It had been a couple of days since we got to the massacred village of Shady Grove and everyone was working hard to rebuild it into the new Automata village. When I was last here, I’d piled all of the bodies that I found into the drained fountain at the center of the village and burned them, rather than feed the scavengers with their bodies. It seemed like the right thing to do for the poor folks that were killed.

Buildings were repaired and cleaned, and living areas were remodeled into work areas for the new residents. Without a need for breaks, the work went on around the clock. In just a few days the village had been transformed from a desolate ruin into a thriving community. Work still continued in construction and design, but the village was mostly functional now. There was some argument over whether or not to build an Inn or tavern since none of the Automata would have a need for it, but in the end, it was decided that there needed to be a place to welcome outsiders. Shea appreciated this as it meant she didn’t have to camp outdoors.

I had both Carnivac and Cyclone helping out with construction while I was working on a new project in a make-shift workshop.

“Morning Prime.”

I looked up to see Shea with a cup of coffee steaming in her hands and Sparky on her shoulder working on a roasted chestnut. I wondered if he roasted all of his food before eating it or it just got that way from him being constantly on fire.

“Morning?”, I asked. I looked to the window to see beams of light illuminating the dust in the air. I was a little afraid to ask how many days had gone by so I kept that question to myself and just checked my internal clock. Two days. Two days had gone by while I was working and hadn’t noticed. I have a habit of getting hyper focused on things sometimes so I’m reasonably certain that in my past life the same thing would have happened if not for bio breaks and the need for food and sleep. “Um, yes. Good morning Shea, and good morning Sparky.”

“Whatcha working on?”

“I guess you might call this a delivery packet? I can load these up into my [RockMortar()] launchers and fire them at Automata. When it connects, it will automatically upload the [Freedom.exe] v2 program to them with an auto-install prompt.”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” she said, unenthused.

“Oh sorry. Yeah, it’s a counterspell that will break the curse on the Automata that forces them to be slaves and prevents them from accessing their own memories.”

“That’s interesting,” she said in a tone that defied the meaning of her words, “but I meant that.” She pointed to a much larger project sitting off to the side. I only had the rough frame built so far and about half of the mana cord, I needed to circulate power. I was also still missing the lightning mana crystals I’d need for each wheel motor, there were six total on this frame, as well as a means of storing up mana as a battery.

“Ah that, that’s a new shell I’m working on but I’m still missing a lot of materials.”

“A shell, like Carnivac and Cyclone? This one’s massive, what’s it for?”

“Transportation. It’ll function similarly to how Cyclone does in bike mode but more like a carriage that you can ride inside of with room for six passengers.”

“That’s fantastic! No offense to Cyclone, but riding on him terrifies me. Anything I can do to help?”

“Now that you mention it, I’m in need of four large lightning crystals about the size of a grapefruit and I’d love to get my hands on one of those big Rock Lizards I saw last week.”

“That’ll be tough, I might be ready for a magic upgrade as payment when I get back.”

“You just had one! I upgraded you and Sparky before setting out on this quest, remember?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said through a grin as she turned and walked out of the shop.

I rolled my eyes, or at least my version of it since I had shadow crystals for eyes with little dots of blue light for pupils. Via my proxy connection to Carnivac, I caught up to Shea to go with her and brought Elita along. Shea may talk big but the request was beyond her current abilities to solo. The thing that I’d been thinking of as a Rock Lizard was actually called a Stone Dragon and they were known for being slow-moving scavengers. Due to their immense weight, hunting wasn’t really an option for them. One should be easy enough to track down, but getting through their heavy rock hide would be another story.

For the lightning crystals, Elita suggested hunting the Voltas which was a giant electric snake. They were apparently pretty territorial so getting four of them would be pretty difficult. The crystal from a Thunder Bear was a little smaller but it would still do the trick and they were easier to find so we decided to hunt that instead. This would be my first time hunting with the girls so I was excited to see how they worked and how I could help. Of course, since my main body was back at the village, I couldn’t use Carnivac at full power or access any of his shadow magic abilities. Still, he had speed and natural stealth going for him. Unfortunately, I knew next to nothing about tracking things, and I completely forgot to give Carnivac any sort of sense of smell. Wolves are supposed to be great trackers with a keen sense of smell, right? Something else to add to the “Revisions and Upgrades” list that just kept getting longer.

They came across a trail of sorts that looked like something huge and heavy and dragged itself through the woods and crushed everything in its path.

“Think this is it?” Carnivac asked.

Elita squatted down and looked at the trail. “Maybe,” she said, “it looks like a Stone Dragon trail, but that’s not the only creature that moves like this. I think we should follow it to see where it goes.”

“Let’s do it!” Shea agreed.

The trail led through the woods for about a mile. It was really strange following it. It was like one of those big steam rollers came through the woods to lay a new highway. Trees, bushes, the occasional animal that couldn’t get out of the way, all flattened. Eventually, the little highway led straight into a lake. Elita stood at the water’s edge and stared out. Then her eyes grew wide and she whipped around to look at us.

“This isn’t a Stone Dragon! We need to move!”

Behind her, the water erupted as something massive threw itself onto the shore and at us.