Spending My Retirement In A Game

Apparently, the originals that existed before the 'reset' had quite literally flattened this whole area; whether this was on purpose or simply a side effect of those exact larger-scale tests was something that even Girland didn't seem to know for absolute certain, but whichever the case, it had now been repurposed for exactly this.

The moss and weeds and other obstructive plants had been mostly removed by Jyuuk and Eisen reinforced the ground properly. Since then, all the originals would use this place for certain larger-scale projects, though they never stayed there for too long so that the others could make use of this space properly too. And now, Eisen and Xenia were going to use this area to test out the locomotive.

The high elf was already there with her own half of the plan. Eisen had expected that she was just going to design the magic circuitry for the automatic track-constructor while Eisen would create the final physical object, but it seemed like she had gone above and beyond and created the whole thing herself.

It was a lot different than what Eisen would have done, even at first glance, but he was incredibly curious about how it worked nonetheless. Or rather, maybe even moreso because it was so different from his own approach.

"Alright," Eisen said, slowly placing the locomotive onto the ground before shrinking back down to Xenia's size, "Will you finally show me how it works?"

The high elf grinned smuggly, glancing over at the tool. It was just an opaque red crystal orb the size of a head, levitating about five feet off the ground. Currently next to that orb were enough planks and metal ingots for about a mile of track, stacked up in long rows. Eisen raised his brow curiously.

"Alright, come over here," Xenia said, waving the old man over. She held her hand toward the crystal orb, as a screen popped up in front of the two, displaying a top-down view of the current environment through some sort of mapping ability. Eisen could feel the orb let out pulses of mana, so that was probably supposed to survey the surrounding area in different ways.

As Xenia held her hand in a certain position, a translucent pen appeared on her fingers that she quickly used to draw a slightly curving line through the area displayed on the map. In the corner of the screen, a number corresponding to the length of the rail segment appeared, and Xenia quickly looked at the old man.

"I already entered in the actual technical details like size, length, and shape of every part of the railway that you told me into it as a default. We can still chang it though, so no worries about that," she explained, quickly moving the pen over to a button at the right side of the screen. Once she did, the map disappeared and a list was displayed; a list of materials.

Each section of that list had checkmarks next to it, as the orb seemingly recognized the materials laid out nearby. And then, Xenia pressed the button at the side of that list, and the screens fully disappeared. The crystal orb started to give off a subtle glow as the orb moved around at a fast speed. It was so fast that Eisen would struggle keeping up with it even when sprinting as a giant.

That being the case, it seemed like it was mostly just surveying the area that the railway was supposed to be built on one more time. At least, that's what Eisen judged from the mana that was flowing out of the orb. Soon, it returned back to the spot that it was in before, as a large sorcery magic circle started being formed around it.

It was truly a largely complex, multi-layered spherical magic circle that simply seemed to appear out of nowhere, activating a number of different spells. And then, a moment later, a moving, writhing mass of ethereal, arcane arms sprouted from the ground underneath the orb.

A few of them, as though dragging themselves while also walking over the ground like feet in a connected, molten-together mass, were moving away from the materials, while the rest were moving toward them.

The hands that moved away were starting to pluck away at the ground, removing any weeds that had grown along the path and pushing any obstacles like rocks to the side. Meanwhile, the hands moving in the direction of the materials were specifically starting work on the prepared metal ingots.

Eisen had given Xenia a blueprint for the metal rail segments, and it seemed like these hands were going to be the ones executing it all. As the palms of the hands heated up around the metal, softening it, some of the other hands were skillfully shaping it.

Eisen recognized the movements of these hands; they were exactly like his own, Xenia seemingly used his craftsmanship skills to create these hands. Though, he would have to take a look later to see how the quality of the rails actually turned out later using this method.

However, he also noticed something else when looking at how these hands moved, "You used one of Jyuuk's spells as inspiration, right?"

"As I thought, you recognized it, huh?" Xenia replied with a smile on her face, happy to see that the hands seemed to be doing their job well, "One of his spells creates these 'Bone Towers' that help relay his powers to turn things into undead from afar. I figured the construction process could be fine-tuned a bit, since it's relatively rough on its own.

But with this sort of control-center method that you suggested, I was able to make it all a lot more refined."

"Huh, interesting. So basically these hands are the drones that will do the whole construction?"

"Yup. Actually, multiple of them can be linked together. One of them will act as the master and the others as the slave drones, and-"

"Slave?" Eisen raised a brow, and Xenia smiled awkwardly.

"It's a real term for this kind of thing, I didn't make it up..." she replied nervously, "...anyway, if they're linked together, they can create more hands, and since the orbs only have a limited range that they can control the hands through, it would be a good idea to make a lot more of them for larger-scale construction."

Eisen ran his hand through his beard with a smile, "Interesting. And they'll take care of everything? What about the enchantments on the rails?"

"They can do it, yes. I tested it out before, and while they're not at the level of what you or I could make, it's still higher than what you would usually expect from mass-production."

"...Huh," Eisen thought for a little while, glancing over at Xenia and the smug grin she still had on her face, "I'm guessing that's not all."

"Yup," she replied immediately, as if waiting for this, "It's not just restricted to the railway. We can plug in anything we want and have the orbs build it, as long as we give it the materials they need. Buildings, roads... we could even make them farm or mine or whatever else we want. And while I haven't tested it out directly, they can definitely also be used for item mass-production."

The old man raised his brows with a curious expression as he looked at the orb floating not too far away from him. The hands were quite fast at what they were doing; if they could be repurposed, then that would definitely be more than just useful. There were numerous ideas flowing through Eisen's mind; but there was one first and foremost.

"...How many can we send to the giants' capital for their reconstruction?" he inquired, and Xenia smiled.

"By next week... we should be able to spare a few dozen."