[Protocol Core Airdrop complete]
[Basic Mineral Extraction unlocked]
[Basic Transport unlocked]
…
…
Accompanied by a muffled, low rumble, a massive airdrop pod came down right in front of the two of them.
The very next moment, a string of notification chimes rang out beside Saito’s ear.
Before Saito even had a chance to react, that several-meter-tall airdrop pod in front of him began emitting a deep, powerful series of mechanical movements.
The silvery-white, single-piece airdrop pod gradually split open, revealing the Protocol Originium suspended above the pedestal inside.
[Protocol Sync Authority unlocked]
Once again, accompanied by the sound of a notification chime, all the information regarding the Protocol Core right in front of him appeared before Saito’s eyes.
And the basic panel of the system had likewise undergone quite a few changes.
[Name: Saito]
[Current Region: No.
7 Frozen Earth Mining Site (Ursus Frozen Plains)]
[Regional Development Level: 1]
[Protocol Cores: 1/1]
[Industry Points: 0]
[Industry Plan: Basic Industry Plan]
The Protocol Core entry now also had an additional openable sub-interface attached to it.
[Protocol Core: Frozen Plains]
[Power Report: 0/200]
[Production Rate Overview: …]
[Equipment Details: …]
[Storage Status: …]
The densely-packed walls of information left Saito feeling a touch dazzled.
He gave his head a small shake and started working through what each entry actually meant, one by one — and as he was puzzling through it all, he kept up a running stream of complaints aimed at the Administrator beside him.
“This system is way too bare-bones — all this stuff just popping up at once and not a single tutorial to be seen…
it’s such a cluttered mess to look at…”
“…”
Listening to Saito’s complaints, the Administrator gave two perfunctory little laughs — while secretly jotting down Saito’s words, every last one of them, into the little notebook inside her head. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
What the Administrator was thinking inside her head, Saito had no way of knowing for the moment — but one thing was very clear to him.
If it had been just him here on his own, getting a proper handle on this system would honestly have been a pretty taxing job — and the Administrator’s arrival had filled in that particular gap absolutely perfectly.
After Saito had relayed every last piece of the new information to the Administrator, in the brief span of just a few minutes she had already grasped this so-called Integrated Industries System in its entirety.
But of course she had — the original framework for this very system had been built by her own hand.
Even though Endfield Industries had carried out plenty of refinements and improvements on top of it over the years, the core of it was, on the whole, barely any different from what she’d left behind back in the day.
The Integrated Industries System, to put it simply, was a setup that miniaturized and modularized every piece of equipment essential to industry — and then, in concert with the ‘printing’ capabilities the Protocol Originium possessed, it could conjure up a fully-functional automated production line out of thin air in a very short span of time.
Put even more simply: so long as one had sufficient resources and sufficient time, the Integrated Industries System could fire up production at any location whatsoever — small things like weapon components or medicines, large things like mobile cities or heavy weaponry — if there was anything you couldn’t think of, there was nothing it couldn’t make.
And the good news was — out across these Frozen Plains, the one thing in absolutely no short supply was resources.
“Quit your goofy grinning.
We’re only just getting started — it’s still way too early for you to be daydreaming about building a Gundam.”
The Administrator reached out and rapped Saito on the head, liberating him from his fantasies.
“At the moment, we’ve only unlocked some basic industrial equipment.”
The Administrator’s brow furrowed faintly as she looked over the equipment manifest in her hand.
Even though she had reminded Saito ahead of time to stockpile a decent supply of refined Originium, judging from the present situation, the gap in the resources they needed was still very substantial.
And so, the thousand-and-one things she might have said reached the tip of the Administrator’s tongue, only to dwindle down to a single line in the end.
“At this point, there’s nothing for it — let’s start mining.”
“…Right.”
…
…
Over the next several days, Saito ended up, in the end, well and truly transformed into the very image of a miner.
Thankfully, with the Integrated Industries System on his side, he hadn’t quite been reduced to swinging the pickaxe with his own two hands.
On the rock face in front of him, several streamlined-looking mining machines were running away under their own power.
Countless flecks of stone went flying, and even more Originium ore came tumbling down onto the ground all around.
Saito’s job was simply to load these chunks of Originium ore into the mine cart off to one side, and then haul them back up to the surface.
This happened to be one of the very few drawbacks of the Portable Originium Mining Machines: the minerals they extracted couldn’t be transmitted directly back through the Protocol Originium, which meant Saito still had to handle the hauling work himself.
That said — even though the Integrated Industries System hadn’t yet hit its stride, the sheer power of the Protocol Core, or rather of the Protocol Originium itself, was something Saito had been getting more than his fill of these past few days.
With the several mining machines roaring along at full operation, the few mine carts were soon piled high.
Saito stepped forward and gave a sweep of his hand, and the Originium in front of him dissolved entirely into streams of light, vanishing from sight.
The very next moment, in the Protocol Synchronizer on his right wrist, the number representing Originium ore ticked upward by another few dozen units.
And once every last one of those minerals had been stowed away, Saito’s figure also vanished from within the mine shaft.
The moment he opened his eyes again, he had already covered a gap of several hundred meters and was standing right in front of that Protocol Core.
The actual underlying principle was lost on him — but in any case, this function allowed Saito, by way of his Protocol Synchronizer, to teleport both objects and himself.
After he had landed, Saito dumped every last one of the minerals in his ‘inventory’ straight into the Protocol Core’s storage.
Then, after glancing around to either side, he set out searching for traces of the Administrator.
And at this very moment, the Administrator was inside one of the relatively intact buildings of the No.
7 Frozen Earth Mining Site.
This place had once served as the archive room of the Ursus No.
7 Frozen Earth Mining Site, holding within it a large quantity of records from before the mine had been abandoned — most of them rather worthless work logs, by and large.
But the moment her eyes fell upon a particular set of numbers on one of those logs, the Administrator’s body couldn’t stop itself from trembling.
“1084…
1084…”
The Administrator murmured those few digits to herself in a trembling voice.
The doubts that had been weighing on her heart these past several days seemed at long last to have found their answer.
Yet what that answer brought to her was nothing but boundless panic and bewilderment.
In the year 1102 of the Terra Calendar, a scientific expedition discovered, at the northernmost point of the Terran continent, a colossal megastructure left behind by an earlier civilization — known as the Star Gate.
Several hundred years would pass after that, and through the efforts of generation after generation, the Sami Star Gate was at last restored.
The people of Terra, by way of that great gateway, set foot upon the planet known as Talos II.
And that day, in turn, marked the beginning of the Talos Calendar.
But everything she had seen and heard at the mine these past several days, taken together with the documents laid out before her now, told her one specific thing.
After all those many years she had spent sleeping, she had not arrived in the future she had originally anticipated — instead, she had returned to the past, several hundred years earlier?
“This has got to be some kind of joke…”
The Administrator clenched her fist tight.
This out-of-nowhere disaster had thrown her every plan into utter disarray.
Her mind, tangled into a knotted mess, sent her breathing gradually growing shallow and quick — and she didn’t even notice the figure that was slowly drawing closer behind her.
She abruptly raised her clenched fist, on the verge of slamming it down with all her strength to vent the agitation churning in her chest.
But a single force suddenly caught her hand mid-air.
“You alright?”
The Administrator turned her head — and a pair of eyes brimming with concern were right there, inches from her own.
____
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