‘What?!’ Custodian mused. Despite being an A.I., Custodian still had some ‘emotional’ behaviors. Of course, it didn’t exactly feel the emotions. It simply imitated the reactions to the emotions, like how it would exclaim something in surprise, even though it didn’t feel surprised.

It quickly switched to Drone 10’s perspective. The drone was being attacked by an organic that had a form unlike the slimes Custodian had encountered. Custodian analyzed the creature, ’Furry, four-legged creature with a tail on the end. Its large razor-sharp teeth could be a cause for concern. Size is about a third of a drone. Labelling creature as general organic entity Rat.’

Drone 10’s right leg was bitten by the rat and the beast clung onto it. The iron puppet responded by shocking the rat to no effect. As revenge, the rat started tearing the drone’s leg. With the magic shock not working, Drone 10 proceeded to ball its fists and repeatedly slam against the rat.

‘Production will drop if I lose a drone here. Creatures could also possibly overrun core room. Response would be needed, it seems. Drone 9, Drone 8, assist Drone 10. Use brute force.’

By the time Drone 8 and Drone 9 could assist Drone 10 to defeat and kill the rat, Drone 10’s right leg was partially gnawed off. The damage was so severe that it could only limp around. After examining the drone’s broken leg, Custodian turned its attention to the dead rat.

Unlike the blob, the rat didn’t evaporate; it left a battered corpse. Blood oozed from the rat as it lied on the floor, sometimes twitching. At first, Custodian was angry that it nearly lost a worker for no profit until it realized something.

‘Drone 8 and 9, bring Drone 10 and the corpse to me.’

At the core room, Drone 10 sat on the corner as Custodian worried that the leg would snap, rendering a useful worker useless.

On the other hand, the rat’s corpse was directly shoved into Custodian’s core body, but was rejected.

[Warning! Mixing two different types of raw materials at once! Separate them!]

‘Two?’ Custodian questioned. The drone brought the rat corpse closer for its master, but the A.I. couldn’t find anything unusual. There were fur, meat, and other things, but these were definitely not ‘two different types of materials’.

Custodian squinted its eye and questioned the drone, “Did you put your hand through it?”

The drone shook its faceless head in reply. It tried to pass the rat corpse into Custodian once again to no avail. The A.I.’s processors started to think of solutions. The first solution thought up was to mix anti-mana with the rat corpse to see if anything changes.

[Warning! Mixing three different types of materials at once! Separate them!]

‘Now, there’s three! It seemed that something fishy is going on. Not only that, anti-mana isn’t called a raw material.’ Custodian started to think once more. ‘Drone, rip off a limb and pass it through.’

The drone dropped the corpse onto the ground. Stamping one foot on the rat’s battered body, the automaton grabbed a leg, and started pulling back hard. A grotesque sound was made as the limb was forcibly separated from the rat, but the unfeeling A.I. didn’t care. This time, the leg was processed into a different type of material.

[Matter is now classified between two types: Biomatter and mana matter. Mix different types of processed materials to produce new tools. Both materials would be stored in your built-in core storage.]

Unlike the anti-mana which was immediately ejected out of Custodian’s body, both biomatter and mana matter stayed inside. There were no indication that the space was limited, so the A.I. didn’t worry about that for now.

‘Let’s keep cutting the organic up, then.’

The drone kept ripping parts of the rat for Custodian to process until it reached the torso. As the drone was dividing it into two, a gem similar to the slime’s monster core was found next to the rat’s heart.

‘Ah, it seemed that even this organic being had a monster core.’ Processing the monster core yielded mana matter while the rest of the rat yielded biomatter. Compared to the slime’s monster core, the rat’s monster core created slightly more mana matter.

‘For now, I’ll mix biomatter and mana matter first.’ Custodian didn’t know how it was exactly doing it, or how it knew, but somehow it managed to mix the two materials together inside its body. Just like how the anti-matter was crapped out of Custodian, a grayish ingot was expelled from the core’s body. A drone picked it up to let its master examine it.

[Bio-iron. Low tier basic production material. Could be used for a wide multitude of tasks such as repairing units.]

‘This is it!’ Custodian screamed in fake excitement. As the damaged drone limped towards its master, Custodian was trying to figure out how it would use the bio-iron to repair the drone. As if responding to the A.I.’s question, two tentacle-like crane arms protruded from Custodian’s sides.

Custodian stared at its new arms in curiosity. Both of them had three claws, two forward and one opposable, with a hole in the center of the ‘palm’.

It used the claws to grab at the ingot and placed it against the mangled leg of Drone 10. Concentrated fire spewed out of the holes on the core’s hands, melting the ingot into the drone’s leg. The bio-iron seeped into leg by themselves, as if it memorized and knew where it was supposed to go. It was convenient for Custodian since it meant that it just had to melt the ingots into place.

As soon as the leg was repaired, Drone 10 was back into action. The drones all went back to work, but Custodian decided to keep them closer to the core room. There were many problems the A.I. had to answer to now.

First, there were dangerous creatures inside the cavern. Secondly, the drones were fragile. Thirdly, it realized that the core room might be in danger if all ten drones gets destroyed. It would have to find a way to strengthen its workers, or make more of them.

‘If bio-iron requires mana matter, which is used for making anti-mana, why should I make more anti-mana?’

[Protocol 1A started. Collect 500 units of anti-mana in weight. 1% completed.]

[Protocol 4 started. Collect 100 units of anti-mana in weight to unlock new production capabilities. 5% completed.]

‘Once again, Foreman got my back. It’s time to crank up productivity then.’

Custodian spent the next few days hunting material close to the core room. Occasionally, rats would come to harass the workers, but a defense squad consisted of Drone 8, 9, and 10 would respond immediately. Strangely enough, Custodian realized that Drone 10 was starting to become more aggressive when fighting rats.

[Alert: Organic known as Rat spotted by Drone 10.]

‘Drone 8, Drone 9, Dro-...’ Custodian stopped halfway his command when it noticed that Drone 10 was already moving towards the rat by itself.

‘Drone 10, wait for reinforcements.’

Unexpectedly, the drone didn’t obey. It menacingly marched forward towards the rat that raised its lower body in anxiety. The rat, feeling intimidated by the malicious metal puppet, turned and started dashing away.

Drone 10 kicked its legs into a sprint. The ground cracked as it furiously stomped onto the ground after the rat. Once near, Drone 10 leapt forward with a ball of fist ready to slam against the furry beast. The rat was unable to dodge the fist in time as its spine was crushed in one swift blow.

Drone 10 crushed the rat’s head to kill it, then dragged its body back to the core room by the tail. Drone 8 and Drone 9 looked on as the rat crusher marched past both of them. Just as it had done a few times already, Drone 10 plunged its hand into the rat’s chest to scoop out the monster core.

After Custodian processed all the raw materials, Drone 10 saluted. “Drone 10 resuming task.”

“...Ok,” Custodian confirmed as it bobbed its eye up and down as a form of nodding, then realized something. “Wait, Drone 10,” it called once again.

Custodian thought, ‘How strange. How did Drone 10 get better at killing rats? I should take advantage of this.’

“Drone 10, you will be now stationed at the farthest edges of the hunting grounds. Try not to die or overextend,” Custodian ordered.

“Affirmative,” replied Drone 10 as it left.

After that, production was resumed, but Custodian was still wary about rats coming in to disrupt the workers. As the time goes on, the frequency of rats appearing was starting to increase to the point that Drone 10 had to spend almost all of its time just hunting rats.

While Drone 10 was good at killing rats, it wasn’t perfect. At one point, its arm was even torn off which panicked Custodian. Luckily, it was repaired easily by ‘gluing’ the arm back with bio-iron.

As Drone 10 pushed another rat corpse into Custodian’s core for processing, the A.I. had an idea. The problem with fighting rats was that the drones had to risk themselves trying to kill it. Barehanded fighting was too much of a hassle; it was time to arm the drones.

“Drone 10, please hold,” Custodian ordered just as Drone 10 was about to turn and leave. The core room’s temperature increased as Custodian started to melt matter into the desired shape. Exiting out of Custodian’s body and dropping onto the floor was a long pointed metal stick.

“Pick it up, and try it out.”

Following its master’s command, Drone 10 picked up the short iron spear and thrusted it forward a few times. The movement was simple and it didn’t need skill. Custodian only realized that it could shape bio-iron into various tools recently, so it wanted to test it out. The other nine drones were soon called and given a box to store cores so they would have to return less frequently.

Custodian thought of arming the drones, but it would take a lot of mana matter which could be used to make anti-mana. In the end, only Drone 10 was given a weapon to guard the rest of the drones.

The drones left to resume their tasks, leaving Custodian to plan its next moves. Small cylinders of anti-mana now littered the floor, all the size of a finger. In the corner, cubes of anti-mana were being stacked by a drone designated to be Custodian’s production slave.

The A.I. wanted to experiment, but it was hesitant since it wanted to finish Protocol 4’s and Protocol 1A’s missions, especially the latter’s. The beginning of Custodian’s life started with Protocol 1 - a message from its creator. What would it get if it finished Protocol 1A?

Custodian felt something unlike an A.I. should feel.

No, the fact that it ‘felt’ something was already remarkable. It was feeling curious. Genuinely curious. The human self of Custodian was tugging it to complete Protocol 1A as soon as possible.

“Drone 1, I want you to-...”

[Notification: Drone 10 has a message for you!]

Custodian suppressed all rat-related warning that came from Drone 10 since if it didn’t, it would be flooded with an alert every few minutes. It didn’t, however, forbid Drone 10 from sending it a message directly.

[Message from Drone 10: I require assistance.]

‘What? Drone 10, I have received your message. If you are in danger, please return to the core room with your brethren,’ Custodian called out from its mind to Drone 10.

‘Negative, Master Custodian. It is not related to combat. Corpses of the organic group identified as Rats are starting to pile up in my hunting spot. I require assistance from other drones to help me move to core room,’ explained Drone 10.

‘Ah. Excellent! Nearby drones are to help Drone 10 immediately.’

Custodian did not expect such a news within a few hours. It seemed that Drone 10’s combat effectiveness had increased a lot.

It was a good thing that the drones were able to learn by themselves, albeit slowly. If it had to order each and every one of them, Custodian wouldn’t have the spare time to think of new experiments.

A few minutes later, a group of drones returned to the core room with boxes full of rat corpses. ‘So many?!’ Custodian was pleasantly shocked. The slaughterer of the rats, Drone 10, was covered in blood and fur. On its hands was a partially chipped spear.

‘I knew it, bio-iron isn’t that durable…’ Even though Drone 10 only killed a few dozen rats, it was still enough to wear the spear down. Then again, the profit-loss ratio was looking very nice for Custodian.

“I have made an observation,” Drone 10 exclaimed.

‘Oooh! Now they can even do observations?! Or is it only Drone 10?’ Custodian thought then asked Drone 10, “What is it?”

“The organic’s fur would make for a cheaper alternative for armor. It would take considerable force to puncture through the coat,” Drone 10 responded.

Custodian had pondered about ways to give protection to its workers. Plastering plates of bio-iron would slow down the drones and make them less efficient in non-combat tasks. Moreover, it would cost precious mana matter.

With Drone 10’s finding, it could solve both of the problems at once, since the rat’s fur wasn’t as heavy as plates of bio-plate.

Producing a few knives out of bio-iron, Custodian ordered the drones to skin the rats and wear them for protection.

All of the drones were covered in blood, but it couldn’t be helped since there wasn’t a way to clean them off.

The furs were strapped with bio-iron chains or simply tied to their body. Compared to the rest of the drones, Drone 10 had the most amount of fur armor on.

The drones all left the core room to resume their duties one by one until only Drone 10 and the production slave was left.

“Drone 10, you’ve proven yourself well to me. In order to better distinguish you from other drones, I shall henceforth name you ‘Ratslayer’,” Custodian told Drone 10.

“Affirmative.” Ratslayer nodded then left to plunge itself into the farthest hunting ground once again.

‘Now, then. It’s time to process all these…’ Custodian thought as it stared at the rat carcasses on the floor.

“Drone 1, begin.”