“...ake up.” I was being shaken awake by my girlfriend. “Just a few more minutes.” I mumbled.

  I had such a strange dream st night, I was in some kind of post apocalyptic world, I was attacked by robots, had some kind of advanced armor, and ate a gray candy bar…

  “I’m not gonna wait all day.” That… doesn’t sound like my girlfriend… I opened my eyes.

  A strange woman was standing in front of me. At first I was going to ask her what the fuck she was doing in my house, until I noticed something off about my surroundings. I was in the same concrete structure as my dream.

  Unlike me, she had regur clothing. She didn’t exactly look human though with rge red irises, and some kind of cybernetic ears…? Swallowing her legs were what I could only describe as mecha parts that looked too rge for her small body, and back arms carrying massive weapons on each.

  A little dread creeped in at the realization that st night was anything but a dream. Looking down at myself to double check only confirmed it.

  “Finally awake now?” She asked impatiently.

  I sat up. “Yes… Who are you?” She offers me a hand to help me stand.

  She smelled… Different? I didn't know how to describe it, but I could tell she wasn’t not like me somehow.

  “I was going to ask you the same question. What is a seedling doing with a Tempr form? And what are you doing on such a deep yer?” She asked.

  She didn’t sound mad, but she did sound confused.

  What the hell is a seedling? Or tempr form for that matter? Maybe she means the isekai thing…? More likely that I was just born might be why.

  “Lady, I have no idea what those things are and I have questions of my own.” No doubt she’d know more than I do about my situation.

  She sighed and set her gun down. “I’m Hati. I’m here on a pilgrimage in search of the Maiden Realm…. Your turn.”

  I tried to remember my name, but the only thing I could think of was a bunch of random letters and numbers, and that wouldn’t do. I wonder if this was part of reincarnating? It was a little concerning, but I’d already paused long enough to be suspicious so I may as well be forthcoming.

  “I honestly don’t remember much, not even my name. I just woke up here yesterday after falling out of a gel pod. I figure I must have died or something because I’m not from whatever this pce is, I’m from Earth.”

  She frowned. “I’m not sure what earth is, but that means you’re not just a seedling with tempr form data, you were born that way… on a lower level no less….” She paused before mumbling to herself quietly. “Could this be a sign from Aurum?”

  I perked up at her words. Aurum? Maybe they summoned me from my world! Perhaps this is a normal isekai after all!

  She looked at me while deep in thought for a few seconds before snapping her fingers. “Your hair is silver so from here on I will call you Silver.” I almost face palmed, that’s what I get for calling the other one ‘red’ I suppose.

  She picked up her gun again. “Why don’t you come with me, and I’ll answer your questions as we go. If you stay - especially without a frame - you’ll be in danger, a newborn nymph won’t st long down here. Perhaps it’s a blessing of Aurum that I found you as fast as I did.”

  All this talk of temprs and some kind of god or goddess named Aurum was weirding me out a little. In my past life I was an atheist, and religious organizations made me a little uncomfortable. This Hati person seemed nice though.

  “A frame; that’s what you’re wearing right? The mecha stuff?” I gestured to her armor.

  She nodded. “We’ll have to find you something if we want to get back to Alqand in any reasonable amount of time.”

  My eyes lit up. I’ll get to wear a mech suit? That sounds fucking awesome! “Do you already know where we can find one?”

  She gave me a worried look upon seeing my excitement, but nodded. “I saw a really old frame, but it’ll have to do for now.” She began to walk towards the rge cavern, gesturing for me to follow when I didn’t immediately.

  I started to chase her out the door, but once again tripped and fell. Hati turned, and gave me a curious look again. “My feet used to be a lot different, still not used to these.”

  “They don’t look damaged..?”

  I sighed. “Before I woke up here yesterday; in my previous life.”

  Hati raised an eyebrow at that, and asked. “Your previous life?”

  I nervously gulped. “Yeah, like when I was a human… on Earth?”

  She ughed it off like it was some kind of joke. “Seedlings are always a breath of fresh air.”

  We continued through the various rooms and halls of the compound; they were all simirly worn by age as the first area, but with extra signs of battle.

  We continue along through the ruins until we reach what looks like some kind of skeleton robot. Hati kneels next to it and begins to strip it. “It looks like she died a century ago, so there’s no cells left.”

  ‘She’ died? I thought it was just a robot… Oh. It dawned on me that this wasn’t a robot skeleton, it was the corpse of someone like me and Hati… That’s why frame parts were stuck to it. Is that what was inside me though? I don’t have bones anymore? I felt like I was about to puke.

  “Hati… What are we?” I asked as I watched her strip parts from the body.

  “Huh? Nymphs obviously.” She answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Why do we look like humans?” I asked her. I couldn’t understand, especially with the fact that other ‘Nymphs’ or whatever clearly were growing like some kind of fetus in those gel pods. It didn’t make much sense to think of us as machines, especially when I don’t feel all that different to when I was a human.

  She’d just finished getting the legs off before starting on the back gear and some kind of rocket. “What exactly is a human? You mentioned them earlier too.”

  What’s a human? What kind of question is that?! Looking around the room we stood in, everything looked like it was built either for or by humans. I gestured to my ancient looking AK when compared to the frames and structure. “The ones who would have designed this; in the distant past if I had to guess.”

  She looked up at me even more confused now. “So you know what carbon based lifeforms are, but you didn’t know about nymphs? You are a strange one, even for a seedling.”

  I pced my hand on my head, feeling like a headache might come on. “And what’s a seedling?”

  Hati seemed unsurprised by the question. “A nymph not born of a queen.”

  Well that just begs the question of what a queen is! Why couldn’t I have been reincarnated into a more normal world? The headache never came, but my irritability over Hati essentially telling me I know less than a newborn should was starting to get to me.

  “And what’s a queen?” I asked, growing more frustrated.

  Hati sighed. “You should know all this, but I’ll humor you AFTER we get back to Alqand.”

  “Alqand? What’s th-” She cut me off with a gre.

  She finished stripping the corpse, and tossed the frame pieces into a pile next to me. We spent a moment looking at each other expectantly, before Hati realized I didn’t know how to put on the frame.

  She has me sit down and hold my legs in the air to make it easier for her, which as she expined, is not the typical way to do it. She fixes the first leg of the old somewhat rusty frame to my leg, then does the same for the other. Thankfully, despite the metal bones, there’s no viscera or staining on the frame to make me any more reluctant than I already was wearing items off a looted corpse.

  She mumbled. “You’re lucky these weren’t the quad type.”

  “Quad type?” I asked, having overheard.

  “Yep, they require a queen or smith’s help since you’d have to remove half of your legs to wear it.” I cringed at her expnation.

  “That sounds… unpleasant.” I commented.

  “Not really, it feels kind of like kneeling, and they allow you to carry an honestly impressive amount of ordinance.” Despite her reassurances, I didn’t want my legs chopped off for more weapons.

  I hesitantly stood up with Hati’s help. It was still harder to walk than with normal feet, but significantly easier than with my new body’s stilt ones. Their shape reminded me somewhat of prosthetics from my past life, ending in a sort of springy pad at the bottom. I walked back and forth around the room for a minute, gaining a lot more confidence with the frame legs.

  “What’s the backpack thing for?” I asked. One of the frame pieces was a rge horizontal cylindrical frame with a rge thruster thing near my ass. Looking back I chuckled to myself. I look like I have the ass of a bee. “Is it some kind of power thing for the frame?’

  She made a ‘sort of’ gesture with her hand, then expined. “It boosts your shields, and powers your thruster.”

  So, Nymphs naturally have shields? Do I have a shield organ? What a weird thought. That being said, if not for that I definitely would have died to that robot earlier.

  “So how do I use this all?” I asked.

  She looked at the emptied chamber in my gun. “Well, first you’ll want to reload your weapon with some BP; so take the magazine of your gun and stick the feed end in the port on the left side of your hangar.”

  I’d never heard the term ‘hangar’ or ‘BP’ before, but it was safe to assume she was talking about the horizontal tube; I found a spot that I could sort of press the magazine into; but nothing happened. “How long do I have to hold it there?”

  She frowned at me. “You didn’t get the option?”

  I stared at her in disbelief. Is she talking about some kind of isekai system? The fuck? “I’m not seeing anything.”

  “Hold on.” She had me turn my back to her as she took the ‘hangar off’. She somehow connected it to her own and gestured for me to hand over the magazine.

  As she pressed the magazine to the hangar, I heard a whirring noise coming from within, followed by a rapid clicking noise as each bullet filled the magazine.

  Hati scrutinized me again. “You seriously didn’t see the option to load it? The hangar system is working just fine.”

  I shook my head.

  She let out a tense breath. “You just keep getting weirder and weirder, you know?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re telling me… What’s so bad about that anyway?”

  She held up a finger. “One, it means you can’t reload on your own,” She held up a second. “Two, it means you’re probably not a Combat Nymph,” She held up a third finger. “And three, I am beginning to suspect that you’re less a seedling messenger of Aurum, and more a botched Alqand spawn.”

  Oh great, just when I thought things were getting cool, it turns out I was born fucked up.

  I let out a deep sigh as she put the hangar back on. “It’ll still be useful even without the weapons interface.” She expined.

  “And how’s that?”

  She smirked. “Think about wanting to go really fast say…” She pointed to a nearby pole. “Right over to that pole.”

  I shrugged and turned to face the pole.

  I was about to sprint towards it, getting into a sort of runners starting pose when she spped a hand on my shoulder. “Not with your legs, you idiot.”

  I was confused, but stood up anyway. I thought really hard about getting to that pole as fast as possible. It was about 50 meters away.

  As I thought about it, I felt some strange muscle pulse. I shot forward, hovering in the air just above the ground in a strangely controlled manner. “WOAH!” I shouted in surprise.

  In less than a second I’d covered the ground to the pole and nded. A quickly diminishing sense of fatigue with the muscle had formed with the movement.

  When I turned around Hati saw my excitement and gave me a knowing smile. I smiled back and waved.

  Repeating the same experience now that the muscle had a sort of ‘full’ feeling. I burst again back to Hati, nding just in front of her.

  I ughed loudly. “That was a bst!” I shouted.

  She nodded, but chastised me for yelling. “It’s good to see your stabilizers are fine despite everything else about you seeming broken.”

  Her words wiped the smile off my face. I didn’t like being called broken. “I may be strange to you, but please don’t call me broken.”

  She was taken aback, and rubbed the back of her head. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I’ve been alone for so long until I ran into you and the other seedling.”

  “It’s okay…” I forgave her easily; I really wanted Hati to like me, and she’s been so helpful to me so far.

  Hati gave me a genuine smile. “Alright Silver, one st thing I’m going to show you.” She gestured to her robot animal ears, or at least that’s what they looked like. “These, just like the headband you’re wearing are comms.”

  I nodded sagely. “So, like a radio.”

  “Sure; we will only be using it sparingly as it can attract the wrong sort of attention if there’s any of the more intelligent automata nearby.”

  “Okay, those are the destroyed robots we’ve been seeing everywhere, right?” I asked, putting two and two together.

  She nodded. “Correct. Just as a test, I want you to try thinking a message to me; we should be okay to do it once since we’ll be well and gone by the time any hunters come here.”

  I closed my eyes and thought really hard to send a message to Hati. “Can you hear me?”

  I opened my eyes and looked at Hati; I heard her voice clearly without echo, and her mouth didn’t move. “Loud and clear.” She gave me a thumbs up.

  “You ready to head out Silver?” She asked.

  “Yep, whenever you are.” I responded.

  “Okay, just follow behind me; keep at a rate of 40kph so you don’t burn out as fast.”

  I nodded, not sure how to keep at such an exact speed, but I’m sure it would be easy.

  It was not, in fact, easy.

  Hati shook her head in slight annoyance; she expined that because I kept speeding up and slowing down - intentional or not - I was burning my energy much faster than if I stayed constant, which meant more frequent stops to let my mobility thingy recharge.

  As we took a break in another rge cavern, this one with massive pipes snaking along the walls, I decided to ask her. “Did you destroy all these automatons we’ve been passing on your way down?”

  She looked at me, pondering the question. “Some. The other seedling killed most of them. I snuck around on my way here, avoiding them where I could; but that seedling is another story; a Nymph on a mission, she is.”

  I thought back to what I saw right after waking up here; a red skinned Nymph with a more lithe frame than either Hati or I had, massive shoulder cannons and a massive sword, way too big for her small stature.

  “She looked like a mecha demon.”

  “What in Aurum’s name is a mecha demon?” Hati asked.

  “What in Aurum’s name is anything in this weird ass pce?” I asked sarcastically.

  She sighed. “We have a few minutes, ask what you want to ask.”

  And so, I asked.