100X Returns System: I Dominate the Age of Gods - Chapter 212. Mana Stone Generator

Chapter 212: 212. Mana Stone Generator
“My lord,” Grimlock’s voice sounded from the other side of mental link in William’s mind as he sat up on his camp bed.
“Grimlock, have you found anything suspicious recently in the cult headquarters?” william asked him making Grimlock look around his surroundings, he was currently standing inside the headquarters.
“My lord, the base has been seeing an influx of explosives and mana-blocking poison incoming from several production lines of the cult. The higher-ups say that these are to be supplied to assist Demon Lord Bellial’s army in the recent clash.” he spoke as he looked at several men handling these items in fron of him.
William sighed. “Have any of those batches of explosives and poison reached Bellial’s army?”
“No, my lord, they are just hoarding everything from the past few days in the huge basement below the headquarters.”
William rubbed his temples. “A clear trap,” he thought.
The explosives and mana-blocking poison were a trap for the emperor’s army, after all, if the Clayman cult really needed to help demons from Bellial’s army, they should have done so from the start.
These utilities would make sense if used in a defensive posture when you needed the enemy to walk into your trap and then use explosives and mana-blocking poison altogether to affect the enemies and surround them inside your home.
In the case of the ongoing battle in the academy, the demons could only choose to throw them towards the academy soldiers, who would clearly dodge these or raise their barriers, making these ineffective because the element of surprise was missing from the equation.
William understood this, and with that, his suspicions were confirmed that the Clayman cult knew about the emperor’s incoming attack, and by hoarding a lot of explosives and poison inside, they were creating a death trap for the Human troops.
“Grimlock, those supplies are not being prepared for any other battle, but an impending attack of the human emperor on the cult headquarters,” William said, and his words surprised Grimlock.
Grimlock looked around him as he saw another batch of explosives being quietly carried down to the basement from where he stood.
To get a visual estimate for the total amount of supplies that he had mostly ignored earlier, Grimlock walked down toward the basement through an entrance.
In the basement, he saw several men working around, setting up fragile wooden boxes filled with powdered poison and explosives arranged together.
The amount was absurd and had filled the whole underground basement to it’s full capacity, from his perspective Grimlock realised that they were truly laying a trap for a huge army here.
Grimlock imagined what if an attack were to land on these things. The devastation he imagined left him shocked.
He quickly climbed back up and contacted William again. “My lord, what are the orders for me and the other slaves?” he asked with a shaky tone.
To be honest, if a conflict was really going to happen in this place, then Grimlock feared that most of the spies that William had planted in the cult would die and his efforts would go to waste, and that would really be unfortunate.
William, on the other side, had a similar thought; he asked the system in his mind.
“Can I just teleport them inside the domain of infinite?”
[You need to connect the mental hive to your domain for that, and it would take a good amount of SP.]
“Ok, we can use this month’s purchase opportunity for that, can’t we?”
[Yes, you can do it next month too, since you are planning for the conflict to start 15 days later anyway, and that would be next month.]
“Well, I want the next month’s purchase slot to be unused till I enter the strange realm beyond the veil; who knows what crisis I may encounter there?”
[agreed]
“For now, let’s just connect the infinite domain to the mental hive.”
[understood]
[using free purchase opportunity…]
[connecting mental hive to the domain of infinite]
[Congratulations, host. From today, anyone who is a part of the mental hive can enter the domain of the infinite.]
[Lower fatebound marks: the slave mark, servant mark, and comrade mark need your permission to access the realm; meanwhile, the mark of destiny and mark of soulmate can enter at will.]
[A/n: Every bearer of a fatebound mark is a part of the mental hive.]
“Ok, don’t let Master and Sera know about it right now; I want to give them a surprise personally, although ignore this command if they find themselves in any emergency before that.”
[Understood, will only inform them in emergency situations.]
William nodded satisfactorily and then answered Grimlock on the other side, “You don’t need to worry about it; I have a way of getting everyone out.”
“Understood, my lord.”
William nodded and cut off the mental connection.
With a sigh, he entered the domain of infinity and floated towards the place where Amorphous lived.
Hovering from above, he looked at a gigantic metallic machine that seemed alive like a monstrous beast, creating faint humming noises.
The machine stood like a marvel of science fiction, fitted with tubes, gears, and gauges.
The core chamber of the machine burned bright.
Inside, swirling mana condensed slowly until a crystal formed and dropped from the furnace-like opening below.
This huge machine was actually a light element based mana stone generator.
Almost 3.5 months had passed since William had arrived at the army base camp, and till now, he had gotten three free purchase opportunities.
The first one had gone towards setting up a mental hive and connecting everyone who is bound by his marks through a network.
The mental hive had quite a few use cases, but the most relevant and apparent one for now was the ability to communicate without spending a large amount of money over large distances and inter-communication between everyone, overlooked by the system.
The most recent free purchase had been used to connect the same mental hive to the domain of the infinite so that everyone could enter the domain at will although everytime they will leave they would find themselves in the same place from where they entered the domain.
that was unless William touched the person and forcefully brought them out with him.
The next thing bought by William was this mana stone generator.
Unlike William’s expectations that the machine would produce mana stones infinitely and as many as he wanted, the system had told William to hold his horses.
An infinite chocolate vending machine existed in the shop because the degree of impact it brought in a limited time frame was far too low for the system to care about, but the same thing was not possible with the mana stone fabricators.
William had been given two choices: if he wanted a Machine that ran on atmospheric mana, just like the infinite vending machine, then the production rate of such a machine would be really low; the machine would produce elemental stones at the rate of 10 stones per day.
Meanwhile, he could choose a machine with a higher rate of production but a limited life. For example, a machine that could produce 1,000 mana stones per hour had a limited capacity producing 150,000 mana stones in it’s lifetime.
William was tempted to purchase the higher-rate machine, but another pitfall of that choice was that the machine needed energy to run; unlike the slow but infinite mana stone fabricator, the faster machine needed fuel to burn.
And the fuel had to be purchased separately. William had given up on that choice and went for the infinite mana stone generator instead, since the time dilation of the domain of infinite worked for the machine, so the rate of production got a boost.
The machine that William had bought was producing 3650 stones per day just because of the time dilation (1 day outside = 1 year inside).
Luckily, the system had not objected to such exploitation.


