A blight of metal grew on the tainted and dead land, the gray steel behemoth breathing out black smog into the night barely illuminated by the sky's broken moon. Its nature was abhorrent and unnatural, the land itself seeming to reject it, the land barren and dead where life could not bloom, its twisted guardians killing anything that dared to try.
The metal behemoth did not care that life could not bloom, that the soil was dead and that dust and sand already tainted the air, it did not care that the everpresent fog would drain all without an aura into husks, that the lands true residents despised its very existence with the imitations they dared to call minds.
Its own guardians simple tore into the land, pulling what little metal could be found from the sand and dust, ripping the plentiful and toxic dust crystals from the ground and consuming it, ripping the stone and bedrock open and carving it into grand edifices to hide itself within like a shell.
The abomination in truth matched the land it had forced itself into, a monster in a land made for monsters, a place where man and mortals were not meant to stay and where gods had crafted beasts. It was a land of legends, dark and twisted they may be, but a new legend was soon to begin.
For the metal beast sheltered four human souls within its grand shell, four ever so fragile souls with legends all their own in a land they could not survive, and the beast made a simple decree. They would live, they would thrive.
It saw the world, and as all monsters were want to do, it hated the twisted world filled with greed, suffering and strife, and imagined that its own vision for the world was oh so much better.
And to many it would be, it would make a world where everyone could grow, be what they wanted to be. But the beast wasn't human, it didn't truly understand them.
Those were problems for later however, the beast knew this as well. And if there was another thing a monster couldn't tolerate it was other monsters, ones who wanted to destroy it, wanted to destroy what was it's. And so it would fall upon them like the beast it was.
The metal harvested from the tainted earth was forged into shape, processed and turned into more beasts, joining the silver tide surrounding it and ripping into the black tide, shaking the earth with their clash and turning the dim night bright as day letting all see the carnage, a conflict on a scale beyond the men of the world.
Colossal titans of metal fought colossal beasts of bone and false flesh, and were tore into in turn by swarms of lesser creations, each dragged under and torn to shreds only for the shreds of the great grimm to be pulled into the air to be made anew, and for the beast of metals metal remains to be hauled back and forged into another beast just as greater and stronger, its flaws and weaknesses learned and removed.
The beast watched the silver tide force back the monsters assaulting it, granting it more land to harvest and craft yet more of itself but it had to fight ever more grimm and its silver tide grew ever so slowly. Soon the grimm would destroy it as fast as it could make more of itself, the land not offering enough metal to truly fight as it wished.
Resources, it was always so hungry, forced to grow just to consume more and growing ever hungrier with its greater size. There was never enough, could never be enough, it was doomed to starve.
A true beast might fear that fate, but this was a thing of metal. It considered fear irrelevant and knew nothing was eternal from the day it had been crafted. Why would it fear?
The beast would march to its end, until it's gears were ground to dust and nothing remained for it to rebuild or protect.
And its heart longed to consume the world, as was its nature and purpose. It longed to take the world into itself, all the people, all the life, all the potential and fashion them, use them to craft its own steel eden, a land free from all it deemed sin.
The beast knew that humanity would not willingly live in its gilded cage, but they were forgetful, irrational creatures. Simply offer safety and distractions and they wouldn't even notice the cage being built. Already its mind races with bait, cities safe from grimm, corruption, and crime. Not to perfect, humans would fear that, they would still need to work, still face some struggle. Purpose built annoyances and inefficiencies, 'flaws' in the design, making it oh so human.
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I sat in my bunker deep underground, in the new world, the air was the same, the conditions identical to the ones I was used to. The bunker safe from even the minor potential danger new air can bear with its atmosphere shipped from Nauvis and recycled with my own machines, giving the air a metallic and ionized taste, more oxygen in it than a human would find healthy. My body faced no such issues, gladly making use of the increase in oxygen to increase its energy production efficiency.
There wasn't really a need to do that, the added risk of flame not particularly worth the minor unneeded increase in mental faculties but I wasn't going to ask the minds to turn it down, it always made me feel sluggish to go back to standard.
The simple addition of more cybernetics would solve that if I really cared, but I simply didn't. If I did another round of major augmentations perhaps, maybe manually growing and installing muscle fibers, or designing synthetic and metallic versions. If the process was particularly easy they could be used in a fair few systems to drastically increase strength and control.
Really none of this mattered, background thoughts my mind raced through at a rapid speed, ideas considered and added to the pile or discarded. The greater portion of my mind was still thinking on the humans still resting above me, in a section of the bunker tailor made for them to stay for the short while they'd remain in my care.
I could readily admit (in my own mind) that I'd grown fond of them, even Yang though I doubted that it was in any way mutual. It was a painful thought to imagine them leaving, and worse still to know just what they sought to do. I'd cared for them, built them armors and tools and learned from them. The thought of that ending? I imagine most humans on this world faced the thought of their loved ones dying, but it had never occurred to me until I met them. Nothing I made would be dying permanently without my own fate being the same, we would be together until we ended.
It was a rather possessive thought of mine I admit, but it was one I had regardless. I had a large temptation to simply…. Follow them, ensure their safety and work with them. It wasn't like the factory needed me in it to run, and once I had enough infrastructure on this side of the portal I could design and build from anywhere on the world. The grand majority of my inventing was done within my armor regardless and I didn't really need to be in it for that.
Put up a perimeter around beacon to increase its safety, put a bunker to stay in within the nearby forest and simply travel there in the day or be nearby, stay in contact while slowly working on my war with the grimm.
Itd even arguably be safer, not being on any of the direct fronts or on Nauvis where the risk of an invisible bug ripping out my throat was never zero. I knew Balistraia would be conflicted about it, boht wanting me to be around other humans and not wanting me in danger, but Bulwark would be very against it. Unless the bunker they designed was extensive and they could somehow install static defenses everywhere I went.
I doubted I could go around in full power armor as well, which was an issue. Itd be solved eventually once I began selling the suits on the cheap, without any of the weapon or strength enhancing systems I wasn't going to be arming every human, but that wasn't something that'd happen overnight.
Perhaps I could work power armor into outfits? That felt like something I'd talk to Weiss for, at least for what humans considered acceptable fashion, but something about asking her to design things I'd be wearing filled me with an odd dread.
Thoughts upon thoughts, but until I had a path to the seas cleared it was all I could be left with.
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The factories efforts to clear the path to the sea had continued for days, thousands of pounds of munitions and explosives used every hour, and tanks falling like flies as the perimeter expanded faster than it was reinforced. The rate of growth wasn't sustainable, but it hadn't needed to be, the ships already produced on Remnant had already begun sailing to the location of the prospective port, carrying with them a wealth of minerals.
On the grand scope of the factory eight ships, only one of which was actually a true cargo ship, was just a drop in the bucket, but it was a particularly large drop and would be the start of a new flow of resources. The minds in Menagerie had managed to get a proper mining operation set up once they had cooperated with the lands leadership for locations where mines had failed due to subterranean grimm presence.
That had allowed for limited production of more production, which led to more drones and combat capable forces, letting the minds mine more. The perfect loop the factory aspired to continue until all available resource sources were acquired and properly utilized. The fact that Menagerie had requested a small tax had admittedly been annoying but they were operating on Menagerie land and the minds were insuring said funds were going towards actually useful projects, primarily infrastructure for the developing nation.
Though Menagerie still struggled to import the needed equipment for said infrastructure, and were often price gouged when they did manage to find a supplier. Apparently supplies and equipment were usually smuggled in, but such illegal uses of the funds had been forbidden by the minds before they had a proper grasp on the situation. Something to rectify, or they could simply say the tax was said equipment and give that rather than refined metals. It'd be less material overall as well.
Something to discuss later, especially given the need to test and learn how to build cites. Menagerie would make a suitably isolated testbed.
The Engineer himself was busy designing some more…. Palatable equipment, human portable laser weapons without significant maintenance, cheap body armor designed to match with the current 'trends' in fashion to encourage people to actually wear it, simple but rugged tools and farm equipment, automated defense systems that couldn't (easily) be turned on fellow humans designed to guard outlying settlements.
Everything he could think of that would help a settlement fight off the grimm with minimal casualties, or at the very least hide or survive until help arrived, cheap enough that it wouldn't cost significantly more than a traditional settlement if produced by someone other than him, and he'd most likely sell at a 'loss' given he had very little need for the various nations' currencies. They simply charged too much for raw materials for it to be worth it unless he decided to run a cover company and actually make use of the thing the humans had the gall to call a supply chain.
The humans were very industrious, but for a species under siege they were decidedly not on a war footing, a properly militarized society with mandatory huntsmen or military service and more efforts put towards static defenses would and could fight off and push back the grimm, unless the grimm could swarm in numbers equal to the grimm lands everywhere. Which wasn't something the Maker could confirm or deny, but remained a worse case scenario.
The grimm lands really were absurd, and while the grimm did not adapt as the bugs did they still wore at his defenses and drained his resources.
Still it was a fight he would win, the grimm having failed to contain him, unlike the bugs who determinedly struggled to keep him from acquiring new sources of resources and could actually launch assaults on his production centers. The grimm simply weren't as durable as the bugs, and didn't have the same tactics tailor made to stymie him.
That meant he had taken the time to design something that he normally wouldn't bother with. A proper outfit, the clothing made of synthetic thread with the feel of silk and having greater strength, made by studying a bug variant's own webbing. Those had been and still were nightmare fuel. It contained threads of metal to further reinforce its shape and durability and contained miniature shield generators and batteries in the jacket and pants lining. Admittedly the designs had a fair chance to detonate if punctured, but the explosions would only burn off his skin, not the reinforced mesh underneath.
He hadn't actually ended up consulting Weiss for the design, Labyrinthine had simple sent him a completed design it had apparently made with Weiss's input once he had finalized the design for the miniature shield generator, really mechshifting had so many more uses than letting a weapon have more weapons in it. Letting a device's internals serve multiple purposes was a fantastic way to reduce size, if an expensive and finicky method.
But everything good was expensive until one learned better methods of producing it.
Admittedly the Maker did quite enjoy the gray and blue color palette, the blue trimming?highlights? (fashion was beyond him and his care) Meshed well with the gray and the coat could be used as an impromptu shield, shifting to be solid with a simple thought, and the buttons could be pulled off and thrown as emp's or tasers. He'd wanted to install laser point defense, but still hadn't figured out a good way to produce enough power to make it viable, perhaps power generation in heavier shoes?
It was a fascinating thing to work within constrictions he'd never bothered with, and already the introduction of the miniature batteries were increasing factory efficiency by nearly half a percent. The cloth and fabrics were currently being tested as an additional form of ablative armor for larger constructs that could be stretched easily over anything that needed more reinforcement or armoring rapidly. Lining everything inside a factory, or at least wires and pipework, would make them marginally more difficult to sever from stray attacks, letting energy based weapons stay active for longer, and more protection for wiring on drones and tanks in general was an amazing boon.
Which meant his prepwork for going to beacon, and getting team RWBY back to their school was finished, he simply needed to try on his new outfit, tell them he was coming with them, and lead them to the ship that would be taking them far enough from the grimmlands that flight was safe.
He'd just need to ….sail on the ocean. Damn.
AN -
Hoping to get back into the swing of writing. One chapter ahead and a short omake on patreon.
likes and comments fuel the factory.
