I take the first turn to the left at a full sprint, then the next one to the right. Nothing really calls me to those, but with my memory and the perception field, I can pretty much start randomly and it will likely make little.

Once in a while, I’m forced to slow on turns or the tricker spots as the ceiling comes down or the corridor narrows, but that’s still not very significant.

The entire place seems an amalgamation of real a cave with something that the system constructed. It’s not completely unrealistic, with the rock formations that seem genuine and a believable level of dampness. But even if I’m not an expert on the caves, I can tell it is not natural.

The smell is almost overpowering, but I just commit to my deep breaths, trying to keep my muscles supplied with enough oxygen even as I drink in Vigor from Aspen like there is no tomorrow.

Then I discover what this place is, as I come across a deposit of a very rare mineral.

Not iron, copper or even gold, we had seen plenty of those all over Earth, but an orichalcum mine. The material needed to make deep steel. I try to estimate quantity and I’m blown away.

This mine probably won’t have the magical properties that we saw on the instance, if we mine a piece of rock, it won't just ‘respawn’. But even then, deep steel only takes roughly a percent of orichalcum and while the concentration on this rock isn’t the highest, it’s enough to fill an entire cargo ship with deep steel.

Then I run another few steps revealing even more orichalcum ore. And not on a single layer but spread over dozens of levels.

A giant smile pops on my face, as I call for a few people and avatar seeds in the inner world to take a look and try to extract as much as they safely can.

A particularly talented earth singer is quick to volunteer and a portal directly from the inner world sends a dozen creatures through the maze and straight into a mining spot.

With a second thought, I send a few guards to stand on the exposed end of their corridor and then I’m back to only running again.

This entire place is partially a natural formation but with a few modifications by the system. There are tool marks on the mining spot and that is a giveaway. It probably isn’t original, only an accurate copy. I feel the Aether in the air and it lacks the weight of age.

So unless the system scrubbed it clean of Aether after taking it from somewhere else it is a new formation. Now that is a terrifying thought.

As I turn what I see over in my mind, the horde of monkeys starts to destroy my layers of defense. Dropping even more roots onto the ground making my path to talk with the others as redundant as possible, I keep running and trying to get a sense of the place, but after another ten minutes, as the numbers and positioning of the Chimps fill out every path I can take, I decide that I have explored as much as I safely could. Another minute navigating back and I collect everyone inside the inner world along with enough ore smelt about one ton of orichalcum maybe even a ton and a half.

With everyone safe and what I’m sure was another exit in mind, I start to bulldoze the little critters.

The Wartat Chimps try hard to slow me and even if they are alien, it feels mean to bat them aside, but I don’t stop or even hesitate. Especially as a few end up with broken bones as I get through a particularly rough spot. If I stop, they might manage to overwhelm me. A few minutes later I make it to open ground, and then it's game over for them. I just crank the speed and it seems that wings sprout from my feet. Not a single one of the creatures can get within arms reach.

“The little mutts are cute.” Someone watching from the inner world calls out.

“That they are.”

Soon I’m flying through the sky on the way to the next dark spot, this one further north, though only a couple thousand kilometers away. The lack of contact with the people in the village doesn’t mean they aren’t fully appraised of the situation along with the inner world inhabitants that have started to plan the mining efforts, even in the places I have yet to explore.

It is probably premature, but I hear people talking about strip mining given that the tunnels are kilometers long and tortuous, while the deposits didn’t go too far below the ground, reaching only between 100 and 200 meters. After our mining operations grow enough, it would be worth excavating all the soil above it, dumping it to the side and then getting every scrap of orichalcum out. If we did that, we wouldn’t be forced to leave structurally sound rock to support all the weight above. Even with reinforcements, we might not even be able to extract a third of the potential in the mine if we only relied on tunnels and which are a lot more dangerous than strip mining.

Just dig one large ass pit and then we can get everything out.

Though as the travel time drags on and the exploration of the similar dark spots in Pando’s network spots reveals little new to me besides other mines, my mind turns to other endeavors before I’m back for the assault on the enemy encampment. If I had found a Mithril mine it would be another matter altogether, but these ones I can leave until after the fight.

Some 40k enemies and roughly double that for us. Our forces may have swelled, but we couldn’t escape the fact that the hundreds of high level people could no longer hold up the entire army. At most, we could put a few in charge of medium squadrons with roughly 100 people. In open ground combat, that is not nearly enough to do more than blunt the edge of the enemy’s advances and create an anchor. If the enemy surrounds our troops after a mistake on our part, they can simply drown a single high level combatant in bodies while devastating the rest of his troops.

Then even without our advantages in the form of support buffs, amazing equipment and other tricks squirreled away, The enemy would nibble on the carcass of the soon to be dead group. After getting they got the numbers down to the single digits unless the high level combatant used all his might to simply escape with his life, it would be game over for him.

Well, I can probably get a few more stat points under me before I go on the attack once more. Nothing that would turn the tide of battle, but steady accumulation was the main factor for me to reach my current heights, why change the formula now?

Then I come back to something that I usually put on the back burner, only paying attention to it occasionally: my inner world. Sure it is part of my core capabilities, but the time consuming nature of expanding it meant that unless I wanted to dedicate myself exclusively to it for decades, maybe centuries, I would not reach its limits.

I glance at the system screen for it.

Inner world

2*298.8*100*88/1000=

Maximum diameter: [5.26km]

Current: [modified]

With the increase in the soul stat along with the more common ones, I now can expand to over two and a half kilometers in any direction. That however is mostly academic without the large time investment the full expansion will need at my current level.

Still, I look within and find that place of malleability around the edges of the inner world and start to expand a narrow corridor so my ‘flashlight’ mode can actually illuminate further away.

All the way from barely a kilometer and a half to over 2 and a half. Getting at least this done before my class trial seems to be the bare minimum and even now it would be a large help with the portal shinanigans I can pull with the inner world and scouting. One more kilometer as a safety buffer.

I fully let the exercise consume my attention, a deeper meditative state than I usually achieve to get started. Then I become the motion as I leverage all of my willpower to twist space in the exact shape and alter its properties to become mine. I constantly reach out grabbing more and more absorbing it into myself and wondering how could I improve my ability to convert the ‘void’ into part of my inner world.

After all, even if they are already high, if I manage to double my lowest stat, double my level and my soul stat, I would get a maximum size in the range of 8 fold linearly, which would be around 512 times more volume and so require 512 times longer for me to ‘claim’ the entire place. And even the current volume is already going to take me ages to get through. I haven’t even reached the limits with just the spotlight that is a few meters across, let alone filling the entire volume.

“I… will figure something out.”

------------

Automaton’s seed POV

“Are you certain?” the lead researcher in the main team asks me. But I don’t speak with nonexistent my vocal cords, nor do I change my mind easily like fully biological beings. I vibrate the air through a magical speaker demonstrating my greater understanding of their language than any other seed:

“The path is set.”

“I’m just… You want to fully pursue nuclear fusion and get it working right off the bat and dedicate all your processing power to it? That’s going to take forever. It might take decades to get a production ready mature technology. We should focus on helping the others to get existing and near future technology back on the table. After all, an RPG now is a lot more useful than a laser pistol a decade away.”

“If we were limited to pre system resources with the relatively small population pool that already returned to Earth, I would agree. But there are thousands of brilliant physicists and magical researchers coming back in short order. And I will take breaks to work on other stuff, which should mitigate a lot of that.”

“But there is the system interference on technology.”

“Already taken into account when calculating my path. Magic and specifically magical shields along with other direct effects that don’t interact with the normal realm of physics will greatly accelerate our development. The small increase in complexity to shield such a reactor from the system’s interference is likely to be an afterthought. You know the broad strokes that other races have developed.”

“Well, there is Nash’s book, and that gives us glimpses into the tech tree.” HE says not fully convinced, but I already used as much time as I would allow.

“Then commence the design. We need a mass accelerator that can efficiently get a few grams of hydrogen spinning at the kilometers per second needed to start fusion.”

“I think that speed is off by a couple of zeroes.” He says with a frown plastered over his face.

“Just seeing if you were paying attention.”

He waves his hand and I realize his mind is elsewhere, but after a moment his attention is back and he says.

“Bloody machine seed, don’t scare me like that, you can’t go senile before we get this working.”

Pictures of a grinning face form on my faux brain that borrows so heavily from Nash’s impressions and then a hundred variations pop into my mind in the time that my research companion turns around and ruffles through the paper mess in search of the most promising design we developed.

A sense of purpose wafts from him and I let it infect me. A feeling that was so muted whenever I lean too hard on my machine side makes itself manifest and then I dive right in.