The progress wasn't as fast as our ship because he only just made his new body but it still moved well.
I asked Brock if he could make a corridor up to his back. It wasn't too hard and was quickly made.
The entrance was about two thirds of the way down his back. When we exited, we were met with a rocky mountain land like back, but it wasn't too hilly except for when his body dipped for him to beat his tail. It wasn't so fast so even though the wind was strong, it was weaker than what we felt on our ship.
When we reached the head, we found several small crystal outcrops. They were well hidden but the dim light they gave off showed their position in the dark night.
I sat by myself on top of the flat rock head of the sky whale and looked up at the sky.
I wondered how long it was that I just lay back and looked up at the sky. I breathed out a sigh as my eyes took in the incredible view of the entire galaxy of Etheria's universe.
The lights of all the stars lit the sky and strangely because of the pollution in the air it gave the lights a strangely mesmerizing look.
“So, you like the view of the night sky?” Brock asked.
I looked around but didn't see Brock.
“I can project my voice by vibrating several metals around you. Hearing works in the same way. I have the helmet on inside,” he said.
I looked around and saw several vibrating rocks around a mana crystal.
I thought for a while and lay back down.
I lay there in silence.
“Don't want to talk at all?” he asked.
“Do... you still regret being made Nova's familiars?” I asked.
It was his turn to be silent.
He froze from the question spoken out loud. They had only heard me talking with Nova or yelling at Gaia so to have a normal question asked might have been strange.
“Um... well I wasn't happy, but I don't regret it now. It’s a lot of fun and I'm sure I would never have gotten this race or anything if I wasn't with you guys. So, no I don't regret it.”
I thought deeply about it.
“What about the other two?” I asked.
“Ena and Blaze? You need to ask them not me,” he replied.
I nodded silently and just lay there for a long time letting the wind pass over and through by body.
After a while, the stars dimmed, and I sat up and saw it was because of the lights from South Gate City.
It was still the dead of the night, but we had arrived. Over the town, Menthol was floating, and we could see the lights of two ships flying about from the scraps on to his back.
“Want to go down or just land in the scraps and log off?” I asked.
“I think I will sit down a bit off. See you in a day or two,” he said.
I pat the big whale and soon it started descending. After a careful landing in the cleaned dirt area around the city I saw the mana crystals dim after he logged off. I checked his status and a (logged off) message was at the top. From the attack on the pirates the three elementals gained three levels and Nova herself gained four from the bombing. I gained four since I was using more than one body and the robots.
As for the rest, I couldn't say unless they told me but I guessed everyone was at least above level seventy already.
What passed through my head was what this new patch would hold. The first one jumped to the future and let the NPCs work to make a nation.
Maybe this one would fast forward to expansion. Some games gave players the chance to be managers of a village. This might expand all the nations enough to make a proper economy if they could set it up properly and make unique products or at least get normal products it would work out fine.
With Brock logged off, the whale was at the mercy of everyone when they woke up.
Well at least I thought that until something fell off the giant whale in the air crashing just in front of the whale kicking up lots of dust. As the dust settled I saw the black figure of a man walking out of the crater that was formed and that suddenly jumped up to us.
I already recognized the figure since it fell from the sky and survived.
I pulled out a small headset like the one used by the girls and tossed it to him.
“So, what brings you crashing down here?" I asked.
“Well, I saw this boy here and was kind of shocked that he already got to this size,” Menthol said.
“It’s probably gotten so big since it was made around a cave so the body stretched to meet the size," I replied.
He nodded a bit and sat down cross legged in front of me before looking up at the sky.
“It’s been so long since I sat down and just looked up at the sky. The stink in the air made me hide away. Right now, I am staying here only for a bit because the trees and such made by the elves clean the air a little.”
“I can't smell or anything so I wouldn't know,” I said out loud.
He chuckled a bit but didn't take his eyes from the sky. I looked up as well. The mix of the night sky, Etheria's two moons and Menthol's sky whale gave the scenery a mystic look. Looking closely, I could see a new little waterfall on the side we could see.
“You made a waterfall?" I asked.
“Hehehe, I was hoping you would notice. Yes, well I always had the water and only let it out when I was in dry areas. You should know an elemental that becomes a spirit tends to attract more elementals. For me, as a necessity to survive without coming down for water I located some water elementals. It’s one of the reasons I came here. Here take it,” he said.
In his open hand was a small little light blue pearl which reflected the weak light coming from the city.
“This here is a water elemental’s core. Be careful because they are mischievous if you wake one up incorrectly. For a peaceful one, you need completely pure water filtered to as high a purity as possible. Unlike the golems who are stupid if they aren't born under the guidance of a greater elemental, nymphs as they are called, are highly intelligent. This core I got from the queen living deep in my reservoir. A normal core would be a small blue ball instead of a pearl like this.”
"Is it different?" I asked.
“She can be called a lesser spirit. Earth spirits like me or the boy here”—he patted Brock’s whale—“are called greater spirits, we are some of the strongest form of spirits because of them.”
Hand once again patting the whale below us.
“Are your second bodies that important?" I asked.
Menthol nodded. “Quite. No other spirit gains a secondary body except my race and it's the reason why the transformation from golem to earth spirit is so intense.”
I nodded understanding. I looked at the little blue pearl.
“Mind looking after them. I want to go piss Gaia off a bit while I rip her off for my reward for eradicating a pirate group."
He started laughing loudly hearing that. “As long as you record the image of her having a tantrum then I don't care. I love seeing her annoyed but I was never able to get that reaction from her since she annoyed me before I could.”
I chuckled and turn to Yasha and had it bring the frozen demon's corpse before we jumped down and headed to the city.
Thankfully everyone was asleep because walking in with a corpse on your shoulders wasn't the best thing to be seen carrying.
We reached the house and I casually connected to her systems which were off. I just carefully took control and had her open the door and then made her lead us to the office where I sat her down and then I put the head of the demon just in front of her face before doing a complete boot.
I was having Yasha film it all while grinning and as soon as her eyes turned on, she took a moment to see what that was before her, she jumped back and fell off the seat she didn't remember shutting down in.
I couldn't help laughing. Actually, since that idiot made me burst out laughing it felt a bit easier to laugh than before.
I couldn't wait until he woke up as well. Anyway, back to the idiot with the rattling gears in front of m
e.
“what is your problem? And how did you get in?!” Gaia shouted.
“You let us in personally I have video footage if you want," I said.
She grabbed Yasha and Asura by the head too fast for me to react.
“show… me!”
It was a deadly tone but I just grinned as I searched up the film in Yasha's memories before uploading it to her.
She let go and watched it. Moments later she turned around with glowing red eyes.
“You… hacked… me!”
“I do the same to my crew all the time when I upgrade them so I know the way to do it without turning the mind on. Also, I turned you on before so I know the way,” I said.
She breathed in and out while her gears rattled loudly.
“Before you try to kill me it’s about that mission you sent for the pirates.” I said.
Still breathing heavily, she looked at me. “What about it!” she asked.
I tapped on the head of the frozen corpse.
“Leader of the pirates. Now what is my reward,” I asked.
She instantly froze up as she looked at him. The damage to the body was two wounds made from the spears on his leg and chest.
“Demon race!? Wait, this is an awakened.” She collapsed on her chair sighing in relief. “Thank god it’s only an awakened. If it wasn’t, then it would be trouble.”
“Why?”
“The demon race are the leaders of their nation which is why the nation is called the Demon Nation just like ours is called the Clockwork Nation. The awakened demons can appear both here and in their own nation but those who appear here have a hard time since they are magic users and not tech users,” she explained.
I already understood the connection. They couldn’t learn more than the basic spells provided by the game system and only elves knew magic but demons can’t learn many of their spells which revolve around nature and light magic while theirs is more fire and dark magic. Put simply being a demon in the scrapyard was a death trap. If fire elementals had survived and weren’t aggressive, they would have had it easier but the only ones with traces of intelligence were the two with me and those being bred on Menthol so they couldn’t even learn much of that.
“Anyway, the reward you get. Well the reward we can give is mineral since you have the blueprints to nearly all our weapons. As many derived from your own stuff and you made us hand them over when you woke up,” Gaia said.
I simply shrugged it off. Minerals were fine since you couldn’t have enough and since we would be traveling for a while we could get a lot out of them while we made more weapons. Since Brock was still small compared to Menthol, I wanted to put turrets and such on his back.
“Oh, we found a large number of enslaved clockwork in the pirate’s base and restored them. We will leave them here,” I said.
She sighed deeply. “There isn’t space.”
“Huh?”
It was unintentional but the shock of hearing that made me unconsciously speak.
“The city is at its limit in population and we can’t build fast enough to support so many awakened. I sent all the race representatives back to their own capitals with the suggestion of expanding. Since the awakened are the largest in terms of numbers we will have a lot of you going out and making new villages and cities. This will remove a lot of people from the cities. We will provide two caravel ships holding materials and tools needed to set up and the specialized manpower from the natives to help. So, if you want why not take those clockworks and some other from the nation’s races and make a city somewhere,” she said.
“No thanks,” I replied.
“I feel it would be a good way for you to start opening up to others, but fine. The offer still hasn’t been approved by all the races of the capital so you can think about it with your friends. Oh, we will also be making an office where you can officially form a crew legally,” she said.
“Explain?”
“It’s simple, to make a crew you need a ship at least caravel sized and a minimum of five other members no matter the age. You go to your capital and register. You have to design a flag or crest for your crew to be recognized and you will be given a device that will let you register those in your crew. They can be both awakened and natives.”
To me, the crew system sounded like the guild systems present in many fantasy games.
“Outside of town there is a new earth spirit, Brock, Nova’s pet golem, survived the transformation into an earth spirit. Take our reward and leave it there. We will gather it later. You do what you want with this.” I pointed to the corpse and with her nod I left. It went strangely well and I was able to catch a really nice video of Gaia scared out of her mind.
I returned to our new base and climbed up to find Menthol lying there with the headset visor on his head.
“I got the video. Let’s enjoy it on a bigger screen,” I said that with a grin and led him into the ship inside Brock and watched while laughing our asses off.
CHAPTER 23 Home Sweet Home
Techno PoV
In the morning three carts being pulled by three domestic monsters each pulled up to the big whale. I was still sitting on the whale's head, but Menthol had gone back to his own body using his magnetism skill. It was too much of a convenient skill to have.
Anyway, the minerals were iron and coal since that was the main product here. There were copper veins but they were rather small and most of the copper came from scraps.
I texted to them telling them to just drop the different materials in separate piles and we would clean up later.
They did just that. One large pile of iron with one ton of the ore and one pile with a half-ton of coal. They left soon after seemingly without giving much thought to the big rock I was sitting on.
Soon after, Nova woke up as did the two girls but Bulk, Brock, Victor, Ena and Blaze logged off to get quality sleep so it was only us four and the clockworks that were repairing their comrades in slavery. Most were repaired, so as payment I had them start moving the coal and iron and dumping it in our storage inside the ship.
I activated my own clockwork robots and told them to guard the ship and the whale with instructions to send me an alarm if anything happened.
With that the four of us headed to Gaia's place. I was going to register my crew as an official crew.
They said we needed a crest or emblem. After thinking of the showiest thing in our possession, my eyes turned to my little sister.
I had her do some homework with the two girls while I drew the design but after she was done, I rewarded her by letting her play with Strato but she couldn't go overboard so I made sure to lock all her guns plus the robot’s as well.
After a while she came back content and I let her ride the robot instead of Proto so I filled it up. By that time, I had my design drawn out.
It was a rather simple white flag with a miniature version of Nova and Strato flying through the sky and her sniper completely out while pointing forward. They were flying diagonally as if about to pass whatever was seeing them.
Why that picture? Tell me exactly who on my crew could win against her? If she used both Proto and Strato, she could easily fight me or Bulk and leave us like Swiss cheese and come out of it laughing.
Since we were already called the Clockwork Crew I went with that and drew it on the lower right of the emblem.
Unlike during the night, the city at 9 a.m. in the morning was the total opposite. Everyone was running about and shopping but for some reason we drew a lot of attention. Discreetly I dropped several drones and made them crawl over to a group of players who were chatting.
“That’s totally him, look six arms and reddish metal plate. Look even the girl with the aircraft,” one person in a group said.
“Yeah, they look like them but seriously anyone can make a look alike like that idiot who got trashed,” his friend replied.
“I have to agree with you, but it's been too little time for someone to make a look alike of him. I think it�
��s him,” a third person said.
“Come ON! Why would he come here instead of continue someplace else?!” the first guy complained.
A fourth player snorted. “Maybe because this is one of the few towns around. The only other one is Shipyard City either a month’s walk or a six-hour flight. Those idiots that died were the pirates in the mountains so it’s between these two towns.”
With that the group got even more excited.
I made the others walk a bit faster before the players swarmed us or something.
We made it to Gaia’s house and were let in rather easily since we had visited quite a number of times.
Rust was waiting with Gaia and they were both dealing with work. Rust was the first to see us. Nova was outside the window but they hadn’t noticed since the sound was similar to regular saw blades cutting metal.
“Techno? What are you doing here? Gaia said you turned the mission in, and the reward was sent already,” Rust asked.
“Not about that. Gaia, you said we can register the crew officially,” I said.
“Yeah, that was already authorized in the last meeting and the devices, are in the making,” she said.
“Register my crew then,” I told her.
She looked at Rust who sighed before walking to a desk on the side and calling us over.
“Gaia, continue and I will deal with it. Well first connect to the console since it would be easier for you. Hmm, where is Nova? I know you never leave her alone without someone watching her,” Rust asked.
“Look out the window behind Gaia.” I pointed casually.
They both blinked and looked towards the window only to find the smiling little clockwork on Strato hovering there.
Gaia was visibly shaken seeing the flying protector and completely froze up but Rust didn’t lose a beat and turned to me instantly.
“Techno, what do you want for the blueprints to that flying craft?” Rust asked.
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