Chapter 11 (1/2)

11.LITTLE GIRL SORTS THINGS OUT AFTER BATTLE

With the battle over, now all that remained to do was dealing with the aftermath.

First of all would be to deal with the remaining people of the bandit group, but actually most of the bandits had already died in battle. There were some that escaped, and it seemed there had been about three people that remained inside the fort.

The reason why it “seemed” was because those people were already dead by that point. When Bela and Borudo found them, they were in an atrocious shape. It seemed that they were beaten to death by the women they had captured.

At the time they were captured from their villages, they had their husbands and children killed. With the positions of the strong and the weak s.h.i.+fted, this was the expected, and was what probably happened to those bandits.

Because the women seemed to be dealing with themselves well enough on their own, Bela didn´t say anything in particular. The bandits that died didn´t have prices for their heads. That said, she also couldn´t let them escape.

It was a pain to sell the ones she caught as slaves, and originally, Bela didn´t think too much about what she should do with them other than just killing them. To begin with, however, by having been killed by Bela, they were able die a more peaceful death than they would have otherwise.

Bela ordered Borudo to collect the heads of the machiini pilots and the salamas pilot and to collect all the gold and any goods there were inside the fort. The reason why Bela herself didn´t move out to do that was because she didn´t know how the released girls would act.

It was a basic rule that the person that killed the bandits could take their possessions, and if you could find something that used to belong to someone else, it was possible to hand it back to them in exchange of a large sum. However, with the value of the things the bandits got by raiding the surrounding region being obvious, all Borudo could find were actually only things that you couldn´t hold much expectation about.

Moreover, while Borudo was wandering looking around the place, it could be said that Bela was checking up her own machiini [Aiandinna], looking for possible improvements. After Bela finished inspecting her machiini and decided what she should do, she called Borudo for more work.

“s.h.i.+t, for you to make a old man work around like that… You won´t die a peaceful death, you… My master…”

“Hyahya, am I supposed to be worrying about how I will die with my age? I will be fine, so just do it already.”

While laughing off Borudo´s abusive language, Bela watched [Aiandinna]´s modifying operation. The modification consisted of removing [Aiandinna]´s left hand and replacing it with the arm Abares´ machiini had.

Many little auxiliary arms left out from both the arms of Borudo´s gnome [Bakkas]. He used them to detach [Aiandinna]´s left arm. After having finished doing that, he also removed the exterior part and the various attachments on the joint, so on proceeding to remove the arm.

Because it seemed that [Aiandinna] and Abares´ machiini had a correspondent set-up, the attachment went well. There were pretty much no problems with the transmission rate in the connection of the nerves, so it could be used in the same way as the previous arm Bela was familiar with. So that the gimmick could be used, it was necessary to change [Aiandinna]´s structure itself.

In fact, people still couldn´t understand about most of the so called “Makino”, the machinery which occupied more than half of the inner structure of the machiini.

If there was correlation between the machiinis, it was possible for people to detach and attach parts on their own. However, with the need of changing the inner structure, it was necessary to expend frana and to modify the structure itself.

Because all it was possible to do by the machiini itself was to [repair] and [strengthen] the structure no matter how much frana you were to spend, in order to have that gimmick “special ability” to be transferred, the element´s machinery adjustment functionality was indispensable.

The dwarf´s gnomes in particular were good in that area, and without Borudo being an exception to that, he was good at readjusting machiinis.

“But this is really a weird view.”

Bela muttered that as she watched the display of [Aiandinna]´s left arm being put onto its side torso part and the s.h.i.+ne of the magic power gleaming in a flowing manner.

[They say the small G.o.ds that live in iron mold it based on the design granted by heavens… apparently.]

From inside his gnome, Borudo said that as he carried on with his work.

“What do you mean?”

[Who knows? I just heard it from a fable of my kin. Also, that what we call frana would be the offering we give to those small G.o.ds, or so they say.]

Frana was the energy you get from killing greater beasts and destroying machiinis and that is absorbed by the dragon heart stone. It was similar to mana, but strictly speaking, it had its differences. By using up this energy, it was possible to improve one´s machiini.

After that, by Bela´s rapid succession of indications in the details, Borudo also changed the armor, installed a short sword at the waist, and attached a s.h.i.+eld at the left hand too. After finis.h.i.+ng all that, [Aiandinna]´s modifications were finally finished and night was already approaching.

——–

In the next day, Bela and Borudo gathered the machiinis of the bandit group they destroyed in the center of the fort. They decided to bring with them only one machiini, and they destroyed the dragon heart stones of the remaining ones for the sake of gathering the frana inside.

However, even the mechanical carca.s.s could become merchandize. It could become the foundation of a new machiini, and by disarranging it in pieces, it was also possible to use them on other machiinis in the same way that it was done to [Aiandinna].

The ones that were specialized on recovering those sort of things were those that worked as scavengers. Hence, Bela intended to ask Kohza for that once she got back to the city.