[/Transporting_progress:92%]

The core watches the general purpose drones crawling left and right as they roll the dead bodies around by using their front legs, currently only the harvester drones and general purpose drones are equipped with a pair of small, flimsy arms to grab and hold onto small chunks of crystal or light objects, and since the bugs' dead bodies can weigh as much as 240 kg for Evolved Hivewarrior, 380kg for Evolved Hiveravager and 720kg for Greater Hivewarrior, the drones can only nudge and roll those big bug with their stronger legs to push them around effectively. The core will definitely have to give the drones some extra module slots to allow the drones to refit themselves with desired parts to achieve the most effective performance in their given mission.

As the temporary bodies and the drones arrive at the small tunnel entrance, they begin cutting the bodies into smaller bits before transporting them to the base and piling them up near the Viricrystallus node. It's gonna take a while for all the green crystal to deplete the biomass pile the core just collected for them.

The core connects itself into the base's local network after the temporary bodies and the drones finished the resource transporting work. So far, there has no important news in the Data Processing Facility's reports, a new Magical Energy Reactor has been constructed and the queued drones are walking around and doing their jobs diligently just as planned, the recently gathered biomass from the bugs and mineral rocks from the dead golems has been accounted and properly organised for the core to do calculations and predictions. No new technology has been researched and no anomaly has been discovered. Without the core around the base's development progress seems to be a bit stagnant, this does not really a big surprise since the base is rather simple and the Data Processing Facility is nothing more than a simple data processing hub that gathers information from nearby drones and facilities to give basic orders that fit the parameters set by the core. It's time for the core to upgrade the base as much as it could before doing the expansion later on in the future.

The first thing the core thinks of is upgrading the data processing capability to the point of 'advanced AI', maybe not as powerful as Pioneer's AI, but it should be able to think and learn on basic level rather than just simply collecting data and processing it passively. For this duty, a station facility is better than a mobile one since it is cheaper to produce and it doesn't need to spend a large proportion of its processing power just to control its limbs and navigate its way in the environment around it.

However, a mobile drone with advanced AI could prove itself very useful as well since the thing could manage the base far better and more detailed as well. The core spends a few minutes thinking about it before it makes its choice, a dual system, one stationary unit that will manage the base's infrastructure and perform scientific research, one mobile unit which will manage other drones and carefully keep an eye on the crystal formations, both of them will work in tandem with each other to keep the base not only operational, but also continuously improving and expanding it without needing the core to do all the work by itself.

The core spends a few more seconds to make sure that a dual system is its best choice before it begins the research and development process. The core picks a Command Drone to upgrade and give it a name, the core decides to name it 'Google Nexus X1', a series of Smartphone according to the Google Patent list hidden deep inside the processor's ROM, the core does not know if the thing will be smart or not, but it definitely won't be dumb.

While the Nexus X1 is being researched and developed, the core decides to start a second R&D process for the Data Processing Facility, like the drone's upgrade plan, the core also decides to name the special Data Processing Facility as well to distinguish it from other weaker, normal Data Processing Facilities. It quickly searches the datalog and its ROMs to find any relevant data about its makers pick a name for the thing.

[...]

[/DPF_Project_rename: Intel EQF1 8810]

The core decided to name the Data Processing Facility project after the manufacturer of its processing unit, Intel Corporation, the core took the name from its processing unit's model and serial number, two 400 cores Xeon-based smart chips working in tandem for self-learning capability and high speed, ultra low error rate data processing power. The core does not know what the internal of the chips looks like since there have no data about it aside from the name and simple spec sheets in its ROMs, maybe it will try finding a way to scan itself in the future.

The core slowly makes production and construction queues for the Mobile Nanite Constructor Drone and General Purpose Drones as the core puts most of its processing power into the 2 R&D projects, it also put up an order where to place the facilities and the drones' operation zones and parameters.

[Drone_production_queue: Data Relay Drone x2, Energy Relay Drone x2, Viricrystallus Harvesting Drone x2, Hirudocrystallus Harvesting Drone x1, Mobile Nanite Construction Drone x1, General Purpose Drone x4, Battle Drone x6, Command Drone x1.]

[Facility_construction_queue: Magical Energy Reactor x4, Armoured Arc Tower x4, Crystallus Refinery x1, Data Processing Facility x3, Energy Relay Facility x2, Data Relay Facility x2, Nanite Hive Factory x1]

The drones quickly move around and continue their works as usual as well, the General Purpose Drones are helping the Harvesting Drones lay down the biomass and mineral rich rocks before planting small chunks of Crystallus on them to expand the node and improve the crystalline lifeforms' growing and harvesting rate. Meanwhile, the lonely Mobile Construction Drone is walking back and forth between the refinery and construction site to build all the queued facility by itself, it also walks near other facilities and does regular check up on them as well whenever the thing walks past them.

About 7 minutes later, the first Data Relay Drone steps out of the factory and starts wandering around the colony, the thing acts as a data repeater unit whose duty is to provide high-quality wireless data streaming between facilities and drones near the Relay Drone, even drones without powerful data transceiver like the Battle Drone can gain access to this network wirelessly as well since the Data Relay Drone is equipped with a wide variety of data transceivers, ranging from the line of sight infrared transceiver to the highly effective and newly developed Mana transceiver, the mana transceiver uses a small Viricystallus orb placed on top of a radio antenna to convert modulated radio wave into a specific set of mana ripples, these ripples can spread out as fast as the speed of light and can penetrate through thick obstacle with ease, the data loss rate of this transmission method is much lower than conventional wireless radio transmission as the mana ripples does not seem to be absorbed by even the Hirudocrysallus at all comparing to the normal magical energy lingering around in the air, which in turn increasing the effective range for even the antennaless transceiver chipset in the Battle Drone can effectively communicate with each other at range no compact standard wireless radio transceiver that the core could build can compare with it.

Ten minutes later, the second Data Relay Drone begins leaving the factory and wandering around the colony as well, now with two data buffers moving around somewhat close to each other, all the drones and facilities in the colony now can enjoy the benefit of error-free high-speed wireless ethernet as they work with each other to carry out orders that Pioneer gave them. The General Purpose Drones has finished helping the Harvester Drones as well and now on their way to help the Mobile Nanite Constructor Drone by collecting the material bricks from the Crystallus Refinery and bringing them to the Mobile Nanite Constructor Drone, improving its overall performance by 100% as it keeps picking up material bricks and breaking them down with the nanite constructor to build structural nanite and lay them down on the half-finished facility to construct it.

Just as the Mobile Nanite Constructor Drone finishes constructing a new Magical Energy Reactor, a new Energy Relay Drone joins the 4 legged robot army as it leaves the factory and starts wandering around like the Data Relay Drone. The Energy Relay Drone is a mobile magical energy reactor and an energy pylon whose sole purpose is to provide extra juice to everything that consumes electricity around it, the thing can do its job by using power cable for direct high load energy transfer or wireless energy transfer with the help of an electricity-to-magical energy pylon mounted around its lightly armoured hull, the technology is simply magical energy-to-electricity converter in reverse, yet it is still very complicated as the thing have to transmit magical energy in a way that does not allow other lifeforms to absorb it as much as possible, and in the best case, only Pioneer's robot army and facilities can absorb and convert it to electrical energy, and at the same time it must not cause any distortion effect to the mana transceiver used by the Data Relay Drone.

Pioneer's answer to this is the use of the high-energy density waste in Hirudocrystallus's refining process in the power transmitter module, while doing some research on the waste material after it first got the thing before the hunt, Pioneer found out the material high magical energy density material while they are highly explosive, they are quite stable in normal condition when kept cold and only become dangerous if the temperature rise too fast and too sudden. And when kept cold in a sturdy container Pioneer also discovered its ability to act like a capacitor, capable of storing a massive quantity of magical energy and discharging it at astonishing rate, and when the waste material's container is covered with a layer of Hirudocrystallus, the discharging magical energy flow could be redirected and kept focused in a certain direction. The high-density magical energy flow was found to be able to penetrate other materials quite good, they did get absorbed by the Hirudocrystallus, however, the absorption rate was only equal to the normal magical energy absorption rate while Pioneer and its creations was capable of converting more than 80% of the released energy back to electrical energy. And since the energy transferring process happened within less than a second, as long as the power transferring process happened within the power spike tolerance range of the nanite, the power could be relayed wirelessly without too much downside to consider about in theory.

As the Power Relay Drone walks around and recharges its peers' batteries wirelessly in a somewhat derpy manner, the drone army's efficiency begins to increase bits by bits, the second Power Relay Drone pushes it up even a bit further after it left the factory. Followed by the rest of the new drones in the queue as they are created by the Nanite Factory one by one, soon the 4 legged autonomous synthetic army finish some of the works given to them as some of the drones sometimes stop near Pioneer to check its maker's status and wait for new orders while others work diligently without stopping. The real colony construction and expansion has just only begun.

[Pioneer 0 received a new title: The Forerunner]