Magus was busy with shaping furnaces, however he still needed to bring the furnace to the main smelting room, which was recently made, and to light the golem crystals on fire.

He finished a new furnace with legs, and brought it to the smelting room, just next to the magic research room. In there, a number of automated workers smelted iron using Magus’ new furnaces, but the new furnace he made wasn’t for them.

Drone 3 was in the middle of the room, hammering into an anvil. The drone raised its hammer, then slammed onto the edge of an unfinished iron blade.

The clanking of the hammer meeting the blade continued to resonate until Magus disturbed his brethren’s concentration.

“Furnace you asked. Here,” Magus brought the legged furnace next to Drone 3.

“Put it there.” Drone 3 pointed at his side using his hammer.

Magus didn’t really have to do anything since the furnace moved by itself. Once it reached the designated area, the furnace’s legs detached, and went back to the research room.

“This blade. For who?” Magus asked as he pointed at the unfinished blade.

“No one. I must practice as I’m still new to this. All my blades so far have been rather disappointing…” Drone 3 sighed as it ran its hand against its featureless metal forehead.

Magus noticed the pile of unfinished swords on the floor next to Drone 3’s chair. He picked one up, and observed it.

It was an ugly one-sided blade. Some parts of the blade were obviously hammered wrongly and unevenly.

“Niner see this, he will be mad,” Magus commented.

“That’s why he’s not allowed near my workshop,” Drone 3 replied, then gave a deep, rasping laugh. “Is there something you need?”

“Brothers find weird beings. Must fight. Need weapon,” Magus answered, and handed a piece of golem crystal to Drone 3.

“This is…?” Drone 3 knew what the gem was, but didn’t know why Magus gave it.

“Conduit. This long,” Magus described as he stretched his arms and continued, “and crystal on top. Make sure it won’t drop.”

“Ah! I understand. I’ll get you a weapon fit for you, Magus.” Drone 3 nodded.

Magus could have asked Custodian for a weapon. With his master’s perfect precision, he could get what he wanted, but he trusted his brother unconditionally, and Drone 3 accepted the challenge, and his trust.

As Magus left, the sound of clanking returned, with greater resolve.

The appearance of a new group of entities alarmed Custodian, but not threatened. After sending a scouting party to probe the undead beings, the A.I. found out they weren’t hostile to the drones, which was a nice change of pace considering that most of the beings the drones had encountered wanted the automatons dead.

Slayer was put to guard the route between the undead town and the core room, while Exarchi built a forward outpost to command the scouts from.

The outpost was located at the large chamber with the pool, because Custodian didn’t know if the door would suddenly close, which would potentially cut off Exarchi.

The scout drones scouted the town with leisure, even going as far as to scout without escorts. There were quite a few types of undead, and Custodian cataloged them all.

The most common were the skeletons. They had a monster core in their chest cavity, which ‘fuelled’ the rest of the body.

At one point, Custodian found a lone skeleton wandering around the grassland. The A.I. wanted to know how strong skeletons were so it made a team of combat drones sneak up on the skeleton.

The result was unexpected for the A.I. Simply destroying the spine, ribs, or anything which could dislodge the monster core could kill a skeleton. However, the skeleton didn’t provide much biomatter since it was just made out of bones.

Custodian expected the monster core to somehow hold the bones together like super glue, but it turned out to be wrong, in a good way.

There were plenty of skeletons, and if Custodian wanted to, it could hunt the skeletons for a lot of biomass.

Of course, it needed more information. Would skeletons help each other when attacked? Do they respawn? How dangerous are they when grouped? Such questions had to be answered first.

There weren’t only humanoid skeletons. There were smaller skeletons that moved on all four legs. Were they rats or another type of animal?

Nevertheless, they shared the same traits as their humanoid counterpart.

Other than the horde of skeletons, there were also incorporeal beings floating around. At first, Custodian thought these were simply glitches in the drones’ optics or light phenomenons. But when a drone got in the way of a ghostly being, it got slashed with a rusty broken sword.

The ghosts, designated as Wraiths by Custodian, looked like ashen people on ghostly fire. They had no legs, all of them having a long skirt or robe tied from their waist and down. No sounds were heard from them, like they never existed in the first place.

Most of them carried physical weapons, usually a rusty sword or a half-broken spear.

Like the skeletons, they roamed the ruins aimlessly. They were only hostile when a drone was on their path. Custodian couldn’t find a way to kill the wraiths, and since they probably had no harvestable matter, they were set to be ignored or avoided.

There weren’t as much wraith as there were skeletons, though, so they were easily avoidable.

The third type of undead was hostile to the drones. In fact, Custodian wasn’t even sure if the beings were undead. Sets of old broken armor floated on their own. The chain mails clinked as the mysterious floating armors marched in set routes, usually around large stone buildings.

Ironically, Custodian named them Living Armor, even though the A.I. thought of them as undead. These undead were significantly harder to kill, being armored and all. So it was hard to determine if they possessed a monster core.

However, Custodian knew the armors could be processed, so plans were being made on how to farm the living armors.

Custodian decided to investigate the large buildings which were guarded by the living armor. All of the buildings had at least one tattered banner. At the front, they all had a metal plaque with the words ‘XUIVIMI’.

The A.I. didn’t care what they meant. It was just logging everything it was seeing. All it knew was that XUIVIMI meant ‘Lots of living armor here!’.

A lot of time were also spent exploring the insides of the ruins. There were many burnt objects, but they were all taken to the core for further examinations. The most curious of them all were the burnt books.

There were scraps of paper which had barely legible characters, but Custodian began analyzing all of it. Using the books, Custodian hoped to understand the undead ruins more, such as mapping out the town without manually scouting everything.

Interestingly enough, some books had the words ‘XUI’ in it. One of them had a tattered page which allowed Custodian to find a cache of old weapons to process.

Some weapons were even made from a new type of material - Gold.

Disinterested at first, now Custodian wanted to know what these ‘XUIVIMI’ meant. Perhaps from there, Custodian could meaningfully make a detailed map, rather than just having boxes in its map marked as ‘Building 1’, ‘Building 2’, and so on.

It took days to recover books, materials, and artifacts to gather information. XUI and VIMI meant ‘Armed’ or ‘Prepared for War’ and ‘Rest place’ or ‘Shelter’ respectively, leading to the word ‘Barracks’. These were only rough estimates, and guesses. Custodian didn’t know if these translation were correct, but it was the best it could get.

In any case, Custodian marked the XUIVIMIs for raids. There were valuables there, and Custodian wanted them.

‘Master Custodian. The team you wanted had assembled,’ a voice called out from the hivespeak.

‘Excellent timing,’ Custodian replied.

Magus, Slayer, Drone 1, and Drone 7 gathered at the forward outpost. Slayer checked his equipment carefully, while Drone 1 was busy sharpening its trusty axe. Drone 7 was sitting by the pool, closely examining the water.

Drone 3 also arrived at the forward outpost not long after. Exarchi approached the drone.

“Why are you here? The dream team only consists of those guys. Not that I am angry that I’m not part of it, mind you,” Exarchi called out to Drone 3.

“I’m here to give this to Magus.” Drone 3 unveiled a long piece of fur cover it was hauling around, revealing a beautiful staff. Some parts of the staff were gold, some were steel, but at the top of it sat a caged crystal.

Magus noticed Drone 3 talking to Exarchi, and approached them. “Drone 3! That is…”

It wasn’t just Magus, but also Custodian who was enthralled by the staff.

‘You asked for gold and steel, but I did not expect this. Magus, test your gift immediately,’ Custodian ordered.

‘Yes, yes,’ replied Magus.

Drone 3 handed the staff to Magus, who excitedly accepted his brand new gift. He tapped the ground with the end of the staff, then raised it upwards. Coursing mana from his insides, Magus shot a burst of shock magic which was conducted all the way to the staff.

The mage drone felt a surge of power emanating from the staff, then pointed it at the wall. A large purple fireball spat out from the crystal, colliding against the wall with a violent bang.

The wall was charred, but undamaged due to the strange properties of the magical chamber room. If it were a real wall, it would’ve dug through a huge chunk of the wall.

“Amazing! Good, good!” shouted Magus as he raised his staff in ecstasy.

‘I agree. Drone 3, well done. I am naming you Smith in hopes you wouldn’t disappoint me,’ Custodian proclaimed.

‘Yes, Master Custodian! I’ll work hard!’ replied the newly named drone.

Custodian’s attention were turned back to the scout drones in the ruins, leaving the drones to themselves.

“Now, you are named. Good job,” Magus congratulated his brother, giving him a thumbs up as well.

“Well, I hope you could get me those steel armor soon,” Slayer remarked.

“Yes, thank you brothers. I’ll get you a nice set of armor, Slayer. Just you wait,” Smith replied and nodded his head.

Exarchi clapped, grabbing everyone’s attention. “Can the dream team please get ready? You’ve got literal death to greet.”

“I guess this is when we part now. Good luck, brothers.” Smith gave his farewell and left.

Magus, Slayer, Drone 1, and Drone 7 lined themselves against the open exit. They were about to step into undead territory, and anything could happen.

Slayer turned to Drone 7, and noticed they were pocketing vials of water.

“By my observation, water makes for a poor choice of weapon,” Slayer commented.

“I have a feeling this isn’t normal cave water,” Drone 7 replied.

“You’re a drone. Drones don’t have feeling,” Slayer said.

Exarchi came from behind Slayer and retorted, “Just because you don’t have feelings doesn’t mean the others don’t either.”

“Nonsense. We are all the same,” Slayer proclaimed.

“Says the guy twice the size of Drone 1, and he’s covered in plate armor.” Exarchi sighed and shrugged. Drone 1 tipped their helmet upon hearing their name.

“Enough. Raid Team 1. It is time to go,” ordered Slayer as he took the lead.

As the raid team left, Exarchi waved and shouted, “Good luck guys! Steal some of bio-iron-for-brains’ kills for me, will ya?”