Chapter 37: The Butcher's Table (Revised)
Assessment Hub 7 was a place where things got fixed not healed. It was a noisy and chaotic workshop.
Rolf murmured, "Damn!! The air here reeks oil and metal!"
We were herded into a large, cavernous room filled with long steel tables, under the harsh, unflattering glow of buzzing arc-lamps.
Everywhere, there were "units."
A Gear-Goblin who had three mismatched, whirring fingers, was arguing with a clerk about a replacement gear-set. A hulking iron golem sat motionless, while a team of engineers debated whether its core was salvageable.
Nyssa looked at them with an interest of a Scholar. She was in her own world, "If you send the Arcane Energy through that pathway..." I let her be.
Refugees from the Blood-Rank societies were also present. Their faces looked grimy and hopeless. They sat on benches, waiting to be assigned a utility or sent away. There was no pity here, only a brutal, transactional efficiency. We were just more assets on the ledger.
"A pure Capitalistic society where people are just assets." I said in a low tone. It was surprising that how it was surviving till now. Even great Capitalist states had to use the means of Socialism for the people.
After a short, impersonal interview with a clerk, we were directed toward a station in the far corner marked "Prosthetic Integration & Augmentation." She did not even look up from her cog-worked abacus. A sign above it was etched in brass, read: "Master Brakka: Custom Chassis & Limb Solutions."
Master Brakka was a Gear-Goblin. If someone had to describe him he was ancient and crotchety, with skin like old leather and a beard braided with copper wire. This Goblin looked had a mechanical whirring eye that glowed soft blue light. He didn't look up as we approached. His focus was entirely on the delicate task of soldering a wire, which was no thicker than a hair, onto a hummingbird-sized automaton.
"State your name and your malfunction," he grunted. His tone sounded clearly annoyed.
"Name: Grik.," I said, my voice raspy. "Malfunction: Missing Left arm."
He finally looked up, his eyepiece whirring as it focused on the cauterized stump. He grabbed my shoulder, his grip surprisingly strong, and turned me to the light. The blue light from his eye scanned my shoulder. A thin beam traced the lines of the wound.
"Hmph," he grunted. He took a clear look at the bone of my severed hand. "Good clearance on the bone. There is a messy Cauterization. Your hand was in good hands kid. They at least knew how to stop the blood. You're ready for a chassis." He gestured to a wall covered in prosthetic limbs of all shapes and sizes.
"We have Standard Iron-Crank. It is reliable and I can assure a Five-year warranty. You'll be lifting crates by tomorrow."
He pulled down a bulky, mechanical arm from the wall. It was a crude thing of cast iron and exposed pistons. It may be functional but what I needed was something much better than this decoration of a hand.
Rolf growled low in his throat. "He needs something better than a crate-lifter. He is a fighter, old man."
Nyssa stepped forward, "Master Brakka, what are the integration options for high mana conductivity users? Grik possesses a unique bio magical signature that requires a more sophisticated interface."
Brakka snorted, but his eyepiece flickered with interest. "High mana? You lot from the Academy? All flash, no function. The Iron-Crank doesn't care about your 'signature.' It's purely mechanical."
"I have a different proposal," I said, my voice cutting through the noise. I closed my eyes, willing the System into existence.
[Available LP: 300]
I scrolled past weapons, past skills, to the very edge of the System's capabilities, to the section where magic and machinery met. There it was. A gamble.
[Confirm Purchase of Neural-Steam Integration Link?]
[Cost: 300 LP]
[Description: A bio-magical firmware that allows the user's core to interface directly with steam-powered mechanics. Treats compatible machinery as a biological extension for the purpose of mana-channeling.]
'YES.'
My final LP vanished. A new understanding bloomed in my mind. I now had the knowledge of a schematic for a connection that shouldn't be possible.
"I have the schematics for a Neural-Steam Integration Link," I said, opening my eyes. I pushed a trickle of mana into the air between us, projecting the System's design as a faint, shimmering green hologram of interlocking arcane and mechanical parts. "It will allow my bio-signature to act as the power source and control mechanism. I don't need a crank. I am the crank."
Brakka's mechanical eye widened. It whirred and clicked, a series of lenses focusing and refocusing as it scanned the impossible design hovering in the air. A slow and greedy grin spread across his face. " This is a direct core-to-boiler interface. By the Great Cog, this is innovative! It's brilliant! Get on the table, boy. Now!"
He scurried to his workbench, grabbing the necessary hardware with practiced speed: a heavy, reinforced piston-arm, a compact turtle-shell boiler unit, and a spool of thick copper cabling.
Looking at the table, I felt a shiver down my spine. 'You are going to attach me an arm! At least prepare a bed, you old fart!'
The "table" was a cold steel slab. YES! A steel Slab! The "Surgery" was a horror. Brakka simply clamped a metal brace over my shoulders, took a pneumatic drill that screamed like a dying donkey, and began boring holes into my shoulder blade and collarbone.
The sound was hideous. I could feel a grinding, screeching agony that vibrated through my entire skull. I bit through my lip, tasting blood, my body arching against the restraints. Through it all, I had to focus, to maintain the [Neural-Steam Integration Link], manually guiding the raw, unformed connections, willing my nerves to reach out and embrace the cold brass and steel he was about to bolt into me.
"Brace yourself, boy!," Brakka grunted as he was holding up a brass bolt the thickness of my thumb.
He drove it home with a hydraulic press. The world went white.
When I came to, the arm was attached. It was a heavy, dead weight, a cold, alien thing bolted to my skeleton. Wires ran from the base into the small, intricate boiler unit that sat on my back like a metal turtle shell.
"The connections are live," Brakka said, wiping grease from his hands. "The rest is up to you, heretic. Don't blow my workshop up."
My team was there, their faces etched with concern. Rolf's hand was a comforting weight on my good shoulder. Nyssa was watching, her mind clearly running diagnostic calculations.
I closed my eyes and ignored the throbbing, deep-seated pain from the bolts in my bones. I reached for my core, for the familiar green-gold-shadow-crimson energy of my pack. But this time, I didn't channel it outward. I poured it inward. Down to the new pathways the Link had forged into the dead metal bolted to my side.
I treated the arm like a new squad member. I initiated the [Sovereign's Chain].
A hiss of steam escaped from the boiler on my back. A low whirr of gears, like a clockwork heart coming to life, echoed from the metal limb. The fingers twitched. The dead weight vanished, replaced by a sense of presence, of solidity. I had a left arm again.
I slowly pushed myself up, the new arm pressing against the steel table. It felt strong. Incredibly strong. I looked around and spotted a piece of scrap metal lying in a bin. I reached for it with my new hand.
My fingers, made of interlocking brass plates, closed around the rod. A small pressure gauge on my wrist, marked with a simple 'PSI' dial, began to tick upwards. I squeezed.
The iron rod didn't bend. It screamed. With a sound like tearing metal, it crumpled in my grasp, folding in on itself until it was a misshapen lump of scrap.
A new System notification blinked in my vision.
[New Equipment: Piston-Driven Vanguard Arm (Grade: Industrial Prototype)]
[Passive: Kinetic Charge - Every second in combat builds 'Steam Pressure' (+5% Strength per stack).]
I looked at the mangled piece of metal in my hand, then tossed it back into the bin. I flexed the brass fingers, feeling the heavy hum of the boiler on my back. I looked at Rolf, Kaelith, and Nyssa.
"Listen to me," I said, my voice cutting through the ambient noise of the workshop. "This Neural-Steam link is highly experimental. It is directly wired into my nervous system and my mana core. If you see my aura violently spike, or if I suddenly move with impossible speed, do not panic. It just means the man stream is over-pressurizing into my nervous system and causing a temporary kinetic overload. It's a feature."
Nyssa looked at me with caring gaze, "I understand, Grik. But please make sure to take care of yourself." She closed the distance between us and held my hand, "I do not want to experience that dreadful moment when I cut your degrading hand." He eyes were filled with warmth.
Kaelith came close and hit my head with a light smack. I agonized in pain. "What was that for?!" To which Kaelith said, "Nyssa is not the only one who was worried, you know? I care too." Her voice felt soft as her emotions could be felt from it.
Rolf looking at us getting sentimental approached us with open arms. "A GROUP HUG!!" I was squashed between my squad members, but it was a feeling I could not let go of. I wanted to stay in their embrace, but we didn't know we had a big problem coming our way.