Book 6 Chapter 32.10 – Overture
In the northern highlands facing the frozen sea, a mountain peak that stretched several dozen kilometers in width, reaching several hundred meters above sea level rumbled and trembled, slowly sinking into the great earth. The mountain surface was covered in cracks, every crack releasing steam and dust that gathered into a smoke cloud that almost surrounded the entire mountain peak. The mountain sank at a visible speed. When the peak was about to enter the ground, it was like a volcanic eruption, a storm of metal covering an area of several hundred square kilometers sprayed out from the place where the mountain peak was originally located! Those were all mechanical bugs of varying sizes, and they weren’t like the swarm that attacked the Blood Parliament, with only a few types. The bug storm that was released from the mountain base had miniature machines that were as small as mosquitoes, but there were also some that were several hundred meters long mothership level warships. Meanwhile, looking at it from the numbers, even if the smallest mechanical bugs’ numbers weren’t taken into consideration, the metal storm still had at least ten million mechanical bugs.
O’Brien and Eileen both had sharp intuition and exceptional intelligence, their absent-minded words actually became true: after exhausting a mountain, ten million bugs were created. If they had the choice, they probably definitely wouldn’t want to see this scene.
The entire northern lands’ skies were dark and gloomy. It was already fall, and in a place like this with such high latitude, daytime was pitifully short to begin with, and it was even covered deeply under thick clouds of radiation, so even though it was currently noon, it was dark like dusk. The graceful and magnificent Starship Valhalla moved while sticking close to the clouds, streaks of glowing blue flowing light moving along the veined patterns outside the ship, moving from the bow of the warship to its stern, and then back to the bow. The flowing radiance applied a dark layer of blue color to the heavy clouds, this scene that was originally extremely gorgeous, for some reason, gave off a feeling of chilliness.
The starship’s entire body trembled. A moment later, the belly of the starship suddenly opened up, a giant and complicated six-sided pillar type object fell out. The surface of the prism was completely made of endlessly flickering light pieces, full of an aura of mystery. The six-sided prism slowly descended, dropping onto the summit of a mountain peak below. Snow immediately melted, exposing the dark-colored rock below. The light released by the six-sided pillar shone on the rock, and then the rock instantly became dark red magma, flowing in all directions. The six-sided prism slowly descended, entering the magma at a constant pace, inserting itself into the mountain belly depths.
The six-sided prism was precisely the cornerstone of a technological civilization, the source of endless energy: spatial furnace. With Starship Valhalla’s ability, producing a spatial furnace still needed more than a month of time.
Meanwhile, when the spatial furnace entered the mountain body, more than ten machinery cabins separated from Valhalla, entering the mountain peak’s surroundings. Some of them directly opened up on the ground surface, while some continued to make their way into the ground, to the extent where they only stopped after drilling several hundred meters down, and then opened up. Thus, work stations of various functions were established around the spatial furnace, forming a complete system. The spatial furnace stopped only after entering close to a thousand meters into the ground. The six-sided prism body suddenly released dazzling radiance, an energy field silently spreading, covering a range of several dozen kilometers, reaching a thousand meters underground. All work stations that entered the range of the energy field immediately obtained an endless source of power, and thus began to work at full speed. The work stations first created all types of machinery, and then the machinery was started up one after another in the energy field, starting to extract ore, smelt and forge metal, process the product, and then assemble it, segments gradually completed and perfected one by one. Then, even more machinery were assembled, and only now were large amounts of interchangeable parts useable by both the workstations and the mechanical bugs they created.
In the depths of the mountain belly, there were several digging machines that emerged from the innermost work stations. They were only the size of a puppy, but their digging abilities were unstoppable, easily cutting open the solid rock, smashing it, and then crushing them into granules of uniform shapes. When their storage areas were filled, they would return, empty the raw materials they had just gathered into the newly established dividing and smelting units to be made into all types of crude materials. Meanwhile, on the surface, several new processing workshops had already been built, digging machines released from between the workshops, these machines entering the ground at prescheduled locations. As the number of diggers increased, the machinery along various parts of the production chain also increased exponentially.
At the center control room of Starship Valhalla, Fitzdurk was floating high up in a place close to the roof, countless bands of light reaching out from his body, sending detailed orders to even the most insignificant mechanical bugs. Meanwhile, below him was a three-dimensional holographic image of the continent, covering the entire northern continent. Almost every area was bright, only the Blood Parliament’s territory an expanse of darkness without any information sent back. Apart from this, there were very few areas on the continent that were dark spots, these information blind spots extremely striking. The northern continent was a continuous expanse of mountains, on it flickering different colors that represented different resources. The various minerals were obviously important, but under the technology Fitzdurk grasped, almost all materials could be used to build a great mechanical army. One could see a striking red dot that continuously flickered below a mountain peak, and it continuously released a faint red radiance. This was the spatial furnace’s marking, the area covered by the red light the range that could receive energy from the spatial furnace. Under that mountain peak, small threads were currently quickly extending, interweaving into a web, these the small tunnels dug out by the diggers, as well as the resource gathering operation. When it became even more concentrated than a web, forming an expanse of color under the holographic image, it meant that the resources have pretty much been completely collected. Tens of millions of mechanical bugs would break out from the tunnels that had all of the resources dug out, thus producing a new all-engulfing storm of metal.
Meanwhile, right now, next to the symbol representing the newly produced base, the number representing the current amount of mechanical bugs was currently jumping, moreover accelerating at a constant rate.
On the other side of the map, the glaring red dot that represented another spatial furnace was currently moving, flying towards a new designated region. It moved together with the manufacturing system that was attached to it, quicky taking root in a new area, starting the production of new mechanical bug swarms.
On the central control room floor, Serendela’s head was raised, looking at the holographic map in the air, her expression continuously changing. She didn’t wear a single article of clothing, her five meters tall body continuously releasing blazing radiance, as if there was a raging flame blazing. Wherever the light reached, all of the light bands of data would distort. Fortunately, Serendela controlled the flames that were released from her body, not allowing them to spread beyond five meters. This was the result of Fitzdurk’s protest, or else if he allowed her to release the energy light flames, all of the data system would be severed. At that time, Fitzdurk’s army of machines would really become a pile of junk.
Even though Serendela’s body was large, her proportions and lines were the perfect figure of a human woman, extremely enticing. However, Fitzdurk didn’t have any interest in her body, his expression blank even when he occasionally gave her a look, as if he was looking at a sculpture, not showing any feelings a male would develop when looking at a female. What Serendela was looking at was precisely where the Blood Parliament was located. That area was completely dark, with only four gaps that weren’t all that large along the borders. This was the information acquired by the four waves of mechanical bugs when they invaded, only, they were destroyed before they even invaded, which was why there were only four small nicks made along the edge.
The Blood Parliament was like a slumbering giant, only displaying its terror when disturbed.
