After digging through the remaining items at the camp, I had scraped together a small collection of semi-precious metals and gemstones. Mainly gold and silver, though there was a small locket of platinum, as well as some children's toys that had minute amounts of aluminium in the form of oxides in the paint.

  I brought the materials into my body and allowed them to integrate with my components. There were a great many things these metals could alloy into, and it would be a source of constant improvement to my cells, if not just added bulk material.

  I hadn't lost too much of my mass beyond the ejected drones, but I would need to make sure not to get too low so as not to run short.

  To that end, I set an alarm to alert me when my effective mass diminished too much for stable operation. I could even fine-tune some of the excess material to change the composition of my cells to further improve their function and durability.

  Eventually, I would need to dedicate some time to diving into their mechanical design to see if I couldn't make some alterations to further boost their performance.

  I listened in on Armela, still peacefully sleeping.

  She hadn't so much as twitched since she went down for the count. I was grateful. The children all slept as well, some of them fitfully, but overall they didn't seem to suffer any kind of insomnia or night terrors... yet.

  I made my way back to the Warlord's cave and proceeded down to the antechamber. This hill was the highest point of elevation in every direction that I could see, and I was interested to see what lay beneath the ground.

  There was a chance that this uplift was caused by an older volcano, which had migrated hundreds of thousands of years ago and was now forming a new hill somewhere else.

  Once again I knelt on the floor of the cave and spread my body out beneath me, producing hundreds of extremely sensitive induction coil sensors along with a host of telluric sensors to capture the extremely minute ratio in electrical gradients.

  This time I was going to sound deeper, looking for metals and hydrocarbons, so a different method would need to be employed.

  Seeing as the planet had an electrical current running through it thanks to the solar wind interacting with its magnetosphere, and all the different materials in the ground had different conductivity ratings, it was possible to tap into that magnetic field and measure those differences, thus identifying the metals based on their individual interactions with the fields.

  I would run a magneto-telluric sweep here, and then every 400 metres around the base of the hill to form a fairly accurate three-dimensional image of the mineral veins under the uplift.

  Each scan would take roughly an hour to resolve and wouldn't require much input on my end, mainly being a passive analysis of the existing magnetic field, so I had some time to kill while they ran.

  I was only interested in the first kilometre of the crust, so waiting longer for a deeper scan to resolve wasn't something I needed to deal with. Instead, I would use this time to design a mining robot to excavate the ore I found here.

  I wanted it to be capable of orienting itself to dig both vertically and horizontally if required. For the time being, I would only sink a shaft down to whatever depth ore was at, assuming any was found, so verticality would be the central focus.

  I also wanted it to operate constantly instead of digging, stopping to move, and then digging again; the progress needed to be uninterrupted and consistent.

  An image formed in my mind of a mechanical spider, many legs suspending an ever-turning wheel of teeth and scoops. Scuttling across the floor, churning up the earth as it circled around the perimeter of the hole it was digging.

  The excavated material would be pushed into the centre of the hole by the rear legs. I'd have a mat of leather set down for the rocks and stone to be collected onto and then carried up and out via drone.

  The spider would have hardened carbide claws at the end of each foot to provide plenty of grip on whatever wall or surface it needed to cling to. Same with the teeth on the spinning core of its body, it would need a robust axle in order to manage the torque needed to chew through the various stones and minerals it encountered.

  Blasting would be too destructive and imprecise. Lasers wouldn't cover enough ground to make appreciable progress, and a drill large enough to create the diameter of the shaft I wanted would take more material than I could produce without expending a reckless amount of energy.

  Start small and work up to the bigger equipment. Bootstrap myself into a full-scale production facility once a reliable source of ore was uncovered.

  As I imagined this mechanical miner, a blueprint constructed itself around my specifications.

  The spider's excavation wheel would be 1.5 metres in diameter, the legs would be 3 metres long and, all told, the hole being dug would be slightly smaller than 6 metres in diameter. Each bucket on the wheel would be capable of moving 1 kilogram of material, and with 1 rotation per minute, across 40 buckets, that would make for 40 kilograms of material a minute.

  Accounting for the rotation of the spider around the circumference of the circular shaft, there would be some wasted bucket space, but the margin was minimal. I also wanted the spider to complete one rotation for every twenty turns of the wheel.

  I expected roughly 0.3 metres of travel for every two rotations. Meaning I'd reach a depth of one hundred metres in just under ten days of work. Considering the process would be entirely automated, I couldn't complain about the timeframe.

  I could just do it all myself, but ultimately I'd need to have the mining machine up and running either way, seeing as when the next cart of people rolled in, Armela and I would begin our journey to Eprie.

  Setting up now or later made little difference, and based on the initial readings of my scan, a significant concentration of iron was located just fifty metres down.

  Using that material to produce more spiders, I could have a significant portion of this hill mined in under a month, which would put me in an excellent position to begin my main mining efforts once I'd located a decent mountain range.

  Once the blueprint had finished resolving itself, I began extruding the parts for the spider from my body, essentially printing the parts from concentrated elements positioned by manipulating my cells.

  I collected raw material from the surface of the cave and used a large amount of energy to convert it directly into the metals I needed, like copper, aluminium, iron, platinum, nickel, tin, lead, gold and silver.

  I also had my drone collect branches from trees along with the corpses around the camp for all the carbon I would need to form the carbides and steel.

  About an hour after the scan had finished running, I had completed the spider.

  Glass, plastics, crystals, and rubber all took more time than pure metals to produce; the complex chains of hydrocarbons and polymers needed in order to form their structures were exponentially harder to manipulate.

  After assembling the spider outside, I inspected my handiwork. It stood slightly taller than me, a sleek black exoskeleton with fierce claws on spindly legs. Holes had been carved out of their structure when the blueprint had been calculating material usage compared to physical stressors.

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  It saved weight and reduced the total amount of resources needed to complete each piece. The legs reminded me of radio antennas, only more elegant and lethal. Its main body comprised a disk running around the central wheel.

  The hardware and electronics had been spread out along the body and were shielded within rigid folds running the length of the steel frame, protecting it from rock falls or cave-ins.

  The central power distribution comprised the same small lithium matrices that I'd provided to my drones. These, in turn, were bundled neatly into a lead-lined box, into which I would continually pour energy as required.

  It was essentially a small, efficient, battery box connected directly to the vast abyss of my core through the same tears in the fabric of spacetime with which I'd returned the children to Hilst.

  With a mental push, the spider set out for the cave to begin its work.

  It didn't turn or rotate at all since every side was the front side. Or maybe the back side?

  I moved to the next scan location. It continued on this way for several hours until eventually Seta's voice drew me out of my work.

  "I offer this prayer to Mechanriel. May this day be bright and the knowledge fruitful. Good morning, Vita!"

  Glancing at the moon, I responded to the girl.

  "The moon still has a fair amount of night left to cross through, Seta. Should you not be sleeping?"

  I wondered if the trauma of the night may have caused her and the other children to struggle to rest in their beds after all, but based on their movements and noises, this seemed to be a different sort of wakefulness.

  Seta harrumphed as she fired back.

  "My mind wouldn't let another moment pass. Rest is fine, but learning is better!"

  I didn't know if it was bravado or insomnia.

  "Besides, my parents will be up soon, and I'll have little time throughout the course of the day to study much of what I've been given."

  Ah, so that was the motivation. Shouldn't have been surprised by that.

  "Especially once they hear of the Goblin raid, the guards will be doubled again, and we'll more than likely be forced to sleep in groups like the last time this happened."

  I dimly recalled a time in my life when my mind had been that thirsty for knowledge.

  In those moments, there was very little I wanted to do more than absorb as much information as was available to me. Sacrificing a good night's sleep seemed like a small price to pay at the time.

  "Your eagerness to learn impresses me, but try to look after your health. A frail body often leads to a frail mind, and Mechanriel has not gifted you with endless vitality."

  I tried to put what I thought might be a fatherly tone in my voice, but it didn't seem to have much effect, so I pivoted.

  "Tell me, Seta, what miracles have you witnessed from Rel?"

  There was a brief silence. Either she was trying to recall a specific event, or she was trying to determine what to consider a miracle in this situation, so I continued.

  "I know already that the priests rely on the blessing of Rel to use their magic, and those could be considered miracles, but I'm more interested in knowing if you've ever directly seen an act of Rel. Some sign that the God intervened with something here."

  Seta thought a moment longer before committing to an answer.

  "Hmmmm, no, no, I don't believe I have ever witnessed something like that. Not unless you count the blessing at my birth, but I don't remember that and I never truly believed my mother was doing anything beyond coddling me, anyway."

  from the tone of her voice, she was supremely uninterested in talking about this with me.

  "The priests sure like to talk as though Rel has whispered in their ear from a young age, though."

  A conspiratorial tone crept into her voice and she became much more interested in the topic.

  "And while we're at it, I'd always felt like that little ritual they perform when children reach the age of 16 was strange."

  Suddenly, I realised that if I gave this girl room in the conversation, she would fill it up with the endlessly linking chain of her thoughts. Spilling out words faster than even she could think about them.

  She went on, not losing any momentum.

  "I mean, why would children need to undergo a ritual at that big creepy church, anyway? What do they do there? I heard one boy went in for a ritual and something went wrong and they had to take him away, and all the girls that come back from the ritual won't utter a single word about it at all."

  Her gift for gossip was turning out to be prodigious.

  "It's always struck me as scary—like the ritual is an excuse for something else they do and is simply hidden by the veil of worship."

  I could feel the conversation veering off, not that I blamed her for the outpouring. She'd found someone who both understood her and was available for her to confide in. That this kind of emotional support wasn't available to her, even with two loving parents, made it difficult not to take pity on her.

  I would admit, however, that the topic of the church had piqued my interest.

  If her suspicions were correct about the shady nature of their dealings, then it would definitely be something I'd have to look into. Any misconduct committed against the children of Eprie and the surrounding villages would need to be corrected. Harshly.

  My mind flashed to the sheet of parchment I'd recovered from the warlords antechamber. Too high quality for commoner hands, too well penned for the uneducated. It came from wealth and station. Hmmmm.

  "Is there a library in Eprie, Seta?"

  I asked.

  I could hear the derailment of her thoughts as she was cut off mid-ramble.

  "Uhhhhh... yes, I've never been inside it, but it's across from the Church of Rel in the city centre."

  Her answer was almost a question, but she recovered quickly with some thoughts of her own.

  "There's a particularly delicious bakery just two doors down that my parents would often pick up treats from. They have the most wonderful flaked bread. If you're lucky, you can get some of the freshly made ones where the butter hasn't quite soaked into the bread so that when you bite into the centre, you get a big mou—"

  I let her go on talking, mainly because I figured she needed it, and partly because it ended up being a fairly good source of information for me.

  As my scans progressed, I peppered her with various questions about what she knew of the continent, the peoples on it, and the wider world around her.

  Unfortunately, because of her upbringing, there wasn't too much she knew about the world outside Hilst; even Eprie was relatively unknown to her. Only what she'd heard through secondhand word of mouth.

  Eventually, I gently reminded Seta about how much time she had left to dig into her studying, and she abruptly threw herself into it with a furious concentration.

  As the hours slowly passed, the other children eventually rose from their sleep as well, and it wasn't long before the drones were discovered by their parents.

  Seta navigated that diplomatic minefield with her parents easily enough, but the other children fared much worse. Their explanations were vague at best, and confusing at worst.

  So much so that I ended up sounding more like the Pied Piper of Hilst than some dashing hero. Both my poor God and myself were scorned and cursed. Come mid-morning, the whole town congregated for a meeting, and an investigation was undertaken.

  The ropes were discovered, along with the bodies of the goblins and, almost as predicted, the vitriol towards myself and my God reduced into something closer to a guarded caution than outright animosity.

  They did still have a discussion regarding what to do about the drones.

  One of the very first things they had tried to do was destroy them simply to put the issue to rest, but when they discovered that there was no physical way to break them, they begrudgingly left the issue as it was for the time being. At least until they could call on a priest from the church of Rel to come and purge them from the village.

  As much as the children wanted to keep them, and saw no real issue in offering a prayer to my God, the adults wanted absolutely nothing to do with them, or the blasphemy they represented.

  Many of the children were forbidden from speaking my God's name, or so much as thinking about giving thanks to him.

  It was unfortunate, but this was interesting in its own way as well. Even if the drones were reduced to bricks, they and, subsequently, the story would both be passed down through village lore well into the future.

  Little magic gifts left by an enigmatic man who absconded into the night, waiting for the right words to be awakened once more—the stuff of legends.

  Seta somehow manipulated her parents into not just letting her keep the drone, but also into allowing her to continue using it.

  It was a guileful use of tact, winding them down a path of questioning both the logic of letting the gift go, and whether it hadn't actually been a blessing from Rel all along. If the God truly was wisdom incarnate, then why wouldn't she send a boon upon her blessed child?

  By the time Seta was through with her parents, they didn't have a single argument to make against her. Though she was still warned not to let anyone find out about it.

  It was late in the morning when Armela finally stirred for the first time. Just as her nose crinkled before a stretch, I tore a hole in time and space and stepped into the tent next to her to sit on the floor.

  By the time she opened her eyes, I was sitting just as I had been when she last saw me.

  She smiled ruefully and blushed, burying her face in her furry arms.

  "I didn't think you'd actually sit with me all night... you idiot."

  'Embarrassed' was a good look for her, drastically better than the dead-eyed look of torment she'd had in the Warlords' chambers.

  I kept my tone even but playful as I prodded her lightly.

  "If you'd awakened with me anywhere other than here, I'm sure that would have been cause for an even bigger earful. I don't take commitments lightly, you know? How are you feeling? You slept well enough, obviously."

  She stretched her arms out over her head, still face down in the bedroll before turning over and staring up at the angled tent cover. She seemed to zone out for a bit before replying.

  "I honestly don't think I've slept so well in months, maybe even years. You didn't slip me anything while I was out, did you?"

  She quickly peeked beneath her bedroll to emphasize the punchline before shooting a glance my way to gauge my reaction to her crude humour.

  "I'm not in the habit of taking things that ought to be freely given."

  I flourished my words with a toothy grin and then stood. Her face reddened so quickly and so deeply I thought for a moment she would either pass out or leap from the bedroll to strike me. Instead, she just rolled back onto her stomach and buried her head in her arms.

  I was surprised by her boldness, especially following the harrowing events of the night prior. Was she rebounding from it? Coping?

  Her response baffled me.

  "When you're finished flushing those images from your mind, get dressed and meet me outside. We're going to begin our work with a light meal."

  Regardless if it was a coping mechanism or not, it encouraged me greatly that she was comfortable enough to banter as candidly with me as she was.

  Based on her body language and mannerisms, it was fairly obvious Armela was attracted to me at the least. Maybe that was helping to speed along her openness?

  Either way, it was something I'd learn more about over the coming days.