Automata Prime

1.6: I need a duck

I fashioned some simple armor for Elita, trying to keep the design along the lines of what I thought an orc warrior might wear, but it was all guesswork based on the memories from my previous life. Elita didn’t have any experience with orc fashion either and wasn’t any help beyond “I think they wear a lot of leather and furs”.  Thankfully I still had the remains of the Thunder Bear in my [Inventory], so I was able to craft some leather and fur items for her.  In my past life, I'd been known to do some cosplay from time to time so I was no stranger to making clothes and armor.  Laid out on the workbench I had leather boots, breeches, bracers, and a tunic with a fur-trimmed collar along with a simple breast plate and a shoulder pauldron from her sword arm.  Now that I looked at the collection, it appeared to be more barbarian than the caveman fashion I associated with fantasy orcs, but whatever; I was sure she’d be fine.  The less skin she had to [Cloak()], the better for her mana reserves,  though a certain amount was a requirement for an Orc it would seem.

The back quills from the Thunder Bear were perfectly attuned to lightning magic, so this was a great opportunity to try to experiment with them.  As an Automata, Elita wasn’t attuned to any elemental magic, so she wouldn’t be able to use any magic items.  This would blow her cover as an Adventurer, so I had to try and come up with a way to fake it.  I tried numerous things, but they all kept resulting in errors.  Nothing blew up in any spectacular fashion or anything; it simply didn’t work.  Thankfully with [Debug], I was able to see the error logs, but nothing was working.  I felt like this should work, but maybe I was missing something, some component or some lack in my knowledge.  Maybe I needed a rubber duck.  For programmers in my old life, there was a tradition of having a rubber duck at your desk.  The idea was that you complained to the rubber duck about your code and explained to the duck how it was supposed to work and, in turn, this would help you to find the mistakes in your code.  Somehow, I doubted I’d be able to find such a thing at any of the local shops.  I tried using Ravage, but she was more interested in batting at my screens or completely ignoring me.

It was time for a break from code.  Sometimes stepping away from a problem could help you to solve it too.  I called Elita down from the roof where she’d stationed herself.  Apparently she’d been working on her sword skills.  I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of person she’d been before having her spirit bound to an Automata body and how much of her warrior nature was her and how much was her programming.  Jada had said that spirits forced into an Automata didn’t have any memory of who they had been in life, though some of their previous personality still remained.  Clearly Ravage had known who Jada was when she woke up, and that she’d previously been Tibbins the cat.  So maybe the method I was using to bind a spirit worked differently.

Elita came down into the shop, and all she had on was her sword belt since Automata have no need for clothes, but she still looked like a naked robot thanks to her conversion.  Shea had said she would feel a lot more comfortable with Elita clothed, but it wasn’t like Elita had any functional organic parts.  She was like a Barbie or an action figure.  Either way, I would be glad to have Shea stop thinking of me as some sort of pervert.  I showed the new gear to Elita, who was more concerned with the clothes preventing her from being able to move how she wanted, and she rejected the breast plate.  It took a bit of explaining that without clothes, her orc disguise would draw way more attention than we’d like.  In the end, she got fully dressed and with her sword at her hip, she looked every bit the part of an Adventurer.  I had her [cloak()] a couple of times to make sure there wouldn’t be any problems, and things looked great.

I couldn’t help but want to show off “my latest work,” so I led Elita upstairs to Shea’s apartment.  Shea was excited and gave Elita a full inspection. I received full marks for the work but a failing grade for something that an orc would actually wear.  At the time, Shea had been heating some water for tea and the kettle began to sing.  I looked over at it and noticed that it was sitting on a stone slab with a magic circle embedded into it.  There wasn’t any sort of fireplace or hearth that I’d expect from a medieval sort of setting.  In fact, her whole apartment gave me a sort of “student dorm” feeling, and this magic device was this world’s answer to a hot plate.

“Hey Shea, how does this thing work?  You’re a water magic type, right?”

“I am, yes.”

“Wouldn’t you need a fire type of affinity to use this magic tool then?”

“Normally that would be true, but for things that only have a simple spell embedded into them, the artificers use mana crystals of special types.  For example, this Heat Stone has a small mana crystal from a fire type magic beast in it.  No, no! Sparky, I’m sure it wasn’t a Fire Squirrel!”

Perhaps fearing that he’d be killed for his mana crystal, Sparky jumped off the table where Shea was seated and ran behind me.

“So what does the mana crystal do?” I asked.

“So as you know, I have an affinity with water so I can’t use fire-based magic items.  What the mana crystal does is provide the affinity.  So I just have to supply it with some of my mana and then it takes over in casting the spell.”

“I see... so like a proxy,” I muttered.

My brain was racing and I thought I knew what was missing.  I remembered the mana crystal that Shea had pulled out of the Thunder Bear. Then I remembered that she’d sold it to the Guild. Drats.

“So how come mana crystals aren’t used in your magic weapons then, to allow you to cast more types of attacks?”

“The amount of mana that a mana crystal can use is related to its size.  So for the Heat Stone, it’s a very simple spell that doesn’t require much mana so a small stone is fine, but to use a spell that would actually be useful in combat you would need a much larger mana crystal and at that point, it’s just not practical.  There are some mages that use large mana crystals in their staff, but they get really heavy and awkward.  You could probably do more damage using it to bludgeon your enemy than trying to cast a spell you don’t have the affinity for through it.”

“I see. This is useful information, thanks.  So where can I get my hands on some mana crystals?”

“Most of them will be controlled by the Guild and sold to licensed artificers.  You could submit a ReQuest to the Guild to have an Adventurer collect it for you, but the reward costs would be pretty steep, as it’s treated as a special request as compared to market prices.”

“What if we went hunting ourselves?”

“You need a special license to go hunting, that’s part of being an Adventurer.  That’s why I’d suggested being on retainer for the shop before.”

“Ah, that makes sense.  Okay, so we still need to get Elita past the Adventurer sign up.  I guess we’ve got no choice and will have to buy some from the guild first.  Shea, can you ask Jada to put in an order for five lightning type mana crystals about this big?” I held up my fingers, approximating the size of a walnut.

“Wow, so many? It won’t be cheap though, probably a silver each at Guild prices.  That Heat Stone cost me half a gold.”

I had no idea how money worked in this world, but it sounded like a lot from Shea’s description.  Of course, I had no money at all and neither did Elita.  I still had a bunch of stuff that I’d stolen from that Magic Tool Dealer, so maybe we could sell some of it.  I told Shea and Elita my idea, and this sounded like a good opportunity to test Elita’s [Cloak()] among others at the market.  I wanted to go myself in case anything happened, but I didn’t have a disguise, and I’d likely be recognized near the Guild.  The girls would have to do this on their own.

It was a shame that I couldn’t go with them to the market, I was really interested in seeing more of this city and its people.  At present, I wasn’t in a position to move freely around.  I’m sure that the Adventurers that sold me to that Magic Tool Dealer would be around town and recognize me; the Magic Tool Dealer or his staff would likely recognize me too, and the fact that I was an ownerless Automata would have any musclehead that thought they could take me down trying to grab me.  I looked down at my hands and my body.  Compared to the warrior frame that Elita had, I wasn’t very big at all.  In fact, I was only just a bit taller than the dwarf Jada.  I had been nimble enough to get around that Thunder Bear to help Shea, but bears weren’t really known for their agility.  This wouldn’t do and I wasn’t the type to just sit around while others went on adventures in the marketplace.

I took a look at the human armor we’d stolen and got an idea.  This was going to take a lot of work, but I was getting pretty excited as the idea took shape.  I cleared off the workbench and put down some parchment; even when I would work in CAD in my old life, there was no replacement for sketching your ideas out on paper first.  Of course, these double thumbed hands were clearly not designed for sketching anything, but I did my best.  I started sketching out my basic frame and making some modifications that would be required later, then building out a larger frame that would go over top.  Elita wasn’t really a Pretender in the way I’d meant it, but it did inspire the idea for this project.

By the time the girls got back from the market, it was late at night and I was nowhere close to being finished.  I really didn’t even have anything to show off at this point other than a pile of sketches and a rough exo-frame.  Now that the girls had gotten back with the requested mana crystals, I’d have to put the breaks on this.  So many ideas and so little time.  Thankfully as an Automata I didn’t need to eat or sleep, but Shea looked exhausted and climbed upstairs, mumbling that she’d tell me all about it in the morning.  Elita handed me a bag with three lightning mana crystals in it, a fire crystal, and an ice crystal.

“I’m sorry, we weren’t able to find five of the lightning crystals in the size you wanted.  Hopefully, this will still work for whatever idea you have?” she offered.

“Maybe. We won’t know until we try,” I shrugged.

I told her what I intended to do with them and how I would have to augment her systems.  Hopefully, this upgrade would let her pass for an organic that only has a little magic ability.

“Okay, take off the bracer on your sword arm and hop up on the table.  How’re your mana levels? You were using [Cloak()] all day, right? Did you run into any problems?”

“My mana levels are low, it was pretty draining... but the disguise worked. Even close up no one suspected anything.  I even had a couple of bearmen try to solicit me.”

“That should have been interesting, I told you that you were beautiful.  Honestly, I was pretty worried about you going out on your own like that.  I’m quite relieved that you made it back okay.”

I could sense her blushing though nothing really showed on her metallic face.  Maybe this was a sense that Automata felt between each other?  I opened up my [Console] screens and opened up her forearm and disconnected her hand at the wrist.

“Would you like me to shut down your systems so that you can rest and recover your mana faster?” I asked.

“No.  I’m okay.  I think I’d like to watch you work.  If that’s okay,” she replied.  Her tone was almost shy.

I nodded and continued working.  She didn’t say anything but just watched me with curiosity and interest.  I supposed after the first conversion I’d done on her, this wasn’t as big a deal.  I could feel that she had absolute faith in me at this point and I was humbled by it.  Her conversion was mainly aesthetic, but this time I was completely disassembling her forearm, and her sword arm at that.  Thankfully, being an Automata, everything was reversible so if this upgrade didn’t work then I could simply reinstall the previous arm design.

Once I got her arm apart, I crafted new parts that would integrate into the arm and embedded new magic circuits and firmware code into the parts.  I worked on through the night and she just silently watched.  It was kinda nice being able to just work and be in each other’s company without having to talk. 

Shea came down the stairs holding a mug of something hot and looking like she’d just woken up.  It was then that I noticed that the sun must have been up for a couple of hours already, but I was just finishing up Elita’s upgrade and closing everything up.

“So, what ya working on, Prime? Is this what you needed the mana crystals for?” Shea asked while absently scritching Sparky under the chin.

“Yeah this is it, and you’re just in time.”  I held Elita’s arm with her palm facing upwards.  “Okay open your [Skill Menu] and look for the [Mana Conversion Proxy] submenu then [load()].”

As she did so, hidden doors opened in her arm revealing a long channel with five nested compartments. I took each of the mana crystals that they’d gotten and placed them into the compartments.  As I placed the last crystal, the doors closed with a soft whirr and a click as they locked in place.

“Okay good, now under that same submenu, use [initialize()].”

We couldn’t see anything outwardly, but I could tell from my diagnostic screen what Elita was seeing as the mana crystals were registered by the new system.

“Now you should have some new commands that have come up in that submenu.  Let’s try [flame()].”

As she tried it a single small flame, like from a candle, ignited over her index finger.

“WHOA! She can do fire magic now??” Shea yelled in surprise.

“Not quite,” I answered. “She’s basically got something like your Heat Plate built into her arm now.  This little flame is the extent of what she can do with fire.  Her mana is pushed into the crystal which then triggers the small spell.  Elita, let’s try [ice()].”

Elita complied and this time we couldn’t see any difference, so I asked Shea to let Elita hold her mug for a second.  As soon as she did, the liquid cooled and stopped steaming.  Elita handed the mug back and Shea took a sip.

“Wow, that’s cold.  Like the river in winter cold, but not enough to form ice.  I don’t see that being very useful in combat, but it’ll be nice in the summer,” Shea said.

“That’s true, but these aren’t really for combat. They’re more to convince people that she can do a little magic, since everyone can at least do a little, right?  Elita, now try [lightning()].”

This time the effect was much better and arcs of electricity danced in her palm.  It still wasn’t what someone with a true affinity for lightning magic could do, but it would certainly be enough for her to use it like a stun gun if needed.

“Elita, I went with the lightning magic as our focus because we had all the Thunder bear stuff to work with, is that okay?  We can always switch you out with other crystals as desired.”

“No, lightning is fine.  It should pair well with Shea’s water magic.”

“Great! That concludes the demonstration. With this, you should be fine going to the Guild and getting Elita an Adventurer’s license.  Now, if you can get me two more lightning mana crystals instead of those fire and ice ones, then she’ll be able to use lightning-based magic weapons.”

“Really?” Elita asked, looking shocked. “That’s... that’s amazing.  I think I’m the first Automata in history to ever be able to do magic.  Even if I’m a Pretender.”