Chapter 180: Puppet
This is a workshop, a mechanical workshop. The sound of useless machinery can be heard everywhere in the workshop. The huge gears on the ceiling mesh with each other and rotate slowly. The air smells of lubricating oil, and a lot of useless metal fragments are scattered on the ground.
Dorothy walked curiously in the workshop, looking around. She saw many strange little mechanisms on the table, including automatically dancing metal figures and mechanical birds flapping their wings.
"The machinery workshop... This is also a 'stone' expert. Compared to Aldrich carving stone statues and Deer Skull making bone monsters, is this person more proficient in metal machinery?"
Dorothy was thinking in her heart as she looked at the scenes around her. At this moment, a female voice with a hint of strangeness suddenly sounded in the corner.
"Excuse me, can you help me?"
Dorothy started a little at the sound, and then looked where the sound came from, but saw no one.
"Who is it? Who's there?"
Dorothy asked, and the Voice answered.
"I'm right here. Please look down a little. I'm on the ground."
Listening to the words, Dorothy lowered her perspective, and indeed she saw a strange thing on the ground there.
It was a head! A head of a young woman with short grey hair and a pretty face! One of its eyes was covered with a round lens, and the skin on its face was broken, revealing the yellow metal inside. The fracture of the head and neck also showed a sophisticated and complex mechanical structure.
"Robot head!?"
The moment Dorothy saw the head, she blurted out, and the head responded with a hint of displeasure.
"This is really a bit rude, guest from Igwinter, my name is Beverly, not some robot head."
Dorothy was slightly stunned after hearing the other party's response. After calming herself down, she continued to speak.
"Ah... so... Miss Beverly, how can I help you?"
"Please pick up my head, and then go to the bookcase on the right side of the workshop. There is a pull rod next to it and pull it open." The head named Beverly said this, and Dorothy decided to do so after hesitating for a while. She walked over and held up the lifelike female head with both hands. Suddenly, she felt a little weird in her heart.
Then, Dorothy held her head and began to look for the mechanism, and the other party was always leading Dorothy.
"Yes, yes... It's over there, next to the bookshelf. There's a lever. Just pull it open."
Under Beverly's guidance, Dorothy found a lever mechanism next to the bookshelf on the right side of the workshop. After pulling it hard as she said, the wall next to the bookshelf slowly opened with the sound of the mechanism clicking, revealing the scene behind.
Behind the wall, lined up were a row of female bodies dressed in plain clothes. These bodies had no heads. Looking at this scene, Dorothy was stunned again.
"Just find me a body and put my head on it."
"Um...how do I assemble it?" Dorothy asked back in confusion after listening to Beverly's words. She didn't know anything about mechanical assembly.
"You just need to put my head on the interface."
Beverly said this, and Dorothy followed her instructions half-heartedly. She found a random body and put Beverly's head on the empty interface of the neck, then let go.
Later, Dorothy saw that the machinery at the broken part began to connect automatically, and Beverly's head also turned left and right on the new body by itself, and finally corrected to a normal posture. Behind Beverly's new body, a huge clockwork key automatically popped out and inserted into the hole behind Beverly. Then, driven by the workshop mechanism, it was tightened with a click.
Finally, Beverly's new body began to move with a sound of mechanical operation. After she mechanically moved her limbs, her movements became more and more smooth. Finally, she walked out from the row of headless bodies and came in front of Dorothy.
Apart from the skin interfaces on her face and the bronze mark on her neck, she now looked like a girl of about seventeen or eighteen years old, quite pretty in every way.
"Phew... Thank you so much, Miss Meshhos. If it weren't for you, I would have stayed there bored for another two hours until someone came back."
Beverly took a long breath, sat down at a table and spoke, while Dorothy tilted her head and responded.
"Do you know my name?"
"I knew that the old man had written to me and told me that you would come, so I have been waiting for you all this time."
Beverly said this, then picked up a cup of light yellow "drink" on the table and slurped it into her mouth. From the smell it gave off, Dorothy could confirm with certainty that it was motor oil.
"Are you a robot?" Dorothy continued to ask, and the other party responded by wiping his mouth after drinking the motor oil.
"To be precise, it should be called a fully autonomous mechanical puppet. You have learned a lot today. People like me are extremely rare in the world. You can probably count them on one hand."
"Puppet?"
"It's the puppeteer's creation. The main part is the stone, and the auxiliary part is the puppeteer. Its characteristic is that it can create all kinds of semi-autonomous or even fully autonomous puppets. For example, I am the creation of that old man in his prime."
Beverly was sitting at the table, looking at the mirror and using a special gel to "touch up" the damaged skin on her face while talking. Her words stunned Dorothy again.
"What? You said you were created by Aldrich? Isn't he a stone carver?"
"Yeah, so when I was first created, I was also made of stone. Not only was I lifeless, but I was also extremely ugly."
"You don't like it?"
"That was back then. The old man had a very old-fashioned aesthetic. He always liked to carve knights, beasts, heroes... I prefer young and beautiful girls, so I was very dissatisfied with the image at the beginning."
Beverly said this, and Dorothy began to recall as she listened to her words. It seemed that Aldrich's aesthetics were indeed very classical. He liked to carve some solemn and majestic or heroic male figures, mostly kings, generals, knights, and sometimes some ferocious beasts. It was rare for him to carve any female figures.
"That seems to be the case with Aldridge's aesthetics. He created you, but you don't like the aesthetics of the one you created, and you are dissatisfied with the form he gave you?"
"Yes, so I tried to carve myself with a carving knife, wanting to change myself into the shape I liked, but my carving skills were not as good as that old man's, so I carved myself into pieces."
As Beverly said this, her makeup became more elaborate and she had already started to use some of the most common female cosmetics. Dorothy, who was listening to her words, just opened her mouth woodenly.
At this time, Dorothy was imitating a stone sculpture of an originally majestic knight or prince, and was carefully carving herself with carving tools in the mirror, trying to transform herself into the image of a beautiful girl. However, due to her poor skills, she messed up and carved herself into a weird thing.
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