The mercenary outpost was filled with people and beastkin alike coming in to confirm completed requests by bringing in monster materials, herbs and in one case another client who had to be there with a client to confirm a safe escort. From what Derus could see, it was apparent that taking requests and completing them had to be done within the mercenary outpost, most probably as a means of security to prevent scamming which might happen when there is no witnesses.

Moving through the line in the reception counter, Derus was met with curious stares from the other persons with some of them whispering and making reference to the mercenary bracer on on the humanoid's arm. No one directly approached Derus as like before, they only held curious gazes and nothing more.

At the counter, Derus was able to ask to secure a meeting with Farris who had gone back to dealing with paper work inside her office.

"It's only been about three hours since you left, what brings you back suddenly?" asked Farris as she continued processing the documents on completed and outstanding requests.

"I need to secure a place to stay. Do you have any ideas where I can find one?"

"Why not try an Inn?"

"I have no money."

"That is a problem... and at this time of day you won't be able to take a request." said Farris before she stopped looking at the documents and, after thinking for a while, looked towards the humanoid that sat a head below her and continued.

"There's a room we have reserved for when mercenaries come back badly injured but are you ok with such a room?"

"It is only temporary."

"I'll let one of the outpost staff know then." said Farris as she and Derus moved out of the office towards the sick bay for battered mercenaries or the SBBM room as the medical mercenaries would call it.

When asked about the medical mercenaries, Farris explained that they are mercenaries who specialize in doing first aid, performing healing magic and have an overall higher knowledge of the human body. Derus hoped to meet one in the near future to see how they would apply mana in treating something as complex as an injury.

The sick bay was located at the back of the outpost, opposite of Farris's office. Inside the room, clean, thin curtains were draped over the windows giving the room a powered lighting effect which blended well with the wooden plank flooring. The three beds were arranged in a side by side manner opposite to the entrance of the room. Unlike in modern Earth hospitals, there was nothing separating them like curtains or walls.

"You can just pick any of them, we don't really get much injured mercenaries anyways."

"Thank you" responded Derus to Farris who went back to her office right after, leaving the humanoid to their own matters.

After an hour, the sun had set and the humanoid had laid down in one of the beds.

'Lying on a bed feels much different now. Status'

STATUS - DERUS Target Ex Machina Type Inorganic Body Status Normal E.U.R (Wh) 100 E.C (W) 91,765/100,000

'Everything seems to be operating normally, the energy dip is possibly due to when I used the [overdrive] combat feature on those wolves.' thought Derus whilst looking at the status screen.

'Initialize sleep state.' commanded Derus to the system as the humanoid's consciousness receeded into the shape of a sphere in an empty space where code runs along the walls.

Sleep State has been initialized, remaining time: 7:59:55 (hh/mm/ss), E.U.R is now -200W/hr. System memory and live memory has been combined. No abnormalities detected. Live memory burning is available. Administrator access is disabled.

In this sleep state, unlike hibernation, Derus is able to know what was happening on the outside via a window which had appeared on the code wall of the space. Sleep state did not work the same way a normal modern earth human went to sleep. The sleep state was the equivalent to a human spending their entire night's dedicated sleep time in a lucid dream. In short, very unhealthy for a person but not Derus as Derus was an Ex Machina. The sleep state allowed Derus to freely control memories in a manner of copy or cut from the system memory and pasting to the live memory but not the reverse.

The system was only able to hold a limited amount of information in storage with perfect recall whereas the live memory was modelled after the structure of the human brain to hold a near infinite amount of information but not able to be recalled perfectly. Memory burning allowed Derus to implant information from the system in such a way that the information becomes as second nature as using a primary language or breathing. Using the administrator mode would allow Derus to manually mold system memory and live memory which can result in a permanent sleep state if the molding is improper or even destruction of the consciousness of Derus.

Derus observed the memory of the blacksmith imbuing mana into the iron as he striked it. Without knowing the basis of how mana worked or how much force to use with each strike, Derus would not be able to use this memory to replicate the blacksmith's skill nor would the humanoid be able to use past life knowledge to do so due to the difference in nature. Derus goal of learning the blacksmithing basics was to primarily learn about mana, how to control it and finally how to use it in craft. After viewing this memory, Derus checked the body components to check if they were in working order and spent the rest of the time in sleep state creating a virtual world inside of the empty code room into a forest theme for fun.

In the mountain border between the dwarf and human territory of the Gigan continent the monsters stir.

A corrupt mana sweeps through the mountains decaying the trees.

A vortex is formed signifying the entrance of a dungeon.

This unknown vortex would signify the start of a disaster.