Zeno was looking through the forest for any natural treasures he could absorb. Since the last time he expanded, he leveled up 5 times, meaning he could create 5 more rooms. As for what to fill the rooms with, he didn't yet know.
He decided to set up a few traps, along several points in the forest. Bits of food laced with sedatives spread through the forest. The idea was that while he got to crafting, several creatures would take a bite of the bait, fall unconscious and be absorbed.
In the meantime, Zeno would get crafting a different kind of robot. Finally deciding to expand again, Zeno went in the opposite direction of the workshop to create a small garden, electing to have the ground be dirt and grass, with a few shrubs and even a tree. There was even a projection of the sky providing sunlight. There he would house all of the small creatures he absorbs, and see if he could control them like he controlled the ant. The area across from the gymnasium would just be a general storage area, where he could house the robots and equipment, if it wasn't suddenly filled with all of the stuff he absorbed before. Oh well, something to handle later…
Finally going to a room behind the workshop, as well as a bit of space above it, he got to building the robot he was talking about.
This robot would have a shape that took up the entire 10 by 10 by 20 meter space, specially enchanted to resist heat and corrosion. The inside was basically a massive forge, with several mechanical arms to shape finish and engrave items. The top area was basically a processing plant, that would take materials and process them as appropriate before moving them into the forge to be shaped and assembled.
Now that Zeno had the dimensional obelisk perk, he didn't need to worry about raising his skill levels like mad, and could instead had the process of crafting be automated. The current automaton in front of him was just the beginning.
He began trying to instill his own crafting abilities in the machine, creating a blank book and filling it with everything he could think of, from the depth and force to use when inscribing, to how to make a metal move a certain way, to how to design and fit parts together, to basic chemical processes for alchemy. He left the pen in the book as he installed it, making a seperate brain rune for every one of his crafting skills. He also added a few sensory systems to look at the normal workshop while he worked himself. The final centerpiece for all of this was the first thing he crafted in this dimension, the forge of creation. Placing the anvil like hammer at the center of the machine, he finished its construction by dowsing it in emerging chaos flames.
[primal wright (unique) lvl 8: granted the powers of creation by a dimensional lord, this smith will flood the world with its crafts. Uses creators skills for crafting. Forge of creation integrated into construction. Obtains creators perks for the purposes of crafting. Can use genesis magic. Can use emerging chaos flames]
[system recognized special construct. Integrating construct with dimension. Host skills now evolved through the constructs use passively. Construct can automatically create any item that host has designed and crafted. Construct can design new items over time. Construct has expanded through dimension]
The robot suddenly opened up, spreading until it encompassed the entirety of the workshop, while the same kind of wires the zombies had and the robots grew spread along the walls while mechanical arms with various tools popped out. Zeno felt the forge rumble to life as the factory started working.
“Have I really been kicked out of my own workshop?”
Zeno decided to go and practice his spellwork. He didn't really want to try things like teleportation or shapeshifting, since those could go really, really, really badly. Instead, he spammed spells like shield, while thinking about how to use summoning spells. He went over them a little in his studies to see if it had any relation to the creation of magic.
At its most basic state, summoning was creating an idea of a creature and bringing said creature into existence. The more powerful the creature, the more mana it cost to summon, so while something like a lizard would be easy to summon, a dragon would be almost impossible. Part of the reason the strength of the gods was linked to the number of their believers was because when they “descended” they were actually summoned through a from of natural conjuration spell. The more believers a god has, the more mana gets funneled into it, the stronger it is when summoned.
Of course, summons weren't permanent, or even “real” creatures. Summons were more like video recordings, you could see and hear them, but they weren't really “there”.
That didn't stop summons from kicking ass of course, and given the immense boosts to magic Zeno got inside his pocket dimension it was worth a shot.
Most likely he would face the undead and their necromancer masters, with a rare chance of demons. That meant that things with holy affinity would fare best, given its effect over the desecrated dead. And when Zeno thought about holy affinity, the first thing to come to mind were angels.
So, covered in repeated castings of shield, he began to channel mana into the summoning spell. He tried to sense the flow of mana, and analyse how it moved and changed as the summoning progressed. Using his heightened focus stat he tried to cast identify on the mana, suddenly gaining sight of a rainbow hued flow of mana moving towards a small white ball.
The small white ball slowly grew wings, and as time passed, began to grow a body as well. Soon enough, a winged, featureless humanoid figure with skin the color of rose gold appeared. Zeno noticed the spell kept drawing in mana, despite clearly being done, so he continued. The angel slowly grew a robe, along with a halo of light. Soon afterwards it began to grow a second pair of wings. As the third pair of wings began to grow, Zeno was entranced by watching the multicolored mana flood into the angels form, further developing it. By the time the third pair of wings grew fully, the spell stopped absorbing mana
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
[research level up, knowledge arcane level up]
[arcane sight unlocked, summoning unlocked]
[summoning level up]
Zeno realized he stood there pouring mana into the spell for hours. He knew the summon wouldn't last for long, so he immediately sent it to just outside of the enemy base. Once there, it immediately began to decompose into small pinpricks of light, fading away outside of the pocket dimension. Just before it faded away completely, it drew its sword and sent out a wave of fire, cleaving through scores of zombies, while burning through the necromancer’s black shields almost instantly. The ground were the flame hit was smoking vigorously, the embers still bright.
[level up x2!!!]
“Huh, I mean I don't mind the level ups, but that took how many hours? I mean in the half that amount of time I could have just created a bunch of bombs and achieved the same effect”
Either way, the angels appearance and subsequent attacks were shocking enough to knock the enemy into disarray, an opportunity that Zeno was all too willing to take by sending in waves of robots. In the time it took him to complete the summon, the factory was continuously pumping out robots, much faster than he could due to being a living assembly line.
They immediately set out in formation, with melee based robots charging in, built similarly to prime but with much heavier armor, using their sheer mass to beat the enemy, while bipedal walkers came from behind, now with 50% more gun. At the very rear, tanks equipped with rail cannons rained death upon the enemy, while flying units dropped death from above.
Unfortunately the melee units were quickly overwhelmed due to the appearance of a zombified asura, a six armed, 4 meter tall giant wielding 6 separate sabers. It charged at the bipedal walkers when the ash from the angels attack converged on it, blasting it apart in a burst of light.
“Huh, maybe the angel was worth the effort?”
Soon afterwards, more necromancers appeared, along with a single devil characterized by the two stubby horns on an otherwise human body. They began to spread a dark miasma towards the ashes, seaming to smother the glowing white embers away. It didn't seem to do much, but zooming in showed that the ash was very slowly being corrupted back into normalcy. Of course during this time the robots were laying into any hostile they could see, with the railgun wielding tanks taking potshots at the necromancers, occasionally piercing their shields as well as the body those shields were protecting. As time went on and there were less and less zombies rushing to try and distract the robots and burn out the field of embers the angel left, more shots were directed at the devil and necromancers. Once they saw there were no more zombies to come and reinforce them, they began to retreat deeper into the university campus.
Unfortunately Zeno couldn't see so far into the campus, so he had to step in and map the place out as he went, taking most of the robots back into the space while absorbing the ashes, as well as the corpses of the enemy.
[sacred ashes absorbed. Soil inside pocket dimension becomes resistant to corruption. Causes creatures hostile to host to suffer very low damage over time]
“That sounds useful”
Zeno immediately took some dirt out of the pocket dimension. It seemed to be a slightly lighter color, and he could easily bury his enemies in it due to how quickly the boundaries of his little dimension seemed to recover from damage. Even when he tried to excavate the walls of his dimension to gain more space the stone seemed to regrow just as fast as he could chip it away.
So he slowly traveled through the university, purposely attempting to map everything. He found a large group of people in the central courtyard, surrounded by a small number of zombies as well as the necromancers and devil who seemed to be trying to construct an arch out of runic stones. At some point, the necromancers started herding people into portable holes, pieces of space that have been expanded in order to allow the storage of large volumes into a space the size of a handkerchief.
The plan was simple. Zeno already requested the factory focus on making railgun turret robots capable of long distance sniping, ignoring almost everything else in order to produce them quickly. He would place those turrets all around the roofs near the central area, supplemented with the railgun tanks. Then he would block off all of the exit routes with soil, ensuring that the enemy had nowhere to run.
About an hour later all the escape routes were blocked off, while the entire campus was mapped. Zeno decided to wait a bit more before deploying the turrets, to ensure he had more than enough to take out all of the enemies in a single volley.
Zeno was a bit grateful the necromancers always wore their hooded robes. Not having to see their faces helped his mental state incredibly. The zombies didn't bother him that much since he didn't know any of them, and zombies were historically one of the most common enemies that you could kill without guilt. This also helped with the devil, since they were also common cannon fodder in various stories, such as the story of a certain warrior slaughtering hordes of demons on the ancient planet mars.
The arch was soon completed. The devil began placing the last few stones around the arch, and began pouring a bit of black mana into it. The runes on the stone lit up as the inside of the arch showed a heavily defended courtyard in an enemy fort. The necromancers began grabbing the portable holes to pull them through.
Zeno realized he was out of time, and thus deployed all of the turrets as well as the other robots. The turrets rained death on the necromancers and devil, quickly clearing out the former while wounding the latter. The other robots focused on eliminating the zombies, clearing them out exceedingly quickly and turning their guns towards the devil.
The devil, wounded and with his shields failing, made a mad dash for the portal, making it through as he was peppered with holes. However, the portal soon started spewing out dark miasma, along with several zombies, these seeming slightly more decayed, yet somehow even stronger than their fresh brethren.
Zeno quickly ran down, pushing his obelisk above the portal and raining dirt over it, trying to bury it. He absorbed all of the portable holes, sending the people inside them to where he sent the others. Once he reached the continuously piling dirt, he absorbed the portal as well, trying to shut it down.
[portal absorbed: integrating into dimension]
[spatial expansion enchantment absorbed: integrating into dimension]
[spatial distortion occurred: dimension has mutated]