Five Nights In Tensura?

Chapter 17: Tin Soldier

Mister New yuh, Vivian at 110k words.

A number of words

Trauma is for shut-ins, which is why I wrote this for you

Anyway, please join my discord if you wanna talk about this or make suggestions: https://discord.gg/aV9cGRYAtH

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William's POV:

"It's done?" Gadra slowly inspected what I'd created. While it was not a powered animatronic, it still had the same mechanical components.

"It does not need to move on its own, at least not with what we have in mind." I'd been calling it a spring soldier as I'd been putting it together. It was a stylized as a spartan hoplite, and looked much like simple armor with a metal skeleton inside. "You can animate it regardless, can you not?"

"That I can. I simply thought you may go overboard." The old man was referring to some of the designs I'd made while heading Afton Robotics, which yes, were overboard. They were overboard with good reason though. Immortality was my aim.

I'd drawn some of them out for him to end his incessant babbling.

Despite that, I did quite like those designs, even still. All but one of them, one that still haunted me in a way, and that I had to wonder if was still out there. Somewhere. She'd be unlikely to have died in that fire, even with Henry's insistence on killing us all, all at once.

It was less hope, and more worry. If she was still out there, then the chance hung that she'd come after me. Try to find me. I could not bear seeing her again, not in that state.

I shook the thoughts away and instead focused on what was in front of me. "The stated intention of the armor for public, as you said. It is simple."

"Simple, but easy to buy. The armor being used to support a mage in melee combat as a puppet, or to allow a mage to offer their support to a soldier, is both simple and makes sense. It means a single powerful mage can field an army on their own, and in this, it is not an armor of brittle skeletons or zombies... No. This is better." The old man smiled somewhat soberly. "It gives my former colleagues something to do, and it gives the emperor something to grow them into."

"When a mage commander does don it alongside his men, they'll certainly be in for a surprise, I suppose." I sighed and carefully put the spring soldier into a storage state, something the old man had requested. Some way for it to fold up and take up less space.

"Let us go, we have much to say, but little time." The old man cast a spell to levitate the spring soldier and tossed my cloak to me. After that he rushed to the door, skipping like a young child.

It really did seem just a bridge out of place, but for the time being I ignored it and instead focused on what he'd instructed me to do; using a better barrier to hide myself. While I worked on the spring soldier, he'd spent hours monologuing to me about ways to better control these magicules.

Alongside that he'd told me a theory he had that most skills were in fact nothing more than magical constructs on a high and fundamental level. After inspecting myself, I concurred in a way. Though I am certainly not a great example.

I'm something of a unique creature as he said, so I may simply be an exception.

With these better techniques in mind, not only did my skills perform significantly better, but I'd managed to learn a handful of useful spells. Allowing me some leverage for an escape, true to the man's word. He was honest, despite sharing my disposition. Henry could certainly have learned much from Gadra.