Chapter 213-1: Tower of Eternity, Starnet Legion (1) |
Cavern world.
Mechanical ruins, underground passage.
The flashlight beam swept across the damp walls. Alan maintained combat mode in his combined form, with his teammates as attachments in his monster form hanging on him.
After a period of trial and error, the fusion mode had been upgraded again.
Besides having more teammate attachments, his star vein setup had new Inherited souls added.
He had added the Inherited soul Insight, which could help him quickly lock onto weak points on mechanical lifeforms and improve hunting efficiency.
He had originally planned to embed the latest contained Inherited soul Siphon to enhance combat sustain.
But mechanical lifeforms had no mental power to draw from, so it did not fit the hunting environment.
In fact, as the main body of the Immortal Fusion Vajra playstyle, there were still many Inherited souls he could embed. Every single one he embedded would raise his overall strength by a large margin.
For the next star vein upgrade, he also planned to embed the Gold Coin Inherited soul to increase the Gold Coin Chamber of Commerce’s profits. No matter how he looked at it, the star vein slots were simply not enough.
Once he finished exploring the mechanical ruins city, his next step was to get his teammates back on track.
He would part completely with the fusion Vajra mode and return to mainstream play.
That way he could remove some Inherited souls specific to the combination playstyle.
For example, the Life Link Inherited soul and Scatter Arrows Inherited soul would have to be eliminated once fusion mode ended.
His teammates could also be freed from the attachment mode and officially begin their steps into exploring Monster World.
As he walked along, his boots squeaked in the standing water. The air here was filled with the smell of machine oil and metal rust.
Wherever his gaze swept, broken mechanical parts lay scattered everywhere. Gears, bearings, and snapped mechanical arms piled together, like a mechanical funeral of a special kind.
“Captain, careful of electricity.” At this moment, the Owl-Headed Fiend teammate gave a warning in his mind.
Alan looked up in the direction the Owl-Headed Fiend had marked. From the ceiling not far ahead hung three severed power cables that occasionally spat a few sparks, lighting up the oil slick floating in the water below.
“Understood.”
After replying, Alan chose to avoid the electrified puddles and continued forward along the wall.
Passing through a nearly scrapped mechanical corridor, his field of view suddenly opened up.
A silvery-white scene unfolded before his eyes.
At the same time, Alan heard a faint humming coming from the depths where the light could not reach.
“Captain, it is a formation of cleaning robots. We can fight, we can mess them up.”
With his teammate’s clear answer, Alan raised his left hand with the Rock Shield teammate, and the Force Savage Axe teammate in his right hand burst with golden flames.
Out of the darkness surged cleaning robots with red lights aglow, raising their spinning derusting brushes as they gathered to attack.
Alan stepped forward of his own accord. The Force Savage Axe in his right hand suddenly swept out ahead.
With the Vital Qi Inherited soul released, the Force Savage Axe dragged out a stream of light as it swung. The released axe shadow shattered three cleaning robots in one strike, parts scattering across the floor.
The Challenger Notification rang in his mind. Alan twisted his hips to borrow force and swung the Force Savage Axe again.
The crisp sound of metal being cleaved rang out continuously.
In no time, he had swept away this group of cleaning robots that had once required his teammates to cooperate just to barely kill.
He summoned the map. At this moment he was 3.8 kilometers from the central sector of the mechanical ruins city. It was not far.
With the direction confirmed, Alan did not linger and continued toward the central area.
At the end of the silvery-white scene, Alan saw a broken production line still stubbornly operating, emitting a low hum.
The metal frame of the line was already mottled with rust. Parts of its structure had been bent by the collapsed ceiling, yet it still extended stubbornly into the dark distance.
The conveyor belt was covered with cracks and welding marks left by Repair Robots, occasionally emitting a piercing scraping sound.
At the start of the line, four old robotic arms trembled as they picked up scattered metal scraps from a mountain of waste. Their joints squeaked, their movements slow and clumsy, as if they might break down at any moment.
It was clear these metal scraps were mostly recovered mechanical remains from the ruins. Their surfaces were scratched and rusty, long since stripped of their original luster.
In the middle section of the line, a few barely functioning welding robots were attempting to piece these fragments together into the shell of cleaning robots.
The welding torches spat weak sparks, but the energy supply was obviously insufficient, leaving uneven weld points.
At the end of the line, a barely formed cleaning robot wobbled as it slid off the conveyor.
Its shell gleamed after polishing, but its chassis wheels were skewed, causing it to wobble as it moved.
The formation of cleaning robots he had just encountered clearly originated here.
Alan did not let these resources go.
He killed the robots that were still running, then dismantled the energy modules on the production line and tossed them into his inventory.
He did not spare the piled mechanical remains either.
Whether sacrificed to the Emperor’s Sign or listed on the Trading House, both were options.
This was another tidy extra profit.
Passing through the cleaning robot production line, Alan led the team onward.
The machine warriors he encountered afterward had clearly grown in strength.
Guardian type, combat type, destruction type. Their hunting levels had reached 25+, and the destruction-type robots were generally at 30+.
Even with the blessing of fusion Vajra mode, Alan still felt tremendous pressure.
Their advance had to slow. After every battle he needed to drink potions to restore his state.
It took them half a day to cover this three-kilometer stretch.
They finally reached the outer edge of the central district of the mechanical ruins city.
Bang.
The Force Savage Axe, trailing a stream of light, hacked into a broken metal pillar blocking the road ahead.
Sparks flew. The heavy metal pillar cracked like rotten deadwood, raising a cloud of dust.
Crossing the obstacle, Alan entered the central district of the mechanical city.
The scene before his eyes left him deeply shaken. This place looked like a city forgotten by time.
Shattered mechanical high-rises stood like the bones of giants. Rusted metal walls were overgrown with luminous mechanical vines forming a mechanical neural network. A faint energy still flowed within them, as if the city’s blood vessels continued to pulse.
The ground was strewn with countless mechanical remains.
Giant gears, broken drones, mechanical guards. The surfaces of these machines were all covered in a thick layer of dust.
He looked up.
On the dome, a gigantic rent had savagely torn open the city’s former integrity. The edges of the tear were jagged, the metal framework twisted out of shape, as if ripped open by an irresistible force.
Shattered metal fragments hung from the rim of the gap, suspended by the mechanical network, swaying in the wind.
Through the hole in the dome, the sky lay completely exposed. In the dim heavens, thick clouds massed. Now and then, lightning cut across the sky, illuminating the central district below the dome.
Seeing this, Alan could imagine what the Machine-Guard race had suffered.
This race, which harbored ambitions to vie for hegemony over the world, had faced an extinction crisis it could not resist before it had even developed.
It had been destroyed either by other descending forces or by Monster World’s native races.
All that remained was this nearly paralyzed city that still ran with difficulty.
Potential and growing up into strength were two completely different things.
It was certain that there were many forces in Monster World with such potential, but most fell on the road to rising and never advanced to become truly powerful races.
Luck was also a very important part of a race’s growth.
No matter how great the potential, if the starting point was wrong, it was destined to be hard to reach the end.
Unless they were like the players, who possessed infinite fault tolerance and could rise again from failure endlessly to continue the unfinished road.
His gaze shifted forward.
At the center of this region, a towering mechanical tower pierced the dome.
Its body was formed by countless stacked metal rings. Each layer still flickered with a faint blue light, as if some kind of energy was flowing within.
The top of the tower had been shorn away by external force. Lightning in the sky was occasionally drawn by the energy circulating within the tower body. It speared through the torn dome and struck the tower, bursting into a blinding electric arc.
Shocked in his heart, Alan stepped toward the high tower.
When he got closer, he activated Analysis and swept it.
[Tower of Eternity (unfinished, damaged)]
Analysis Introduction: The supreme miracle created by the Machine-Guard race in their pursuit of mechanical immortality, standing at the center of the mechanical city and symbolizing the technological pinnacle of the Machine-Guard race. The tower interfaces with the core energy hub created by the Machine-Guard race and is also the ultimate carrier for the Machine-Guard race leader’s consciousness (not uploaded).
A vast consciousness network has been constructed inside the tower. Through mechanical neural technology, the Machine-Guard race leader would enter an Immortal State after fusing with it.
Through the mechanical neural connection network, one could control everything in the mechanical city.
Note: The Machine-Guard race believed that as long as the Tower of Eternity stood, their civilization would endure forever.
—
“As expected, there is a Tower of Eternity.”
Although it was only a half-finished product, the appearance of the Tower of Eternity still made Alan extremely excited.
This meant the planned concept could continue to advance.