The cave had opened up onto a relatively steep cliff face. It clearly hadn’t been as steep when the mine was established, but time had eroded the land quite a bit.

  Kyle and his erstwhile companion shuffled down the mountainside slowly. The forest ahead was still sparse at its thickest points, and Kyle’s wide shoulders wouldn’t get caught on trees. Kyle decided to finally open his nanoscopic air filters to smell the forest a bit more. It smelled like one of those moons terraformed into a nature preserve. Purely natural-it was unlikely civilization had ever touched these woods, beyond the badly overgrown dirt path he was following.

  He had even seen a doe, off in the distance, drinking from a small leaf-covered pond. After the chaotic encounters of The Depths, this was rather relaxing.

  Kyle finally took a moment to go over his checklist now that he didn’t have a goal in sight.

  First, he opened every single radio receiver on every wavelength, and even activated his wormhole radio-only for less than a second, as it was incredibly taxing on his reactor to do so.

  Interestingly, there wasn’t a single signal within hundreds of miles.

  Then, he quickly performed a hygiene check, and found his implants working fine. One implant he had needed for certain was a Subdermal Control Unit-he could turn off his sweating instinctively.

  His nanites could control his internal body temperature just fine. Not to mention, those same nanites could straight up clean his entire body in only a few minutes.

  A few other systems-gravidar, ammo fabrication, his breaching axe, and even the monofilament garrote wire he had decided to keep in case of emergencies. His 14x40 revolver was in good shape, and his railgun only had a small chip in the paint from a piece of rock that had hit it earlier.

  They had been walking in silence for about 10 minutes, when Bariyon decided to question him some more. “Lad, what is that thing you shot me with? I’ve never seen a weapon so strong, on the same scale at least.”

  Kyle repositioned the skull so it could see the railgun. “It’s a Model 1279 Power Armor Integrated Railweapon. Capable of shooting through many feet of steel. I can make ammunition for it from nearly anything, though metal is best. The other one at my hip is my ceremonial revolver. Not nearly as strong as the big one, but a lot less unwieldy.”

  Bariyon looked the railgun over. “Interesting design. Looks kind of like a crossbow without the arms to provide tension. I assume the inner workings are beyond you as well as me?” “Yeah. I know the basics, but nothing more.”

  They continued to walk in silence after that.

  Nearly an hour of peaceful walking later, they reached the more temperate regions of the forest. A small snuffle echoed from behind him. Kyle turned around and was face-to-face with a fantasy goblin.

  A 2-foot-tall green humanoid, with a long nose, long ears, and large eyes. It wore what looked like a squirrel pelt around its waist and held a small stone shiv.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  It looked at him with a really confused look on its face. It kept sniffing the air-and Kyle realized what had happened.

  Its eyes looked a bit milky and unused, but the nose looked powerful. His armor was throwing it off, as it smelled like nothing at all for stealth purposes. “A goblin? Disappointing, they haven’t been exterminated by the civilized races yet. This one seems particularly dull.” Bariyon made his disdain for the species clear with that.

  Kyle merely mumbled “Interesting” and turned back around to walk down the road some more. “Wait, turn back around! Let me kill it… I want to see how much magic I can still cast.”

  Kyle obliged and faced directly at the goblin, which was now shuffling away absentmindedly.

  With a bit of arcane-sounding hissing, a small bolt of that same sickly green energy shot out from the skull's forehead. Upon impact, the goblin fell to the ground, dead.

  Afterwards, its flesh slowly melted and bubbled away in a rather grotesque manner. Once its skeleton was left, Bariyon said another arcane phrase, and the skeleton jerked and sat upright. The bones pulled together like magnets and a green glow ignited in its eye sockets.

  “Well, I’m not diminished in the slightest! Only my mana capacity has decreased. If you stuck me onto another skeleton, it would go back to normal, I suspect.”

  Kyle was curious. He knew basically nothing about his companion. “Why would it go up? Actually, how do liches work?” The skull entered into another long-winded explanation. He seems to have a predilection for monologuing. Kyle simply sighed in his helmet again.

  “For most constructs, their mass determines their mana. More space equals more mana veins and cells to generate mana as well. I could spread my network through the bones of another skeleton, but due to my nature as a lich, only a skeleton would work.”

  Kyle nodded in understanding.

  Bariyon simply let the skeleton drop back to the ground and lose cohesion. It would serve no purpose to them right now anyway.

  They were coming up on a hill. Interested in getting a better view, Kyle quickly jogged up the hill and looked around.

  Nothing but plains as far as the eye could see. Behind them, the mountain top was visible above the denser pine forest. In the distance, more clusters of trees were scattered about. To the west, a white sandy coastline stretched off into the distance. To the east, the mountain range wrapped around to meet with another, much smaller one. A cobbled road passed between them, and his dirt road eventually met up with it.

  However, the thing that caught his attention the most was the small village nestled against the mountain range near the pass. Bariyon interrupted his introspection. “Hmm. Intriguing. There used to be a huge capital city here, even larger than what was in the cave. Not to mention the surrounding farmland.” Kyle set off again towards the village.

  The plains were still picturesque. A flight of 4-winged birds of prey gracefully drifted above, reminding him of the alienness of the world. The road was in decent condition, but it was clearly incredibly old-maybe approaching a century.

  Kyle decided to send up one of his many drones to spy on the village a bit. Every PAST unit was networked and covered by tens of drones each, and they operated in 5-man units. Kyle had a battery of small, dragonfly-sized scout drones, two deep reconnaissance drones for research, and a few armed drones for fire support in a potential larger-scale battle.

  The one he was truly proud of was his self-designed assassin drone. It had both a silent high-power air rifle, and a powerful suicide bomb. It could sneak into nearly any room, and either kill the target or take anyone in the room with it in case of failure.

  The tiny scout drone whizzed away. His radar finally had a contact listed, the drone. Just a few minutes of peaceful walking later, the drone chirped to him over the network that it had arrived.