At a certain point, I really had to wonder how many bad habits the trial was going to instill in me. Would the interface have let me keep it after the trial? I would have to learn how to forge, craft, and more finely operate on the same level as all of my machines after I was free. That was probably the main way the interface intended for my skill-path to develop.

  That was another confusing aspect. Shouldn’t there have been a level up or something similar already? Some kind of bonus from my path, beyond the scraps of knowledge? Mine was clearly related to crafting, and nothing even surrounding pushing back the need to sleep for days–as the forum post had put it–had been given.

  I had to have been prevented from progressing my path while inside the trial. It clearly had something to do with cybernetics, and I had replaced my feet. That should have been more than worth an upgrade.

  Speaking of the Moon Walkers, I had really started to notice how absolutely terrible the design was. The repulsion bowl was fine, great even, but the joint was stupid and ruined any hope I had of getting a hold of the new feet. More than that, gold was a stupidly heavy metal, and I started to feel the strain on my thighs and shoulder from having metal weighing it down. It was terrible. Even worse was how sweat would build in the cup, and chafe at my skin. It felt like bed bugs had made a nest inside of it.

  And… there was a certain integral change that came from losing your feet. It didn’t matter that the replacements were mostly foot shaped, and roughly the same size, my balance would not be the same ever again. Humans were not meant to lose their feet, and especially not meant to glide. I did not know what went through my head to mess myself up so much so early.

  The interface had to be doing something to me, right? I would not normally consider chopping off my feet and replacing them. But… I did. Maybe it was the trial itself, the fact I had died multiple times, or some horrible combination of all three. The scraps and knowledge gave me ideas, and I started to wonder how many of them were actually mine.

  I could not suppress the fact that the Shade upset me. Both her situation and her behavior. I got it, I understood that she was trying to make me numb to it, but her sympathetic backstory didn’t matter when I had seen her smash my head in and forcefully rot my body down to the bone. What exactly was she?

  I was angry and upset, and none of these trains of thoughts helped me. I stood up, walked into the workshop, and decided to inspect whatever the hell it was the interface decided to give me. Imagine my surprise when I saw another, half-finished pod.

  It looked the same as the HARP, but it was significantly larger, with a suspicious amount of space in the back separate from the actual pod. It grazed the ceiling of the workshop, and it, in conjunction with everything else in the workshop proper, comfortably took up half of the room. There was only one left unoccupied corner, and I couldn’t really imagine what else was supposed to go there.

  The part that pointed to the pod being unfinished was that in the black box attached to the back of it were dozens of mechanical arms that hung on swivels and lacked the tools that were supposed to be attached to them. There was, in the center, a packet that contained pre-made schematics for every one of what had to have been dozens of tools, and that was when I finally made the connection of what it was I was standing in.

  It was the HAAP, which was a significant fall off from its twin. The Harmless Automatic Assembly Pod. And the interface gave it to me at a cost. I would have to spend over two deaths worth of materials for it to actually be usable.

  Which was a fucking scam. Blatantly. There would be some guy, after the trial, who’s path was specifically related to surgery, and I would get that person to cut me open and shove in my machines. I would rock it without internal modifications. I was already this close to beating the Shade afterall. One more try, and I’d have made actual progress.

  No, the only thing I was planning on doing for that life was upgrading the H-TIG.

  H-TIG had become a progressively worse name for my first machine. The gun was never, ever, actually located in my hand, and it had gone from occupying my forearm to my entire right side.

  I didn’t have the HAAP set up yet, so imbedding it into my flesh–to avoid those god-forsaken cups–was beyond me, but I was able to print a solid brace that connected it from the shoulder to the rest of my body. It was still connected, physically, with gold inlays that would shift uncomfortably if I tried to stretch it unreasonably, but the direct upgrades I was able to shove into that thing when focusing on it exclusively were a bit ludicrous.

  Firstly, I now had two fully charged cylinders, each loaded with six fully charged shots. It was… unnecessary. Excessive, considering the fact that I only fired three times in my last fight. Part of the brace that wrapped around my chest–it was made of steel and would uncomfortably dig into my skin–wrapped around my hips as well, and I hung a collapsed cylinder from there.

  I could, on average, switch cylinders in five-ish seconds. The detachment was down to where it was sitting. If it was flush with the barrel, I couldn’t move it beyond changing which shot was next to fire. However, I could hold down a button on the bottom of it and slide it back before swapping it out for the other.

  I was sweating, and pale, and I felt like I was going to have a heart attack after I filled each. I took off the Moon Walkers while drawing up the designs, letting my nubs breathe as I worked, already going back on the vow I had to have made not even five, eight, hours previous.

  It was probably closer to twelve.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  But, something great that I discovered, the fact that the gold now traveled directly from my chest to the H-TIG meant actually pushing the mana in was quicker than ever. Unfortunately, I was left with the uncomfortable fact that I missed my arm.

  My entire right side was aching from strain, and I felt this itch. I could imagine and still feel my old right arm, and the cold steel and gold were off-putting to constantly have attached to me. God, it was so heavy, and even ignoring how well the HARP did with removing it, it still hurt afterwards. I was sad. There were scars on it, from pets and accidents that cemented it as part of me, and the H-TIG would be replaced and cleaned every time I died.

  I would upgrade it again after I died. It was impermanent, and I hated it. Nothing showed that it was real. No wrinkles, no proof that it had existed a moment before this, nothing. I realized the thought was a bit insane, missing my old marks and flesh. This was an objective upgrade. And, with time, it would get better.

  I cried a bit, and rubbed my ankles with my left arm. There was still gold in my leg, poking out slightly from where it connected with my tibia. My skin, from where the cup used to cover, was clammy, and I stared at a birthmark I never realized I had that hovered right above the half-inch indention I made. It looked like a leaf–a posterized version of one–that was a dark pink in contrast to the rest of my flesh. The HARP shaved most of my leg hair, and I likely would have never remembered it.

  When I would extend the Moon Walkers, or replace them entirely–god I hated them–I would make sure it stayed with me.

  It took me… a while to actually get up, put the Moon Walkers back on, and head out towards the Shade. I was letting my mana recharge.

  I didn’t spare much time actually heading out. It was an encounter that spawned based on the distance from the tree. It could have been the distance from the hub, but it was probably the tree. That just made more sense. The Moon Walkers were still, unsurprisingly, ass for balance. But I still made great time, and there was a smile on my face when I managed to stay upright at insane speeds for nearly ten seconds in a row.

  It would fall as soon as I ate dirt, but ten seconds later of success again would repeat the cycle. I did slow as the Shade appeared on the horizon, oddly enough still shirtless. The few holes I had put in her had, once again, healed, and the pile behind her was larger. She raised a jagged, pale claw and pointed at me as I approached, ten feet away and there wasn’t even a hand pressing down on me.

  This would be the fight that determined how the rest of the trial would go.

  “Hero. I… I remembered my name.” She was painted in ragged breaths that reminded me of her rusty armor. “I do not know how the interface will translate my name, but it was-” I flinched, the word starting in a garbled, glitchy noise before understanding slowly dawned like with the Neophyte books. “[Fifth Month],” it said at first, before settling down into “[May].”

  I nodded, slowly. May was probably not at all even related to her name, beyond sharing the common origin of being our species' fifth month. They could have had twenty seven months, but because she was named after the fifth, that was what the interface distilled it down into. A history of meaning, connotation, and odyssey’s that the interface was too piss-poor to actually give.

  I raised my arm, clenching my fist tight as I waited for her to approach. I wouldn’t take the initiative this time. I couldn’t use the same trick twice.

  “I’ll remember it.” I said, and May nodded, before once again rushing at me. I didn’t trust in my balance enough to attempt running and keeping distance like I did last time, and put more faith into my reaction speed. Obviously, a trained warrior, she took advantage of this.

  She grabbed my arm and pointed it down at my own leg. The shot was already set to fire, not timing properly. My mana reacted quick enough that it should have fired before she was able to grab me, but the unreliability of the H-TIG blew off the entire bottom half of my right leg, and I once again lost consciousness.

  My vision fuzzied, and I was grabbed again, down a Moon Walker and leg. I screamed as she wrapped her arms around me, panicking as I felt the rot seep into my open wound and across my back. It was coming from her chest too, attacking every angle it could.

  I refused to die so quickly. I brought my remaining foot to the side of her leg, and started kicking. For ten seconds, I kicked and I kicked, and then I felt something give. It wasn’t her leg, or my chest, but the latch on the bottom. The Moon Walker was closed, and I started pumping mana into it, and stopped kicking.

  The skin along my stomach began to tear. My intestines probably would have fallen out if it wasn’t for the fact she was holding me so tightly. Another ten seconds, and the blood I oozed onto her chest turned black. Another ten seconds, my vision still fading, in and out, and I started to kick again, trying to get the hatch to open.

  I don’t know how long it took, but eventually it did, and I felt my leg snap from the feedback of the explosion. More importantly, I saw the Shade freeze and drop me as I got a look at the damage I laid into her.

  From the bottom of her thigh, to the top of her hip, there was a circular hole in her body. Different, compared to last time, were the cracks that ran through her body, as the wafer thin, dry, hive-like structure shattered and crumbled within her. I was trembling, eyes searing with tears from the pain, and the sight of my blasted off leg nearly made me puke. But the sight of how fragile May was then kept me going.

  I raised my arm while she was distracted and blew off her right one from the shoulder down. She didn’t really react to the pain, more assessing everything as I blew off more of her. Discounting the H-TIG, we were now at the point that we would make a complete person if we accounted for the amount of limbs and damage we each took.

  She reached out to grab me, and I shot again, aiming to take off her head. The H-TIG reacted to my will in a timely manner, but the shot only succeeded in caving in the rest of her chest.

  The Shade did not bleed. She had no organs for me to take out to cripple her. She would fight until every part of her was gone, and even in her state she was able to wrap her remaining hand around my face and force the decay down my throat. I wasn’t able to scream anymore, and slowly felt my features meld together and shrivel up, but I still raised my arm and fired.

  My eyes were gone, I realized as she dropped me, still not able to see. She had lifted me off the ground, but I must have finally hit something to put her down. No retaliation came, and the warmth began to leave my body as the blood flowed free from my leg. My arm felt so cold…