Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

"It's like playing some kind of shooting game. Damn, I'm out again. Boss, restock!" Flash slapped the production button on the production equipment next to him, and a new, assembled "Kobold Miner" quickly stood up from the stack shelf and climbed out through the dedicated delivery hatch.

"Hoo hoo~ We won't wait for you." Ash's eyes gleamed with excitement. Through the symbiote and the communication station, she maintained a connection with the captain's machine she controlled. Unlike the neural link mode, this link mode was more like playing a very interesting 3D shooting game, the kind with almost unlimited lives.

"Watch out for grenades!" Ash was controlling a construction industry obstacle-clearing drone, and what it was launching was not a grenade, but a regular metallic hydrogen explosive charge, the kind used to demolish large or sturdy buildings.

"Boom!" A demon suffered a great loss from the explosive charge, with half of its root system flying off. The enraged demon turned around and swung its tentacles down, but it only missed.

"This is so much fun." Shuanghua controlled the flight module, hovering over the battlefield and issuing commands to the drones that were not being remotely controlled. She didn't have any emotions towards these "rebellious mineral" drones, but simply followed the instructions to cut, crush, blast, and drill, causing tons of damage to the demons.

However, in order to reduce and guide the demons, Lao Xia also created several mining mules to collect those Originium meteorites and move them in a more distant direction to attract and lure the demons there.

"Boss, when can I get one too? This is great!" W was really envious. The biggest headache for those who play with explosives is whether they will blow themselves up when loading and detonating bombs. But with this kind of drone, it would be much easier. They can play a lot of exciting explosive games.

"Next time, next time. I wonder if there are any symbiote injectors in the cargo containers on the mothership. If there are, you can play with them too," Old Xia scratched his head, indicating that he would talk about it next time.

"Alright, the number of demons in this area is decreasing. We can call the mothership to send a convoy to load the cargo. That's one good thing about Terra; I don't have to worry about where to find a large cargo platform."

If this were Earth in the Ashes era, all those cargo boxes would require an entire street of eighteen-wheeled trucks to transport. But Terra only needs a single ship-based transport platform to haul away a small portion of them, and three round trips would be enough to clear them out.

"Boss, the nearby airdrop pods have been recovered. Do the outer shells need to be recovered?"

"Recycle them together."

"We understand" that the mothership's guards have already recovered the airdrop pod that fell outside. The distance was very short, so they used the land-based ship's crane and a large number of engineering vehicles to solve the problem in no time.

Moreover, the Star Alliance packing is quite meticulous. The boxes are categorized and secured on the circular racks. You only need to select them on the automated logistics shipping platform, and the automated loading and unloading robotic arms will accurately extract these boxes and stack them on your vehicle platform, without any need for manual information verification.

However, this is based on the premise that data entry and labeling are prepared in advance. If the label says A but the actual contents are B, then there will still be an error. Therefore, even in Star Alliance, this loading and unloading process still has a manual review and random inspection part, because there have been tragedies in the past where the wrong contents were loaded and the whole ship almost starved to death.

"Now we just wait for the doctor's convoy to arrive and join us."

So what about the Doctor? The Doctor was running for his life. His area had the most Originium minerals falling, blocking some bridges and passages. The alarmed demons almost surrounded him, forcing the convoy to detour around the dead city. Several times, they almost overturned and were wiped out.

"Have you cleared the passage?"

"It's working! I have to say, the unlimited process area package with 56,000 star coins is really better than the regular 1,800-star coin package." The area process package means that you can produce products infinitely within a certain area. However, products will be automatically locked once they leave the area to prevent anyone from exploiting loopholes in the unlimited process blueprint.

Of course, there are people who use cracked versions, but cracked versions are generally 3 to 4 levels lower than the current mainstream versions, and they also have all sorts of bugs and problems, and they are not covered by warranty. Therefore, unless you are really short of money or just using them for learning and research, not many people will use cracked versions.

"As long as I'm within the Terra sector, this package guarantees that I can build drones that cover the entire surface of the planet without anyone interfering."

"That's great. Could you send one of your robot squadrons over to deal with the demons here?"

"Oh, right away, I'm deploying construction drones and obstacle removal drones."

After clearing out the surrounding small area of ​​evil spirits, Lao Xia was reluctant to use the Star Alliance's material boxes to make more. Those things, while not non-renewable, were quite exquisite and expensive, so there was no need to be so extravagant.

The maintenance of the spaceships and the construction of drones will require more material boxes, and Kazdel will likely enter a "new mining era." The volcanic areas of the original northern farm mining area, the mines of the Dragon Ridge Mountains, the open-pit mines of the hilly areas and Tallinn, and the mines of the concessions will all require the use of real mining drones and magma mining platforms in the mining cooperation in Kjerag.

There are also larger, more advanced models than Old Xia's simple farm mineral smelting version, such as small gravity forges, extreme ion furnaces, and stellar furnaces. They also feature force field diversion screening systems for precise screening of magmatic fluid minerals. The previously unused pyrolysis scaffolding can now be used to install magma thermoelectric systems and magma extraction pipelines.

"Anyway, Terra is going to be blown up by the sun sooner or later, so there's nothing wrong with drawing blood before it explodes, right? It won't kill you."

"Besides, I've already sold Terra's coordinates and mineral types. If we're optimistic, the planetary mining ship might arrive before the Ark is repaired and built. That thing is big enough to fit another Terran person—well, as long as you don't mind the discomfort of riding the mining cabin home."

When did you sell it?

"Just now."

"Finish the deployment quickly and come over to meet up." The doctor wanted to say something, but didn't know what to say. No one could remain indifferent when they heard that their entire home planet had been sold for a good price and the buyer might come to evict the homeless people who had illegally settled there at any time.

"Immediately, immediately, troops are being deployed, I need to collect materials first!" The obstacle removal drones are collecting debris and building ruins all over the streets, and then the construction drones send them to the recycling station to be made into new building materials and then used to pave roads. A straight road is extending towards the entrance of the dead city.

Chapter Sixty-Six: The Meaning of the Tower of Babel

Chapter 66

In the dead city, an armored SUV sped along an ancient road, its wheels crushing ice shards and kicking up shards of ice. "Screech!" The wheels screeched as they came to a sudden stop, the rear of the vehicle swinging to one side due to inertia. Then the wheels started spinning at high speed again, and the SUV drifted gracefully through the bend.

Less than two seconds later, the worm-like giant demon crushed the bridge and crashed into the building on the other side, then turned around and charged towards the convoy.

The 40mm automatic cannon on the roof kept firing holy fire ammunition at the demon, but it could only barely stop the demon's movement and attacks.

"How long until your reinforcements arrive?" the Doctor asked calmly, glancing at the demons chasing after him.

"We've arrived. Cross the intersection in the commercial area ahead."

"Understood, W?"

"Roger!" W took off his communication headset, opened the car door, and tossed a few small items onto the road. "Just a little gift, nothing special." The smiling succubus blew a kiss to the demon through her mask, and then the demon pressed down on the "surprise boxes." "Boom!"

Debris flew everywhere, and the flames and shockwaves momentarily halted the demons for a few seconds, scattering their shattered flesh and blood in all directions. The armored vehicle sped through the crooked buildings and bridges, crashing off the bridge and smashing through the wreckage of the vehicles in front of it. At that moment, the Doctor also spotted the reinforcements.

The machinery, painted in standard yellow for industrial and mining operations, slowly climbed up the stairwell and landed on the roof. The tools on their backs were aimed at the evil forces. These were "heavy-firepower" rubble clearing and debris removal machines, codenamed "Scavengers".

"Bang!" The kinetic energy projectile, propelled at fifty times the speed of sound, stirred up a vortex-like cavity in the air. Like a line of fire, it plunged directly into the demon's body. Almost instantly upon release, the almost melted aluminum alloy on the outside shattered, and the internal carbon fiber foam material bloomed like countless strands of chrysanthemum, releasing all the kinetic energy onto the target.

Instantly, a black fountain erupted from the demon's body, with countless pieces of flesh, tissue fluid, and fragments spraying out towards its back. Even though the demon could quickly recover and fuse the fragments, the complete shredding of its muscle tissue temporarily rendered it immobile.

Then a large number of pulsed lasers fell on the body, constantly creating small light bursts and evaporation effects. Those ion cutters were particularly effective at burning biological tissue.

"Where did you get this heavy electromagnetic gun?" The heavy sweeper slid several meters across the floor to absorb the recoil, leaving four grooves scraped out by the anchor piles.

"The downloaded open-source blueprints, the Type 50 mass launcher, are not electromagnetic guns." Of course, Lao Xia didn't have the money or the means to buy proper electromagnetic gun blueprints, so the downloaded open-source civilian tool blueprints were "at the level of a middle school student's handicraft teaching aid, so don't be surprised. Okay, I did make some personalized modifications, adding a few more rows of boosters and extending the gun rails."

"Are all your middle school students so full of martial spirit?"

"Compared to the middle school students of my dad's generation, they're much worse." Old Xia said that it was nothing, the previous generation was truly full of martial spirit.

Where did you get your materials?

"The city is full of materials. These are all professional clearing and recycling equipment used to deal with colonial ruins. You know, what we have the least shortage of over there is war ruins."

"Although the Star Alliance was victorious, it was actually exhausted. The massive casualties of its main population, coupled with the hundreds of times greater territory gained from the war, plunged the entire civilization into a huge population crisis. Moreover, many of its original colonies were destroyed by extermination weapons during the war, and both reconstruction and cleanup would require considerable time and manpower to complete."

The extensive use of unmanned engineering machinery for processing is an inevitable choice. Even so, the Covenant has effectively lost control over the newly added territories, now known as the Outer Ring Star Sector, and can only watch as these areas are occupied by other civilizations or turned into more ruins.

Those hostile vassal civilizations that had been left unattended due to their eagerness to end the war seized the opportunity to occupy considerable territories and attempt to recover their technological data and various artifacts.

However, as the Star Alliance gradually recovers, those who interfered will eventually face retribution. The era in which Old Xia lived has a specific historical term: "The Re-expansion Era".

This is why the Covenant needs a large population, and this population demand is difficult to increase rapidly through socialized care or other means.

To put it bluntly, these methods are like high-protein foods, but the person is a person who has just recovered from a serious illness. Although their spirit is vigorous, their body is actually weak and powerless. In addition, given the population needs of interstellar civilizations, education requires a huge investment. Whether it is a human caregiver or an AI caregiver, it requires other human resources and computing power.

Not to mention, even with artificial wombs and mass cloning, if you need real people who can shoulder heavy responsibilities, not tools, slaves, and cannon fodder, then each batch would take 15 years to produce—not even considering the scrap rate.

Moreover, people can't just be born and left unattended. They can't be like aged wine, where you produce a batch every year and then add another batch every year after 15 years. You need to educate them, invest social resources in their growth, and wait until they are basically adults and have completed their studies before you can free up manpower to handle the next batch.

This means that over the course of fifteen years, the AI ​​computing power and manpower required will only continue to increase, consuming more and more limited resources. Therefore, even the Covenant is very cautious about this issue. This is why Lao Xia said that even if Terra completely surrenders, and the other side has the ability to immigrate and absorb immigrants, then at least 10% of the population will likely be eliminated.

For the Covenant, these lost colonies or populations like Terra are like sugar water. Although they can only provide some energy and cannot actually provide the necessary nutrients for body repair, what it needs now is this kind of "sugar water" to quickly fill the frontier regions, rather than "high-protein food" that would poison it.

"Aren't you afraid of rebelling?" The convoy had already driven onto the newly cleared road, with various drones following behind to intercept the demons. The doctor was also able to discuss some things unrelated to the current battle with Lao Xia.

"What do you think? You're in the Outer Ring Colony. Do you think it's a wonderful place? Small-scale wars have never stopped. If you leave the Star Alliance, we won't even need to do anything. Believe me, none of the other alien creatures are kind. You'll only die a more miserable death."

“Indeed…” The doctor thought for a moment. If he were to rashly get involved in the struggle between interstellar civilizations and be assigned to a border war zone, it seemed that there was no other way to do so except to cling to the powerful forces behind them.

"Okay, I'm almost there."

"I'm almost done with my problem here, and I'm loading the truck now." One by one, the cargo boxes were sent out of the bottom loading and unloading area. The large flatbed truck in front of them was piled with large cargo boxes, while the smaller cargo boxes were placed on trucks around the large ground transport platform.

Several Sarkaz workers were dismantling the airdrop capsule using tools they had unpacked. Although it wasn't prepared with fuel for a second launch, the braking rockets, frame materials, and so on could all be recycled and reused—in the sense of raw material recycling.

The doctor's convoy stopped at the loading and unloading yard. "Is this the supplies you delivered?"

"Yes, there are no military supplies. I checked. However, the equipment for building shuttles is complete. Oh, forget about starships. Unless they deploy a space shipyard for us and more than four thousand professionals, we can't even think about building one."

However, the ordinary shuttle is fully equipped. As for the control circuits and control programs that were originally the biggest headache for Lao Xia and his team, they became the simplest problem after obtaining access to the public network.

"What about control and software issues?"

"I outsourced it."

"what?"

“It was outsourced. It’s not a difficult job. I found a studio recommended by a senior student, placed an order, and they promised to complete it within a month at the latest.” Old Xia rolled his eyes.

"Brother, we now essentially possess the civilian R&D capabilities of an interstellar civilization. As long as you have star coins, you can outsource almost all design work, including your Ark. By the way, speaking of the Ark, when you get back, give me a copy of the Ark design drawings, and I'll find a professional design company to finish the parts you didn't complete back then, and then review the completed parts. However, this will take quite a bit of time..."

There was still money, but everyone wisely refrained from bringing up the issue of money.

"Weapon systems can be outsourced?"

"No, but I can ask my dad's old friends for help. Their generation was quite skilled in this area," Old Xia complained.

"You have to understand, back then they rarely went to school on the ground or on a space station. There were evacuations or colony withdrawals every few days. In my dad's words, he spent his entire high school year taking classes on a warship. I mean, not one of those mobile academies that were decommissioned and docked later on, but an active warship."

"If you're unlucky, you might even encounter a combat situation. Imagine you're crammed into an empty briefing room with dozens of your peers, and right outside your door is the bustling passageway of a warship, while in front of you is a teacher who's not much calmer than you, giving you a high school lecture."

"The entire ship was dilapidated and in ruins. When it encountered a blocking attack, even if you closed your eyes, plugged your ears, and held your breath, you could still feel the breath of war seeping in bit by bit from the violent shaking of the hull and the gravitational disturbance caused by the overload of the shields. Even in relatively calm times, you would occasionally see a few or dozens of black bags, just big enough to fit a person, floating past in the passageway."

"So, their generation had some quirks. For example, they would feel restless if their home didn't have some heavy firepower, and they could only sleep amidst tons of metal and spaceship equipment. Or they would never spend much time in surface colonies or space stations, preferring to live on spaceships."

For example, this is why Lao Xia's family runs a ship repair shop; they can only feel at ease when dealing with engines, hull structures, and pipes.

"Therefore, there are quite a few people here who understand shipborne weapon structures and even later went on to work in related fields. Although it is unlikely that you can get a complete professional version, you should be able to equip a makeshift version with various mining tools. The same goes for ground combat weapons and equipment."

"However, compared to that, how do we solve the problem of tickets for the Ark?" Old Xia was asking how to get the other Terran countries to cooperate completely, which requires not only a certain amount of military deterrence but also considerable political skill.

“They won’t be able to sit still when we start repairing the Ark.” Even though the Ark is completely unarmed, no one can calmly face such a huge thing in the sky and believe that it is incapable of fighting.

"So, what will happen then?" They certainly couldn't sit still, so that's the real problem. What to do? If tickets are issued to everyone, how will the order of boarding be handled? How will the ruling structure on the ark be managed? How will the emperors and nobles coexist in a narrow area? How will their authority be preserved or dismantled? These are all the questions.

As for the cultural conflicts between the various races and nations of Terra, they are relatively minor issues. Even if Kazdel were to launch a full-scale war now, it would only result in the military occupation of their territories, and true conquest would still be a long way off.

“Let’s talk about this when we get back. Besides, the Ark can’t hold that many people. It seems you’ve misunderstood something too.” The Doctor glanced at Old Xia. “What I want to preserve is Terra’s civilization and the Terran people’s race, not Terra’s politics. I chose to compromise before because I needed the support of these countries, and the resources of these countries are in the hands of these superiors, so I chose to cooperate.”

"And when I feel it's unnecessary, why should I continue to cooperate? I only need to take away the people of Terra, not the country and its politics, right?"

The doctor's point is simple: why should he engage in power struggles with these people? He only needs to directly absorb immigrants and refugees, and this is actually a good thing for countries like Colombia that choose refuge.

Since the shelters can't accommodate so many people, it actually reduces the pressure of future repression for them. They might even secretly encourage those who can't get shelter tickets and boat tickets to go to Kazdel.

"Actually, I never intended to take the nations of Terra to the New World from the very beginning, because I couldn't draw borders inside the Ark. So, I only had one choice: I could only take the people of Terra to their new home. No matter which country they were from before, as long as they chose to ascend the Tower of Babel, they would all be Terrans. That is the meaning of the Tower of Babel."

The Tower of Babel was a tower destroyed by God, and the reason for its destruction was that God realized that when mankind used the same language and worked towards the same dream, there was nothing they could not do, including building the Tower of Babel. Therefore, God destroyed the tower and sent his messengers to confuse people's languages ​​and their understanding, so that their powers could not be used in the same way and their words could not be understood in the same way.

From then on, humanity was scattered and became a disorganized mess, and from then on, God could enjoy his power without worry. Therefore, the reason why the Doctor and Theresa named their organization "Tower of Babel" is because of this.

To break down this barrier and rebuild the Tower of Ascension, we must not only build a physical Tower of Ascension, but also a spiritual and cultural Tower of Babel, achieving a higher level of identity that transcends national borders and countries.

"In that case, the number of people boarding the ship will be far less than expected. Many people are not unwilling, but rather unable or unable to do so. Is this really a good thing?"

"There's no other way. It's a choice between taking some people with them to survive and rebuild Terran civilization, or being wiped out in the infighting. The choice is easy." The doctor looked at the polar sky, where a convoy was packing up the last pile of cargo and equipment in the distance.