From the other side of the door, Jordan sensed that the System was doing its thing. It seemed like it was currently building an extension to his base, in order to accommodate the Miner. While this process had started immediately and without his input, he didn’t necessarily mind just leaving it up to the System.

Now, the funny thing about ten minutes was that it fell into that range of only being a short amount of time for some things, or a long amount for others. Have to do some big exam or turn in homework that you held off on doing until right before it was due? Very short amount of time where each minute passes with every blink of an eye.

But if you were just waiting for ten minutes to pass and stood there? Every minute seemed to drag on for what felt like a small eternity. And while Jordan could have just waited it out, it was only after the first minute that he decided to be a bit more productive with his time instead.

There was one issue with the portals, and that was how his land drones couldn’t use them on their own. As it turned out, this was actually very easy to deal with, and something he really should taken care of right after he first discovered the gateway. While waiting for the Miner to be built, Jordan went up to his Transmuter.

He then did the mental math on the dimensions of what he wanted to create, and whether he could do it one go or needed it to be something on the more modular side to assemble. In terms of height, Jordan figured that it didn’t actually need to be tall enough to reach the portal. It just needed to be enough for the top of the drone to touch the bottom of the sphere, which was a requirement that meant this side project would be much easier to pull off in under ten minutes.

Just a few minutes later, Jordan watched as a land drone went through the portal. He then went through it himself, and noticed that his placement of the thing on the other side had been off by a few inches. With just a nudge from his foot, that was fixed easily enough.

What Jordan had built could essentially be called a pair of ramps. One placed on each side of the gateway, so that his land drones could come to and from with ease. The ramp for the mountain-side of the portal had taken just a bit longer to get ready than its counterpart. As due to the the difference in weather conditions, he felt it might be a good idea to make that one a bit more sturdy.

One by one, all of his land drones had followed him here and were now on the other side. The sun was now quite lower in the sky for the mountain range, but that was fine. Jordan would give his drones a set of orders that they should hopefully be able to follow continuously without trouble.

The planned schedule would be as such. During the day, on the forest’s side, the land drones would patrol the giant forest while grinding Experience Points. Then as soon as the portal appeared after sunset, they would use the ramp to cross over and hunt around the mountain range. Once it was approximately half an hour until the gateway would disappear, they would then come back and return to the forest and resume hunting there. It should also be noted that the land drones would fully spread out while within the forest, and remain in pairs while in the mountain range.

Jordan at least believed that was the best compromise between them covering the most area while being less likely to be destroyed by the higher Level denizens of the mountains. While this was ongoing, a lone air drone would remain in the forest to patrol the area directly around the edges of Jordan’s Kingdom. Just so that extra layer of security would always be there, even as the land drones spent half their time in the mountains.

I’ll probably still have to replace the land drones as they’re taken out by Ice Sprits, Wyverns, or whatever else is out there. But at least I can just do that as necessary while sitting in my base, and send out the land drones again as soon as they’re summoned. Now, I wonder how long it’ll be until they grind enough Experience Points for me to hit D Grade? Jordan asked himself as he hopped on the single land drone that hadn’t been sent across the portal yet.

He still needed it as a ride back, but then would immediately have it go through to join its kin. Having five land drones as what he could currently summon without zeroing out his TP did mean that one would have to be alone without a buddy. But such was life, even if it did mean this lone drone was more susceptible to being destroyed while fighting things.

When it came to the predicted rate of Experience gain, he knew that they had gathered over 3000 EXP after the first whole night across the portal. While they were in the forest during the day, he estimated that the figure might drop to a bit under 1000 due to the lower average Level of creatures. Though maybe it’d be even lower now that a large number of local forest animals had likely already been killed by now, so there would obviously be fewer in the area to keep murdering.

Yet at the same time, his land drones hadn’t really encountered the stronger foes within the mountain range during the previous night. So maybe as they found those instead, those higher amounts of Experience would compensate for the difference? He did know from Appraise that the Wyverns tended to live near the peaks of the mountains, so assuming that was where the higher Level stuff in general resided, that could be something for his land drones to focus on.

Hmm, there’s no way so much killing can be sustainable, right? Even if I assume those four aren’t interested, Haje is definitely going to still keep farming Experience Points for himself, too. Let’s say that there are enough creatures in the area and through the portal for my drones to farm a few more Levels of Experience, and at least let me hit D Grade. What happens after that? Assuming this isn’t like an actual game where things will eventually just respawn, I’ll soon need to either expand my drones’ range, or I’ll have to personally move around to other biomes they can’t currently reach from here.

For the former option of a substantial range increase, he at least hoped that was something D Grade could provide. It’d seemed like Haje’s own Skill had received a massive boost when it hit D1 for its Grade. So as soon as he hit Level 11 himself to evolve his Skill to E5 first, Jordan felt it wasn’t unreasonable to think that Summon Land Drone would get a similarly potent upgrade.

With that thought, Jordan arrived back at his building. Just a bit over ten minutes should have passed by now, yet he was quick to notice something. From the angle he was driving in from, he should have been able to see the new room that had been built by the System. And yet, as far as he could tell, there was no extension or anything obviously different about the building at all.

Huh. The System showed the live construction of the building before, while it was still in progress. So definitely not just a case of only appearing when finished, and it not being done yet. Well, only one way to find out what the System decided to do, he thought while hopping off his drone. There was another reason why he was confident about the building being done, and that was because the System had said so while he’d driven here.

Automatic construction has now been completed!

The user’s Second Boon has now been installed!

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

As Jordan then approached the front door, he sent his land drone off to spend the remainder of the night through the portal. When Jordan entered his base, his gaze immediately went over to the other side. Just like the building’s exterior, the interior also remained the same. Even the concrete door next to the Transmuter appeared to be unchanged. As he then walked up to it, he already tried to focus his will on it.

“Ohhhh, so that’s how we’re doing it? Alright System, I can taste what you’re cooking,” Jordan muttered aloud. The System had indeed built an extension to his base that the door would lead to. Just not one that went across the wall like he’d expected, but instead had been built straight down. Now that did beg a question. If there wasn’t anything on the other side of the door itself, how had the System implemented the space needed for a ladder or stairs? The answer was that it simply hadn’t.

When Jordan touched the door, he felt that it wasn’t an instant process like the gateway outside. Instead he got a mental pinging, one asking him for permission first. Which he naturally gave, and was promptly teleported.

An instant later, he reappeared in a new room. From what the System had informed him, Jordan was currently about 20 feet under the very middle point of his Kingdom. The underground room he now found himself in was pretty simple in terms of its design. He was surrounded by concrete, in a cube that was 20 feet long in every dimension. Despite being detached from the rest of the building, this room still had lighting in the ceiling, heating, and energizing air.

But of course, it was the machine in the center of this chamber that was really worth mention.

The Industrial Miner was rather big. It was tall enough to touch the ceiling, and took up about half the room’s total space in terms of length and width.

When it came to the machine’s design, Jordan believed that it could be described as fairly cubical in shape, with the main body being just one large cube, and then a much smaller and rectangular part to its side. When Jordan looked at the latter more closely, he discovered that it was actually a metal chest.

Opening the chest, he saw a chute that connected it to the main body. The chest itself was about five feet in length, three feet in height, and then three feet in width. Some very quick mental math put that at a volume of 45 cubic feet, which was a pretty good amount of storage space.

Sadly, the metal and almost entirely closed nature of the machine made it like the Industrial Transmuter. Where to find out how the inside actually looked and start figuring out how it worked, he’d have to break into the thing. Putting side the risk of irreparably breaking something, Jordan didn’t even know it’d be possible. As the System had long-since informed him that the metal these Boons were made of could be simply described as very, very, very durable.

Name: Industrial Miner

Charge: 57.2%

Rank: 2

Description: The Second Boon and backbone of Industry’s future potential as a Kingdom. This System-created machine is one of a kind, as it allows for the identification and automatic extraction of any underground materials. The only limitations are the number of items within its range, and both the Charge and time needed for each extraction.

Two things were quickly noted by Jordan. The first was that this machine shared a Charge with the Transmuter, which he supposed did make sense as the latter was also the central power for his while Kingdom. And the second was the Miner had a listed Rank to match his current Kingdom Rank, but not the ability for him to increase that by feeding it his Experience Points.

Speaking of which, one might wonder how much it took for him to do that now. Since that was something he’d already seen, when he used the Transmuter earlier. The answer to this was as interesting as it was straightforward to keep in mind.

Ten thousand Experience Points, which was exactly the same requirement as before. Now that meant that the cost would likely remain the same after hitting Rank 3 as well, unless the System pulled a fast one. For now, that was too high of a cost for Jordan to pay. And now that he actually had citizens in his Kingdom, he still had the feeling from inherent knowledge that only he as the Kingdom’s owner could pay it. At that price, that would mean setting himself back by a couple of Levels. So for the time being, it was a matter for after he at least hit D Grade at Level 11, and could better afford the setback.

Right, let’s see how you actually work, Jordan thought as he then placed a hand on the Miner. The moment he willed for it to activate and tell him more about its functions, it quickly responded. And when it did, Jordan used his other hand to start rubbing his chin.

“Interesting,” Jordan muttered to himself. “So like the Transmuter, this is going to take a bit of testing. Since I’ll first need to pick an amount of Charge to feed it for the size of the area it’ll check. Then when it gives me a list of what it found, I’ll have to just pick something and figure out how much Charge and time it takes only after it starts the extraction process. Huh.”

Knowing that much now, Jordan pulled out his handy notebook and pencil. He would have to manually keep track of the costs and time requirements, and then steadily figure out how each was determined. So just to start with, Jordan decided to put down 5% as the initial Charge to survey the ground.

Putting his hand back on the machine, he felt it respond to his will. The Industrial Miner shook for just a few moments as the used-up Charge was deducted. And then, a new pop-up appeared before him.

Material deposits located!

Range checked: 0.5 miles

Found Deposits:

-Unknown metal

-Unknown metal

-Unknown metal

…

Dozens more results appeared on what ended up being quite a long screen. All of them were listed as unknown metals, which was… not exactly as helpful as he would hoped. The only thing that was actually good to know was the range was confirmed to be in every direction by a feeling put in his head.

So assuming it continued to scale evenly, that meant the entire size of his territory could be covered with double the Charge at 10%. However, that was before the increased depth to his Kingdom’s territory that had also been provided by the Boon. As far as how deep of an increase that actually was, Jordan still didn’t know for sure.

Though there was one last part to address. Which was an addition bit of information the System had decided to give him at the very bottom of the screen.

Note:

From the top, found deposits are listed in order of expected time and used Charge for their extraction. In addition to other factors, this is primarily determined by their distance from the Industrial Miner and the inherent nature of the material within the located deposits.

Jordan couldn’t help but chuckle a bit. Despite his initial reaction being that of slight annoyance, he did admit that this was the more fun way of doing things. Rather than simply have it all spelled out for him, he couldn’t deny that there was a certain satisfaction to figuring out the details himself. With that being said, he went ahead and selected the top result.

Once again, the Miner hummed with life. The floor beneath Jordan’s feet shook, and he thought he could hear the sound of stone being crushed. But something about seemed… distant? It was hard to say, as at least some of the noise would naturally be muffled by being underground. Yet after he began the extraction process, he checked to see the current Charge.

Charge: 52.2%

So that had cost him exactly 3.2%. That would be a pretty hefty price to keep going. Jordan had been making somewhat of an effort to recharge the Transmuter by occasionally feeding it things like dirt and dry leaves, which were abundant. At least enough to offset his use of it so far, without spending too much time just collecting such things. But if he was going to frequently use the Miner, it seemed that side of Kingdom management would need to be stepped up.

But now there was a minor issue, or rather, a Miner issue. The machine was still humming with life as it was definitely active and doing its job. Yet it soon became clear to Jordan why the System had deigned to add a storage container that was a lot larger than the chute that would deposit the extracted material into it.

This might take a while, and Jordan currently had no idea how long he’d need to wait.