After slightly calming down from her brief snap of overwhelming jealousy, Anastacia stomped over to King and forcibly pushed the strange guild official lookalike off him – or at least tried to; the moment her hand touched the fortress dweller’s armor, the world turned to a quick blur of lights until she found herself being held down against the floor and felt the edge of the official’s kneepad press on her spine.

It was rare for someone to get a jump on her without being frozen by her powers, but she hadn’t exactly prepared for such physical consequences to be handed out by a member of a race she knew to be complete pushovers.

“One wrong move and your walking days are over.” The official warned and took a quick gander at the other two strangers in the room. For someone living in a fortress that had sent out such a desperate plea for help, her attitude or the look in her eyes certainly didn’t reveal any thankfulness or relief.

“One wrong move and your walking days are over.” The necromancer responded, utilizing every last bit of her self-restraint to not dislocate the official’s leg to the other side of the room.

“You’re not in a position to make threats, small intruder.” The fortress dweller said gruffly and pressed Anastacia’s face against the floor. “And neither are your companions. Explain your business with Erratic Judgement at once!”

Suddenly King defused the situation by picking the official up by the collar of her armor and tossing her a few meters away before kneeling to help Anastacia back up.

The official was quick to get back on her feet but was clearly baffled by what had just happened. “Knight! What is the meaning of this?! Are you compromised by vile magics?!” She barked as her horn kept flickering furiously.

“Compromised maybe, but not by magic.” Emilia calmingly interrupted the interrogation and lowered her weapon as a sign of peaceful intentions. “My name is Emilia, and I am a priestess of Sylvia, the goddess of joy. We are here to aid Erratic Judgement however we are able to.”

Now confused on top of being angry, the official glared at Emilia. “Goddess of… What? The gods are still a thing? The war is still ongoing?!” She asked without relaxing her combat-ready posture but appeared to at least be willing to hear the adventurers out.

“And now it looks like we’re both lost in this conversation – what war?” The priestess sighed.

“The one we started? The necromancers were supposed to get rid of the gods once the filth that made us was cleared out, at least that’s what we hoped would happen.” Clarified the official, though not terribly helpfully. Suddenly her face filled with worry as she appeared to realize something. “ARE THE AUREUN DEAD?!” She screamed almost desperately.

“Yes, long gone, at least as far as anyone knows.” Emilia nodded but didn’t bother digging into the rest of the things mentioned, as she felt that the official wouldn’t appreciate her dragging out the conversation – or at least her counterparts in Valor weren’t too keen on sharing information they absolutely didn’t need to.

A weary but glad smirk surfaced on the official’s face for a brief moment before the angry frown returned. “Now, please, fuck off and leave the knight here, we have a war to finish and after that, much, much more to do. The Wrath core applauds you for returning him here.” She demanded, only barely rounding her words from before.

Both Emilia and Anastacia were about to protest, but King stepped forth once more and walked up to the official. Grasping the crystalline horn with his hand, he poured energy into it through the lines of light on his armor until the horn itself briefly turned light blue.

When he released his grip of iron, the official appeared wholly confused – almost enough to lose her stance.

Clearly at the loss for words, she gasped for air and pointed at each of the party members in turn. The horn on her forehead had stopped flashing entirely as she processed the information King had presumably dumped on her all at once. Then the official kept blankly staring at the floor for a while and rubbed her brow, every now and then glancing up in disbelief.

“Looks like I acted a bit brashly, I didn’t know the company I was in and let my innate temperament get the better of me again.” She finally said, looking slightly remorseful but leaving any sort of actual apology unsaid. “I am unit twelve of the custodians of Erratic Judgement, also known as the Wrath core. I am led to believe that you are familiar with the absolute fucking cowards that are the majority of my kind, namely the Avarice core. I will spare you the details, but trust me when I say that we are nothing like those spineless wimps. I am also told that I may have stepped on someone’s toes by merely doing my duty and inspecting the condition of this here knight, of which I don’t give a damn and implore you to grow up, you scrawny piece of shit.

“I have been asked to procure some additional equipment for you, including a map for the Venator pattern with you, which I absolutely do not have the time for but will do regardless because orders are orders. The items in question will be left in the knight’s quarters, I’ll begrudgingly accompany you part of the way, but he can guide you there.

“I must also inform you that the request you were dispatched here for was not sent by any of us, but on the account the invaders holding on to the bottom floors and the stalemate we are locked in, we are unable to contact The Great One themselves. So the origin of the message might be The Great One, or it might not.”

Without saying anything else, the maliciously compliant custodian started walking away into the distance. Not once did she even glance over her shoulder to see if the party had realized follow her, which they did, albeit only after she was a fair distance away.

As they crossed the immense hall of emptiness, Anastacia made sure to stay between the custodian and King, constantly glaring at their guide menacingly, just in case.

Leggy was similarly intent in sticking no more than a meter away from the necromancer, and King still remained oddly unbothered by it.

Combined with the lack of singing in her head, this all left Emilia feeling slightly lonely, and she decided to hurry along enough to catch up with unit twelve. Of course, she pretended it was to gather more information, but in all honesty, she just wanted to avoid the silence.

“So what’s up with this room, why is it so massive?” She asked to spark up a conversation.

The custodian rolled her eyes before turning to the priestess and gave her a smile so fake that it must have only been possible for an artificial being. “You know, it’s actually really interesting. This room well predates my cursed existence, but I’ve done some digging around in the archives, and the reason they made it so huge is that it could one day fit all the dumb fucking questions you’d have for me – but I can already tell we’ll need a few other storage halls as well.” She said without missing a beat and kept walking at an awkwardly fast pace.

“You know we’re here to help right?” Emilia tiredly asked.

“The nearest hall would be eighty-four, but I think we put a dragon in there at some point, so I would have to ask if it minded having idiocy as a roommate…” The custodian pretended to mutter to herself.

Anastacia didn’t appreciate someone being so difficult to her friend, mostly because that was her job, but also because she already hated unit twelve. She picked up the pace as well to catch up with the two and joined the conversation.

“Hey, nerd, don’t you have papers to file and archives to keep? Are you sure you have the time to be snide?” She asked, having gathered that the custodian didn’t enjoy being associated to the likes of Strawberry.

Unimpressed, unit twelve scoffed at the mockery. “The only archive I’m in charge of is the 11 782 902 ways I could kick your scrawny ass if it weren’t for certain knight’s weird tastes – and trust me, that archive is expertly curated.”

“Anna, stop it. We’re not here to make more enemies.” The priestess sighed and continued asking questions she didn’t expect answers for. “You mentioned that you belong to something called ‘The Wrath core’, what is that?”

“Is there no end to my suffering? Must I answer you before you relent?” The custodian groaned. “Assuming our weak-willed brethren have already divulged our origins to you, you should know why we abandoned our makers. You naturally born dumbasses have your flaws and strengths handed to you by random chance and happenstance, and there’s no way you can ever truly grasp what it’s like to be made intentionally flawed. Every second of our unending nightmare of an existence, we fight against the malevolent nature we were forced to have – and yet the feeble majority of our kind saw it fit to just abandon it all and pretend to start over without our creators. The Wrath core is made up of the twenty-seven of the third artificial children that demanded blood for the crimes the aureun committed.”

Surprised by the first actual answer she received, Emilia didn’t know what to say, so instead she just let out the first thing that came to her mind. “Just twenty-seven, huh? Judging by the size of this place, you must be pretty busy with just maintenance.” She thought out loud to no one in particular.

“It’s frankly amazing that you parsed that one together. Wherever might you have gotten the idea that I don’t have time to play a tour guide? Was it the first hundred times I said that or the second that gave you the clue?” Unit twelve said and mockingly faked amazement.

The conversation died down after that, on the account of the outright hostility of one of the participants. While the adventurers would have very much liked to know more, they figured that maybe it was best to wait for another custodian to appear, or just find out things for themselves because there was no telling where unit twelve ranked among them in helpfulness – maybe King had called her because she was the best the fortress had to offer.

In silence, they crossed the rest of the room until the entrance they came in from was nothing but a dot in the distance. At no point had they seen another way out of the room, and all the walls simply repeated the same endless tiling that didn’t appear to have any points of interaction in it.

The almost musical array of thumps, thunks, whistles and metallic moans from somewhere deep below kept echoing and breaking the ambience. Anastacia in particular rather enjoyed the sound and found herself often humming along with the rhythm, often managing to predict where the next notes of the machine song.

Being more used to the dulcet tones of her god, Emilia didn’t find much to appreciate about the seemingly endless noise that, to her, sounded emotionless and cold, but regardless, she was happy that the necromancer appeared to be enjoying herself.

Eventually they came to the wall on the opposite side of the room, which appeared in no way unique or different from the kilometers’ worth of wall they had passed. Yet, the custodian stopped by it and placed her hand in the middle of one of the tiles. As the light patterns reacted to her touch, she impatiently tapped her foot and cursed the slow response she was getting under her breath.

A moment later, few of the tiles on either side of her slid down and revealed two identical paths that led down two identical unlit corridors. The custodian stepped into the left one and briefly turned around to address the adventurers.

“These two routes both lead to the same place, this one is a bit longer but won’t have you people in it, so I’ll be taking this. The knight with you can lead you along the other one into his quarters, where you can wait for me to scrape together all the things he wanted me to get – which might take a while because I can’t exactly stroll by a portable transilluminator tree and pick a couple of portable transilluminators from it.” She instructed the party and furiously tapped the wall next to her, trying to close the path behind her. When the tiles finally began to slide back to their places, she shared one more piece of advice. “Oh, and please touch everything. Everything down here is perfectly safe and harmless – just make sure to stand on something that looks like it’d be easy to clean.”

As the left path closed for good, King moved to the front of the group, stepped into the right one and began leading the adventurers down it.

Only a few meters past the entrance, they passed a closed stone door with an extremely tempting circular plate in the middle, that was just the right size to be pressed with one’s palm.

Resisting every urge she had, Anastacia passed the door without touching it and proudly smiled at Emilia for once managing to keep her hands to herself.

After about fifty more meters, they passed a second such door, and after that, at even intervals, several more. Only at the thirteenth door did King stop and place his hand on the round plate, causing the door to hiss and slide open to reveal a dark room.

Excited to see the simulacrum’s room, Anastacia pushed past him and stomped on the floor to activate the lighting.

The room itself was more of a hall than anything, being at least thirty to forty meters wide and probably twice that in length, it was larger than most houses. In the middle of the room was a large stone table that, likely uncoincidentally, was more or less exactly long and wide enough to fit a laying down Apex pattern simulacrum on it.

Lining most of the walls were shelves holding countless weapons and pieces of armor, some of which Anastacia had seen on the recordings on the elevator and could tell were meant for King. On top of that, much of the room was filled with even more shelves containing much the same and totaling up to dozens of different sets of armor.

Anastacia squealed in excitement and immediately disappeared between the shelvings to marvel at each and every piece she could find.

Emilia was considerably more wary and the last one to enter the room. She took a careful look at items arranged by the door and gladly left the rest of the room to the necromancer.

The first thing she noticed was a large set of stone and metal armor that was meant to be worn normally and not for a simulacrum, she recognized it and the shield leaning on the table they were arranged on, from the tall warrior that had appeared by King after the blinding flash of light outside of the fortress. It was an odd thing to have in a room reserved for a simulacrum but based on the ceremonial way it was placed on the table, it was important to the resident. Fearing she might upset King; she left the armor untouched and moved on to the shelves next to the table.

Of course, none of the items there made any sense to the priestess either. All of the shelves were filled with artifacts and apparatuses that no doubt each did something incredible, but guessing by the lack of glowing, didn’t have a core to power them. She could recognize the slot for the core on a few of them, but they all seemed worryingly pointy and spinny for her liking.

The only items that appeared even remotely safe to pick up, were a pair of spoon-like pieces of metal with obvious handles and flat parts at the end. The apparatuses seemed to have a core halfway inserted into them already and the slot was placed in a way that it was easy to press in with one’s thumb when holding the strange item by its handle.

Emilia hesitantly picked up one of the artifacts she assumed to either be a weapon or a tool of some kind, and carefully inspected it for any moving parts but failed to find hints of its purpose.

Emboldened by the apparent inertness of the simulacrum spoon, she held it as far away from herself as possible and pointed at an empty part of the room while shielding her eyes. The core offered a bit of resistance when pushed and felt like it might have had a spring under it, but regardless, slid easily into its place and let out a click that locked it into its place.

With the core in its place, the device sprang to life and began to violently vibrate while emitting a buzzing sound. Worried that the sound was it charging up to something, the priestess tapped on the core with her thumb, and to her surprise, it clicked again and popped out of the slot, killing the buzzing sound immediately.

“Hm… A switch?” She mumbled and pressed on the core a few more times to make sure it worked like she thought it did.

Less worried that the spoon might unleash chaos upon the world, Emilia let the buzzing and vibrating continue for a while, but couldn’t feel a difference in it, so it almost certainly wasn’t charging up to anything.

Now more curious about its purpose than ever, she pressed the buzzing device against one of the shelves and when nothing happened, against her armored glove. Aside from the noticeable trembling, there really didn’t seem to be much to it.

After playing around with it for a while, she absentmindedly pressed it against her chest plate and suddenly could feel the vibration in her entire body. A bit startled by the experience, she turned off the tool and immediately let her mind fall into the gutter.

“Well this is… dangerous. It’s only responsible of me to keep this away from unprepared and inexperienced hands, who knows what it might do after all.” She said to herself, pretending to have a justifiable reason to covertly slide the device into one of the pouches under her cloak. While doing that, she noticed the second one on the shelf and swiftly grabbed it too. “Can’t leave them out in the open like this. Surely it’s my job as a guardian to keep these… safe.”

As she quietly hid the second device under her cloak, her heart skipped a beat when she saw Leggy intensely staring at her from the shadows between the shelves on the other side of the room.

“You saw nothing.” The priestess whispered and pretended to inspect the armor again.

A while passed before King and Anastacia reappeared from among the shelves. Carrying a whole load of bits and pieces they were planning on replacing the worn pieces of the simulacrum’s body with, they emptied their haul on the table in the middle of the room.

Even though the necromancer was generally cheery, for Emilia, it was always nice to see her so childishly excited about something. It reassured her that the life as an adventurer hadn’t completely messed up Anastacia and that she still acted like a regular kid of her age at times.

While Anastacia arranged the pieces of armor they had gathered on the table, King approached the shelves Emilia had stolen the strange tools from and was seemingly searching for something.

He put his hand on the only empty spot and appeared a bit confused that the devices were gone. After quickly going through the rest of the shelves in the area King glanced at Leggy for aid, but the cloaked simulacrum simply shrugged in response.

He was without a doubt looking for what the priestess had taken, but it was a bit late to return them, and in all honesty, Emilia would have rather kept them if she at all could. When King quizzically turned to her, the priestess acted clueless and suggested that maybe there were spare ones in the nearby rooms.

The knight seemed to believe her and headed back into the corridor, allowing Emilia to finally let her guard down and breathe easily. Leggy even gave her a reassuring thumbs up from across the room, which did make her feel a bit easier about the theft, but at the same time raised questions about the cloaked simulacrum.

When King returned, he brought with him one of the spoon-like devises he had borrowed from his neighbor. Before handing it to Anastacia, he quickly demonstrated its use by placing the flat part of the tool on a piece of armor on his arm and pressing the switch on it. As soon as the buzzing sound started, the lights on the armor piece dimmed and it fell off like a dead leaf from a plant.

“Oh! So that’s what they’re for.” Emilia exclaimed without thinking and gathered the looks from everyone in the room. “I mean… That’s- ah screw it, I can’t come up with anything. Please, just carry on.”

Anastacia frowned while repeatedly pressing the switch on the tool she had immediately taken from King. “Have I ever told you that you’re a massive weirdo?” She asked and started to remove more armor from the knight of stone.

“I know...” The priestess sighed and sat down by a wall to bury her face into her hands for a while.

Starting from the head and moving downwards from there, Anastacia kept removing all of King’s armor and tossing the worn and chipped pieces aside. She was rather excited to be able to finally see the metal frame under it, because not only would it be interesting as far as learning about the ancient machines themselves, it would let her deep clean King from nooks and crannies that she couldn’t reach before.

Once she was finally done peeling off the cracked and splintered stone, she put down the tool and started to take a better look at the metal pieces. After a fair bit of mostly unnecessary rubbing and prodding, she was ready to make a ruling on the machinations and mechanics that were hidden before, and in many ways, even she was surprised by what she found.

“This is a body.” She stated and scratched off a bit of oily dirt from a gap she had discovered in the simulacrum’s abdomen.

Emilia lifted her head. “What?”

“This might as well be a human body. It’s missing some intestines and such, but every bone and every single skeletal muscle that’s needed for movement is here, just in a weirdly symmetrical metallic form. I have no idea what’s holding any of this together or how the ‘muscles’ contract, but this is a perfect recreation of a body.” She explained in a bit more detail. “That’s not even the weirdest thing though. The patterns on these inner pieces are the exact same control patterns necromancers use. The other ones have always been sort of similar, but these are just control patterns with perfect angles and perfectly straight lines, there’s no ambiguity here.”

The priestess stood up to have a better look at the bare frame, as if she understood anything more that way – though even she could see the unquestionable resemblance between the rough body structure of many sentient races and the metal parts under King’s armor.

“What does that suggest then?” She asked and tried to touch King’s arm but got her hand slapped away by Anastacia.

“Well, considering I’ve had a good look at Leggy’s bare parts, and know that those follow the regular patterns instead of these, I’d guess that either Erratic Judgement or the necromancers of the time came up with the patterns and taught the other, willingly or unwillingly. They must have also kept it from other machine fortresses, and that’s why King’s type is just better in every way compared to others.” The necromancer theorized and fiddled with a part that represented one of the muscles on top of the ribs.

Suddenly realizing that she might have sounded rude, she turned to Leggy and grasped her hand. “Only when it comes to fighting and such is what I mean!” She reassured the cloaked simulacrum, who clearly had no idea why she should have felt insulted over something that was objectively true; the Apex pattern was superior.