“That was impressive” Primus climbed down from a tree far away overseeing the testing ground, with him was B, putting away the escape plan she made in case Mimic’s head gets chopped off or something along the line “So your engine does work. We going back?”

“Something is off.” B stood tall on the branch, her eyes following Esther as she rode out in a panic

“I mean he’s alive, can’t be that bad.” He shrugged, making his way back towards Mimic “You coming?” He called out, yet stopped after a few steps, not hearing anything from B

“It’s much worse” B grunted as she rapeled down the tree, marking their location on the map for future use “She is running from something that we don’t know about, and by the looks of it, it’s urgent enough for her to temporarily ignore the threat that a 100C poses.”

“Wait we pose a threat?”

“This early on if the games were not rigged, we would get rolled over if you really wanted to do so, adding on she has way more resources at her disposal, I would assume she is looking for a group similar to us, or maybe just 2 or 3 100C that met each other” She said as she put the map away, catching up to Primus.

They arrived at the testing ground a few moments later, the ground outside of the tent was riddled with notes that Mimic wrote shortly after their short encounter, himself currently lying in the tent, reading through the datasets.

“Well? We get to live?” Primus pulled open the tent, shining sunlight onto his face.

Raising his hand to block the light source he sat up and grumbled“She knows you two are twins, a boy and a girl, and was asking if you have another sibling, yet she does not know about your identity. So, I don’t really know”

“How, the fuck?”

“Good question, no idea. Sent her running though, after I told her you guys have proof of life, as well as not having another sibling.” He said as he craw out of the tent “Oh and something about scholars”

“Anything else?” B stood outside, checking everything he said against the notes to see if he remembered anything new

“Asked for me to finish the antibiotics as soon as I can, and something about ‘something is coming’” He shrugged, hands tucked in and palms up “At least she doesn't appear to be hostile I guess?”

“So she knows there are other people here that do not have the proof of life.” Primus said as he went over to examine the engine “Didn’t B say those have to be intentionally made? So that leaves what? Us and some other bots?”

“Just find out as much as you can next time you meet her, for now we’ll just play by her book, then kill her off some time soon after all this is over” She concluded

“Right.” Mimic looked blankly into the ground below him, almost forgetting the current goal of B.

Shame really, killing off an interesting person, I mean she is kind of a replacement but still.

The briefing ended after no more information was given from both sides, B dismissed the group, letting them go do whatever they wanted.

Mimic turned his back and walked back to the village, having obtained a few information that might come in handy sometime down the road, spending some time asking others about things like ‘You ever put leaves in hot water and drink it?’, ‘What if I grind up this nut and make a drink out of it?’ or ‘Have you tried grinding up wheat and mixing it with hot water?’, he was sure they thought him a retard by the faces he received when the first two were asked, the face of ‘oh dear you are special.’

Primus was given the new task of making antibiotics after the materials arrive tomorrow, due to the recent event and the sudden appearance of a duplicate he was instructed to secretly work on things and report back only to B just in case Mimic unintentionally leaks it to Esther.

B finally got the confirmation that her engine could not only work, but also withstand a high amount of mana input, with the new found information she went off and attempted to put together a lathe.

For now it is just simply extending the engine's crankshaft and adding in something that could hold onto things at the end, nothing fancy.

Later that afternoon, with the help of Primus and Mimic, B convinced the blacksmith and the carpenter to follow them outside of the village to the testing ground for the presentation of the lathe, despite B’s initial motives being just a test to see if everything ran smoothly.

“So, what is this lathe you kids were talking about?” The tall man asked, saw dust on his knees, sharpened chin, emerald like eyes, and brown, long hair.

“I swear if these are another one of ye casual jokes I’ll break ya leg.” The other growled, slightly shorter than the other, but still slightly above average when compared with the other village people, wearing an apron, smears of coal on his face, his arms crawling with scars, hammer in hand, for now.

“So, you have um, mana?” Mimic asked, keeping his distance with the blacksmith due to their past encounters being less than friendly.

“Why? What you up to this time?”

“Well, that needs mana, we no really have those, so you maybe supply those.” Primus said with his broken language skills.

“So it runs on runes eh? When did ye learn those.” The blacksmith walked closer “That the thing?” He said as he took a stroll around the exposed crankshaft poking it with his fingers.

B clamped in a chunk of metal and handed a dagger to the blacksmith “It’s like any simple rune, just dump the mana in here, and this thing would start spinning” She said as she went over the basics, trying her best not to touch him so that he would still have mana to work with “Put some mana into the dagger as well, so that you can carve with it.”

Finishing the introduction, she slowly backed away and gave him the go sign.

“So it just spins?” He asked, as a red-ish glow started flowing out of his body, then into the engine, the dagger lit up as if it was just taken freshly out of the furnace. Soon the ground shook, with the engine running at full speed “DO I JUST STICK THIS IN?” He yelled, looking at the spinning death cube in front of him, somehow putting more trust in the locking mechanism working than Primus ever put in Mimic.

“YES! JUST HOLD ON TIGHT, THE METAL BLOCK IS NOT ENCHANTED WITH RUNES. STOP PUMPING MANA IN AS SOON AS YOU ARE DONE” She yelled at the top of her lungs

“Shit we should have had the carpenter do this first huh? Watch as he just jams the dagger into the block without thinking.” Primus said, peeking out from a branch, besides B and Mimic. “If that thing flies out, we are so dead.” He added

The blacksmith looked at the dagger in hand, looked at the spinning block, and what did he think was the correct way to interact with a piece of material that was spinning faster than the eye can capture? He stabs it right in the middle, thankfully that went parallel with the spinning axis.

Sparks bursted out from the block, almost engulfing the blacksmith, the sound of metal grinding against metal could be heard throughout the forest around them.

As he retracted the dagger from the block, the red hue started to dissipate, eventually fading out, he stood besides the machine and waited for it to come to a complete halt.

“Soh that’s it?” He asked, taking a look at the resulting block “It makes ���?” B attempted to walk up and teach him how to properly use the device, yet the carpenter stopped her.

“Please, Aegir, allow me.” The carpenter walked up taking the dagger from him. He took a look at the cube with a circle in the middle made by the blacksmith, thought for a moment, then pumped in the mana to both the lathe and dagger.

Shaving off the sides carefully as if it was a delicate piece of work, shaping the whole block slowly into a cylinder, then into a half sphere, finally working on the interior and finished off with a bowl, taking small breaks in between, powering off the machine and chekcing on the progres from time to time.

“I have to say this is really nice.” He said as he removed his final work handing it over to Aegir

“Wot? Really? How did ye?”

“A little more time my friend.” He humbly replied, then turning his attention to the childrens “So, who was responsible for this ��ei�q�r�� machine?”

B pointed towards Mimic, who is currently examining the lathe, laying his hand directly onto the crankshaft, finding out that explosions heats up things, and is currently blowing on his palm as hard as he could.

“So, um, Mimic is it?” He walked over, squatting down besides him.

“Yes, you are?” Seeing such, he stood up and extended his hand out for a handshake by default

“Oh, no need for that. Frode.”

“Living up to your name I see.” Mimic smiled “You want this machine?”

“ ��� lower mana �ds�esf��, this takes in a lot of mana somehow. Don’t get me wrong, this is a ���� piece of work. You just need to solve the mana problem, because as of this moment, no one around would be able to use it for a long time.”

“Oh that’s going to be easy. If Aegir make metal version, we drop most of runes for enhancing, leaving only explosion runes behind.” He chuckled, waving his hand up and down, thankfully no blisters has formed just yet

“Explosion?” Frode paused briefly, pointing at the shaft “In there?”

“Well, two stacks of explosion runes in that, and each goes off…” Quickly realising he is talking to someone with not a single idea of an engine, and he is using a language that he has no clue of, he swapped to a more simple explanation “Ok, explosion push things up. So me put an explosion rune inside dirt, fortify dirt, can use the explosion to push things up, add some sticks and attach it to the main stick running down there, and this spins.” Mimic pointed to each component, explaining the best he can with the still limited vocabulary. It works in terms of getting ideas across, but it’s far from perfect.

Looking towards Primus for help yet all he got was a ‘the fuck you want me do’ gesture followed by a thumbs up, and shoo. As for B, she is talking Aegir into helping by listing out possible implications in the future.

“Ah so ye need stronger material eh?” Aegir walked by after being convinced, handing the bowl over to Mimic, His tone less hostile than before “I’ll help ya this time, I get to use it as well alright? What exactly do you need?”

Mimic asked for their patients as he went back into the tent and search for the blueprint, soon coming out with a few sheets of paper.

“So there a we way no use explosion, it maybe cut back on mana, but me not sure.” Laying out a few other proposals “So that is called… Um….” He pointed at a coal generator, snapping his fingers, trying to find a word to replace generator “Uh… It makes…” Fucking hell they probably don’t know electricity as well

“It makes weird mana that can power the engines.” B stepped up and finished the sentence for him, clearly putting more effort in the language category. “Give us some time.”

Pulling Mimic to the side “Are you trying to get us discovered by more people? This is not the time to talk about electricity and generators.”

“So no motors? But you said it yourself that the explosion runes are not exactly efficient when it comes to transferring mana into energy.”

“Yes, just use those until Esther brings up the topic of electricity.” She said as she smiled to the two adults behind Mimic, acting as if everything was just for fun.

“So, no, no weird mana. We no make weird mana yet. Just make this in metal, and we save lot of mana.”Mimic said as he handed over the paper to Aegir “Make lots of this and me can do other thing with it.”

His eyes riddeled with doubt having heard their conversation yet not being able to deciver any of it “That it then?” Aeiger said as he took over the paper“I’ll give it a look when I got some time.”

“One more thing, can you just make this and follow the instructions on this?” B crawed out of the tent just as they were leaving, carrying a barrel taller than her along with a small chip of wood, handing all three to Frode “Just put some mana into the wood and ram it through the metal bar.” She added.

Frode now fidgeting with the wooden rifling button and looking down at a thick tube with the inner diameter slightly bigger than his pinky, asked for the purpose for it, of which B went with ‘just for fun.’

He gave her a questionable look, yet on the top of his head he can’t really think of a way that what he is helping to make could be harmful so he agreed. They bid their farewell, took the papers and the barrel, then headed back to the village, leaving the three standing around, not believing how easy that was.

“So we are giving out guns now?” Primus asked as they watched the two adults leave the testing ground “You are legit introducing guns to them right now?” He asked in disbelief

“We are still a milling machine short of that I assume, but holy shit that is a big ass caliber.” Mimic added

“They can just make the rest, we just need something easier to use than a crossbow.” B replied. “I’ll deal with the bullet problem next, assuming this goes well and these people actually know how to aim, we would actually have a chance of killing Esther.”

“Yall ever considered therapy? This is not a good relationship to have with yourself you know?” Mimic chuckled, before getting a slap on the back from Primus.“So we taking the convoy? I mean we have that, might as well test it out maybe?”

“Didn’t she explicitly tell you not to do that? What’s her name? Esther”

“No, we are just handing those out so that this place knows that we know what we are doing. So when it comes to later actions and stuff we at least have a little bit of credibility. Either way, tomorrow, we set up production.”