It’s night, so the experiment makes sure to condense the miasma into the human’s helmet. It isn’t sure whether there’s an interaction with the radiation they apparently try to absorb on this planet to get stronger through mutation, but if it had to hazard a guess, it would think that the two phenomena didn’t interact negatively at least. If there was any sort of destructive confluence, the human likely would have mentioned something about certain times of day being more or less effective for the process of meditation rather than just giving a flat number based on individual potential. Not that it had proper documentation or anything, but it had a fairly clear indication at this point that the miasma at least had no negative effects on the human, at least in the short term. In fact, maybe the fact that they were able to keep up with it, more or less, was an indicative of the substance standing in for biological necessities. Humans usually needed to eat, at least.

Considering the spontaneous generation of life exhibited when the helmet seal was breached earlier, the miasma likely had some sort of animating effect. The human had seemed somewhat surprised that the creatures that sprang into existence near it weren’t immediately hostile, which was suggestive that the various creatures they had passed on the way to this town would have been the type to immediately resort to violence if it had stopped to try and interact with them. None of the small, easy to defeat by human variety had been in evidence however, so by its estimation the larger, slower creatures were able to generate spontaneously in high concentration areas of miasma, whereas the smaller ones would need additional stimulation in the form of proximity to a living sapient creature. It was pretty sure there were biological analogies beyond white blood cells reacting to bacteria, but it hadn’t really paid much attention to anything the forty-five series had to learn. That was the whole point of specialization anyway, so not everyone had to learn everything.

Medical knowledge for the medical staff, no one else needed to know how bones worked. All it really needed to know was the ABCs of medical triage; A Bone Coming through the skin is very bad. That was enough to keep everything in check until an actual medic could get there and do some of their biological fix magic. Theoretically, at least. It wasn’t as though there were any actual medical units here, and there were definitely more humans that medical training would be useful for dealing with than it was used to dealing with.

For example, the new, larger human that it was following. How was it supposed to know how much alcohol was enough to gently poison a fully grown human? Would spicing it up with the death bottle be too much? It was pretty sure that humans did actually drink this stuff, otherwise it wouldn’t be sold in the quantity it had found it, but it hadn’t even really gotten a good handle on how potent the drinks were. Mostly the bottles had different flavors, but none of them individually seemed to have any interesting effects.

“Yer gonna need ta hand over yer rum, if ya know what’s good fer ya,” the human says to the tree fiddy human.

“I don’t have any rum!”

“Then hand over yer mead.”

“There isn’t any mead!”

“Well what do ya have then?”

“All I have is light beer.”

“Ugh, keep it.”

“Can I interest you in buying a new weapon?”

“Oh sure, I’ll take a sword.”

“That will be five hundred gold, for the steel version.”

“Great,” the human says, handing over the money. The shopkeeper provides a rapier, which does not appear to be the same type of weapon the human is currently using, and they do not make any moves to swap their cutlass for the primarily piercing piece. Instead, the human simply straps the weapon to themself, and moves on to the next shop.

Following behind, the experiment grabs the coin from where the proprietor stashes it with its telekinesis and presses the currency into its newly acquired piggy bank. Its own human had been less willing to follow them into every shop, but was perfectly capable of holding whatever it was they came out of the places with. The intangible mesh the experiment had pushed onto them seemed to have a large enough pocket dimension to hold everything it had tossed into the space so far, and it was curious as to what kind of limit it could be expecting from this point on.

Hopefully there wasn’t a limit.

Back home, the fifty four series had a hard limit on their carrying capacity, but it was actually tied to their physical capabilities. If this human had anything similar, they might start off with a lower current storage ability than the experiment was used to, but with capacity for growth. Probably not as efficient growth, due to likely being useful for more than just storage and physical capability. Specialization also had the effect of making it so no one had to try and teach them or their pets how to count to ten.

Intelligence is an expensive trait.

For the purposes of conversation, it was fortunate that the other optimized roles did actually require incredible computational ability. Instantaneous spatial mapping and multiverse application was a bit more difficult to parse than ‘pick thing up, move it, and put thing down’. Ideally it could include the forty five, fifty one, and fifty three series in any discussion of tactically important information, but all of them had specific weaknesses that it was less than inclined to deal with. For instance, the fifty three series were more physically adept than any of the other intelligence-oriented optimized experimental groups, and often tried to leverage that into factors where initial bodily strength had no place. The human the experiment had been dragging along with it seemed to have the same type of inclinations, as evidenced by the interaction with the smaller human, but was far more effective due to the whole ‘being a human’ aspect of their biology.

Since they were coming up on the shop where the card in question had shown up, that human trait of physical confrontation might similarly rear its head. Thinking about the recent past, the experiment didn’t think it had met a single human yet that hadn’t used violence or the threat of violence to try and achieve some end or another. Most of those ends were its own, so it might have a bit of a skewed perspective, as that was a known fault of their existence. Still, a good portion of the instinctive fight or flight responses were a fight response. That might be a symptom of the environment, as the society developed in this place was clearly guided along a specific path for whatever goal the enemy had for this particular group of humans.

It was probably more soldiers. That was usually the case.

“Hand over all yer rum, if ya know what’s good fer ya!”

“I don’t have any rum, my entire shop is a collapsed pile of rubble.”

“Then give me all yer rubble!”

“Go ahead, take it. It’s not worth my life, or my family’s life.”

Each of the two humans, merchant and guide both, start pulling giant rocks of roof and metal chunks out of the shop, and hand them to the experiment’s human, who struggles with each chunk for a moment before the object vanishes. Every time they do so, there’s a tiny ripple of space as air rushes in to fill the vacuum created by the sudden lack of matter. That was potentially interesting. If the human could use the pocket dimension on things other than solids, they might be able to create airless spaces where friction was less of an issue. A rolling transmission from front to back of atmosphere would synergize nicely with both of the legs constantly accelerating, which would allow for very efficient travel. Ordinarily, it would never think that a human could handle that type of speed without some sort of container, like the rest of the armor, but potential was there for a faster than sound movement without the issue of smashing headfirst into the momentum of their own travel.

Can’t have the issue of the speed of vibration in an elastic medium if there is no medium to transmit vibration.

That assumed that it would be able to get the human to both understand the concept of air friction, that the storage medium was able to absorb fluid, that the storage medium was able to autonomously absorb material on a proximity basis, and that the storage medium would be able to eject and absorb simultaneously. Other than the reasons that it couldn’t work, it was a perfect plan.

While the experiment had been spacing out, the humans had finished stealing all the building material. Supplies were useful for base building, but it didn’t have any intention on staying in this place long enough for any sort of base of operations to be useful. As far as it could tell, there was no real harm inherent in allowing redistribution of literal rocks. This was maybe the most impractical looting it had ever been a part of.

Deciding it may as well drink the good stuff while it wasn’t actually doing anything, the experiment pulls the stopper out of the poison bottle. Most of those types of liquid stops were predicated on the idea that you needed to follow specific methods to open the container and get at the contents hidden within. Some, like child proof caps, were tougher to open than others. Corks and the like though, those relied on the concept of inconvenient handling. If you couldn’t get a grip on the stop to pull it out, the thing would stay in. There were even specialized tools specifically to dig into the material to create a hold for the user to get the bottle unstoppered. With telekinesis, it could just grab onto the cork and pull on it exactly as effectively as it could anything else.

Granted, that wasn’t much, but these things usually were not sealed that strongly anyway.

Fumes billow from the bottle for a moment, before the experiment drops the glass stopper and shoves the gaseous poison back into the container. It didn’t look like any of the humans had noticed the potential leak, so it was probably still in the clear to surreptitiously imbibe a portion without having to share.

Spicy.

“Why are we doing this exactly?” asks the human wearing armor.

That was a good question, and it takes the experiment by surprise. A little bit of drink spills out as it almost says something flippant instantly, but it catches itself before it can spit take, allowing it to just wipe off its mouth with a sleeve. Quickly floating the stopper back onto the bottle’s neck, it takes a moment to make sure that it isn't leaking before attempting to come up with an answer that isn't just 'I have nothing better to do'.

It fails.

"I don't exactly have anything better to do at the moment. There's the whole thing about making sure there isn't enough of the ambient night energy to manifest any of those smaller blood pinatas that you were worried about, but it's not like I need to specifically concentrate on doing that. Following this person around also serves the purpose of collecting everything around the place," it says, trying to keep the fact it was using 'everything' as a placeholder for 'all of your mutation radiation and also the miasma that causes spontaneous generation of life' as an oblique reference that wasn't being openly broadcast to every single inhabitant of the town, "which means that you can get stronger by lifting rocks. You were just saying that you need to put in effort to improve even if you had just finished meditating, if I remember correctly."

"So that's why thar haven't been any random monster attacks," chimes in the other human. The experiment considers whether it would be more effort than it was worth to turn off the helmet's subtitle projector as soon as it was done with being around this one human that already knew about the capability of the helmet to do that kind of translation. It would be able to speak with its own human privately, but on the con side of the argument it would have to remember to turn it back on whenever it wanted to actually speak to someone. Considering it was likely to forget there was even a language barrier the moment it stopped actively thinking about the issue, thanks to the implant making it a non issue in only one direction, it was much more likely than not going to forget to turn the subtitle projector back on if it turned it off at any point. On the other other hand, its human would still be able to understand what it was saying without the words being projected, and was apparently willing to relay its words to the intended recipient, minus whatever errors the translator was adding into the mixture. At least, it assumed that there were errors, considering the slight differences it had occasionally noticed between the things it said and what the human decided on outputting.

"Of course," responds the experiment, "how could I stand to let random encounters waste my time, or the time of my fellow human here? We are very busy, with at least three things to do."

"And what would those things be?" asks the fellow human in question.

"Well, there's 'get to the other arm', 'get to the other leg', 'find the torso part of the armor', and 'locate the auxiliary control unit'. That's four things, which is definitely at least three."

“What’s an auxiliary control unit?”

“That’s just the part that makes it so I don’t have to make sure everything in each part of the armor does what it’s supposed to do every time. Okay, that’s actually extremely important. Manually activating things is extremely annoying, and it’s nowhere as effective as letting the auxiliary control unit do everything for me. Once we aren’t in public, I should probably tell you all about what the individual parts do and how to make them work. As long as you aren’t trying to figure it out yourself, nothing should explode. Well, nothing that you aren’t trying to make explode anyway.”

“Yar, ye better not be tryin’ ta explode anything on the ship,” interjects the other human. That was exactly why the experiment was somewhat less than willing to explain the various functions of the armor. Humans were far too perceptive, where perceptive was defined as being able to read and do something else at the same time. It could notice when something was moving in its general direction from thousands of kilometers away, or when something was about to suddenly materialize next to it, but doing something and another thing at the same time? That would take relatively resource intensive brain modification that it hadn’t undergone. It had been more toward the ‘be lazy and don’t improve itself’ school of thought, coasting along with the basic amount of power it had been built to wield and only strengthening its control to the point required by its superiors. Anything beyond that minimum requirement would require effort, and who has the time for actually trying at things?

“It’s f i i i i i i i i i i i n e,” it drags out, “without the controller attached, my human would at most be limited to about seven long range explosive projectiles per second. If they can only activate one of the functions at a time, there’s a limit to how much destruction a single… uh, body refinement cultivator can do, even with equipment that’s way more advanced than anything they could reasonably think to obtain through normal means.”

“Oh, and I be sure that ye’ve made sure yer shinin’ child disciple thar has tha temperment to wield power far beyond ‘er ken, aye? Even the most lackadaisical elders ‘a the Primordial Grandmist Sect would be wary ‘o just passin’ ancient technology down to the younger generation. Tha’s the whole reason that tha sects have rank and contribution requirements ta be able ta check out or otherwise obtain tha various resources required to advance in power. Ya don’t hand an underdeveloped brain tha power to destroy everythin’ tha makes ‘em angry, or ya end up with a destroyed wasteland brimmin’ with undead when tha youngin’s get mad o’er the stupidest things and start fightin’ with no head fer collateral damage.”

“It’s f i i i i i i i i i i i n e,” it repeats, “this human has been a calm and collected, as well as reasonable and helpful, example of… You said it was a her? Of her species. I’ve known her for almost as long as I’ve been in this world, and very rarely have there been any examples of hey where are my subtitles going.”

Moving away from the conversation, the human was pulling the holographic projection of its words along with her as she charged toward the smaller human from earlier. She grabs onto its clothes as it tries to run away, and starts pummeling the familiar creature.

“You! It’s your fault my card got stolen, I’m sure of it! You’ll learn what it means to cross me!”

Pulling the larger human over to the pair wrestling on the ground, one more effectively than the other, the creature acquiesce to the human’s wisdom.

“Okay, maybe you’re right and we should head to the ship now.”