Chapter 411: Proliferating… |
What could a whole group of mass?production dolls, each with a door pre?set inside, actually do? Irene could not help pondering. A cloud of ideas bubbled up in this small one’s head. She sensed that the function had many uses, but specifics would not come at once. Only after a good long while did a vague plan begin to take shape.
“Let me think. If you can summon them over, can you also teleport them away?” She tilted her face up, full of curiosity as she looked at Yu Sheng: “Can you send them directly to places you’ve been?”
“That counts as one,” Yu Sheng said with a nod, offering a casual explanation. “You know I need a beacon to open a door, either a place I’ve been or somewhere I recorded during a random opening. But I can’t be in several places at once. With these mass?production dolls, it’s different. The door embedded in them is itself a complete beacon. Wherever a mass?production doll goes is effectively a place my door can open.
“Also, because they carry full blood?authority, these dolls can activate the door inside them on their own. Add that to their evacuation playbook. If they run into mortal danger while out in the field, they can teleport back to the Valley instantly.
“Last, in theory mass?production dolls can chain?summon one another. One doll could summon the others to herself. That’s hardware?feasible, but I don’t know if the software can keep up. It depends on how strong their self?governance is. The mass?production line doesn’t think much, and this is a fairly complex operation.”
“That’s no big deal,” Irene waved as soon as she heard it, hands on hips and full of confidence. “When their brains aren’t enough, they still have me. I usually run them in low?bandwidth mode, but at critical moments I can log in personally.”
“That’s true,” Yu Sheng said, rubbing his chin. He had almost forgotten Irene could “log in herself.” His thoughts began to flow again, then a worry occurred to him. “If your primary consciousness can jump around between a bunch of mass?production dolls at any time, won’t too many transfers give you split personality?”
He was just thinking aloud, but the little doll gave it serious thought: “It… shouldn’t, right? I can control four hosts at the same time without splitting. And honestly, running four threads for long periods makes me feel more energetic. Lately I’ve been researching whether at night I can have only one body sleep and the other three pull an all?nighter. There’s already progress. When one body is asleep, the other three can sleepwalk around the room.”
“So the ghostly crawling all over the place in the middle of the night was because of that?!”
Yu Sheng stared at the little doll for a long while. She showed no reaction. At last he could only spread his hands helplessly, while curiosity about her mental architecture rose in his heart. [How does a doll with no brain not only think but think on four threads?] Strictly speaking, her ordinary “thinking” was quite limited.
Yu Sheng shook his head and tossed those stray thoughts aside, focusing again on the mass?production unit before him.
He knew the uses of the pre?fabricated door inside a mass?production doll certainly went beyond what he and Irene had just listed. As long as your imagination kept up, there were plenty of things these upgraded units could do. And even putting the add?ons aside, the mass?production models had some combat power of their own.
Their skeletons had been cost?compressed, but they still counted as Spirit Fox Darksteel Lite. A quick zap with an Irene?ray could still take the field. Sent out alone on an exploration mission, they could protect themselves.
Thinking of that, Yu Sheng rubbed his chin and muttered, “They can explore when out, fight if they meet an enemy, and run if they can’t win. That’s the ultimate scout build.”
The little doll’s eyes lit up: “What search?fight?retreat?”
“Play fewer games that are too hard for you,” Yu Sheng glanced down at the tiny thing by his feet and headed for the alchemy dais. “You don’t even really get them.”
“That’s unfair. I’m amazing, okay? When I play, they can’t even kill me,” Irene piped up at his heels, little legs hustling as she chattered. “Hey, why aren’t you listening? I’m really aweso… hey, what are you doing next?”
“The first test unit passed. Obviously we keep crafting,” Yu Sheng said over his shoulder. “Mass?production is only mass?production if the numbers go up.”
As he spoke, he instantly generated a dozen sets of molds on the floor for casting doll skeletons, raised rows of work platforms across the spacious alchemy lab, and began transporting a steady stream of “earth” from the Valley onto the platforms. He was clearly setting up to ramp production immediately.
Only now did Irene remember the “mass?production” part, but she frowned as she watched Yu Sheng work. Something felt off: “So you’re going to keep hand?crafting dolls here yourself? That’s not what I imagined.”
“Who said I’d be doing the handwork?” Yu Sheng grinned, and once he had the prep in place, he pointed at the mass?production doll still standing by, looking a little blank. “Next, let her learn.”
Irene blinked, then caught on: “Nice.”
The mass?production doll received the command, came over, then scrambled up onto a platform on hands and feet and stared intently at Yu Sheng.
Yu Sheng began by directing Foxy to prepare the “Lite skeleton,” while he demonstrated to the mass?production doll how to carve the spirit?infusion array, arrange ritual materials, and shape the clay. He found a moment to explain to Irene: “The mass?production line can’t control the Valley’s soil and rock to ‘instant?shape’ the way I do, so we’ll have to prepare this portion of the materials for them, and the shaping will be slower. But once the numbers grow, scale will make up for the lower efficiency per unit.”
As he spoke, Foxy was already flaring furnace?fire, smelting Darksteel and pouring skeletons. On the first alchemy platform, Yu Sheng finished inscribing the ritual array and placing the materials. Then he handed the graver to the mass?production doll and told the little one to repeat the process on the other platforms.
This small one hugged the graver, which was practically a short staff to her, dashed to the nearest platform, and began clumsily reproducing what she had just “learned.” She worked slowly at first, but grew more proficient at a pace you could see with the naked eye, then better and better.
Watching the tiny worker busy on the platform, wholly focused and increasingly deft, Yu Sheng had a fleeting suspicion that Irene was secretly logged in. He dismissed the thought quickly. Even when she logged in, Irene could not do it this well. She did not have the patience to repeat such tedious work over and over. [This might well count as a kind of machine?spirit rejoicing.]
He fetched a cup and began to fill it with blood. This was the other key material required to make living dolls.
It might even be the most critical.
After Foxy quenched and cooled the skeleton with a simple spell and set it on the platform, Yu Sheng demonstrated for the mass?production doll how to mix the tiniest amount of blood into the soil and how to wrap the skeleton with it to form a rough human shape.
For a doll only 66.6 centimeters tall, this step was quite difficult.
“Once the mass?production numbers go up, we can have them work in teams of three or four to build new dolls,” Yu Sheng said, watching the little one focus intently on kneading mud. He turned to Irene and Foxy after a moment’s thought. “We can also switch to standard lightweight clay. It handles better than mud and isn’t expensive when you buy in bulk.”
Foxy poured another batch of skeletons. After a brief thought, she said, “It looks like performing the spirit?infusion ritual and shaping the bodies can both be handled by these mass?production dolls themselves. For smelting skeletons, we can set up a furnace and a simple casting room and let them do it, as long as we adapt the fixtures to their height. Right now the only limit on output should be the two key materials.”
“The key materials,” Yu Sheng murmured, arms folded, thinking it over.
One was Foxy’s Spirit Fox Darksteel. It granted spirituality to the mass?production dolls.
The other was his own blood. It granted them life.
“To be fair, silly Fox’s iron ingots have pretty high yield,” Irene said offhandedly. “Every so often she pulls out a big chunk, sells some to the Special Operations Bureau, and still has leftovers. And you need very little to cast one skeleton. You’ve compressed costs so much the frame is practically wire?thin.”
As she said this, her eyes slid to Yu Sheng.
Irene thought for a moment.
“Hey, Yu Sheng, your blood yield seems pretty high too. Draining you to death once should make at least a few hundred. If we’re frugal, maybe a thousand.”
Yu Sheng saw the little doll’s eyes spinning and knew nothing good was coming. Sure enough: “Listen to yourself. Is that something a human would say?”
“True. If you really died, your blood would evaporate on its own after a while, and we wouldn’t have time to use it,” Irene mused seriously, continuing her calculation. “Looks like we can only drain you half to death.”
“That is not the key point!”
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