Austin had about reached his limit both literally and figuratively. As he was starting to run out of spare processing power between his resource operations, his manufacturing operations, drone control, and various other projects, He was literally stretching himself too thin. As much as he desperately wished to continue upscaling for the coming conflict, he had to finally bite the bullet and step back. Especially when he double checked his previous calculations and realized he was operating with far less than he had originally assumed in terms of processing power. Either several smaller processors had failed, or an entire server had just somehow come unplugged. He wasn't honestly quite sure yet, as he was still trying to find the source of the problem. If the components were failing, that was really bad, as if too many failed at once, he would be in a very compromised position. On the other hand, if it was just a power disconnect well, he just hoped there would be an easy way to fix that. He still lacked the facility to make the microprocessors superconductors and so on. Building something equivalent to what he had been working with was just impossible at his current state.
While he had upscaled his production for basic construction, he still hadn't begun the basic infrastructure for anything nearly that complex, so he'd have to do the next best Thing. As far back as the 21st century, humanity had the capability to create systems equivalent to what he needed. Though they did require far more space and power to run to match modern equipment, this couldn't be helped, as annoying as it was. Especially since he was running out of space since most of the ground around him was rich in metals, He could not easily discard the rock and soil.
Though he guessed he didn't need to store it inside the ruins of his old ship. While he refused to toss out what he had already mined, instead, he continued to process it down. Meanwhile, any new material was simply brought to the surface and dumped where it could later be recovered. That helped a little, but the large number of scrap shell beetles running around didn't. As he simply couldn't leave their corpses around. He had taken to burning them, along with any other monster corpse the town had no use for, in pits and then coming back later with a molecular disassembler to suck up the ash. As well as collecting any surviving chunks of shell for storage. This not only helped speed up processing corpses but gave him a good place to dispose of all the ones he had stored already. Still, the processed material needed to go somewhere, and while his manufacturing was using a lot of materials, as was the construction of his expansions, he was still gathering more materials than he was using. He needed more room to build more processing to break down more resources to make room for the processed resources to be used to make more room for more whatever else he needed. Basically, as soon as space was made by processing down the resources he had, it was instantly filled with either the processed resources, more equipment to process more resources, or one of the hundreds of other machines and equipment he would need later. It was getting so bad that he was actually starting to store pallets of less valuable processed resource units on the surface, stone, carbon, and so on. Occasionally, one of the townspeople would ask for some. More than a few were curious how he was able to make entire bricks of what they presumed was coal, though it burned far cleaner and far hotter than any coal they had ever received before.
Having more than he knew what to do with, he eagerly allowed them to take or request any material they might need. They would occasionally ask for some iron and copper to repair tools or maintaining the weapons he had provided. A few families had even requested salt and small units of carbon, which they would chop up and use to cook with.
If the issue with his processors wasn’t enough of a headache while he was trying to find space to put a ridiculous number of simple processors in. Or store the ridiculous amounts of resources he was processing. Or making more facilities to process down the raw resources he had to work with. A small, unprepared, uncoordinated army showed up on his doorstep, or rather in the valley. He had done his best to get them to the village, but not without losses. From what little he had been able to glean from their short time there, they were the dungeon subjugation group they had been waiting for, and even for that, they were considered a poor example of it.
According to Catherine, dungeon subjugations were usually made-up of a mix of adventurers or mercenaries, as he preferred, and standard soldiers and elites from the local duchy. They would then brute-force their way through the dungeon while it was still young. Kill any of its defenders. Reach the core and then use a particularly skilled mage to enslave it, but since the cores were relatively simple minded, they couldn't fully take control. More shackle it so they could point it in whatever direction they wanted. It would still make monsters, but they could tell it which monsters to make, that sort of thing.
The more Austin learned about how this whole dungeon system worked, the more he was curious to see it himself. Unfortunately, and this was the part that really pisssed him off, the mage they had brought with them had gotten power hungry and thought it could subjugate him as well. The elf of all things had even ordered Sophia to help it do so. When she reasonably, in his opinion, explained that she had no honest idea how they had made their connection. The fool had attacked the girl only to find himself on the receiving end of some sort of mental defense system.
While he still did not fully understand how it was possible for magic to exist, let alone how it functioned. It would, however, seem that this system or whatever it was that governed it and allowed for magic's ease of use. Seemed to favor the girl more than it did most others, and for that he was thankful.
He should be mad, he really should, but right now, he barely had the processing power to handle all of what was going on and had said as much to Catherine. Before explaining that he would have to leave for a few days as he worked on increasing his processing ability. When they had absolutely no idea what he meant by that. He tried explaining it again as his current activities were so draining, he was having a hard time continuing and would need a few days to try and regain some of his strength. After assuring them that he wasn't fully abandoning them and everything would keep running as normal, he just needed a break, Austin desperately set to work. While storing the newly mined rock on the surface, and processing down the stuff he had in storage. By the end of the first day, he had managed to clear out enough space to begin construction. He had the needed components together to build the equipment to make the computer components. This still left him with a lot of extra resources he didn't have a place to put, but since he needed the space more than ever. So, with no other choice, he stored them in the town on the surface. More than a little annoyed with the whole conundrum, but for a while now, he's had more resources coming in than he's had products going out, he’d just to have to start limiting himself to only what he needed. It hurt some part of him to leave all these valuable materials just lying around unused, it just felt wasteful. Even if none of it was actually going to waste.
By the end of the second day, he already had five rooms filled to capacity with various servers and other computer components. For once, he was rather thankful for the flood as he could use the water for coolant. Unfortunately, he couldn't produce enough heat with his current electrical output to create steam, as useful as that would be. Though he did have the capabilities to produce thermal converters, while useful devices, they produced very little power. They were mostly used in ships to drain off any excess heat and convert it into something useful rather than just venting it into space. With the five previous storage rooms converted into servers. He found it wasn't a lot, but it was enough processing power for him to run his entire current facilities without having to worry about overtaxing himself again. He'd still need more before the assault, but at the very least, he could deal with the soldiers now.
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With a flicker, he found himself in the sleeping girl's room. He still didn't understand quite how this ability of hers worked, just that there was an open line of communication that he could access at any point in time. His holographic avatar was unfortunately not able to go far from the girl, especially if there was a door or wall in the way. Not wanting to wake the girl, knowing she had been through an ordeal just a few days ago. He had one of his bots notify him when she woke up. For the time being, he would just return to his work.
The upscaled beetle project was almost done, and the worms we're currently working on creating multiple new tunnels. His fabrications were producing a three-way mix, a handful of fabrication bays were working on components for the scaled up beetle bot and other components. One was just printing out the cable for the orbital elevator. He would actually be able to launch it soon if it wasn't for the beetles, and while he was working on a workaround for that. Even if the cable was ready anytime soon, it would still require far more equipment and testing before he could start setting up orbital infrastructure. Not something he really didn’t have the time for right now, he was currently mining a large storage area near the village. That would later be subdivided into food material and other forms of storage. As well as digging out a large space for a purpose built server room. Well, they were until they hit another colony of the blasted ants. Not wanting to deal with them lightly, he recalled 2 of the beetle bots and then began to drive them back. Once the room was carved out and secured, he slapped thick metal panels over their tunnels, bolting them in place. He wasn't originally planning on paneling the entire room, at least not yet, but now he didn't have much of a choice in that matter. He couldn't risk them tunneling in.
The server room design was quite ingenious, if not ridiculously simple. A large glass tube of water would be set in the center of the room with four large thermal converters followed by a heat sink in the center of the floor. The massive server towers would have multiple water lines running through them that would circulate water to absorb heat. The base of the water coolers would be several freon based cooling units, their heat exchange dumping straight into the large water tower in the center of the room. They weren't actually meant to cool the room, just absorb any excess heat that wasn't already absorbed by the water’s circulation. The large water tower in the center of the room was more meant to hold the warmer water, while four smaller tanks underneath the floor would hold colder water. Meanwhile, the thermal exchange units would absorb the heat slowly over time. Venting the heat above ground likely would have been simpler, but it just felt so wasteful. He done the math, but the power efficiency of this setup was the best he could do with what he had on hand. He might consider if it got damaged or when, or if he ever got around to upgrading it with proper equipment.
By the time the floor plates were starting to be laid in place. He finally got the notification that Sophia was awake. As he looked in on her and found her eating breakfast, he decided to give her a few more minutes. He double checked the design and set the parameters to dig another storehouse Next to the server room that he could easily convert into more servers later if needed.
By the time he finished this, and returned his attention to Sophia. She was about to finish her breakfast, and Austin waited the few more minutes it required for her to finish before pinging her with the communication request. The girl eagerly answered, and with a small flash and a minor drain on the girl's mana, Austin found his avatar forming in the room with her.
“Good morning, Sophia, you seem to be recovering well. Any issues after your ordeal with the mage?”
Sofia quietly shook her head, and not for the first time, Austin wished he could actually comfort the girl.
“It wasn't your fault he was an idiot for attacking you, and your skill that protected you. You, did not harm him, and you, did not lash out against him. I know you still feel bad for it, but I can't stress this enough, it was not your fault.” Austin said doing his best to comfort the girl. Well, he tried, but without Sophia making a conscious effort for him to do so, his avatar could not physically interact with the world around him.
Sophia just nodded. “I know everyone says that. The villagers, you, mom, even Catherine, I just I didn't want to hurt him, but he scared me, and I don't know what happened.”
“I know, but you can't change the past, we can only control what happens in the future. Speaking of which, I need to speak to the soldier’s leader, and while I can do so without your assistance, it's far more taxing. Would you feel up to helping me out again today?”
Sophia nodded with a slight smile as she started to walk off.
The village was physically unable to arrest the soldiers and their leader. As technically, since the mage hadn't, in the terms of the law laid down by the Duke, hadn’t broken any laws. Something that irked Austin severely, but he had to at least for the moment, comply with them as he had no way to correct this issue. Though he'd need to look into correcting it in the near future. Instead, the soldiers had been put to work, and their leader, who couldn't technically be imprisoned, had been confined to the mayor's house. Though he could technically leave whenever he wanted. It was just heavily implied by Austin Catherine and all the guards in the village that he really shouldn't. Earlier, Austin had been able to convince Sophia for a short time to let him speak to the man, and though Austin didn't hate him, he very much didn't like the man either. He wasn't cruel, mean, or conniving, well, not exceptionally so. The best he understood he was commander in name only. As the mage had out ranked him politically, and while he had heavily discouraged the mages’ actions as his commander. He did not have the political backing to stop him, especially if he had actually succeeded, then he would have likely been forced to reward the man even. By law, while the mage had gone against his commander's orders, he had also been killed by a lowly villager, and by the law of the land, Sophia was technically the one in the wrong. This had aggravated Austin at the time, but with his already overtaxed processing capabilities, he had to admit he hadn't taken it the best. However, with him currently pulling back as much as possible and with his new construction, he had a bit more processing power to work with until the new servers were up and running. Hopefully, by the time they were, he would have a nice surplus of new units to deploy as well.
Regardless, he had a few primary objectives for this meeting. First of all was to secure the man's aid. In a few days' time, his new upscale beetle would be ready, and with the servers being probably finished a few days after that. He was planning an assault on the dungeon. With the mage meant to enslave the dungeon gone, not that he’d apparently have been much of a help anyway. With how the dungeon had broken open already and was in an absolute fury. However, since the dungeon had apparently broken or break, he still wasn't quite sure on the terminology, along with their lack of a skilled enough mage, killing it was the only option. The army would eventually arrive in force to put it down, but he'd rather get this problem done before any more needless blood was spilled. Next was to negotiate some form of leniency for Sophia, either convincing the commander to just stay quiet or negotiating a better deal. Though it turned out he needed not worry. Crysteffor had apparently been putting Austin's absence to good use. Filling out tons of letters and paperwork, which he had allowed Austin to read through.
Apparently, this man was one of the Dukes illegitimate children and had his heart set on being a merchant of all things. However, Austin got the impression that he and his father didn't get along so well, and this was a bit of a sticky topic. After a long, long, long explanation, planning session, and lunch, they finally had straightened everything out.
Sophia, meanwhile, had completed her schooling lessons, her magic lessons, and then took a nap from sheer boredom while the adults talked the whole day away.
In summary, they had basically agreed to downplay Austin's power while playing up Austin's value. While they would have to report him as a spirit. They would simply claim that their mage had not survived the journey into the valley, and without them, there was no way to subjugate him or the dungeon, but since the dungeon was already breaking, this was no longer a viable option anyway. They then discussed that while Austin was powerful enough to defend the village by getting them to retreat underground and making them weapons so they could defend themselves. Though he was not powerful enough to defeat the dungeon on his own. Crysteffor, instead, would take the acclaim of defeating the dungeon partially to spite his father and partially to protect Austin. Before laying out in great detail that while Austin was not a threat. He was, however, exceptionally valuable for his Craftsman ability, and that he'd likely be of more value left alone than he would be, say, under the heel of Crysteffor's father.
Austin had to admit that while the man wasn't the most conniving individual here, he’d likely make a decent merchant. With how well he was not only able to navigate the local politics, but also how he was able to sell the story of a particularly aloof so-called spirit working away in the middle of nowhere. That would be willing to trade away processed goods for a ridiculously cheap price just to be left alone. Was worthy of at least some praise.
