"We're in a simulation," I said, summoning an identical second bow and handing it to her. "Duplicating models is trivial here. I encourage the both of you to tweak the bows to your personal preferences, I will be making both of them from scratch in the real world anyway, it makes no difference to me if they are different models."

Jenny nodded and took the bow, testing the draw. She held the bow differently to how Conor did, not sighting along the arrow but holding it away from her chest. I saw why when she released the string, if she held it any closer then it would hit her breasts painfully. She took a stance at the edge of the grass and began shooting. At the end of a minute there were thirty eight targets glowing gold. She turned to Conor with a smirk.

"Now that I don't have to compensate for not having a targeting line I can see I'm faster than you," Jenny said. "I already had to work out the trajectory of my shots, but this calculating is nearly instant."

"A shot every two seconds compared to a shot every one and a quarter seconds," I said. "It is a big difference, but your combat potential against a lot of opponents should be combined. Practice both shooting at once, and set up a communication channel that you can designate targets over."

They both nodded and began discussing how to go about it, Jenny still teasing Conor about being the better archer now. I left them to it and went back up to normal speed, reconnecting with my body's senses. Jacqueline, the human woman, was up here talking with the others that had yet to be converted. From what I could hear she was reassuring them about the process and explaining some things about being a Demi-AI.

The next person around the circle of tables was the bear woman. As I walked over to her I tried to summon a throwing blade from my inventory directly into my hand. What I wanted it to do was be able to equip items directly without having to reach into the portal, mostly so that weapons could be equipped immediately. After a few tries and it not working I thought that it might have to do with the item being essentially disposable. I tried it with my sword and it worked immediately, the hilt appearing in my right hand. I willed it back into my inventory and it disappeared.

Inventory sub-system extended Permanent equipment can now be equipped from and dismissed to Inventory owner's character sheets.

Good. That should solve the awkwardness of the leprechauns having to pull their bows out of their inventories.

I had been standing in front of the bear woman while I was experimenting with the Inventory system, and she flinched when my sword appeared in my hand.

"Hello," I said. "What is your name?"

"Ursula, my lord," Ursula said. "It is a traditional name for those in my bloodline that are born bears. My husband is named similarly for bulls, he is Taur. You actually saved my son, Brutus, when we first arrived. Thank you for that."

It seems standing in front of her blankly and then summoning and desummoning a sword had rattled her. Oh well, I'm sure she would be more settled once she was converted.

"Let's begin," I said.

I got her to swear the oaths, and then gave her my speech and converted her. We appeared in the landing room, in the infinite hallway version, and I sent her the Demi-AI primer. After a few minutes of her sitting with her eyes closed, absorbing the information, I decided to go to the wargames simulation. I left Ursula an invite to join me there, and she actually disappeared from the landing room before I did. We appeared on the stone pavement to the side and several meters away from the field, Ursula still sitting with her eyes closed.

Conor and Jenny were both using the practice field, which instead of the practice targets that they were using when I left had waves of hostile monsters approaching from the distance. Large creatures, some land-bound with hooves and dangerous looking claws and fangs that could be seen even from several hundred meters away, some with wings and stingers. Occasionally a nearly invisible flying enemy would fall from the sky at a closer distance, pierced by one or two arrows, or bludgeoned from the sky.

Looking at the bows that the two leprechauns were using, both were markedly different from the original model I had made, and they were each using a range of different arrows. Conor's bow was smaller, just over seventy centimeters tall. Jenny had gone the other way, where the bottom of Conor's bow went down to his waist, Jenny's almost touched the ground. It was well over a meter and a half tall, and the arrows that she was firing were twice as thick as the ones Conor was using.

They were both slowing down their rate of fire, and the monsters started to make it closer and closer. Jenny was the first one to put down her bow, Conor following three shots later, and the simulation paused.

"Twelve minutes, thirteen seconds," Jeff said from behind us. "Eight hundred targets down, with only five having broken through that I had to deal with."

"And we're completely out of mana, and exhausted as well," Jenny said.

"I can probably help with both of those in an actual battle," I said. "Mana crystals and energy refreshment, though energy refreshment is painful and I would need to be close by. Your target count is very impressive."

"Thank you, my lord," Conor said. "We have done quite a few modifications to the bows and arrows you designed for us. I hope that is alright?"

He and Jenny both sent me a series of models, for each of their bows and eight different types of arrow. Conor's arrows were almost all light, though without sacrificing strength, and Jenny's were almost all heavy, some even with thick blunted arrowheads.

"It is," I said. "I did encourage you to do it, after all. I'm not sure what half of these arrows would be used for, but I can easily make them all in the quantities indicated. I did solve the issue of storing and retrieving the bows, too."

I sent them both a bit of code that would emulate the way that the Inventory would work out in the world.

Conor studied the code for a few moments, then made his bow disappear. He held his hands out in front of him like he was holding an invisible bow, then equipped his bow, drew an arrow, fired, and unequipped his bow. All in under two seconds. He shook his head.

"It doesn't add much time to my shot, but it doesn't add any real benefit either," Conor said.

"It's more for travelling, so you can always have your bow to hand," I said.

Conor nodded. I felt a large hand tap me on the shoulder and turned to see Ursula towering behind me.

"Taur and I are defensive fighters," Ursula said. "We take the attention of attackers, drawing their damage to us to allow casters and damage dealers to kill them with the least possible risk."

"Okay," I said. "Good to know?"

She summoned up a set of heavy armour, made from living plants, to cover her. The breastplate was a single piece of carved wood, and it connected the rest of the armour with lots of thin root threads.

"The leprechauns mentioned you making improved equipment," Ursula said. "Have you considered what armour the people in your army will use, or will we be using our own personal pieces?"

I hadn't considered armour at all. The fights that I had been in I relied entirely on my speed, and in the tough fights my willingness to take damage in return for a killing blow. My immediate reaction was that armour would slow me down, but then I remembered the concept for a highly flexible suit of armour that used an extremely durable material to deal with multiple forms of attacks.

Some of it required electricity, such as the active filtering to counter gas, but I could use small portals to achieve the same result. I frowned and scanned through my memories, looking to track down where this fully realised concept had come from. It only took me a few seconds to remember my first Power, 'General memories of relevant concepts from my past life'. Apparently this armour was some sort of sci-fi space armour.

"I hadn't considered it," I said. "Give me a few minutes, I'll design something now."

This would be considered permanent equipment, which allowed me to ignore how getting in and out of the armour would be achieved. The Inventory would simply equip it. And I had the scans for everyone in the army, so I could tailor the armour perfectly for each of them.

The design ended up being a deep blue, almost black, to match the dominant material that the Fortress was made from. In a lighter blue on the left side of the breastplate I imprinted the design that was on the front side of the Fortress Coins, the symbol for the four biomes. The suit was as rigid as possible while still allowing full range of movement at all of the joints. And the helmet was a separate piece, so it could be removed to leaved the head free if required. The whole armour was sealed to the outside and used portals to provide cooling and air flow, with a reinforced glass polymer as the facepiece to allow vision out of the helmet.

With that done I sent the personalised models to Ursula, Jeff, Conor, and Jenny, and summoned my own set over my model.

Once everyone had equipped their own, Ursula looked at me, trying to speak. I sent her a communication request.

"It's completely sealed," I said. "You'll have to speak through digital channels. I'll add something like a presence that can be spoken through a bit later."

Ursula nodded, then added everyone present to the communication channel.

"I want to test the armour," Ursula said. "Stand still, leprechaun man."

Ursula walked over to Conor, crouched down, and then swung her paw hard into his stomach, slicing across with her claws that had extended through her armour still covered. Conor's armour held up fine. Conor himself went flying through the air, flipping to land on his feet in the grass field and sliding back several meters.

"Minimal damage done," Conor said.

"You next, my lord," Ursula said.

She walked up to me and reached back for a full powered swipe. I settled into a fighting stance to receive the blow. I saw a flicker of white gold on the outside of Ursula's armoured claws just before they went cleanly through my armour and then my chest. I fell to the side in two pieces as the simulation faded to grey around me. Damn.