A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 397 Rorschach's "Amazing Wisdom"

Caroline also noticed huge structures moving around the factory area, pulling all-steel wagons that carried materials in bags or barrels.

"This is practically a gigantic alchemy workshop; they don't even need carriages, they use constructs instead."

"There's no other way," Luo Xia said helplessly. "The materials are now measured in tons, and the entire factory runs day and night. First of all, the load capacity of transporting materials by wooden cart is too low; secondly, if we were to use pack animals, we would have to divide them into five shifts, and the cost would be even the same as the current structure."

These golems have many advantages. Besides being able to operate continuously, they have amazing carrying capacity and can also handle loading and unloading work in addition to pulling carts. The earthen golems have been upgraded, with plate-like skins on the outside, cast iron skeletons, and hydraulic power—a culture solution mixed with living water microorganisms is sealed in the hydraulic system to generate power.

In addition, inspired by the accident involving his clone, Rorschach used his own blood to cultivate a lineage of Familia-like beings. Once the population reached a critical value, they would become more "human," reducing the burden of control on the Tower Spirits. Therefore, Rorschach was able to create more large beings.

The park was huge, so Rorschach summoned a spare puppet, who lifted Rorschach in one arm and Caroline in the other for a "ride." Caroline felt awkward, but was surprised when she actually sat on the puppet's arm: "How can a construct walk so steadily?"

"It has to be stable." Luo Xia looked pained as he said this: "Some of the products here explode at the slightest bump before they're passivated."

The puppet carried two people as it patrolled the factory area. The workers were used to it and simply made way for it. Another puppet pulled a cart of shift workers and passed by Luo Xia and his group.

"Why don't you make specialized transport-type puppets?"

Hmm. Good question! Rorschach hadn't expected it either; when he and Andrei were designing the new form, they had subconsciously considered other uses.

"Yes, the next batch will be of the terrestrial type." Rorschach adopted Caroline's suggestion and showed her the air separation production area, ammonia synthesis area, ammonia-alkali co-production area, tri-acid-di-alkali production area, nitration workshop, power plant, and centralized waste treatment area.

Seeing that the main road had been worn away, she finally finished her tour. Caroline noticed a phenomenon: the newer the factory area, the less alchemy technology was used. By a mage's standards, it seemed like a step backward?

However, Luo Xia disagrees. He argues that the more "natural" something is, the more advanced its building materials and design processes become.

When he led Caroline into the core research and development building, she saw two transmutation dust extractors, one of which produced physical crystals, and the other which directly output energy to the factory.

"This must be the extractor. Back in the Tower of Stars, even Master Kano's research hadn't broken through the transmutation laminar flow. I'd heard about extractors before, but this was the first time I'd seen one in person." She also noticed that most of the operators weren't spellcasters.

"Valuwana also has larger operations, with more technicians in the alchemy department."

"So, this is all operated by ordinary people?"

Luo Xia shrugged: "As long as the integration and operability are high enough, it doesn't matter who turns the valve. Just train the employees properly. As for safety, strictly enforce the regulations, and no one will die if nothing goes wrong; if something does go wrong, even a junior mage might not escape." He spoke a little loudly, and the operators trembled.

The final stop at the Basif Factory is the workshop where the Tower Spirits are housed. Two golems make way, and after passing through the heavy fireproof, waterproof, and burglarproof door, the shared brain of the three factory's Gabat Mage Towers is exposed to Caroline.

In addition to the main core array surrounding the main structure, there are a significant increase in computing units stacked in the cabinet, occupying two walls. One wall holds Rorschach's workbench, and the other wall holds the storage unit array.

When Caroline touched the computing units, she noticed traces of spatial distortion and compression and exclaimed in surprise, "You've built a miniature version of the Istani Analytical Engine?"

The tower spirit answered on Rorschach's behalf: "Respected and beautiful Ms. Caroline, I am the upgraded version, far surpassing you in intelligence and performance!"

Although the Tower Spirit told Luo Xia that further material additions would reduce the benefits, Luo Xia couldn't make a major upgrade in the short term. He came up with a rather bizarre method:

He instructed the Gopper Factory to continue manufacturing computing units, and then used the [Ether Membrane Space Compression Technique] to compress the computing units from about one cubic meter to the size of a watch, and then connected them in parallel in a cabinet that had been subjected to the [Constancy Technique].

Therefore, while the server room space remains the same and the cabling distance connecting the basic units and the core doesn't increase significantly, the potential for brute-force component stacking increases dramatically. Even a 13nm chip in Rorschach's hands can be compressed into a 3nm chip, immediately resolving the bottleneck issue.

Even the tower spirits were impressed by Rorschach's "astounding wisdom" after the upgrade: "You are invincible, master."

"So this building is your mage tower?" Caroline thought for a moment. Besides this building, the research and development building also has a transmutation dust extractor, which best fits the definition of a mage tower, but she didn't seem to see anything that a proper mage tower should have.

"Teacher, don't worry, we'll go to Kempson's steel plant again tomorrow morning." Caroline noticed that both of the companies they visited today relied on the support of steel plants, and she was a little curious, so she agreed to continue the visits tomorrow.

Upon arriving at Kempson, the sinkhole came into view for Caroline. The enclosed blast furnace did not emit any flames, but when the coking coal was discharged and the slag was discharged from the bottom of the blast furnace, a large amount of light, heat and gas still escaped, steaming and filling the bottom of the pit, and permeating it with faint coal ash, as if the dust was heavier the deeper you went.

Even at the edge of the sinkhole, Caroline could still hear the incessant muffled sounds, the sounds of steam-powered forging hammers striking the ground from the nearby workshop.

At the center of the blast furnace is another huge steel structure building with a strong geometric shape and dynamism. It consists of a series of spiral structures that rotate and rise around a vertical three-story tower.

At the base of the central tower, you can see the same kind of puppets as Basif going in and out, but they are now viewed from above and appear much smaller, while the people at the bottom of the pit look like ants.

From the outline of the man-made circular mine to the steel-framed towers, Caroline sensed a kind of brutality—an unreasonable transformation of the earth. The more regular the outline of the circle, the taller the tower, and the more materials it churned in, the more it revealed a "savage" power. It was an outpost for conquering nature, where workers sweated and molten iron flowed from the earth.

Just as Caroline was about to share her thoughts, a small black dot appeared at the top of the tower, gradually approaching two people at the edge of the factory area. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be Andrei wearing a motorized suit.

He was now wearing the third version of the device, which had a greater payload capacity but the same battery life as the second version. Although Andrei insisted that he was testing the performance, Rorschach had reason to suspect that the guy was just playing around.

He glanced at Rorschach, then at Caroline, and blurted out, almost as if possessed, "Teacher, are you personally conducting the onboarding training?"

(End of this chapter)