The Online Craftsmaster 117 Problems Over Problems

But John stomped them before they could start talking, he and them to the kitchen telling them that he would join them shortly. They listened to him when they saw his calm expression and left the room, John started cleaning up his workshop. He put the materials away and put away all of his tools when he came to the carving Knife of sin he wanted to use for this project he noticed that it's color changed and got fuller than it was before, but there was still a tiny bit of color missing but John that the knife could already exert most of its power.

John finished up his workshop and started walking to the kitchen where his friends were waiting for him, he sat down and looked at the stern faces of his friends, he then started the conversation by asking Erika about the problem she mentioned.

Erika told him about her visit to the orphanage, she explained that she was inside it when one of the residents spotted something and screamed causing her to run out of the building. She then told him about her fight with the undead and ordered some of the robots to bring in the corpse. The corpse was laid on the table and the group of friends looked at it with disgust, they studied the machinery that replaced the limbs of this poor soul and noticed that even though the manufacturing process of the mechanism was decent and even though some parts were made by John himself, the creator of this mechanism didn't seem to understand the right usage of those gears and how an automata works.

At first, they asked why John made these parts for such a disgusting purpose but he told them that these parts were not made for such a mechanism, they were made as internal gearing of a demon-o-bot. John worked with hundreds of gears since he started playing King's Reign and he reached a rather advanced proficiency with them, that's why could see that the gearing that was used for those limbs was worse than average at best, they used durable gears where smaller faster gears would have been better while there were also places where you could see bent and broken gears as they were to weak for the purpose.

Also the creator of this contraption used way to much gears resulting in a weaker stability and causing the whole mechanism to be p.r.o.ne to malfunction and damage. It was clear as day to John that the creator of this contraption just used the gears he had without considering their purpose and balance. John explained his findings to his friend and mentioned that it wasn't that hard to get some of his gears as they could be salvaged out of his dungeon. Even though most of the players did not reach farther than the second floor that was more than enough to get these gears.

But what was worrying John more than the machinery was that the poor man that was used to create this undead was a beastman that clearly was used for this creature against his will. John knew that it was nearly impossible for anyone to conduct these acts of gruesomeness within his kingdom as there were hundreds of his servants patrolling through the whole country day and night.

But that meant that this creature must originate from the Kingdom of the Humans, so John ordered his bots to man the border and control everyone that wants to enter this kingdom. His minion heard his order and got to work, the robot army deployed while the smithing bots started working furiously producing more reinforcements.

Erika was satisfied with John´s response to the threat and excused herself and left the kitchen the supervise the deployment of the troops and defend the border herself, she was joined by Vito who told them that he wouldn't be of help with talking or deciding so he just joined Erika to help with something he could. Olaf also left the kitchen saying that he would help those smithing bots to forge some appropriate weapons, only Claire and Eva remained in the room with John until Claire suddenly stood up too leaving the room while smiling in Johns direction shrouding her actions in secrets.

John was startled when so many of his friends left the room so quickly but it was probably for the best as Eva probably wanted to talk about some Virtec inc. stuff. John looked at Eva expecting her to start but she seemed to fumble around with her words not knowing how to start, John was surprised as Eva usually was decisive and would just talk or act like she wanted, but this time something bad must have been happened.

So to help Eva start talking John asked her about the alarm that went off some days ago when she had to leave so rapidly, not expecting that Eva´s face would harden and his head would be hitting the table with a loud bang after he asked her. But Eva's anger didn't last long and she sighed, she told him about the small robot he created that was traveling around the world causing all kinds of problems around the world.

John listened to her in shock when she talked about killed dragons, dethroned deities and the death of a demiG.o.d by this small Sc.r.a.pling. She continued telling him about the alarm and that the sc.r.a.pling reached the City of Metal, Stahl, and that they were scared that he would destroy it completely.

John heard all this and was already searching for a way to leave the room without that Eva noticed it, he thought the big problem Eva talked about was his fault that was why he was surprised when she told him about a unidentified person that tried to stop the journey of this small robot even risking to destroy the whole city in the process. She couldnt find out who it was because when she wanted to investigate she stopped by the mainframe AI and when she wanted to find a way around it she was stopped by her supervisor. But what she found out that he had a strange connection to the king of the Human kingdom.

She told him about the strange behaviour of the G.o.ddess of Judgement and that she found strange power fluctuations at the palace of the Human king, she also found out that he had been trying to rebuild the angersteel Colossus and that he recently succeeded and could even control it thanks to the support of the G.o.ddess of judgement.

But what worried Eva the most were the strange reports that came from the palace of this king, at first there were just some Error reports from some NPCs that stopped, then more of these reports came and stayed and now there were even some mental health warnings from some players. The last part was the most disturbing as usually the game AI looked for those mental health warnings and monitored those players and even stopping them from playing but somehow, not only weren't they stopped from playing they even started to showed signs of an addiction to being online that got stronger the more warning messages about their mental Health status there were.

But eva told him that before she could do something about it or investigate some more her access to these reports were revoked with the explanation that a team of doctors were hired and these report would be treated as medical files for that only the doctors had access to.

John had a stern face when Eva finished telling him everything she found out and asked her what they could do, especially for the players that had mental health problems. Eva answered him that she managed to program a tool into the game that allowed her to ban players that showed signs of mental health problems for some time if they were killed in game also notifying an ambulance at the same time. And now that they found out that a war against the human kingdom was basically set in stone that they had to take care of the other problems as they were coming.

John sighed he just wanted to play this game to remember his brother and after he found out about the NPC version of him he wanted to find him, but now problems over problems were in his way and he didn't even have a clue yet where he could search for his brother. But John once steeled his resolve when he saw the corpse of that poor beastman and decided that if the human kingdom was really the creator of such a monstrosity than it had to be stopped.