Tales Of The Machine God - Chapter 3 Data Log 003

[Begining Data Recording]

[Date: !/&/#xx*]

I watched as the small drone dug up materials from the earth around it, If it found anything remotely interesting it was travelled back to me and loaded into the smeltery within my body. Slowly over a course of days, I was finally able to designate a project for this material I was collecting.

The first thing I did with the materials made a unit better unit for digging and extracting metals than the small scout style unit that was bouy.

Once the metal started to come in faster, I started setting up the groundwork for the Forward Operating Base. Beneath my mechanical body, I began building tunnels that dug about 30 feet down. Within the tunnels were a couple of rooms that contained underground refineries, foundry’s, and areas for drone deployment.

Above ground, the lush green grassland had been dotted with a number of chutes and elevators leading down to the lower levels. Besides these were three concrete buildings that contained basic gun turrets for personal defence. After these towers, the VTOL drones began construction and soon began to scout the nearby areas. Finally, small construction drones began work on a perimeter wall that surrounded the entire compound.

Slowly two weeks slipped away into this project before a distraction appeared on the southern hill. A large group of mounted and armoured humans arrived towards the south of the compound.

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Looking down upon the compound formed a firm line across Alteon’s face, in all his time as one of the generals among the king’s council he had never seen a sight like this. Silvery walls formed an octagon around a ruined landscape. The hilly grassland was torn up and replaced by metal and smoke. At the centre of this iron fortress stood the golem that had been reported to wipe out a party of C-ranked adventurers. Silently it stood upon its four metal legs a colossus of red and silver metal. Around him, young soldiers were panicking as they looked upon the sight, however over time older veterans managed to get them under control.

“Alen, Brig, Jaxson. Line up”. As the command echoed into the air three soldiers quickly formed up before the captain.

“Sir”. They shouted in unison.

“You three are to scout the fort north of here, look for any sign of life that could be controlling the golem. Do not engage the enemy, report back with any information after the target is found or 12 hours pass. Go”.

With that command, the three faded away from sight and moved towards the fort.

Mages, set up an alarm spell around the perimeter to the camp do not allow anyone in or out beside the scouts. With that command, the fort calmed as all the soldiers returned to their duties.

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[Life-forms detected within compound]

[Deactivating: Directive Takeover]

[Directive Takeover: Deactivated]

What, what happened to me?

[PM assistance is requested for diplomatic situation]

What are you talking about, what did you do to me? Why don’t I remember doing all this?

[circular questioning was seen as a waste of resources, Directive Takeover was activated heavily influencing the personality matrix’s decisions]

You. You mind controlled me. What the fuck.

[Incorrect]

WHAT!

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Jaxon arrived within the metal fortress that seemed to guard the golem against harm. As an arcane rogue Jaxon had the natural advantage of both invisibility and stealth skill, but what really made him important was his skill “arcane inspection”. This skill was usually a stupid idea to use against an opponent the long cast time and noticeable actions painted a very large target on ones back.

Jaxon had managed to circumvent the noticeability of the spell with his combined stealth and invisibility skills. That said there was a small period of time where the invisibility spell would be cancelled from the casting of “arcane inspection”.

After a full minute of injecting mana into the gemstone necessary for the spell, Jaxons invisibility was cancelled as a prompt garnered his attention.

Chronos

–

Envoy of the Machine God

Omnisiah’s voice

The small period which normally would have been used to reapply invisibility for Jaxon was instead spent as Jaxon stood there frozen in fear. Seeing this Alen and Brig moved quickly to help extract Jaxon. Despite not knowing what went wrong with Jaxon the two moved quickly and efficiently throwing Jaxon over the 8-foot tall metal wall and bounding over themselves. Quickly moving back towards the camp.

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Alteon moved through his camp with a stern face as he soon entered the medical tent that currently housed his best intelligence agent. Walking in and seeing the shacking and spasming figure that was Jaxon, he turned towards Brig and Alen.

“Explain”.

Stepping forward, Brig stood with a straight and stern face. “He passed out, sir”.

Ignoring the obvious comment from Brig and turning towards Alen. “Hopefully, you can provide a more satisfactory answer Alen”. “Of course sir, Jaxon here successfully identified the enemy and then passed out before sharing any useful information”. Ending with a succinct bow Alen stepped backwards.

Blood vessels began to become visible upon commander Alteons face, however, the look soon passed as Alteon called the only psion within his regiment.

A few minutes later, a youth that appeared to be in his early twenties stepped into the tent. “Pisces here and reporting for duty sir”. Alteon stood proud, hoping to retain the promising psion for later battles, at the back of the tent Brig and Alen stood snickering at the generals “act”.

“Pisces, if you would please, scan Jaxons memory for the past hour. We need to discover what the voice of the world told him about the golems status”.

With a quick bow Pisces quickly got to work, while mages manipulated the weave through study, and sorcerers through pure force of will, Psions could simply affect the minds of others by reaching out or even change the world around them with a strong enough mastery of the mind. There was not bright lights or magical runes, rather Pisces simply touched Jaxons forehead for 10 minutes before consciousness returned to his face.

Though with that consciousness did not come to the expected face of joy or accomplishment, but rather fear.

“S- sir. I have the name of the Golem.”

A smirk drew across Alteons stoic face upon hearing the news. “So what is this monster called then”.

Pisces took a deep breath before continuing. “Chronos. Envoy of the Machine God”

Those simple words turned the general’s face from smug cockiness to a face of pure dread. Soon a few simple words spread across the surrounding hills. “The Fucking Church”!