In the blink of an eye, Elita threw herself at the others, knocking Carnivac and Shea out of the way. Before she even hit the ground, she was rolling and springing back up with her sword at the ready. Carnivac turned to see what was attacking us and saw a giant turtle covered in reddish-orange muck. Its head alone had to be at least three feet across. She thrust her broadsword at the creature’s head and jabbed it into the jaw. As soon as it penetrated the creature’s thick hide, she loosed a bolt of lightning through her sword and into it. The turtle reared back with a hiss and spasmed as the electricity coursed through it.

Carnivac pulled a handful of throwing knives from his thigh holster and flung them at the creature. Two of the blades lodged in its face but one of them found its eye. The turtle thrashed its head back and forth, snapping at us in a rage and started pushing itself back into the water.

“Oh no you don’t!” yelled Shea, “[WaterJet]!” Carnivac watched as water siphoned up from the lake to form a ball in front of her, trembling as it compressed from an unseen pressure. A laser-like stream of water shot from the ball, hitting the turtle in the neck. The force of the water blast lifted Shea and pushed her back until Carnivac was able to get behind her to provide more resistance. Her high-pressure water stream cut through the turtle’s thick skin like a hot knife but it wasn’t going deep enough. Shea slumped and her water ball collapsed as she ran low on the mana supplying it.

Carnivac rushed forward with his wakizashi short swords and hacked away at the wound that Shea had made. Blood gushed from the wound, he’d hit an artery. Not that his shadow magic would have been too helpful here, but without my main body inside to provide extra power, it felt like he was performing at about half of his ability.

Something changed with the turtle, it started pulling its massive head back into its shell while the reddish-orange muck vibrated and began forming spikes. Crap. Carnivac could tell it was gearing up for some sort of magic based attack but he didn’t have access to my [Console] abilities to try and throw a [PauseBreak;] into its magic functions. Nor did he have my main body’s maxed out resistances to all magic-based attacks.

The spikes shot out, and he threw himself over Shea to protect her from the blast. One of the spikes caught him in the back but it didn’t go deep. His systems started going nuts though. There’s no way he should be taking this much damage from that attack. He turned to see Elita sliding under the turtle’s chin with her blade at its throat then driving her sword to the hilt into the wound he’d made. Another lightning bolt attack and the turtle screamed as smoke poured out of its mouth and its wounded eye. He watched the creature drop into the mud as my connection to the proxy became less and less stable until it cut out completely.

Error Connection to proxy `Carnivac` could not be established

I stood at my workbench looking at the delivery packets I’d produced so far, about thirty. I had no idea if Carnivac had just gone offline or if he was completely inoperable. Just what was that attack, and why did a single hit hurt him so badly? After a few minutes’ wait I felt both Carnivac and the turtle go into my [Inventory], now I could get some answers. I pulled Carnivac out first and laid him out on the table, he really hadn’t taken much damage. I tried connecting to him again but I got that error message again saying that the Remote Connection can not be established.

I flipped him over and looked at the wound, it was a shallow puncture only an inch or two deep, but full of that reddish-orange muck. Just what was this stuff? I brought up [Console] to inspect it but instead of the usual diagnostic screens saw a notification window instead.

Software Upgrade Available

Developer Console ready to upgrade to version 2.0.14

Restart system to apply upgrade patch to firmware

I’d gotten a couple of minor version updates already but so far I hadn’t noticed anything really different, and my current firmware version was 1.3.37. This was my first major version upgrade so I was pretty interested to see what was new. The downside meant that I needed to completely shut down my systems and reboot, which meant also shutting down all my proxies and anything else that was relying on me to be working. I hadn’t had to do that before and was able to keep running when the minor updates applied. A quick check-in with Jada’s Junk Shop, my home workshop, and my proxies working there and I would be good to go. Shiro was covering the shop and would be fine while Alfred and the others were offline. Cyclone was busy helping to construct a new maintenance shop for Jackie, the town doctor/mechanic, so I updated Jackie that Cyclone would be down for a couple of minutes. Okay, after all the proxies were shut down and disconnected, it was time to reboot.

Kwyjibo H87 Pro4 ACPI BIOS ver 1.4

APC: Computronium(R) Ceratanium(R) E3-1230 v3 @ 1.21GWz

Memory: DDR3 800 in Dual-Channel Interleaved Mode

Memory Testing: 8332683T OK

Initializing Controllers ... Done

Auto-Detecting PRIME1... IDE Storage Core

PRIME1: PR2000DM001-1CH164 ADA Device

M.A.S.K. Capable and Status OK

Auto-Detecting Mass Storage Devices

00 [Inventory] Mass Storage Device found and configured

Activating Interlock ... Interlock Activated

Connecting Dynotherms ... Dynotherms Connected

Infracells status ... UP

Megathruster status ... GO

Installing Developer Console ver 2.0.14

Applying Upgrade Patch

Reconfiguring Databases

Upgrade Complete

Booting from PRIME1

As a former human, rebooting yourself and seeing a scroll of text in your mind as a start sequence is a really bizarre experience.

I came back online and had to wait a couple of minutes as my eyes cycled through all of the available light spectrums until dialing in on my preferred default settings, then a couple more minutes as some diagnostic windows opened and closed. When it was all done, I looked around but nothing seemed to have changed. Still, according to my internal clock I’d lost an hour. Just how extensive was this upgrade patch? I opened up my [Console] and got a notification message:

Developer Console upgraded to version 2.0.14

Patch Notes:

Server creation - unlocked Database creation - unlocked Repository creation - unlocked Inspect - upgraded Proxy limit - increased from 5 -> 10 Proxy Range - increased from 50Km -> 100Km Health - increased from 100 -> 150 Mana recovery - increased from 1 MP per minute -> 1 MP per second

Huh. So now I could create servers, databases, and repos. What did they even run on? And how were they relevant to how things work here? What did they even mean in this context?? Did I just level up? How does that work? Well, those were questions for another day. I dismissed the notification and reigned my focus back on Carnivac and this gunk attack that took him out. I started with [Inspect]ing the mud in the wound.

Iron Oxide Clay

Rarity: Common

Quality: High

Source: Iron-Backed Turtle

Notes: The shell of the Iron-backed Turtle continuously rusts due to its damp environment and forms a thick rust clay on the back of the turtle. Using control magic, the turtle is able to manipulate the clay to some extent when in danger.

I see, so it was rust. So it wasn’t that this would normally be a super dangerous attack but just bad luck that Carnivac was an Automata shell. All the iron in the clay, along with the water, short-circuited him. This was basically a picture-perfect attack to use against an Automata. As an aside, the upgraded [Inspect] was giving me a ton of world information now, I’d be tempted to spend a day walking around and just looking at stuff. Alright Prime, stay on target.

Once I got all the gunk cleaned out of Carnivac’s wound, the repair itself was pretty easy. I powered him up and this time the connection went through like normal. Carnivac sat up on the workbench and gave me a nod, which meant that I really just gave myself a nod. I couldn’t help but laugh inwardly at my own dorkiness when Jackie walked into the shop.

“Prime, is everything okay? It’s been a lot longer than you said and Cyclone still hasn’t woken back up yet.”

“Oh shoot! I forgot all about them! Sorry Jackie, I’ll get him back up and running. Actually, I’m glad you’re here. There’s this thing I’m hoping you can help me out with.”

I had Jackie and Carnivac follow me out to a cleared space behind the workshop and met up with Cyclone. I brought the Iron-Backed Turtle out of [Inventory] and all of the mud and gunk and water that was around it in that lake came with it and gushed all over us. The thing was WAY bigger than I was expecting. During the fight, Carnivac only ever saw its head and the front part of its body, the rest was still in the water. I looked over to Jackie, who wiped the gunk from his eyes and looked back at me.

“So, uh... what, exactly, is it you need my help with?” he asked dryly as he flicked the gunk onto the ground.

I couldn’t help but laugh, which had the unfortunate effect of making my proxies laugh, which I admit probably looked really creepy for Jackie.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said regaining my composure, “yeah, two things. First I want to collect all this Iron Oxide Clay that’s on top of our dead friend here. I have a feeling it’ll come in handy later. Second, I need the iron shell but I don’t know the first thing about breaking down the carcass.”

“I see. I’ll get some hands to help out with the clay collection... and I think that our hunters, Mara and Kull, should be able to help with the breakdown.”