Chapter 78: Development Plan

“Hmm… this otherworldly black technology.” In the castle’s Underground Library, a Little Dragon was flipping through a thick book several times larger than itself, muttering from time to time. Beside him, a Ghostly Little Maid was bored, playing with a bamboo dragonfly. When he ran away from home, Zheng Yichen had left behind all the little gadgets he made. Now those little things had become trophies for the Ghostly Little Maids.

Even some of the Ghost Maids would play with them when they had nothing better to do. Because of this, the lingering regrets of these Ghost Maids were greatly eased, allowing Zheng Yichen to read here undisturbed now…

What he was reading about was Alchemical Puppets. Well, this thing was inseparable from Engineering. Engineering provided the skeleton, and Alchemy filled it in. Right now, he was reading about the filling part. A real Alchemical Puppet possessed a certain degree of ‘intelligence’. They could autonomously complete some instructions from their Creator and continue operating as long as Mana was sufficient.

This world didn’t have anything called a Computer, so this ‘intelligence’ needed to be replaced by something else… the required thing was a Soul!

The required Soul wasn’t limited to only Human ones, and its use wasn’t about stuffing this Soul into the Alchemical Puppet. Instead, the Soul was used as a Material to create an Intelligence Core belonging to the Alchemical Puppet. After being made into a core, most of the Soul’s characteristics would disappear, retaining only the most basic elements.

After all, the realm of the Soul was very mysterious and difficult to manipulate. Interfering with a Soul, even a slight mistake could cause damage to or even the collapse of the entire Soul. The quality of the Soul Material used to make the core affected the core’s quality. The higher the core’s quality, the higher the level of intelligence the Alchemical Puppet would possess.

As the Workshop improved, Zheng Yichen realized he was seriously short-handed. Just the daily maintenance was a particularly troublesome matter, not to mention his main body had to run around every day to ‘exercise’.

The Ghostly Little Maid beside him played with the bamboo dragonfly for a while, then lost interest. Her gaze shifted to the alchemy book Zheng Yichen was reading. She tilted her head, biting a finger as she thought for a moment, then gently tapped the back of Zheng Yichen’s head.

“Huh? You’re saying if I’m short-handed, I could transfer some maids over?”

The Ghostly Little Maid who expressed her meaning stiffly nodded her little face, puffing out her chest. The meaning was probably… ‘Pick me! Pick me quickly!’

“Ah~ that won’t be necessary. My current situation isn’t good. That Workshop is something I can abandon at any time. If you all went and something happened, wouldn’t I be harming you?” Zheng Yichen shook his head and refused. The Ghostly Little Maid in front of him immediately pulled a long face.

“Ahem, so that’s that for now.” Temporarily closing the book, Zheng Yichen’s Projection body expanded to match the size of his main body. He reached out, picked up this Ghostly Little Maid, and placed her on his back. “Let’s go. Besides checking information, I also plan to set up some interesting things near the castle this time I’m back. By the way, among your sisters, are there any who have mastered Alchemy?”

The Ghostly Little Maid thought for a moment and very decisively shook her head. This answer made Zheng Yichen somewhat stunned. What the heck? Not even one? After coming into contact with Alchemy and Engineering, Zheng Yichen felt that magic-using professions had an innate advantage when it came to mastering related knowledge. So among those twenty-plus magic-using Ghost Maids, surely one or two would know a bit, right?

“Really not a single one?”

The Ghostly Little Maid seriously nodded and waved her hands, gesturing. The more Zheng Yichen watched, the stranger his expression became. “You’re saying Alchemy is very hard to learn? Even among Humans, there aren’t many who know it?”

Was it really that hard? From the time Zheng Yichen started learning Alchemy until now, he didn’t find it particularly difficult to learn and master. Although there was indeed a lot of knowledge that was quite hard to understand, with more study and exploration, it could be overcome. As for Engineering, that was even simpler. “Hmm, what about Engineering?”

The Ghostly Little Maid continued gesturing, meaning this one was a bit easier. However, Engineering and Alchemy complemented each other. Lacking one was like cutting off part of a development path…

So Zheng Yichen could understand. To put it this way, mastering Engineering alone allowed one to make that kind of steel armor that could be worn, equipment similar to Iron Man’s. A person wearing it could move and increase combat power, but it mostly just enhanced defense and attack power.

But if Alchemy was added to it, then this armor’s performance could achieve a qualitative leap. For example, correction of attack accuracy, assisted aiming for ranged attacks, analysis of enemy attacks, etc… These were things that Engineering alone couldn’t achieve. Developed to a high enough level, it would be the performance difference between a mecha and an EVA, he supposed.

“This is a bit troublesome.” Zheng Yichen scratched his head. The castle’s location had already been moved. The whole process didn’t have any fanfare; it happened silently and without a sound. As for the impact of the new environment here, there was even less. These Ghost Maids were all veteran homebodies. They had nothing to do, so they just stayed indoors.

With Zheng Yichen gone from daily life here, and them not needing to eat much—apart from occasionally satisfying their desire to taste good food—they had even less reason to go out.

Rather than letting them continue idly bored like this, Zheng Yichen was planning to find them something to do. While constructing the Workshop, Zheng Yichen had also continued his follow-up research on the monitors. Besides the sound transmission aspect still being unresolved, the image clarity had improved a lot, and the stealthiness had also increased considerably.

The monitor’s principle was ‘seeing’, not Magic detection. As long as the internal operation was secured, the shell could be made of magic-resistant materials. Although the ‘information’ transmission might be blocked by the magic-resistant material, Zheng Yichen had long since found a solution: just pull out an antenna, right?

As for distance, if it was too far, it would indeed generate extra Mana Fluctuations. But each monitor was equivalent to a repeater. Under the premise of being interconnected, the emitted Mana Fluctuations were suppressed to a minimum. That’s right, Zheng Yichen planned to create a surveillance network centered on the castle. The planned coverage area would be quite large, and the required maintenance workload would follow suit. This would be the job for the Ghost Maids.

Loris didn’t care about the ‘neighbors’ in the Forest of Illusions, but Zheng Yichen did. Just looking at those people’s attire, he knew they definitely weren’t good people… Taking precautions in advance was always a good thing. Without anyone to help with this task, completing it alone would take Zheng Yichen a lot of time. This made him wonder if he should slow down the surveillance network setup and first make real Alchemical Puppets. He didn’t demand they have powerful performance; as long as they could assist him with the assembly-line processing of some materials, that would be enough.

Making them consumed time, and processing materials consumed time too!