《Clockwork》Volume 2 Chapter 3 The Second Awakening
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Sorry for the late release. Couldn't finish last night because of lack of motivation from a hard day. Last chapter of the week i will be starting D&A after a bit and hopefully release it today.
Please post any ideas because i'm out and don't really know what to do with Techno's adventure from here on out.
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Delta PoV
It’s quite nice to finally get to see the world outside of this metal shell I was trapped in.
Though I say it’s good, I still feel sad seeing it in such a horrible state like it is now. The war really took its toll on everything the world had to offer. I have gained quite an ample view of the world thanks to the programs I uploaded in Gaia and Rust I have been passing to all clockwork.
It’s quite convenient but still the more I see the world, the more I understand why Gaia didn’t want me loose. As of now, the descendants of those who caused this chaos and even those who participated in it, were starting to repair the damage. I would only ruin their efforts. I think staying here for now is for the best.
At least now I have something to do instead of stay in eternal darkness. It’s quite fun to play with the robots this young awakened boy left behind. The most interesting were the smallest ones, these drones. Small collectors from some out of control furnace queen.
He did well to make them so diverse. This mechanical animal is also strange. Rather weak though, lacks many weapons to make it useful but still has a strong rush attack like the real animal would have.
Now the thing that kind of peaked my interest was why the leader was a Knight mechanic. This class is only useful during wars because they are able to survive the battle front and repair the units on site.
Ah I get it, mechanics are normally slow. He must have gone for a mobile mechanic class. Well if he built a smaller knight body and put the tools inside he would still have mobility and be only mechanic class.
I should suggest that to him when he wakes up.
Anyway at the moment I've counted about 20 years that has passed since the boy went to sleep. The clockworks, Dwarves, Gnomes, Elves and Goblins have all united into one nation. Elves still want to maintain independence and are still their own smaller nation annexed within. Gaia was smart because she did not want to get on their bad side.
From what I saw, with gnomes and elves help, they have also created flora that can survive in this wasteland planet after some cultivation of the ground.
They have also taken over a huge ship which, from listening to Gaia and Rust talk, was once occupied with rotten humans. Sometime after the ship began operating a group that seemed to have lived there originally returned.
They asked to join the nation and were accepted but most of the races were wary of them and didn’t let them participate or even get near, any of the construction projects. Most of it was ship constructions as well. The humans didn’t take it badly though, knowing somewhat how humans were thought of they accepted the treatment but they did speak with the elves and wished to learn how to repair nature.
Again, though wary the elves did let them watch and their leader taught basic level nature magic to these humans.
I believe humans who use nature magic are called druids. The leader of the humans gained that class and began learning the elves culture.
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Seems he was very sincere about getting nature back to normal, though I wondered about a few of the other humans.
A few of them were less willing to continue living in a place they weren’t accepted but they stayed trying to learn something from the others.
With a bit of searching through my connection with the clockwork, I found a few drones lying about in the shipyard settlement. I took them for myself and finally gained my personal freedom and then went to spy on these humans.
The only thing they were allowed to learn was the basics from the elves and quite a few didn’t want that.
I kept my eye and soon I found several that wanted to leave but also taking a few ships with them.
I sighed at how they never changed, though the nation's outlook on them was still the same as well, given good reason though; I still send an anonymous video to Gaia who has been leading the constructions.
With a steel fist, she disciplined them before having them leave with their things. She also had those who didn’t want to stay leave as well.
It was at this moment that they all voiced their complains about how they were being treated and they were only acting that way because of it.
The other races all looked the other way but they all felt the truth.
Gaia was in deep thought about this. The thoughts were to simply get rid of them all which kind of ticked me off.
Delta: ”Stupid old hag, if you make them all leave it will soon lead to a new war.”
Gaia: ”Tch, you are watching this huh, shut it brat.
(A.N. Gaia is older, she was built first)
Delta: ”Think properly for once. If you make them leave it will only cause trouble in the future. They are right that they are being treated unfairly and were acting to at least have a better chance of survival.
Gaia: ‘... *sigh* Fine, if it’s alright with all of you we will teach you basics, and ONLY basics, of the craft you want but you will be considered a citizen of our nation and trying to run with technologies from here will have you hunted down.’
Many of the humans gave a wary smile as did the others who would be teaching but more or less everyone agreed.
Gaia: ”Since you made me accept this YOU are watching over them, GOT IT BRAT!”
Delta: ”Hehehe, it’s always nice to see you annoyed. Brings joy to my small world”
From there she stomped off angry and I had a grin on my face. Like promised, I watched over all the humans but they did nothing and looked quite satisfied being able to learn from the other races without stealing from them.
It was quite peaceful after that for the most part, everything except for the new monsters that have begun to appear in the restored nature. Besides the mutated lower food chain animals there were quite a number of larger animals...and pests. Larger creatures such as humanoid rats and very large bugs of all kinds. They were all powerful and a real big pain in the ass of the restoration group.
One of the tanks was sent there with knights to clean them up but the number was quite amazing. He even went on to ask to make more knights because the current number would soon get destroyed if they fought constantly.
They then began working on building bodies for those willing to upgrade to knight class. Besides this class though other classes, all of which seem to be what the young awakened boy made, were made, a sniper, a scout and knight.
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Gaia visited the kids with Rust when they came to repair them and activated them momentarily to check out all the weapons. The interesting shoulder launcher on the boy, the powerful machine sniper on the small girl, the bombs the boy made and the protectors jump suspension. All of them were scanned to be used. Some would say it's shameless to steal but I’m sure they won’t mind because when they return, the weapons would be upgraded by then.
With the new weapons built rapidly from the tinkering hands of the gnomes they are put into play. Protectors were built like the girls and all snipers controlled one. This kept them free of trouble and having them massive fire power to rain havoc on the pests.
Even a few miners were able to fight. With one of them making a somewhat bulky knights body but with drills. With a better mobility they are able to run at the monsters and use the large drills on their hands to cause damage.
Now what is really interesting is how goblins have taken up work. They are just as versatile as a human. They are everywhere and because of their fast birth rate they have grown to nearly the same number as clockworks.
Most of them are trained in the dwarf mines to build strength and stamina, as are all those who go fighting, before getting tinkering training and then finally get some dwarven armor and some weapons to start off. They train clearing out monsters down below in groups before going out to hunt in the mountain range.
All in all the nation build by these little ones is going quite well. I do wonder though, where are the constructs. If the three join up together they would be quite a force to be reckon with.
Nathaniel PoV
I’m really happy right now. It seems that visits like in the detention center are still allowed.
Mom and Dad purchased a capsule and after speaking with the warden and several others it was decided that they allow family in.
With a bit of working on the Company's part, mom and dad had their capsules modified to allow them to come to the Virtual space during the time we were here. It seems they also did that to many capsules of other juvenile convicts that were here and have been letting the parents come and speak or spend quality time with them.
We all go and walk around what everyone is calling Virtual Town now. Mom and Dad say that after this town was made there were quite a few in the Company that liked the idea and released a new VR drive which makes new servers in with towns like this. With a bit of government managing it was made so that around 5,000 people can access 1 server. Most of these towns were similar to this but none of the players had Virtual Spaces like ours.
Not that it mattered to us. We couldn’t access them anyway so it’s not like we cared.
What I and the overjoyed Sasha did care about was going to the movie theaters here in our town and enjoying the day with all together.
It felt nice to spend time with them.
Mom and Dad will probably try making time to play Etheria but it won’t be like us who are stuck in their 24/7. We do know though that ever real life month, 5 months in game time, we will be allowed to spend 2 real life days, 10 in game days, in Virtual Town. It was a really nice day but unfortunately they can only come for 1 day every break. Rather cruel but rules are rules and even with my trial being total shit I'm still a convict so it’s not like I have any say.
When the time came they logged out and we both went back home.
Several ideas for had appeared while I read the mechanics and programming books I got and it gave he me that same uncomfortable pain in my hands. Thankfully there was a room to buy for mechanics stuff. I bought it but it was the annoying price of 100 points. We were left with few of Sasha’s points now and couldn’t buy anything big anymore.
We both spend time in there both learning. The place came with infinite parts of whatever kind we wanted. I spend my time learning to improve the things I had made in game and even plan new stuff. Most of the stuff I made notes in the notepad. I guessed that the notepad was a capsule system so even in the game it might work.
I then looked thought of my own body. The one I made modeled after Gaia’s was monstrously high leveled to the point of feeling broken even with it not being complete. I think it works even with a normal engine but the energy needed would make it work at around 20%.
I would probably only be able to use that body as a robot. I turn my attention to think of a new way to use that gear model.
I would need to decrease the number much further. I think the torso gears will need to stay the same. I think for now I will concentrate on the legs.
I draw up a model. I try seeing if it connects to the game even slightly to see if a level appears for the blueprints.
Shockingly it does. Just making the legs with more gears increased the agility monstrously but the level restriction was at around 90.
I guess it worked for now. I would simply need to work with normal clockwork models for now. When I reach level 90 I will start making more Synthoid model bodies.
I will also need to look for a way to make the magic circuits.
Gaia’s circuits were pure silver which is a metal that naturally transmits mana well in its pure state. I’m sure Mithril is better but being a metal that is not only VERY high leveled it probably would end up rigid as well while silver would feel like copper wire which is very malleable.
I draw up a smaller than normal knight body but put all the tools properly spread out around my body. Thankfully I could still keep the swords but no other weapons would be able to be input. The body was just at my size like the other robot I tried making but the gears were steel and built like a normal.
The level was 30+ so it was a good start.
I continue for a while. The days were approaching where we will return to the game so I wanted to be ready.
Bulk PoV
After I logged out last week I was left with nothing to do. The game took up most of my afternoon and night. Because we sleep while we play. Well anyway, it didn’t matter much. Oh something did change though. The company LIFE released a new app for the capsules. They call it Virtual Town and it makes a virtual space to hang out in the virtual world. This system works with a small working part of the feedback system the company has been testing. The News of the release made everyone buy it and the next real life day it showed thousands of people using the virtual town to catch up on work, home work, and exercise.
Because the feedback system is still in its early stages it only transfers about 5% of the effects so there wasn’t much to it but many people who needed to lose weight bought it and began. With 1:5 time distortions like in Etheria they trained a lot more in the Virtual town.
There was even governmental discussion on the third day of the release about using this Virtual Town app to take the place of things like school classes, though PE is still in the real world, as well as office buildings for many companies. This would clear out many large offices and make it easier to travel to work since you can stay home instead of traveling hours.
Seems LIFE is making our lives easier one way or another.
Me being a college student, I could really use this. I bought it and caught up with my massive load of homework and then enjoyed the rest of the day looking around the server that the school bought.
Man, if I could talk with Techno it would get rid of some of this boredom. I wonder if he is in Virtual town. Wait he probably isn’t American anyway. He could be from anywhere in the world.
(A.N. Never said this but Nathaniel/Techno is Brazilian like me. It’s probably possible to bribe a judge here which is why it's not unreasonable to bribe a judge unlike in the USA.)
I give up on that thought and decide to enter a recently opened sword fighting class that was made inside Virtual town. I wanted to learn real dual sword fighting to use in game. I’ve been letting the system guide me but from every fanfic I've read the best Virtual reality players are the ones with real life knowledge of what they are doing I game.
That said, the training was quite intense. The teacher was Asian descent and was relentless with his training.
At the end of the virtual day I was exhausted so I logged out and went to take a bath. I did notice my body was a bit sore. Seems the feedback system isn’t some crappy rumor. At the end of the week the game will be back online.
Anyway I take a bath, eat before I head back in. I was going to be way stronger when we get back into the game.
Gaia PoV
It's been 35 years since Techno has gone to sleep. Our nation has grown large. The elves are still somewhat separate but because we started restoring nature they came out of the forest and even expanded their own borders.
They were a bit against industrializing their cities but it simply took me learning some basic alchemy from them and I could begin making weapons and goods that can be used with magic.
Oh just so you guys know, alchemy was the skill that allows us to mix up and work with monster materials and mix it with other materials.
Speaking of monsters, there are quite a number of annoying pests appearing. Any normal animal are long gone, instead we have to categorize them by herbivore/carnivore and by size.
One example is the rats. They are now humanoid but just as annoying and are smart enough to strategies. Then there are the less intelligent like the rabbits. They are as big as horses but much stronger.
We have survived well because we took Techno's weapons and improved them greatly. Because we have alchemy we also learned how to make real black powder. We also began remodeling the engines for everything making them consume much less but bring out more power.
Several ship weapons were made as well which helped greatly to explore more dangerous places.
During these last few years we also began encountering some more races. More specifically 3 strong races, the Demon race, The Ogre race and the Genie Race.
The first ones we met were simple travellers and explorers for their tribes. The demon race. I was rather happy finding them because they are very powerful but unlike the comment thought of them, they are a nice race. They range between 180cm - 200 cm (2 m) with a long tail, pale grey skin and the feature that always made humans fear them, the eyes. The pupil is white and the supposed whites of the eye instead are back.
When the demons encountered the humans in our nations a few jumped back from the sudden shock of seeing them but soon they calmed down.
After the shock they greeted them normally like any other.
This brought a strange reaction from the demons who have probably only heard of humans as a plague
Now the Ogre race similar to the demons were met with explorers, the difference is that they were much stronger. The ones that met them were the knights when they were fighting a group of monsters. The group was having trouble and the Ogre helped them and was invited back to the Ship city.
They vary between two types of ogres. One is a hulking giant that is almost 3 meters tall, 280 cm to be exact (ogre Kichi reference). These large ones have look like heavy body builders with very dense muscles and green skin. Their black hair is wild and drops to just below the shoulder. They have two large horns on the side of their head and two large canines on the lower jaw can be seen pointing out of their mouth when they have their mouth closed.
(http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/re-monster/images/d/d2/Ogarou_vs._Ogakichi_(sparring).png/revision/latest?cb=20141101232306)
The shorter ones are 230 cm (ogre Rou reference) They, similar to the large ones, have dense muscles and two horns on their heads as well as a paler shade of green skin. Their black hair is similarly wild like the big ones and goes down to the waist.
I was familiar with the race but it seems things changed some time ago. I think the rank up magic that because the rapid growth of monsters in our world might have disappeared. The reason is because no goblins have ranked up once even though many of them have trained greatly. What has happened is them slowly growing like a human. Also after a certain number of goblins were born, their birth rate decreased drastically and the time it took for them to grow before birth was also lengthened.
They might not be considered a monster race anymore or the god’s magic simply was gone. I think the lack of followers could be the answer. Not enough power was flowing to them.
It was fine by me. It made things easier since the rank ups sometimes turned somewhat sentient creatures into mindless monsters.
When I met them we found out they wanted to join our ranks. It seems they saw the goblins and saw them prospering and growing stronger and wished to join. Soon after the tribe arrived and some went to South gate town by ship.
The last race was the Genie race. This race is quite unique, they are very powerful magic users whose main body is a small lamp. They carry it on their person at all times. They are generally human in looks with males being nearly 2 meters, muscular and pale blue skin. The females are beautiful like dancers and have light pink skin. They normally wear cloth or silk cloths which are weaved from their magic somehow. They also have the racial trait of allowing them to turn their legs into mist which lets them fly.
They are a neutral nomadic race that only attacks when threatened. They also hold a grudge like no other. They will never forget someone who has wronged them but they will also never forget a benefactor.
Genies, as said, are nomads and have no real home since they always travel. When they arrived at ship city they were quite interested and I met the leader. After talking a bit they decided to leave. It seems they prefer nature to technology. Obviously not wanting to lose such a power house race I suggested having a few men take them to the elf city.
They like the idea and we prepared a ship to take them there.
They ended up staying with the elves and with a spell they knew to call their kind slowly more began appearing at the elves home.
After advancing so much I was now standing at the top of the scrapyard wall. I was looking down at the bustling town that had grown very large. Lights lit the stone streets and came out of the stone and metal houses. At the center was the council hall which stood 3 floors high with the most refined look being made with a skeleton of steel and stone covering it.
It’s been a rather long time since I woke up again. One reason or another I was always flying from one city or another. Several smaller cities were made near some new mine within the mountain range or some near some dead forest closer to the elves home. From those the woods were restored slowly bringing life back.
As I look up at the clear night sky, with the stars shining brightly trying to outdo the lights of the bustling town, I notice Rust arriving.
Rust: ‘So here you are.’
Gaia: ‘You’re back. How were they this time.’
Rust ‘*sigh* The rapid rusting is a pain. As soon as I attach a new part the rust begins eating away even if it's magic alloys. They lose their magic and turn to regular rusted iron.’
Gaia: ‘Must be a god level magic on their bodies to keep them like that.’
Delta: ”Yes it is, I feel it. It is fading though. The spell is consuming itself faster because it must almost be time for their second awakening.”
Gaia: ‘So it’s almost time to have fun again.’
Delta: ”Sorry to burst your bubble but it's not like you can leave. Queen.”
Gaia: ‘Tch, who are you calling queen.’
Rust: ‘He is right. What will the nation do if you leave. You're the most qualified to run it.’
Gaia: ‘Like hell, I want to travel.’
Delta: ”So does Lyra but you see her sucking it up and doing her work.”
Gaia: ‘Fuck.’
She looked dejectedly out towards the scraps. The direction was towards the clockwork base which was turned into a town.
We just stood there in silence when Delta broke the silence.
Delta: ”I feel it...the spell rusting the kids is broken.”
I nod and then something catches my attention. Falling from the sky like a shower of meteors were bright lights. A large shower of light was falling over the dwarf’s mountain while a spread out shower was over the scraps outside of the South gate town.
Rust: ‘What the...they have awakened.’
Gaia: ‘...Ya, get ready for a huge number of pains in the ass because things are going to get busy. Rust, go get Techno. Delta keep him there.’
Delta: ”He is having trouble moving so it’s no problem.”
I nod and look to Rust. He nods and runs off down the wall. Soon a small ship that was attached to the docks made into the side of the walls began flying towards the mountain that hid Techno inside.
Gaia: ‘Guess I should get going. They are waking up and they are made from trash. Need to get the dwarves on max output for Iron parts.’
I walk down the large stairs until I leave South Gate town and walk towards the dwarf town.
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