The [Pot Bot] recipe was by far the longest he’d ever seen.
Recipe for: [Pot Bot]
Ingredients:
Pot
2x [Medium Axles]
4x [Medium Wheels]
1x [Large Gearbox]
4x [Conveyor Belts]
4x [Logic Gearboxes]
1x [Large Crank]
1x [Toy Claw]
10x [Gear Wheels]
18x [Spring Clamps]
…
He kept scrolling. And scrolling. And scrolling.
The recipe sprawled across sections. Mechanics… Logic...
But then came the part that made his heart skip a beat.
“Programming,” he read aloud. That part was further divided into subsections. He went through the first one.
Back Wheels — Pinned Barrel with three pins:
0 0 0 – Stop
0 0 1 – Forward Slow
0 1 0 – Forward Fast
0 1 1 – Backward Slow
1 0 0 – Backward Fast
This wasn’t a toy robot. This was a programmable machine.
His thoughts leapt to Esther and Riku. The NPCs had tremendously lightened his load in the Breach. While they did the menial, repetitive tasks for him, he was free to his own devices. How he wished they were here with him. But maybe, just maybe, there was another way to have assistants. Assistants in the form of robots!
His pulse quickened. Even if they weren’t as capable as Esther and Riku, if he could build one, he could build more. The potential was incredible.
For a moment, his imagination soared—an army of walking pots across the landscape, carrying out his every order. He even pictured himself lounging on a throne, two pot bots at his side fanning him with palm leaves.
He shook his head. No way that was possible. But… what if it was?
This all started, after all, because of a reward from a legendary chest. Legendary. Moreover, this recipe resulted from a synergy triggered by his hidden class. Maybe it was fine to let his hopes climb sky-high.
Grinning, Jack shot to his feet. There was only one thing to do now: gather every last part on that list.
*
He opened the recipe to the mechanical section.
“Step one: mount the central gearbox.”
He lifted the cube in both hands, approached the pot—then stopped. It had to sit halfway up the pot’s height. But if he mounted it now, how was he supposed to reach whatever needed to go underneath?
That familiar itch crept in. If I just shove this in, I’ll end up with a jammed mess.
He lowered the gearbox and set it back on the floor. This wasn’t a wind-up mouse or a jack-in-the-box. It was bigger.
Jack rubbed his temples and leaned closer, peering through the slits at the nest of gears and springs. “All right,” he muttered. “Slow down. How do you actually connect?”
He pulled the recipe window open again and read it once. Then again, slower. By the third pass, he slapped the window closed with a groan. It was hard to visualize the whole thing.
Maybe I just need to see it move.
He would assemble the mechanics outside the pot first. If he saw how everything worked together, mounting it would be easier.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He placed the large gearbox at the center of his workspace. Then he pulled a vase from his inventory, flipped it upside down, and set it beneath the cube like a makeshift table.
“All right, big guy,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do.”
He slotted the Large Crank into place with a solid clunk and twisted.
“Ooof—” Pain shot through his wrist. “Takes more strength than I thought.”
The spring inside caught. He cranked again. And again.
Then he let go.
Whirrrrr.
The gearbox hummed to life. Inside, cogs snapped into motion as the stored tension unwound. The crank slowed, but on the opposite face, the output spun at a quick, steady rhythm.
Jack watched for a few seconds, then nodded. “Okay. Wind it up, store the energy, release it as steady motion. Same idea as the toy mice.”
The difference was scale. This design relied on conveyor belts. When the gearbox turned, it wasn’t just powering one part—it had to drive everything else.
He mounted a small spindle at the output. Next came a second axle. He clamped a gear wheel to it, then looped a conveyor belt between the two.
He cranked.
The belt went taut. The axle spun.
“Nice.”
He added a second axle, parallel to the first, fitted with a smaller pulley. When he turned the crank again, both moved in sync.
That was it. One gearbox feeding motion everywhere it needed to go.
Encouraged, he tried a new setup: the large gearbox feeding into an axle, which fed into a logic gearbox.
He cranked.
The input spun. The logic gearbox clicked.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Jack frowned. “You’ve got a heartbeat, huh?”
Despite the sound, the output didn’t move. Curious, he pressed one of the metal prongs.
Click.
The ticking shifted, and the output spun this time. Jack jumped back, startled. A beat later, the prong snapped back, and the output stopped cold.
He tried again, holding the prong down.
Tick. Tock.
The output kept rolling, smooth and steady, until he released it.
Jack’s eyes lit up. “A timer,” he breathed. “You only listen while the signal lasts.”
He flicked the recipe window open to the programming section.
Back Wheels.
Pinned Barrel with three pins:
0 0 0 – Stop
0 0 1 – Forward Slow
0 1 0 – Forward Fast
0 1 1 – Backward Slow
1 0 0 – Backward Fast
The image finally snapped into place.
“If the barrel spins,” he murmured, “the pins press the prongs. The prongs tell the wheels what to do.”
Saying it out loud helped—a habit he'd picked up from the one day he’d worked alongside his father.
The thought brought a brief ache, dulling his excitement. He shook it off.
He reached for the next mystery, lifting the toy claw by its chipped tin pincers.
“Let’s see how your arms work.”
*
It had taken hours of tinkering, two busted prototypes, a sore forehead from headbutting the wall, and more than a few rocks kicked down the street—but he’d done it.
His first pot bot!
It stood tall on four sturdy wheels, a goofy red smiley face stretched wide across the pale clay. Here and there, fresh holes scarred the surface—access slots Jack had drilled and filed open with his bone-carving kit.
The access panels let him swap pinned barrels in and out. A claw and scoop, stuck to ruled metal bars, hung at its sides, and the big crank jutted from its back like a pair of wings far too small to fly.
Inside was the machine's heart: a big gearbox, mounted at the center. Conveyor belts stretched taut, logic gearboxes perched above the empty barrel slots, waiting for the machine’s brains.
Even with prefabricated parts from the recyclers, this wasn’t like playing with Lego. It required a lot more thought. He had to make sure every piece was precisely placed, properly aligned, and that the conveyor belts didn’t get in each other’s way. But now that it was all working, it was kind of beautiful.
His first pot bot was bulky but filled with potential.
Pot Bot (Epic)
Crafting grade: C
An automata ahead of its time, capable of basic programmed functions.
Durability: 32
Functions: [Harvest], [Craft]
He still couldn’t believe it. These bots were considered epic items. Epic!
The Functions section was unprecedented in all the items he'd made. Harvesting seemed simple enough. He pictured the scoop scraping at the dirt, the claw clumsily lifting whatever it managed to grab. But then what? Did the loot vanish into the pot bot's own inventory? Did it even have one? Would things just magically appear in his inventory instead?
And what about crafting? Could the bot follow any recipe programmed into a pinned barrel?
Questions piled up faster than answers, but he forced himself to refocus. There was still one last component for the pot bot left: the pinned barrel.
He grabbed a logic gearbox still unused in his inventory. He had to bring this along to the Pottery Association. If the pinned barrels weren’t the right size, and the prongs didn’t align with the pegs on the barrel, none of this would function.
Jack took one last look at the happy-looking pot bot, pride and frustration mixing in his chest. Then he turned toward the door.
“Just you wait, pot bot. I’m going to go make your brain,” he muttered.
He left the bot behind, its red smile fixed in place, as if watching him go.
