Writer’s spot: Greetings friends! Today, our first look into the civilization of this new world!

BESIDES, Well, not much to talk really… So…

Beep, and enjoy your story!

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For quite some time now Gaz could hear a fairly familiar hustle and bustle of a large city even while within the truck. The sounds of steam motors and soft buzzing indicated the presence of a vehicles nearby, the murmur of voices barely reaching his sensors.

Feeling a bit groggy, he quickly looked around, seeing as the others unbuckled themselves from their seats and quickly got up. They were talking about something with a serious tone, but the very few words that Gaz managed to pick up didn’t help him understand what they were talking about.

[What… What happened?] He asked confused in his mind, as there was a blank on his memory.

[Good morning, Gaz.] The goddess said cheerfully. [Since the travel was taking so long, I told you about the sleep function, so you decided to use it.]

[…Wait, I had a sleep function? Why didn’t you tell me earlier?] He asked annoyed, but only received a giggle from her.

[You said exactly the same thing earlier!] She said laughing. [But that was something I started to work after noticing you getting bored during the nights.] She explained before going back to a serious tone. [But I wouldn’t recommend using it too much, since it takes a bit too long for you to boot back up.]

[Is… Is that why I’m so… So…] He tried to explain his state, but his mind gave up on thinking.

[So slow? Yeah. Pretty much. Just wait a couple more minutes and all the systems should be back up.]

[Hmm… Great…] He said. [So… How long have I been… out this time?]

[Six hours, thirty three minutes, twenty eight seconds.]

As he had his talk with the goddess, he saw as Yllivia took on some help from Ross to exit the truck and calling him with her other hand. He gave a long and drawn out beep as a response before slowly going his way towards her. Yllivia gave him a quick confused look, but since it didn’t looked like anything too worrisome she let it go for now.

He quickly followed her into the streets and then towards a building nearby. He felt that he should have taken a better look at whatever it was that he was passing, but his slow thinking took the better of him and he decided to leave it aside for now.

He followed the quartet down the building filled with some rough looking and aggressive looking folks.

Stopping for a moment he started counting the amount of people on the group he was following and noticed that there was someone else with them. A pink haired elf was happily chatting with a seemingly indifferent Yllivia. He stared at her for a moment before remembering. She was the girl he met earlier right before getting to the truck.

[Damn… This boot up is really annoying as hell…] He said annoyed, receiving giggles in response.

The group went into what looked an elevator. He briefly thought that the elevator was a bit too big, since all the group plus himself managed to fit easily into it with some room left. The elevator chunned for a moment before smoothly starting to move upward. Some seconds went by before a low ting sound echoed within the elevator, telling them that they were on whatever floor they wanted.

The group left the elevator finding themselves on a long corridor with rows of doors on each side. Lunn quickly guided to group towards the sixth door to the right. Entering, Gaz saw what looked like a fairly small room with a pair of couches and a small table on the middle. Besides that, there wasn’t anything eye-catching on the room.

On the couch to the left side laid a feeble looking man with a lab coat and black hair. A pair of cat ears popped from the top of his head, just like Yllivia’s. He immediately brightened up after seeing the group coming in.

Sorius took the lead, greeting the man politely with a shake of a hand before calling the others to sit on the other couch. Yllivia refused on the offer, sitting behind the couch and starting to pull up the leg of her pants and removing the bandage from the wound. Lunn quickly went to her side and crouched down besides her.

Gaz looked worried at her for a moment, seeing as the gash in her thigh was still looking bad, fact proven by her making some grimaces whenever she moved too much. Still, that didn’t stop Lunn from examining the wound. The pink haired elf looked at it intently for some moment, sometimes even touching it slightly before letting out a sigh of relief.

She exchanged some words with Yllivia, who nodded while having a slightly annoyed look on her face. Following that nod, Lunn touched something on her gloves, as if adjusting a dial, before turning back to the injury. She took a deep breath before slowly taking her hand towards the injury as it slowly started to glow. Yllivia grimaced visibly as Lunn focused on her injury.

[Is she using healing magic?] Gaz asked as he looked at the scene.

[Magic? Please Gaz, like the mortals could use something like that!] The goddess said in a slightly playful tone.

[…What?] He asked confused. [Didn’t Sorius use some kind of lightning magic back at the swarm?]

[Magic? No, that wasn’t magic.] She said in a teacher tone as if proud of herself. [You see, the elves have a special constitution that allows them to harness one specific element while using their brains. They call those powers Psy, since it uses their psyche as a medium.]

[… So, they use mysterious power that they control with their minds that alter the very fabrics of reality… Is that right?] He asked with a confused tone.

[Yup!]

[Then… How is that different from magic?]

[Isn’t that obvious?] She asked confused.

[Nope. Not at all.]

[…]

Seeing as the conversation died down there, he sighed loudly on his mind.

[Then, what exactly is she doing there?] He asked finally.

[Oh, that? She is only boosting Yllivias natural regeneration.] She said cheerfully.[It increases both the speed and the effectivity of a persons healing capacities… But it does have its downsides…]

[Is there? Is that one of the reasons why she didn’t do it earlier?]

[I guess it is.] She said in an awkward tone.

[I see…] He said in wonder.

Seeing that the two were simply working on the healing her wound, Gaz turned his attention back towards Ross and Sorius, who were discussing something with the man in the lab coat. Ross took out the sack with the pistons from the Leapers and took a couple of them to show the man.

He quickly examined the piston after taking it from Ross, looking at it from every angle and even taking a ruler to measure it. All the time he kept exchanging words with the others, and Gaz could barely make out some numbers from their talks, so he assumed they were speaking about some kind of payment.

In the end, Ross spread all the pistons on the table and started to divide it between himself and the guy. Once the other guy took around one third of the pistons, he nodded happily, storing then on a bag and leaving some kind of crystal coins on the table. Sorius thanked him while counting the crystals and storing them on his own bag.

The man left the room cheerfully while Ross packed the remaining pistons back into his own bag. Sorius quickly stood up and checked on the girls, seeing how Yllivia’s leg was faring before leaving the room with Ross.

Gaz stayed there with the girls since, from what he could understand, the cat girl was his actual owner for now, and since he had nothing else to do, it wouldn’t hurt to actually obey her for now.

At least it didn’t take much longer before Lunn finally sighed and unfocused herself, almost falling down on her knees exhausted. Yllivia quickly supported her with her leg looking fine, but the girl herself looked exhausted for some reason.

Almost in synch, the stomachs from both ladies roared loudly, making the two blush slightly before raising themselves from the ground. Gaz watched as the two stumbled their way towards the door with him following soon behind.

They took the elevator back down to the ground floor, and this time Gaz could take a better look at the scene since his booting sequence had finished.

It was a large hall with many different people, ranging from elves to trolls. All of them wore military clothing and carried weapons with them, while some dwarves even wore full-body armor.

The room was fairly large, probably capable of housing a couple of hundred peoples. Large screens hanged on the ceiling, pointing towards the four sides of the room, and within them was a list that kept slowly scrolling down. He couldn’t quite make out the words written, but he could somehow guess what they were.

[Are they… mercenaries?] Gaz asked in his mind.

[Mercenaries? What’s that?]

[Soldiers for hire. You pay them and get them to do any job you want.]

[And why would someone hire soldiers?] She asked confused.

[Well, since people have to pay for them, they tend to be better than normal soldiers, as well as having better equipment.] He explained quickly, [And some times you need someone like them to do a dangerous job, like escorting, assaulting and so on… Things you wouldn’t use your own people for.]

[I think I understand it…] The goddess said.

As Gaz followed the girls towards a desk with an attendant, he saw as the door opened and in came an old looking elf. He walked towards a nearby desk and spoke something with the attendant, after a while and a quick exchange, a buzzer sounded over the whole room, making the mercenaries look towards the screen, on where some large words appeared.

Yllivia and Lunn also looked briefly towards it before shaking their heads and turning back to the attendant. They left what looked like a key-card with the attendant before walking away, towards the door.

Before leaving, Gaz could see as a group approached the old looking elf and took a key-card with the attendant before walking towards the elevator, probably to discuss the details of the contract.

Leaving the merc’s building, Gaz followed the two girls through the streets, feeling as some people looked at him in surprise. Not that he didn’t look surprised himself.

The city was full with large buildings and vehicles rolling on the streets. Elves, dwarves, trolls, cat-people and even some other species walked on the streets wearing modern to scy-fyish clothing.

However, Gaz couldn’t help but notice the lack of two things on the scenario around him. One was the lack of humans. No matter where he looked, he couldn’t see a single human around him. The other, was the lack of robots. Or at least some that looked sentient.

He had seen some other smaller robots, some were androids, and some were clockworks. They roamed around following other people, but they way they acted rather reminded him of pets, so he was pretty sure that they weren’t sentient.

Following the girls, he quickly reached a place that looked like a small restaurant. The two entered it nonchalantly, so he quickly followed them. The moment that he entered the room he was bombarded with the voices of chatter and laughs. Feeling a bit overwhelmed with the difference between the outside and the inside, he stood still for a moment, only moving away when he felt someone kicking him on his back.

He quickly moved out of the way from a large troll and darted in the direction of the girls, laying on the floor beneath their table.

[This is wonderful!] He heard the goddess say suddenly.

[What is?]

[With so much conversations going on, we can quickly develop the translation software!] She said cheerfully.

[How so? I can barely pick a single conversation…] He said confused.

[Just leave that to me!] She said proudly. [I can easily pick each of their conversations, so I can improve the software for you.]

Gaz would have blinked in surprise, as suddenly all the others conversations died down and he could pick one of them specifically. A list appeared on the corner of his vision, where many options with a small microphone symbol flashed up and down.

“[email protected]$Credits$#!#%No vacations, [email protected]$!”

“%#@! Lucky! $(*#!%Your place!”

“[email protected]#Blacktriggers#%@#$killed!##wife’s mother!”

“!#$!Leapers$!#%#!Piston market%!#$Pumps and cauldrons#%!#$”

He started cycling through the conversations, picking up bit and pieces of the conversations and seeing as his completion bar quickly started to rise.

While he discreetly started hearing some pieces of gossips around the city, a waiter came to take the girls orders and looked shocked for a moment before nodding awkwardly and leaving towards the kitchen. A few minutes later he came back, followed by another waiter, both carrying large plates filled to the brim with food.

The girls brightened immediately as the plates were put on their table. Gaz couldn’t quite see from the angle he was, but the way their arms moved around told him that they were probably wolfing down the food like there was no tomorrow.

Finally, when they finished eating amounts that would leave even a large troll shocked, the girls finally paid the bill and left the restaurant. The two quickly gave their goodbyes before separating on the exit, with Yllivia going to the north and Lunn going to the west.

Not having much to do, Gaz followed behind Yllivia, rolling his way towards his new house.