When Jordan reappeared on the ground floor, he first took a look around. At first glance, he didn’t see much of a difference. He then placed a hand on the Transmuter and opened the screen to confirm something.
Name: Industrial Transmuter
Charge: 49.0%
EXP: 0/10000
Rank: 3
Description: The First Boon and centerpiece of Industry’s future potential as a Kingdom. It acts as both its own device, and the central power source of the Kingdom’s first building. This System-created machine is one of a kind, as it allows for the recycling of any object into another of the same materials and mass. The only limitations are the size of the item transmuted and the user’s imagination.
Right, so Kingdom Rank did go up, and the Experience needed for the next one is still at ten thousand. The question is, what did hitting Rank 3 actually do for me? Jordan asked himself. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t another spot for a room to be built or an obvious new Boon that needed to be claimed.
Now curious to find out what kind of upgrade his Kingdom had received, he stepped outside. Luckily for Jordan, he didn’t have to worry about the concrete door waking up those sleeping upstairs as it was swung open and closed. The System had provided a minor quality of life feature in the form of having it move almost soundlessly, save for the air it pushed as it quickly moved.
From the outside, he still couldn’t see any difference in the exterior of his base. Jordan knew that something must have changed with the increase to Kingdom Rank, or else it’d just be incredibly disappointing. But if he couldn’t find a Boon to add, nor see any other visible changes, then that only really left the size of his territory as a difference.
After his latest series of negative thoughts, Jordan’s brain was happy to latch onto a distraction to focus on. In front of him, since he already had 10 TP still unreserved, a land drone appeared at the newest reservation cost. And hoo boy, the most recent and dramatic increase to his Stats was a true game-changer on that front. Because while he’d previously just focused on upping his Wisdom, the Scaling of Summon Land Drone didn’t just benefit from that.
Scaling: Intelligence (Gain one additional summon for every 25 Stat points.)
Scaling: Wisdom (Gain one additional summon for every 25 Stat points.)
With the default one land drone separate from the dual Scaling, it added up really quickly. And what was the new cap after applying his current Stats to the Scaling?
15 land drones.
At 1/15th each for his TP, one land drone would only reserve a bit more than four points. Though Jordan knew from before that the System was going to do some rounding. But since it only cost 3 TP for the base cost of his air drones, Jordan’s quick estimate led him to believe that stacking to 14 land drones wouldn’t pose a problem.
So all in all, he would soon have air and land drones that totaled a swarm of 18 summons strong. Speaking of which, he went ahead and summoned three more air drones to send out. The TP taken from the land drone just now meant he couldn’t do all three all at once, but it was still done more than quickly enough thanks to his fast regeneration.
Jordan drove through the woods. Out of every direction, he’d chosen to head toward the portal. Just because it made for both a good frame of reference for distance, and the fact that it was the only thing of real note near his base. Soon enough, he had driven one mile away from the center of his Kingdom. And as he’d half-expected, Jordan still sensed that he was still within his territory even after crossing this point away from it.
He crossed what he estimated to be two miles, and then reached the gateway for what was now two and a half. Even at this distance, Jordan sensed that he was still within his Kingdom’s territory. Though since it only took a few minutes for his land drone to drive this far, it would be a couple of minutes longer until the other land drones disappeared and he could have the entire new batch be summoned with the updated TP reservation cost. In the meantime, Jordan decided to keep driving past the portal to go even further into the woods.
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Bet Haje might have made it back to the beach by now to get those Advancement Crystals. I should order a drone to meet him and lead him back to my actual base. Will do that as soon as I get the next group of land drones summoned, Jordan thought as he crossed five miles away from his Kingdom’s center. And since measuring from the center meant it was just the radius, this already meant that his territory had an actual length of at least ten miles.
Jordan crossed ten miles from the center, and still hadn’t found the edge. Slightly surprised it’d gotten this far, he now summoned his full fleet of land drones with their updated costs. One was ordered to lead Haje back as he intended, while the others just followed his earlier hunting plans. When he then checked his TP after summoning the 14th land drone, he confirmed that it’d left him at 4 TP. So just enough that he could still pay the base cost for at least one new air drone at a time, as needed.
Now then… just how much farther am I going to be able to go before I hit the border?
***
In a station that sat within its hidden subspace above the planet known as Vervina-C, an uproar was taking place. Information about past Megings was something that only grew more scarce the farther back one looked, yet for what was known, the current event was entirely unprecedented. For when the Initial Mergers on the planet below had gotten a notification for what was to come in six days, the A Grades observing from within the station had also received a System message of their own.
Aside from a couple of exceptions who had been watching from the start, the common sentiment had been to wait for the first full year to pass. Perhaps as months passed, a slow and steady number of people would take an interest and begin to watch even before the initial Quests were done. However, even then, it would have mostly been because they belonged to smaller factions and didn’t have as much political pull when it came to making alliances, trade deals, and other negotiations. And as such would be the soonest to have nothing else to do but start more closely watching the ongoing events of the Merging anyway.
Nishandra read through the text and looked across the various other screens she’d kept open. As her deep red eyes flickered between the screens, she couldn’t stop herself from mindlessly fidgeting with her white hair. She glanced over at her fully robotic companion, Kirus. Even he, as one who could choose to not display any emotions or give any indication of what he was thinking on his screen, had a certain rigidness to his posture.
Then her gaze saw it. “Kirus! Go to the far right of the sponsorship screen and scroll to the bottom tab! Am I crazy, or is it actually what I think it is?”
“It is,” Kirus responded with a digitized voice. “In the 40th Merging, the System did a similar mechanic of interference through a sponsorship store, though the records show that it was highly limited. I recall that it was determined by slots that were limited in number and what effects could be given, but they were free to give. It seems that this is a point-based store. I am already in communication with others who are present, and it appears that the number of points we start with varies by the relative prominence of our associated Guilds.”
“But this bottom tab… do you see any limits? There’s no way that by custom, the System actually means that we can just put in whatever we want? I know that it uses the first part of each Merging to experiment with new features it’d normally never allow, but isn’t this just a bit much?”
Kirus shook his head. “I am currently in communication with three others present as they have already begun to experiment with the custom option. One of them already confirmed that it does not accept Levels or Experience Points as an input. But aside from that as a hard limitation, there do not seem to be any other restrictions for what can be granted. However, do note that the System stated that anything done now will be done at an extra cost. It would be wise to wait for the costs to go down for at least several days and see what the reduction rate appears to be.”
For a few moments, nothing more was said. They both just silently explored everything that could possibly be given to the Initial Mergers on the planet. Aside from the custom tab, there were pages for premade armor, weapons, automatically built structures, and more. But then there were also things like crafting materials or special formula books for crafting recipes. Other types of items were present as well, of which one option stood out from the rest.
Advancement Crystals.