Chapter 81: Development

“Okay, okay.” Looking at the five identical ‘robots’ before him, their appearance was already quite similar to a T-800. All they needed was a layer of skin applied, which was also an Alchemical Product that required subsequent crafting. There was no rush for that, though. For Alchemical Puppets, skin was essentially just a layer of disguise. They could already start working now.

“First, tidy up this place, then sort and organize those materials for me.” Zheng Yichen issued the order to these Alchemical Puppets. Driven by the ‘intelligent’ core, they could understand Zheng Yichen’s commands. Because the cores were of decent quality, considered intermediate, they exhibited higher autonomy and possessed good learning ability!

As for the highest quality cores, those not only required an extremely high-quality Soul as the crafting material but also a certain amount of luck and sufficient skill to possibly produce. According to the descriptions in the books, the performance of that level of core was simply explosive. If the Alchemical Puppet’s appearance was made realistic enough, then an uninformed person would have a hard time telling it was an Alchemical Puppet.

However, Zheng Yichen couldn’t make them, nor did he have the corresponding materials.

Low-level cores? They could only carry what the Creator infused into them. Learning ability? Nonexistent! As for the very worst kind, forget about carrying many infused skills; being able to actively distinguish friend from foe was already quite good, and even that distinction tended to be particularly prone to misidentifying people.

After giving the orders to the Alchemical Puppets, over at his main body, Zheng Yichen let out a long yawn. After working continuously for a long time, he finally finished some of the tasks. Next, he would get a good rest and then officially begin the development plan.

Rubbing his eyes, Zheng Yichen found a warm spot, lay down, and closed his eyes, drifting off to sleep. He had set up warning Magic around the area. As long as someone triggered it, he would know immediately. There might be false alarms from small animals wandering in, but it was at least safer, preventing anyone from unknowingly sneaking up on him.

After a sleep that left him fully refreshed, Zheng Yichen gave a long stretch of his body and his two wings, shook his head, and after eating some stored food from a hidden cache for breakfast, he gave a high leap and took off from the spot. Zheng Yichen’s flying speed wasn’t fast, mostly due to the Gravity Enhancement on his body. When not flying, the gravity enhancement on Zheng Yichen was at the maximum he could support. When flying, it was much lighter, mainly to train the strength of his wings.

Any heavier, and he wouldn’t be able to fly.

Changing locations early every morning had become a recent habit of his. It might not be immensely useful, but it gave him peace of mind, which was good. In any case, during this period, Zheng Yichen hadn’t suffered any harassment.

On the way, yawning, he observed Frostmourne, the Magic Arms within the Magic Weapon Summoning Book. The Souls stored inside were still slowly increasing, very slowly. Only one or two more Souls would appear after a period of time, and some of them weren’t even Human ones; they were from beasts. The previous rapid increase trend from a few days ago was completely gone… So, was there a small-scale conflict happening somewhere?

Muttering to himself, Zheng Yichen was now very accustomed to flying. It was like a person walking; he didn’t need to think about it much at all, just moving his legs—it was practically instinctive. During this time, thinking about other things posed no pressure. In his mind, Zheng Yichen began designing new Magic Arms. Basic Magic Weapons and Low-level Magic Weapons went without saying. After perfecting the Magic Armor, there was basically no room for adding anything else.

Zheng Yichen had been consistently working on perfecting Intermediate Magic Weapons. This was also to increase his proficiency with the Magic Weapon Forging Magic, striving to meet the conditions for using High-Level Magic Soldier Summoning sooner. As for playing around with Magic Weapon Summoning… he didn’t need to think about that for now. Some Magic was easy to learn, while others presented a major hurdle with each level!

He was now quite proficient with Intermediate Magic Weapon Summoning, but High-Level was still nowhere in sight. The leap in learning and mastery was a bit too large.

“I worked on perfecting a staff a few days ago. What should I make today? Seems like bows and crossbows haven’t been done yet…” Muttering, Zheng Yichen first used Basic Magic Weapon Forging to create a mold. If possible, he could completely continue to fill it with the Magic for forging Low-level or even Intermediate Magic Weapons, upgrading this Basic Magic Weapon to Low-level or Intermediate.

Bows and crossbows were much easier than Firearms, at least they fell within the general parameters of Magic Weapon Forging… Hey, an archer, Zheng Yichen smiled somewhat inexplicably. While Magic Arms would automatically adjust to suit the user’s physique, their overall form wouldn’t change. However, if the user reached the state of Reaching the Tier and also had the Advanced Summoning permission for the Magic Weapon Summoning Book, then they could make slight adjustments to the summoned Magic Arms Projection.

If one’s skill was sufficient, one could even fine-tune the Magic Arms to a degree resembling an ‘arrow’!

In that case… the bow and arrow weapons about to be added to the Magic Weapon Summoning Book seemed to be the most overpowered. Of course, to be overpowered, one needed the capital to be overpowered, requiring at least the unlocking of weapons other than bows and arrows!

As for anomalous existences… so far, Zheng Yichen had only discovered one anomalous existence! That existence, using some unknown method, forcefully unlocked all the Magic Weapon Summoning restrictions. Although the extent wasn’t very high, just nearing the standard for Advanced Summoning, the fact of full unlocking indicated that the other party was probably a major player.

Putting away the bow and arrow, which was about one-third perfected, Zheng Yichen had arrived at one of his new cover locations by now. “Hmm, I should set up one or two Alchemical Puppets at each cover point.”

Upon reaching this location, Zheng Yichen said to himself. Even though they were places he could abandon at any time, they still needed routine maintenance. After all, he visited each periodically. Setting up one or two Alchemical Puppets to handle the daily maintenance work there would save him the trouble of organizing when he arrived. If left unorganized, nothing might seem off now, but over time, each cover point would surely become messy.

Though they were cover points, keeping them clean and tidy often was a mood-lifting thing anyway. Besides, Zheng Yichen didn’t stay at each cover point for only one day; generally, it ranged from half a day to two or three days.

Nodding, he would continue working hard for a while longer. The hard work now would lead to ease later. As for spreading the work out over subsequent days, doing it little by little… why not just finish it all in one go?

After entering the cover point, Zheng Yichen shifted his attention back to that low-intensity maintained Projection. Standing quietly in the Workshop like a statue, the Alchemical Body reactivated as the Projection became active. Moving its neck, Zheng Yichen’s voice came from the Alchemical Body, “Tsk, tsk, it would be nice to have physical sensations… First, I’ll go purchase a new batch of materials…”