The next day, Adam didn't go to his office and instead decided to stay at the base with Agent, discussing their solution to this terrible incident.
After the attack from Infected Grimms, they have to pull back most of their forces and concentrate only on defending the Dust mines which are an irreplaceable resource they need.
"Actually, why don't we create these manufacturing plants in another world?" Adam suddenly came up with an idea.
The Black Bullet world is mostly in ruins, the resources are mostly left abandoned as the people are incapable of exploiting them anymore with Gastrea overrun the world.
To this proposal, Agent also agreed. But she explained that they must first analyze Gastrea's aggressiveness. Because in the information she dug up, Gastrea are mentioned to be aggressive to all living organisms that are animals. Like humans, animals, insects but not plants. She wanted to determine their reaction toward robots.
Besides Adam's suggestion, Agent also proposed a suggestion Agent got from Scarecrow.
Scarecrow suggested they loot the SF technologies and machineries used to produce SF units. Agent analyzed the report of yesterday's battle, the reason they lost is because they only have Prowlers as their only mechanized soldier. If they have access to stronger robots like lets say, Aegis and Nemeun or the humanoid units, their chances of victory would have been significantly higher.
"Alright, let's settle the resource matter in Black Bullet world first before we gather up everyone for your world." Adam agreed to both suggest.
"I will gather a few Prowlers for the experiment." Agent nodded and left to complete the preparation.
After Agent left, Tina suddenly popped up from the basement dressed up in her green dress while carrying her Barrett .50 Caliber Sniper Rifle.
"I heard that you are going to my world… Can I come along?" Tina asked.
"Sure." Adam agreed as there is no reason to refuse as Tina has nothing to do staying at the base most of the time. Taking her out to stretch her legs is probably something good.
"Oh! Can we come too, Master? Pleaseeee!" Five heads popped out one after another from the basement, all staring at Adam with hopefully look.
"Sure, why not." Adam replies and all five Alice high fives to each other and happily climb out from the basement and gather around Adam as he hands out headpats and scratches.
After a few more minutes, Agent returned with ten Prowlers and stared for a moment at the crowd that gathered after being away for a short while.
"Let's go then." Adam stood up and initiated the Contract.
———
Somewhere in America, Adam and his group appeared on the empty street of the city ruins.
"Oh right, I forgot to explain to Tina." Adam remembers that he forgot to explain about leveling to Tina and proceeded to give a simple explanation before the ten second timer ended as they moved to a more vantage location.
"So, I can get stronger simply by killing Gastrea?" Tina was in disbelief that she can grow stronger simply by accumulating 'XP' from killing enemies. "That's wonderful!" She replied with starry eyes.
Tina is already very strong at her baseline state. Adam wonders in anticipation how much stronger she can grow after leveling up.
Just as the ten second countdown ended, Gastreas started swarming into the street as if drugged into a frenzy and charged at everyone.
"Just focus on taking out the hard ones." Adam told Tina before she left for a higher spot.
"Leave it to me, nii-san." Tina replied in high spirit and shot down her first target, a beetle Gastrea.
Alice stays close to Tina as she is best at mid ranged battle with an assault rifle. As for Agent that wields laser machine guns and Adam that wields shotgun, they both are best at close range battle and decided to stay on the ground while protecting the entrance of the building.
Due to a discovery made by the original Alice who used Sub-light COM2, a gun originated from the System. Any weapon that came from System shares the same trait as Adam's attack, which is being effective to all enemies disregarding their special traits like Gastrea that cannot be fatally injured by non Varanium weapons.
So, all Alices Dummies are wielding Sub-light COM2 manufactured by System. As for Agent, she is also outfitted with a high ammo capacity laser cannon that shoots no different to a machine gun, manufactured by System using blueprint.
The waves of Stage I Gastreas were nothing to them as they dispatched them with ease. As for the occasion Stage II Gastreas, they are a little more durable and come with odd abilities, but still a piece of cake.
Although, at the ninth minute mark, the last wave arrived and the Boss was a Stage IV Gastrea, according to Tina.
"A queen ant?" Adam stared at the massive winged ant Gastrea. Its height was as tall as a two storey building and its width was longer than a bus.
It landed on the street and released a shrill hiss that send intense vibrations that cause all nearby glasses to crack and fall apart.
Along with the swarming Gastrea, the Queen Ant Gastrea also spawns normal Ant Gastrea in hundreds.
"I take it back about this being easy." Adam cursed and activated both Adrenaline Shot and Hold The Line simultaneously. His shotgun immediately turned into a machine gun with an illogical rate of fire, creating a deadly wall of pellets that shred any soft targets that it approached.
Agent stood to Adam's side, taking care of the enemies that slipped through his killing zone with her laser weaponry that punched holes regardless of how well armored they were. Meanwhile Tina and Alices focused their shots at the Boss.
After a two minute long intense battle that felt like two hours, they finally killed the Boss.
While the other three are used to it, Tina is surprised by the visible changes on her body attained after a level up.
"How much level did you raised?" Adam asked after Tina descended down to the street.
"I reached level 23." Tina replied, unaware of the shock she caused Agent and Alice.
"Hmn, that is expected. This Contract's difficulty level is level 300+ after all. Getting that much XP isn't unusual." Adam explains what literally is power leveling.
The difficulty level is the cumulative level of all participants. The combined levels of Adam, Alice and Agent is somewhere around 380+. With Tina being a Level 1, the XP she gained is expected to be a lot, especially since she is the No. 1 contributing damage to killing the Boss.
Anyway, after the Contract is done. Adam refused the offer to return and the group wander around to find Gastrea. Tina assisted by releasing her drones.
Few minutes later, Tina found a group of Ants Gastrea that seems to be common in this area.
Agent then commanded the Prowlers from a distance to approach the Ants Gastrea while she borrowed Tina's drone to observe.
When the Prowlers approached, the Ants Gastrea also approached the Prowlers. Then they seem confused. Gastrea are known to have intelligence, especially those of higher Stages. So, Agent decided not to attack and saw the Gastreas response.
After probing the Prowlers for a bit, the Gastrea tried to take a bite of the Prowler but immediately lost interest when finding out it isn't edible flesh and they just bite into metal.
The experiment is a success. But they tried it a few more times, trying on a bigger scope of test subjects.
The results are always the same regardless of Gastrea types and Stages. After they try eating the Prowler and find it was made of metal, the Gastrea immediately lose interest and ignore the Prowlers. But if agitated repeatedly, they will try to destroy the Prowler out of annoyance or self-preservation.
"That's a success." Adam sighed in relief.
What more, according to Agent. This world is a carbon copy of her own world in terms of locations and distributions of resources. Which means, they already know in advance where to find which resources they need.
Once their goals are achieved, everyone returns and immediately jumps into GFL World for the next objective.
———
In the Eastern Europe, GFL World
Adam and the group landed somewhere near the shore of the Black Sea.
"We are deep in SF territory." Agent immediately informed, clearly expressing her discomfort for having Adam being in such a dangerous area. "However, we are quite near to a SF factory."
With Agent as the lead they spend hours trekking through wilderness and slowly approach the factory, the small building in the distance slowly grows bigger and bigger until the real scale of the 'factory' finally sinks into his brain. Not to mention, its design looks very similar to the manufacturing plant that Agent proposed.
"That's big…" Adam and Tina awed at the scale of this deceptive sounding building.
"This is actually a smaller factory." Agent casually dropped another bomb which shocked the two even more.
"This is actually small?! It's larger than a city." Adam cannot imagine how big the biggest one of the smaller factories is already.
"Any, how are we going to raid this place?" Adam wondered as he imagined such a facility would be defended and being this big, the defenders must be a lot too. But Adam quickly figured out the answer himself. "Oh right, the Anti-Parapluie Virus."
Indeed, as a former ringleader that was trusted to manage most operations. Agent knows all the ins and outs of every SF owned facility like the back of her palm.
After Agent hijacked control over the Command Node and spread the Anti-Parapluie Virus. However, by complete accidents. Agent assessed the database of SF network although the offline part otherwise she would immediately be detected by the Mastermind. But she put aside the information and completely isolated the factory from the SF network first above all to prevent the enemies from finding out what she did.
The Command Node was without a commander. Normally, there will be one overseeing a Command Node to act as the active decision maker or else, it will simply follow the standard protocols. For that reason, Agent was able to take over this factory with ease otherwise, she would have met with fierce resistance.
The cause of this was apparently caused by the disappearance of Executioner, Destroyer and Scarecrow. If they were simply dead, the Mastermind or the other her, can just revive them in another body with back up. However, they weren't dead, their unique Neural Cloud or in another sense, their souls disappeared without any trace. Thus a panic spread into the rank of ringleaders of SF.
In an attempt to preserve themselves, they have shrunk their zone of influence and become extremely wary of a mysterious force that is causing the disappearance of ringleaders.
In short, nothing that they do to this factory will be caught by the ringleader. Making Agent extremely relieved as she shares this good news to Adam.
"Hmn. That's good." Adam responded after hearing the good news. However, how are we going to dismantle this production line?" Adam asks while looking at this gigantic factory.
"What's important is blueprints and high precision part assembly machines, the rest is possible to recreate with the current technological level of Remnant. Although it would be time consuming…" Agent answered and still prefers to disassemble every part of the assembly lines if possible to immediately start production instead of having to start from scratch again especially when they are already behind schedule.
"Master, how big is your Inventory space?" Agent suddenly asked.
Adam is unsure as he turns to his System and his System answers, [As much as the Orbital Fortress can carry]. The reason is because the Inventory shrinks the item with quantum bullshit into molecular size. But the weight remains the same. With the spacecraft being in space. It didn't matter how much it could carry because it simply didn't matter how much any item weighed because space has no gravity and everything is weightless.
But problems will occur when the weight becomes too much. Heavier objects get pulled stronger by gravity. So, as long as Adam didn't try to put something like a moon in his Inventory. It's very unlikely the Orbital Fortress will be affected.
So, not infinite. But big enough that he didn't need to worry about ever running out of space for the immediate future.
To answer Agent's question, Adam replied "Yes".
In response to this, Agent ordered the humanoid units garrisoned in the factory to help her disassemble the machinery, leaving only an empty factory behind. After that, Adam stuff everything into his Inventory. Next, they also looted the armory, warehouse, everything that isn't nailed down.
At least there isn't any chicken and dogs to slaughter.
They are basically set to build a manufacturing plant in Black Bullet world. With nearly the whole world's worth of resources for themselves, they themselves have a factory that is capable of manufacturing parts all the way to assembling the robots.
"Safe to say, our mission this time is very successful. A bountiful harvest!" Adam laughed happily, thinking perhaps he had been doing everything wrong and should rob another world blind more often.
—————
If you readers feel generous or want to appreciate my work and effort, feel free to tip me here.
https://ko-fi.com/lazy_kat_aoi