Very quickly, the two of them made their way back out from the mine tunnel and into the mining site proper.
They picked out a random room next to the Protocol Core to serve as a temporary meeting room, the Administrator dug up some paper and a pen, and with their two heads bent in close together, they began discussing the plans for what was to come next.
“Now that we don’t have to worry about the Originium Ore reserves anymore, the next thing we should be thinking about is the next phase of our industrial plan.”
As things currently stood for them, the most critical issue — survival — was no longer a problem for the time being.
The mining site already came with every sort of basic living facility ready and waiting; energy could be supplied directly by the Protocol Core; and even with food being the scarcest resource of all, Saito’s hunting efficiency was more than enough to sustain the two of them — not to mention that if things really got bad, Saito could always just chew on rocks to keep himself alive.
On top of that, they now knew the location of an Ursus village; when the time came, they could go there and trade with the villagers for daily necessities.
No matter how you looked at it, there was no possible way they were going to starve to death.
And so the two of them, as a matter of course, turned their gaze toward more distant horizons.
The Administrator picked up the pen and, on the blank sheet of paper in front of her, wrote down two short words.
1.
Exploration
2.
Safety
“As things stand, we still know absolutely nothing about this stretch of frozen earth.”
In a soft voice, the Administrator laid out what was currently their single greatest hidden danger.
On the surface, their current situation might have looked secure and steadily on the upswing — food and clothing taken care of, things on the mend — but this stretch of frozen earth, this nation, was hardly a place where they could grow and develop with any real peace of mind.
There was no telling when some sudden, unforeseen accident might come along and reduce everything they had right now to nothing — and that was an outcome they absolutely could not accept.
As for the Administrator, the single most important matter at the moment was to figure out the exact time, the exact location, the current state of affairs in Ursus, and the specific reasons why this mining site had been decommissioned.
Although she had previously made the conjecture that no one was going to be returning to this mining site, and had backed it up with corresponding evidence, a conjecture, when all was said and done, was still just a conjecture.
After all, this place was still the property of the Ursus Empire — there was no telling what might happen further down the road, and even the remaining fragments of memory in her own mind weren’t necessarily one hundred percent accurate either.
And while the Integrated Industries System would be the very foundation upon which they made their stand, by that same token, it was also perfectly capable of bringing down a death-sentence-level disaster onto their heads.
So now, what they had to do was gather information about the outside world on the one hand, while at the same time accelerating the development of the base on the other.
“The outward-facing exploration — you can just leave that to me.”
Saito gave his chest a confident thump, taking it upon himself to shoulder the duty of outward exploration.
The Administrator, very evidently, had been thinking along the very same lines.
For the two of them, the best possible division of labor was Saito handling matters on the outside while she handled things on the inside.
“Ideally, head over to that Ursus village sometime in the near future — we need to get a clear picture of what’s actually going on out there first.”
Saito gave a nod, and one by one, he jotted down all the things the Administrator wanted him to look into, recording them into the Protocol Synchronizer. Read this novel at novelping . com for the best experience.
After that, it was the Administrator’s turn.
Even though the sheer convenience of the Integrated Industries System allowed them to develop at an extraordinarily fast clip, for the Administrator, even that pace still wasn’t fast enough — at the very least, it wasn’t enough to truly give them the capital they needed to gain a real foothold here on the Frozen Plains.
But thankfully — the power standing behind them wasn’t just the Integrated Industries System alone…
“Three days…
and three more days, and then another three days — by now, how very many sets of three days have come and gone…”
“Perlica hasn’t really, actually gone and forgotten about me, has she?”
At Endfield Industries’ headquarters, inside the operator dormitories aboard the Dijiang, Chen Qianyu was lying on her bed in absolute boredom, her eyes blank and vacant as she stared up at the metallic-sheened ceiling above her.
It had already been close to half a month since Perlica had promised to send her over to Valley No.
4 to carry out a mission.
Throughout that entire stretch of time, she’d been waiting patiently.
Chen Qianyu believed!
She believed that Perlica absolutely would not deceive her — she must just have been too busy, and for the moment didn’t have the spare time to attend to her side of things.
This sort of thing — she understood it perfectly well.
After all, ever since she’d come aboard the Dijiang, the second-most frequent thing she’d heard out of the mouths of her fellow operators had been praise for and reverence toward Perlica.
On the entire Dijiang, from top to bottom, there wasn’t a single soul who didn’t bow before the strength of Perlica’s work capabilities and the magnetism of her personality.
Apart from that fabled, legendary Administrator, Overseer Perlica was probably the single most respected person aboard the Dijiang as things stood today.
“And I hear that not long ago, Perlica actually collapsed from sheer overwork.”
Chen Qianyu clicked her tongue.
Holding a position that high and still working that hard — no wonder Perlica had been able to land the seat of Overseer of Endfield Industries at such a young age.
Only — a wait this long had, in the end, completely worn Chen Qianyu’s patience down to nothing…
Okay, actually — what was being worn down to nothing was the patience of the person in charge of the training ground.
Lately, because she’d been a little on the aggressive side with her sword practice, she had broken several of the training-ground robots — and if she didn’t get out on a field assignment soon, she was very probably going to wind up killed off by the look in that person-in-charge’s eyes!!!
With that thought in mind, Chen Qianyu sprang up off the bed in a single carp-flip, got herself changed, and walked right out of the dormitory, heading off in the direction of the Central Control Hub.
At this hour, Perlica should still be over there, right?
…
…
By this point, the hour was already drawing close to nighttime on Talos II.
Most of the logistics operators had long since returned to their dormitories to rest — but Perlica was still seated in that one chair at the very center of the Central Control Hub. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
And directly in front of her was a holographic projection of m3.
“m3, how are things looking?”
“Over the past several days, we have, one after another, been picking up messages sent in by the Administrator — but every single time we’ve tried to triangulate the Administrator’s position, we’ve failed.”
m3’s holographic projection gave a helpless shake of the head.
Over this stretch of time, they had tried just about every method that could be tried — but in the end, every last attempt had come up empty.
The Administrator’s current location did not appear to belong to any corner of Talos II — rather, it had to be somewhere far, far more distant, somewhere far more unfathomable.
Otherwise, even in regions that had been eroded by the Hyperdomain, there was no way they should have been coming up entirely empty on every possible lead.
“Keep at it.
The Administrator needs our help right now.”
Perlica’s expression was the same as ever — clearly, she had moved past quite a bit of the initial anxiety.
Only, judging by the reports the logistics operators had been giving m3, it seemed she was simply using other methods to suppress the emotions inside her.
m3 looked at Perlica’s face, hesitated for a brief moment, and then slowly said:
“Perlica…
I think we shouldn’t be keeping this news completely under wraps.”
“Ma’am…
what do you mean by that?”
Perlica’s expression betrayed a faint trace of hesitation — she wasn’t quite sure what m3 was getting at.
“As things look right now, even if Endfield’s strength alone is capable of locating the Administrator, doing so is still going to take an extraordinarily long time.”
m3 looked at the tablet she was holding — at the most recent messages from the Administrator displayed across its screen — and read out, word for word:
“We might also be able to make use of strength borrowed from others.”
“…” Perlica caught the subtext beneath m3’s words.
This particular decision, perhaps, really had been a case of her not having thought things through carefully enough.
“I understand.”
____
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