Alien Hotel.

Chapter 661 The Problems Faced by the Puppet Army

Inside the portal hub pyramid, the "alchemy laboratory," used for mass production of dolls, is bustling with activity.

A large number of damaged dolls evacuated from Deeprock Fortress are lined up in the Nexus Pyramid awaiting repair. Hundreds of alchemy platforms in the hall are currently occupied, with a dead-eyed Eileen lying on each platform—many of them missing limbs and "severely wounded." Meanwhile, a large number of dolls that haven't yet been put in line simply gather quietly in a corner of the laboratory.

Many intact mass-produced dolls were busy around the alchemy platforms, skillfully attaching clay "spare limbs" to the damaged dolls. Once the bodies were repaired, the dolls that climbed off the platforms would immediately go on to help their companions with repairs, and so on, in round after round.

A faint scent of blood filled the air. A "diffusion device" was placed in a corner of the hall. The thin red mist emanating from the device split into hundreds of strands, surrounding the alchemy platforms. Using this technology from the Three Heroes of the Demon Suppression Tower, the amount of blood required to repair and manufacture mass-produced dolls has now been further reduced, and production efficiency has been increased by more than double.

Thus, the "alchemy ritual" that originally required tedious preparation has now been integrated into an incredibly efficient assembly line operation—and the efficiency of this assembly line is far from being at its peak. In theory, as long as there are enough raw materials, the efficiency of "producing dolls from dolls" can be increased infinitely. What is now restricting the expansion of the Eileen Legion is even the scale of this "alchemy laboratory".

Yu Sheng never imagined that the space he created based on the idea that "bigger is better" would be insufficient, and that it would become insufficient so quickly.

"To be honest, this efficiency is really high," Yu Sheng said slowly as he walked through the rows of alchemy platforms. Looking at the mass-produced dolls with dead fish eyes on the platforms, he couldn't help but sigh, "If Eileen were to go all out with this, she probably could fill up this valley in no time."

Actually, he initially wanted to remark that the puppet army was expanding at the same speed as cockroaches, but he swallowed the words back—after all, this place was full of mass-produced Irene, and the little Irene had a small mind; if they flew up and bit people, it would probably hurt a bit.

Luna followed quietly behind Yu Sheng. When they passed one of the alchemy platforms, she paused slightly and looked at the platform.

A mass-produced doll with only its upper body remaining lay quietly on the platform, its scarlet eyes appearing somewhat vacant. This unfortunate fellow had half its body shattered by a heavy particle rifle fired by Old Joe's soldiers during the previous battle, but it still managed to be teleported back to the hub hall in time, looking quite pitiful.

As if sensing the gaze upon her, the half-doll suddenly stirred. Her dull eyes turned to Luna, and she uttered a somewhat sluggish voice: "What are you looking at? Never seen a half-doll before?"

"A half-human, is that what you mean?" Luna said slowly, poking the belly of the half-doll. "Thirty-three, centimeters..."

"C-shaped, C-shaped buckle! You-grandpa!" Eileen immediately burst into a tirade, but because her body was so badly damaged, she couldn't even finish her curse. So she quickly grabbed a perfectly intact doll from the side to curse for her, "I'll @#@￥you! You #￥%%￥! And why are you mimicking me!"

Luna wasn't angry: "I didn't imitate you. I've always stuttered."

Yu Sheng, who couldn't stand it any longer, felt that the scene of a malfunctioning robot bullying a half-human doll was a bit too bizarre, so he quickly went over to smooth things over. Then, with a slightly subtle expression, he looked at Eileen lying on the platform and said, "I'm serious... this body is only half left, is it really necessary to fix it?"

“You have to be frugal,” a perfectly intact doll next to him rolled its eyes, “It’s still half left, you can’t just throw it away…”

Just as Yu Sheng was about to ask something more, he heard pattering footsteps behind him. Turning around, he saw a figure with only her lower body, Eileen, stumbling and running towards him like a headless fly (she really had no head, nothing above her stomach). This lower half of the doll couldn't jump onto the platform after a couple of attempts, so two intact dolls who were assisting with the repairs grabbed her legs and threw her onto the alchemy platform.

Immediately afterwards, several intact dolls jumped onto the platform and began skillfully piecing the two sections of the doll's body together. They then applied clay to the gaps in the waist of the body, and wisps of blood-red mist gathered in the air on their own. In just a few breaths, the two sections of the body were repaired, and the clothes on the doll's body were also repaired.

The newly repaired mass-produced Eileen sat up on the table, hands on her hips, looking at Yu Sheng: "See, it's fixed now! At least the materials weren't wasted..."

Even Yu Sheng was shocked: "...This actually works?!"

"The Alice doll, isn't it amazing!" Eileen jumped off the platform excitedly, making room for the next doll, and proudly tilted her head back. "Let me tell you, this is nothing. Before you came, my record was assembling one using parts from seven different bodies..."

Yu Sheng: "...Holy crap, I've figured it out!"

As he spoke, he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of another tattered, mass-produced Eileen being thrown onto the platform by her companion. Then, a bunch of dolls gathered from all directions, some holding arms, some holding legs, and others carrying clay and wire, and they swarmed onto the platform to begin assembling their injured companion... After a while, another complete Eileen climbed down from the platform and strolled off to help elsewhere.

Yu Sheng's gaze passed over the neatly arranged platforms and looked toward the corner of the hall.

A large number of damaged dolls were still patiently queuing up for repairs. Many of them were severely damaged (after all, with a small size of 66.6 centimeters, a single shot would leave pieces scattered all over their bodies), some even to the point of being unable to stand. So many dolls were simply piled together. These piled-up damaged dolls were not idle, but were still moving around. Occasionally, they would rummage through the "garbage heap" to find still-moving limbs and gestures on their own bodies, seemingly trying to find replacement parts in advance.

In the vast hall, the soft clicking sounds of the puppets' limbs being assembled and the footsteps of the puppets moving around were continuous—these were the only sounds when no one was speaking.

Let's put it this way: if this scene were to happen outside and be seen by someone, the number of people calling the police would stretch all the way from Wutong Road to the city center and then circle around twice. Even in a game, this would be at least the final battle of the penultimate level, the kind of battle where you could die ten times without a guide.

“…This scene is a bit eerie, I’m telling you,” Yu Sheng’s lips twitched as he looked down at the little doll at his feet. “Can’t you fix the art style issue?”

"You actually pay attention to the art style?" The little doll looked shocked. "You never worried about this when you were growing up wildly in Deeprock Fortress!"

Yu Sheng: "How can that be the same? There are a bunch of children in this valley. What if some curious ones come here and get scared by you?"

“I don’t think we need to worry. They’ve seen far more bizarre things than this,” Eileen waved her hand dismissively. “Instead of worrying about this, I think you should be more concerned about two other things—first of all, the space in this ‘alchemy lab’ is clearly not enough. We’ve only just gone out to fight one battle, and it wasn’t even a full-scale attack. When we come back to treat the wounded, there’s a long queue. If we really want to storm the Hermitage’s stronghold, how will we have enough space?”

“That’s true. I’m already considering finding another place in the valley to serve as your ‘doll production base’,” Yu Sheng said, stroking his chin. “I think that open space on the edge of the Black Forest is quite good. Recently, there have been more and more dolls in the valley, and the Hub Pyramid and the town are almost saturated, right? I plan to build a ‘doll town’ for you on the edge of the Black Forest. Then we can put the new production base right next to the doll town, which will save on transportation issues.”

Eileen's eyes lit up immediately: "Holy crap, Yu Sheng, you've finally had a change of heart! You're finally going to build houses for my puppet army, right? I've been asking you for so long! So many mass-produced puppets are just crammed together in the warehouse when they're idle, or they have to go to the fairytale town to freeload. I'm the second-in-command, and I don't even have my own place in headquarters..."

The little doll started chattering incessantly, its incessant chatter making Yu Sheng's head spin. He quickly waved his hands frantically, saying, "Stop, stop, stop nagging! I just haven't had the time, and you didn't have this many before... Let's not talk about that. Didn't you say you had two things to do? What's the other one?"

“Oh, another thing is that you don’t have much blood left in the lab,” Eileen said, stroking her chin with a serious expression. “In fact, it should have been used up a long time ago. It’s only thanks to that ‘diffusion device’ that those three evil cultivators made that we have an unexpected effect, which has greatly increased the utilization rate of the blood. But even so, the remaining blood is only enough to refill the diffusion device for two more rounds. It will probably be used up after we repair the damaged body here.”

Yu Sheng's face twitched involuntarily, and he said in a strange tone, "You've used it all up already? I left so much last time..."

Eileen, hands on her hips: "How do you think I got six regiments of troops?!"

Yu Sheng: "...That's all my hard work!"

Eileen: "Yes, yes..."

Looking at the silly little thing, Yu Sheng sighed and clicked his tongue: "Well, I was just thinking that the only thing restricting the puppet army was the scale of the production facilities, but now a new bottleneck has appeared... The scale of the facilities is easy to solve, but the 'production raw materials' I have are hard to come by."

Eileen also drew out her words, making a smug sound: "This won't be easy—"

So the two of them started to worry together.

(End of this chapter)