The Return

by Nathan Valerio

  CHAPTER 3 The Second Awakening

  Delta PoV

  It was quite nice to finally get to see the world outside of the metal shell I was trapped in.

  Though I say it was good, I still felt sad seeing it in such a horrible state. The war really took its toll on everything the world had to offer. I gained quite an ample view of the world thanks to the programs I uploaded in Gaia and Rust as they downloaded to all clockwork.

  It was quite convenient but still the more I saw the world, the more I understood why Gaia didn’t want me loose. The descendants of those who caused the chaos and even those who participated in it, were starting to repair the damage. I would only ruin their efforts. Staying away for the moment was for the best.

  At least I had something to do instead of staying in eternal darkness. It was quite fun to play with the robots the young awakened boy left behind. The most interesting were the smallest ones, the drones. Small collectors from some out of control furnace queen.

  He did well to make them so diverse. The mechanical animal was also strange. Rather weak though, lacking the weapons to make it useful but still had a strong rush attack like the real animal would have.

  Now the thing that kind of piqued my interest was why the leader was a knight mechanic. The class was only useful during wars because they are able to survive the battle front and repair the units on site.

  Ah, I understood, mechanics were normally slow. He must have gone for a mobile mechanic class. Well if he built a smaller knight body and put the tools inside, he would still have mobility and be only mechanic class.

  I need to suggest that to him when he woke next.

  Anyway, at that moment I counted about 20 years that had passed since the boy went to sleep. The clockworks, dwarves, gnomes, elves and goblins had all united into one nation. Elves still wanted to maintain independence and were still their own smaller nation annexed within. Gaia was smart because she did not want to get on their bad side.

  From what I saw, with gnomes and elves help, they had also created flora that could survive in the wasteland planet after some cultivation of the ground.

  They had also taken over a huge ship which, from listening to Gaia and Rust talk, was once occupied with rotten humans. Sometime after the ship began operating, a group that seemed to have lived there originally returned.

  They asked to join the nation and were accepted, but most of the races were wary of them and didn’t let them participate or even get near any of the construction projects. Most of it was ship constructions as well. The humans didn’t take it badly though, knowing somewhat how humans were thought of they accepted the treatment, but they did speak with the elves and wished to learn how to repair nature.

  Again, though wary the elves did let them watch and their leader taught basic level nature magic to these humans.

  I believe humans who use nature magic are called druids. The leader of the humans gained that class and began learning elven culture.

  Seemed he was very sincere about getting nature back to normal, though I wondered about a few of the other humans.

  A few of them were less willing to continue living in a place they weren’t accepted but they stayed trying to learn something from the others.

  With a bit of searching through my connection with the clockwork, I found a few drones lying about in the shipyard settlement. I took them for myself and finally gained my personal freedom and then went to spy on these humans.

  The only thing they were allowed to learn was the basics from the elves and quite a few didn’t want that.

  I kept my eye and soon I found several that wanted to leave but also taking a few ships with them.

  I sighed at how they never changed, though the nation's outlook on them was still the same as well, given good reason though, I still send an anonymous video to Gaia, who has been leading the constructions.

  With a steel fist, she disciplined them before having them leave with their things. She also had those who didn’t want to stay leave as well.

  It was at this moment that they all voiced their complaints about how they were being treated and they were only acting that way because of it.

  The other races all looked the other way, but they all felt the truth.

  Gaia was in deep thought about this. The thoughts were to simply get rid of them all which kind of ticked me off.

  “Stupid old hag, if you make them all leave, it will soon lead to a new war,” I said insulting Gaia.

  “Tch, you are watching this huh, shut it brat,” Gaia sneered back.

  “Think properly for once. If you make them leave, it will only cause trouble in the future. They are right that they are being treated unfairly and were acting to at least have a better chance of survival.” I say.

  She let out a tired sigh. “Fine, if it’s alright with all of you we will teach you the basics, and only basics, of the craft you want but you will be considered a citizen of our nation and trying to run with technologies from here will have you hunted down,” she said sternly.

  Many of the humans gave a wry smile as did the others who would be teaching but more or less everyone agreed.

  “Since you made me accept this you are watching over them, got it brat!” she texted.

  “Hehehe, it’s always nice to see you annoyed. Brings joy to my small world.” I laughed.

  From there she stomped off angrily and I had a grin on my face. Like promised, I watched over all the humans, but they did nothing and looked quite satisfied being able to learn from the other races without stealing from them.

  It was quite peaceful after that for the most part, everything except for the new monsters that have begun to appear in the restored nature. Besides the mutated lower food chain animals there were quite a number of larger animals… and pests. Larger creatures such as humanoid rats and very large bugs of all kinds. They were all powerful and a real big pain in the ass of the restoration group.

  One of the tanks was sent there with knights to clean them up but the number was quite amazing. He even went on to ask to make more knights because the current number would soon get destroyed if they fought constantly.

  They then began working on building bodies for those willing to upgrade to knight class. Besides this class though, other classes, all of which seem to be what the young awakened boy made, were made, a sniper, a scout and knight.

  Gaia visited the kids with Rust when they came to repair them and activated them momentarily to check out all the weapons. The interesting shoulder launcher on the boy, the powerful machine sniper on the small girl, the bombs the boy made, and the protectors jump suspension. All of them were scanned to be used. Some would say it's shameless to steal but I’m sure they won’t mind because when they return, the weapons would be upgraded by then.

  With the new weapons built rapidly from the tinkering hands of the gnomes they are put into play. Protectors were built like the girls and all snipers controlled one. This kept them free of trouble and gave them massive fire power to rain havoc on the pests.

  Even a few miners were able to fight. With one of them making a somewhat bulky knight’s body but with drills. With better mobility they are able to run at the monsters and use the large drills on their hands to cause damage.

  Now what is really interesting is how goblins have taken up work. They are just as versatile as a human. They are everywhere and because of their fast birth rate they have grown to nearly the same number as clockworks.

  Most of them are trained in the dwarf mines to build strength and stamina, as are all those who go fighting, before getting tinkering training and then finally get some dwarven armor and weapons to start off. They train clearing out monsters down below in groups before going out to hunt in the mountain range.

  All in all, the nation built by these little ones is going quite well. I do wonder though, where are the constructs. If the three join together they would be quite a force to be reckoned with.

  Nathaniel PoV

  I’m was really
happy. It seems that visits like in the detention center are still allowed.

  Mom and Dad purchased a capsule and after speaking with the warden and several others it was decided that they would allow family in.

  With a bit of working on the company's part, mom and dad had their capsules modified to allow them to visit the virtual space during the time we were there. It seemed they also did that to many capsules of other juvenile convicts that were in the virtual space and had been letting the parents visit to spend quality time with them.

  We walked around what everyone was calling Virtual Town. Mom and dad said that after the town was made there were quite a few in the company that liked the idea and released a new VR drive which made new servers with towns like it. With a bit of government managing it was made so that around 5,000 people could access one server. Most of the towns were similar to ours but none of the players had virtual spaces like ours.

  Not that it mattered to us. We couldn’t access them anyway so it wasn’t like we cared.

  What I and the overjoyed Sasha do care about was going to the movie theaters in our town and enjoying the day together.

  It felt nice to spend time with them.

  Mom and dad decided to try to make time to play Etheria, but it wouldn’t be like us who were stuck in there 24/7. Every real-life month was five months in game time, we would be allowed to spend two real-life days, ten in game days, in Virtual Town. It was a really nice day, but unfortunately they could only visit for one day every break. Rather cruel but rules are rules and even with my trial being total shit I was still a convict so it wasn’t like I had any say.

  When the time comes, they log out and we both go back home.

  Several ideas had appeared while I read the mechanic and programming books I got, and it gave me that same uncomfortable pain in my hands. Thankfully there was a mechanic’s workshop available to buy. I bought it but it was the annoying price of 100 points. We were left with few of Sasha’s points and couldn’t buy anything big anymore.

  We both spent time there both learning. The place came with infinite parts of whatever kind we wanted. I spent my time learning to improve the things I had made in game and even planned new stuff. Most of the stuff I made notes on was in the notepad. I guessed that the notepad was a capsule system so even in the game it might work.

  I then thought of my own body. The one I modeled after Gaia’s was monstrously high-leveled to the point of feeling broken even with it not being complete. I think it works even with a normal engine, but the energy needed would make it work at around 20% higher.

  I would probably only be able to use that body as a robot. I turned my attention to thinking of a new way to use that gear model. There was a need to decrease the number much further. The torso gears would need to stay the same. I decided to concentrate on the legs.

  I drew up a model and tried seeing if it connected to the game even slightly to see if a level appeared for the blueprints. Shockingly, it did. Just making the legs with more gears increased the agility monstrously but the level restriction was at around level 90.

  I guess it worked. I would simply need to work with normal clockwork models until then. When I reached level 90, I would start making more synthoid model bodies.

  I would also need to look for a way to make the magic circuits.

  Gaia’s circuits were pure silver which was a metal that naturally transmitted mana well in its pure state. I was sure mithril was better but being a metal that was not only very high-level, it would probably end up rigid as well while silver would feel malleable like copper wire.

  I drew up a smaller than normal knight body but put all the tools properly spread out around my body. Thankfully I could keep the swords, but no other weapons would be able to be included. The body was just at my size like the other robot I tried making but the gears were steel and built like a normal low level clockwork.

  The level was 30+ so it was a good start.

  I continued for a while. The days were approaching where we will return to the game, so I want to be ready.

  Bulk PoV

  After I logged out last week, I was left with nothing to do. The game took up most of my afternoon and night. Because we sleep while we play. Well anyway, it didn’t matter much. Oh, something did change though. The company LIFE released a new app for the capsules. They called it Virtual Town and it made a virtual space to hang out in the virtual world. The system worked with a small working part of the feedback system the company had been testing. The news of the release made everyone buy it and the next real-life day it showed thousands of people using the virtual town to catch up on work, homework and exercise.

  Because the feedback system was still in its early stages it only transferred about 5% of the effects so there wasn’t much to it, but many people who needed to lose weight bought it and began. With 1:5 time distortions like in Etheria they trained a lot more in the Virtual Town.

  There was even governmental discussion on the third day of the release about using the Virtual Town app to take the place of things like school classes, though P.E. was still in the real world, as well as office buildings for many companies. It would clear out many large offices and make it easier to travel to work since you could stay home instead of traveling hours away.

  Seems LIFE was making our lives easier one way or another.

  Me being a college student, I could really use this. I bought it and caught up with my massive load of homework and then enjoyed the rest of the day looking around the server that the school bought.

  Man, if I could talk with Techno it would get rid of some of the boredom. I wondered if he was in Virtual Town. Wait, he probably isn’t American anyway. He could be from anywhere in the world.

  I gave up on that thought and decided to enter a recently opened sword fighting class that was made inside Virtual Town. I wanted to learn real dual sword fighting to use in game. Previously, I had been letting the system guide me but from every fanfiction I had read the best virtual reality players were the ones with real-life knowledge of what they were doing in game.

  That said, the training was quite intense. The teacher was Asian descent and relentless with his training.

  At the end of the virtual day I was exhausted, so I logged out and took a bath. I did notice my body is a bit sore. Seems the feedback system isn’t some crappy rumor. At the end of the week the game would be back online.

  Anyway, I took a bath and ate before heading back in. I was going to be way stronger when we get back into the game.

  Gaia PoV

  It had been 35 years since Techno went to sleep. Our nation had grown large. The elves were still somewhat separate but because we started restoring nature they came out of the forest and even expanded their own borders.

  They were a bit against industrializing their cities, but it simply took me learning some basic alchemy from them and I could begin making weapons and goods that could be used with magic.

  Oh, just so you guys know, alchemy is the skill that allows us to mix up and work with monster materials and mix it with other materials.

  Speaking of monsters, there were quite a number of annoying pests appearing. Any normal animals were long gone, instead we had to categorize them by herbivore/carnivore and by size.

  One example was the rats. They had become humanoid but just as annoying and smart enough to strategize. Then there were the less intelligent creatures like rabbits. They were as big as horses but much stronger.

  We had survived well because we took Techno's weapons and improved them greatly. Because we had alchemy, we also learned how to make real black powder. We also began remodeling the engines for everything, making them consume much less but bring out more power.

  Several ship weapons were made as well which helped greatly to explore more dangerous places.

  During those last few years we also began encountering some more races. More specifically three strong races, demons, ogres and genies.

  The first ones we met were simpl
e travelers and explorers for their tribes. The demon race. I was rather happy finding them because they were very powerful but unlike the common thought of them, they were a nice race. They ranged between 180-200 cm (2 m) with a long tail, pale gray skin and the feature that always made humans fear them, the eyes. The pupil was white and the supposed whites of the eye were instead black.

  When the demons encountered the humans in our nation's a few jumped back from the sudden shock of seeing them but soon they calmed down.

  After the shock they greeted them normally like any other. This brought a strange reaction from the demons who have probably only heard of humans as a plague.

  Similar to the demons, the ogres were met with explorers, the difference being that they were much stronger. The ones that met them were the knights when they were fighting a group of monsters. The group was having trouble and the ogre helped them and was invited back to the Shipyard City.

  Two types of ogres appeared. One was a hulking giant at almost three meters tall, 280 cm to be exact. They looked like heavy body builders with very dense muscles and green skin. Their wild black hair dropped to just below the shoulder. They had two large horns on the sides of their heads and two large canines on the lower jaw could be seen pointing out of the mouth at all times.

  The shorter ones stood at 230 cm. Similar to the large ones, they had dense muscles and two horns on their heads as well as a paler shade of green skin. Their black hair was similarly wild but grew all the way down to their waists.

  I was familiar with the race, but it seemed things changed some time ago. I think the rank up magic that caused the rapid growth of monsters in our world might have disappeared because no goblins had ranked up even though many of them had trained extensively. Instead, they became more human like. Also, after a certain number of goblins were born, their birth rate decreased drastically and the time it took for them to grow after birth was also lengthened.