Chapter 368 - 357: Starting the Money Printer
Chapter 368: Chapter 357: Starting the Money Printer
"Jarvis, deploy Cybertron."
[Command confirmed. Anchor established.]
Space twisted behind Allen. A deep blue crack tore open the lead-gray sky, its edges flickering with unstable spatial turbulence.
A twelve-square-kilometer modular complex squeezed out of the void and into the Material Realm, its heavy base crushing the surrounding rock formations.
Five Earth Vein Magic Furnaces let out a low rumble. An AT Force Field Shield instantly expanded, repelling the radiation-filled dust that filled the air.
The six-meter-tall material recycling furnace was placed at the edge of the processing area. Magic Power transmission lines were already connected, and the Rune Arrays on the furnace’s surface lit up one by one, waiting to convert scrap into wealth.
"Demon Eyes, ascend. Map the battlefield’s Magic Power fluctuations."
Ten V-type Demon Eyes ascended. They broke formation and hovered several thousand meters in the air. A grid of intersecting sensor beams scanned the forty-square-kilometer wreckage zone, leaving no blind spots.
Three minutes later, a simulated battlefield sand table formed in front of Allen.
The map was marked with three colors.
Green, the largest area, represented residual Magic Power that had naturally decayed to a safe threshold.
Yellow, scattered in patches, indicated the presence of low-level curse residue or unstable Energy Sources.
Red, blindingly conspicuous. There were seventeen marked points in total, all concentrated in the center of the battlefield.
"Jarvis, analyze the red zones."
[High-threat warning. Multiple un-detonated High-tier Magic traps detected in the red zones. Suspected presence of high-level curse anchors. Based on Magic Power peak characteristics, the possibility of dormant Mechanical Bodies cannot be excluded.]
Allen’s gaze swept over the sand table.
Traditional scavengers encountering this kind of terrain would need to hire a High-tier purification-specialist Wizard to remove the curses bit by bit, using pathfinder slaves to trigger the traps. The process was time-consuming, laborious, and extremely costly.
But a Golem Wizard had his own methods.
"First the meat, then the bones," Allen ordered. "Begin the operation. Avoid the yellow and red zones, and clear the green zones."
Cybertron’s alloy gates opened, and three hundred Factory Servants swarmed into the wasteland, each pushing a simple cart.
They had no emotions, were unaffected by radiation, and felt no fear of unknown curses.
Mechanical arms grabbed broken Golem remains, molten metal chunks, and twisted battleship armor.
Their built-in sensors and induction modules operated rapidly.
Low-grade scrap was tossed into the left transport container on the cart, while suspected high-grade alloys went into the right.
Jarvis took over global dispatch. Its central algorithm optimized the route of every single Servant to perfection. As soon as a transport container was full, it was immediately sent back to the storage area.
Before long, the first batch of mixed wreckage arrived.
"Activate the recycling furnace."
Thirty-six resonance modules activated. The wreckage disintegrated under low-frequency pulses, and its magical bonds shattered.
The scrap metal liquefied into different colored metallic fluids, which were then separated and re-solidified in collection troughs at the bottom into standard-sized metal ingots.
[First furnace cycle complete.]
[Materials input: 82 tons.]
[Output of high-purity Black Patterned Magic Steel: 54.6 tons.]
[Overall recovery rate: 66.6%.]
Allen looked at the data panel floating in mid-air.
’Almost four percentage points lower than the lab data.’
[Analysis complete. Trace amounts of unknown alloy impurities were mixed in the wreckage. The current resonance frequency is unable to break them down, causing some Black Patterned Magic Steel to be encased within them and ejected as slag.]
Allen brought up the slag composition analysis.
’Can’t break down the high-grade stuff. It’s gumming up the works.’ He issued a command, "Jarvis, adjust the resonance frequency range. Widen the peak interval. Run a comparative test on the next furnace cycle. Gradually eliminate the ineffective impurities."
[Parameters updated. Second furnace cycle ready.]
For the entire afternoon, Cybertron’s assembly lines ran at full capacity, continuously devouring the scrap metal from the wasteland.
As evening fell, the lead-gray clouds grew darker.
The clearance progress in the green zones inched forward. In the storage area, ingots of high-purity Black Patterned Magic Steel were already piled into a small mountain.
Allen switched to the thermal imaging view.
His gaze fell on the edge of a yellow zone.
The rear half of a wrecked Floating Battleship was embedded there at an angle, its massive metal structure casting a huge shadow across the wasteland. Sensor feedback indicated a strong Magic Metal reaction from the hull’s location.
The ship’s armor was made from a Black Patterned Magic Steel alloy.
But around the battleship wreckage, there were seven or eight spots where the Magic Power fluctuations were extremely unstable, suggesting potential unknown risks.
"Commander, shall I dispatch Golems to investigate?" Jarvis inquired.
’Investigate?’
Allen shook his head.
Sending Golems to "clear mines" was too inefficient and risked losses. Some Magic traps had chain-reaction triggers, and the slightest misstep could cause a large-scale collapse.
"Bring the Sky Throne over."
The clouds overhead were torn asunder. A one-hundred-and-twenty-meter-long, oval-shaped aerial platform slowly descended, hovering two thousand meters above the battleship wreckage. Its vast shadow enveloped the ruins below.
The main cannon’s muzzle took aim and began to charge.
Stray Magic Particles in the air gathered frantically, and a blinding white light ignited at the cannon’s muzzle.
"Targets, marked points H-04 through H-11. Multi-wave strike."
"Fire."
An orange-red pillar of Magic Power pierced through heaven and earth.
There was no probing, no finesse.
Pure energy poured down, precisely striking the ring of yellow trap nodes.
BOOM—!
The nearby ground was instantly vaporized.
Magic traps buried deep underground were forcibly activated by the extreme heat. Before the curses could even spread, they were torn apart by an even more violent surge of energy.
A chain of Magic Power detonations erupted in the ruins. Dirt flew, and metal fragments shot out in all directions with a piercing shriek.
The shockwave swept across the wasteland and slammed into Cybertron’s energy shield, creating a large ripple effect.
It fired once every three minutes, for a total of ten shots.
The smoke and dust cleared.
The ground around the battleship wreckage had been shaved down by three meters. All concealed traps, curses, and hidden explosives had been reduced to slag by the intense heat.
Allen looked at the virtual sand table.
The Demon Eyes re-scanned the area. The yellow markers in that zone had vanished completely, replaced by safe green.
"Servants, move in. Dismantle those armor plates and bring them back."
[As you command.]
Night fell completely over Plane 1143.
Cybertron’s searchlights illuminated tens of square kilometers as brightly as day. The recycling furnace never stopped, its low hum the only sound in this dead land.
Allen sat on a metal chair in the main control room, reviewing the first day’s summary report.
[Clearance progress: Green zones 34%.]
[Recovered output: 13,750 tons total of high-purity Black Patterned Magic Steel and equivalent metals.]
[Calculated market value: Approximately 5.5 million Low-Level Magic Stones.]
’Five and a half million in a single day.’
A rare smile appeared on Allen’s usually calm face. The alarm bells for his cash flow could finally be silenced.
In just another ten days or so, he could return to Hub City with tens of millions in cash flow and use the money to brute-force the production lines for his Golem division and scrap recycling business.
BEEP—
A piercing alarm suddenly blared in the main control room.
On the holographic sand table, one of the seventeen red markers in the central zone—the very deepest one—suddenly began to flash.
The previously static red halo began to expand and contract rhythmically. The frequency of the flashing red light was remarkably similar to the breathing pattern of some enormous creature.
[Warning! Ultra-high frequency Magic Source reactivating!]
[Energy level reading: 5800! Second-level Wizard.]
[Target is on the move. Speed: 70 km/h. Estimated time to outer perimeter: eight minutes.]
Allen stared at the light screen, his pupils contracting slightly.
’There’s still something alive in the ruins of a battlefield from forty-seven years ago?’
"Gabriel, deactivate sleep mode."
"I don’t care if you’re a man or a ghost. If you touch my money, you die."