The Machine God Chapter 181 - One Ring Changes Everything

Chapter 181

One Ring Changes Everything

The second fabricator lifted off the workshop floor, tons of industrial equipnt responding to Alexander’s will. tallokinesis guided it across the room toward the right wall where the first unit already waited, power feeds dangling from ceiling mounts.

His new workshop stretched out before him. The room ran long from the entrance, maybe 70 feet to the far wall where display screens waited in near darkness. Tool racks flanked the doorway on both sides, with empty slots ready for equipnt he’d acquire over ti. The left wall held a workbench running most of the length, the surface already populated with circuit board stations, welding equipnt, and precision cutting tools.

Everything he’d need for detailed electronics work.

The fabricator settled into position beside its twin. Feed bins mounted above each unit, waste disposal chutes below. Collection baskets waited beneath the output ports for completed parts. The setup was functional but crude. A professional manufacturing line would have conveyor systems with automated handling arms and quality control scanners at each station.

He had to start sowhere though. And he’d been making do with worse for quite so ti now.

The third fabricator rose. Alexander guided it over the central island workbench, careful not to clip the scanning equipnt and testing stations built into its surface. Holographic projectors waited at intervals along the table, ready to display schematics in three dinsions. Piled across it were the damaged drones that had survived his trip into space in various states of disrepair. They’d made it through the cultists. Cultivators. Beasts. New York. But not whole.

Feed lines connected automatically as the third unit locked into place. chanical clicks echoed through the empty workshop as power systems engaged.

The fourth fabricator was the hybrid unit, heavier than the others by half a ton. Alexander’s focus tightened as he lifted it. The weight wasn’t a problem for tallokinesis, just required more concentration to keep the ascent smooth. Damaging the new equipnt before he got to use it would be a tragedy.

Mostly because he’d have to find soone else to borrow replacents from.

It settled into the final position. Four fabricators lined the right wall in neat formation.

Alexander reached into each unit simultaneously using Technopathy. The systems opened to him like books, their architectures clear and simple compared to the complexity of true 3D printers. Three were specialized units. One for basic tal alloys, one for polyrs, one for ceramics and composites. The fourth could handle layering multiple materials during fabrication, but would require manual finishing work to properly bond the different substances.

People called them 3D printers. The terminology was technically correct, and while he preferred that most days, in this particular instance it obscured what mattered. The Zhao-Matsuura NX-7000 he’d rented on Astra Omnia was a comprehensive 3D printer. An artist’s tool that allowed research and creation, along with all the experintation required between the two. It had a two-nanoter resolution with real-ti atomic monitoring. It could handle almost anything you needed, even offering material synthesis on demand.

These were fabricators. Industrial photocopiers for manufacturing work.

The distinction mattered. The NX-7000 could print a complete functional drone in a single build cycle. Fra, electronics, casing, all molecularly bonded at material interfaces. A finished product when the chamber opened. These fabricators would produce components. Fast and reliable components, but components nonetheless. The tal unit would print drone chassis. The polyr unit would handle casings and flexible parts. Then he’d need to manually assemble everything, integrating the electronics and running his own tests.

Ti-consuming work. But still faster than doing it manually, even with superpowers.

Alexander examined their specifications more carefully. Print resolution sat around fifty nanoters. Acceptable for structural work and laying down basic circuit board pathways, though he’d need to install comrcial or custom-built chips and modules. The capacitor banks in his gauntlets required perfect carbon lattice alignnt down to two nanoters. Fabricators couldn’t even approach that level of detail.

They’d serve their purpose though. He already had established designs for the drones. The fabricators could reproduce parts while he focused on new developnt work. These units could run continuously, pumping out chassis and components in parallel.

His mind drifted to what he really wanted. An NX-7000 of his own. Full capabilities with no ti limits or rental fees burning through credits. Fifty million for the printer itself. Probably another ten for installation and infrastructure. The cooling systems alone would cost millions. Clean room construction, backup power, repair contracts, all before worrying about material spools and feed bins.

Stealing one would be a nightmare. The printers weighed multiple tons, were the size of a small room, required specialized cooling infrastructure, and every fragile component demanded exacting calibration. Even if he successfully borrowed one, getting it operational sowhere new would take months of work.

Then he’d have to figure out how to convince Zhao-Matsuura to send maintenance technicians every other month…

Soday maybe. But these fabricators solved the imdiate problem. Eighty percent of his personal manufacturing bottleneck was resolved. New designs and experintal work would still require ti with a comrcial workshop, but everything else could happen in-house now.

Alexander pulled up the tal fabricator’s control interface. Loaded the drone chassis specifications from his personal files. The machine accepted the design and calculated material requirents before estimating completion ti at six hours per unit.

Six hours. That was one thing the fabricators did better. The NX-7000 would need twice as long for the sa chassis, and only then by cranking the precision down to match fabricator tolerances anyway.

He queued up a series of orders. The fabricators humd as feedstock began flowing from the overhead bins.

Alexander surveyed the quiet workshop.

Everyone had scattered to their own priorities. Annie was sowhere on the island drilling Gilly and Felix in combat exercises. Augustus had locked himself away with a spellbook he’d purchased off so dark web store site. Alexander was half-convinced the old goat had been scamd, but Augustus swore he knew what he was doing.

Talia was upstairs working on the Dubai action plan. Carn had finally taken a break, though her version of relaxation involved slotting herself into the Sleipnir’s watch rotation for a couple of days.

Which left him with actual free ti. A rare commodity.

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His gaze drifted across the workshop and caught on a toolbox resting near the far end of the left workbench. Alexander crossed the room and grabbed it, then dropped into the leather chair. The seat was ridiculously comfortable, one of Augustus’s contributions to the space. He spun around as he flipped open the toolbox’s lid.

The cultivator’s storage ring sat nestled among screwdrivers and wire cutters and other standard kit.

It was a simple tal band, unassuming and stubborn.

He’d made so progress since the first ti. Routing Electrokinesis through his Cultivator’s Core had revealed an entrance into the ring’s internal structure during his first examination. From there, the current had traced out an increasingly larger maze of energy pathways twisting through the solid tal. Branching paths, dead ends, a puzzle that required navigating correctly to unlock whatever storage chanism the cultivator had used.

Alexander set the toolbox aside and lifted the ring, turning it between his fingers. It was ti to finish what he’d started.

He settled deeper into the chair and closed his eyes. Electrokinesis cycled into his Core, the power responding smoothly to his intent. Then the current flowed down his cybernetic arm and into the ring.

Power poured into the tal.

The maze opened before him. Energy pathways stretched through the ring’s interior, wrapping around its curved surface. Alexander followed the routes thodically. Left at this junction, straight through that passage, right when the path split, forward over the cross. Ti passed. The fabricator humd in the background as it worked.

Another dead end. He backtracked and tried a different route. Progress was slow. The maze was complex, and every wrong turn cost him ti.

Then he had an idea. Multithreading kicked in, following the thought.

Alexander reached out with his right hand and gripped the ring, now holding it with both hands. Animachina cycled through his Core separately from the Electrokinesis. The two powers remained distinct as he pushed the second current down his flesh arm.

He’d tested his other powers on the innocuous band before, and while Animachina had provided a sensation of the energy sohow engraved into the ring, it had provided no further insight. But that was before he could simultaneously trace the inside of the maze and map the patterns outside.

He wondered if he were truly generating two individual streams of thought or just task-switching extrely fast.

The analytical consideration fractured his focus. Both currents flickered and died. Alexander cursed under his breath, opened his eyes, and glared at the innocent tal band.

He took a breath, closed his eyes again, and started over.

Electrokinesis flowed down his left arm. Animachina down his right. This ti he kept the thoughts on task. One stream navigating. The other mapping.

The process revealed sothing that he’d been unable to perceive using either power alone. The maze had depth. What had felt like simple dead ends were actually exit points that spatially corresponded to other disconnected sections of the labyrinth. Multiple separate mazes occupying the sa locations within the ring but energetically isolated from each other.

A dead end he’d hit earlier aligned perfectly with an entrance to a completely different maze segnt.

Alexander frowned. He didn’t know if Qi worked differently to the current he was channeling into the ring, but the energy creating the patterns, the maze, locked his Electrokinesis within its structure. He’d already considered blasting current through the energy before, tearing it open with raw power. But he was afraid that might destroy the subtle enchantnt, losing the ring’s contents forever.

Not that the contents really interested him.

Droney had proven that Animachina could reach across vast distances, treating the space between as if it were rely a suggestion, allowing Technopathy to ride along the connection it ford between them

That was what had given him the idea to create Soul Circuit. Which proved that Electrokinesis could do the sa.

Alexander focused. Sharpened the stream of Animachina, turning it from a questing wave, mapping out the energy in its entirety, into a single tube. A temporary connection spanning the gap between constructs.

Electrokinesis flowed across it, finding itself in an entirely new maze. The pathway twisted in different patterns, branching in unfamiliar directions. Alexander navigated carefully, one thought stream piloting the current while the other continued mapping and maintaining the path.

Another dead end. Another bridge.

The fabricator chid as it completed the first chassis. The sound nearly shattered his concentration. Alexander’s focus wavered, both currents threatening to collapse. He steadied himself and sharpened his Will.

Electrokinesis stabilized. Animachina held.

He pushed forward.

More mazes. More bridges. The pattern beca clearer as he progressed. Each section led to the next in sequence, a lock chanism that required threading power through every disconnected segnt.

Then, abruptly, sothing clicked into place. The sensation was taphysical. Energy patterns within the ring began rewriting themselves as the locking chanism adjusted, shifting from whatever Qi signature the original cultivator had used to reflect Alexander’s own power signature.

Vertigo washed over him.

Suddenly he was aware of standing inside an enclosed space. Except his body remained in the leather chair, hands gripping the ring. Alexander released both powers, allowing one part of his mind to acknowledge his physical position while the other accepted the awareness of the ring’s dinsional storage space.

The vertigo faded.

The space was modest.

Perhaps ten feet by ten feet. Three ters high and on each side.

Mostly empty except for a few scattered items. What he assud were cultivation manuals bound in weathered leather. A handful of jade slips and painted paper slips. Several sealed wooden boxes and stoppered vials with pills or liquid inside. A small pile of roughly shaped glowing rocks, right next to a smaller pile of smooth colored orbs.

So of the cultivator’s personal effects. A locket. Spare change of clothes. And a painting of a fierce-looking young woman.

Alexander allowed the guilt to wash over him for several heartbeats, then crushed it. They may not have been responsible for opening the gateway to the Nexus, but there was no doubt in his mind they would have joined their guild or clan or school in attacking if the opportunity presented itself. He didn’t deny it might not be all of them, might not be their individual choice, but it mattered little. They would have followed the cultivator who took his arm if he’d demanded it.

He couldn’t afford to feel remorse at defeating every enemy. For killing them if the need arose.

Especially because deep down he knew there would be a lot more to co.

Alexander opened his eyes. The ring still sat between his palms, warm from the power that continued flowing through it passively. He didn’t need to focus anymore. The lock was solved. It responded to the slightest flow of Electrokinesis.

The storage was his.

He grinned.

Finally.

Then he dumped the ring’s contents out onto the floor. For a mont, he was curious about the manuals and the knowledge they might contain. But only for a mont. The Cultivator’s Core didn’t make him a cultivator. It was a superpower masquerading as a Core. He’d give them to Augustus. Or Talia. They could figure out what the cultivator’s junk did.

Alexander held out a hand. tallokinesis pulled, and a drone flew into his hand. He focused on the drone, on the ring, and Willed it inside.

It vanished from his hand.

Alexander blinked, then checked the ring’s interior by sending a quick pulse of Electrokinesis into it. The basketball-sized drone sat inside, taking up a tiny corner of the available space.

He grinned and seized another. Focused for an instant before it disappeared too. He kept going, adding a third, a fourth, then more.

Until every drone was stacked inside. Neatly, according to his intentions. No fumbling to place it. Just Will and execution.

He did so quick math, realizing he could easily fit over fifteen hundred drones in there with room to spare. Which ant he could fit a lot more interesting things in there than just drones.

Alexander glanced down at the unassuming tal band and laughed.

No longer would he have to travel without his drones. Everywhere he went from now on, he’d do so with a portable drone swarm.

He slipped the band over the middle finger of his cybernetic left hand, sliding it down until it rested snug against the wolf ring.

A single ring had changed everything.