Dornheim was gradually sinking into silence as the exhausted villagers dispersed to their homes. Elyria, hovering briefly in front of Iron, curtly announced that she had urgent business to attend to. Iron just gave a tired, short nod: "Okay." The spirit vanished among the dark trees, and the camp completely emptied out.
Only Noah remained on the empty, trampled grounds near the workshop. In pitch darkness, he stood motionless, gripping his weapon tightly.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to focus completely. Noah concentrated sharply, intentionally forcing the entire flow of his blood into his right arm.
A sharp swing of the blade produced a whistle, but... nothing happened.
Noah gritted his teeth, returning to his starting stance. Concentration again, a rush of blood again. A swing.
"Damn it," escaped hollowly from his chest.
Another swing—and nothing again.
"Damn it!" Noah repeated the motion, faster, harder.
"Damn it! Damn it!"
Yet another swing ended in nothing. Breathing heavily, Noah lost it. In a fit of rage, he hurled his weapon to the ground.
"What the hell?!" he growled quietly into the void.
Noah fell back, sprawling out on his back right on the damp earth. For a few minutes, he just lay there motionless, staring at the stars.
He slowly stretched his right arm upward, as if trying to catch the distant light with his fingers, and his voice broke into a barely audible whisper:
"I'm sorry, Grandpa... Grandma... I couldn't save you. And them... looks like I won't be able to either."
Noah fell silent, feeling powerlessness boiling up inside him.
"What am I supposed to do..."
He froze for a second, staring at the sky, and then abruptly pressed his palms against his face and shook his head, forcefully knocking the momentary weakness out of his thoughts.
"No," he said firmly to himself, getting to his feet. "I have to keep going."
Noah walked over to his discarded weapon, picked it up, wiped the blade dry on his clothes, and got back into a fighting stance.
A week passed. Dornheim was humming with hard work, but by the end of the seventh day, a fourth golem was already standing on the assembly site. Exhausted workers bustled around the massive machine, tightening the last of the armor mountings.
Iron, standing a little ways off, carefully inspected the structure.
"Clear out," Iron commanded quietly, but clearly.
The workers, already used to this routine over the week, fell back to the edges of the site. Iron pulled out his pistol, cocked the hammer, and shot the golem right in the chest.
Another deafening roar, the familiar bright red flash of energy, and the dry crack of shattering metal. The machine turned into scrap. However, a moment later, the hardwired physical algorithm kicked in. A second passed—and the golem stood motionless again, gleaming with intact armor.
Four golems in a week. A good result, though I was aiming for at least seven, Iron noted mentally, putting away his weapon. But out loud, he just gave a tired order to the crowd: "That's it for today. Great work, everyone."
The men stretched their tired backs in relief and started to disperse. Iron, meanwhile, leaning heavily on his cane, slowly made his way to his workshop.
Somehow making it to his workstation, he sank into his chair with a sigh of relief and set the cane aside.
Walking with a cane is definitely harder than with stilts, he thought.
Iron's gaze fell on the workbench. Lined up neatly next to his tools were four pistols, assembled over this same week.
Four pieces in seven days, he thought grimly, rubbing his temples. If I keep assembling weapons by hand, it'll take us more than a month just to issue a pistol to everyone in the camp. Iron shook his head. Everyone in the village.
Too slow. You can't build a defense like this. I need a different scale.
Iron leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, and began running through options in his head.
Maybe design a massive reactor?
He immediately shook his head, tossing the thought aside. No, right now that's a pointless waste of resources.
Then, maybe reconnaissance drones?
Iron chuckled and raised an eyebrow. Why mess around with microchips? We have Elyria. How is she not a drone? She flies fast, sees everything, her camouflage is perfect. Scratch that.
So, do we need a huge stationary spotlight to blind the enemy? Or a colossal flamethrower for the main gates?
At this thought, Iron let out a quiet, hysterical laugh, covering his eyes with his palm. What kind of stupid ideas were creeping into his head from pure exhaustion.
I needed a completely different solution. Something automatic, autonomous, capable of mowing down enemies in batches without human involvement. And at the same time, large-scale—something where just five of them would be enough to lock down the entire outer perimeter of Dornheim.
Iron abruptly opened his eyes and sat up straight.
"Automated turrets?"
He pulled a clean sheet of paper toward him, grabbed a pencil, and sketched out the first draft of the mechanism.
"That'll do."
While a pencil fiercely scratched away in Iron's workshop, Darwin was laying low in the infirmary. His health was perfectly fine, but Albert's quiet office had become a great place to catch his breath after a brutal week on the assembly site. They were chatting, discussing the technical quirks of the newly finished golems and their ability to reassemble after being shot.
Albert, wiping down his medical instruments with a clean cloth, shot a sideways glance at the guy sitting on the cot.
"Are you sure you want to spend your evening talking to me?" the doctor asked calmly.
Darwin raised an eyebrow in surprise, snapping out of his thoughts:
"What are you talking about?"
"Well, it's just that there are some young girls in the communal kitchen right now, cooking food," Albert nodded toward the window, where the distant hum of voices was coming from. "And... it seemed more logical to me that you'd be somewhere over there."
Darwin instantly flushed bright red and sat up indignantly:
"Who do you take me for?!"
Albert just chuckled quietly, not even turning his head toward him.
"Oh, come on. At your age, I don't think those kinds of thoughts would hurt. It's about time."
"Maybe so," Darwin abruptly cooled off, and his face suddenly grew unusually serious. He looked down at his hands, stained with ingrained metal shavings. "But right now, the most important thing for me is to be a reliable pillar of support for Iron. You see for yourself how hard he pushes himself. He's literally sleeping on blueprints, walking on the edge of exhaustion. And why does he do it? What's driving him so hard?"
Albert set his tweezers aside, turned to the young man, and looked at him closely.
"I don't know, Darwin. Iron has his own demons in his head," the doctor said softly. "But if you ask me, you're already a reliable pillar of support for him. Without your hands and your dedication to his ideas, half of those iron machines would have remained just scribbles on paper."
Darwin got noticeably flustered by such directness. He awkwardly scratched the back of his head, averted his eyes toward the window, and muttered quietly:
"Thanks, I guess... But I don't for a second think I've done enough. I have to keep working."
Meanwhile, things were bustling in the communal kitchen. Clara, along with the other girls and women, was preparing dinner: cauldrons sat over the fire, and the smell of stewed meat and roots hung in the air. Noah appeared in the doorway. He dumped the carcass of an animal he'd hunted in the forest onto the floor.
"Thanks, Noah," Clara called out, not looking up from chopping vegetables.
Noah, not answering a word, turned around and walked right back out.
Elyria, watching this from above, sighed. She had been flying around Dornheim for an hour, mindlessly tracing circles over the village, and the sheer boredom was putting her to sleep. Spotting a familiar figure below, she sharply dive-bombed, hovering right in front of Noah's face.
"You're always walking around with this look like you just ate a whole bag of sour berries," she threw out mockingly, blocking his path. "Maybe you could smile for once? Or else your mug is gonna start scaring even the trees soon, and they'll stop giving us fruit."
"Just shut up," he snapped coldly, not looking at the spirit.
Elyria threw her hands up indignantly, doing a flip in the air.
"First of all, you shut up! And second, why are you such a bore? Why don't we spar? We haven't done that in a while. You're not sleeping anyway, so you might as well get some exercise."
Noah stopped. He looked at Elyria, then toward the dark forest.
"Fine," he agreed curtly.
Meanwhile, Marek and Gaston stood frozen at the assembly site. They were silently examining the golems.
"Gaston, do you think there's even a single monster in the forest capable of beating them?" Marek asked quietly, crossing his arms over his chest.
Gaston stared at the massive shoulders of the machines for a long time, taking his time to answer.
"I don't know," he finally exhaled. "But to be honest, I doubt it. I think not."
Runa ran up to them. She stopped nearby, tilting her head back and staring at the golems with the exact same look as the men.
"Runa, are you wondering if this golem could withstand a pack of monsters too?" Marek smiled, noticing her presence.
"Yeah," the girl nodded, not taking her eyes off the metal.
Marek stayed quiet for a moment, then changed the subject:
"And how are Aiden and Kaiden? Doing alright?"
"Aiden is asleep at home," Runa answered. "And Kaiden is keeping an eye on him."
A couple of seconds later, she suddenly caught herself, stamping her foot:
"Oops! Why did I even come over here? I wanted to call you to help us with the cooking, cause we can't manage on our own."
Marek nodded without hesitation:
"Sure, let's go."
And together, they headed toward the communal kitchen.
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