“I don’t think I’m going to make it...” Charlotte complained.

Dorothy looked sideways at her friend. “What do you mean?”

“You know... a nice big meal... always makes me sleepy... and we have this long walk back to the city... my poor little feet... they just can’t take it...”

“You know, I’ve never seen an arachne with shoes before... they’re very cute. Like little baby dancing shoes.”

“You’re a robot... and you’re wearing boots,” Charlotte countered.

“Fair point, these were my Papa’s boots when he was an adventurer. Are your shoes custom made?”

“No... they’re baby dance shoes...”

“Ah.”

“I like them though... and it’s not like I use little hooks on my feet to climb like spiders do.”

“You ever want to go dungeon diving? I bet your ability to climb walls would be really useful in a dungeon.”

“I don’t know... as a plant mage, I’m fond of having sunlight available...”

“Oh, right. Though there are different kinds of dungeons around. I heard that there’s one near Bowen’s Warf that’s almost entirely underwater. I think they call it The Hydrongeon.”

“That’s... a pretty terrible name...”

“Isn’t it just? I love it. I wonder if the dungeon is just a normal dungeon but at the bottom of the ocean or something or if it’s completely flooded... You think you have to swim around in it?”

“This might shock you... but I’m not a great swimmer...”

“We should go someday. I think it’d be a lot of fun.”

“My feet... are really killing me... we’ve done so much running around today...” Charlotte complained again, falling behind Dorothy.

Dorothy stopped and turned to regard her friend. Charlotte stopped too, and slumped to the ground.

“Poor thing. Eight legs and still can’t last all day.”

“That just means I’m working four times as much... just to keep up. It’s a bipedal world out there, you know...”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make fun. Okay, come on. I’ll carry you.”

“Finally! I mean... really?” Charlotte said, perking up. Without waiting for a response, she climbed up onto Dorothy’s back and wrapped her legs around her.

“Wow... um... I feel like I’m being hugged by four people at once.”

“Arachnea are the best huggers...”

“Yes, I can see that,” Dorothy laughed as she jogged back to the city’s East Gate. She kept an eye on her mana levels the whole time but the additional weight of Charlotte didn’t tax her systems at all. Dorothy was starting to get curious about just how strong she actually was.

In far less time than it would have taken if they had been limited by Charlotte’s pace, they reached the guild hall. The place looked a lot calmer than the last time they’d seen it, and Adventurers were just milling about in the various lounge areas. You wouldn’t know that some potentially boss-level event may have occurred earlier. Fran was behind her station and Papa was behind his. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

Sitting sideways in a large, plush chair was Razz. They had one leg up, over the arm of the chair and the other was flopped over the back with their head resting on the opposing arm. It looked like they were examining something on their guild card and flipping through different screens.

“Hey Razz, done all those ReQuests already?”

“What? Oh hey. Dorothy, right? Oh. Um... You, uh...” they paused, tapping their lip with a finger in concern. “You, uh, have a... I mean... don’t move too quickly... and I don’t want to alarm you... but there is a very large spider on your back, right now.”

“Ha. Ha.” Charlotte said in an annoyed tone as she climbed down from Dorothy’s back.

Dorothy chuckled. “So anyway... Razz, this is Charlotte, my party mate. Charlotte, Razz.”

“They, them,” Razz said, giving Charlotte a little wave.

“They... who?” Charlotte said, confused.

“His pronouns— I mean their pronouns. So not he or she, but they,” Dorothy tried to explain.

“That’s... weird. You’re weird,” Charlotte said, giving Razz multiple side eyes.

“Says the girl riding her friend like a mount,” Razz responded with a smirk.

“My... feet just got tired... that’s all...” Charlotte responded weakly.

“It’s fine. It’s fine, I don’t care,” Dorothy interjected.

“So... yeah. I mean, no. No, I’m not done with my stuff yet, just taking a lunch break,” Razz offered. “I got four of them done though, two more to go.”

“What’s left?” Dorothy asked, curious about what an almost B rank would pick up.

“Nothing special,” they replied. “One is... collecting Inferno Centipede eggs... and the other... is recovering some special whatsit from the caves of Doromon. That one, I’ll probably have to camp overnight before coming back.”

“Doromon...” Charlotte asked, “Isn’t that a dungeon?”

“Mini Dungeon really,” Razz answered, “but I don’t need to run the whole thing. Just to the fourth chamber, that’s where this whatsit is supposed to be.”

“Do you have a party?” Dorothy asked.

“Nope. Just lil’ ol’ me.”

“Do you want one?” Charlotte asked, curiously.

“Tell you what. Come ask me again when you’ve caught up to me in rank,” they said with a wink.

“I... I wasn’t asking you to join,” Charlotte said defiantly. “I was just curious if... if you worked alone by choice... or because no one would want to work with you.” She stuck a tiny, triangle shaped tongue out for emphasis.

Razz just laughed, which caused Charlotte to turn beet red and turn in a humph.

“And with that... we need to check in,” Dorothy said as she gently pushed her friend towards the material counter. “It was nice chatting again, Razz. Good luck on your final ReQuests.”

Razz gave her a wink and a smirk before going back to whatever they had been looking at on their guild card screens.

“I... don’t like that person...” Charlotte said as Dorothy shepparded her to the material counter.

“Oh, Razz isn’t so bad. They, um. They just like to push buttons when they see them... I think...”

“Probably a rogue... all rogues like pushing buttons... to see what they do.”

“Could be, could be. They weren’t heavily armed, and both of their remaining tasks could benefit from being extra sneaky.”

“Definitely a rogue... and also a scoundrel... and I definitely do not find them exceedingly attractive...”

Dorothy chuckled and shook her head as she tapped on the material counter to get the cats’ attention. Neither one was at the counter but Dorothy could see them in the back, working on breaking apart a petrified maple elk.

“Hey Dot!” Josh called out.

“Dorothy,” Jake said, giving his brother a judging look. “What do you guys have for us today?”

“Cabbage Troll heads,” Charlotte said as she started unloading her bags.

“Cabbage Trolls?” Jake repeated, looking through the collection. “Not something I’d want growing in my garden...”

“Oh... you have a garden?” Charlotte asked as she lined up the heads, looking suddenly interested.

“I do not,” Jake said flatly.

Charlotte deflated a bit and Dorothy smiled and turned away to keep from laughing. Jake finished counting out all of the Cabbage heads and wrote up a receipt for them and handed it over to Charlotte.

“You guys heading out again after lunch?”

“Maybe,” Dorothy offered. “I haven’t lined anything up for us, but I wouldn’t mind.”

“Eh... I don’t know... I might need a nap...” Charlotte countered, “Dorothy’s a machine— I mean, yes she’s an Automata but she just keeps going and working, you know! I don’t... I don’t have the stamina for that...”

“Seems like you nap a lot...” Dorothy pondered.

“I guess it’s a spider thing... I can go a pretty long time between meals... so after I eat, I need to sleep it off... Our ancestors were trap hunters... so lots of hanging around... and not a lot of running around...”

“Well, we’ll be here till 16th bell,” Jake warned. “We’re cutting out a bit early to go visit mom so you’ll need to bring anything in before then, or wait till tomorrow when Gini is on duty.”

“Got it, thanks Jake,” Dorothy waved as she pulled Charlotte off the counter.

They headed across the hall to close out their ReQuest and found that Papa was currently with another Adventurer party so they went to Fran’s counter.

“Hey Fran, we’re finished up with a cabbage troll ReQuest,” Dorothy said cheerily as she handed over their guild cards.

“Alright, let me take a look at your material slip...” Fran replied, taking the slip from Charlotte. Once she found the ReQuest form, she was able to close out the ReQuest and add the bonuses to it.

“You girls did pretty good, huh? Let’s see now... You get 50 promotion points each... the reward was 4S plus 3C per troll head, and you got... 26 of them... and then the River Commission wanted to throw in a bonus of 2S for also taking care of the source root... so that’s 6S 9C each. Sorry, Dorothy, half of yours goes to The Primercy, of course.” Fran counted out the money and handed their cards back. “That’s not a bad little payday. You should go celebrate.”

“We just might! As soon as I figure out how to in this new body...” Dorothy said, wilting.

“Don’t worry kiddo, you’ll get the hang of it sooner or later,” Fran said with an encouraging wink.

Dorothy and Charlotte collected their earnings and headed out of the guild hall. Charlotte was looking forward to sleeping off her meal and headed back to the inn that she was staying at, leaving Dorothy to figure out how to spend the rest of her day. Dorothy had the new code snippets to play with, but she also had 12 silver, 17 copper, and 12 iron coins burning a hole in her pocket. It was time to do a little window shopping.

Dorothy strolled along the row of shops and various street peddlers. There were clothing stores, food stalls, cobblers, a haberdashery, even a millinery full of fancy hats for fancy ladies. None of it interested Dorothy in the slightest. She glanced in some of the armories, there were some nice sets of enchanted armor pieces or swords guaranteed to never lose their edge, but nothing sang out to her. Largely because a lot of the magic items wouldn’t work for her since she no longer had a magical affinity of her own.

She puttered along until she saw “Magic Mike’s Tools of the Trade”. At first it looked like another Adventurer armory but sitting in the window was clearly an Automata arm with a blade sticking out of it. Dorothy walked inside and was greeted by shelves and barrels full of Automata limbs, weapons, and parts that she couldn’t begin to guess at. Where Romie’s Gilded Auto was all highly polished and seemed to be fashion oriented, Magic Mike’s was fairly dirty and oily but everything looked tough and formidable.

“Yeah? So? Whattya want?” a gruff voice called to her from behind the counter.

Dorothy looked in the direction of the voice and could just barely see the top of a balding head and long rabbit ears sticking up. A small, stocky figure, shorter than Dorothy, climbed up onto a stool and looked down at her. The voice belonged to a horned rabbitman, other than the bald patch on top, the rest of his hair was long and salt and peppered. His face and ears were covered in piercings though his gaze seemed to contain just as much steel.

“You’re a new Auto, right? What’s your POS at?” the rabbit man asked.

“Um.. yes I am. My POS is 1.3?” Dorothy replied, though she didn’t understand why he’d asked.

“Over there is the newb stuff,” he said jabbing a finger in the direction of a bin full of items. “Don’t even bother looking at anything else unless you want to get depressed.”

“But I see some things I can afford...” Dorothy reasoned.

“What did I just say? Don’t even bother, doesn’t matter if you can afford it or not if your POS is too low you can’t install it. Newbs... you read your docs, right?”

“Most of them, yeah?” Dorothy said indignantly. “But you’re not a...”

“Not an Auto? Who cares? Money is money,” he said snorting.

“I guess that’s true... still, why Automata stuff? You seem pretty knowledgeable...”

“If you must know, my husband is an Automata, and I’m an Auto Artificer. I built everything in this shop.”

Dorothy looked again at the wares with a new sense of wonder, there was a LOT of stuff here. She went over to the newb bin and rummaged through it. Most of it looked like replacement limb parts but she had no way of knowing if they were any good or what they did.

“I’m interested in getting an integrated sword... I’d also like to be faster on my feet, if possible... maybe some ammo for my small blaster... any recommendations?” she asked.

The rabbit man got down from his stool with an annoyed look and walked over to the bin and searched through the items for a bit until he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a bulky forearm part and a set of parts that looked like they might be feet with wheels built into the heels followed by some sort of internal components with large metal tubes projecting from them.

“What’s your build level at?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Um... 30 of 40?”

“And how much gold you got?”

“I can spend up to 1 gold and 3 silver... but I don’t want to spend everything in one place...”

He then tossed everything back into the bin and waved away her comment.

“You’re an auto now. What else you going to spend your money on? An Inn? Good Food? Health potions? Looks like you’re an Adventurer too so I doubt you’ve got some artistic hobbies you’re working on. Sorry kid, for an Auto, and an Adventurer at that, this is where your money is going.”

Dorothy was taken aback at the rudeness of his statement but she couldn’t find any fault with it and slumped a bit.

“You could go to other shops I guess, but you won’t find this level of detail or commitment to our customers. My George is an Adventurer too and there aren’t that many of you guys in that profession. He’s my first customer so I guarantee the quality since I want him to make it back home.”

Dorothy shrugged, resigned, “okay sir, what do you have?”

The shopkeep gave her a smirk and pulled out another arm upgrade. This one was more streamlined than the first, but also looked more expensive. He then rooted through another bin and held up a blocky object with a piston at one end.

“You got Inventory?” he asked, giving her a judging look.

“Inv 1, yes.”

“Good, good. Okay you’ll want these.” He took the arm and the weird, blocky thing up to his counter and got back onto his stool before waving her to come closer. “Okay, this blade conversion arm has a retractable blade of 30cm, 2 small mana crystal ports, and 2 spell slots. If you install a spell and a crystal it should get the build quality up to 10 which would get you your next POS update. Spend your upgrade on speed if you want. This here,” he said holding up the block, “is an ammo compressor for small bore blasters. It only has the [Ammotize] spell and it will convert whatever C class raw material you target into ammo for your blaster and store it in your Inventory. It requires POS version 1.4 or better though so you’ll need to upgrade before you can install it.”

“Wow, thanks! That sounds pretty great!”

“Yup, the blade is 1 gold and the compressor is 12 silver, but I’ll give them both to you for 2 gold.”

Again, Dorothy deflated. “I guess I’ll just take the blade.”

“What? You mean, 13 silver is really all you have?” the rabbit said, looking shocked.

“Yes? Well... plus some coppers and irons...”

“Oh for— Look kid. I’m not trying to rob you here or anything, but in the future always tell a vendor less than what you have. Ugh... okay okay, I’ll never hear the end of it from George... okay, give me the 13 silver and I’ll give you the blade and install it for you. Let’s see... what about the balance... look, I’ve recently run out of ink for my printer and I need more. If you can get to my supplier in the industrial district and get me more and sell me your old arm then we’ll call it square and I’ll install the compressor for you.”

Dorothy lit up with excitement, “Oh thanks! That’s great mister!”

“Mike,” he said, sticking out a gnarled looking paw.

“You’re Magic Mike!” she said giggling and shaking his hand.

Mike gave her a half smile, “yeah, I’m Magic Mike.”

“I’m Dorothy!”

Mike took Dorothy’s money and installed her new forearm. Having the “hair” installed didn’t seem that strange, it was almost like having a wig or a hat put on her head, but replacing parts of her arm was a decidedly different sort of experience. Mike had started by disconnecting her forearm at the elbow and then disassembling her old arm to free the wrist and hand from it. Inside, it looked pretty basic, like there might have been a lot of room for improvement. Mike installed her wrist and hand into the new forearm and then attached the new arm. As soon as the connection was complete, Dorothy saw that little spinning hourglass again followed by a new system message.

New Hardware Detected

Primary Operating System has detected a new arm unit.

Install required drivers?

Yes

Enzio conversion Blade Arm installed

New hardware installed and ready for use. Use trigger word [Enzio] to toggle blade extension.

“Enzio?” Dorothy asked.

“Name of the blade. I always set the triggers as the name of the weapon instead of some generic blade or blaster trigger. Mainly because if you have more than one, you can run into trigger conflicts.”

“Makes sense,” Dorothy agreed as she tried out the trigger. A panel popped out on the underside of her forearm and a multipart blade snapped out from the hidden compartment. It’s positioning made it a little awkward to swing around, but she’d get used to it. She would have preferred the blade on top of her arm rather than below for parrying and slash attacks but this blade looked better suited to thrusting stealth attacks.

Mike took her old arm and put it into a basket behind him. Again, it felt strange. A part of her body was no longer hers and was sitting in that basket while on her arm was an all new part. She retracted the blade and wiggled her fingers around, everything seemed normal; or at least this new normal.

Mike gave her the name and address of his ink supplier and promised to install the compressor if she could get him the ink as well as update her system to version 1.4. It shouldn’t be too hard for Dorothy, but first she wanted to stop by home to check on Mama.

It was nearly the 15th bell when Dorothy poked her head into Mama’s shop. Mama was busy with a customer, so Dorothy took a seat in the waiting area and opened up her [Console] to take a closer look at her new gear, items, and spell snippets.

Snippet Library

Assign Attribute - Apply attribute snippets to a variable target based on a trigger effect

IF Condition - Run contained snippets only when condition is true

ELSE Condition - Run contained snippets when attached IF condition is not true

x2

LOOP Statement - Run contained snippets repeatedly while implied IF condition is true

TRIGGER Statement - Run contained snippets when trigger event occurs

Variable(small) Attribute - takes on elemental attribute of mana crystal used

Charge Element - applies 2 mana worth of an elemental effect to the target equipped item

“Hmm, what can I do with these...” Dorothy wondered aloud. As she read through the snippet descriptions, the Variable (small) one stood out to her and she pulled out the ice crystal that she’d gotten from Gina. So with the ice crystal, the Variable(small) could take the ice element and act like it was an ice attribute all along. That was so much better than having to have both the blast attribute as well as a blast crystal to power it.

So she could give something an ice attribute, if she linked that with the Charge Element one, then she could give Enzio an ice element based attack to do cold damage on things... but was 2 mana worth a lot? Was it only a little bit? With the help of the Project Wizard from before, she started a new spell that she called [IceFang]. Since Enzio didn’t have any spells already to trigger from, she had to start with the Trigger Statement so that when she used the Trigger word and supplied the spell with mana it would run. Inside of her Trigger, she added a loop and set the condition to keep going as long as she was supplying the spell with mana. Inside the loop went the Variable(small) and Charge Element snippets.

Dorothy stared at her new spell for a minute before saving her work and decided to rename it [MegaCharge] since it would only be ice if she used the ice crystal and with the variable, she could swap out different crystals for different elemental attacks.

She saved and closed out the editor, then opened up the access panel in her new arm to reveal the mana ports and dropped the ice crystal into its spot. Just like the Blast crystal, she watched a mechanism clamp around the crystal and pull it into her arm and lock it in place. Then in her HUD the little hourglass spun for a second and a message told her that the crystal had been installed. The new spell and crystal were enough to trigger the update and she clapped when the system message popped up.

System Update Available

51/40 Build quality acquired for update to v1.4

51/50 Build quality acquired for update to v1.5

Update Now?

Dorothy whooped and clenched her fist before her mother gave her an odd look and she regained her composure.

System updated to v1.5

The Primary Operating System has been updated to version 1.5.

2 Build update point(s) available for assignment.

Assign Build Update Points:

Health [10] -> 20 Mana [80] -> 90 Strength [5] -> 6 Speed [6] -> 7 Focus [6] -> 7 Recover Health [2 per hour] -> 3ph Recover Mana [1 per minute] -> 2pm

Dorothy remembered what Papa had said about health and put a build point there, the other, she decided would go into mana recovery. When hunting the cabbage trolls, it felt like she was constantly near the bottom of her mana pool and waiting for it to recover enough to use [Blast] again.

When the system finished updating, Mama was finished with her customer and waved Dorothy over.

“Wah Gwaan,” Mama greeted her.

“Mi deh yah, yuh know,” Dorothy responded with the expected return phrase.

“Come,” Mama called, “I have sometin fah ya.”

Dorothy did as bid, and Mama handed her a green, fabric bundle. Dorothy looked at the bundle curiously and unfolded it, holding it out at arms length. In her hands, she held an old and worn, but well maintained ranger’s cloak. “Mama? Is this... ?”

“Ya gone bein’ an Adventurah now. Ya got ya fahda’s gear, so ya might as well have mine too. I altered it dis morning.”

“Oh Mama... thank you...” Dorothy said, feeling choked up though lacking the physiology to express it.

Mama waved her hand in the air dismissively. “Tink nothin’ of it mi love. Dat cloak have some stealth spells in it an’ should help keep ya safe when ya in da woods.”

“Oh thank you mama, I love it,” Dorothy said, giving her mother a big hug.

“So, I was doin’ some research askin’ about an’ even went down the book hall. Di’ ya know, dat Automatas don’ eat no food?”

“Mama!” Dorothy said exasperated.

Mama gave her a wink. “It’s true, I say. Dey jus’ suck up what dey needs. Right out da air, like plants. So here’s da ting. Dey don’ normally eat any ting. But I hear dere’s a fancy Automata chef dat can make tings dat Automatas can taste.”

“What?” Dorothy said, shocked. “There’s something that I can eat? Or at least taste? I... I must know what this is!”

“I taught ya might tink dat. So if my baby can’t have da food she usta, den as her mama, it’s up ta mi ta fine da foods she can have, yeh?”

“Sounds like quite the epic quest,” Dorothy teased.

“Well, fahst we need ta fine dis fancy time chef. I keep lookin’ round, yeh?”

“Tanks Mama,” Dorothy said, slipping into her mother’s accent a bit. “Oh! Check it out! I got an upgrade!” Dorothy showed her mother the blade conversion and how it could slip in and out of her arm.

“Ya know, whit dat an’ da cloak, yuh make a fine Ranga huntah. Mehbi yuh sign up da assassin guild, yeh?”

“What? No! I’m perfectly fine being an Adventurer like you and Papa, thank you very much. Anyhow, I need to go into the Industrial district to fetch some ink for a merchant so I can get a deal on another upgrade. I might try to grab another ReQuest if there’s time so I’ll see you this evening then.”

Mama sighed and looked a little sad for just a second before returning to her usual confident smile. “Okay, mi see yuh likkle more den.”