(Training Camp)
Zeus arrived at the site and took a quick look around, searching for Khaled, and indeed he found him sitting with a small group of children.
Khaled saw Zeus and ignored him.
"Strange, did he just ignore me?" Zeus thought cautiously and decided to keep a safe distance between himself and Khaled.
He moved to a nearby spot to the right of the males' tent, where there was a large pot cooking food over a wild fire.
Miss Zahraa was working on it, assisted by some younger girls from among the children.
When Zeus didn't find the girl Raneem, who had tried to poison him, anywhere near the cooking area, he felt some relief.
Nevertheless, he remained cautious enough, because he hadn't seen her anywhere else yet.
Zeus began counting the children and realized that three of them were missing: Raneem, Sattam—the rude boy—and Tala, the sweet girl who had given Zeus a flower, and whom Zeus wondered about whether she was truly innocent or actually more dangerous than all the others in the place.
Since she was from the Scorpion Village, and that alone was enough to raise a lot of suspicion about her.
Wait—there was one more missing person that Zeus couldn't identify, so he decided to ask Amjad, who was working nearby on a small pot over a fire, preparing some strange liquid.
(Zeus): There are some children I can't see around the area.
Amjad's hand, which had been stirring the liquid, stopped suddenly, and he stood up quickly and began scanning the children.
(Amjad): I told them not to leave the area. I should have known they wouldn't follow orders.
(Zeus): Do you have any idea where they might go?
(Amjad): Either towards the village or towards the mountain ranges. Based on what I know about those kids, maybe they're looking for herbs and materials.
Why?
Not sure. But maybe they want to make poison to kill you.
(Zeus, nervously): Don't joke like that, man. If anyone saw your seriousness, they'd think it's real.
Amjad looked silently and calmly at Zeus, who spoke with an awkward laugh.
You don't seem to be joking.
Amjad remained silent, and Zeus's smile faded.
"Damn it, am I really going to die at the hands of a child in the middle of the desert!? That bastard Khaled is also ignoring me suspiciously. If I'm not careful, he might kill me before they do," Zeus thought, annoyed, before deciding to take some measures.
First, don't accept any gifts from the children.
Second, don't take your eyes off Khaled, not even for a second.
Third, no sleeping at the camp from today.
Fourth, he must find the children and figure out what they are doing right now.
Zeus launched his grappling hooks and decided to search towards the mountains, since he had just come from the village a short while ago. Even though he hadn't focused on the road, his eyes would have caught the children if he had spotted them.
...
After five minutes
Zeus saw Raneem, Sattam, Tala, and another girl from a distance and decided to sneak up on them.
Indeed, as he got closer, he could hear them thanks to his genetically enhanced hearing.
(Raneem / 7 years old): We have to finish our work quickly before the target returns.
"Did she say 'target'!? Why does her way of speaking sound like she went through assassin training?" Zeus thought, staying focused to catch their words.
(Sattam / 12 years old): Are you sure this will work?
(Raneem): Don't worry. When he eats his food, he won't feel anything strange. My grandmother told me this is one of the best lethal poisons.
(Tala / 7 years old): Are we going to kill the teacher?
(Sama / 11 years old): Yes. And don't cry when he dies. That bastard deserves it... Whoever opposes the Scorpion Village must taste its poison.
(Sattam): I don't belong to your village, so you need to change your words in the future. I still don't know how we'll put the poison into only his food without messing up.
(Sama): Leave that to me. I've always been great at planning, and my plans rarely fail.
(Tala): Don't kill him.
(Raneem): Tala!? He hit me! Didn't you see him!? You shouldn't stay this kind! Didn't Grandma tell you to train on killing? I didn't tell her that you were throwing frogs into the river instead of killing them, but if you stay like this, I will.
Tala clearly looked scared and seemed about to cry.
(Tala): Don't tell her!
"These brats!! What the hell are they teaching their children!?"
Zeus was shocked by the conversation and realized the situation was truly dangerous. At the same time, he realized that Amjad might not be the calm, rational man he appeared to be.
This was another point Zeus needed to remember: Amjad was dangerous too, and he needed to be cautious of him.
"What have I gotten myself into!" Zeus thought, annoyed, before leaving quietly.
Revealing himself wasn't the best option. Zeus decided he would teach them a lesson in another way.
...
(Training Camp)
Zeus returned and went straight to talk to Amjad.
(Zeus): Those brats are planning to kill me.
Amjad smiled lightly and spoke calmly.
Are you scared?
(Zeus): Yes, I'm scared—scared that I might lose my temper and accidentally kill them.
Amjad's smile disappeared, and he remained silent, staring directly into Zeus's eyes with mysterious expressions hiding his true face.
"I still have a hidden card. If I'm going to be killed, I'll have a vision beforehand. They can't really do much," Zeus thought confidently, launching his grappling hooks to head toward an unknown place in the mountains.
He reached a high peak, examining the area around him, looking for a place suitable to set up a private tent, and realized there was already a flat space, but it was full of large, hard rocks.
Zeus landed at the site, and when he saw the rocks, his eyes lit up with a brilliant idea.
"If I cut these rocks with laser beams, could I make joints and pieces that can be assembled using carvings to create a moving monster!? It's not impossible theoretically. I just hope the rocks are durable enough to bear the carvings."
Zeus grabbed the first big rock and didn't modify it much; he just cut off some protruding edges to form a piece about 1.5 meters long and roughly the same width, then started working on cutting nearby rocks.
"This isn't easy," Zeus thought, deciding he should first draw a blueprint for the stone monster he wanted to create.
Indeed, he started sketching on the ground the shape of the hands, feet, head, and main joints.
After some work, Zeus realized that the laser beam alone wasn't enough to achieve what he wanted.
He wanted a half-spherical pit at the top of the stone foot and wondered how he could make it.
Eventually, he started tweaking the energy-launching glyph's programming to create large, concentrated energy balls.
He made the ball stick to the stone foot without exploding while forming in front of the edge of the chains' blade, which was responsible for launching energy.
Indeed, the concentrated energy began drilling the stone to produce the shape Zeus wanted.
He placed the spherical joint into the spherical gap, and the pieces fit together relatively well. However, Zeus realized that even if the body was held together by the movement glyph's force, there were still significant flaws.
First, there would be continuous energy consumption just to keep the body intact, and luckily, the energy recovery rate could keep up with the energy needed for cohesion.
But if Zeus decided to make the stone puppet move, the energy consumption would exceed the natural recovery rate.
In a rough estimate, Zeus guessed he could make the puppet move for about half an hour if the glyph's storage was fully charged.
Zeus finished all the parts, and now it was time to give the puppet programming instructions and see how things would work.