The Dawn of the New World

Hao Xuan sat on an oversized leather chair in front of a stone-brick fireplace. His hand moved up and down grasping at empty air, his eyes hazy and full of confusion.

To his left was a single dark brown oak table with a cup of tea still steaming. The walls on the left and right both had a window that showed the front and backyard of the property.

"Is this...real?" he whispered.

Altron suddenly whizzed by and hovered next to the fireplace. He spun around once before looking towards Hao Xuan.

"Huh? Huh? What do you think? It looks pretty good, isn't it? I went with19th-century victorian era British architecture for the room. I know you liked it from those books you read."

But Hao Xuan was almost lost in a trance. He couldn't ditch this feeling of deja vu no matter how hard he tried and for good reason.

This was the 'private study' that Altron had built next to the property on the side. The only issue was that it was almost in the spitting image of the room Mr. Hyde stayed in inside Hao Xuan's mind palace. Only a second chair and maybe a couple of paintings and the newspaper were missing from this one.

Hao Xuan raised his arm and held it in front of the flickering light of the fireplace. Every single hair was standing straight up. It was the strongest feeling of goosebumps he had ever had.

He swallowed a mouthful of saliva to wet his drying throat before responding to Altron.

"Yeah, victorian era. Where exactly did you get the idea from? Was it from my memories again? Did you see a place like this in there?"

Altron seemed confused for a moment.

"Well, technically, yes. I just took a few things you liked and put them together. Do you...not like it?"

Hao Xuan could hear the doleful gloominess in Altron's voice and couldn't help but change the topic.

"No no no, of course I like it. It's just that it is very 'artistic' you know. I wouldn't have expected it from you. So it was all your idea then?"

Altron nodded proudly, his entire body moving up and down in the air.

"Of course! All my own!"

"Hmm...good, yeah very...good..." Hao Xuan trailed off for a moment, lost in thought.

Baracus had clearly said that he had only given Altron the memories from before he came to this world, so technically there was no way he could know about Mr. Hyde's room. Hell, even Baracus didn't know about that place, it was not somewhere he could just visit.

Altron noticed Hao Xuan spacing out so he gave him a few minutes before breaking the silence and bringing him back to reality.

"Soo~...should I begin the report?"

"Huh? Oh yeah, go ahead."

"Cool cool," a hole opened up on the bottom of Altron's main body and a hologram was projected of the city right below him.

"First, the city itself. There are two unmanned defenses in the form of the reinforced star-metal wall and the energy barrier. The star-metal for the wall was gathered from the ruins of the old city and repurposed. Each 4-meter square section of the wall can easily withstand an average-sized physical attack from a Profound Realm creature."

"The energy barrier is a mixture of an ordinary kinetic barrier and magical barrier cast by the Orcs that were able to learn magical spells. Other than that there are of course the automated targeting systems with multiple manually and auto-turrets on standby at all times. Although their effectiveness against supernatural creatures is not yet known."

"The inside of the city is divided into 6 sections. Three Commercial and three residential."

The hologram showed a top-down view of the city but going by the main roads it looked like there were five sections so Hao Xuan inquired about it.

"Aha, I'm glad you asked!"

Altron reached into the same hole from the image was being projected and pulled out some eyeglasses before slamming them onto his 'face' plate. They barely stayed on but it did make him look smarter, which was exactly what he was trying to achieve.

Suddenly the hologram started to expand, not horizontally but vertically downward.

"The surface area is divided into the first five sections while the sixth one is completely underground. It houses the energy power plant, the experimental laboratories, and several other scientific and some not-so-scientific subdivisions. There is approximately 4 times more of the city underground than at the top."

Hao Xuan was impressed once again. Just the area above ground was 1.5 kilometers wide and it was quadruple the size underground too? It looked like Altron had done a lot more work than Hao Xuan even thought possible.

"Very nice. And how is armory coming along? I hope you didn't waste time on all this without doing what I actually asked you to.. I might have a few more hours at most on the outside world which means it will be maybe half a year if I'm lucky. Did you create enough armaments for all 200 Orcs?"