Millennium Witch.

Chapter 71-71- Four Layers of Matryoshka Dolls
That evening, Copper Skin and the other mechanical puppets in the kingdom went to great lengths to hold a welcoming ceremony for the two guests who had come from afar. In addition to sitting together and replenishing their magic with the energy storage box, Yvette also saw the puppets perform various entertainment programs for her, such as imitating acrobats throwing beanbags or performing operas.

Although from a human perspective, these performances were terrible—the movements were stiff and clumsy, the dialogue was poorly delivered, and the beanbag toss even landed on the audience's heads—the puppets were all very happy. This joyful mood had an invisible infectious power, which also put Yvette in a good mood.

She felt that, at least as an audience member, the puppets' laughter should be genuine.

After the welcoming ceremony ended, as Yvette watched the puppets busily cleaning up, she felt as if she had forgotten something.

This feeling of unease lingered until she lay down in the new room that Copper had cleaned for her.

Then, she slept peacefully in the air-raid shelter for one night. When she came outside the next morning, she saw a black dragon covered in snow and tied with a rope, forced to curl up and guard the RV. Only then did she realize what she had forgotten.

She saw a sealed iron door in the bunker's main hall. Opening that door would allow Dugrabi to enter. However, the welcoming ceremony had distracted her, and by the end, she had completely forgotten about the black dragon lying alone outside, even forgetting to untie its rope and let it go out to hunt for dinner.

"Thank you for your hard work," Yvette said, walking over to loosen the rope.

Dugrabi didn't know how to answer, so after a moment of silence, he turned his head away and refused to look at her.

Perhaps because it was only separated from the outside world by an iron gate, the soundproofing of the air-raid shelter was not very good. Last night, when it was lying outside enduring the wind and snow while silently warming itself by the fire with its dragon breath, it could clearly hear the laughter and chatter in the hall, as if they were coming from another world.

Compared to the humiliation of pulling the cart, this feeling of being forgotten seems even harder to accept.

“I didn’t mean to,” Yvette said again.

Dugrabi remained silent, deciding to play the role of a taciturn old horse. How could a horse talk to a person? It could only work hard and swallow all its sorrows.

"What do you want?" Yvette asked helplessly; she really wasn't good at coaxing children. Although this black dragon was almost 100 years old, considering that dragons could live for 2000 years, proportionally it was only about the age of a five-year-old child.

Dugrabi was somewhat tempted; now seemed like a good opportunity to ask to become his apprentice, and this third-rate wild god might agree. But when he thought of that sleepless, cold, and hungry winter night, his emotions surged again, and he turned his head away, remaining silent.

Yvette waited a while longer, but seeing that the black dragon still didn't react, she decided to give up for now—rationally speaking, now didn't seem like a good time to communicate.

She had the copper sheet open the iron gate so that Dugrabi could go in and rest at any time, and then she began to think about the exploration plan for Cooks.

First and foremost, safety must be ensured. The mysterious spider woman was able to shatter the magical barrier of the magic mech with a single blow, meaning that her current magical defenses are also highly likely to be breached. If she doesn't want to rely on hardened tentacles for defense all the time, then she must find a way to increase the defensive capabilities of her crimson armor.

This was certainly achievable. In the last month of her dream, her mastery of the engine was still very rudimentary, practically that of a complete novice. Although she had roughly completed the upgrades to the specifications and structure of the four elemental spells of ice, fire, wind, and thunder, as well as the three physical spells of Crimson Armor, Muscle Unlimited, and Regeneration Pump, it was, after all, a hasty upgrade, and she was a beginner in the field of engines, so the results were bound to be far from ideal.

She had taken this into account, so during the upgrade process, she basically only upgraded the architecture, leaving a large area of ​​the details under the architecture blank, waiting for her to continue to ponder and fill in.

Now she can finally fill in these contents according to her current needs.

……

Time, like the misty snow outside the valley, drifted away quietly. In the blink of an eye, Yvette had been staying in Cooks for more than three months. During this time, she mainly focused her energy on improving and fine-tuning the Crimson Armor. Under the 10 specification limit, the defensive power has its limits, so her main focus was on overlapping spells, that is, applying the same spell twice to her body at once, in order to achieve an effect that exceeds the current specification.

In elemental spells, this isn't difficult; it's just adding another rune ring. But in self-enhancing continuous spells, this is the effect that only a special 10-level structure can achieve, which is one of the reasons why Yvette insisted on upgrading the structure in the first place.

She even plans to design a stacking technique specifically to assist in the nesting of dolls, which can be barely achieved with a 10 specification. If this stacking technique can be successfully developed, she will have four layers of nesting dolls, at which point the safety factor should be very considerable.

Of course, the cost was a much higher mana consumption, but fortunately, as a nature mage with over two thousand mana points, such a cost was not unbearable for her.

Meanwhile, Bingyu and Dugrabi gradually got used to local life.

Among them, Bingyu's ability to integrate is undoubtedly outstanding. As a genuine mechanical race member and a new generation of magical puppets in the Sky Kingdom, her experiences along the way provided her with all sorts of topics to talk about, and in just a few days, she became a prominent figure here.

Dugrabi, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. Perhaps because of its ferocious appearance, resembling a mutated creature, and its inability to communicate, few golems dared to approach it. In addition, it itself was very disdainful of these broken metal alchemical creations and often pretended to breathe air to scare away the golems that approached, which led most of the kingdom's residents to keep their distance from it.

However, there was an exception: a mechanical girl named Jasmine, through her tireless efforts, managed to become somewhat familiar with Dugrabi. Although their communication was limited to physical interaction, after several attempts to scare the little tin man away failed, he gave up and would occasionally allow Jasmine to clean his back, which he couldn't reach.

……

Time flies, years pass silently, and in the midst of a peaceful life, winter snow once again covers the valley, and a year has passed just like that.

During this time, thanks to the air-raid shelters where the mountain whales passed by, nothing dangerous happened in the kingdom. Bingyu remembered the local residents' advice and dared not approach Cux, instead carrying out archaeological work in the surrounding towns and villages.

Dugrabi simply did nothing—dragons are a uniquely gifted race; as long as they eat normally, their magic will naturally grow with age, and they will automatically awaken dragon language magic when they reach a certain level, without needing to make any effort.

What it does most often is go out for a stroll with the magical puppet child Jasmine and several other child puppets, to look at the mines left behind by human civilization in the vicinity, or to gaze at the skeletons of collapsed human buildings in the distance.

Finally, on a cold morning, Yvette, who had long stayed in her RV or air-raid shelter and never stepped outside, pushed open the door and stretched lazily at the silhouette of Cooks City, which was shrouded in mist and appeared and disappeared like a mirage outside the valley.

"Finally finished," she thought, "I finally have four layers of crimson armor for protection."

With such defensive capabilities, it shouldn't be possible for that mysterious spider woman to shatter them all in one strike, right? And given a window of opportunity, she can recast the spell to stack the four layers of protection back up, thus avoiding fatal damage.

Should we set off tonight? Head to the mysterious downtown of Cooks? Gather some intelligence?
She was somewhat tempted, but soon, gazing at the snowy landscape before her, some scattered, unpleasant memories began to surface in her mind.

No, we're not prepared enough. Who knows what monsters or secrets are lurking in that place? Even the God of Machines' chosen ones suffered heavy injuries; how can we be careless?
Moreover, the four-layer protection has not been tested in actual combat, so who knows if there might be any hidden bugs?

Just in case, let's also perfect the most powerful lightning element spell. We already have the ultimate four-layer protection, now we should have the ultimate four-stage lightning.

It's not too late to explore again next year when both offensive and defensive capabilities are met.

(End of this chapter)