The scouting team returned to the mountains and noticed that within a few short hours that they were away, Keyrin had already cleaned up the mess at the demon rat’s base camp. With the magic converter, the Thunder Ram Demon made sure that there was no scent, no tracks and no trails of the Demon Rats at all.
Should a Demon Rat ever return to scout the area, they would only find the forest and mountains as it is (Perhaps more lush than ever.) Even the cave which the Demon Rats mined was covered naturally with rock formations matching the surrounding walls. Keyrin also ensured that all the tunnels that were excavated had been covered too.
“Brilliant job.” Sebastia praised the Thunder Ram Demon resting at the side of the cliff overseeing the forest. Keyrin snorted and mumbled a few words that allowed him to cast a spell on them. Magical particles surrounded the scouting team momentarily, and they could feel their steps were lighter than usual.
“It’s a light footed spell.” Meomi noticed as she jumped about to test her balance, and it did not impact her body at all. She deduced she could move faster in it, especially the scouting gear the team had brought.
“The spell will last for a few days, sufficient for you to reach the next town in less than a day. You will sorely need it considering you already spent so much time here surveying the Farm Rats.” Keyrin said as he looked away and mumbled. “…and as a thank you.”
“Heh, the haughty, majestic Thunder Ram Demon is also capable of thanking people.” Flame Ripper thought to himself and grinned as he saw another side of a monster he could not have seen when they were in Jin’s home instances.
“Now, be gone! I need some rest before I prowl the area for these Farm Rats.” Keyrin neighed and peacefully closed his eyes. The scouting team did not hesitate any further and began to travel with Meomi in front since she had knowledge of the locations ahead.
Separately, Gold was in Ording Sanctuary to check on the conditions that the mousefolk were living in. It was utterly desolate and to call it a Sanctuary was somewhat of a stretch. However, the mousefolk were resilient in their ways. They had managed to grow a few crops that did not need sunlight and surprisingly, they had stumbled upon an underground source of water that aided them to stay in hiding for long periods of time.
But all this was about to change with Gold now in charge. Because of Jin’s permission to aid the fellow ‘resistance’ groups, the System had given a very limited access of Qiu Yue’s and Lynn’s subsystem modules to Gold. (Of course, whatever he does will be tracked by the System and notified to the respective Sub System Users as well as Jin.)
Unlike the Goblin General’s sons, Gold had already proven that he was capable in leading the werejackals by ensuring there was a hierarchy in place to maintain order. Jin also felt that he should not be micromanaging too much of the monster’s aspects.
He might be the user of the System that supposedly controls every aspect of the things he built, but it would be the death of him if he really did that. Even if he could achieve Astral Form and be capable of leaving the Another Jins behind to oversee the projects and do the work for him, there would still be an endless amount of tasks to handle. Kraft wasn’t wrong when he told Jin that there was no need for him to do everything by himself.
That was also why Lynn used her Sub System to have her penguins not just do the cooking but also train new penguins whenever the Sub System deemed it fit to reward her with new ones.
Not only that, with the emergence of WunderPanda Theme park, the more experienced penguins had taken more roles such as managing various cafes as well as handling the administration for anything related to the matters of cooking.
Similarly, Qiu Yue had also subcontracted the Minotaurs to be her overseers for the construction of the Dungeon City Fortress. It happened that those cosplaying minotaurs were outstanding mediators between the goblins and orcs, which resulted in the overall construction process to be faster and smoother.
So far, the agriculture sector had already been completed, equipped with modern aqueducts and processing factories. While some of the Orcs had already planted a few crops, native as well as foreign according to the System’s choices, both Shu, the Ancient Treant and Ke Mi, the Zither Mistress had also been tasked to come on a regular basis to get the crops up fast.
This was more of a massive scale and endeavour as compared to the farm the Werejackals had done. However, this particular agriculture floating platform sector could not have been accomplished so successfully if not for the System using the data it had gathered by analysing the Werejackals.
They were indeed the specialists when it came to farming.
Food Experimentation Specialist Melis had also cooperated with the Werejackals to learn more about the quality of the food grown. Other than the penguins, Melis was currently the only one to have been subcontracted by Lynn to be allowed to use the Cooking Sub System.
She had been using the Sub System modules to check the overall health of the crops, and how long they needed to be matured for harvesting. While the Werejackals already had some proven farming methods, Melis was granted a fairly large patch of field in Agriculture Sector One to test out other possible fertilisers as well for any other experiments she was going to conduct.
In addition, the Orcs and Goblins had commenced rearing animals for meat processing along with the production of other materials which the animals provided like fur or eggs. And because the System had the power to manipulate time, the animal farms had been placed in Agriculture Sector Two, a separate floating platform that was strictly regulated by the System and Lynn.
Lynn knew that raising livestock was a different issue compared to growing plants. Animals needed way more time to mature, and they required extra care such as food supplies etc. At the moment, she was rearing livestock that was native to their world such as chickens, pigs, ducks and cows to test out the time manipulation powers of Agriculture Sector Two. The animals were also allowed to roam and breed freely since the meat…are the tastiest in the wild free ranged ones.
The System had already geotagged each and every individual animal in Sector 2 and monitored their health and progress while accelerating the time in there. Should there be any signs of disease or sickness (which there should not be any after the strict vetting by the System), Lynn could assign the penguins to take them out of the Sector before it was allowed to spread. Otherwise, the penguins would only enter to bring the matured livestock out for slaughtering. (given the Peggies’ skills, their deaths would be swift and merciful.)
On a separate note, when Qiu Yue was away negotiating economic and political deals with the Goblins and Orcs, Moloch became her second in charge. He made sure the minotaurs did their own part in the construction efforts while mediating if needed. Thankfully, it seemed that squabbles were getting less and less frequent the more those two races came together and worked alongside each other.
Moloch even got them to work hand in hand (albeit grudgingly at first) with the improvements on the Sandroku golems and had already begun working in teams on a 24 hour shift to create and reinforce the foundation of the Pand-Atlantic City. (However, they still competed in regards to which Team managed to do the most in a day)
To Moloch, it was just business as usual, but if Orc King Frost Echo and Goblin King Sol were to see this, it would be a historic moment for both races.
In the meantime, the researchers were swarmed with more work to study the Steam Tech that the Demon Rats had used. The designs were not as complicated as the Lost Tech which the Orcs had used, but it was the inconsistency of the armour and weapon enhancement that pissed off Ayse.
“THERE IS NO ORDER IN THEIR CREATION! They merely slap some pieces of metal together and use the enhancements with any disregard for their lives!” Ayse shouted as she looked at the horrid mess of technology those Demon Rats were making. She could not find any common basis in their designs, which she found it annoying to a certain extent. Even the Steam Tech tanks Gold had taken were not of the same dimensions or within a margin of errors.
“It will indeed be a headache to categorise them.” One of the Elfish Researchers said. “At least we have the System with us to sort the items.” The Researcher was pointing out the Savants who had decided to ‘volunteer’ to sort the problem Gold threw them.
The Savants might be of various adventurer classes from the outside and their limited personalities did not suit to be research assistants but being Savants, they could all be further programmed by the System’s AI.
The System believed that those Savants would make good helpers for the researchers who were currently short handed. If those savants could pick up cultivator’s skills based on the System’s AI programming, they should also be able to quickly pick up the instructions and rationale of the researchers. The System believed by allowing them to experience research procedures rather than installing it in them that it would allow them to create their very own artificial intelligence functions.
It’s like seeing mini Systems grow; an experiment by the System to see if an AI with limited capabilities was able to thrive and perform. The researchers would also use this chance to oversee if they could create more of this kind of Savants without the invasive procedure Kraft had performed. If this was successful, Jin could easily create an army of sentient soldiers (to take over the world?) but for now, categorising the Steam Tech was the number on priority.
Back to Gold, with the permissions he received from the System, he had asked for some prefabricated houses to be put into the caves of Ording Sanctuary, creating furniture and giving the mousefolk a better place to rest. However, all this was not free, and someone had to pay for it.
Fortunately for Gold, the Farm Rats he killed were all ‘reincarnated’ items, and thus they were natural resources that could be used to pay for the costs in a certain way. The System had made use of the Lost Tech that Jin had looted from the Mysterious Island.
The Lost Tech Material Recycler and Lost Tech Counterfeiter.
Jin had recreated the piece of living armour successfully after 99 hours with the lost Tech Counterfeiter or Mr Bobbling Bear as Ayse had named it. Since it was the System, it was able to quickly sort through the useful and useless items that the Farm Rats had been reincarnated into.
Afterwards, the System inserted useless junk from the Farm Rats and gave it to the counterfeiter machine as food to create the prefabricated houses for the Mousefolk. With such ingenious products at its disposal, this was also why it did not allow Ayse to throw the Steam Tech away. Even a useless item had its uses.
Whenever Mr Bobbling Bear was not in use by the System, the System would place it in Lynn’s kitchen to let Mr Bobbling Bear eat whatever mishaps made in the kitchen. It was in replacement to the incinerator that the System once used for the kitchen and it proved to be very useful.
Because of the constant waste from the kitchen, this time round the prefabricated house and furniture that System had created were all free. and within a short time limit too. (Poor Living Armour Plants no longer receiving scraps anymore from the kitchen.)
As for the Lost Tech Material Recycler, the researchers had thrown a few badly damaged Steam Tech enhancements into it to see what was thrown out. To their surprise, the rumoured Litoride was also extracted by the Material Recycler.
Ayse was more interested in that than categorising the items, and so she had decided to appoint herself and a few other lucky researchers to study on the composition of the Litoride. The rest of the researchers grumbled and took comfort that the Savants were there to make their jobs slightly easier.
The Mousefolk were filled with delight and felt immensely indebted to Lord Scholar Gold. “This is so that you guys can rest properly. Insufficient rest means a drop in quality of your training. Right now, every bit of that training is needed to make sure that you all can defeat the rats.” Gold told them, and the mousefolk swore on the previous Lord’s name that they would do whatever it takes to win against the Demon Rats.
“A Sanctuary with less than a hundred people…as compared to the thousands …if not hundred of thousands of Demon Rats…I wonder if Master Jin can pull off such a miracle.” Gold thought to himself.
