tanks. Compared to his original steel body his physical stats were at least 15% better and his toughness even more.

  Nova remained sniper but got a much more dangerous sniper rifle that required only 10 seconds for cooldown. Not only that she got better rifles on her arms, handguns and an assortment of other smaller gadgets. The protector had his mini-guns remodeled.

  It maintained the same body shape, but new weapons were added as well as an engine. Techno was also using all four arms skillfully.

  He told me he made a software program after he repaired his corrupt codes. My jaw fell when he told me that fixing all his codes gave him nearly 200 intelligence and wisdom. Though it seemed useless to a robot who couldn’t use magic, it actually was balanced out. Races that can’t use magic instead can learn things easier the higher those two stats are. His potential to learn something quicker was faster than others. Think of it as getting photographic memories. He catches things better.

  I walked outside to get some air and found the earth golem, Brock I think, sitting on the upper deck looking up while holding an earth core. I sat next to him and looked out into the partly cloudy white and blue sky with the brownish black earth below.

  “Something on your mind?” I asked.

  “Hmm... Well I was wondering if I was lucky or unlucky,” he said.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “Getting caught here. Not getting an option to restart my character?” Brock said.

  “I’m not so religious but I would say fate has its reasons. Who knows if you will do something great or just fade away while here? Even I don’t know if I will be of greater help besides a simple smith.” I replied.

  “We saw the robots you guys made. They look like monsters.” Brock said.

  “It was designed by Techno. It’s quite amazing how much he learned from this game. He has a great memory and even things that are fed to him by the game he probably remembers.” I said.

  “That's what I mean. He uses me to get minerals, Blaze and Ena are his flame controllers, we haven’t done much of anything besides that.” Brock said.

  “Well I can’t help much in that regard. You should find your own things to do. Why not study your own race a bit? Those cores are some good stuff. You can make more after gathering mana and minerals.” I said.

  “That is simple farming me for these.” He tossed me the newly made core and I looked it over. It was still poor quality, but it was better than most other ones I saw there. As he leveled up, it might go up as well. “Did you know I can make puppet golems using my own cores? I learned about it in the forums. Water and wind elementals are doing that to go around solo. I wonder how good each would be?” he said.

  “I bet as good as the collector drones Techno uses.” I said that clearly showing my comparison.

  Ever since I met Gaia, and Bulk told me about her race, I noticed the similarities between clockworks and golems.

  He looked over and took the core from my hands and let it roll on his human like rock hands.

  “Who knows, right? Still there is nothing to do. Maybe if we look well enough, we can soon find some great dungeon in the sky.” He started laughing and me with him.

  I stood up and looked out before I frowned. “Damn, how long did you know that was there?”

  Still sitting, Brock was confused, “What?” He stood up and looked with me out the right side of the ship.

  Far off rising above the clouds as if surfacing from the ocean. The figure of a humongous whale could be seen. Even from far away we could tell it was a giant mass of rock.

  You have discovered the flying earth spirit, Menthol. One of the last remaining of his race, he is from an ancient earth elemental race that once roamed the skies and his back is home to countless beings. It is a pure unpolluted land as the land on his back is away from the toxins on the ground and he lives above
clouds so polluted rains rarely reach him.

  This race of elementals are also known to house dungeons of all difficulties and can hold great treasures both historical and knowledge.

  “Call Techno, we found dungeons to grind in.” I said seriously.

  “Uh huh!” He nodded and ran off leaving me to watch the massive island whale appear over the clouds.

  CHAPTER 9 Sky Whale Base

  Techno PoV

  We were all looking with our mouths hanging open. The giant sky whale swimming over the sea of clouds couldn’t help but startle all of us.

  I put the ship on high speed to catch up to the whale.

  All the while that I controlled the ship, I had my other robot, which I called Asura because of the model I used, scan the area.

  The scanners we had were greatly upgraded compared to the old ones. The engines, mainframe, coding, everything I had remade. I was allowed to repair 75% of the codes. It seemed the level restricted it. Anymore and it would add a level restriction to our motherboard which was kind of crazy.

  Still the massive coding repairs helped greatly to reduce fuel consumption, made the systems work better and opened processing space for several new programs as well.

  After I finished my first body, I even had to create a new software system to aid me in using the extra arms. I was still perfecting it, but I could already use four arms at one time. It would help a lot since Asura had six arms all armed with different weapons on the arms, shoulders and chest.

  My two new bodies were actually really unique compared to all the others we made. They worked like a set so both of them were built with motherboards. Because of this I was able to switch which robot I manually controlled. For the most part I planned on staying with my Yasha body (four arms) since it was more what I was into, but if needed I would manually take on Asura if the occasion called for it.

  I also needed to make a new system for Bulk.

  When he logged back in to find his new body made so it had a secondary mode which let him go on all fours like a rhino, he asked for some auxiliary systems to help him control himself while like that.

  Bulk’s body had several new heavy weapons that fit the heavily armored robot.

  First off, in his hands I installed a mini-gun. It wasn’t like the protector’s which had many barrels. This one could be compared with a high caliber automatic rifle. Besides that, there were actual mini-guns on his back which worked when he was in rhino mode letting him ram into his targets if he wanted to go wild.

  I left several empty slot zones on Bulk’s body because there were many weapons we still didn’t have like rockets which could be added when we finally developed them.

  For the moment, I could only add the automatic rifles and mini-guns. I didn’t give him a grenade launcher, even though it would work nicely, because I have better plans for what to add in its place.

  While we flew closer to the sky whale, we were searching for a place to hook the ship. The whale was constantly moving so we needed to attach hooks some place.

  The back of the whale was like an untouched forest with high trees, cliffs, plateaus and so on. If we weren’t so high up, you would think this was a regular forest.

  As we flew around it looking for a spot to make a stop, we noticed hundreds of sky fish and several large birds.

  Scanning all of them, I saw they were levels 160-200. I frowned because the whale seemed to be a high-level zone. Still, I wasn’t about to let a goldmine like that fly away.

  Nova’s upgraded sniper rifle could probably kill them if she hit it properly. I gave her my best targeting system which even took the wind speed and direction into account before showing her the target.

  I steered away from the flying monster areas and made my way to a high mountain near the center of the back.

  The mountain didn’t have many trees at the top and it was a bit flat which would allow us to hook up.

  I had Nova and Bulk prepare some large metal spikes used for sky fishing, which Nova wouldn’t stop pestering me to make, and had them aim at the center area. I turned the ship enough to let her aim the cannon loaded with the roped shot and she got it dead center. The ship was left close enough so we wouldn’t be dragged and turned the other way and had her do the same thing.

  With both sides of the ship hooked, Bulk, Asura and Brock pull the ropes in, while I slowly moved closer before lowering the ships built in ‘feet’ for landing. It was a nice attachment already built into the ship. This feature wasn’t used in south gate city because the dock was in the air but they could land on the ground as well.

  Landing, the ropes were fastened tight, so the ship won’t be thrown around and a few other ropes dropped to keep the other parts of the ship tight.

  With the ship landed we threw down drones and began scouting.

  Victor was inside working on the upgrades I drew up for his battle suit. I had already built a new engine for it so he just needed to make the improvements.

  He would then prepare several smithing tools and stuff and load them on to the blast turtle before having it exit and be ready to leave.

  He was our healer and support, as well as our ammo depot.

  Most of the guns had pellet bullets but the barrels were engraved to make them spin. The only long bullet was Nova’s metal drill shot and metal stakes.

  We set up camp and with a few robots I set up sentries. If I was going to make it a safe zone, I would need to add weapons and make a perimeter.

  It would need to be military style more or less, but because of the height we were mostly safe from any land predators.

  For the moment we would scout and map the area out before doing any kind of exploring. With Brock bringing up iron and any other kind of metal the area held we would have plenty of materials to work with as we set up a base.

  Nova PoV

  THIS IS SO AWESOME!!

  We landed on a big flying fish and Bro was helping the midget fix the toys and setting up the other robots to keep watch. It was like being in one of those cool action movies me and Bro used to watch.

  I had Proto help move some of the bigger toys since he was really strong after Bro fixed him.

  I tried playing with him and it was really cool. He was so fast and was much cooler.

  Bro didn’t let me test out the new toys he made for me but told me that we needed to make this place safe before I could play.

  We were looking for some targets, so he would let me play when we were ready.

  I wanted to test it out, but when Bro saw that I was going to try to test he locked all my toys so I couldn’t use any of them until he said so. Even when I cried, Bro simply turned his ears off and I had to text to make him listen.

  Since I didn’t know how to work it, I typed slow and soon gave up.

  Bro is so mean. First, he made two awesome robots for himself and just fixed me up and got me new toys.

  They did look really cool though. The one with six arms had a slight red color to its body making it look really scary and it was really tall. The eyes weren’t that cool, v-shaped helmet we got from those bugs before. They were two normal looking eyes that always shined red and were long and when his face was normal, he looked like he frowned.

  The one with four arms looked like the Bro I knew but with two extra arms. He was a bit more muscular looking but that was so all the stuff Bro put in would fit. His eyes were also two normal eyes, but they shined blue and instead of an angry look all the time, he had a calm look. Both of them had lots of pieces making up their faces. Bro made it special so that the face would show expressions like a normal person.

  He did the same for Bulk and me.

  We could show expressions unlike before when our faces were almost frozen the same way and moved very little.

  It was nice to move my face like normal, though I still couldn’t feel anything. It felt strange to touch something without feeling it or needing to eat.

  Still, I helped out and in two boring days of getting all the toys set
up we finally made our cool action movie base.

  Bro also said he found lots of interesting places. One place he called a dungeon had lots of targets and I was jumping to have fun.

  Bro unlocked the toys in my arms and the new ones on Proto so I could protect myself.

  I wanted to have fun. We left behind Ena and Blaze because we needed someone to watch the ship. With Victor and Brock coming with us, we headed down a path Brock made with magic. It circled around the hill we were on.

  Techno PoV

  With two days of preparations the base was set up. Thankfully Nova was easily deterred from whining since I turned off my ears right after I locked her weapons. She isn’t good with texting, so it was slow with it and eventually gave up.

  Still she was good help because she was strangely good at building the weapons in place.

  We put stationary weapons like mini-guns and rifles on simple tripods.

  If we could I would have set up cannons but those on the top deck of the ship were enough for now.

  I activated all the clockwork robots that were stocked up inside the ship and left them all on in position. Several were put to watch and were all in my view.

  We headed down a slowly growing path Brock was making as we walked. The group was everyone but the fire elementals who were left behind to watch the ship.

  Victor was riding on the back of the blast turtle which, for some reason, he had installed a tripod support for a weapon. The seat built just behind it was made for his size and his suit’s engine as well, as the turtles fed the steam for a high powered mini-gun placed onto the tripod.

  To his side Victor had his trusty warhammer. I also had the warhammer he gave me but mine was in my inventory.

  I would have pulled it out but since I had six swords in my Asura and four in the Yasha body it made more sense to use those.