Securing this castle ruin is harder than its sound, while it is doable but with my state of being in half there's no way I could move without crawling and I am not too keen on fighting while dragging my torso.

With limited material and not an ounce of microbot to reform my organic body, I resorted to making my whole body from metal. It's not enough to create a whole replica of my human or equine body but it's enough to make a standard, albeit modified, search bot.

A pair of caterpillar tracks for stable movement, a rectangle main body big enough to fit both my power core and brain, an acrylic dome on top of it containing a single lens for scanning. As weapons, an arm on the side right side that ended with a clamp, and a basic laser cutter on the left side is sufficient enough to keep things away. A piece of sufficient equipment for exploring some old ruin.

Doing this I can do 2 tasks at once, the first one is to map the entire place and secure it, the second is to gather material lying around that I can find. So far there's only a few rusted armor and weapon, a couple of nails and metal sheets from the front gate, a handful of ornaments, and metal bars from the dungeon cell block.

There are some noteworthy things around when I'm exploring, like this statue in the middle of a room with stone orbs that emitting some kind of strange energy that I steer away from. The last time I messed around with some unknown energy I left a pretty big hole behind, thankfully it was in the middle of a desert so no one really cares.

As I go deeper there are more things that I kept track of, such as secret passages are scattered here and there, surprisingly most of them still work despite the whole place looks like has gone through more than a century, a decent-sized library filled to the top with books, expectedly time has taken its toll, only a few of them are readable, If I can read horse language that is, one of the characters is literally a horseshoe.

Fortunately, the books have another use for me, the binding of it made out of some metal, most of them have either a plate or nails holding them together so I cleaned the whole library empty, shelves included because why not.

After leaving the now empty room behind I venture deeper into the castle looking for a specific place, now from my knowledge, a castle similar to this bound to have some sort of vault or armory somewhere underground. Though it might have been emptied the vault itself is what I am after.

A whole room made out of tough materials, presumably tougher than what I currently got inside my body, is enough to secure at least one of the upper rooms for a base of operation and to construct a couple of equipment, assuming the vault is the size of royal treasury room.

Speaking of equipment, with no way to connect to HQ or any orbital satellite and being monitored 24/7, there's only a limited amount of it and I can't use any military-grade stuff the public hasn't know yet, which is not much but most of the stuff in weapon category is enough to decimate a small army.

[Alert, unknown energy reading detected, caution is adviced]

A popup appears on my HUD, seems like my sensor picking up something, sending a mental command to open the detail of it I was greeted by a wall of text, skimming most of it and only reading where it's from, which is right below me, I consider if it's worth investigating.

'Might as well check it, could be something useful.'

Dissolving the pair of caterpillar tracks to a pool of liquid metal, I began absorbing the stone below me bit by bit similar to how an Acid Slime move underground, once I hit something that definitely not rock or dirt I began drilling a small hole enough to fit a cable and form a camera on the other end.

It seems I hit the jackpot.

While it is not a vault filled with gold, precious gems, and other riches like most royal treasure rooms like I was expecting, the room I drilled into holds more value, well for me at least. Rows upon rows of weapon and armor, mostly designed after horse armor bur smaller, filled the room with no space to move around, if I had to guess it could fully equip a whole battalion of ponies.

All the things in this room seem like they could be sold for a huge amount of cash but the one that catches my eyes, or rather lenses, is on the back of the room. A pair of full set horse armor bigger than the rest, one colored dark as the night with an emblem of a moon painted on both sides of the flank while the other is more bright-colored with a sun emblem instead. Between the armor is a pair of weapon, a scythe, and a greatsword crossing each other.

Normally I would gobble all of them like there's no tomorrow but my sensor is practically overloading with the [Unknown energy], not to mention the big armors practically emitting it, made me think again.

Then again, this is just a simulation, if there's any damage inflicted on my real body, it would be fixed before I know it by the self-repairing program I made, right?

...right?

A few hours later the room is gone.

No, I'm not revering how the room is empty, the whole room is gone. When I entered the room I notice the ceiling I absorbed is in fact not hard stone but metal so I look around for a bit and discover not only the top part made out of metal but the floor and all 4 walls are also metal, so I thought to my self 'why not take the whole thing?'

So I did.

The only thing keeping it from caving it is the wooden pillars I erected while excavating the room, I am well aware of using wood pilar without any foundation is a stupid idea and the wood will rot over time if termite doesn't eat it first, so this is a temporary solution.

With my newly acquired materials, I backtracked my way to the surface.

'Huh, morning already? That took longer than I was expected,' I shrugged, idly took note of a bird perch on one of the broken windows, who knows it could be someone's familiar or a disguised drone, 'now then, where's a good place to start...'

Picking a strategic place to defend is essential to set up a base of operation. In a forest, most bases are either hidden underground or up above covered by thick foliages to avoid being discovered, some utilized Magic Tool or Artifacts to make sure it is properly hidden.

Of course, I can make a base somewhere deeper in the woods, high enough so that no wild animal can reach it, it's still would be pointless if someone keeping an eye on me 24/7. No matter how well hidden I make it, sooner or later Bob would send something to destroy it, so this leaves me with two choices.

Either keep moving from place to place, gathering material, and stay in a spot only for a short amount of time to make something necessary or build a base that can be called a fortress with enough firepower to defend against an army.

Naturally, I pick the latter.

Not only defending is my forte, with this castle ruin I don't have to make a base from scratch, just a bit reinforcing here and there and it will be sufficient enough to keep wild animals out. And when I have enough metal I can easily turn this into a full-blown iron fortress, but for now, a single room is all I needed.

I opted to make my base on one of the towers near the entrance, not only it's high enough to see beyond the treeline it also has a clear look on what seems to be a bridge across a ravine. With how the other 3 sides of the castle are surrounded by forest, the bridge might be the only safest way to here.

Still, I can't just focus all my attention on only 1 spot, the risk of being attacked by wild animals from all sides is still present, other than Manticores and wooden wolves I am sure there's a lot more dangerous and vicious beast out there.

Gah, dammit, if only there's a volcano nearby I can collect sulfur for gunpowder and make a crap ton of bullets and explosives. I suppose I can mark that as a future objective, I'll have to make do with what I have.

Reinforcing the area around my room using metal bars is incredibly tedious, I have to insert each bar one by one and making sure the wall doesn't crack. While I can just tear down the whole tower and rebuild it back with reinforcement, it would take longer and I don't have the necessary ingredients to make a proper cement mixture.

For defense, I replaced the main door with hardened wood I gather from the nearby forest and reinforce it further with a couple of metal plates. Behind it a tripwire that acts as a trigger for a pair of ceiling-mounted, rapid-fire crossbows, each loaded with enough arrows to put down an orc.

While it seems simple and easy enough for a greenhorn Adventurer to avoid, I purposely made it like this because I still haven't put something that is worth protecting and I don't have much firepower on hand. Who knows what Bob will send here, probably a fuck ton of those wooden wolves, a pack of wild dragons, or, god forbid a Magi Beast. If that's the case I can just ditch this place without losing too much important stuff.

I might come across a place with rich recourses like iron ore deposits or an underground volcano but for now, this castle ruin is just a temporary safe zone.

Speaking of recourses, I should explore the surrounding area for any of it and see if there's one then I can mark them for future use, a standard High Altitude Warfare Kit for Surveillance (H.A.W.K.S) drone should do the job, it can map out the area from high above the clouds and agile enough to avoid branches to get more accurate details under the foliages.

But another problem appeared, while I have the necessary material to make one, powering it is another thing. This drone uses a pack of four 40 volts batteries to power it, be it magical or not. While I have something equivalent to a nuclear powerplant I don't have anything to store energy separately.

'Of all the things I need, it has to be something so common I can order it online or buy it at a convenience store...' I sigh, if I make a battery with the material I currently have the drone would only last for about 5 minutes, 'got no lithium or any of those powder mana crystals.'

I could just explore by myself and look for materials but it would take ages to find and the risk of leaving my base unmanned and unprotected is worth considering. Sure I have put down some traps to keep wild animals out but that's it, I don't have anything to take down something big while I'm gone.

"Well, there is that one place..." I muttered to myself, god just thinking about it hurts my brain, all those bright color feels like a nail jammed into my eyes and straight to my brain, nevertheless the place is full of loot ripe for taking.

Walking in on a plain day is definitely a no-no and I don't have any equipment necessary to sneak around, but why risking getting caught stealing from houses and stores while there's a whole field of free stuff? If I remember correctly there should be a junkyard somewhere in that village.

While I doubt there would be high-quality material being thrown away, the amount and variant of junk make up for it, I need stuff other than metal to make necessary equipment such as rubber, plastic, and silicone.

"I don't have any other choice do I?" With a heavy sigh and set a waypoint on the edge of the forest.

I check the crossbow trap once more and make sure everything is working as intended before I head out toward the village, this time I'm more prepared and armed than last time. If all goes well this would be a walk in a park, just get in, get the stuff and get out, it's simple as that.

What's the worst that can happen anyway?

Author's Note

Huh, I was planning to update this story after the other one but what the hell, I already finish half of it before my other story so 'why not finish it?'

So yeah, I know I've been neglecting my stories and how long I've been inactive on this website, heck there's more than 100+ unread story just sitting in my bookmark.

I'm just gonna throw my excuses here and blame it on my lack of motivation and laziness, other than that I have fallen down to The Rabit Hole that is Vtuber (Curse you, you damned wild rabbit!) and spends almost all night watching them.

After this, I would be working on my other story which I have been neglecting for the past 7 months so don't expect any update soon.

As always please tell me if there's any typo and/or grammar error, also let me hear your thought and criticism of this chapter so that I can improvise my writing!

Thanks for reading this chapter and stay safe!