Time passed quickly as I continued to pour pieces of machinery out of my body. As the day stretched on and evening fell, I estimated I had another 4 hours of production before all the pieces were completed and ready for assembly.

  I looked over to where Armela sat, expecting to see her still in the throes of concentration, but as I studied her, she lifted her head.

  It pivoted to stare directly at me, and an immense feeling of dread washed over my soul.

  In fact, the look unsettled me so much that I temporarily halted my production and rose to a fighting stance.

  It was such a blank, vacuous, soulless look.

  Like she wasn’t actually conscious.

  Before I could call out to her, she was up and sprinting directly at me. Dirt and gravel sprayed up in a wide fan from behind her heels as she rocketed forward.

  I slowed down my sense of time until she was barely moving.

  Something was going horribly wrong; my soul felt like it had been directly kicked by w?h?a?t?e?v?e?r? was staring at me through Armela’s eyes.

  Observing her body, I didn’t notice any major changes in her physically. My cells had maintained her appearance through the transition, so not a single hair on her head had been altered to any degree.

  I scanned her systems, pinging all of my old cells, and they were all functioning perfectly. Even more baffled, I checked in on her mind and saw that it was still behaving like it had been when I had left her by the fire.

  There was absolutely no difference at all. And yet she was currently barreling towards me with a face of lifeless stone. There wasn’t a single emotion there; hell, there wasn’t even a lack of emotion.

  It felt like I was being stared down by the dead.

  This was not Armela.

  Everything I’d seen had told me that there was no possible way she could be in control of her body yet. This was an e???n???e???m???y??? in Armela’s body.

  s?o?m?e?t?h?i?n?g? had slipped into her as though she were a piece of clothing and was now using her like a suit.

  The crystal.

  The fucking crystal. That was the only plausible explanation of this.

  I ran a full sweep over every spectrum I could and yet I saw no activity, no flares in power, no skills, no sigils, nothing. She was being controlled like a puppet, yet there were no strings, at least, that I could discern.

  Given how quickly she was covering ground, even with time slowed the way it was, she would be on me in less than a second from where she’d been sitting.

  I needed to remove the crystal from her body; that was the only rogue element at play here. I needed to do it quickly, and with as little destruction to Armela as I could manage.

  Whatever this t???h???i???n???g??? was, i?t? had been waiting for an opportunity to strike at me. I had no way of knowing what i?t? could see, or how much i?t? knew about me or my purpose. I wasn’t even sure if i?t? was sentient, so I needed to handle this in a way that revealed as little about me as possible.

  Those strings needed to be snipped as quickly, precisely, and permanently as possible.

  Focusing on the crystal, I calculated.

  Velocities, momentum, mass—I ran through thousands of formulas in nanoseconds. I double and triple checked the solution and then pumped out prodigious amounts of energy. It was almost instantaneous at the speeds I was operating, but at the heart of the crystal, a small black hole flared into existence.

  I’d calculated the amount of energy needed to condense the local space of the crystal into a singularity. Sucking it—and hopefully whatever it had allowed into Armela—into an endless oblivion of quantum static.

  It grew within her, slowly swelling until there was enough mass to drag the crystal into its event horizon.

  The crystal stretched, its atoms being ripped apart one by one as the tidal forces being exerted by the hole spread up and away from the focal point.

  The t?h?i?n?g? inside Armela seemed to realise something was happening.

  I?t?s? gate shifted ever so slightly, I noticed a tiny twitch in her eyebrow, tension rippled out over the body; i?t? was preparing to shift i?t?s? momentum and alter i?t?s? course. Perhaps i?t? thought i?t? might dodge whatever was about to happen to i?t? , or maybe i?t? sought to ruin the calculations I’d made; there was no way to tell.

  I had no intention of interrogating i?t?; I didn’t see how it would be of any benefit to me. Even if this ????i????m???p????o????s???t????e???r??? ???? felt charitable and decided to monologue, or answer some of my questions, there was no doubt in my mind I would end up giving away more than I got in the exchange.

  There was also the dread. Every single aspect of my soul was screaming at me to end this... t?????h????i????n????g????? immediately. It felt as though, had I allowed i?t? to come any closer, I would have put myself in incredible jeopardy.

  Jeopardy of what, I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t taking my chances. I also needed to recover Armela, who I believed may have been a part of i?t?s? initial plot against me; use her to stay my hand, but if that had been the plan, i?t? had failed miserably in the attempt.

  The crystal was disintegrating rapidly at the slower frame rate I was observing from, and I could see the effect of that destruction carry out across her body; it radiated out from the crystal in a wave, travelling across her like a ripple.

  Starting from her core and emanating outwards; her muscles slowly stopped responding. Her legs went limp, and she rag dolled through the air as her momentum carried her slightly to my right. As the wave coursed up her chest and down her arms, the face remained rigidly locked onto me.

  Rotating to track me as the body diverged from the direct line to me. Before the final command signal reached the neck, I could see the slightest hint of movement in her eyebrows, an almost imperceptible creasing down the middle—confusion.

  Good, the e???n???t???i???t???y??? inside her didn’t understand what had happened. This implied that, while i?t? had recognized an attack of some kind was being directed at i?t?, there was no way for i?t? to know the nature of it.

  This was a boon to me.

  The crystals did not allow for an omniscient view of the world outside the host, nor did the t?????h????i????n????g????? have any inherent knowledge of what I had been capable of. This was valuable information about how this t?????h????i????n????g????? operated and eased the gut-wrenching dread I felt by a small fraction.

  I?t? could be beaten, at least here on the planet, anyway. As Armela continued to tumble forward in extreme slow motion, I targeted the other crystals and obliterated them as well.

  I didn’t know if they could control a host remotely, nor did I know if I was susceptible to their effect, so destroying them was the safest path forward for now.

  It was regrettable, but I would need to forgo my research on them for now. Perhaps at some point I could uncover a way to poke around inside them while handling all the potential risks. I couldn’t have a repeat of what had happened with Armela, so if any of my future companions ended up becoming Technolytes like her, they would have their crystals removed.

  Their physical capabilities would make them a preeminent threat to everything on this planet on their own. If Armela had mastered the use of her new brain before the u?????s?????u?????r????p??????e??????r?????? had assumed control, I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to resolve things as quickly as I had.

  I lashed out and collected Armela’s body from the air, arresting her horizontal flight. It seemed like this experience had been largely outside of her awareness as she had not come out of her trance in the few seconds that had elapsed.

  In fact, I had seen nothing to indicate that there had been any change in her thought patterns at all. This was probably for the best, as I could imagine realizing s???o???m?????e???t????h?????i????n???g???? taking over your body like a parasite controlling its host would have lasting traumatic effects.

  And she definitely needed no more of that.

  I did worry slightly that there may be hidden changes wrought on her from this exchange, but I couldn’t detect anything in any of my scans.

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  Time would tell, I supposed.

  I sped time back up and brought her back over to the fire where she'd originally been sitting. I would let her know what happened here once I had a better understanding of where the crystals originated and what their main purpose might be.

  It certainly wasn’t for the enrichment of life on this planet; I couldn’t see anyone benefiting from this beyond whoever sat atop the power siphon. As far as Armela needed to be aware, I had simply opted to remove her crystal while she meditated.

  I travelled back to my mound of debris produced by the mine and picked up where I left off with manufacturing parts for the refinery.

  ***

  Settling back into the rhythm of parts production, I allowed my mind to wander. I thought about the refinery I was creating and how it seemed to go a little out of my way to produce items for a reward system.

  Obviously, all I would technically need to do would be to provide the fabricator with raw ore, and it would be capable of simply stripping out the atoms it needed, ejecting the leftover material once the ore had been used up. But putting the entire refining process into one machine was too small a point of failure.

  Not to mention, it would unnecessarily complicate the maintenance of the tools. I would eventually need the people falling into my religion to be the stewards of the machines I built; if the machines were made far too complicated for them to feasibly service, then things would simply break and stay broken.

  There would be significant upkeep done by drones I produced specifically for that purpose, but I needed the caretaking of my God’s Limb to be something sacred and central to serving the religious tenets. Techno-theology would elevate the preservation of machines and tools into the realm of the divine and further bind the people of my congregation to my God’s will.

  There wasn’t a guarantee that I would be present, or available to keep the fabricators running, so the people would need to have the means of breaking down raw material and turning that into items they needed.

  While I was around, the printheads on the fabricators would never suffer from wear or malfunction since they were literally a part of my body, but there was no way for me to know if they would continue on indefinitely in my absence were I to die or leave the universe.

  To that end, producing the mining array and making adjustments to it as I developed my facilities would be an important step in ensuring the independence of my future flock of zealots.

  My mind pivoted at the mention of the word zealot, flashing back to my interaction with the mystery e???n???t???i???t???y??? inhabiting Armela’s body. I replayed every microsecond of the event over and over, looking for clues and information.

  I studied every insignificant motion, every look, every action, display of emotion and sound. All told, the entire event had transpired in under 3 seconds. From initial head swivel to crystal deletion. There were two noticeable things I took away from what I reviewed.

  The first and biggest being the slight signs of emotion playing across the e?????????n????t???????i???????t?????y???????'???s??????? face. The simple micro-expressions had portrayed a sense of confusion, consternation, and a lack of understanding. Which implied that the e???n???t???i???t???y??? could understand which, of course, meant that it was sentient on some level.

  To what degree I couldn’t fathom, but i?t? was capable of being puzzled, so I couldn’t approach i?t? thinking i?t? lacked intelligence.

  Second, i?t? could pilot Armela’s body without interacting with any of her systems directly. Since I couldn’t detect anything pulling or pushing on her body, it stood to reason that i?t? was employing the same power to control her as i?t? did to manipulate the energy produced by the crystals.

  She wasn’t even aware that s???o???m?????e???t????h?????i????n???g???? had been in the driver's seat, though, the possibility that she was focused so intently on her own thoughts that she couldn’t possibly notice anything around her was high as well. Regardless, the mechanism for this 'possession' remained a mystery to me.

  Which meant that until I could remove a crystal from its host, the host needed to be treated as a potential host for the e???n???t???i???t???y??? . Obviously, there could be some other activation conditions for the possession, but I couldn’t risk that. Every interaction with a crystal bearer would be handled with maximum preparedness.

  I wasn’t entirely certain if it was possible to remove crystals from living creatures without killing them yet. Armela had mentioned that the body eventually relied on the crystal for its energy and strength, but because of the technological level here, I wasn’t sure if people dying from having their crystal removed was being mis-attributed.

  It was likely that they had simply died from the extraction process instead of losing the power the crystal granted. This would need experimentation soon; the crystals needed to be expunged from this universe through any means necessary.

  I set two of my drones to hunt the area for any creatures containing the crystals. Once I’d found a decent number, I would begin the experimentation process to find out just how critical to life the small objects were. I needed a decent sample size in order to ensure I had a good idea of how the crystals interacted with the host organisms.

  As that thought finished, so too did the parts for the small refinery. The last piece was being carted away by a drone as I hopped through a rift and popped back up in my small resource room.

  The drones had unceremoniously dumped the parts on the floor in the order they were delivered, so a large pile of unorganised machinery now occupied the centre of the chamber.

  I pinged a disapproving thought through my link to the drones. They had no emotions, so it was more of a self-soothing gesture, and even if they had emotions, I still would have been the one to blame for not instructing them to lay the parts out neatly.

  I shook my head and began the work of assembling everything I’d created.

  Evening turned to night as I slotted components into place, ran cables, threaded bolts, and tensioned pulleys. As midnight came and went, I had fully expected to hear from Seta, but she had gone to sleep some hours before, having exhausted herself through the completion of both her studies and the daily physical checklist.

  Glancing through the logs of her drone, I noted with interest that she’d been awarded a rare drop.

  A small clay gourd with a cork stopper filled with energising tablets. The tablets were refined caffeine pills specifically suited to Seta’s metabolism. The flavour text for the pills instructed her on how to take them and when, the risk of taking too many, and what she could expect from its use.

  I was honestly impressed with how descriptive the flavour text had been, considering it had been procedurally generated.

  Frustratingly, I did feel as though it missed a certain… charm, though. I mulled over whether I should add some charisma into the production algorithm in order to affect a more… relatable narrative in item descriptions.

  While the current format was more than sufficient regarding conveying information about the items granted, overall it came across fairly stiff and… robotic. There was no relationship between this system and the user, which could only serve to distance the people using it.

  I wanted them to be engaged with it, interact with it, and look forward to what might come next.

  Ultimately, I made an edit to the procedural nature of the system. Moving forward, the plain text description would remain, but it would be relegated to a sub-display accessed through an additional symbol embedded in the item display screen.

  Replacing it would be a less analytical description located directly beneath the image of the item. This chunk of text would be strung through the same procedural algorithm as the item generation, and would be slowly adapted to suit the humour and disposition of the one in possession of the drone.

  As an experiment, I ran Seta’s reward through the new display and was met with:

  It was interesting to me; it had automatically quantified the effective boost the drug would impart on the body. I supposed this made sense, since the people who would interact with the drones would already be used to this system from the crystals.

  Breaking the effects down into something they would relate to, or be able to conceptualise would ease the transition over to the drones. I was slightly concerned that the system had given these pills to Seta, who still hadn’t hit puberty, but there were no adverse effects of caffeine intake at the dosage it had provided to her.

  The only actual risk would be in her taking over two a day.

  Seta hadn't acquired a crystal yet, so I was unsure how she'd interpret the status effects of the item she was being given. Hopefully, she'd been exposed to enough people with crystals to have the contextual knowledge to make the description sensible.

  I wondered if the warning it had generated would be enough. It didn’t specify the exact danger of overdosing, and I trusted her to not make an uninformed decision regarding the pills, or any other future items she received… but others who ran into these situations might decide the recommended limits were loose suggestions rather than outright instructions.

  While I wanted to do what I could to protect them, ultimately I couldn’t coddle them to the point of them becoming brainless zombies either.

  The system would take a substantial burden off of their agency, providing them with a concrete path forward, but they still needed to retain the ability to fend for themselves if anything were to eliminate my blooming network.

  With the changes made, and with the last of the parts falling into place, I regarded the small refinery before me.

  Scaling this operation up could be something I dedicated a small portion of my mind to complete in the background while I focused on other endeavours. Conceptualising blueprints, drafting them, calculating material demands, output efficiency, and upkeep projections would all become a part of the design algorithm.

  I would let it run for a few generations, iterating on each successive version until a satisfactory version was produced. I wanted it to be simple; the fewer moving parts, the easier it would be for people to learn its components and recreate. It also needed to be efficient while maintaining a high production rate.

  With these parameters in mind, I let my subconscious take over the task of designing and redesigning what I’d made. The next time this was to be constructed, it would be done with drones instead. I would lean heavily into automation moving forward as the sheer size of operations was about to balloon out of my ability to manage manually.

  I connected the power to the refinery and watched it come alive. The static hiss of electricity filled the small stone room, and drones began flooding in with bundles of excavated ore. They dumped the batches into the first hopper, and the sound of grinding stone soon followed.

  The cacophony of gritty destruction was deafening, so I opted to exit the cave system and return to the surface.

  I instructed the fabricator to begin work on a second digbot and got to work producing any material it needed that wasn’t coming from the ore being processed. While I did that, I produced a few specialty drones with more dexterous capabilities in order to assemble and disassemble machines.

  I instructed them to collect the material I produced and deliver it to the fabricator. Once that was completed, they would collect a finished part, bring it to the surface and then assemble the digbot. I wanted this procedure to repeat until I had 5 more digbots.

  Sitting back atop my mound of rubble, I set to work producing the missing components.

  Staring up into the night sky, I ran over the events leading up to this moment. It’d only been four days since coming to this world. I hadn’t slept at all since my God had flung me across time and space, and I didn’t feel fatigued at all.

  I looked over to Armela once more, half expecting her head to swivel towards me like it had before. Thankfully, it stayed still, eyes shut and brows scrunched together in concentration. A lot had occurred over the past three days, and I hadn’t even really started my quest.

  The priests from Eprie would arrive in Hilst tomorrow, and the next caravan of slavers would be hot on their heels to this camp. I marvelled at how I had been taking this all in stride.

  I’d encountered goblins and orcs, willed black holes into existence, slept with a wonderful Wolfkin, and was just beginning the process of stripping the planet of its resources. Things I could have only thought possible in my wildest fantasies. I didn’t know if this was the correct path to take; I didn’t even know if my God would ultimately approve or disapprove of the things I did.

  I was completely on my own with only the vaguest outline of what I needed to accomplish.

  But I was free.

  Truly and utterly free. I could go where I wanted, do what I wanted, or simply do nothing. I closed my eyes and silently wished I could share this small happiness with my friends and family before offering a prayer to my God.

  I opened my eyes, which once again fell upon Armela.

  Perhaps there was another family waiting for me here. Somewhere off in the unseen future. It was difficult not to think of Ava every time I looked at Armela, but I knew that the odds of ever seeing Ava again were slim at best. Absurd at worst.

  And even if everything aligned perfectly and I could one day see her beautiful smile once more, it would be hundreds of thousands of years in the future. Possibly millions, depending on the severity of the resistance I met over the course of my crusade through the universe.

  Who could say how that time would affect me, or who I would be on the other end of my journey. For now, the best possible action I could take would be to bury my memories of her and soldier on with the small hope kindled in my chest.

  Protecting it until the day we embraced each other again.