"This is the best you can do?" Grey looked at the results that Shay and Gleeb formed and his lip twitched.
To be honest, he had never seen any crafters forge mechs other than himself. All of his "lessons" came from comparing himself against himself.
The closest thing he had had to a teacher in that respect was probably Prometheus, but Prometheus wasn’t an active participant and Grey had to literally pay it to get it to give him the upgrades to the blueprints he needed.
The second closest person he had had to a teacher was Globb, but Globb’s biggest contribution was telling him where to go off and kill the Region Boss that had hidden the tome in the first place.
Well, that and their little technician lesson before he left the city for the first time.
This was the first time that Grey was actually watching someone else craft. After seeing how confident they were, he had expected...
More.
’This is just... sad.’
First of all, they outright failed the first attempt. Then, feeling a bit embarrassed, they tried to start with an easier piece, then failed again.
They then had to go all the way down to the very first iron jaw mech, the same one that Grey had started with.
Finally, they succeeded. But the end result had like half the Energy Reserve that Grey had managed on his very first attempt. It almost felt like they were doing this on purpose to make him feel better about himself. That was how terrible it was.
"Alright. Clearly, you guys are not good at this," Grey said.
He would consider himself a good person by his own moral compass. To him, his own moral compass was the only one that mattered. But one of the reasons that so many people didn’t like him was because he never sugar coated things and he spoke what was on his mind.
He wasn’t about to tell these gnomes that they were doing good just because of the Mech Soul. He’d rather fight his way out of here with it than lie like that.
Especially when they were already blushing from head to toe.
Gleeb cleared his throat, hitting a fist against his chest.
"I..." He hesitated and then his next words came out in a hint of a sob.
He sat down on the ground, hanging his head low. If it wasn’t for the gruff piece of mechanical metal lacing his jaw, he would have looked like a child given his small stature.
"Uh..." Grey was speechless, but then he felt bad.
This was a man who had lost a son, he should at least try to be kinder.
But he could tell that these weren’t tears coming because of Globb, though they were tangentially related. Gleeb felt truly humiliated. He didn’t hate Grey, he hated himself because of his inadequacy.
It was because of older generation members like him who were entirely untalented compared to their ancestors that their race had fallen to this extent.
His son had had to go off and put himself in danger because there was no one here good enough to teach him. What good was it to stay under his father’s protection when he had long surpassed his father?
The tears fell from Gleeb’s eyes harder and faster. He tried to suppress his sobs, but he still needed to breathe, so sometimes they would come out in short wispy gasps.
Slay rushed over to the old man’s side, kneeling by him and giving him a hug. The younger gnome gave Grey a harsh glare, but Grey could only look at him with a bit of an awkward expression.
He wasn’t really sure how to comfort people, least of all grown men crying. What was he supposed to do? Rub his back? He didn’t even know the man.
But he could understand the sentiment and the weight on Gleeb’s back nonetheless. It was no wonder he felt so helpless.
This was just what a cruel world did to an otherwise strong man.
Grey sighed and squatted down. He put a hand on Gleeb’s shoulder, about to say something when a jolt ran through his hand.
Grey’s eyes narrowed. He had felt that jolt before when he touched Nebb’s hand.
Gleeb suddenly stopped crying and looked over at Grey, feeling like something was off and then his body started convulsing. Impurities started being flushed out of his body and Grey took a large leap backward and looked at his hand, cringing.
A flickering flame rushed to life and the impurities were burnt away.
’Gross. But why’s his reaction so much more fierce than Nebb’s? Kind of weird...’
In fact, unlike Gleeb who seemed clueless, Nebb was a lot more sure of what had been going on.
"What did you do to him?!" Slay demanded.
Grey rolled his eyes and just reached down to stop Slay from charging at him. The little guy swung his arms but couldn’t connect with Grey’s body with Grey’s palm on his forehead.
Another jolt ran through Grey’s hand and Slay found himself convulsing as well.
’Hm... him too, huh? Then is Nebb the weirdo? Or is it because Thi Lan spent a lot of effort helping Nebb to improve so that she could have allies, and that’s why his process of adaptation was a lot smoother?’
It felt like a little bit of both. Nebb definitely knew something a little extra, and Thi Lan had helped him a lot.
"Alright, fuck it, I guess. Give me my own little minion army."
Grey flashed out of the little hut and started rushing around like he was a religious deity. He touched the gnomes and they all began to expel their impurities and rapidly evolve.
The process itself took hours, and honestly Grey didn’t feel like wasting the time. But after he secured the Mech Soul and made sure no one was going to do anything stupid with it, he felt a lot better.
The only thing he had to do now was make it back to the Holy City.
He looked back toward the convulsing gnomes and shrugged.
"Eh, they’ll be fine."
Grey quickly began to find his way back to the outpost only to find a familiar message that left him gritting his teeth.