DC

  The result of all of Talon's industrialization is that they have begun mass production of weapons that have allowed the rats to push back their enemies even further. The downside is that now the forces lead by Talons ex-apprentice, who is now going by Fang Fleshcarver have been conducting regular raids on Talons factories which have required him to put up better defenders to keep away raids, but still. If the opponent is successful they gain access to a large quantity of stockpiled weapons waiting to be moved out.

  And even worse, would be the death of any of the smiths. The smiths are quite rare, and so are treated with special respect, and with multiple body guards per smith with the sole job of getting them out of harm's way in the case of any raids.

  Also, Talon has begun the creation of a new type of weapon. It's sort of a battle suit. I'm not quite sure how it works, but I'll do my best to explain. Near the groin area there's a sort of boiler, where you burn bloodstones. The bloodstones create an explosive force that is sealed in by mana. Then the operator, who is nuzzled inside of a cavern within the machine, sends pulses of mana into the machine, causing hydraulic pistons to move allowing their arms, legs, or fingers to move.

  The only problem with this, is its very difficult to control, mana intensive, bloodstone intensive, and the whole thing heats up, and burns the operator alive most of the time, without proper usage. You can't store more than a certain amount of explosive energy within the machine, so you have to be very careful with the quantity of bloodstone the machine is consuming. It's a delicate balance, too little the whole thing stops working, and the user is locked within a metal cavity, too much and the user is cooked alive.

  I'm considering stealing the design, and attempting to perfect it into a mob of some sort. Problem being, they are pretty high level. Also, Talon hasn't thought of it yet, but because the whole thing is controlled through pulsing mana through a series of passages, you can give them as many limbs as you want, as long as the person operating it has enough mana.

  So, I do follow through on that, and steal the design for one of them, and recreate it. Then, I find Gairy, and I ask him something.

  “Hey Gairy. I was wondering something.”

  Gairy sighs, and lowers his pipe away from his mouth. “What?”

  “Well, I stole a machine from those rats you are fighting on the bottom floors, and I want you to help me perfect it, so I can use it as a mob.”

  Gairy sighs, and sets his book on the table next to him. He stands from his chair, nods. “Take me somewhere, so I can see it.”

  I teleport Gairy away, and into a work room. At the center of the work room is the machine as well as some blood stones, and a couple of kidnapped rats which I've brain washed, and am allowing Gairy to experiment on.

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  “So, the thing has a multitude of problems, but basically if the user runs out of mana they can't control it anymore. Those bloodstones, are filled with a type of mana, that is also very explosive if smashes or burned or anything, I want a way to hook bloodstones into the person mana, so that as long as they have bloodstones they won't run out of mana, also I'd prefer if they didn't have to eat food, so they can just live off the mana from the bloodstone.” Gairy glares at the machine.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  I chuckle nervously.

  He continues. “You know I've got a life in that village you know? Why would I-”

  “A life that I gave you.” I begin. “And, can take away.” I finish.

  Gairy glares, but does not argue, and gets to work experimenting.

  He keeps doing this until he eventually finds that if you agitate the stone by lightly stabbing it with needles underwater, then the mana will slowly diffuse into the water. You can then pump the water through piping which is surgically implanted into the user's stomach. The water is then diffused into the bloodstream, releasing mana into the body. This works very effectively as long as the bloodstone is removed before it runs out of mana, because then it would, like, fully explode, and it would cause a blast of water to travel through the pipes, into the user, and blow them apart from the inside out.

  The good thing about this system, is that if you set up two of those mana diffusing systems, the mana over saturates the body, and begins to replace the need for food. If you have three of them, then it completely removes the need for food. But, they should be able to live for months at a time with only the two diffusers. But it is similar to rationing, and they can't survive that way forever.

  Also, because of the water filled with mana running through the body, it also acts as a cooling system. There is still a risk of overheating, but it's much less now. Due to the pipes being surgically implanted in the stomach even the slightest jostling can disrupt the whole system, so instead of just leaving them in a compartment I just had Gairy fully stitch them into the machine. This way they have less of a chance to tear themselves open.

  I had Gairy make three of these monstrosities. One of them is just the same as a regular human, but with an extra pair of arms protruding from the stomach area of the machine. INstead of having regular hands those bottom hands instead have curved blades that attach to pistons allowing them to close all the way, like scissors, cutting things. Installing those on both of the lower hands makes it more combat-able, while the upper hands are better for anything that requires more dexterity.

  The second bot is more closely related to a centaur. This one was actually really cool, because they had a bunch of open space in the horse area where I'm considering putting archers, or some rats with guns. They also had two sets of arms, in the exact same pattern as the other Mech.

  The last Mech is fucking terrifing, and its basically a giant spider. The legs instead of having flat gripping surfaces have something more similar to drill bits made of steel that I then hardened with mana.

  A couple caveats to this whole thing, would be the fact that Gairy was completely unable to follow through with these designs by himself, so what I basically had to do was kidnap Talon, force him to do it, and then reshape his memories to forget the whole thing happened so he wouldn't try to copy me. His innovations must be his own.

  All in all what I was left with was three very large defenders, who I placed within my core room to protect me from anyone who actually wants to hurt me. It wont do me much, but they are the first creatures I have made who I would classify as in the low B ranks. Sadly I can't really tell, because they are machines, so they might be closer to high C ranks.