Dropping the pile of garbage from the shed in front of the workshop, Ryan slightly stretched. It wasn't really that any of this stuff was heavy, it was just unhandy and annoying to carry. Half-rusted and broken bikes, deflated leather balls, piles and piles of random pieces of wood in various sizes and levels of refinement. There were pieces of split firewood, leftover wooden floorboards, and even a log that had been torn out of the ground, roots and all.

  Of course, there were also various old cardboard boxes and plastic trash, old metal tins and even some cans of old, pitch black oil. In the very back corner there were some remnants of an old wasp hive that had been abandoned quite a while ago. Though even if they were still there, Gaia would actually be able to just ask them to leave.

  They almost had some problems with wasps a couple weeks ago, but she was able to just use her Little Helpers skill to get them settled somewhere else where they didn't bother anyone directly. Now, Gaia just had them come by and help out as pollinators when the local butterflies weren't able to do all that she wanted them to.

  All these things, which were effectively just heaps of trash, were going to be salvaged by Gregor. The only parts that Ryan figured he'd keep were the untreated pieces of wood, since they could be used for things like campfires. It was never a bad idea to have a bit of spare firewood around, anyway, in the case of an emergency.

  It probably wouldn't happen in a city like New Riverside, and this house specifically had some emergency batteries all over the place, but it happened more than once that Ryan's whole hometown lost electricity and hot water for a couple days. Whether it was a dungeon obstructing the proper functioning of the grid or some wannabe villain destroying or attacking the local powerplants. One time, it happened in the middle of winter, and Ryan had to walk all across town to get a haul of firewood from a family-friend's shop. Again, it probably wouldn't happen here, but you could never be too careful.

  But for the time being, Gregor was able to get started salvaging all these materials. To allow him to do so a bit faster and work at a better quality, he swapped out who of the spirits he was currently unsealing. Technically he could unseal two at once, but if he wanted Gregor to be at 3/10th scale for this, it would be draining his mana far too much to do it with him and Gaia at the same time. So, Gaia returned to her original size for the time being, allowing her to take a short break as well, while the rusty automaton grew to be more than half a metre tall.

  Ryan grabbed one of the bottles standing on one of the high-up shelves and gave it to Gregor. Like his other skills, for this one to work properly, Gregor had to 'fuel up'. He twisted the cap off the bottle of high-proof starkian whiskey.

  Ryan tried some of it, but it practically tasted like poison to him. Well, technically that's what alcohol was, but with this, it was even more obvious. It probably would have been more pleasant to drink hand sanitizer than this. But Gregor seemed to love it, so he kept a regular stock of it. It was cheap as hell, anyway.

  Gregor placed the bottle against his metallic mouth and poured some of it down. It sounded like filling up a gas tank for a few moments, until the robot's stance sort of mellowed out. He was less stiff than before, and quickly stepped toward the pile of materials.

  The three arms hidden and folded up on his back quickly appeared, floating just a few inches away from his body. Beside Gregor's two regular arms, he still had the 'High-Power Drill', 'Precision Assembly', and 'High-Strength' arms that were useful for him this process.

  Ryan never got bored of watching this next part. It was just so interesting to him. Since he constructed Gregor's body from the ground up, and even placed all of his internal machinery precisely where it was supposed to be, he had a pretty good understanding of what he looked like on the inside, but there were tons of parts with functions he didn't understand. But this skill revealed the function of one of them.

  There was a small hatch on Gregor's back. It wasn't big, maybe as large as the robot's regular fist at any time, but it was still notable and Ryan never got it to open. Behind that hatch was just a small empty container anyway, hooked up with tubes that didn't connect to anything. But with the activation of the skill, and a dull clicking sound, something changed inside of Gregor.

  The robot's main hands quickly started transforming into those same precise tools that he used to create the parts for his machinery, but instead, he just cut everything up into small chunks. His other arms were a little less sophisticated in the process, but they all did the same thing - they were tearing down the materials in any possible way, and quickly stuffed them into Gregor's mouth.

  There were small, spiked crushing wheels covering the inside of his mouth and throat that protruded with the activation of the skill as well, and everything that Gregor stuffed into his mouth was broken apart into its finest parts. Within him, some magical effect, the actual skill, then did something to those materials. Soon, the hatch on Gregor's back was ready to be opened.

  One of his hands, the precision assembly hand was the most suited for it in this case, opened the hatch and quickly started to take out a bunch of cubes out of the red-hot glowing space, stacking and sorting them on the side next to him.

  Gregor's 'salvaging' for metal took the form of some kind of furnace. It happened at an illogical speed, but that was just the effect of the skill. The rusty, old metal bike soon turned into fairly high-quality steel cubes that could later be processed into machinery through Gregor's other skills. Actually, Modak made use of them sometimes as well, collaborating with the robot to create particular pieces by cheating the blueprint system a little bit here and there.

  Before long, though, Gregor got to the next parts of the process. Wood. The hatch, or furnace, almost immediately cooled down and started rearranging itself into a different form. Similarly, Gregor's mouth and throat also changed. Now, he just pushed the pieces of wood into his mouth in one straight piece, and they would come back out somehow completely 'fixed' in the form of new wooden blanks. They weren't huge planks, of course - the size-outcome of these salvaged materials also depended on Gregor's size, another reason why Ryan unsealed him as much as possible, but they were still more usable than the formerly bug-eaten, rotten wood that was barely even useful for a fire the way it was before.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Ryan made sure to help stack and sort all the new materials that Gregor was salvaging, putting them into their designated spots here in the workshop shed. It took about half an hour for Gregor to get through the first batch of things from inside that packed shed. Him and Gaia were only able to clear out a little more than a third of it so far, but they should be able to get through it relatively quickly. At the very least, by the end of the day, it should be cleared out well enough to turn it into the freezer that Ryan wanted to make it at least for tomorrow's party. After that, they could take their time to figure out what else it could be used for.

  During this entire process, the small sphere of mana was still floating next to Ryan. He was actually able to keep it together surprisingly well while going through all that manual labour. Maybe it was because he didn't have to think that much, and didn't really get super distracted in the process. Either way, his confidence was growing and with that, the speed at which he could work today also grew more and more.

  And so, while Gregor continued downing his drinks as a reward for work well done, Ryan and Gaia returned to the other shed.

  The pitch black car came to a halt with a slight skid over the old, badly cared for asphalt. It was so hot here that it looked like the road was about to melt and flow off onto the gutters on the side. This road was already barely wide enough for one car, so you couldn't really afford to lose any more of it to the heat.

  The passenger side door opened first, and Runar stepped out. He looked around, immediately uncertain. Just to make sure, he looked over at Yamada who had just gotten out as well, quickly signing to her.

  "Are you sure that we're in the right place? This is the address we were given?"

  The demon nodded her head. She carefully rested her right hand on one of the pistols strapped to her hip, while quickly signing back.

  "I'm positive. It's a bit out of the way, but did you really expect us to find clues in a normal place?" she asked, quickly closing the door. Despite her slamming it, it didn't make any sound at all. Runar had specially installed some runes because Yamada used to ruin missions like this just by how loud she could get without thinking.

  Runar sighed slightly. He pushed his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small glasses case. In there was a pair of spectacles - sunglasses specifically - with tiny runes etched onto the thin metal frame.

  After a moment of hesitation, Runar placed the glasses onto his nose and started taking a look around. Really, just as Yamada said, this wasn't a normal place.

  It was a house built in the middle of some fields, about four hours out of New Riverside, and there was not a single town, village, or even hamlet in sight.

  "What's with the empty fields?" Yamada wondered, glancing around. There was nothing growing in the fields. They had clearly not been abandoned and were actually taken care of pretty well. The soil was loose and wet, and was clearly dug up quite recently, but it was still a bit too early for most common crops to be harvested. Though, that wasn't a concern in the first place.

  "... A couple decades ago, things just kind of stopped growing here. Nobody could figure out what exactly happened here, so it was just chalked up to some kind of anomalous mana that shifted the nutrients in the ground just so slightly so that it made the ground barren or something. Apparently the family went to investigate it back when it first happened, but they couldn't figure anything out, so the area was just abandoned. Or... it was supposed to be."

  Runar stepped forward toward the house in front of him. When he heard that someone lived here, he thought that there was some kind of old farmhouse in the area, with some old kook living in it that refused to abandon his family home despite the state of the fields. But that wasn't it at all. It was a townhouse.

  A four-story, quite slim house, that you could see plenty in New Riverside. It appeared quite modern, and Runar wouldn't be shocked to be told that someone just up and plucked it right out of a fancy newtown neighbourhood. But the, by far, weirdest part about this house was that there was no magic running through this place.

  There was the regular ambient magic, of course, but there were no cables run through the ground to provide magic. Even in the documents Runar searched up, there were only records of some repairs being done to the electrical cables around twenty years ago, and there were no contracts with local energy providers either. But the house was brimming with the light of a specific type of magical lantern that was supposed to be more energy efficient than others of its kind.

  Even through these powerful mana-seeing glasses, he couldn't see the flow that was connected to powerful generators or ambient mana collectors either.

  But at the end of the day, there was only one thing Runar had to do. He walked up the steps to the entrance of the townhouse and knocked. Yamada was standing at the bottom of the steps, keeping an eye out, her hands tightly on her guns that she had moved slightly behind her back.

  And a few moments later, the door opened up. What Runar saw surprised him even more. It was a little old lady - quite literally. She was an elderly Mustiar, her fur had gone a pale grey all over and had already lost its shine and lustre. Standing at barely a metre tall even at her peak, this woman now was even shorter than that. Thick, round glasses were making her eyes look just absolutely massive. Even with those, could she see anymore?

  "Excuse me, ma'am, are you..." Runar hesitated for a moment, "... Esther Apperton?"

  The elderly woman looked up at him, squinting her eyes deeply. It wasn't clear if that was out of suspicion or to help her actually see better, "Oh my, who's askin'?"

  "My name is Runar Aglecard, and this is my associate, Yamada Hiero. We're currently looking for our friend, Anders Steinberg, a middle-aged dwarf. Dark brown hair, black eyes, around yay high," he explained, quickly showing Anders' height to the woman, though she clearly couldn't tell what he was trying to show, "Uhm... nevermind, have you heard anything at all? Even a slight clue would be helpful.."

  Runar was almost rambling in front of this woman. It felt almost ridiculous trying to talk to her, to get out any information about Anders. Even Yamada, who of course wasn't even hearing any of the conversation, was growing a bit restless.

  "Dwarf? Haven't seen nobody like that in years, I'll say!" the mustiar replied as if it were obvious, getting ready to slam the door shut. Runar was already translating everything to Yamada behind his back, and decided to give a few more instructions while he was at it.

  Before the elderly woman could slam the door shut, Runar pushed his foot inbetween, quickly stopping her, "I'm... sorry, I really hate being like this, but I must insist on talking to someone," Runar sighed. He felt almost sick having to do something like this, "If you can't tell us anything, do you think we could talk to that man upstairs? Is he the one that... did this to you?"

  The mustiar, Esther, seemed a bit taken aback, "You want to talk to a god? Those are the only ones that did this to me!" she scoffed out, shaking her head.

  But Runar carefully knelt down, taking out his writing pen. He quickly drew a rune onto her forehead, and broke the illusion that was covering her. The old mustiar now appeared far more decrepit. She had been dead for quite a while after all.

  "I would like to talk to the necromancer that resurrected you. He's upstairs, correct?"

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