I climbed inside of Carnivac and tried moving around a bit. Everything had been properly repaired, though the shoulder joint felt a bit loose. If he had been an action figure, a couple of drops of floor polish would have done the trick, but I doubted it would help much on an action figure that was seven feet tall with a magisteel exoskeleton covering a mana fiber musculature.

Shiro and I left my shop and headed over to the village Inn. Shea was staying there along with the two Adventurers from the guild, Shiro’s organic helpers from the nearby town of Thompson’s Fork, and Princess Relena. Being an Automata now, the princess didn’t really need a room since she didn’t need to eat or sleep, but it was still nice to have a space to call your own to have some down time.

A small communal eating area was set up on the ground floor with a few tables and chairs. Shea was eating breakfast along with Devin, one of Shiro’s Inn staff, and Sparky, our little fire squirrel friend. Shea and Devin seemed to be getting along well, or at least it seemed like Devin might be interested in her. I couldn’t tell if Shea was interested back.

“Good morning Miss Shea, Mister Devin, Sparky,” Shiro greeted them with a small bow.

Devin jumped to his feet and snapped to attention, giving Shiro a bow in return.

“Master Shiro! I’ve already finished gathering the linens and refreshing the jugs for the wash basins! I, I... I was just checking on Miss Shea to make sure her stay was comfortable!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Shiro soothed. “Sit down and enjoy your breakfast. When you’re finished go and see Kull or Mara from the hunting team and get us something we can use for tonight’s dinner.”

“Yes sir!” Devin said a little louder than was required and gave another bow before gathering up his plate and heading for the kitchen.

Was this really the same Devin that had such contempt for Automata that he’d assaulted Shiro on the road some time ago, threw a fire bottle at IronHide and even tried to attack me with a knife? I had absolutely no clue what Shiro must have subjected his assailants to in order to get this sort of change.

Ting

I looked up to the sound of a bell ringing and saw Stew, one of the other kids atoning for the assault on Shiro with his arms loaded with plates of hot food. He set them down at a table with the two adventurer kids and headed back to the kitchen before poking his head back out.

“Master Shiro! Looks good! By the way, we’re running low on chickie-doo milk and room 4 is requesting a hot bath and fresh flowers.”

He then ducked his head back into the kitchen and Shiro turned to me.

“That would be the princess’s room. She asks for fresh flowers each morning and expects someone to bathe her, though the only one qualified to attend to the princess has flatly refused now that they have been unlocked.”

“She’s an Automata now... and doesn’t do any labor... how much cleaning could she need?”

“Royal habits I imagine.”

“Shiro, you look so... furry,” Shea commented.

“I should certainly hope so Miss Shea. Master Prime set up this illusion spell for me. We need to go out shopping and he insists that I have a disguise. It’s a look-but-don’t-touch sort of thing.”

“You know, I think Lily from the guild dismantling department would be quite taken with you. Oh, maybe I can come with you on your shopping trip?” Shea ventured.

The steps creaked and the princess in Rom’s body came halfway down the flight.

“There you are Miss Shea, might I borrow your time?” she asked with head held high and hands clasped. It was a bit odd seeing Rom’s body being prim and not being in control of it.

“Yes of course your highness, I’ll be right there,” Shea replied, standing up and giving a small curtsey.

The princess gave a little nod and went back upstairs.

“She was very kind to me in Urd even though I was so frightened... though now it feels like I’m at her beck and call,” Shea said with a frown and a slump.

“Think of it as atoning for your actions at the guild,” I said flatly.

She pursed her lips and pouted but didn’t argue. Instead she took a couple of coppers from a pouch and left them on the table before heading up after the princess.

That reminded me that I’d promised to make a coach for our friend Jada in Urd. She didn’t like horses so she was probably expecting something self propelled but there was no way she’d have the mana to power such a thing. I put Rom and Ratchet on the job. They should be able to collect enough wood for a coach from the woods with the help of the construction team, I’d just need to figure out the other components. Maybe I could reverse engineer the mana collection systems of an Automata to build a sort of recharging battery of sorts.

Shiro gave his daily orders to his subordinates and I informed the princess that we would be heading out to gather some supplies but that the Urd Adventurers were downstairs for her protection. I also left Alfred at the Inn should she need anything, though I was wary of him getting roped into becoming an attendant.

On our way out I could see behind my shop in the cleared testing area I called The Range. Our resident robot sniper, Remi, was giving the Automata twins, Baju and Yani, tips on archery. The twins were still very much just children and their father, Teddy, had requested that they have child sized bodies. They were quite the handful, but it was great having them around. A village without children is just weird.

“Um... excuse me? Carnivore?”

I turned around to see Jaffmeern looking hesitant. The poor guy had been designed to crush boulders and was huge but in order to power a body of that size the artificers at The Factory had installed two soul cores into him. That meant that he actually had two people trying to run a single body, Jaff and Meern. He had also been mounted to a plinth and had hammerheads instead of hands.

“Carnivac?” I asked.

“Ah! Right, sorry sir. Idiot, I told you it wasn’t Carnivore. Well they sound the same, right?” Jaffmeern argued with themselves.

“I’m about to head out, can I help you?” I prompted.

“Sorry! Sorry. Um, have you seen Master Prime?”

“Yeah. I got him in here,” I said tapping Carnivac’s chest. “We’re going shopping for supplies.”

“Oh, sorry sir. Um... we was wonderin’... that is... He promised to make new bodies for us.”

“He hasn’t forgotten. We just need materials. If you head over to Prime’s shop and talk to Ratchet, he might have enough to make you guys some simple hands.”

“That’d be right proper! Yes, thank you sir.”

“After that, could you report to Scara of the construction team? They could use the help with all these new folks.”

“Oh of course! Yeah, ‘appy to ‘elp out, dems dat don’t work don’t eat. We can’t eat anything, what are you on about? Oh shush.”

“Master Shiro! Hey Master Shiro, will this be okay?”

Approaching from the main gate was Shiro’s subordinate, Devin. Behind him I could see our village hunters, Kull and Mara. In a village full of Automata, they didn’t have much to do normally but hunting is what they were used to before their conversions and they enjoyed their jobs so they kept at it. Thankfully, we had more people in need of food joining us. Between them, they were carrying what looked like a cross between a boar and a watermelon. Could it be the Porcoopine that everyone but me seemed to know about?

“What... what is that beast there?” I asked.

Shiro looked at me like he wasn’t sure if I was joking or not.

“You act like you’ve never seen a summer melon,” he said, giving me a sideways glance.

“Right... a summer melon... wait, what?”

Shiro shook his head and conferred with Devin regarding the use of said melon for dinner.

“You okay Mara?” I asked the shorter of the two hunters. He was looking a bit down.

“It’s gone,” he sighed.

“Gone?” I repeated.

“My streak. 109 undefeated matches in Battle Beasts and I can’t win, not once, against Jayce.”

“Ah.” Battle Beasts was a game I was developing that made use of illusion stones that basically played like Rock Paper Scissors. So the fact that he was able to go 109 matches undefeated is nothing short of a miracle on its own.

“Who would think that a guy with such an elegant and effeminate frame could be so vicious?” Mara lamented.

“I have no words for you,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. Jayce was a decidedly male Automata that had been installed into an elegant maid type of body to be the princess’s attendant and named Lucy. Now that he was unlocked, he was having none of it, but was still wearing the maid uniform. Well, to each their own as they discover who they are.