When I woke up it was to the annoying sound of gunfire and iron crashing.

I spread around my collectors just to find golems and dwarves fighting it out near the tunnels that lead in.

It was really annoying waking up to this. As I lifted my head the first thing that lands in my view is Hino. Suddenly, a grin appears on my face.

I take control of the rhino and have him start walking towards the noise. As I got the tunnel in view, I measured at least 20 meters and made him start rushing.

I send a message to all the dwarves in the way.

”Move or get crushed!” I tell everyone.

They didn’t have time to think and quickly looked back before jumping out of the way. The rushing rampaging rhino slams right into a bulky golem and pushes him straight into the wall with his metal horn stabbing right into its chest. As I make Hino pull back, I see the crystal pushed into the wall behind the golem and he fell along the wall limp.

With the collectors spread around, I was watching from various places. I saw the startled golems to the right and left, with a slight turn of the rhino I got the golem into aim. I then order Hino to buck like a bull and it hit the golem square in the chest and sent the human sized golem a few good meters away in front of a dwarf that took the kill.

I let out my pent-up stress. Hino did take a few hits in the fight but the robotic distraction made a space in between the golems which the dwarves took advantage of and split them in half, which effectively took them out. This fight had a lot of help from Clockworks using ranged weapons.

As the trouble settled down and the golems were finished off, I finally relaxed with a grin having relieved a bit of stress in a really interesting way. It was while I was relaxing that I looked at the corner of my view and noticed my level. Level 20.

Yep 3 levels in just one fight and I was only controlling the robot. If it works like this, I could very well maintain the mechanic job while fighting. Still, maybe a sub body purely knight class while my main one turns more mechanic.

This was a nice discovery for sure.

During the fighting, Nova woke up a bit after me and started hugging me, she must have been scared. Guess a child is still a child no matter how they look, to wake up with this type of noise it isn’t something an eight year old would normally like. When Hino came back, I had Nova help me repair him. I told her how he had fought and she jumped at the story as we fixed the broken plates and gears.

Once we repair the rhino, I let Nova take him in the place of the Protector who I would probably hold up until I finished my new robot.

I turn to the furnace and engine. They were both finished so I needed to start the robot itself but a problem arises. If it will be in the shape of a turtle the speed would be pathetic. And though large steel gear wheels seem appealing it would make it hard to travel through small paths and mountains.

I end up doing both. The main reason is that wheels are bad on uneven ground but if we can get some flat space we can almost get a car it would become an alternate mode of transport. As for legs, it's better in uneven ground and also when it enters forge mode who would want a forge that rolls away.

I start work right away with some newer metal that was set aside for this.

Rust PoV

My, what a stressful way to start the day. The golems attacked this morning but thanks to Techno using Hino as a distraction as well as a major tank for attacking them we could suppress them without them entering too far into the town.

Right after there were many suggestions on how to stop them even if it's just to get enough people ready. So we ended up planning to make a huge door to lock the tunnel.

Shame we don’t have the furnace up completely yet. We get the Clockworks back to work while we have the dwarves stationed at the entrances with only a few small groups go hunt the animals out in the small forests. They say there are a lot of mutants and monsters but if they are careful it shouldn’t be too bad.

*sigh* What a few good knight class wouldn’t do for our defense now. Once the furnace is up all the workers can remake their bodies but we will definitely have to make at least 2 mechanics and some knights. A knight will make so much difference when defending. Steel bodies would be nice but I need to train to reach the requirements for them. Would be bad to have such good body material and not be able to use it.

I wonder how Techno will meet the requirements, he never goes out of his way to fight and gain experience.

As much as he doesn’t trust others he is a good leader but it's strange to work for a man who barely looks at you when talking and it's not even verbally. I’ve heard his voice so little that I’m sure I can’t connect his voice to his body if ever I lost my vision.

Anyway, back in the large three story smithy we get back to work. The place was repaired about 10% yesterday. It’s heavily rusted and so many parts took intense damage over time, leaving a huge amount of parts unusable. We are using scrap replacements for now until we can smith new parts.

With scans and a poorly written mapping program, that takes said scans and makes a really sketchy schematics, we return to the first floor repairs. It’s estimated that at least 70% of the repairs are on the first floor.

As with every large construction there will always be a small area we can’t reach so we borrowed Bulk’s tool drones (collectors with tools on the arms) and basic collectors. We sent them to these spots to fix up the really small parts in these areas.

It’s really tedious, but it’s got to be done since these are the most fragile parts so they break first.

All in all, it’s boring but none the less we must do this much at least so that we can spread further. From what I can guess Techno found a really good transmitter to scan the area and found this place. I would give or take the rest of the clockwork at first base at least 4 more months before they even detect this place unless they find a transmitter of similar quality.

I wonder what class I should take up after this. I was given a new work class body but I still don’t have any thought on what to do later on. I’m not bloodthirsty enough to be a fighter. Also, even though I’m good at tinkering; I’m not like Techno.

Even Nova has shown talent beyond her mindset should be.

Maybe I should follow the girl as a sniper. No, I think riflemen would be better. Even with the targeting system I can’t hit that far. I’ll give it some thought when I am making my body.

As we repair the furnace I take some time to finish up a pair of handguns I’ve been working on.

A two barrel dual shotgun. Techno says the model looks like a Sawed off Shotgun.

Unlike a normal shotgun that shoots small pellets all together, I want to set this to shoot a blunt shot made for powerful impacts. Things with penetration resistant armor or skin would get hurt with this.

The guns weren’t like the others which had them in the body. Mine were handguns like the dwarves but I did modify my arms to have a pipe and pressure valve that would hook up when I grabbed them to provide the steam power.

I can't wait to put it through practical tests when the golems return. I want to see the kind of damage the blunt shots have on them.

Techno PoV

It’s been a week since the golems first attempt to take the village.

During this time the furnace has undergone massive repairs. Estimated to be at around 75% complete. The speed that the clockwork repair it improves with each day.

As for myself, I finished my project. Now lying in a vacated area in front of the smithy is a huge 3 meter tall 6 long metal snapping turtle. From the top of its high shell smoke rose as fire burnt in its belly.

Beside it were several clockwork and dwarves constantly preparing and cooling parts made by the molten metal.

The most interesting thing about this turtle that all you need to do is bring scrap metal and coal and with my carefully calculated programs it will eat nearly 10 kilos of scrap and 1 kilo of coal. The material lands in the main chamber crushed and is more easily melted because the turtle "eats" both of them making the parts small and much more easily meltable.

Ever since I finished him, he has been constantly converting scrap to usable iron which is used to remake the furnace. With a new source of ok quality metal the furnace began losing the rusty look and began to get a newer appearance but we would still need to replace the metal plates of the furnace itself.

The blast turtle, as it's being called, is able to make a large amount of iron in a short time unlike older engines. First it uses crystal fire to power it.

I did a test of how long the crystal lasts before it burns out its mana and begins recharging. When a single crystal is lit on its own, it lasts roughly 8 hours. When it is placed next to another crystal that time doubles. The two work together to keep the same flame going. That is why I placed three fire crystals in the furnace.

It runs a full day before dieing out. Inside are water tanks for making steam which connect to the engine outside. Behind the engine sat four small metal cylinders. They are similar to propane tanks. I made these to store pressurized air. I had two more sets of 4 which are switched out for later use when these are empty.

They connect into the furnace through copper pipes but after they enter the furnace I changed it to iron pipes because of the heat. It would melt copper pipes as soon as the air starts pumping and the heat inside the chamber rises above coppers heat limit.

Now with my great contribution to the repairs done I need to work off my anger that Rust instilled into me. What pissed me off. A conversation I had with him when I brought the turtle to them yesterday.

I had brought the turtle and explained to them how it worked. That was when Rust asked.

“Are you going to try and make steel bodies now?” Rust asked.

”Yeah, once this is done I will make some, why?” I replied.

“What level are you?” He asked.

”20 why do you ask? I replied and looked at him now.

“I don’t know if it still possesses it with so much change to the world but steel bodies held a level 30 or above restriction.” He said.

His words made my circuits boil but the next moment several ideas already appeared in my mind as I looked towards the door the golems came from.

I took the whole day yesterday making hundreds of different gears and parts and completely refitted the protector. Then I made ammo which were small pellets the size of the top digit of a human thumb. I had fun testing out the gun that's for sure. Really who wouldn’t like having a robot with two miniguns on his arms, moving fucking fast and doing acrobatics that seem to defy gravity?

Surprisingly he had his own status screen and the one controlling him can access it. From what I saw his agility was already over 100 everything else was 70 but dexterity was 30. I guess having those kinds of hands aren't the best for working with your fingers.

Anyway with the protector, as well as Hino, I sat down and stayed stationed near the entrance to town. If I remember correctly the penalty for dieing was 1 level and you're locked out of the game for 24 real life hours. For juvenile prisoners it was the lost of 1 level and your locked for 1 game day.

Considering its been a week all of them should already be back so I think they may be planning something.

The village has 3 paths, one to the outside and two going down. The guards are evenly split and shooters are on a few guard posts we built on the walls.

To say things were getting boring in town after the attacks stopped would be an understatement. The problem is that we can’t go too far into the cave with too large a number without possibly falling into a trap and leave the village alone.

I did make a mapping program, though poorly made, so I’ve been sending the basic class collectors to scan the tunnels to map out the caves but as they go down they split and connect on so many points that it's a hassle to follow. Most of the tunnels after the town could fit 3 of me side by side and have a bit of room left so we can’t send small number either.

I had half a mind to start building steel bots and rampage around while looking for this threat but then I would waste materials as well as time.

From my scans I could find a few locations the golems stay but nothing else.

What was also interesting is that there are no other dwarven towns no matter how far I map.

I didn’t let it bother me but the more I scanned the more it irritated me so I ended up asking Bulk and Victor since they are both normal players.

“Are there more dwarf towns?” I ask him.

“Nope. This is the only ones. I asked the same thing to the original residence and they said the same thing.” Victor replied.

“Something you curious about?” Bulk asked me.

”Well this is a VR game right. Shouldn’t there be billions of people playing?” I inquired.

“You don’t know?” Bulk asked confused.

”What? I said with a frown slightly forming.

“The game is restricted for only about 10,000 players. It was all over the news when on the launch day. Where were you under a rock?” Victor said.

I tell them I was part of a program but obviously not a juvenile prisoner or my crime.

“I get it. You're stuck in the game testing the feature huh?” Victor said scratching his huge beard.

“Don’t you have access to forums or something?” Bulk asked.

”I checked a bit but found nothing so I dropped the search early on.” I said.

They both sigh and then tell me how to open the forum. I try and to my surprise it opens. Hundreds of forum threads open up. I then find the post with the news about the restriction.

From LIFE company staff:

Greetings all your future players. We are very sorry for the inconvenience. As all of you have noticed the registrations have been blocked. The reason for this action is because the setting of the start of the game can only be done by few peoples. The full registration will be open to all once the survival period has been complete. By then each race should have some form of begining town and structure to them or they have died out or been locked and must be rediscovered.

Please note that there is no time limit for how long the survival period will last and only after every race has succeeded or failed in their quest will the survival period be done and then their will be a 1 week downtime where we will allow for them to advance further before the full opening of the game begins.

If you wished to call it a the beta testing phase then it could be thought of as such.

Thank you for your time and I hope you luck in the future.

Marcus Freeman CEO of LIFE

So that’s what they meant. Well now it makes sense why there are so few players. Only 10k so that means there must be a large race with the bulk of the numbers...humans duh. I said thinking of how that was the most cliche race.

It would probably be them like always. Many people don’t want to change so they stay with their original race instead of getting something different.

I look through the forum and below that message there are forum pages for each and every race. I thank the two who showed me how to get to the internet with a nod and walk to the front lines and sit down and scroll through them. I stopped at Clockwork and opened it up.

What I find makes me chuckle. Nearly four hundred of the starter comments during the first days were complaints. Since we wake up with limited power, 1 arm and the engine is off we need to work fast or get lucky that someone started earlier and helped out.

I then looked through them and find one that was on the date after the furnace was captured.

There was a video from someone's pod showing the queen being fought and they showed me and Nova in the cross legged position while we controlled the collectors.

Going more down it shows the furnace already working and then I appeared with the salvaged knight and mechanic and use the tanks to push everyone away and start making completely new bodies for us.

The comments that followed got a little laugh out of me.

Look at that guy. He took total advantage of the bit of familiarity he had with the tanks to push everyone. Who is this bastard we should spam kill him to teach him a lesson.I’m with you but I was there and I know how good the guy is. The guy is nearly a mute and used the text message system to talk. He was amazing with his hands and was the first to think of using our weak engines to make crude weapons. He was always tinkering not caring to help much except when he tested those small spider things.Its funny reading this page. All of you are just jealous the guy who didn’t care about familiarity and did his own thing and got way ahead because of it.

The next hundred comments were fights between them about me. Now one more up to date and from a much too familiar clockwork.

Bulk: Why don’t you guys go out of your way and do things differently instead of kissing the asses of the revived clockwork. Maybe then you can get somewhere. Me and Techno are those two in the video that got the new bodies. We are already at the gate of the scrapyard so why not trying a bit harder.

I facepalmed myself. For the rest of the forum there were hundreds of thousands of comments the asked where we were how we found the gate and so on so I closed it and went to the dwarves page and looked. I looked through the starting pages and found it was true that they began with the golem races and about the same time we left the base the golems expelled them from the caves.

I grew curious and searched the golems page looking for the quest but no records show. At least they were smart enough to not post the quest but their was something that appeared and I could only grin.

A single video just before the dwarf exiling. Deep underground in a room half filled with magma sitting at its center was a golem made molten rock. His chest glowed brightly from the crystals glow. In front of my eyes was the threat we looked for. Without a doubt this was our target. The threat that threatens to kill the dwarven race. The boss monster... The Magma Golem.