The AutoFoundry was pretty great in terms of available tools, machines, and even materials. What it lacked, though, was a proper testing facility. The ground floor was spacious enough that I could test driving IronHide around in circles. The ceiling height was also large enough that I could fit IronHide in his bot mode.

His transformation got the usual response from the student artificers, which I never tired of. The ‘Hide Mk II stood 18 feet tall, 3 feet taller than the previous model, but overall was stockier. The new model had a wider silhouette with a lot of extra armor and weight on the back. The extra armor and weight formed something of a turtle shell that invoked the Iron Back Turtle he was originally built from. His [IronGrowth] function could easily build up and shed armor on the shell as needed. Like the Carnivac Mk II, this model wasn’t a shell any more. Also, like Carnivac Mk II, it was loaded up with Mana Collection Units or MCUs; 24 of them.

I kept the black iron coloring for the most part, though the “back shell” was a bright red, honoring the character I’d named him after. All in all, the new design sorta resembled the look of a giant, armored, ninja turtle in a moto-cross style helmet.

IronHide stretched from side to side like he was limbering up, twisted at the waist 360 then back, and windmilled his shoulder joints to test the articulation motion.

“Good job on the shoulder joints, Meleek, nice and flexible without being too loose,” IronHide praised. The mindflayer beamed.

He tried doing some squats then popped up into a side kick that could level the building if he wasn’t careful. The students looked nervous so he rechambered the kick and tried to lightly set the foot down.

“Physically things feel mostly okay guys,” he critiqued, “transformation has a few grindy bits though. They’ll probably wear down in time...”

“Where at Mister Hide?” Kiyohime asked, pulling out a notebook.

“Just IronHide is fine.. Or I guess Hide, but not Iron, that just sounds weird. Um... this bit here,” he demonstrated, shifting back into truck mode but slowing down and moving back and forth where some parts were scraping against each other.

The team was focused and several of the students were scribbling down notes, asking Hide to shift back and forth or focus on specific motions. It was amazing. When you’re the sole developer on something it’s easy to miss mistakes or to even see them and ignore them, pushing them away for later. This team of kids was hands-down the best upgrade I’d gotten since I started building things in this world.

“Hide? Sir? Um, could we inspect you with our diagnostic tablets? It would be good to get a look at some of the feedback data in real time,” Nur, a rare human girl, asked.

“Of course, though I can’t really let loose here... I might break something...” Hide said thoughtfully, folding his arms.

The new head design had a mouth guard that covered the lower half of IronHide’s face, giving him a proper “knight” look. It split in half and retracted into the bulky helmet as he thoughtfully tapped his new lips and made “deep thinking” expressions.

“What about the chasm?” Meleek suggested.

“Chasm? Tell me more,” Hide asked, getting excited and squatting down to get closer to the flayer.

Meleek backed up, looking nervous to suddenly have the full attention of this 18 foot, eight ton titan.

I met the kids on the ground floor and put ‘Hide into [Inventory] for easier transport through the facility. They guided me through the main workshop, to another less secret lift which took us to a large hangar area where the two destroyers had been torn apart and the new airship project was being worked on. I had been through the area before to inspect the work, but I hadn’t taken the time to explore the facility.

At the far side of the hangar was a massive set of double doors, that if I’d thought about it, was clearly how the destroyers had been brought into the facility in the first place. Our little group found a smaller, people-sized door in the middle of one of the giant ones. Meleek tried to open the door but found it to be locked. There was no key mechanism, though there was a mana collection plate embedded near the handle.

I [Inspect]ed the device and found that it had been keyed to a single mana signature in the same way that you might find a password lock on a website with the password value hard-coded into the submission script to test against. That is to say that it wasn’t secure in the least if you had the ability to [Inspect] and modify the thing. I had no idea who’s signature it was, but getting past it would be like shoving clay into a lock to get a copy of the key.

Slightly annoyed at the level of security for the facility, I ripped out the code on the lock completely and replaced it with the same program I’d written for AutomaTown. As it was updating to the new set of functions, I had a moment of guilt.

“Anyone know who it was that had access to this door? I just blew away the security that had been embedded here...”

I received a number of shrugs for my efforts and decided not to worry about it too much. I changed the seed, or encryption string, from the one that AutomaTown used so that access to one wouldn’t grant access to the other, and initialized it.

I pulled a fist-full of tokens from [Inventory] and embedded encrypted access tokens into them and also registered the digital token into my own codebase.

“Okay, Kiyohime, you get to test it,” I said, tossing the oni one of the tokens. “Just touch the token to the reader plate.”

He did as asked and the door unlocked.

“Sir, what exactly did you do here? Did you update the magic lock to use this as a key?” he asked.

“Um.. sorta? Well actually, I guess more like completely ripped out the old lock and put my own in its place.”

“Why go to all that trouble if you could just update the old one to accept your signature as well?” Nur asked.

“Cause it was stupid and deserved to be ripped out,” I grumbled, opening the door and motioning for them to pass through. “Let this be a lesson to you all, if you get lazy about security then don’t be surprised if you find yourself locked out of the thing you’re trying to protect. Whoever locked this in the first place can come to me when it doesn’t work for them anymore.”

“What’s to stop someone from ripping this lock out like you did?” Meleek asked.

“Good question, I’ve added an additional lock on top of the codebase to prevent it from being altered or removed without an administrator level access token.”

“Oooh...” Meleek said, flaying his facial tentacles in thought. “Different levels of access on a per user basis...”

It was fun to see the gears turning with these kids. Maybe one day I’d be able to visit their Academy. I passed through the door, after all the kids and was amazed to see a huge, underground cave system. It was easily large enough to allow the airships to travel, and was lit with luminescent crystals that seemed to be growing naturally from the walls. Everything was bathed in blue and purple lights.

There was a landing zone for airships or possibly other methods of air travel with a safety railing that boxed the area in. Beyond it, I couldn’t tell if the cavern extended below for an incredible distance or if there was water at the bottom that was reflecting the glowing crystals. I made a mental note to ask Milliardo about the cavern and how it was accessed from outside.

“There’s stairs going down!” Calesta called out.

Calesta was a minotaur— minotauress? — with white fur and black patches. I couldn’t help but think of dairy cows whenever I saw the girl. She was bigger than most of her peers and a little slower, which I associated with her species, but she was a sweet girl.

We followed her down the steep, and narrow, stairway that had been carved out of the rock wall. There wasn’t any railing here, which made me nervous for the kids. I also questioned if these academics would have the strength or stamina to climb the stairs back up. When we got to the bottom, I found that there was, indeed, water. The river that cut through the city either diverted through this cavern or fed from it.

A narrow beach separated the cavern walls from the underground river while large boulders dotted the scene. In the infrared spectrum I could see things other than us moving around, though the visible light was pretty scarce. Meleek and Kiyohime backed up towards me, I assumed they had perfect night vision. The oni had the growth spell after all and grew by a foot, putting on more muscle than an academic was usually known for. Nur and Calesta, not so much for seeing in the dark as they stumbled into me and grabbed on, since I was glowing from my panel lighting.

“Any of you have a light spell? Something like a flare, maybe?” I asked, calmly.

“Oh! I know [Flare],” Nur offered.

“Light it up, baby,” I encouraged.

“[Particles of light; Gather to this fixed point; Flare to life up high;],” she chanted.

She went through the chant several times as sparks of light gathered into her palm. It was just as well that her eyes were closed as the ball of light illuminated the area. Calesta gasped and tried to hide behind me, which would have been hilarious in any other context. Around us, ghastly white creatures with extended limbs and gholish features crawled at the water’s edge.

“[Flare()]!” Nur shouted and her ball of light shot up into the air and burst, lighting up the whole area like a little sun.

As soon as she saw the creatures, she shrieked and tried climbing into Kiyohime’s arms. The creatures didn’t seem to take notice of the light. I initially thought that they would all cower back from the bright light but it ended up that they lacked eyes. They made hissing noises and snapped at each other as they worked their way closer. It was apparent that they were better in the water, and seemed to go after anything with a pulse.

“Don’t worry guys, this will be perfect to start things slowly,” IronHide said as he materialized from [Storage] and came online. “Make sure to get loads of good data!”

Kiyohime looked like he was of two minds about something, then made a determined look and shrank back down to his skinny self.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” I assured him, “but it’s fine to beef up if it makes you feel safer. Er.. no offence Calesta.”

“Why would I be offended?”

“Cause of the bee— nevermind, It’s dumb, I’m dumb. Forget it.”

“All good Master Prime,” Kiyohime said, giving me a worried smile. “It’s just... I can be focused and analytical, or tough and strong, but not both.”

“Gotcha, okay gang, if everyone has their tablets locked on to Hide, we’re going to start with just basic movements.”

IronHide rolled his head around like he was loosening up his neck and punched his fists together twice.

“Oh yeah, let’s do this,” he smirked as his battle mask snapped into place.

In two steps he was at the edges of Nur’s light and among the white creatures. They slapped against his feet and tried attacking his ankles but it was useless. He guessed fighting them off wouldn’t really be much of a test of his capabilities after all. He reached down and plucked one of the ankle biters off and looked at the thing. It was a bit like someone tried making a mermaid using only parts found in the Halloween section and chicken skin.

He tossed and caught the thing a couple of times, getting the feel of it, then reached back and hurled it as hard as he could in the direction that the river seemed to be coming from. We all waited for several seconds, those that could see in the dark witnessed the thing vanishing in the distance. Eventually we heard a faint splish, followed by a few more splashes as it skipped along the surface for a bit.

“Approximate weight of the cave wraith was 82 kilograms,” Maleek reported.

“Distance traveled... estimated at 293 meters. Next time we should go to the yard pitch to properly track distances,” Calesta suggested.

“Oh, what about fields on Pepperidge Farm? They’re very orderly and uniform,” Nur offered.

“We just have to make sure we don’t damage any crops,” Kiyohime warned.

“Guys,” I said, smiling to myself, “maybe after the whole fight the dragon thing, yeah?”