Chapter 2: Adventurer
'I was hoping nothing like this would happen.' I think while behind a set of iron bars, 'I could just use my nanites to eat the bars away, but I don't want to become a criminal the moment I step out of the cell.'
I sit down on the bench inside the cell I'm currently in and close my eyes, pretending to sleep. I hear footsteps outside my cell and open one eye, soon seeing an armored man with a clip board standing outside my cell.
I open my other eye and sit up, "Hello." The guard stares at me plainly before saying, "State your name." I tell him my name and he asks me another question, "According to witness reports, the man attacked you in line and you were just defending yourself. Is this true?"
I nod my head causing the guard to sigh, "Then I guess it would be wrong to keep you here any longer. You're free to go." The guard opens the cell door, allowing me to step out.
"Have a good rest of your day." The guard then turns around and leaves. I sigh and mutter, "Just a minor inconvenience... I hope." I walk out of the guard house.
Unbeknownst to me, a scarred man was looking at me the whole time with bad intentions written clear on his face.
I walk down the street of a very medieval looking town, minus all the filth and trash. Continuing down the street, I eventually find what I'm looking for, "The adventurers guild." I step inside and see one side of the building made into what looks like a cafe/bar. The other side is filled with counters and a single board with a bunch of papers stuck to it.
I walk over to one of the free counters, "Hello there! How may I help you today?" says a very bubbly, purple haired receptionist. I smile and reply, "I'd like to become an adventurer."
The receptionist nods her head while humming, "Of course! Just let me get everything ready for you." The receptionist goes under the counter for a few seconds before coming back up with a few papers, "Here is the paperwork!"
She hands me the papers and a pencil, 'I'm surprised they have these.' I take the pencil and papers and lay them on the counter to look at them, 'Basically, I will be starting at copper F rank. And to rank up I need to do quests and sell monster parts. Quests can be found on the board next to the counters and parts can be sold to the warehouse keeper out behind the guild building...' I fill out the registration by writing down my name, race, and preferred class.
I hand it to the receptionist. She then looks at it and reads it out loud to me, "Name: Maeve. No last name?" I frown, "For personal reasons I didn't write it down." The receptionist nods in understanding before she continues, "Race: Human. Preferred class: Tank/Swordswoman."
The Receptionist nods and puts the papers under the counter, "I'll go get your rank plate ready. Please wait here."
The receptionist goes into a room behind the counter and after a few minutes, comes back with a copper dog tag that has an F on it along with my name and an icon depicting a sword over a shield.
She hands me the tag, saying that it goes around my neck, which is where I put it. The receptionist steps back and bows slightly, "On behalf of everyone here, I welcome you to the adventurer's guild!"
I thank her and go to the board, "Let's see here..." I glance over the board, having Suzy pick out ones that seem fun and productive.
[There's this: Kill 10 Goblins and collect their ears as proof.] Suzy says. I think for a moment, 'I've killed a goblin, and they're not that hard to take care of.'
I go back to the counter and sign up for the goblin quest, "Alright! Good luck!" The bubbly receptionist says with a slight bow of her head.
I turn around and leave the guild building, heading down the street. I walk past an alleyway and see two men dragging a young woman with wolf ears and tail down it. The woman is struggling to escape, and has her mouth covered by one of the men.
I narrow my eyes and follow them discretely, listening to their conversation, "Stop struggling! Unless you wanna be knocked out!"
I grit my teeth and run in at the man who said that, pulling out my knife and ramming it into the back of the man's neck. The man dies instantly, as the other man turns towards me and screams in fear, "Demon!"
I cover his mouth and slit his throat, dropping him on the ground. I turn towards the woman and smile, as the blood on me and my weapon slowly disappears, "You ok?"
The woman stands up and brushes herself off before responding, "Y-Yes I'm fine. Thank you for saving me." I nod and start to walk away. I don't get very far before I hear a 'Hey' from behind me.
I look behind me and sigh. The woman I saved looking at me weirdly, "Can I help you?" The woman opens her mouth to talk, but soon closes it, before reopening it, "P-Please let me accompany you!"
My eyes widen in surprise, "Why should I do that?" The woman's green eyes widen at my answer, "We're both adventurers! I-I could join your party!" She says with desperation. I think for a moment, before sighing, [We should accept her offer. She has a great deal of mana in her, so if we run out of energy, she can supply us with more.] Suzy comments.
I turn around and look at her neck, seeing a silver tag with an E on it, "What's your name?" I ask despite being able to see it on her tag.
"I'm Lyrissa Moonstone! I'm a Spell Blade!" She declares. I nod my head, "So you can use magic?" Lyrissa nods, "Good, I am in need of someone that can use magic." Lyrissa smiles, which for some reason makes me smile too, 'Cute. Wait, what am I thinking!? I like guys!' I turn back around and leave the alleyway, with Lyrissa in tow.
"My name's Maeve. I was going to go kill some goblins before running into you. You ok with helping me?" I ask Lyrissa who just nods her head, "Great! Now let's go!" We head out of the gate and into the meadow.
We then enter the forest and look for goblins, soon finding a group of seven of them. I get out my knife and run at one of them, stabbing them in the eye, 'Thats one.'
I look back at Lyrissa and see her running her finger along the flat side of her sword, causing various runes to appear on it, "Wind Blade!" She then swings her sword upwards towards a goblin, sending out a magical blade of air, which collides with the goblin, splitting it down the middle.
'So that's magic. Seems effective.' I refocus on my part of the fight. A goblin attempts to jump on me, resulting in me grabbing them and tearing their head off, 'Thats three.'
I turn my head and am met with a fireball to the face. I instinctively hold the part of my face that got hit before realizing that it doesn't hurt, 'Well I am a robot, so... Makes sense that I wouldn't feel pain.' I try looking around, only to find that half my vision is gone, 'It's fine. I should regen it back soon, right?'
I look back at the goblin who partially blinded me and run at them. The goblin screeches and freezes up in fear, giving me a chance to grab them and bring their forehead to my knee, soon hearing a sickening crack of bones breaking. I drop the unconscious body of the goblin mage and curb stomp them, fully splattering their head on the forest ground, 'Thats four.'
I look over at Lyrissa and see her surrounded by three goblins. I regain the other half of my vision and see her run her finger up the flat side of her sword and thrusts it straight down into the ground, "Fire Aura!" The spell knocks back the goblins surrounding her and sets them on fire.
The goblins fail to put themselves out before falling to the ground dead, 'And that's seven.' I fold up my knife and store it before walking over to Lyrissa, "You did good." Lyrissa sheaths her sword and replies, "You did well too." She looks up at me and gasps loudly, "Oh by the Divines, your face! Are you ok?!"
I put my hand on my face and feel metal. I panic before turning around and saying, "Yeah! I'm perfectly fine! This kind of thing happens all the time! Just need to wait for it to regenerate." I hear a sigh from behind me, "Let me heal you, it'll speed the process up."
I hear Suzy start panicking in my head, [Don't let her heal you! It won't do anything, which will expose us!] I turn around and begin to wave my hands in front of me, "You don't have to do that! I'm perfectly fine! Really!"
Lyrissa runs her finger down the flat side of her blade, before thrusting it upwards into the air, "Healing Cir-" I rush her and push her to the ground, landing on top of her, "What are you doing?! I'm trying to heal you!"
I suddenly realize what kind of position I'm in and quickly get off. I look at Lyrissa and see her looking at me weirdly before blushing heavily. I stand up and make up a false explanation.
"I have a... Uh..." I think quickly without success, "A...?" I would be sweating bullets if I could, "I have a... Rare mutation! Right! a rare mutation that blocks all healing magic! Yeah! that's it."
Lyrissa looks like she doesn't believe me, "Then how are you regenerating? Thats a middle tier healing skill." I think to myself, 'Shit! What now?!' As I am thinking of how I could possibly get myself out of this, Lyrissa speaks, "Also, how is your skull made of metal?"
I freeze, [She knows...] I sigh, "Guess there's no point in hiding it from you since you've already seen my metal bits." I sigh again, "As you can clearly see, I'm not human. I'm what most would call a robot, or a machine."
Lyrissa looks at me with difficulty, "But why hide it?" I walk over to the dead goblin mage and pick up his staff before answering her, "I hid it because I didn't know what people would think of a being like me... And I didn't want to be discriminated against or attacked for no reason by people who think I'm a monster."
Lyrissa closes her eyes and hums in thought. She then blurts out something, "Most people would think you are some kind of advanced automation, a complex machine made by dwarven engineers, so if someone other than me found out about you being a machine, the most they would try and do is just push you around to inflate their own ego."
I nod as she opens her eyes, "Did you know that your eyes turn red when fighting? Also, your face is fully repaired." I touch the damaged part of my face and breathe a sigh of relief at the fact that she was telling the truth, 'Suzy, how much energy did that take to repair?'
[About 20 units.] Suzy answers, 'Not bad.' I take a peek at my energy before sighing, 'I need to eat more... Wait... I can just ask Lyrissa to supply me with mana.' As I am about to ask, Suzy cuts in saying that mana can only fuel me if I am completely out of energy. I can still get hit with lightning magic to recover energy.
I hold up the staff I picked up and tear the crystal that was on top of it off, discarding the rest of the staff. I then bite into the crystal and chew it soon hearing a small gasp of surprise from Lyrissa. I finish the crystal and turn towards Lyrissa, who looks weirded out, "Are you ok?" I ask.
"Did you just eat a mana crystal?" Lyrissa asks, confused, "Yes, yes I did." Lyrissa looks even more confused at my answer, "Why?" I sigh in annoyance, "Because they give me energy, now end of discussion."
I take my knife back out and unfold it before walking over to one of the goblins corpses. I crouch down and ask Lyrissa if we take one ear or both, "We just take the left ear, or in some cases, what's left of it." I thank her and begin cutting ears from heads.
I also looted the green skins of any food they were carrying in pouches and promptly eat it, regaining 12 energy. We use one of the food pouches to store the ears in. Lyrissa then asks me how many we need, "Just three more."
Lyrissa nods before her ears twitch. She quickly turns towards me and yells, "Look out!" I turn around and feel something impact my chest and pierce all the way through.
I hear Suzy yell in my head before hearing another mechanical voice in my head blare out, [WARNING! INSUFFICIENT ENERGY TO REPAIR DAMAGE. EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS ENGAGED.] I ask Suzy what that means.
[It means you're dying! You don't have enough energy to repair yourself, and when that energy runs out you shut down!] I look down at my chest and see a large spear sticking out of it. Lyrissa runs to me in tears, "Are you ok?!" I force a smile on my face, "I'll be fine." I lie.
We then see three large goblins step out of the bushes. I hear Lyrissa click her tongue, "Hobgoblins." I turn to Lyrissa and tell her something, "Hey, Lyrissa. When we beat these guys, if I fall and look dead, just infuse mana into me until I wake up, 'k?" Lyrissa looks confused for a moment before gaining a determined look, "Ok."
I pull the spear out of my chest and throw it at one of the hobgoblins. The hobgoblin ducks under it with a look of surprise, probably wondering how I'm still able to move.
I run at the hobgoblins with Lyrissa, who draws her sword and runs her finger along the flat side of it, "Attack Howl!" I hear a wolf howling from Lyrissa's direction, and see her Weapon gain a red glow.
I rush the hobgoblin I threw the spear at and kick them to the ground. I bring my foot down onto the hobgoblin's chest, going through and hitting a hard material. The hobgoblin died as soon as this material was hit.
I remove my foot from its chest and look inside, 'A mana crystal?' I pick it up and bite into it. I take a peek at my energy levels and see that the crystal gave me some desperately need energy, 'Not enough to fully repair myself though.'
I look over at Lyrissa and see her running her sword through a hobgoblin's neck. She tries to pull her sword out to attack the third hobgoblin but fails as her sword gets stuck. She tries to rip out her weapon and barely gets it out in time to block an attack from the third hobgoblin.
As she is struggling to defend herself, I run over and dropkick the hobgoblin in the side of the head. I grab the monster's spear and stab them to death with it.
I step off the hobgoblin and peek at my energy, 'About to shut down. I should warn Lyrissa.' I turn towards Lyrissa and tell her how I'm about to shut down due to low energy levels. She panics and asks if there is anything she can do, "Well yes actually. You can pour mana into me when I shut down to wake me back up. It may take a lot of mana though."
Lyrissa nods and I lay down. Lyrissa, for an unknown reason, starts to cry, "Why are you crying?" Lyrissa looks at me like I'm stupid, "This is basically you dying, isn't it?"
"Not if you do your part correctly it isn't." I see my view start to fade, "Welp. looks like I'm going. Hope you succeed in bringing me back!" And with that, Darkness.
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