Chapter 421: Solder, The Mutant Village Chief

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At the end Vladimir agreed to it all, bringing his remaining arm across his chest and glaring down at the Mutants with a sneer.

The cockroaches frowned in annoyance, exchanging looks and speaking while loudly clicking their mandibles.

After all, they were doing all this for him and he called them shrimps out of nowhere?

"Shrimp?!"

"We’re not shrimp...!"

"Divine Lord, why is your slave so disrespectful?"

Vladimir looked from one to another. Apparently, that was the part they’d taken offense to. He hadn’t expected them to be happy about it, but he also hadn’t expected all of them to stop what they were doing just to complain. One held its materials closer to its chest, watching him like it was reconsidering whether he deserved any of them.

Seeing their discontent, Riven sighed. "Forgive his manners. His mother dropped him when he was born."

"WHAT?!" Vladimir roared.

Vladimir turned toward him so quickly that the Mutants were forgotten for a moment. Riven hadn’t even hesitated before saying that. He’d brought him here to get an arm, not to give these little bastards another reason to look at him like he was an idiot.

Riven ignored his outburst and glanced back at the Mutants. "Have you prepared what I asked for?"

"Yes, Divine Lord!"

"We’ve crafted three models of mechanical arms to replace his missing one."

"The blood, tissue, scale, and bone samples have helped us figure out how to make them fit his body."

Three models? Vladimir nearly asked what the differences were, but the next part caught his attention before he could. Blood was one thing. He’d lost enough of it in fights that hearing about a sample didn’t surprise him much. Tissue and bone, though? He looked down at himself, trying to remember when Riven could have collected all that without mentioning it.

"What? Tissue?" Vladimir asked, glaring at Riven. "What do they mean, tissue? Did you just take a chunk of my flesh or something?"

"When we fight, you’re always getting gored and slashed, so it’s not exactly hard to find a piece of you lying around," Riven said with a sigh. "Besides, I just took what was left of your destroyed arm."

Vladimir wanted to argue, but that explanation made more sense than he would have liked. It wasn’t as if he could have used what was left of the arm himself. Still, hearing Riven talk about finding pieces of him like they were spare materials was annoying.

The Mutants didn’t seem bothered by any of it. They were waiting for the conversation to end so they could show their work, which somehow made the whole thing worse. To them, the samples were just something they’d needed to do the job. Vladimir rubbed his face with his remaining hand. Fine, at least nobody had cut anything off him while he wasn’t looking.

"Damn it..." Vladimir groaned. "Well, it’s not my fault I’m normal and not a freak of nature like you! You can somehow recover after being burned down to your bones..."

"Hah, you’re not one to call me a freak of nature, let alone call yourself normal, but sure," Riven said with a laugh, teasing him. "Anyway, Tinkerer Chief, your name was...? Solder, right?"

"Yes, sir!" The tallest of the cockroach Mutants nodded. He stood around a meter and a half tall, with four extra mechanical limbs attached to his back. He wore a construction helmet he’d modified with small cameras and other tools. One of the extra limbs adjusted something on the helmet while his hands remained free, and Vladimir watched it move before looking at the others. He could see why having more limbs would be useful for this kind of work. Solder didn’t have to put one thing down just to pick up another, which probably saved him a lot of trouble when he was building something. Vladimir would have been happy just getting his second arm back, though. He wasn’t about to ask for four more. "We’ve prepared everything. Please follow us inside the workshop."

Riven and Vladimir followed Chief Solder into the Alchemical Workshop, which had been remodeled to suit the Mutants’ needs. Countless giant cockroach people scurried along the walls and ceiling like it was nothing, carrying small pieces of metal and other materials. Vladimir stopped just past the entrance when one passed overhead.

He looked up, following it until it reached another part of the workshop and handed its materials to a waiting worker. Nobody else even bothered looking. Apparently, the ceiling was just another way to get around here. It kept the floor from getting too crowded, but Vladimir wasn’t sure he liked having so many people moving above his head. Riven noticed him looking and grinned, though he kept following Solder instead of giving him another explanation.

Cockroach Mutants were the most common subspecies of Mutants. The other chimeras were much rarer, often larger and physically stronger, so the cockroaches usually relied on them for heavier work. While the smaller workers carried parts along the walls, the larger ones moved loads across the floor.

Solder led his guests around them without interrupting their work, occasionally making room for someone carrying more than they could easily see around. Riven was glad they’d already found ways to make the place work for them. Giving them a Workshop was one thing, but they knew better than he did how to arrange everything inside it.

At the center of the Workshop, there were also plenty of fleshy materials taken from monsters they’d hunted. These were being sorted separately from the metal parts, though both were clearly meant to be used in their creations.

Vladimir glanced between the piles, trying to guess how much of his new arm would be mechanical and how much would come from a monster. Riven had said they were good at combining the two, but seeing the materials laid out made that a lot easier to picture. Nearby, workers gathered blood-covered Monster Cores, which were soon transported to the refinery.

After walking past all of that, they entered a small room where several Mutants were waiting. Three large mechanical arms lay on a table.

One was yellow, the second red, and the third blue.

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