Chapter 317 - 310: New Generation Long-Range Fire
Chapter 317: Chapter 310: New Generation Long-Range Fire
Three years. One thousand and ninety-five days and nights.
Words cannot capture the tedium of those long years. Only the scorching air and endless dust storms bore witness to the transformation of Zone 18.
The first year, the magic-rich blue crystal mines in the Silent Abyss went into full production. Working twenty-four hours a day, the Mining Golems were like tireless worker ants, hauling raw ore that shimmered with a faint blue luster to the surface.
The second year, six standard-issue Golem Legions were fully formed. This torrent of steel, its full military might restored, patrolled the edges of the zone, crushing any Magical Beast that dared to approach into a pulp.
The third year, anti-gravity transports laden with refined ore ingots shuttled between the depths and the sky, establishing fixed routes. The balance in his account climbed steadily, increasing by 2,860,000 each month.
The roar of the workshop alternated with the silence of the Meditation Room.
Monotonous. Tedious.
...
On the outskirts of Zone 18, at Live-Fire Test Site No. 3.
A fierce wind whipped sand and gravel against the Black Patterned Magic Steel, producing a constant, abrasive hiss.
Allen stood on a rock formation, arms crossed, staring at a launch rack a kilometer away.
A streamlined, dark-red projectile lay dormant on the launch rack.
It was nearly twice as long as the Red Lotus-I model from three years ago, its tail fitted with a newly developed miniature Magic Power engine.
To overcome the fifty-kilometer range limitation, relying solely on anti-gravity and flight Rune modules was no longer enough; they had already been pushed to their absolute limit.
"Red Lotus-II, thirty-seventh live-fire test." Allen’s voice was calm, without the slightest ripple. "Initiate."
[Command received. Ignition.]
No sooner had Jarvis’s electronic voice faded than a blinding cluster of blue-white particles erupted from the projectile’s tail.
"BOOM—!"
Under the ferocious thrust of the miniature Magic Power engine, the dark-red projectile tore through the air, howling into the sky as it trailed a straight jet of Magic Flow.
Unlike its predecessor, the Red Lotus-II didn’t follow a parabolic arc. The guidance Runes on its surface suddenly flared red, and it executed a sharp, near-right-angle turn in mid-air, hurtling toward the ground.
It was tracking.
The target: a Spider Slayer target drone in the distance, executing erratic tactical maneuvers at full speed.
Allen tapped his vision into the Demon Eye network.
The inspiration for this guidance technology came from the dime-a-dozen apprentice-level "Magic Missile"—a tracking Witchcraft with an extremely short range but a guaranteed-hit property.
Allen had stripped out the Witchcraft’s core targeting logic, simplified and reconstructed it using alchemical and runic techniques, and then integrated it into the missile’s guidance module.
The combination of Witchcraft-based targeting and alchemical Magic Energy propulsion finally gave this type of Magic Missile true combat viability.
The red dot representing the target drone executed three consecutive sharp evasive turns.
The Red Lotus-II was like a mad dog that had smelled blood.
The drone turned left; it turned left. The drone leaped; it adjusted its trajectory to match. With every course correction, the miniature Magic Power engine fired lateral jets of Magic Power to adjust its attitude, refusing to relinquish its lock on the target.
Two hundred seventeen kilometers away, in the designated target zone.
The target drone activated Shadow Travel in a last-ditch attempt to evade.
After missing its mark, the Red Lotus-II pulled up and began to circle, lying in wait. The instant the target drone materialized, the missile dove.
An intense flash of light erupted.
Two seconds later, a small, black-and-red mushroom cloud roiled silently into the sky at the edge of the horizon.
[Test complete.]
[Effective range: 217 kilometers.]
[Margin of error for accuracy: 0.3 meters.]
[Tracking success rate: 94.7%.]
Watching the data scroll by, the tense line of Allen’s jaw relaxed slightly.
A more than fourfold increase in range, and it now possessed the "fire-and-forget" combat capability of the missiles from his past life.
Its destructive power had also increased by fifty percent.
"Begin mass production. Assign it Priority Two," Allen commanded.
But the test wasn’t over.
He turned and walked toward the other end of the test site.
A strange, spherical Golem hovered there.
It was a full size larger in diameter than the Demon Eye Type IV, its matte-black shell symmetrically inlaid with six protruding hexagonal modules.
An extremely faint, ethereal blue halo flowed across the modules’ surfaces.
This was a Talismanic Replication of a resonance core: the "Echo Module."
Magic Eye Type V, codenamed "The Insightful."
"Initiate test protocol."
The six Echo Modules on The Insightful’s shell activated simultaneously, flaring with brilliant blue light.
Unlike a conventional Demon Eye, it didn’t just passively receive optical and Magic Power signals. Instead, it began to actively radiate extremely low-power, multi-band detection waves.
These waves were colorless and formless, sweeping across the entire wasteland in an instant, much like a bat’s echolocation.
The holographic sand table in front of Allen began to furiously update its data.
Within three seconds, for a radius of 200 kilometers:
The energy frequencies of twenty-four mining sites, the internal communication bands of the six legions, and the base-level fluctuations of the Earth Vein Magic Furnace were all marked on the sand table as differently colored points of light.
Even the extremely faint flow of Magic Power within a dormant Low-Tier Magical Beast, hidden in a cave one hundred sixty kilometers to the northwest, was clearly captured and amplified.
The battlefield had become transparent, but only for him.
"Enter phase two: electronic warfare mode," Allen ordered.
Several kilometers away, amid a field of ruins, Jarvis activated three prepositioned Spider Slayers. A Demon Eye Type IV controlled two of them, simulating an enemy Wizard’s communication node.
The blue light from The Insightful’s six Echo Modules turned a piercing scarlet as a multi-band interference wave radiated outward in a fan-shaped pattern.
Five kilometers away, the Spider Slayers froze, their six mechanical legs locking up. The red lights in their eyes flickered erratically as their data links were completely jammed by a massive volume of junk signals within three seconds.
"CLANG."
The Demon Eye Type IV dropped right out of the sky, and two of the three Spider Slayers were also completely incapacitated.
[Effective jamming radius: 5 kilometers.]
[Capable of quickly disabling Golems with no anti-jamming capabilities.]
Allen looked at the incapacitated target drones, a glint of satisfaction in his eyes, but his brow quickly furrowed again.
’Still not enough power, and the range is too limited.’
He made a quick entry in his log.
’More than enough to deal with conventional Golems. But against the encrypted communications of a Second-level Wizard or a High-tier Spiritual Power barrier, the jamming efficiency will plummet.’
Over the past three years, the most difficult technical hurdle had been the Talismanic Replication of the resonance core.
He had managed to simplify and replicate the thousands of complex biological crystalline layers inside a natural Abyssal Ray core, reducing them to a fifty-layer artificial film made from experimental materials.
The final product’s performance was only at 37% of the natural core’s.
But even that 37% was enough to get his foot in the door of electronic warfare.
’Initial prototype of the Echo Module is validated. It will require at least two or three more iterations before deployment. It also has no effect on Golems controlled by a Wizard’s direct psychic link.’
Many Wizards could directly command Golems and Alchemy Creations using Witchcraft like the Cluster Link Technique. This communication method was extremely sophisticated, operating completely outside of Magic Power bands and was therefore impossible to jam.
However, Wizards couldn’t possibly control all their Golems personally, as it would consume immense mental and computational power. Most of the time, they delegated control to command nodes—just as Allen himself did.
Even so, the technology held terrifying potential, especially for use against his fellow Wizards.
Allen jotted down the last line and paused.
’I still have a long way to go before I can transform this into my own Core Witchcraft...’
Allen also planned to package this technology of multi-band frequency hopping and jamming into a Witchcraft model and develop it into his own unique ability, but that was not something he could achieve in the short term.
Just as Allen was preparing to sever the mental sub-process and return his focus to the main workshop...
A high-priority notification suddenly popped up in his field of vision.
It was a financial notification, marked with a gold coin icon.
[Commander.]
Jarvis’s voice carried a rare hint of inflection.
[As of today, all output from the mines in Zone 18, along with profits from arms trades and liquidated spoils of war, has been tallied.]
[Total liquid assets in the account: ninety million Low-Level Magic Stones.]
[The preset threshold for the "Demi-Plane Fragment Procurement" budget item has been reached.]
"So, I’ve finally saved up enough."
Allen raised his head. His gaze traveled past the test site’s bunkers, over the relentlessly operating mines, toward the distant skyline and the ever-growing fortress at its edge.
"Jarvis," Allen said, straightening the wind-tousled collar of his coat.
[I am here, Commander.]
"Patch me through to Forged Fire Fortress’s secure channel. I need to speak with Master Mercer."
[Establishing channel... Connected.]
Facing the fierce winds of the wasteland, a wild grin spread across Allen’s face.
"Master."
"I’m calling to make an arrangement."
"That demi-plane fragment. I’ll take it."