Rubbing my temple, I process the information that I had somewhat learned. The entire first few months, as said by the old doctor, would be focused on the human anatomy. Skeletal structure, nerve layout, study of the brain, or at least what is known about it, circulatory system, etc. For now, only the skeleton was being studied because that was the support of the body. Without proper skeleton the body would be deformed and broken.

The skeleton of the clockwork was many times simpler than the true human skeleton but it was enough to allow free movement because of the circular joints that rotated for the movements. If the human sized joints were put to be the movement parts, they would be incredibly tiny so it did not come out good for common clockworks.

That said, for automata, it was perfect. Automata have a perfect human structure held together by some kind of fibrous muscle attached to a human shaped skeleton all made of unknown material.

In my view of my massive coding that is the blueprints to my automata form and it’s main coding, I could see that the largest bones were forming in the body containing all the interior machinery but there was a vacuum between the ‘skin’ and the bones where the muscles go. What I truly lacked was the small bones and his spine. Also only the basic form appeared because he has never seen the shape of bones of a human.

“I need to find human remains or maybe undead that I can scan or maybe an x-ray.” I thought.

After sorting through the day’s class I left the now empty room that the old doctor had left long before to explore the city before deciding his own job in this kind of scenario.

Brock informed me, as I left, that a home was made for the 15 military and it was in a clear area should the number increase or they need other buildings.

The dwarfs were already training their skills within tinkering and Clockwork construction to figure out the technology. There was only one that remained with Victor who was doing maintenance while showing off his prized robot suit digger.

To the mechanic, he saw so much potential in this and it was clear that he wanted to test this kind of thing in real life if he had the chance. Of course, Victor just showed off and didn’t simply hand over the blueprints since it was an important powerhouse of the city and my group.

After looking around, I finally go on top of Brock were I find several plants and trees that have the buds of the dryad while there are some trees with a face shaking here and there. The back had turned into a forest and it was somewhat flat and Brock had formed mountains in the time he grew during the 7 months of travel. Being 300 meters long and 200 wide, the back was like a large park with hills that formed cliffs holding a pond at the top that formed a small waterfall pooling into a larger pond further down and one more before forming a river moving about the place. The elementals were all over the place as they enjoyed a peaceful coexistence. Besides that, there were many berry and fruit trees as well as root crop plants that have been preserved by the elves and were planted all over the place.

The final thing that existed here were the clockwork animals. Each and every one was either animal or robot like in different proportions.

The seven months that we were traveling, I had focused on developing the city and one of the biggest developments was these animals. They are easy to mold because if you introduce different kind of parts, they can develop them and install them into the programming of the still to be created animals.

One of the things I have tried to develop through them are more efficient electric engines or better steam engines to model off into the clockwork and reduce fuel expense.

The only reason we have so much fuel is because we extract from the polluted surroundings and during the travel, we did so by scooping water into Brock like those water transport airplanes do when putting out forest fires and from inside the undine would extract the material from the water that is then deposited into tankers that hold all the cities fuel supply.

Before, there was an enormous fuel consumption rate because of the problem of lightning the city and it even caused sickness because of the gases released but this was later resolved when I developed, with the dwarfs, a system that uses the Lightning Core crystals made by refining Fire elemental cores with crystalized mana several times. When attached with wires to an exposed pillar of crystallized mana, they will absorb the mana and release electricity, we then just need to extract that electricity and distribute it. The only cost is that the whale loses 0.2 mana regeneration for ever Crystal core that is attached so, in this case, it is a 1.2 point of mana regen lost but his body has 50 reg/s.

At the time we heard of this we thought he was bullshitting with us but after explaining that there is a huge need of mana for levitation and controlling the earth on the body it made more sense since the body had grown a lot since it was first formed.

A small bit taken for electricity wasn’t much. Now the besides the electricity taking care of the much needed problem the sylph also took care of the air inside the city keeping it pretty pure as they absorbed and compressed smoke that was left from smithing and cooking and cleared it out.

Back on the animals, the second thing I tried to research through them was weaponizing them. Of course, these weaponized ones were isolated due to the danger. When weaponizing the codes of an animal, we take them to an enclosed area at the bottom of the whale, below even the city, and this area we installed a jammer specific to the unique communicators of the clockwork animals. This way when they are weaponized, they will not transmit the codes.

Of course, they are very good at adapting and if one branch of animals is jammed enough, they will ‘adapt’ and will develop anti jamming but the adaptations are too large to focus on other things. Be it a new sound capturing system for the ears, better eyes, smell sensory system we improved, these all are tested but this isn’t weaponizing but what we did when we modified the codes to have a gun turret on the back of a bull robot, that was indeed weaponizing and it worked. Upon installing the weapon, the robot took it in but could not adopt a proper storing mechanism which caused the next generation to be born with the weapon already in the codes and it was properly sized and the body shape even changed slightly to fit the weapon and way to fire.

The robot type animals are just as interesting as the actual animals. They adapt easier to different robotic attachment like arms and pistons. They were the first to develop a rustic type and after a long time they have already developed a much smoother type which is farmed and harvested along with the parts from the body but the piston has become the best piece.

Looking around I find a small rabbit robot and sending a communication signal to it the robot looks at me and walks over.

The robot's are very unique, they developed very strangely, at least the ones I kept, and people with cores can send a signal to them and the robot's will think of you as friendly. It's a rather useful thing and they can send some sort of code that shows what they are ‘saying’ but it is very hard to understand.

Doing a scan of the rabbit shaped robot I nod. “The power jump system in the rabbit is developing well. These will be good pistons to replace the pressure punch in the clockwork. It will decrease the consumption of steam by a lot but there seems to be a small bit of leak.” I thought as I examined the parts. Taking a copy of the system coding I let the rabbit go and it scurried off and I archived the file while going around.

When I saw one of the very few robots that were developing I found myself with a thought and connected to one and having it come over. The structure of this was like those robot's with stiff arms that road around with tank treks. These were one of the most advanced core robot's. There was a very small head used to hold the visual unit, the chest was about as bulky as a teens and was where the core was, there were two squarish stiff arms that were cleverly built so that pistons were used as the muscles to pull back and forth. It was different from the gear using clockwork which were even more advanced than these but these robot's natural weapons that others didn’t.

Within their stiff arm is a type of needle launcher, their hand that is formed from three stiff claw appendages, one as a thumb and two as fingers, could only grab and had no free movement, would open up and the flat square surface with open two small panels where there were 30 needle openings and it will fire these weaponized needles. Making it worse, these had strong penetration ability and were coated in poison allowing them to hunt small birds. They had a very good targeting system that aimed at the two possible positions that the bird shaped robot's would be.

Taking ahold of the robot's main code, I formed a copy of the human skeleton information that I had just obtained earlier but hadn’t fully learned. The models lacked hands and feet and any human shaped bones and were all ‘robotic’ shaped. This was where the idea came from. I brought the robot down to the isolation area and inserted the codes.

Watching the robot, it scanned and rescanned the codes. It was obvious that it would take a long time for it to assimilate the codes. It was all hundreds of times more complex than its own body structure and even the core systems would not be compatible. Besides leaving some clockwork to take care of the robot, like feeding it, I left since it would do nothing to keep watching as it simply scanned over and over the codes.

I returned to the top to continue to see what was gained and lost while spreading something more to see the result.

***

With the buzz of the propellers from Strato, Nova just kept flying further while releasing a relay drone that had been made for when travelling long distances. With this, the signals coming from the ship would extend several kilometer. All scouts and most of the main crew had dozens of these in case they need to travel long distances.

These drones were flying drones that had a helicopter like propeller. They were as big as a soccer ball but the propeller was very quiet. It could stay several hundred meters in the air safe from land predators while airborne creatures were far too few in number to matter. Most avian creatures had long since died and most that survived were the most powerful lizards or still surviving sky based races like the ones that Gaia once hunted alongside Nova.

As the little girl kept flying she looked to both sides wanting to find something worth looking at. All the while, when she found a scene that was pretty or interesting, she would take a picture with her robot's and would later store them in her core.

After a few hours of flying into the mountain range she suddenly saw a long mountain with an opening and was somewhat interested so she flew over.

The mountain, although low, was extremely wide and had strange rock formations on its surface. What surprised the little girl was the village that could be found in front of a massive stone structure that looked like a huge door.

From far, she activated her sniper cannon and targeting system using it to zoom in on the people while maintaining a long range. What she saw she didn’t understand but she could tell it was some kind of religion because there were lots of people in dull grey robes while some had white bone armor and spears or swords.

Suddenly from below a howl came and a hoard of mutant monsters came out. Those in robes took to the air through magic while those on the ground began to fight and slaughter the raging monsters.

“What is this?” Nova said blinking while taking screenshots.

Obviously blood didn’t appear in her view and what she saw were even flashier moves then they really were. She filmed most of it while taking pictures of some interesting stuff. Then she got curious about what was inside so she flew high up towards the opening and with herself buckled in properly while the little rabbit robot hugged her sniper's waist, she tilted Strato to look down into the hole with her sniper's scope.

Just as she was about to though, a strange energy caught her and Strato’s power turned off began to fall.

She was startled and activated Strato as they began to spin. She began to scream as the robot turned on once more and fixed themselves but it could not rise and instead it turned towards the hole, falling into it before turning off once more and causing the young girl to crash onto the ground that formed a massive cavern.

Her systems were shocked for a short while as the robot's were in a stunned state but after a while they began to light up and get up.

“Clockwork fiend, what brings you here.” A loud majestic but somewhat frantic voice said.

As Nova’s systems finally booted up completely she could finally look around. What she found was a woman, no two women, who were perfectly identical and had many strange tattoo over their body from head to toe.

That said the first thing she did was look around and see strato, “Nooo~! Strato!” She shouted as her two robot's ran over and she pushed it up right and began to connect to the robot to try and start him up while checking him over.

The stunned woman just looked at her confused by the childish voice that had come out.

“You girl!” one of the women shouted. “What brings you here! Speak or I shall give you death!”

Finally remembering the women Nova turned her rabbit robot body towards the women. “Ah did you do this to strato!” Nova frowned.

“Huh?” The woman said. “What of the robot? It is but a machine as are you. Answer what I asked clockwork. What brings you here?!”

“Hmph, meanie! You hurt my Strato! And I wasn’t even doing nothing, I was just playing around!” Nova said.

“And you call pointing a cannon at us, playing?” The woman said.

“I was using the scope to see closer.” She replied and humphed.

The women were shocked but somewhat realized their wrong in pulling her inside.

Suddenly Nova shouted, “Ah! Why is that pretty lady hurt!” Nova said as she noticed the second woman was laid out on the ground still looking her way but clearly her right arm was devastated and burnt while her right half of her back, most of the lower back and her legs were burnt and even the right leg from the knee down was gone.

Her twin made a scowl when this was mentioned.

“What happened to her?!” Nova asked.

“It is because of our own people and you clockwork existing that this happened.” the other sighed.

Nova looked confused. “Why, did one of the robot's do something to you?” Nova asked.

“Do you not have memories of the wars?! 2000 years ago my sister tried to reason with the humans that were a warmongering race at that time but received an attack on the level of a one hundred dragons firing their dragon breath together.” The healthy woman said.

“Eh… Why does this sound familiar…” Nova muttered.

“It should, my sister and I are Twin sisters that are both Goddesses of the Human race.” The woman said.

Nova showed a shocked expression, “Ah! I heard of it from bro! You were hit and became really angry and attacked anyone!” Nova said.

The woman sighed, “Well it was my sister, how could I not have gotten angry when she was hurt.” the woman sighed, “You are a strange clockwork, you said you had a brother? How do you have one as a machine?” She asked.

“Um… bro said that we are called awakened in this world.” Nova replied.

“Ah! Yes. the accursed awakened. I should have known.” She shook her head.

“Is there a problem?” Nova asked.

“This world was once had a wave of humans some 4000 years, the world was named something else but I don’t remember, after they left we had a long period of peace before the war. During the time of the awakened it was chaos. How is the world now?” She asked.

Nova shrugged, “I don’t know, smelly I think, I can’t smell. It looks ugly but recently we helped a granny tree called Sakura who is really nice and her pink flowers are so pretty. She suddenly grew really big and lots of other talking trees started to grow suddenly recently.” Nova said.

“Sakura! The Nature Titan is awaken once more! This is great news for the world for sure.” The woman said and looked up at the dark sky and sighed. “How I missed the feeling of the wind in my hair, playing, fighting alongside and living with my sister.” She said and held onto the burnt hand of her sister behind her.

“Don’t worry… we will eventually… get out.” The hoarse voice of the woman said.

“How come she didn’t heal? I though over time you get better?” Nova asked.

The healthy goddess laughed a self mocking laugh, “Its because of me of course.” She shook her head, “Because I went into a fit of rage, all the gods were sealed.” She waved her hand over her body and then waved it around. The wave caused the ground to completely light up with different imagines. It was only when the glow appeared that Nova noticed the six different colored pillars that released a chain shaped light holding onto the women. “We have a seal to seal our power and another to keep us in place. In truth, the one restraining us is easy to break, simply smash these pillars but the seal on our powers is too powerful. Only Ariel can remove it probably. Because we don’t have our powers, our regeneration ability is also heavily affected and because this land is far from being magically rich, unlike 2000 years ago when the whole world was magical, it is impossible for us to heal ourselves.” She said.

“Um… I can’t break it since i’m not that strong but I bet my bro can. I can bring him here.” Nova said.

“Do as you wish, but be wary of the people outside. They are an ancient church that worshipped us, they consider this a sacred ground and keep monsters from coming near here. Their numbers are few but their power is very high. They have lived 2000 years here keeping me ‘safe’ from the monsters but that is just a pretext to be near a god. Not like it helps with anything since my divinity and divine aura is sealed as well. Even if we leave, they won’t notice a thing.” She said.

Kacha! Kacha! Rrrumm!

Just as she finished speaking Strato suddenly began to work once more after some small repairs. “Great! Pretty lady! Hold on, I will get bro to let you out so that you can get help.” Nova said and took to the air but before she did she took an airborne view of the seal to show Techno.

Like that, Strato shot out and using the signal from the Relay drones, she made her way home humming.