Chapter 484: Parts is Parts...except for that Amazing Liver

"I'm going to make a calculated guess that Number Thirteen was originally human, but I reserve the right to be wrong if I find out their are brain transplants in this world."

Nina was just finishing up her preliminary autopsy of Number 13's skull. It had taken them six hours to unlock the armor, remove the outer plates and begin to dismantle the apparatus, piece by piece, to find out what was inside. It was a task only Milo was qualified for with his experience with Magi-Tech. And he needed his best tools. Nina had seen his summoned stash before, but when he showed her the vastly upgraded version, she went silent for a few seconds, then shook her head. "I thought my thief based class with Shadow Teleporting and darkness spells was cool and fun. But this is just...I don't know...stupidly overpowered. You could steal a Dragon's hoard and walk away! How did you know to take a class with something like this."

Milo looked sheepish, "I wanted to be short and have a tail."

She nodded her head, thoughfull, "Can't fault you there. Tails are awesome. All right, how about you take out all the tools you might need, name them for me, and I'll be your assistant during the mechanical part. I need to start learning Magi-Tech, so I might as well be your bumbling assistant. But if you trigger a trap, don't blame me for disappearing suddenly."

"Seems sensible to me."

Belinda smiled, happy to see Milo bantering with his sister. It was good for him. "And I'll be ready to put out fires, neutralize poison, and put you back together."

They got to work, Milo finding small openings where he could insert special tools to loosen armored plates, and expose the underlaying tubes that fed the weapons on the wrists and shoulders of the armor. Once the tubes were crimped and disconnected, he took apart the weapons, then dismantled the small tanks on the armors back that held the toxic chemicals. Thirteen hadn't specialized in just one type of weapon or damage type. The armor had acidic sprays, flame bursts, expanding foam that hardened to the strength of steel, poisonous clouds, high-intensity explosive grenades deployed from shoulder launchers, and poison tipped needles that shot out from fingertips. Milo judged that he would have been a much tougher adversary than the three Ur-Khemysts he had fought.

But, the armor wasn't up to the standards of the Deep Rock Engineers. It was still a mechanical wonder, but he'd expected more. Fine steel wire created a system of pseudo-musculature that helped move the heavy suit. Anyone wearing this would be ponderous, but very powerful, and would be able to survive the attack of monsters such as the Stone Lurkers. Retractable steel claws, also poison tipped, added a close range attack. Powering everything was a series of large energy crystals. Each was many times what Milo would install in such a suit, and their were five of them. It was a pattern he saw over and over in the suits construction: Redundant systems taken to the point of insanity. And the materials were odd. The rare ores from the nearby mines were used everywhere, but in their raw form. The Engineers alloyed those metals, creating mana channeling wires, storage devices and all sorts of magi-tech weapons and apparatus. As he worked to disassemble the armor, part of his mind was whirling with ways to rebuild it and make it more efficient. The rational part of his mind asked the question, "And when would we ever need something this clunk?" but that didn't stop the part of him that hated anything this inefficient.

As the hours ticked away, they removed, documented, and set aside the defensive and mechanical systems of the armor, exposing what was left of The Master, and the systems that had enhanced his biology and kept him alive for centuries. Then, the lead had shifted to Nina. Her expertise might come from the real world, but she was having no problems adapting to a world with slightly different rules.

She told Milo the tools that she needed, and he pulled them from the huge store of fine tools he had inherited from Black Eddy. Then their roles reversed as he acted as her dissection assistant and they began to literally take Thirteen apart. It took over a day, during which Belinda made them stop to eat and nap. "I can hit you with Energize once an hour, but after a dozen hours of that, you'll be so jittery you'll forget what you're doing. I recommend Six hours of work, two hours of eating and sleeping, then a boost from my spells." They agreed to that, and the work went onward.

Later, as they collapsed into comfortable chairs that Belinda had asked to be brought from other parts of the tower, Milo looked at the table where dozens of jars sat. Thirteen's organs were preserved in them. There were many, and not just the normal one or two of each. Despite the strangeness of what they had found, Nina was of the opinion that Thirteen had been human. At least at the start. She'd indicated the brain as her main piece of evidence.

"You're theorizing that the brain is original, and a solid clue as to his original race?"

"Exactly. That's a human brain, and the cranial cavity didn't show the scarring it would have it the brain had been reinstalled. And I don't know whether or not that could even be done, but it would leave traces. There was definitely some brain work done: implants inserted through holes drilled into the skull, and a sub-brain was added between the two hearts. A shame it was so torn up from the spike of rock, I'm having a hard time figuring out what type of creature it was from. The implants were wired into his weapon systems and biological controls. He may have enhanced his brain, but he started out as a normal human."

Belinda had assisted with the project as they turned Thirteen into a stack of parts. Her healing skills helping her to identify what each extra organ did, and where it had come from.

"He sure didn't stay that way. Secondary heart from an orc, highly efficient at keeping blood flowing, even when the body is wounded. For poison and toxin resistance he had three giant opossum kidneys added to his original two, both of which look like they were barely functioning at the end. His main arteries were replaced with synthetic tubing, all of his bones have metal rods inserted to hold them together, along with that entire system of gears, wires and pulleys that allowed him to move. I'm not sure where the armor stops and the man began. But it's his liver that bothers me."

Nina rolled her eyes, "Me too, the thing is huge, and technically still alive. His suit had so many preservative and healing systems that most of him is in remarkable good shape, as if he died recently, but that liver is amazing. What species is it from?"

Belinda looked at Milo, "A Ratkin. Very large, with high regenerative ability. And it had a direct connection to the second stomach, also from a ratkin."

He stared at the liver, half expecting it to open an eyeball and stare back at him. He saw the organ twitch as he got close. "A liver from a Cheese Fiend, connected to a stomach that was highly efficient at processing cheese. I like this person less and less, if that's even possible."

While working on the dissection, all of them had been absorbed in their work. They were doing science, and the part of their minds that might be horrified at what they saw was quiet. Now Milo sat and pondered what he'd seen, each of his minds pursuing a different line of thought. "I think he wanted to live forever. A lot of the armor systems are designed to keep him running, preserve his body, and regenerate new tissue to replace the old. There is some resemblance to the preservative suits that the Senior Engineers used to cheat death, but cruder.

"And there is so much Magi-Tech, but used poorly. Pounds of rare alloys and dozens of crystals used to keep all the mechanicals running. The dwarves are a hundred times more efficient in their technology. And...some of this doesn't make sense as the work of one person. Maybe the Ur-Khemysts do work on each other? But I think it likely, based on their society, that he was buying these upgrades from others with the wealth he got from the Nimbulkin. With the amount of rare metals and crystals he had access to he could have the best any other Khemyst could offer. I wonder if he kept records of all the upgrades and procedures...no, of course he did. He'd pay extra for all the research and add it to his own. What does a mutant liver cost? How much for his new pair of lungs and the mechanical pumps that kept them working?"

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Milo glanced at the doorway, "I think I need to take a break."

Belinda laughed at him. "And, I don't believe you. You can't wait to dig into the library now that you know what he was and have made all those drawings of his armor. It's fine. Go do your research. You need some down time to process things. We can finish the cleanup and cataloguing here, and then I'm going to have Nina assist me with recreating some of these restorative fluids. I need to see if they are powerful healing potions, or something else entirely."

Milo didn't need to be told twice, his mind was whirling with ideas and he desperately wanted to begin reading. He surged into the Library, half expecting to find chaos, and instead he found Min and Butch playing a boardgame with Number 12 at a large table. Algernon and Onyx were reshelving stacks of books, scrolls, and stone tablets, a table of snacks and drinks sat between two comfortable reading chairs. Onyx yelled across the room at him, "Greetings, Doctor Frankenstein, done playing with your monster? You're faithful minions have been hard at work correctly organizing your new library. Some of it was in good shape, but a lot of it looks like it was just unpacked and tossed on the nearest shelf. Along with a lot of lab notes, you've got a huge historical section dealing with the history of the city of Blothmazdan. Seems like a very nasty place. We are following Gendifur's orders to take a break now and then and do some light reading. Sensible person, reminds me a little of Mama."

Algernon pointed at the large table where the game was being played, "These three are not helping though. We are itching to join them. That is a very intriguing game, based off a quick glance at the components and basic rulebook. I suggest you take a peek at it. We are intrigued, but will hold off playing a game until all of us are free."

Milo trusted his brother's judgement and instead of diving into a century of lab notes, he walked over to the table. The board was huge, roughly six-feet across in diameter and already held a few wooden buildings placed upon it from the beginning moves. Each player had a number of colored pawns available to them, along with carved ivory tiles. Stacks of hundreds more tiles were at the end of the board. Butch waved at him. "Pull up a seat. Our new snail buddy is trying to explain the idea of games to us. He says this was the Master's favorite and no one could beat him at it. He used to make the snails play each other while he watched and laughed at them."

Milo looked at the board, which reminded him a little of Monopoly, an ancient game from the Dark Ages of history before video games. But where that board was square, this one was round. A large circle divided into sections ran around the perimeter of the board, each with one or more symbols that corresponded with the stacks of tiles. Five main avenues divided the circle, all ending in a smaller circle at the center. Smaller streets divided the five areas into blocks of space. Number 12 was speaking in the Master's voice, but very low, and the phrasing was slightly different. This was the snail talking, not simply regurgitating old recordings. He was becoming better at using his voice after the adjustments Milo had made to his vocal apparatus.

"Fate is good to me, giving me double three's. My main pawn has landed on the wealth symbol, scoring me six more gold, and allowing me to move again. My second move has given me nine minions to deploy at strategic areas in the Slave Quarter, conveniently near where a factory can be built. Tremble in fear at my next move. I am spending two silver to deploy recruiters in the Slave District and the Evolved district. Since you foolishly overlooked the medium chemical factory in the opening discard pile, I will forego choosing two random tiles, and I am going to purchase it from the pile for four gold, six silver, half its normal value because it is the first turn, and i will then deploy it in the Slave district, increasing the effectiveness of my recruiters by three-fold. Next, for three silver, I will buy three Bullyboys to increase production, I may lose some of my workers, but the increased production is worth that chance. At the end of my turn, corresponding with the end of the first round, I will reap the benefits of my ingenious plan and score 12 production points, putting me in the lead for bidding on the contracts coming up next round, and giving me the funds to control them all."

"Look upon my genius and gnash your talk-boxes." He waved his eyestalks at the two of them, in a smarmy gesture that both understood.

Butch studied the board. "Funny, I don't remember the option to not take random tiles and instead buy one of those on display."

Min glared at the snail, "Nope. Me neither."

Number Twelve waved his eyestalks in a rude fashion. "I gave you the basic rules, and am not required to explain additional rules from the yearly updates. Be upset that you are lazy and uneducated, and don't blame this hardworking snail trying to bring joy to your lives."

Butch sighed, "Hate the game, not the gamer?"

Twelve said, "Exactly! You are smarter already."

"I don't buy it." Min was scowling at the snail. "That let's you make shit up and claim it was in one of these mythical updates."

Twelve was immediately angry, "NEVER! One does not get caught cheating at Blothopoly! At least not in that clumsy manner. Quoting a fake rule is idiocy. You would be within your rights to ban me from the next 2d12+5 game sessions and play my position as a proxy. Who would risk such horror? But please, don't just accuse me of malfeasance. Do your research. I'll even give you a clue: Check update #143, and if you find I misapplied the rules stated there, I will allow you to impose a 30% penalty I'd have to pay you on all production. I'll be ruined for the next six games!"

Algernon cleared his throat and pointed to a bookcase where a large number of binders were displayed, each with a number from 1 to 332. "He's telling the truth. All the updates are here."

Twelve's eyestalks dropped low, "Sadly, not. Updates came with the yearly resupply after the Master began his nap. We had strict orders to let no one inside, and were not allowed to put anything in the tower. Number one argued that we couldn't leave the packages on the front steps as it violated 'Stay off my Lawn', an important rule. We had to push them into the trash heap."

Algernon looked at the shelves, "Then this collection is incomplete. But the dwarves opened all those crates, so we can find them downstairs. Can't have a game without all the expanded material." He raced downstairs to find the distinctively colored game updates.

Butch was staring at the board, "Don't have time to read through it all, we'll play at a disadvantage to Mister Snail here. We'll lose, of course, but that's our own fault for not knowing all the rules."

Brother and sister shared a look that Milo recognized. Shit was about to happen. Intrigued, he sat down to watch and casually picked up a rulebook.