I flipped through the book, imaging each of the pages and memorizing their contents. I processed the entire thing in a few moments. An incredibly simple rot cypher encrypted the book — every character rotated 13 steps, so this languages A became N. This nation was far from the sophisticated encryption of the information age, and I didn’t even stumble upon reading it.

The book contained an immense amount of information, besides just the skill it granted, [SUBJUGATION BINDING, RITUAL].

I reached into the pocket of the patchwork robe I had received as a dungeon reward, freeing the thumb sized dungeoncore I had ripped out of the dungeon. It was navy blue, and optical sensors reported an illusion when observing it; I knew it was a static object, but staring into it, it seemed to possess the depth of oceans.

//QUERY: Viability of integrating dungeon with living mind.// I asked Mathias.

“It’s a bad idea. It’s what got us in all this trouble to begin with.” Mathias had to look up to stare at the dungeoncore I held in my hands. “Beside that, the intricacy and precision necessary for control runes like those means you need a massive dungeoncore. The size of a fist. And the bigger the dungeoncore, the more it obliterates the mind of whatever you merge it with.”

I reviewed my new knowledge of the [Subjugation Binding]. Mathias was correct. I couldn’t possibly carve those runes with my own hands.

I would need a laser engraver.

/01 TO 03: PRIORITIZE ON-LINING 1 ENGINEERING WORKSHOP

/ 03: ACK. TIME ESTIMATE FOR PROGRESS AUTOFACTORY 2 SET TO 12 HOURS

//Acknowledged. Dismissed.

Mathias stared for a moment before he walked away, casting glances over his shoulder.

The notebook switched handwritings several times. It opened with discussions of a meeting between Mage Nobles, a congregation called to study OFF02. When Mages reached a certain illustrious level of study and Grade of power, the King would offer them land and title to bind them to the country, stopping others from buying them away.

It was there that they recorded the initial notes and sketches of 02, slowly being iterated upon over multiple owners until arriving at Tobias and his translation of the runes onto my frame. Judging by the contents, several generations had been Necromancers, despite it being illegal, which made it unclear why none of them had tried to revive the machines before Tobias.

I closed the book, walking to the lobby. Miniature black starfish mechs crawled through the hallways, working together in teams to feed piles of scrap to the factory.

I heard the Acolytes arguing before I even entered the mech hangar. One of them was arguing with Mathias — I compared his voice to all records of interactions in the farm town, pulling up information of name and face. Tavi, estimated to be just younger than Mathias. Long black hair framed his face falling to his shoulders. Whip thin and pale, likely suffering from malnutrition.

“— and then die in the woods, Mathias?” Tavi interrupted. Mathias was shouting toward a half dozen Acolytes. At some point, they had led the wagon into the hangar. One was sleeping on it.

“If we stay here, we die to the Templars.” Mathias said. “Or to the fucking monster Tobias created. The only reason we’re alive is because it wants to use us.”

“Like Tobias didn’t. Okay, I’ll cave. Offo killed one of us. How many did Tobias kill? A dozen?” Tavi rolled his eyes. “I’ll choose a sword over starvation, thanks.”

“We don’t have to starve! We can go back to the city —“

“Where most of us — “ Tavi gestured at the other acolytes, “— were starving, before we joined? We don’t all have families to run back to, Matty. This place is still better than trying to sleep in the gutter.”

Mathias paled.

I reached the inside of the room, causing him to jump, staring at me.

//Query: You lived on the street, previously?

Tavi looked me up and down, biting back a statement before deciding to reply.

“Yeah. Didn’t get a chance to attend a fancy noble school or anything.” Tavi made a head nod toward Mathias.

//Acknowledged. Which of you can read and write the local dialect?

“Most of us — we can piecemeal it together. No good at writing, though.” Tavi replied.

I made a note to create an audio-visual dictionary for them. I could make something basic — a tablet where you could tap a word to hear it — but creating an entire program would be more of a task for AI615. Bringing all the Acolytes skills up would increase our relative command level.

As for Mathias, there was a very low probability he ran away. If he was going to, he would have done it while Tobias was asleep.

I headed out to patrol the border of our ship. The temporary exterior housing had already completed over the last few hours, simple log cabins with floors of cut stone.

The tree line rapidly receded around AI615, cut down as fuel and fed back into the hungry mouth of the autofactory. We split production between producing 6 mini starfish an hour and producing parts to repair the second autofactory.

It would slow down once we ran out of refined materials to recycle from the devastated ship and destroyed mech fleet. The combat mechs routinely brought back new corpses. With human life now staying here, the leftover corpses had to be harvested and incinerated. 03 had begun construction of fire stacks and refrigerators for the leftover meat.

03 left out a replacement mining mech to raise. The fight heavily damaged the last frame. I spent a few minutes raising the replacement, once again filling my command cap of 7. With a mental query, I pulled up the list of controlled undead.

///COMMAND: 7/7

///7 [Skeleton Warriors]

///EXPANDED: OFF03 (G1LVL9), GENSTAR043(G1LVL2), GENSTAR009(G1LVL2), MINDOG001(G1LVL2), COMADS4(G1LVL6), COMSON2(G1LVL8), MINDOG003(G1LVL1)

I currently didn’t have a skill to raise zombies. I would have to have the Acolytes raise the recovered corpses of the adventurers. And at some point, I would have to deal with the one we took prisoner.