141 Chapter 140: Battle-automata (2/2)

”Phew…”

Exhaling, I began to slowly break the signs and symbols apart, decoding the images and rearranging the patterns to allow me entry. My modifications caused a reaction, and the metallic doors glowed brightly, blasting me off my feet with a violent qi wind.

”Ugh…!”

I did a cartwheel in midair and landed on my feet, skidding a few centimeters backward. Sucking a deep breath into my battered lungs, I glanced up at the doors. My body tensed as I got ready to move, in case I had triggered some security system and it was going to attack me.

To my surprise, the doors merely swung open.

”Ha ha! You did, it, you brat!”

Qi Lin burst out laughing when he saw that I had succeeded. I rose to my feet, continuing to stare at the open doors blankly for a few moments until Qi Lin snapped at me.

”Well, what are you waiting for? A red carpet to roll out and welcome you? Get your ass in there, pronto!”

Shaking my head to clear myself of my stupor, I then stepped into the vault. A cold blast of air struck me, but both being an ice-type martial artist and having already experienced the hellish depths of the Nine Thousand Yin Ice Hell from earlier, the sudden drop of temperature was nothing to me. It felt chilly at worst, soothing at best.

”This is…”

The moment I stepped into the vault, I froze when two rows of colossal battle-automata came into view, their hulking forms standing straight and stationary. My first reaction was to use Tui to retreat out of there before they could attack me, but as soon as I calmed down, I realized that they were emitting no sign of qi, life or energy.

Just like the Thallax pattern battle puppets before them, they were dead. Or at least unpowered.

”These are different from the Thallax pattern battle puppets or the Servitors from earlier,” I mused, stating the obvious. Mustering my courage, I stepped into the vault again and scanned through the two rows with my hastily repaired glasses. The sensors in my lenses counted their number for me and I saw that there were about a hundred and twenty of them.

”I want these too…” I murmured greedily.

”Good choice!” Qi Lin concurred excitedly. ”Brat, your luck is really good! These are all mid-level battle-automata! Castellax-class battle-automata! They formed the mainstay of the cybernetica cohorts and mechanical armies during the Dark Age of Technology, serving as the line troops during the Great Crusade!”

”I don't suppose the Machine Cult and the Great Emperor sent them out into space?”

I was being sarcastic, but Qi Lin shook his head as if he thought I was asking a serious question. He glanced up and sighed.

”Space travel and faster-than-light technology has always eluded us. It'll be a few thousand years before we finally gain the technology to cross the stars and colonize other planets. For now, we're stuck in this world.”

”…right…”

”For now, though, these are probably one of the most powerful weapons you can have at your disposal! If, like the Thallax battle puppets, you are able to find the correct Spirit Engraving patterns and bring them back online and fully functional, you'll be able to command a terrifying army that can obliterate entire regiments!”

”Heh…”

Even without Qi Lin having to tell me, I was already venturing over to study the vast ranks of the Castellax battle-automata.

They were large, over three meters high, which allowed them to tower over even the superhuman Astartes…I mean gigantic martial artists. Their dome-shaped heads were smooth, with no features, not even the slightest trace of a face. They carried – or used to carry an assortment of weapons, which ranged from…well, ranged mauler-pattern bolt cannons to plasma guns or thermal weapons. Their arms ended in power claws, which would have rippled with shimmering power fields had they not been destroyed. Also attached to their hands were smaller patterns of bolt weapons, which upon my analysis, fired mass-reactive projectiles that detonated within their targets to deal maximum amount of lethal damage.

If I could command entire cohorts of these fallen battle-automata, perhaps I could launch a Great Crusde of my own and conquer the stars, setting up dozens of forge worlds that adhered to the tenets of the machine cult.

”Hmm, but the Spirit Engravings will only bind them to their command and program them, but they still need a power source.” I examined the closest battle automata intensely, but couldn't find any reactor or qi generator that was present in most modern vehicles and electronic devices today. ”How are they supposed to move?”

”Yeah, you'll need to provide the energy for them to move.” The ghostly master snickered. ”Who asked you to be so greedy? Normally, a single practitioner has barely enough power to supply a mid-level battle automata and still be able to fight alongside it, but you want to gather hundreds of them! I think you'll only be able to control twelve of the Thallax battle puppets, or one of the Castellax battle automata at most, assuming you want to conserve enough qi for yourself to fight beside them.”

”Well, I can always sell them off…just ensure that they don't fall into the hands of the wrong people.”

Even if I was desperate for money, I couldn't very sell them off to unscrupulous owners who would use these terrifying automatons to conquer the world. Aha! I knew just who to sell them to. The Imperial Guard. Even if I couldn't trust private corporations or my fellow men, I could always trust the government.

Okay, that sounded incredibly naïve. Of course the government couldn't be fully trusted, but at least they were far less likely to do something stupid like conquering the world than a corrupted, greedy mega-corporation.

I hope.

Thinking about it, the president of the United States during the time I got hit by a truck was quite the…madman.

Shuddering at the memory of a loud-mouthed president who was willing to shut down the government just to have his stupid wall built between Mexico and States, I tried to focus on this timeline. Surely the royal government of the Great Zhou Empire wouldn't do anything as stupid…right? Right?

It was alarming that I couldn't convince myself that it was all right to trust the royal government. Politics tended to bring the worst out of people.

”So I provide energy to the battle-automata by infusing it with my qi?” I asked Qi Lin. ”Are there other methods?”

”Certainly. If you want to conserve your own qi, then you can provide it qi through other means. For example, you can directly feed a battle automata pure yuan pills. If you want it to execute an attack that is equivalent to that of a Qi Fusion Stage practitioner…hmm, approximately two thousand pure yuan pills will be required. However, that's only enough to release one attack. After unleashing that attack, if you want the battle automata to continue fighting, you'll have to continue supplying it with more pure yuan pills or your own qi.”

”That's pretty expensive…but…” I grinned. ”I can see the possibilities.”

Certainly, I didn't have any pure yuan pills. But I might be able to request for access to the next best thing.

Artificial qi.

Wu Ling Academy had tons of artificial qi…all right, they were pretty expensive, so I obviously couldn't afford to continually buy artificial qi from them, nor would I ever be able to afford to buy so much artificial qi to supply every single one of my battle-automata. But even for just a single battle-automata at my disposal, if I could supply him with three sexagenaries of qi, he should be able to fight on par with a top Wu Ling Academy student.

That was more than enough.

Good thing artificial qi exists, eh?

I suddenly knew who to sell the battle-automata to (or the majority of them, anyway – I planned on keeping at least a few for myself). With unlimited access to virtually infinite amounts of artificial qi, Wu Ling Academy would certainly welcome the chance to add these battle-automata to their armory!