‘I hate that look.’ Mathias stumbled at the crack of a belt landing against him, hard leather slamming on his skin. ‘Those aren’t my eyes. Stop looking at me!’

His father loomed over him, spit flying from his lips with every worth. Mathias couldn’t move. He stared up, defiantly. Then his father’s face glowed with Glory. Mathias felt his father’s hand slide into his hair, pulling him above the ground, and then he felt the knife stab into his stomach, over and over.

Mathias gasped, waking in the dead of night, panting and covered in sweat. He rolled off the bed, landing on the floor and dry heaving. Cold metal pressed against his bare arms, sucking away the heat.

What an awful nightmare. They had been getting worse, too, combining two of the worst people in his life. He knew he would find no sleep tonight.

“L — lights.” He whispered. There was an audible, high-pitched noise, and then the room he was in lit up.

It had been 3 days, and the world was being turned on its head. In the middle of the first night here, that second giant building had roared to life, pouring out even more of the terrible, star-shaped monsters that crawled through the facilities.

Mathias stopped, staring in a daze at the room made of steel around him. A bed sat in one corner, filled with materials as luxurious as the handmade cottons he had given up to come here. A desk filled the area against a wall, with a handheld device on it. Despite every investigation, it didn’t appear to use magic or mana at all. It was a hand held scrying pool, displaying images and text that weren’t real. That couldn’t be. It was the same as Offo’s head.

Mathias walked towards a cabinet in the corner, still distrusting of it, before swinging it open. Not for the first time, he simply sat in front of the box that blew cold air towards him, filled with glasses of water.

There was no magic here.

Offo bent reality on a whim. For convenience. Without even using magic. There wasn’t so much as a single rune throughout the entire design of the ship. What horrible knowledge did his creators have?

What would they gain once they had magic? Already, Offo pushed at the rules and limitations of the System in startlingly efficient ways. Ways that no Mage Noble knew. It didn’t matter to Mathias. He was going to leave.

As soon as he could convince anyone else to go with him.

Already, they settled into their lives here, granted private residences on the ship.

Mathias sat in front of the scrying tool — the tablet, Offo had said. It presented him with indexes, displaying various books. There was a copy of every book he had read that day in the Church’s office, complete with images of every page. Tapping the words made a voice read them aloud. Then it tutored in the use of the words and their definitions.

Mathias had already looked through all the books here. He stood, sliding back in the chair and walking through the maze like hallways. More cleared every day. Scrap moved away to open halls into this gigantic leviathan. Maze-like paths that currently led to nowhere branched away in every direction.

As Mathias moved closer to the exit, the sounds of work grew louder. Hundreds of legs moved in concert as he stepped into a hall, creating an endless noise of clicking and shifting machinery. The ceiling wasn’t visible, instead completely covered in starfish mechs. Many carried scrap metal in tiny fingers. When pieces fell loose, they circled down the wall and onto the ground.

It was unnerving to walk under them. But not any less than living in a town surrounded by undead. The sound of animal’s bleating outside grew louder, covered with the dull hum of the building sizes autofactories at work.

Mathias finally stepped outside. Floodlights illuminated the area. Movement stripped bare trails of grass, revealing a dozen paths in various directions. Day by day, the forest receded. Hundreds of mechs worked, assembling various metal equipment or feeding forges made of stone to produce charcoal.

Cages lined the road, filled with monsters from the dungeons. They screamed and bleated and groaned, biting at the cages and trying to tear themselves free. Hands reached through cage bars, grabbing at the ground and trying to free themselves.

And there was Offo, sitting at the center of a swirling world of steel and fire. It walked forward, stopping without looking at the cages, raising his right arm. The arm aligned with dozens of cages full of monsters, and energy erupted, spearing them. He fired a second time, then a third, before cutting through all of their bodies.

Mathias shuddered.

///XP: 2500/2500

///EXCESS XP DISCARDED

///LEVEL UP: LEVEL 5

///XP: 1100/3000

The dungeon had yielded, on average, 2000 XP a day, varying only somewhat in what lived on the first floor.

However, the creatures on that floor were slowly becoming resistant to the gas used to incapacitate them. Their Vitality and Endurance allowed them to survive the burns long enough to transport and store them here, but at a certain tipping point, the gas wouldn’t work to weaken them enough to be caged and transported. We lacked the refined resources to produce more complex gases. The on board refineries on the ship were all shot — they were currently being recycled to produce a new one.

We may have to switch to producing combat mechs earlier than anticipated.

3 of 4 autofactories were online, with the third expected to come online by tonight. We had scrapped many of its parts to bring the other 3 online. Simple constructs like metal were fast and easy to make, not requiring precise molecular accuracy while printing. The more small and refined the parts, the more time it took the autofactory to successfully produce. Processors and power cores, for example, took much longer than a mechs exoskeletal frame.

All plans were proceeding smoothly at our maximum operational capacity.

Except for one.

The prompt hung in my interface with the System, taunting me.

///DUNGEONCORE PENDING INTEGRATION

///AVAILABLE COMMAND: 2

///COMMAND NEEDED FOR INTEGRATION: 10

03 had classed up as well, moving into Grade 2. It turned out that as my undead leveled up, they would consume more command cap.

It looked like it was time for me to go diving again. With a mental signal, I cleared my notifications.

///NOTIFICATIONS CLEARED

///SKELETAL REPAIR, SKETAL TAMPERING, BONE MASTERY, AND RAISE SKELETON, RITUAL, HAVE CONSOLIDATED INTO [Skeletal Undead Mastery, Apprentice]

///SYSTEM STATUS, OFF01

///Lvl. 5

///CLASS: SKELETON MAGE(ERROR)

///Skills:

[ NOVA-3 PLASMA CANNON (LVL.3) ]|[ ENERGY DRAIN ]|[UNDEAD REGENERATION]|[RAISE SKELETON, RITUAL]|[Play Dead]|[Lord and Master (LVL.9)]|[RAISE WIGHT, RITUAL]|[NECROTIC BLADE]|[Skeletal Undead Mastery, Apprentice]

///HP: 250/250

///ENERGY: 0/100

///Stats:

[VITALITY: 25]|[STRENGTH:25]

[ENDURANCE:25]|[AGILITY:40]

[WISDOM:0]|[INTELLIGENCE:50]

[PERCEPTION:60]|[REACTION:60]

///Skill points available: 0

///Stat points available: 0