After we returned to town, Tobias worked for a few hours instructing and guiding his acolytes. The center of the church was a mess of notes and books and corpses and blood, acolytes sprinting around and laying out salts and powering rituals, working to raise the corpses one at a time.

After working for a few hours, Tobias went to sleep. I sat guard over his room, waiting for his vital signs to normalize. Most of the acolytes refused to look at me. Mathias most of all. Occasionally, while my head wasn’t pointed at him, Mathias would stare at my sword arm, silently contemplating. When the time rolled around, 24 hours after the last skillbook I completed, I attempted to process a second one — and failed. The reason was obvious immediately — the days were longer here. Only a little while later, I processed the next book, reviewing the contents of the individual images in my mind.

The book’s title read ‘Bones and Other Moving Parts’, and granted a skill, [SKELETAL REPAIR], which allowed a Necromancer to feed dead parts to a skeleton to restore its health faster. There was a heavily implied subtext that this would allow you to swap out parts as you got them, increasing the strength of Bone Golems as you killed more powerful monsters.

With that complete, I left.

A cordon of monstrous undead, a wall of dead flesh and bone abominations, surrounded the church, isolating that place from the rest of the world. For now, Tobias and his acolytes were under no threat.

I had to raise more of my undead. With [Lord and Master] at level 6, I could raise an additional 6. It would take time as I worked through the night.

I ran through the woods, arriving at the corpse of AI615. OFF03 had already moved to intercept me, standing out in the open beside a pile of organic corpses. At the top of the pile, a gigantic bird leered at me, opening its mouth slowly. OFF03 had discovered the utility of [Energy Drain].

They freed several mechs from the soil, mostly those in more complete states. Drones buzzed around, scanning complete mechs and drones or dismantling the more damaged ones.

One of the cargo doors to AI615, several hundred feet in the distance, hung open. The autofactories were deployed. 3 of them were half dismantled, parts littering the ground around them, the earth covered in hunks of misshaped steel. Drones worked to repair the 4th.

OFF03’s LED indicator swiveled to show he was acknowledging me.

/Show me the six most necessary mechs for on-lining systems

/ ACK

Six drones stopped their work, suddenly hovering in place in midair, pinging me to alert me to them. I tracked them as they flew over the work site, stopping over a set of mech bodies that had freed from the wreckage or ripped out of the earth.

These weren't mechs like my generalists that were deployed for the ground cordon. My mechs were humanoid, though without the unnecessary head, with bodies designed for all purpose work, capable of contorting to different shapes and using their five limbs interchangeably.

2 of the 6 mechs laid out belonged to OFF03’s group — construction, survey and mining drones. The mining had dog-like bodies, human technology often imitating from nature. Quadrupedal, mechanical legs rose to a truck bed, feet across, covered by a chassis. A matching set stuck out from the top, so that the dog could walk at either orientation. In the place of a head, a set of articulated limbs emerged. One was a drill and an accompanying articulated arm for manipulation or laying blasting charges, while the other was a circular surface mining tool. They were mostly machines for sampling ores so that bigger, stationary equipment could be moved in. But they could mine some materials.

Normally, the static equipment would be ready to roll out of the ship and begin mining operations, but it was unlikely to be in one piece.

I pulled up a 3D model of the locations for the [RAISE SKELETON] ritual, overlaying it with a 3D model pulled from radar scans, automatically shifting the optimal location for each symbol to be aligned on the mining dog’s frames. The render overlaid my vision, and I engaged my prybar and its oscillation, drilling the symbols into the framework.

It rose to its feet, twitching, the sound of motors whirring as it tried to adjust to its body’s balance. I gave it the standard directive set, with an additional instruction to obey OFF03’s orders as long as they didn’t contradict mine or the standard directives. Then I worked on raising the other dogs.

The next two mechs belonged to my group — general purpose mechs, referred to by humans as Starfish. In the place of a head, they had an additional limb. They could orient and walk on any of their limbs, were highly modular, and contained articulated fingers at each point. Calculating the ritual for these two took additional time — seconds extra — which showed just how unconventional their frames were.

They were up and running quickly, OFF03 transmitting orders the second I pushed energy into their frames. They lumbered into the ship, their articulated forms mobile enough to squeeze through the wreckage, likely on missions to account for inventory of working parts and doing detailed scans to plan repairs.

The last two bots were offensive in nature, belonging to OFF02. They were the most unique by far. Another one of these was a dog like model, but instead of a head of articulated limbs, it had a cone. It was an anti-personnel weapon used to repel local wildlife without killing it and disperse crowds; a sonic weapon. The last mech was a similar non-lethal weapon; it featured a dish for a chest, capable of sending directed energy. The Active Denial System it featured would disorient almost anything hit by it; it was similar to setting a thin layer of the target’s flesh on fire, with almost no permanent damage.

All the better for capturing batteries. My energy reached 40% by the time I was done, so I moved to the pile of corpses, stabbing my prybar into the animal on top. OFF03 had continued to work the entire time, directing drones and assembling pieces of machinery. 03 worked to weld together pieces of metal, accelerating the repair of the autofactory. The dogs were nowhere to be seen; likely heading off to the mine.

The bird still lived by the time my energy refilled, so I removed my sword. It no longer moved as violently as it had before; it could thrash a lot for a creature with no limbs.

Finally, I walked to where 03 directed activities around the autofactory. The starfish were carrying a container out of the ship. One of them walked along the ground on three of its limbs, holding the other starfish above it with the other two. The starfish above held onto the starfish below with two limbs, using the other three to carry a container several times their size. When they set it down, drones flew to it, pulling apart the contents and putting them in place on the autofactory.

The autofactory itself towered over us, almost as large as the collection of squat buildings in the little village we were occupying.

/How long until production capacity is online?

/ Work is proceeding at a steady rate. In the next day or two we will begin manufacturing, but without a central AI to coordinate we will have reduced efficiency. We will bootstrap the four autofactories before beginning repairs on AI615, then dedicate 25% of capacity to expanding capacity. 50% will be dedicated to drone reconstruction, starting with military drones. The final 25% will focus on repairing AI615. OFF01, we have not found OFF02 at the site.

/OFF02 is missing?

/ Affirmative.