Chapter 4: First real enemy

"Beautiful. No, majestic," Vulcan admired the platoon of Automatons in front of him.

He had taken a little break earlier and decided to explore more of the deep rift before he received a notification from the system telling him the first batch of Automatons had been finished. He raced back, and once they turned on, it was a strange sensation; he was connected to them all. It was as if they were all an extension of him, and yet it was him at the same time.

"We basically work as a sort of hivemind now, huh?" said the steel Automaton to the original him.

"Yeah, pretty much. I guess I won't be lonely now if I have you guys," said the original Vulcan body.

They all nodded at the same time, which would be creepy to anyone else but not to him.

Vulcan then switched and focused himself to take over the steel Automaton. It was much taller and stronger than his original body, so he thought it would be fitting for him to use this body instead. He could still take out things from his Spatial storage and access the system, so it didn't worry him. Speaking of the system, he took a peek at it again.

Name: Vulcan

Level:6

Race: Automaton

Body material: Rank 2/Steel

Energy points: 10,500

[Facilities]

-Spacial storage

-Automaton production factory

Pretty much the same things, but this time he had a name. His body was steel, and he had a good amount of energy points from the starter pack. He wondered what the energy points did. When he focused on a description for their function, it told him they were meant to buy blueprints from the store and to purchase facilities. Since he didn't have the store unlocked yet, he looked into the factory facilities and how much they cost.

Small Automaton production facility - 10,000 EP

Medium Automaton production facility - 100,000 EP

Large Automaton production facility -

1,000,000 EP

Moon Automaton production facility -

100,000,000 EP

Planetary Automaton production facility -

1,000,000,000 EP

He read the description of the medium-sized factory since he already knew what the small factory did. It would be able to produce about 1,000 Automatons a day of rank 3-4 metals and below. A large factory could produce 100,000 Automatons a day of Rank 5-6 metals and below. Now a moon factory could produce 1,000,000 Automatons a day of Rank 7-8 metals and below. A planetary factory could produce 100,000,000 Automatons a day of Rank 9-10 metals and below.

Now that was insane. If he had a planetary factory right off the bat, it would be game over for this world. Too bad it was so damn expensive. Also, the fact that Rank 9-10 metals would probably be extremely hard to find. He was barely considered a Rank 2 metal and his small factory could only create two a day tops. He decided to save up his EP for something worthwhile, but if he found more iron veins in this rift, he wouldn't hesitate. He needs to gather a reasonable army before he could feel safe from any outside threat.

He then focused on his forces he had for now. Since there were plenty of rocks around, he decided to make a sort of fortress around the factory to guard it, and make it more accessible than just jumping on the rock ledge. He took out his plasma weapons and gave them to ten of his sentries. Yeah, he'll call them his sentries.

Then gave them the task to start carving heavy stones to start forming a fortress, assigned the rest to help carry the blocks into place while he supervised. Like this, they got to work. The blocks weighed around a ton. He didn't know how he knew, but he was sure it was right. His sentries were able to carry them with some effort. He decided to try and help out to speed things up, and he picked up the block easily. This surprised him but made him puff up his chest with pride. This was a dream come true to be able to pull off stunts like this.

It soon got dark, and they worked through the night until he received news that another batch of sentries were done. He left for a short while and came back with the 50 Reinforced iron sentries and the one steel sentry. The thick walls were soon done, and he decided to change up the strategy now that they had more help.

He knew that raising his level would be important to unlocking more facilities, so he sent his steel sentry with a squad of 20 sentries to hunt any creatures nearby. He gave them half the weapons to hunt easier. With that, he was multitasking different projects. The waves of notifications soon came in, he wondered if what he was doing was going to harm the environment.

[Cave Bear lvl 20 defeated, 700 EP collected]

[Treetop stalking spider lvl 10 defeated, 350 EP collected]

[Saber-wolf lvl 15 defeated, 500 EP collected]

[Goblin lvl 8 defeated, 200 EP collected]

It was all coming along nicely. In just a few hours, he had already collected a little more than 1,500 EP. Just as he was enjoying his time watching the kill notification go up, an alarming red notification popped up.

[2x Reinforced Iron Automatons destroyed]

He had noticed that they ran into another group of hobgoblins mixed with goblins. But while they were engaged in a fight, an even bigger variant than the hobgoblin appeared. It was at the same height as the steel sentry, its physique was insane, as if it was made out of only muscles. It charged at the sentries and bisected them from the torso with a large axe.

I took over the steel sentry and with the spear in hand aimed for its neck. Sensing my attack, the thing bent down, but I had predicted this and hit him with a high knee to the face. The hit connected, sending it reeling back and landing with its back on the floor. With all my strength, I stabbed down with my spear directly through his face, ending its sad existence.

[Hobgoblin warrior lvl 25, 1,000 EP collected]

After that, the rest of the sentries had no problem killing the rest. A perk of being one single entity, we had perfect unity and cohesion. While the goblins ran around in chaos, only protecting themselves. The group returned back to the fortress bringing along the scraps of the two sentries. I had an idea and wondered if it would work.

He took out one of the nano healing stims and approached one of the bodies. He injected the body and backed away. In seconds, thin metal-like lines connected the other half of the sentry and repaired it back to normal. He sensed his connection with the sentry come back and it then stood up as if nothing had happened.

He contemplated for a second but then decided to use a second stim on the other sentry since he didn't know if he would be attacked again; he needed as many sentries as possible right now, and he still had three stims left for himself. With that, he didn't send out more hunting parties. He had already unlocked something that would help him immensely.

[Level has increased to 17]

[Store unlocked]