Dungeon Raider System

Medusa stood in front of a complex machine with a deep scowl on her face. She inspected it from every position, then scratched the back of her head, then inspected it some more. She was the one who assembled the extruder, but for some odd reason it wasn't working.

"Have you tried disconnecting it and connecting it again?" Uriel asked with a disinterested tone of voice.

"Of course! I just don't get why it isn't working. I've seen this thing work at the Mapple corp. like a hundred times. I'm sure I assembled it in the proper order and I had no extra screws or bolts afterwards, I thought that meant I did it correctly."

"Can't you ask Fermi?"

"No, he's always busy and he won't leave his workshop unless it's strictly necessary."

"I don't know much about orichalcum, only what Plato said which, admittedly, might be all wrong. But I think I may know what's wrong. Atlantis was supposedly a high tech civilization that sunk in the ocean, but why did it sink in the first place? It's obvious it happened because of their technology which now we know is related to orichalcum."

"Yes, but what exactly?" Medusa sighed.

"I can't be sure, but maybe if you explain me a bit of the process I could make a theory. Just try to no be so technical because I'm just starting to catch up with Fermi's lectures and my head spins each time he starts spewing formulas."

"Alright. The ore goes in here in a solid state, then it goes this way on a liquid state. Contrary to most metals, it doesn't need heat to melt. In order to melt orichalcum we need to drain as much flux energy as we can from it. Then, to solidify it, we use flux infused tools to feed it with energy."

"I see, does that mean that we can store the molten orichalcum on our foundry indefinitely?"

"No," Medusa shook her head. "Flux energy is present everywhere, if you leave orichalcum outside an extruder it will solidify in a matter of days. This means we need to melt the ore and cast it into ingots before it hardens or we would have to go through the extruding process again and it takes a long time."

"Hang on a second, so this thing doesn't have an energy intake but an outlet!"

Medusa's eyes widened and hurried to replace the fully charged tier 3 battery with an empty tier 1 and it started recharging on its own. It was very slow, but after some experimentation she found out that the process could be sped up by hooking up to ten depleted batteries to the device.

It didn't matter which tier they were, the device only allowed ten batteries to be connected at the same time and they all recharged at the same speed.

"This means we could stop paying to have our batteries recharged at the Cryptid hunting agency and we can start recharging our own!" Medusa joyfully hugged Uriel, who almost started crying at the thought of saving money.

"This is awesome! We need to get some more of these things!"

They both remained close to the extruder the rest of the evening to watch how the machine turned a small orichalcum nugget into liquid that dripped out from the faucet.

"This is our first orichalcum drop!" Medusa said while she and Uriel had their arms wrapped around each other.

"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." Uriel said moved by their success.

"Get a room already." Nika said jokingly, though Medusa took it quite literally.

She awkwardly gazed at Uriel who didn't seem to react. She was blushing so hard that she ended up pushing him away while resenting Nika from killing the magic of the moment. Continue your adventure with My Virtual Library Empire

"Maybe Atlantis used a process like this to produce energy in order to sate the needs of the city and to achieve this they needed a huge amount of orichalcum."

"And that lured too many cryptids." Medusa continued.

"Or maybe, a cryptid too strong for them to deal with. Do you remember the cryptid Sam said he saw during our first incursion?

If a thing like that had its mind set on sinking a city I think it'd be more than possible." That thought got them to realize that, while finding and processing orichalcum was something incredibly positive for them, it also had consequences that could potentially affect the whole city in a negative way.

A refining plant, albeit a small one like theirs, had the potential of drawing in more cryptids towards the city. They didn't know how did they manage to conceal the city's energy signature from cryptids, but if even a civilization that possessed advanced technology like Atlantis ended up falling then it meant that there was a limit to the amount of energy they could keep hidden.

That night, Uriel found himself tossing and turning on his bed which wasn't unusual for him, but it hadn't happened to him in a while. He pondered on whether it was correct or not to sabotage or hinder the other factions because in the end, like it or not their fate was tied to that of the city.

He knew that helping Sam cover up his misdeed was the right choice, but he even went out of his way to cause even more trouble for them.

They deserved it or, at least, that's what he thought. But now he wasn't so sure if it was convenient for them. Refining orichalcum within city walls could be dangerous and if they didn't balance their production with their defenses it could cause a domino effect that could spell their end.

Eventually, Uriel arrived at the conclusion that as long as his friends were safe, he didn't care much about what happened to the city. Nevertheless, the only way to ensure that was to become stronger and the easiest way to do so was to hunt entity level cryptids and become a heavenly rank hunter as soon as possible.