The Return

by Nathan Valerio

  After a long half hour of that I felt a bit empty. So much was let out on the bag that it left rips in it, but they slowly mended as the room remade it.

  I got up and left after wiping my face. I found Sasha sitting and working on her homework while the TV was turned to one of the music video channels and an old song from the early 2000s was playing. It was one of the songs that was made as a tribute for a loved one. I stood there and listened to it. Sasha was looking at me as well.

  As the song ended, she got up and hugged me. “Bro doesn’t need to get angry, mom, dad and I will take care of you.”

  A few new tears began falling as I picked her up and hugged her. “Thanks, let Bro go take a bath and we can play a bit and then go to sleep.”

  “Can I sleep with Bro tonight?” she asked.

  “Just tonight, go do your homework, I’ll come back in a bit.” I replied.

  She nodded and kissed my cheek before I put her down. Smiling I went and took a bath before we played together and watched some anime movies before going to sleep.

  CHAPTER 2 Rising Nation

  Rust PoV

  It had already been 15 years since the awakened fell asleep. Those who were living creatures vanished but those of the clockwork simply turned off.

  Gaia lost no time in taking control of and guiding all the revived clockwork that the awaken restored. Furthermore, she even headed over to the dwarf and gnome towns and began negotiations and with the three races they began a new nation together.

  The capital would be South Gate City. It was in between both the clockwork base and the dwarf town which would over time become part of the city to be built.

  With that said and done she began leading expansions to the outpost. With steel made by the dwarves, new walls were built in a 10-kilometer radius around the gate. Then all the scraps inside were melted and only the motherboards of all the clockwork survived along with memory chips were stored to reawaken these clockwork.

  All the memory chips were scanned for useful data, such as skills or better techniques for doing something.

  With all the trash cleared, we also discovered several protectors, and half a dozen squadrons of knights, each group had around 15. With steel we remade their bodies and under Gaia’s tutelage we began learning software programming. Through it, we repaired the corrupted codes of the knights and all our own, as well as improving them somewhat.

  In the first seven years, the dwarves and gnomes also began to increase in population. Their populations swelled up as each couple had lots of kids.

  With population growth came the need for resources and food. After some thought, Gaia suggested we domesticate several monsters in the mountain range.

  With that thought, we scouted several monster races and learned their eating habits and mating rituals. We didn’t want animals that fought for a mate or were carnivores.

  With our targets set, we set out to clear a space inside the scrap yard outside of the walls but still attached to them in a fenced area. Clearing the area and then making the dirt fertile again was a bit of a hassle but gnomes lived with the elves for a long time so they had learned some nature magic, which is made from mixing the water and earth magic system. With the land clear of oil, somewhat, the gnomes went about using a bit of magic to sprout the local vegetation around the area. It took them nearly a year of trial and error, and with every error the withering plants were tilled to use as fertilizer before they tried again. Finally, after a year some weak sprouts came out and were able to survive until adulthood and release seeds. This was a good sign that these plants had higher pollution endurance and could survive in the highly acidic soil.

  Once we got some plants growing, we started cultivating that fenced area with them, always planting seeds from plants that grow better and killing off the weaker plants. Besides these first ones we started growing other plants that were consumed by the animals.

  It was a slow annoying process which took several years before a large number of plants naturally grew in the polluted soil which was by now much cleaner.

  With the area finally ready, we sent the knights off into the mountains to kill all the aggressive adults of the chosen monsters, then captured the babies, brought them back and put them inside the fenced area while caretakers raised the monsters. Because they didn't fight life and death fights, they simply had natural strength but never surpassed level 20 monsters unlike their wild counterparts.

  They also gained passive personalities instead of aggressive ones because of the plentiful food sources.

  During the time we cultivated the plants, we also developed several water purifiers. The river at the bottom of the mountain range was very polluted, but we needed the water. With the help of several clockwork who developed bodies built for mining we carved the rocks around a relatively flat area nearby. We made a large basin around the lake which filled only a quarter of the way before continuing to flow.

  Once done we planned out the purifier and built it about a half a kilometer away before building a steel dam to hold more water. It wasn't that much more because it was a shitty piece of crap, but it held up against the water pressure and with a space cut in around three quarters of the way up we were able to let the water loose without it breaking the dam.

  We reinforced it quickly with a better structure to hold up longer, so we didn’t have to worry.

  As the water rose, we started up the purifier which sucked up the polluted water and threw back a cleaner water.

  Compared to the original polluted water we were able to remove about 5% of the pollution. There was so much trash. We were actually curious about was upstream, so Gaia and I led a team of knights and one of the tanks. What we found was an old graveyard of ships in the mountains. There wasn’t a single ship intact which explained the massive amount of fuel in the water. We found a lake filled with what remained of the fuel.

  Gaia was grinning because we found a ship graveyard, but I was annoyed about the water problem.

  Her solution, build several purifiers that separated the fuel from the water and then reuse that fuel.

  Workers were brought in and all around the large black lake several purifiers began working. The fuel was put into very large cylinders that were built there to store it all while the water was thrown back in.

  There were about 10 purifiers which all reduced the pollution by around 5% per day. That said in this cesspool it was more like 0.5% per day, that's how much fuel was dumped in there.

  Well with this going on we were getting a regular supply of ship fuel.

  Once all this was passed Gaia had the gorilla tanks drag back some half intact ship carcasses and got working on getting it operational. It was much larger than Techno’s.

  Speaking of him, I personally go there every two months and do regular repairs on all of them and their things. It’s quite amazing how fast their bodies rust though, it’s like something is making it speed up. What was strange is that their cast iron items were rusting slower than the steel body they last used. I even took a look at the coding and found it slowly being corrupted.

  I cringed thinking of how much data was already broken. Quickly remaking what I could, and from then on I also check all the programming as well, i leave.

  While looking around I also found the cores of the elementals. What was strange was that there were several of each core and not three like there was supposed to be. I scanned all of them and found all of them were alive but the three strongest were in the middle. I figured this was the original three elementals that Nova kept as sla… pets.

  They were gathering a lot of mana from the air and slowly growing.

  I put them back down and picked up all the new cores and took them back to Gaia. When she saw them, and I explained what I found her eyes began glowing brightly. She picked up two of them and then told me to open my chest piece. I did as asked, and she put the cores near the fire and they began absorbing the fire until they turned a bright red. She pulled back and then struck them togethe
r and from the sparks the cores jumped into the air and were covered in flames.

  I remained there dumbfounded watching the little fire wisps fly around.

  Gaia was grinning as she watched the two. Looking down she had several other clockwork come and help and we slowly fed the fire cores our engine fires and then woke new fire elementals. For the earth golems we took them to the dwarf mine and pushed them into the walls in the mine.

  The small earth dolls soon came out looking around at us.

  From there we began getting the dwarves used to them. Guess they are still wary of them, though it’s with good reason.

  Still after a few years they started to get a bit more comfortable. Most of the golems were human type with a few being the bulky kind. The will-o-wisp normally took the shape of a bird making them look like phoenixes.

  With the golems out and about things like forge fires and mineral gathering got less dangerous since they helped with both.

  Once the first ship Gaia repaired was operational, she gathered a crew of workers, dwarves and gnomes, and set out for the now abandoned human city.

  She wanted to capture that city and use it as a construction site for larger ships and equipment. After thinking a bit, I found the idea quite smart. The huge ship could easily be opened a bit to make into a massive shipyard city built for production.

  They headed over with that plan but that wasn’t all. The second ship was almost complete as well, and Gaia’s orders were to load it up with workers and several purifiers and take it to the elves to gain their support and favor.

  I could see now what she was planning. If gnomes were good with nature magic, then why not get the real pros.

  Once the ship was complete, we had it loaded for the Very long trip.

  When we finally reached the forest city, we were kind of shocked to find the place completely renewed.

  The broken platforms were new and looked even better. All around were a lot of goblins, gnomes and elves. I heard elves had a hard time reproducing but looking around, I think that was a lie.

  Anyway, we headed to the queen and learned the layout of the forest and where most of the rivers were.

  With most of it marked down we headed to the largest rivers that enter into the forest. We build a few purifiers in the area near the entrance where the forest was already purifying the water. With the machines helping even a little it would allow the forest’s magic to work more efficiently.

  With our work done, I began planning to return, but we made sure to leave several dwarves and workers since we needed to do maintenance on the purifiers.

  During my planning I spoke with the queen about letting elves leave the forest. I tell her about wanting to restore nature to bring the world further away from ruin and to return it to normal.

  She happily allowed that and even had one of her royal elves be the leader of the elves leaving.

  In total, around 20 elves were coming. It sounded small but elves have huge mana capacity so even a single one can do something close to miracles. Most were ‘old’ and very wise. Even though I was a machine, they treated me as another living being and showed me the same respect I gave these great elders.

  We headed to the old human city where the humans had begun their restoration and left five elves there. They began the next day, we saw them because they were letting out a bright green light where they were using magic.

  When we arrived back at South Gate outpost, which was more of a town now, we led them to our small fenced zone. Even though the place was poor and had at best only weeds, the elves marveled at it saying they were impressed we could get this much grown so well in such contaminated soil.

  They had brought several seeds from their forest and some from the human’s restoration forest and planted them around the fenced area. Then, they all gathered in a circle and channeled their magic.

  Soon they were all letting off a green light, the leader high elf walked to the middle and raised his arms. This caused the light to gather in a glowing ball. He grabbed it and pushed it into the ground.

  Like a large shock wave, a wave of green light spread from the spot and even passed the fenced wall and spread far into the scrapyard and out into the mountain range.

  After a moment I looked about and noticed many green shoots appearing, and when I looked at the tree sprouts, they were already passing three meters tall and slowly rising. Many weeds were dying and quickly re-growing becoming more lush and more varied as many different species were appearing.

  When the chaos of green growth stopped, I asked the high elf what happened.

  He explained that the magic they used helps cleanse the area of impurities that harm nature and causes even the smallest bits of vegetation to rapidly grow and mutate making many varieties.

  This was an old art used long ago to repair devastated areas of war or drought. The vegetation here would become a seedbed for all this region’s new vegetation.

  I was happy to get so much help from him, this provided us with more than we could have hoped for and the domesticated monsters also seemed to like the new variety of food.

  The connections Techno helped us make were really blooming and helping us. I can’t wait for him to wake up once more. I’m sure all the races in our nation will think the same, He is our savior.

  Bianca PoV

  “What do I do?” I asked myself.

  As soon as he saw me, I felt like I was being stared at by a monster. It was scarier than when the tribe of kobolds attacked me. He was much scarier than anything I can remember.

  I guess I did that to him though. When I saw him eating with his sister, I wanted to apologize, but I guess I was pretty naive. I put him in jail, ruined his life and hurt his family. I’m amazed he didn’t attack the moment he laid eyes on me.

  The police might not have been able to stop him if he had started to fight. He definitely would have beaten me into a bloody pulp if they hadn’t intervened.

  I think it would be best to try to avoid him like they said.

  I wonder if I can meet him in game? My face is different in there, though I don’t think I'm anywhere close.

  I open a map made by the players. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. Only several spots actually meet up and that was where the real adventurous people went through.

  No one except me or the water-based races actually met the ocean so there was no way to tell if there was one continent or several. I guess I can only wait until later in the game to meet him. Let him open up more, I guess I also need to change myself before I meet him as well.

  I leave my virtual space and head into town. I go to an ice cream shop and get a double chocolate scoop and sit in a park while eating it and thinking.

  What could I really do? All I did was annoy my party and landed myself all alone. The only people I never talked back to were the sirens and merfolk. They were nice, and I always thought before talking because I liked them.

  I guess I'll just have to wait to see how they turned out and choose my actions based on their progress. Maybe I can get a few quests around there or learn a bit more about why an elemental core was assimilated into my body after being wrapped in the cables inside my body. So many questions and no answers. My head hurts, but I guess it might be the ice cream. I think I will do like Nathaniel, instead of randomly making a party, I will make it with people I like.

  I think even the NPCs can explore. The world of Etheria was really free compared to the regular games where the NPCs are shackled to a job or role.

  Maybe I can make a few friends with a siren or someone and have lots of adventures. I hope I can find people who won’t leave me behind just because I talk too much without thinking.

  I headed back home and examine the forums before picking up a few high school level books and start studying. I really needed to regain even a bit of confidence and getting my school grades up would help, but I guess the mechanic books I got to help me in game might help as well.

  Warden PoV

  “So how
was the investigation?” I asked.

  The man sitting across from me shook his head. “Sorry sir, but nothing. All the files are hidden and under lock and key by the girl’s father.” the man said.

  With a sneer on my face I replied, “Well isn’t that interesting.”

  I was sitting in a Starbucks cafe talking with a personal friend who was a private investigator. I hired him to look into Nathaniel’s trial as well as his family’s situation and so on. Most of the information I already know. Charges of rape and sexual harassment but no proof of it but he still got 10 years of jail time. He would have been transferred to the adults jail this year since he would have turned 18.

  Family situation only got worse after he went to jail, an accident which left his sister paralyzed. No records of drug use or any violent actions done by him. Besides what happened to get him in here he looks like a model citizen. The problem is that the files of the trial themselves were locked and kept in a very secure cabinet that was almost as secure as a federal class case.

  To view that, I would need a judge’s order or a police search warrant and since I wasn’t a field officer, I would need the judge's order, but that was unsuccessful. No judge wanted me touching that file.

  I was very curious about this case now because watching the video of Nathaniel nearly jumping at the girl in a fit of rage isn’t something to ignore, even more so when the only other time I saw him angry was against that NPC in the game.

  I did search her up and found that she was the ‘victim’ in his trial. Searching a bit more I found out her father was the one that ordered her to pay the same amount of time as the boy and paid a hefty sum to make that happen.

  There was definitely more to this story than meets the eye and I wanted to dig as deep as I could. If this bit me in the ass, then so be it, but I couldn’t get the feeling out of my head. Something was very wrong in that case and I would find out what.