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He was still working on making them self-sustainable for long periods of time, but alas, that would come with time. Batteries were not difficult, but generators small enough for scouting drones had many potential challenges before a stable version was possible.

For now, Arnold regarded the monitoring screen, seeing everything was as expected as he sent it on a scouting mission to map out more of the area humans had not scouted or mapped out properly yet. A 3D map of the part of the planet they occupied appeared, including general reads of which territories powerful creatures occupied, with his current aim being an exploration of the ocean and other continents. On a side note, he had attempted to map out the forest but found his drones quickly getting picked off as their movement capabilities and ability to sense dangers were significantly hampered in there, with ambush predators often taking them down. It was a waste of valuable resources to keep attempting to scout it, so he would have the other humans do that. News had come back that Lord Thayne had recently cleared out many of the powerful C-grades in there, so perhaps it was time to reassess.

His workshop was rapidly expanding as he examined some of the other in-progress projects, primarily the ones he was about to restart after a resupply from Lord Thayne. A lot of what he did had been automated by now, and the mana-gathering dynamos were working at full capacity to power the enchantments that would be placed on the weaker drones.

Arnold had primarily gotten the inspiration for the dynamos from the half-destroyed Altmar Census Golem given to him by Lord Thayne. The technology had been incredibly impressive and, frankly, far above anything Arnold had any chance to comprehend while still only in C-grade. It reminded him of when he was eleven and went to university for the first time for a special lesson with one of their professors. Rather than intimidate him, it just expanded his horizons of all there was to learn.

It was an emotion he had felt rarely in the last few years before the system arrived and one he greatly welcomed. There had always been more to learn before, but it all felt so limited. Unapplicable in most cases, even.

The field of theoretical mathematics was interesting in its own right. However, it often dealt with concepts and hypothetical postulations improvable and inoperable in the material plane, making them little more than inspiration for future scientists. It was not uncommon that a theory or hypothesis would be proposed by a scientist or great mind decades, if not centuries before it was proven or at least partly demonstrated through empirical evidence as research methods and tools evolved.

Societal constructs that dominated the scientific culture rewarded this prescient way of thought with social capital to further one’s career and acquire future funding by gaining recognition through the lens of the public eye. They desired the articles and to create public discussion, not true discovery. Arnold had never strived for such vain recognition, but then again, he had never truly attempted to innovate and shift the current paradigms – simply to comprehend what was already there and apply it in the most efficient way possible.

At least, this was his methodological approach before the system. However, the scene changed, reality flipped, and limits were removed. No longer would he create a theory for a future scientist to prove in a hundred years; he would be that scientist himself in a hundred years.

Some realities remained, such as the constant requirement for funding, but he had found such a thing was attainable through simple trade, and with the man called Sultan, he had a financial broker to handle any products he no longer needed while acquiring new raw materials.

Of course, one could not forget Haven itself and Lord Thayne, providing him with new interesting objects and paths for obtaining high-level goods. The Treasure Hunt and subsequent Auction had already been an exemplary learning experience, allowing him to collect technology of Yalsten to disassemble and learn from.

Many creations were under construction, hundreds of blueprints had been created, and his head contained ideas for thousands of potential inventions or recreations. His most impressive right now was called New Horizon and had recently been put into operation.

New Horizon was an exploratory vessel sent out into space, and to his knowledge, this was the first time a man-made object of their planet had entered space since the integration. It had not been an easy task making that a possibility. Firstly, the skies on Earth were now incredibly dangerous, and there were many natural barriers. He also theorized that the atmosphere would kill most creatures mid-to-late-tier C-grade trying to pass through, and even if one made it to space, the dangers were far from gone as the concept of a vacuum was not as absolute anymore. Space held many dangers.

At least there was enough of a vacuum for New Horizen to still have constant acceleration as it absorbed mana from the atmosphere. But once more, the biggest challenge had been the atmosphere, as most powerful creatures in the sky ignored unmanned vessels.

The key had been an item from the Auction:

[Damaged Transportation Pod (Rare)] – A pod created to transport individuals over a long distance. This pod was originally made to allow the weaker denizens of Yalsten to travel outside their realm safely through wormholes, and the vehicle has an incredibly high resistance to all space magic. The inside of the pod is spatially expanded. Due to damages incurred during an escape and subsequent decay of the entire vehicle, it has led to a severe decrease in rarity. The pod is still functional but has severely limited speed and limited spatial expansion. During the escape, the generator was damaged, making the pod require constant power infusion too.

Arnold had completely disassembled the pod to use its skeleton. The materials used on the vessel’s surface were made of a special metal that seemed to almost ignore the heat and much of the other concepts that would hurt something exiting the atmosphere.

He saw no use for the spatial expansion feature and had gotten rid of those parts entirely as he filled the pod with modules to optimize flight as well as its control range and ability to relay information through almost impossible distances.

Long-range information of any kind was difficult to transmit without mana or other concepts interfering, but that is what he had the skill given by his Blessing to handle. He was grateful to his Patron, Oras, for that one, as it had been instrumental to his current Path.

The destination of the exploratory vessel was not entirely determined, though it was sent out at first to explore their own solar system.

While examing that everything functioned within parameters, he was contacted for the second time that day. The City Lord had sent over a message, and as she rarely contacted him, Arnold established it had to be important.

Reading the message over, he frowned for a moment before realization struck him. For a while now, he had measured seismic activity, but he had assumed it was perhaps just C-grades fighting deep beneath the earth or perhaps just a natural shifting of the environment. Now he hypothesized it could perhaps even be these termites.

He agreed with her assessment that a scan of this hive was necessary, but he also believed she and Lord Thayne had underestimated these termites. If his current scans were accurate and the seismic activity was truly caused by these termites, then the size of this hive wasn’t just a country underground but an entire continent.

Making his thoughts known before being sure would be unwise, so Arnold decided to prioritize dealing with this hive.

Taking off his current work coat, Arnold went towards an elevator off to the side of the workshop – one Lord Thayne had never bothered using. Not that he needed to, as it was primarily made not to go up but down.

Descending deep into the ground, he sent a message to the City Lord before he went to the production facility and hangar. It was there he now produced the weaker drones, such as the ones used for collecting data. Pathfinder-18 had just been made, but Pathfinder-17 had been in mass production ever since he reached C-grade.

The Treasure Hunt was far behind him, and Arnold was no longer as inexperienced as he was back then. His drones had also improved in both quantity and quality, allowing them to function far more effectively. After little consideration, he decided it was time to operationalize all of them and attempt a full field deployment and stress test.

Inside the hangar, he had an operations room. Walking inside of it, he activated the many enchantments to feed him mana and make sure he wouldn’t run out. As he sat in the chair, its back opened up. A helmet was attached and lowered towards him before placing itself on his head.

All it then took then was a mental command to initiate the operation.

--

Miranda had contacted Arnold but knew it would likely take some time to hear anything back. She hadn’t expected him to respond within an hour and was actually a bit surprised at the swift answer. It was a short message, and reading it only made her frown.

“Exercising full deployment of scouting drones.”

She had expected him to do something, but it seemed like he took it more seriously than she had first anticipated. Exactly what a full deployment meant, she also wasn’t sure. Luckily – or unluckily – she got her answer not even ten minutes later as reports came flooding in, one of them even including a recording.

Miranda opened it swiftly as she wondered what the panic was all about but understood upon seeing it.

A giant hatch more than a hundred meters across had opened up in the middle of a restricted zone of the plains outside the Fort, leaving a giant hole in the landscape. Then, it looked like a river of silver emerged from the hole, streaming upwards. It was only on closer inspection Miranda noticed what she was seeing, taking her aback.

Spherical drones. Thousands…. If not tens of thousands. All now flying towards the insect plains.

“Forty-two minutes. I underestimated myself,” Jake said with a smile as he blasted through a tunnel wall to continue his descent. He had given himself a lot of leeway with the timer, so it was only to be expected. As for levels, he had gotten a nice round zero. If this was a sign of things to come and the increased difficulty of leveling in C-grade, he didn’t know, but he did know that the fight had been easy, and that had no doubt resulted in less experience. It was also possible that this lack of difficulty had given him an even larger experience reduction than others due to his new class, though that would indicate an accompanying reward from killing truly high-level foes. So maybe not entirely negative.

Behind him, he left an utterly destroyed cavern filled with corpses of C-grades. Looking at the haul of that entire session, Jake didn’t feel like it was overly worth it. “Only eleven cores from that many termites.”

Due to how weak the termites were, most of them simply didn’t drop any loot of value. Sometimes a mandible or one of their legs or something like that would be infused with their Records after death, making those into items, but only with the semi-strong ones did he get cores. It was no coincidence only 204 or 205 warriors had been the ones to give cores, and even then, it was not even one in five. Based on statistics Jake had read, that meant he had even gotten lucky.

No matter, there were plenty more of these termites to gain cores from, and after releasing a few more pulses, he saw that the termites were now reorganizing after their initial assault failed. Exactly how many C-grades this hive had was hard to determine, but Jake reckoned it couldn’t be that many. At least not when speaking of ones capable of fighting. Many termite variants would focus on expanding and maintaining the hive, not combat.

For a good while, Jake ran through the tunnels without encountering any life. He did spot a few D-grades hiding in the walls or burrowed beneath his feet in the ground, but none of them made even the slightest movement as he ran right over where they were buried.

The C-grade Queen wasn’t stupid and had likely concluded sending more of its C-grades after him would be a waste of life. Jake remembered reading that it was a common skill for Queens to be able to see the final moments of their spawns after they died. If this Isoptera Hive Queen had that skill, it would now have plenty of short films on why sending more core donations to Jake wasn’t in its interest.

As his progress remained steady, Jake began to frown a little. Using the pulses too often was giving him a bit of a headache, but he felt like it was necessary to not be taken by surprise. Knowing he had his legendary Wings of the Malefic Viper at least made him feel a bit safe as he knew he could escape from most situations, but it was still a bit eerie being this far down.

Through his scans, he became aware that the Queen had chosen her response: to fight him straight-on. Focusing, he spotted quite a few figures within its egg chamber, many of which he assumed to be Queen’s Guards, but there was one that still stood out. It looked different than every other termite in the chamber, its frame smaller yet deadly-looking. It was not the Termite King Jake had expected, as this one looked slightly different, but chances are it filled a similar role.

Jake began to slow his progress to a more relaxed pace. He got a feeling that perhaps this could get more dangerous than he had first anticipated, so Jake did what any reasonable person would do when stuck kilometers beneath the ground in a giant hive of giant termites out to kill him. He sat on his ass and pulled out a cauldron to make some potions. If he had time, perhaps even a bottle of poison or two, though he was plenty happy with just using his blood so far.

Afterward – or when the termites got tired of waiting and attacked – Jake would finally go take a look at how far the Queen had come since his last visit.