Chương 298: Long Overdue

Following the bizarre revelation in the Gravescape that the creator of this place seemingly lost his freaking mind and decided that it was totally worth it to slaughter everyone else to try and summon a devil to cure his…

'Boredom', I decided not to pay much attention to this and restrain my curiosity about the fate of the man himself. I prepared accordingly and went to find the room that had been prepared specifically to accommodate Mari and her mechanistry endeavours. The room was large, and despite her odd personality, everything was very tidy.

Actually, when everything was tidy, clean, and quiet like this, it meant that Mari wasn't currently working on anything, and judging by the way she was walking circles around things covered in white sheets, I could already guess that she had successfully found a way to assist me in concealing my identity, and was now worrying about what I was going to think about it, especially since I had made quite a big gift if she were to succeed. Would you look at that, she's all prettied up as well…

Mari had switched from her usual attire, covered in grime, oil stains, and other messes, and instead shifted to her second kind of clothes. She was frantically dusting her shoulders to get anything off her light brown waistcoat and white shirt, carefully rearranging the red tie she was wearing as if her reward was a job interview–Well, I suppose that it might actually be how she felt it was going to go.

As smart and obsessed as Mari was, she wasn't actually that emotionally savvy, so in spite of my hints and bold-faced confession that I was willing to make her my girlfriend when I spoke of a reward, she still didn't get it, or perhaps she didn't manage to convince herself that it was true. It was a good thing to keep her from finding out about Leou and me. She might have had a heart attack otherwise. I smiled lightly with my 'Gynoid Form'.

It still felt surreal to be able to return to what was essentially my human self, as nice as it was, though, I only cared about the time limit hard-built into the form when it came to infiltration matters. I didn't care much about maintaining this form in my daily activities. I had long accepted that I was a multi-form monster and no longer a human–Regardless, this form was great when it came to this kind of relationship, for rather obvious reasons, as none of the others had the… Huh…

'Equipment' required to actually do anything that couples were supposed to do. As funny as the mental image was, trying to kiss someone in my 'Base Form' was simply impossible, and the only other form that had a tongue was the 'The Cauchemar Beast' of the 'Nightmare Form'. … I would like to say that a rotten tongue hidden at the depth of two murderous maws on a hulking monstrosity would be an issue, but as I think about it, I can't help but feel that neither Leou nor Mari would mind kissing that thing.

I held a small bit of hope that they wouldn't, but all that I knew about them pointed to the opposite being the truth. I stretched my robotic limbs and listened for the popping noise of articulations. … Still not quite right with those. In my pursuit of a perfectly realistic 'Gynoid Form' meant to fool even the most attentive of people, I was even trying to replicate the 'pop' articulations that it would sometimes make.

Nara had been kind enough to tell me that it was due to trapped air that was released, but automating the process so that I could use it at will to show how life-like I was, was proving to be quite difficult. Anyway… At the moment, instead of wearing my usual dark mantle, I had dropped it, revealing the light grey, ample shirt that I usually wore underneath it. That thing was tucked into my pants, but was actually impressively baggy.

I had grown quite fond of this style, but originally, it was so baggy to conceal my overly wide shoulders, and also to not make it obvious that I was flatter than a cutting board. It was more effective than most would imagine. It hid an attribute of mine that made me intimidating, and also allowed onlookers to work their imagination a bit. As effective as it was, it had never been enough for me to find a good man, but it would definitely be effective on Mari. I rolled up the sleeves, revealing my muscular forearms.

I couldn't help but inspect them myself–I had done a very good job, especially with the veins.

"Mari" My voice rang out and echoed into the large room that was still mostly empty. Mari jumped up in surprise, I hadn't tried to sneak up on her, but she had been so busy inside of her own head that she didn't notice my approach at all.

"M-Mara! I, huh… I" She stopped to collect herself.

"I have concocted a way to throw people off and make them doubt their own deep-seated beliefs" It was rather impressive how eloquent she could be when actually focused, especially when a second ago she was stumbling on her own words and looked like her skeleton was going to jump out of her own skin and try to run away from the scene. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

I nodded, taking a step forward, getting closer than Mari was used to, forcing her to collect herself again as I spoke.

"That sounds interesting. I assume that your creation is hidden beneath these white sheets?"

"Y-Y-Yes…" She cleared her throat and, after some hesitation, moved away from me to pull the sheets off, revealing something that I hadn't been expecting, as I hadn't been checking on what she had been doing. Standing before me were three automatons with the appearance of my 'Base Form', but rather than perfect replicas, they were all intentionally quite different despite the close resemblance. The one on the left was actually golden, and as Mari soon demonstrated, its dot-like eyes were a deep ocean blue.

The one in the middle was the most similar to me at a glance, but this one's maw was a bit different. It was shorter than I was even before my growth spurts, and had green eyes. And the one on the right was bronze-coloured, was taller than my current base form, had menacingly red eyes, and had an extra arm coming out of its chest.

"These are the first three that I made to show you… Aherm, they are… I mean…

This isn't an upgrade to change how you look, but after thinking about it, I figured that instead of changing your appearance, it would be more effective to introduce 'creatures' similar to you into the wild, casting doubt on whether you truly were the one all those adventurers and such are looking for, or if you were simply part of this new kind of entities, and was thus likely to have nothing with the purple-eyed one they are seeking out" Mari explained her reasoning, and I quite liked the solution she came up with.

I could already alter the colour of my eyes, thus severing myself from the most incriminating part about my appearance, as people always recognised at a glance the oddness of this shade of purple. As such, introducing these automatons who looked a lot like me, but had clear differences, could completely throw everyone on my tail off. They would have no choice but to consider the possibility that the 'me' that worked with Leou was completely different from the master of the Nightmare Plague.

It was frankly genius, and Mari had really thought outside the box to come up with this solution–Not to mention that building automatons like these was simply a great idea in general. Nonetheless, my personal mechanist fiddled with her fingers.

"... Excuse my incompetence, but I think they'll need to be possessed to work properly…" I placed my hand against the top of her head.

"Really, you think that's incompetence that you couldn't figure out how to make them work forever as they scour the land? Cut yourself some slack. Besides, I have an innate ability that I haven't used much beyond tests that is perfect for this" Indeed, I have 'Tortured Soul Imbuement', which is specifically about imbuing the souls and spectres I own into mechanical constructs. If I do things well, I could even give these automatons abilities as long as I create the right spectral servants for the job.

"Building many of these will be a lengthy process, though, won't it?"

"Well, yes, but I have the steps engraved in my memory, so it should be fine" I continued to caress her hair, a fact Mari only now seemed to realise as she turned beet red, but instead of retreating in embarrassment, she smiled wryly and stayed in place, definitely hoping for me to continue. Since my 'Gynoid Form' had access to the same stuff as the 'Base Form', I was able to summon one of my spirits. As it popped into being, Mari didn't react much despite its rather horrifying appearance.

The ghost had the look of a dried corpse wearing mage robes. He had pointy ears, but the most noticeable thing about him was his face, or rather, his lack of one. The face was hollow and only gave way to a dark abyss from which four tendril-like, shadowy hands crawled out, moving through the air like floating snakes. This was the tortured soul of Vilador, the expert in golem crafting and spirit making, whom I had assassinated a while back.

Much like Kyrtian, he had lost a lot in the transformation, but he retained his ability to craft golems and automatons just fine. I made sure to even empower that side of him. I even went as far as finding space to give him more hands to work with. He could no longer create spirits, so giving 'life' to his golems and automatons would fall onto me, but it really didn't matter much. I was the one with the superior spirits anyway, and removing one of his core skills only allowed me to empower the rest further.

As such, Vilador would make an excellent assistant for Mari alongside the strongmen I had already provided to Mari.

"I suppose they could even be further personalised to give them upgrades akin to mine to further push that they and I are merely part of the same species. It will be suspicious how my kind just suddenly shows up, but I myself am already a ghost possessing a machine, so no one should find them to be that different from me" I could already envision unleashing hundreds of those guys all over the place with Leou's assistance. It would be absolutely glorious, and as I thought about it, we could do even better.

"We'll make one that wears antlers alongside appropriate clothes, and we'll send it to Louwoods" Mari didn't quite get what I meant by that, but if she did, she would immediately realise that I was trying to separate the purple-eyed automatons–Also known as myself–From past events, further muddying the waters. I bet this would make a certain small detective lose her mind… I turned to Mari.

"You did a great job. I had been focusing too much on an upgrade to solve my problem, but you were able to think outside the box just fine. You've truly shown that you aren't my personal mechanist for no reason, Mari""T-Thank you, Mara…"

"I know you love the praises, but I think it is finally time to move on to the main reward. I am sorry that I left you hanging for so long. I remained stuck on my desire to start a family with a man, despite that possibility having been gone for a long time now""As much as that desire still exists within me, I've let it take a back step, and I have realised that I do not just have nothing against a relationship with women…" I leaned forward.

"... I actually quite enjoy them" Mari couldn't even make a sound before I pulled her in and pressed my lips against her, picking her off the ground with one arm as I swiped everything off a nearby table with the other, sitting her on top of it. I stepped back and brushed her hair behind her reddened ear.

"Are you ready?"