152: Chapter 156: A Factory, But No Workers

The three mining stars began to vibrate simultaneously.

That vibration was not volcanic activity or tectonic movement, but a mechanical pulse with an extremely rhythmic beat coming from the deepest depths of the planets.

The first second after Li Cang pressed the unlock key, all the display screens in the cockpit went black.

Immediately after, a brand-new interface that had never appeared before directly overlaid the original tactical operating system.

The holographic projection shifted from a cool blue to a tone of interwoven dark red and brassy yellow.

A massive totem composed of countless interlocking gears emerged at the top of the screen, and below the totem was a line of extremely concise system prompts.

【Forge World Atlas activated.】

【Designated Physical Base: Mining Planet No. 3 Cluster (Three Stars).】

【Forced core restart in progress. Estimated time: Six hours.】

【Commander, please complete the basic configuration of the Forge World during this time.】

Li Cang pulled his chair forward a bit and propped his elbows on the console.

Six hours.

He could probably guess some of what those three mining stars would go through during this time based on the Warhammer setting.

The panoramic monitor outside the battle axe frigate provided the answer.

On the surface of the nearest Mining Planet No. 3, the massive craters left behind by the Scavengers's bombardment were undergoing violent physical changes.

The rock layers at the bottom of the craters were baked glowing red by extreme heat from deep within the core, then cracked open to reveal dark red veins of ore being reactivated underneath.

These ore veins were not naturally formed.

They were industrial pipelines forcibly carved into the crust of this dead star by the system according to the underlying code of the 【Adeptus Mechanicus · Junior Forge World Atlas】.

The entire planet was being transformed into a super furnace.

The remaining rubble and scrap iron on the surface melted under the intense heat, merging into dozens of scalding liquid metal rivers that flowed slowly along the newly carved ore vein trenches toward the planet's equatorial belt.

On the equatorial belt, an annular forging trough, so massive it required a satellite lens to see in its entirety, was slowly emerging from the magma.

This was the heart of the Forge World.

All raw materials would eventually flow into this equatorial forging trough, where they would be repeatedly heated, tempered, and cooled, finally becoming the keels, armor plates, or weapon blanks for warships.

Li Cang zoomed out the panoramic view and simultaneously brought up the newly generated Forge World management panel.

This panel was a completely different matter from the tactical panel used for fighting before.

It listed dozens of subsystem modules that needed configuration, from basic ore mining to high-level plasma cutting; each required separate allocation of manpower and energy.

Li Cang's finger slid from the top of the panel to the bottom, taking a full five seconds to reach the end.

The complexity of this system far exceeded his expectations.

In the Battle Royale, warship upgrades and card fusions were all completed within the relatively simplified interface of the civilization forge.

But the Forge World was different.

The civilization forge was a microwave oven; the Forge World was an entire heavy industrial assembly line.

From ore to armor plate, there were at least seven independent processing steps in between, each requiring dedicated operators to maintain equipment, adjust parameters, and handle waste.

These operators had a specific name in the Warhammer system.

Servitor.

Li Cang clicked on the 【Manpower Configuration】 sub-menu.

It was empty, with only a line of cold red text.

【Current Available Labor: 0.】

【Minimum Forge World Startup Requirement: Basic Servitors x 5000.】

【All production lines will remain in a dormant state until the minimum startup requirements are met.】

Five thousand Servitors.

He didn't have even one in his hands.

Li Cang leaned back in his chair, slowly circling his temples with two fingers.

Could Astartes be used as Servitors?

No.

The thought was rejected the same second it popped up.

From gene cultivation to being ready for the battlefield, an Astartes Recruit consumed enough resources to support hundreds of Servitors.

Making them tighten screws and haul ore was like using gold bars as door bolts; it wasn't impossible, it was just incredibly stupid.

Furthermore, the hands of the Astartes were too large; the operating interfaces of those precision forging devices were designed for normal human proportions.

Five thousand basic Servitors.

There were only two ways to obtain them.

The first was to open a new historical deduction instance, allowing the civilization to naturally develop a Servitor production system during the deduction, and then extract blueprints and templates from the settlement.

This path was the most stable, but it required time.

The second was to directly plunder labor from other civilizations on the great map.

This path was the fastest, but it would further lower his already abysmal credit rating on the great map.

Li Cang pulled up the civilization credit interface of the great map.

He hadn't noticed this panel before the Battle Royale because credit ratings were meaningless in the closed segments.

But in the open ecology of the great map, this number determined everything.

【Current Civilization Credit Rating: D-】

【Rating Description: This civilization has a large number of recorded unauthorized violent acts in public star sectors, including but not limited to: illegal occupation of neutral monitoring base stations, destruction of system arbitration facilities, and fraudulent transactions on public trading channels.】

【Current Restrictions: Prohibited from entering safety star sectors above Grade B, prohibited from participating in official tournament bidding, and warp range is restricted to the peripheral desolate zones.】

He stared at that D- for three seconds.

The logic behind this rating report was clear.

In the interstellar great map, the system didn't maintain order based on whose fist was bigger.

It relied on an extremely sophisticated credit rating system.

High-credit civilizations could receive lucrative official missions, enter resource-dense core star sectors, and participate in high-level tournaments to gain more points and technological rewards.

Low-credit civilizations were locked in the peripheral zones, eating only the scraps left by others.

Li Cang's previous series of violent actions—ramming base stations, blowing up Arbitration Towers, selling Poisoned Crystals—while building his reputation, had also smashed his credit to the bottom.

Under these rules, he wasn't some respectable conqueror; he was just a notorious interstellar thug.

This meant:

The second path was no longer viable.

If he went back to robbery, his credit rating would drop directly to F, at which point even his warp engine would be remotely locked by the system.

Only the first path remained.

Deduction.

Li Cang exited the credit panel and opened the list of available deduction instances.

This list was already very different from the one he saw when he first started.

With the increase in civilization level and the unlocking of the Forge World Atlas, the system had opened up a batch of brand-new high-level historical nodes to him.

His finger slid slowly across the list, his eyes lingering on each instance name for less than half a second before moving on.

Until he scrolled to an entry marked by the system as 【Extremely High Risk · No Player Has Completed Yet】.

Olympus Treaty · Mars Dawn.

His finger stopped.

This name immediately activated an entire information chain in his mind.

Olympus Treaty.

That was the first major thing the Emperor did in the Warhammer universe after unifying Terra.

Terra was unified, but the Emperor only had the Thunder Warriors and a barely sufficient human army in his hands.

He needed warships, armor, and super factories capable of mass-producing war machines.

In whose hands were these things?

Mars.

The Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars.

Those lunatics who worshipped machines as gods held all the industrial production capacity left behind by human civilization during the Golden Age.

The Emperor took his army to Mars, but did not start a war.

He chose to negotiate.

The Emperor told the Archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus: The omnissiah you worship is me.

The Adeptus Mechanicus chose to believe.

Both sides signed the Olympus Treaty.

The Emperor gained all of Mars' military industrial capacity.

The Adeptus Mechanicus gained the Empire's military protection and religious legitimacy.

This deal laid the industrial foundation of the entire Empire for thirty thousand years.

And the output of this deduction instance would undoubtedly include Servitor production blueprints, Forge World operational plugins, and perhaps even the logic of the Adeptus Mechanicus's crazy but effective production systems.

This was the soul his Forge World needed most.

Li Cang did not click to enter immediately.

He first pulled his finger back from the screen and brought up the credit panel again.

Rating D-.

72-hour warp restriction.

All paths outside the peripheral zone were blocked.

But deduction instances didn't require warping.

Deduction was a virtual historical regression conducted within the system, having nothing to do with where his warship was parked.

More importantly, completing a deduction instance was itself a form of "Civilization Contribution" recognized by the system; a high-scoring deduction settlement could directly boost the credit rating.

Killing three birds with one stone.

Deduce to get Servitor blueprints, solving the Forge World's worker problem.

Deduce to get contribution points, solving the credit rating's shackles.

Deduce to get technology plugins, solving the problem of the Forge World being a soul-less empty shell.

Li Cang's finger reached out again.

But before clicking the enter button, a bounty notice from the great map's public channel suddenly popped up in the bottom right corner of the holographic panel.

There were hundreds of such bounty notices every day, most being commercial purchase orders issued by high-credit civilizations, having nothing to do with a peripheral dweller like him with a D- rating.

But the identity of the issuer of this one made his finger stop mid-air.

【Issuer: Eternal Star Crown Federation (Credit Rating SSS). great map Comprehensive Ranking: 7th.】

【Bounty Content: Purchasing "abnormal biological tissue samples" from any source at high prices. Including but not limited to: non-standard genetic chain living cells, high-dimensional aberrant organic materials, and abyss-level biological remains.】

【Reward: Negotiable. Depending on sample purity and rarity, there is no upper limit on the price.】

【Note: This Federation's purchasing behavior is not restricted by credit ratings; Commanders of any civilization level are welcome to trade.】

Li Cang read it twice.

Ranked 7th.

SSS-grade credit.

Eternal Star Crown Federation.

This name appeared with extremely high frequency in the public channel's historical records.

He hadn't cared before because he was still locked in the cage of the Battle Royale.

Looking at the wording of this bounty now, it was very deliberate.

"Not restricted by credit ratings" — this sentence was specifically written for low-credit players like him.

"Welcome Commanders of any civilization level" — this sentence was a public statement: I know who you are, and I am not afraid of you.

Purchasing abnormal biological tissue samples at high prices.

Li Cang looked down at his inventory list.

Blood residue of the Abyssal Star Beast.

High-dimensional crystallized living fragments remaining in the ruins of the Arbitration Tower.

The mutant serum samples circulating within the bodies of those hundred recruits, fused with Star Beast genes.

These things were piled in his warehouse, and besides using them to make Poisoned Crystals to scam people, he hadn't found a second way to monetize them on a large scale.

And the 7th-ranked Eternal Star Crown Federation wanted these things so much they had publicly posted a bounty without any threshold.

Why would a veteran player ranked in the top ten need such extremely unstable abyssal organic materials?

What was their civilization type?

What were they using these things for?

Li Cang did not accept the order immediately.

He exited the bounty interface and pulled up all public information of the Eternal Star Crown Federation from the last six months from the public channel's historical records.

Fleet organization, territory range, tech tree inclination, past battle records.

These data were transparent in the public channel; the higher the credit of a civilization, the more information was forced to be public by the system.

Information slid across the screen line by line.

The crust of Mining Planet No. 3 continued to boil outside the window.

Li Cang sat in his chair, left hand supporting his chin, right index finger tapping incessantly on the edge of the console.

He was in no hurry to make any decisions.

The entrance to the deduction instance was there; it wasn't going anywhere.

The Eternal Star Crown Federation's bounty was also there; it wasn't going anywhere.

But the sequence and method of handling these two things would determine the course of his fate for the next half month.

He needed to figure out one thing first.

What hand the 7th-ranked veteran player was playing.