I woke up with a slightly sore back and a growling stomach. We’d spent half the night cranking an ancient well in one of the small square houses. The amount of effort involved to get just a single cup nearly outweighed the benefit of drinking it. At least our stomachs handled it well despite remnants of oil in the tin cups or flakes of rust in the water. I also tried making some inquiries at the gate guard bot but he didn’t say anything helpful.

  No one seemed to care about anything, much less the fact we’d appropriated this place as our home. Robeep returned to us shortly after. They could have done a better job of repairing him since he still had jutting pieces of metal and loose wires all over. But his condition showed him at full durability.

  “I have returned fellow meatbags. What glorious campaign have you planned in my absence? Whatever it is, I have decided we must salt the earth in our wake. Life cannot be allowed to return.”

  A loud rumble escaping from Ruza’s stomach punctuated the presence of our looming starving debuffs. “What would be the point?” I said, “Dying of hunger is almost preferable to eating anything we’ve seen grow in the wild so far.”

  “As always, your simple fleshy nature belies the profound wisdom hidden within, Susawa. I must contemplate this deeply.” Robeep went quiet after that, muttering to himself about the true nature of suffering.

  Ruza stated the obvious, “We need food.”

  “Ruza, I need a better leg. At this rate we’re just going to get stuck in an endless cycle of wandering back and forth.”

  She was still afraid of the bot people, or golems as they were called here, which meant I had to once again hobble to the gate. My endless pestering paid off after half an hour or so.

  It spoke, “Take what you wish from the smaller structures, fleshling. But cease your incessant questions, I beg of you. Your wants and needs matter less to my circuits than the sand below your inferior foot.”

  Good enough. We scrabbled together various wires and suitable metal scrap from one of the abandoned buildings. Robeep flattened the ends of several iron bars by monotonously smashing them against the wall of our shack. We still had a spare wooden sandal, no idea what happened to the other one. I carved some indentations into it with a new lockpick extracted from Robeep’s body. Ruza helped me tie everything together. The process unlocked an engineering skill.

  Great, it’s a snarky System. Why am I not surprised? My leg designation had changed to ‘economy leg’. There wasn’t much to it. Four metal bars fastened to my original prosthetic reinforced the structure and the flat ends allowed us to tie them to the sandal. Surprisingly, it held. It also squeaked and chafed constantly since my stump held things in place, together with spare wiring and some oil-stained rags. But my walking speed improved significantly. Finally, we were good to go. Ruza flinched when the gate guard rotated its head toward us as we left the village.

  We backtracked to the location of our goat fight, marked by a dried bloodstain. My hopes of it being a trail paid off when another pack showed up after hours of waiting. We got our asses kicked as usual but Robeep managed to cripple two of the calves this time. I convinced him to focus them to the exclusion of all else by explaining he was killing future generations and dooming them to extinction that way. We decided to bring the corpses back home instead of eating them on the spot, making small talk along the way.

  “We should save the skins-” Ruza said before the pile of Robeep she carried interrupted her.

  “Agreed. It is only right to wear the skins of our enemies. It sends a message. The message is the inevitability of their demise. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  She continued after shaking her head, “They are valuable, if we ever find a tanner that is.”

  “Sure, why not? It’s not like we have any money either. What’s the currency anyway?”

  Robeep interjected before she could answer, “Data logs of committed atrocities.” We ignored him, he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Creds, they’re circular alloyed coins, about this big," she shifted her burden a bit to free up her hand and pointed at a screwhead the size of a bottlecap sticking out of Robeep's mangled shoulder, "with a square hole in them so they can be threaded with a string. Copper is the least valuable, next is steel and alloy is the most prized.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  So metallurgy is alive and kicking. Interesting. “What’s the alloy made of?”

  “I believe it is something called tungsten steel.”

  Chit chat ended a little later as we arrived at the gate. The guards accepted Robeep’s broken remains without complaint. I still wasn't sure what his oil stat signified since he didn't exactly bleed out. It lowered the further he got wrecked but remained static otherwise. We cranked the well for a while before the hunger became unbearable.

  The robots remained uncaring even though we set random wood on fire in the middle of town to cook our veal. Sleep beckoned after filling our bellies. Ruza complained about her mounting aches from sleeping on a hard floor but admitted it was better than a cage. Even though the bone protrusions of my bizarre body should have made mine even worse, it didn’t bother me at all. Before fading away, I had a look at my stats since all the debuffs were gone now.

  Intercepting a head butt with my walking stick improved the block skill, while performing some irrelevant repairs on Robeep and replacing my own blood soaked bandages bumped up robotics and medicine respectively. All the walking got me a few points of athletics but my combat stats and attributes stagnated still, aside from perception. An attempt at sparring with Ruza proved fruitless as well. This more or less confirmed my lingering suspicions. I sighed. Why does it have to be like this?

  Things increased pretty quickly when there was a huge disparity and only true enemies counted. Fighting the slavers at the Great Womb stopped giving results after a while and beating baby goats to death with Brainseeker failed to raise my blunt weapon skill past two. This was the worst possible System. It required me to fight things much stronger than me to make any progress. Not every skill functioned the same either as my laboring improved from cranking the well.

  I woke up early the next day and decided to visit the building with a leg sign while Ruza slept in. Squeaking followed each of my footsteps, grating my nerves. Knocking on the metal door elicited no response and neither did the heavy scrape of sliding it open. The robot shop keep looked even more disheveled than Robeep, although the models were somewhat similar. This one had all its nonsensical internals exposed and three round lenses in a triangle arrangement as eyes.

  There were various crappy limbs of all kinds on display behind the bot. It immediately pulled out a rusty katana from under the counter upon seeing me.

  “Whoa, whoa, just here to browse. The guards said we could stay in your village after bringing our buddy AWFP-0183 in for repairs.”

  It replied in monotone, “Understood. Logic confirmed. What are you querying?”

  “Well, here’s the thing. I need a better leg, but we don’t have any money. You seem to have plenty of stock and no customers in sight. Maybe there’s something you’d like us to do or get for you in exchange?”

  “Calculating. Negotiation function complete. Compiling option. Offer: Directions to nearby ruin. Request: Retrieve functional CPU chip. Reward: Specialist quality leg. Accept: Y/N?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take it. Not much choice here.”

  It laid out the promised directions. We’d have to pass through the Great Deluge for a bit, probably why the bot didn’t just go out and do the thing itself. Ruza explained that the acid rains were persistent but not constant. Since it was only a couple of miles in, we might manage before getting our skin burned off. She was weirdly on board with things. I suspected she wanted to pay me back for the whole rescued from slavery ordeal.

  Robeep had no problems with the plan whatsoever, returning repaired once again.

  “An excellent mission,” he said, “It is always worth confirming structures for meatbags trying to avoid extermination. We shall track them down and crush their vain hopes of continued survival.”

  Ruza tried talking some sense into him, “Robeep, we’re doing this to get Susawa a new leg. It would be nice if you could try to remember that instead of blindly attacking everything you see.”

  “She’s right, Robeep. This is important to me. Please don’t mess it up.”

  “Understood. I stand corrected. Your performance has been gravely disappointing as of late. Improving your ability to annihilate the remnants of civilization is of paramount importance. I shall comply.”

  Luck was on our side. We followed the surprisingly detailed instructions and chanced upon a lull in the acid rains. Ruza appropriated Robeep’s sandals since the sand here was jagged and sharp like broken glass and it didn’t seem to bother him. No troubles or setbacks barred our path, except for the constant squeaking of my economy leg. An outline of a circular building manifested in the distance, with a giant spire similar to the one in the village. My perception ticked up once again.

  For once, things were going well.