I had explained the plan for my not so hidden secret space station in orbit. He agreed it would be a great way to get things into orbit until they figure out asteroid mining like his world had. That idea sparked off new projects for me as well. But an asteroid strip mining ship would have to wait. He explained that it would be best to pressurize the station. He explained that when I was discovered and I had a bunch of inhospitable bases it would be clear I didn't care much about life, so I should make sure that any base or ship I built was capable of having people living inside. That sounded like from experience advice, so I made sure alter my plans with his input.

He really was an engineer. With the new requirements he redid the layout of all the rooms of the automated station. He added in bedrooms a kitchen a library, a freaking museum of all things. Then he put in something I honestly hadn't seen a lick of on the planet so far. When I asked him about he seemed to realize it himself and actually looked scared. "Say, have you seen any churches?" That one question stretched into silence for a long while. Of course his reply was no.

That brought up the question of just who exactly sent us here and why if there were no churches to worship them. It really got one to think if we were the invaders... Was that why he was sent here? To make me realize I was working for an evil guy? Or was it legit and there was a hidden threat, but then why bother protecting them if they no longer worship him? Either way my plans were still going through, send Cameron to space to construct the catch with a team. Then he'd attach the automated portion just before launch and we'd have our own station to work out of.

In the end we didn't include the church with the plans. We replaced that with a massive movie theater using one of my giant building sized monitors. We were men at heart, we knew what would be great fun to have in our own dens. I never did tell him I used to be human, he never did ask if I always was a machine so wherever he came from it might not of been that weird.

Of course getting sent to space required a full health check and background check so it was going to take time. He carried with him the top secret classified plans for the catch so he was allowed to carry a gun. Not a projectile one, an energy based one. Apparently they knew decompression was a thing and effectively banned projectile guns. I just hope he wont construct some pipe gun and end up blowing a hole into the station... That sounds like something he would do.

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After the reviews of the resort came out it became quite a popular place. Someone in the military let it spill that there was some formidable defenses as well so it was known it was actually a safe place for a vacation or taking shelter. They didn't even know that after Cameron's advice I was starting construction of an underground safehouse under here. Well, it was more like the size of a city but I was actually growing food down there. With the easy source of water from the spring it was actually very well equipped they'd be able to survive indefinitely under there.

I pushed new robot designs to my factories and my website. Now the old models dropped in price steeply as I had new ones and wanted to be rid of the old ones. The new ones were using the batteries I built. They would absolutely shatter the market simply because they weren't using energy crystals. Once people realized I had cracked the tech they'd be swarming me to try and get some for their own robots. Military would want them to make guns or power their mechs, shuttle companies would want to have them to get into space easier.

I couldn't sell the batteries as they were though, they were too good. Just one would give people infinite power. I had to dumb down the design so they drained over time and needed a special device to recharge. But it would only be a matter of time until using my design someone would figure out that I had a version that never stopped outputting power. They'd apply their own patent over their superior version of the battery only to find out I had it already.

But for now they'll just be quietly replaced. None of the resort goers even seemed to notice that the robots design changed. Though they did note the increase in performance. I knew that other robotics companies were aware of mine, they bought some of my robots to try and see why mine were better. They took them and put those ideas in their own robots. I let them do this, it helped everyone after all. But the batteries... those aren't robotics. My guess they'll be quiet about it and try and replicate it anyways. I expected at least three explosions before they wouldn't be able to cover up what they were doing and that I had some new magic power source.

I was still not rolling in cash despite all my income. I was spending it just as fast as I got it. I was spending it on metals to send to space, I guess it's about time to head down that tunnel I sent the miner to create and see if there are any ores. As I walked down the way I was scanning for ores, nothing. What was up with the ores on this planet? Why were they so scarce? I didn't find any ores at all. But I did find something.

I was looking down, a black cavern that my mining machine fell into. Of course it stopped when it detected the movements of soil and the possible collapse but the ground it was on crumbled beneath it and I was too far away to connect with it to know why. My floodlights lit up the cavern and I was amazed at what I saw. No wonder the ore's were so scarce, the surface was built on top of an ancient civilization. Of course all the ores were refined so they didn't show on my scanner, but there it was. A city made of metals. It was a massive city as well, I noticed that the stone around the city was an unnaturally perfect sphere like it was here while the earth around it was liquid.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I put my money on that being some type of magic. But whatever was holding up the stone long faded as my miner just fell right through. I would have to make a new machine to systematically dismantle the old city. Not for just the resources, but for signs of what happened. The lack of resources definitely could be explained if there already had been a civilization built and then destroyed. I would have to calibrate my sensors for refined metals under the surface.

But of all the things I could have discovered, I was not prepared for an entire city encased in stone. At least it was safe, as long I didn't fall down. But now that I knew it was there it was easy to just make a big spiral down the edge to the ground level. From there I just directly scrapped my miner. It had done it's job.

Then I sent out a new robot, it was carrying one of my construction beams so it could just just directly harvest the metals. Then I put down a depot for it to deposit them to carry more. The city was amazing to look at. It looked the part of a sci-fi city with the remnants of neon signs and tall skyscrapers. It made me wonder if the magic itself was the problem... Mainly because I saw a car that ran on electricity rather than magic. And electricity was mostly unused in the current world.

I hoped there would be information on what happened and hoped it would help me. For now though I set the drone to collect the metals and set another to find unique objects and place them in a zone. On the way back to the resort I pulled a belt of the metals to the factories.

Then I settled into my cameras and external feeds. News about the railgun was that it was complete but they were waiting for the catch to be finished before testing could begin. My direct competitor had launched a rocket to space where it was towed by a shuttle to be collected. While the initial costs were lesser and the gains much quicker, overtime mine would end up costing much much less. But the news were vultures poking at my plan calling it a waste of money. Of course I remained silent. They can shout at a wall, even if my plan was terrible the contract with the government still had a few more months until they would come check on the progress and decide which ones to axe.

There was no way that this project would get axed, the math was too concrete and after the first test proved it possible the cost would by far be the lowest. Except for launching a whole ship in one go, which was just too far in the future for now.

There was nothing more but to wait on that project now so I looked over at the cameras to camp on the other side of the mountain. Ever since they shipped away the decoy I left for them it had been fully converted into a Beastman kingdom base. They lost a lot of the humans who were inside as they were mostly Coalition forces, but they didn't move their own troops out. Especially as the incursion dropped those monsters onto the world, they realized their cities were not defended well against these kind of attacks. So they did the opposite, they set up fortified camps with emplacements around every city. Sure the enemy could go between the camps and miss them entirely but they'd be shot all along the way as they did so.

I was a bit skeptical about how they just included my resort as one of those defensive positions without asking me. Or even questioning WHY my place was so powerful. How did I know I was included? Well, when there's a clear dotted line and there's a missing dot right exactly where you have your house? It was very obvious that they put my defenses on par with a fully manned camp. They probably got some footage of my gun turrets exploding the meat animals.

Needless to say, I was getting bored. Stuck in a cave, waiting on construction projects. I decided to browse the internet for more information. Rather than searching up the news and watching another report about how dangerous and expensive a giant cannon is I instead went looking for other things. I tried to rack my brain, figure out what I should look up. Then I remembered that despite magic being common-ish, I never actually seen anyone cast any magic yet so I only called it relatively common.

With that in mind I searched up things that had magic. And wouldn't you know it, most of the items came out of the elves territory. So did the blue algae for that matter. I thought about it, the magic plants and herbs that I could find outside had a long history. It was common knowledge that certain plants could be picked and made into a healing potion. Rather the ones that the elves were sending out are new things, only been around about twenty years. That could just be then being secretive, but there was literally no record of them even in legends.

That was when I got the proximity alarm, anyone who came here came on the road in a bus. This person was limping obviously bleeding from a few wounds. But what really set them apart was the uniform they wore, I didn't recognize it. It didn't match any military force on the planet. They saw my wall and before my turrets could even swivel to aim at them they vanished. Just poof gone, no smoke no sound just one instant they were gone.

That all black uniform, they were definitely special operations. Though who's I don't know. We'll see if any one suspicious pops up in the next few weeks... They had really vanished, the only thing that remained was the still warm blood from their wounds on the thermals.

I tried to piece together who it could be and why they suddenly left. But the answer I came up with was anybody. I had my money on the elves though. Did they catch wind of my batteries already? I had no idea... But whoever it was they weren't part of the Kingdom military as not long after from the same direction came a squad of heavily armed mechs. Luckily I was paying attention and disabled the turrets before they got shredded. I'll have to add in a fire control system to judge weather friend of foe. But the mechs retreated after seeing the dead trail where the blood stopped. There was... four mechs, for one person? Just how overkill was that?