Free Web NovelChapter 326: Chapter 319: Another Three Years
Cybertron Half-plane, core hub.
A faint blue light reflected on Allen’s face, the flickering shadows making his calm, placid eyes seem all the more profound.
Three years.
It wasn’t a long time, nor was it short, but it was enough for his Half-plane Workshop to grow even more magnificent.
Allen sat before the main control console in Cybertron’s central hub, a densely packed financial report floating in front of him.
Green numbers represented income, red represented expenses. The red took up more than half the screen.
[Current average monthly net income: 2.94 million Low-Level Magic Stones. All identified mineral veins in Zone 18 are being mined at full capacity. Production has hit its ceiling.]
2.94 million. The goal set three years ago was 3 million, so he was just a little short.
"The zone’s output has peaked. The veins’ potential has been completely exhausted," Allen murmured to himself, no trace of regret in his voice.
His only "windfall" had come from the Wizard trade fair held at Forged Fire Fortress eight months ago.
Allen had brought three "Purgatory" heavy Golems and one Hive Mother Ship to the event.
The Purgatory’s brutal damage output and the Hive Mother Ship’s swarm tactics caused quite a stir in the demonstration area.
Several Second-level Wizards who ran large-scale mining operations placed orders on the spot.
The final transaction value—11.3 million Low-Level Magic Stones.
The name "Allen Wesren, disciple of Mercer," began to carry some weight in the Wizard circles of the Molten Iron Mountain Range plane.
It wasn’t a famous name, but at least when people mentioned him, they would add, "the one who builds the Hive Mother Ships."
After returning, Victor was bitter for three days, saying Allen’s success was just dumb luck.
Allen ignored him.
The money came in fast, but he spent it even faster.
Over the three years, the changes to Cybertron were visible to the naked eye.
Twenty-four "Prism Towers" were deployed along the outer walls of the Defense Zone. Each one possessed three times the power of a Titan’s Roar, was directly powered by a Magic Furnace, and had a range covering a fifty-kilometer radius around the workshop.
Reinforced AT Field Generators were embedded in the thickened walls, creating a shield strong enough to withstand an attack from a Second-level Wizard.
Five more assembly lines were added to the production area, bringing the total to eight.
The workshop’s servants were expanded to one hundred and eighty units. Logistics rails now ran through every district, and daily production capacity had nearly tripled.
Ten Freedom Gundams stood in neat rows in the hangar, the indicator lights on their chests glowing with a faint blue standby light.
The First Storm Falcon flight unit was at its full complement of thirty-six, parked in a dedicated hangar and ready for deployment at a moment’s notice.
Three dedicated labs were now operational: a Runeology Lab, a Weapons Development Lab, and a Magic Power Theory Research Lab.
The equipment procurement list for the remaining seven labs was still on Jarvis’s to-do list; that would come in time.
He currently had 30.74 million Low-Level Magic Stones in liquid capital.
It seemed like a lot, but compared to the total budget in Cybertron’s development outline, it was just a fraction of the cost.
But all of this was just background dressing.
What truly excited Allen was the tough nut he had spent a full eleven months cracking.
The second-generation Magic Engine.
Allen wanted to build a new generation of ultimate weapons, and the first step was to solve the problem of its heart.
The project had been established the day he obtained the complete technical specifications for the Earth Vein Magic Furnace.
The Singularity Engine had given the Freedom Gundam supersonic maneuverability, but he had always known that it was just one of his mentor’s early "teaching aids." Its potential was very limited.
He now had two useful technologies at his disposal: the Singularity Engine’s energy storage and conversion logic, and the Earth Vein Magic Furnace’s Original Magic Power Connection Array.
The former excelled at efficiently storing and releasing Magic Power, while the latter excelled at drawing and purifying large amounts of raw magic from the environment.
One was battery technology, the other was power generation technology.
Shoving them into the same shell was the core concept behind the second-generation engine.
It sounded simple, but it was murder to actually build.
The Rune logic of the two tech systems was fundamentally incompatible.
The Singularity Engine’s core Rune Array had a divergent structure, with energy radiating outward from an anchor point. The Earth Vein Magic Furnace’s connection array had a convergent structure, with Magic Power gathering inward from the outside.
Forcibly connecting them was like making two rivers collide head-on. There could be only one result: an explosion.
After blowing up seventeen scale models in the Runeology Lab, Allen finally had a breakthrough.
Instead of connecting the two systems directly, he added a "translation layer" in between—a newly designed buffer Rune Matrix.
It functioned like a frequency converter, "rectifying" the convergent Magic Flow from the connection array into a divergent flow before feeding it to the energy storage and conversion system.
Allen designed over three hundred versions of this buffer matrix’s Rune layout.
Dseek and Jarvis ran simulations simultaneously. Eight sub-thought threads ran at full capacity for forty straight days before they found a stable structure that, in theory, wouldn’t cause Magic Power turbulence.
Then came the scale-model verification.
The first scale prototype’s seventeenth Rune node in the buffer matrix overloaded and burned out three seconds after ignition.
The second lasted for eleven seconds.
The third, twenty-nine seconds.
The seventh prototype finally completed the full test procedure.
The power output was stable, the Rune Matrix temperature was within safe thresholds, and the energy storage efficiency reached 89% of the target.
Allen stared at the test data for five minutes, then ordered the construction of a full-scale prototype.
The manufacturing process for the full-scale prototype took another two months. Allen personally etched every single Rune node. His Craftsman’s Hand moved nimbly within the cramped shell, precisely connecting thousands of Mithril wires to their corresponding crystal contacts.
The final product’s appearance was also completely different from the Singularity Engine.
The cylinder had become a flattened octahedron, its height successfully compressed from three meters to two-point-six, with its widest point at one-point-two meters.
The density of the Rune Circuits on its outer shell was three times that of the Singularity Engine. When activated, faint blue light patterns would flow across its surface, giving it a very impressive look.
["Singularity Engine Mk. II" construction complete.]
[Performance parameters compared to first generation: Volume -31.2%, Magic Power absorption efficiency +187%, Power output +122%, Storage capacity +40%.]
[New feature: Active Raw Magic Absorption Mode. Can slowly self-recharge in environments with normal Magic Power concentration. Theoretical operational time: Infinite.]
At the time, when Allen saw the word "Infinite," he couldn’t suppress the smile forming on his lips.
The original Singularity Engine was designed to draw Magic Power from the environment, but its efficiency was low, forcing it to rely more on pre-charging during combat.
The Mk. II engine had the miniaturized connection technology from the Earth Vein Magic Furnace stuffed directly inside, boosting its active absorption efficiency by nearly five times.
Although the self-recharge rate would drop significantly in a magic-deprived environment, under normal conditions, the engine would theoretically never run out of energy.
The night the Singularity Engine Mk. II was officially activated, Allen broke his routine and gave himself a day off.
It was worth celebrating.
The Mk. II engine was the foundation of all foundations. Only with it could he even begin to consider the next step.
A 122% increase in power output and a 40% increase in storage capacity, in practical terms, meant a Golem’s operational time was extended by nearly half, and its performance saw a very considerable boost.
More importantly, the miniaturization of the Mk. II engine left room for the next phase.
The Freedom Gundam had performed meritorious service, so Allen’s first thought was to try installing the new engine in it.
But after a test installation of the Mk. II engine, the frame itself became the bottleneck. The skeleton couldn’t withstand the power the engine could output.
It was like putting a racing engine in a family sedan. If you floored the gas pedal, the car’s body would fall apart first.
He had designed its framework back when he was still a First-level Wizard. Its material strength, Rune load capacity, and so on were all benchmarked for a First-level Wizard’s capabilities.
It was a pity, but the Freedom Gundam had reached its limit.
Therefore, he needed an ultimate weapon that could truly match the combat power of a Second-level Wizard.
He picked up a cold drink and walked over to the lab’s workbench. Spread out on it was a massive blueprint, along with a pile of design drafts, performance projections, and technical path analyses that he had been intermittently accumulating for over half a year.
There was nothing on the blueprint; it was completely blank.
But a temporary codename had already been written on it:
["Great Angel"—New-Generation Ultimate Weapon Concept Design]
Allen put down his cup and stared at the blank space, his mind churning with all the combat data he had accumulated.
The series of Golems under his command were powerful and had a distinct military feel.
But it wasn’t enough. Not "Wizard" enough.
’This thought had actually surfaced during many of his past battles.’
The Freedom Gundam was, in essence, an up-scaled Mecha: high mobility, high firepower, heavy armor. It followed a path of pure physical domination.
It was sufficient against Magical Beasts, but if the opponent was a true Second-level Wizard—
Spatial abilities, Spiritual Attacks, elemental domains, all sorts of strange techniques.
These were things that steel and firepower alone couldn’t solve.
His Golems lacked the means to counter Witchcraft.
This was their greatest weakness, and a problem he had mulled over repeatedly for the past three years.
After upgrading to the Demon Eye V and equipping the complete Echo Module, the problems of reconnaissance and electronic warfare were solved.
But on the offensive and defensive fronts, he was still stuck in the mindset of "using bigger guns to shoot through thicker armor."
He needed a Golem that could fight by fully utilizing the methods of Wizard technology.
Allen pulled over a chair and sat down, facing the blank blueprint.
He closed his eyes. Eight sub-thought threads activated simultaneously and began to operate at high speed.
The new Golem was positioned as an ultimate weapon against giant Magical Beasts, while also possessing the capability to engage Wizard-level targets.
Design philosophy: It needed devastating firepower, but he refused to simply stack on more hardware.
Not thicker armor, not bigger gun barrels, but the integration of Runes into the weapon systems—carving "Witchcraft" into its very skeleton.
In his mind’s eye, a silhouette began to faintly emerge.
It wasn’t a "machine" like the Freedom Gundam.
It was more like...
A God!
Possessing both the precision of a machine and the majesty of a god. Within its cold, steel body, the blood of Witchcraft would flow.
’Yes, that’s it!’
Allen opened his eyes and, raising his hand, drew the first line on the blank blueprint.
