The Tin Knight-Chapter 44: The Tin Knight and The City of Clockwork (3)

Funds extorted from the alchemist Franka, who treated winged monkeys like children.

Money received as payment for looting treasures from the labyrinth and handing them over to the Halder Company—or more precisely, a portion of it.

Dorothea’s financial power was quite abundant, and thanks to this, there were no obstacles in the transaction.

“Well, first we need to take a look inside, so tell the doll to lie down on that workbench over there. Put the sword and shield aside, they’re dangerous.”

At the man’s words, Dorothea looked at you with a face that said, “Did you hear that?” and you silently laid down on the workbench.

“Oho?”

The man’s eyebrows twitched greatly, showing an expression of admiration.

“Its intelligence is quite high? It can move based on situational judgment without specific orders from its master?”

“What high intelligence? It’s just an idiot.”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ protests that Dorothea’s assessment is too harsh!]

You expressed dissatisfaction, but Dorothea didn’t even pretend to listen.

You felt wronged.

You were just living faithfully to your desires at each moment!

“Hmm, I wonder how they constructed the circuits. It might take some time, so if your legs get tired, you can sit somewhere nearby. No, please sit down.”

The man’s speech had been quite inconsistent from the start.

He was maintaining the minimum courtesy as a shop owner, but it felt like his true nature was popping out here and there.

Dorothea briefly scanned the surroundings but didn’t sit down anywhere.

Apparently, there were no seats that appealed to her.

The man’s light humming and the clanking sounds of him disassembling you harmonized and echoed.

It was a situation similar to being examined at a hospital, but due to the lack of sensation or pain, there was almost no sense of tension or reality.

“Huh... The technology itself is certainly old-fashioned, but this level of craftsmanship is no joke. No way this was made by just one person. Several top-level experts from different fields must have worked on this. If I showed this to the old geezer who died, his eyes would have popped out.”

“Can you fix it?”

“I think I can handle the internal mana circuits with the materials and equipment I have on hand. But this needs to be fixed right away. It’s like a building where the pipes that should carry water have countless scratches and cracks. It’s leaking even when idle, and if you increase the pressure, the cracks grow larger too. If left like this, it would have gone boom any day, you know?”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ shivers, saying it’s chilling!]

You were terrified, but the repair technician couldn’t hear your words, and Dorothea seemed uninterested either way. You felt alone.

“Can’t the self-repair function fix that much?”

“Hmm. If you compare it to humans, the self-repair function works on things like skin, muscles, and bones. The issue lies more with the internal organs.”

“What about other things? Can’t you increase the storage capacity of mana, or make it possible to supply mana remotely like other magic dolls?”

“Well. The thing that acts as a mana tank is usually a jewel. The jewel this doll has now is already ridiculously large. Even though it must have worn down and shrunk over time, it’s still this massive. How large must it have been in its prime? Anyway, finding anything larger would be near impossible. It’s not just a matter of money, but such jewels are usually used as accessories by high-ranking people, so there’s rarely any stock available for use in places like this.”

“What about remote supply?”

“It would be faster to just start from scratch for that. Well, if you really want to do it, instead of tinkering with the existing body, it would be better to transfer the artificial soul of this doll to a completely new magic doll...”

The repair technician’s voice trailed off.

His mouth, which had been chattering about various things enjoyably, closed tightly, and his eyes widened.

Doubt.

Shock.

Denial.

And then...

Rage.

The repair technician, emitting a fierce aura, abandoned his work and strode towards Dorothea.

You tried to get up, but being half-disassembled, you couldn’t move an inch.

The man’s hand reached out towards Dorothea’s neck—then suddenly hesitated.

It seemed he was trying to grab her collar, but given the structure of Dorothea’s clothing, grabbing her collar was quite a difficult task.

The man hesitated, unable to do this or that with his outstretched hand, then lowered it towards the ground with an irritated motion.

“Hey, what the hell is that? You obviously didn’t make it, so where the hell did you get something like that?”

Dorothea frowned.

Despite the large man sticking close and making threats, she showed no sign of fear.

“That doesn’t seem like the attitude to treat a customer. And does that have anything to do with the repair?”

“Cut the crap and just answer the damn question!!”

“Explain the reason first.”

“Wow, really...!”

The man’s fists trembled, but unable to swing them, he shouted instead, “─That’s not an artificial soul! It’s goddamn human!! This was made by stuffing a living person as is!!”

Dorothea’s eyes widened.

Just as she was about to say something, moving her lips...

With a creaking sound of old hinges, someone entered the workshop.

“Brother! I told you to lock the reception desk door when you’re in the workshop! What if someone steals shop items...?”

A girl with brown hair that was more reddish than the repair technician’s, but resembling him, stopped speaking as she saw the scene inside the workshop.

That was, the scene of the shop owner sticking close to Dorothea with a fierce face and yelling at her.

Unlike the man who went through the stages of doubt, shock, denial, and rage, the girl’s emotional change was very simple.

Bewilderment.

Okay, I understand. Die.

“Hey, you, jackass──!!”

The girl, pulling out a monkey wrench from her waist, charged at the repair technician with terrifying momentum.

“Wait, hey, that’s not, ack! Gah!”

Spurting blood. Screams rose into the air.

The bloody action scene that unfolded in a workshop in a back alley of the City of Clockwork finally ended after about ten minutes.

***“I’m sorry! I’m so terribly sorry! I knew my brother was an idiot, but I didn’t know he was trash who thinks with his lower half instead of his brain!! I’ll educate him even if I have to beat some sense into him, so please forgive us just this once!”

Dorothea wore an expression that was hard to describe as she watched the girl bowing repeatedly and apologizing without pause.

Generally, the “I’ll educate them thoroughly, so please let it go this once” line from the family of an offender was famously unreliable, but... well.

Twitch, twitch.

Looking at the repair technician writhing like a caterpillar on the floor, it seemed that, at least for this girl in front of her, the words “I’ll educate him even if I have to beat some sense into him” had some credibility.

Rather, Dorothea thought she might have gone too far.

It would be troublesome for Dorothea too if the useful repair technician she had finally found disappeared.

“...It’s fine. I didn’t suffer any particular harm, and I learned something thanks to this.”

Saying, “learned something,” Dorothea glanced at the Tin Knight.

A human soul?

If asked whether she had never suspected it, of course she had.

The excessively expressed emotions and high intelligence—all of it hinted at the Tin Knight’s extraordinariness.

But Dorothea had never seriously considered that possibility.

The very act of putting a human soul into a doll itself already puts considerable strain on the soul. If centuries or more have passed in that state, it couldn’t withstand it no matter what. The soul itself would deteriorate and perish, or even if it somehow endured, there’s no way the mind could be intact, hmm...

Dorothea suddenly flinched at the thought she had just had.

That’s right. Come to think of it, the Tin Knight’s mind wasn’t intact at all!

There’s no way someone with a sound mind would act like that. I see, so that’s what it was.

Dorothea let out a thoughtful sound.

Thinking about it that way, things seemed to fall into place.

Above all, she had directly witnessed the soul that was usually hidden under the armor, in the container holding the soul, so she couldn’t deny it even if she wanted to.

Dorothea looked at the Tin Knight with somewhat pitying eyes.

She had thought he was just a strange fellow, but it turned out he was a patient.

From now on, she should be more considerate...

[The ‘Tin Knight’ points out that staring so intently at the exposed insides of his body is unexpectedly perverted!]

Clang!!

Dorothea’s staff mercilessly struck the face of the Tin Knight lying on the workbench.

“Eek!”

The girl beside her jumped in surprise.

Apparently, she misunderstood that Dorothea was expressing her anger towards her brother in this way, but Dorothea didn’t care about that right now.

“For now, finish the repairs that can be done immediately, as quickly as possible. And do you also do blacksmith work here?”

“Ah, yes! But we’re not at the level of a specialized weapon shop, just using it as an auxiliary for workshop work.”

“Then put some metal on the head part of my staff. So it can be used as a blunt weapon.”

The girl swallowed the words “It seems like you’re already using it well as a blunt weapon” internally.

To provoke such a terrifying customer.

She was convinced that this damn brother of hers must have gone completely insane.

***The man’s name was Smith.

The woman’s name was Sinc.

Smith, with bandages wrapped around his face, apologized to Dorothea with an embarrassed expression.

“Well, I’m sorry about that. Seeing such trashy behavior, I got heated up without realizing it.”

“An apology along with an excuse is the worst, Brother.”

“You’re no better, starting to beat me up without even listening to a proper explanation—no, never mind.”

Sinc, with sparks flying from her eyes, and Smith, averting his gaze while sweating.

Towards the deeply affectionate repair technician siblings, Dorothea asked, “Is the work all finished?”

“For the internal mana circuits, yes. There won’t be leaks everywhere when drawing mana like before. However, it was impossible to recreate all those circuits, so it might not function as it did  when this doll was first made.”

“Why, there are two types of those blood vessels, right? Thick and sturdy ones, and thin and easily bursting ones. Usually, magic dolls only have the thick ones, but in the case of this doll... knight, there were even thin blood vessels. Now they’re all severed and clogged, leaving only traces.”

Sinc answered, and Smith added an explanation.

“Can’t those thin and detailed circuits be recreated?”

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“We can’t.”

“We can’t right now.”

This time, similar yet different answers came out.

Smith frowned.

“Hey, if we can’t do it, we can’t do it. What’s with this ‘right now’ nonsense? It’s unsightly.”

Sinc grumbled in rebuttal, “If it was in grandfather’s workshop, not this corner room, we could definitely do it!”

“What’s the point of that now? Ahem. It would be better to pretend you didn’t hear what was just said.”

Smith continued his explanation with a sulky expression, “To begin with, such detailed circuits are useless even if they exist. The reason the latest model magic dolls only have thick mana circuits is that those are sufficient.”

“You mean they’re useless organs?”

“That’s how it usually goes when making various complex machines. You think something is necessary, but later you find out it works fine even if you remove it, or conversely, you think something isn’t needed but it turns out to be essential. That’s how improvements are made. Well, in the case of this knight, since it’s such an old model, I think it ended up like that from trying to imitate the human body as much as possible.”

Dorothea crossed her arms and fell into thought.

...Somehow, the results feel quite inadequate compared to what I expected.

Remote supply was impossible without making a completely new doll.

Increasing mana capacity was impossible due to the lack of jewels to act as tanks.

The only thing that succeeded was improving the mana circuits, but even that had some dubious aspects remaining.

Dorothea stared at the two.

Judging from the talk about their grandfather’s workshop, it seemed there was some backstory, but given the atmosphere, it didn’t seem like they would easily share that story.

Even if they did share it, it was questionable whether it would be something Dorothea could solve.

“So if I just get a suitable jewel, we can improve the capacity problem?”

“That’s true, but it’s not just about size being better unconditionally.”

“I can check whether it can hold a lot of mana or not. If I see something suitable, I’ll bring it.”

After exchanging greetings like that, Dorothea opened the front door of the shop and stepped outside.

As she was about to move her feet, her view caught sight of a pair that seemed to be about to enter the shop.

One was a girl who looked about the same age as Dorothea.

Shining blonde hair and blue eyes. A pristine white dress that looked out of place with this dark alley.

Guarding her side was a knight wearing similarly pure white armor—no, a magic doll.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ brightens his eyes at the appearance of a Player 2 color!]

Black and white.

The dull metallic luster reminiscent of a battlefield, and the brilliant metallic luster that seems like it would march in the center of a crowd.

Dorothea realized something.

It was closer to intuition than theory.

And the girl in front of her seemed to have reached the same conclusion.

The girl smiled and greeted, “I’m Gale Elilaz, mentee of the Witch of the North. Are you... perhaps a witch?”