Chapter 122 - 42: [Artificial Undead and Divine Era Technology]

Chapter 122: Chapter 42: [Artificial Undead and Divine Era Technology]

"Should I stay, after ignoring it all?" A Demon Race Exile hummed a soft song to the starry sky in the middle of the camp, cradling a plucked string instrument that resembled a classical guitar.

The starry sky was brilliant, with dual coppery-white moons hanging high. From the distant town, the faint clamor of taverns and the shouts of peddlers drifted over.

"Who would care about the fading of yet another beam of starlight? Under the sky, billions of stars shine...

"Who would care about a person’s time slipping through their fingers? Our long lives are but fleeting moments..."

Gwyneth Helder, with gauze taped to her face, held a small accordion. Her fingers pressed the smooth bone keys, laying down smooth chords.

Old Duke held an antique violin and bow. Tucking it under his chin, he accompanied the singing with his eyes half-closed during the interludes. The violin strings trembled, releasing a series of long, drawn-out vibratos, while his gray beard quivered slightly with his breaths.

The Exiles clapped lightly to the beat or tapped the wooden barrels and iron cups at hand, keeping a steady rhythm.

The Exile Camp at night was quite lively. The Demon Race was a passionate people, and their transient life in exile made them value warm, enthusiastic atmospheres even more. Furthermore, their journey had coincided with the Ederic Empire’s Caster Festival. The grand festive atmosphere compounded; half of the members were participating in the festival’s revelry at the town’s taverns, while the other half gathered around the campfire in the camp, playing music under the starry sky and dancing slowly to the tunes.

In a corner of the camp, a dead rat lay quietly on the ground, completely motionless.

[Scanner enabled.]

[Organic structure.]

[No signs of life.]

Samael carefully extended his Nether Copper Hand Armor, attempting to control the molten fluid of Nether Copper flowing from his palm to cast a Spiritual Implant onto the rat’s skull.

The red-hot Nether Copper fluid squirmed as if alive, crawling and stretching before rapidly cooling, ultimately transforming into a fist-sized Nether Copper Bell-shaped Helmet.

[Spiritual Implant set.]

Although Nether Copper had high structural strength, it was severely limited by its structural volume. The smallest Spiritual Implant that could be created was still the size of a fist.

The palm-sized rat sported a Nether Copper Bell-shaped Helmet that was nearly the same size as its body, looking as comical as a bobblehead doll.

Samael adjusted his UI, attempting to control the rat’s corpse, but the dead rat remained motionless.

[No Spiritual Construct. Unable to drive.] A prompt popped up in the helmet’s UI.

[Requirement: Organic Spiritual Construct - Circuit Infiltrator (Artificial Lifeforms, Level 2)]

[Insufficient permissions. Currently locked. Please scan an authorized user’s identification code to obtain the corresponding user permissions.]

Samael thought in absolute frustration, "Great, just great! To unlock the Circuit Infiltrator, I need to scan an authorized identification code. But I need this so-called Circuit Infiltrator to create a little Undead rat that can sneak into the Holy Hall and scan the identification code!"

He wondered what kind of endless loop this was.

He pulled the fist-sized Nether Copper Bell-shaped Helmet off the rat’s charred skull, tapped it lightly, and tried to activate visual sharing and the scanner. Even though he couldn’t control the dead rat’s movements, the auxiliary components inside the helmet still functioned normally.

Since Organic Spiritual Constructs wouldn’t work, he could only try his luck with Inorganic Spiritual Constructs.

Samael pondered for a moment, searching for the term "Inorganic Spiritual Construct" in the UI. Scanning back and forth across the faint blue, illusory screen, he suddenly noticed an entry nestled among the dense characters:

[Inorganic Spiritual Construct - Component Library]

[Prerequisites: Basic Spiritual Energy Studies - Level 0, Artificial Lifeforms - Level 0, Nether Copper Printer]

He clicked into the entry’s details page. The interface displayed dozens of primary Nether Copper structural parts, including oddly shaped Nether Copper Limbs, balance gyroscopes, propellant thrusters, power wheels, and aether magnetic attractors, among other miscellaneous gadgets.

"Besiege?" Samael thought, taken aback as he remembered a game he used to play.

This meant that he only needed to create an ultra-small, properly functioning Nether Copper construct and then weld this fist-sized Spiritual Implant onto it to produce a Nether Copper creation capable of infiltration work.

He flipped through the circuit structures in the blueprints and the detailed icon descriptions in the component library, suddenly realizing that the scale in the component legends was off.

Limited by the material properties, each of these Nether Copper structural components was a good half-meter or even over a meter long. If Samael welded four Nether Copper Limbs onto his back, he could straight up cosplay a Dark Souls version of Spider-Man.

[Inorganic Spiritual Construct - Component: Manufactures basic parts using Nether Copper. The consciousness can autonomously modify the body to adapt to complex work environments.]

Reading the component library’s description, he realized that these components were meant for modifying his own body.

However, the amount of Nether Copper on hand was very small—nowhere near enough for him to drastically modify his physique. Furthermore, the infiltration operation had to rely on a small-sized construct.

"Maybe I can rely on Witch Gold to shrink the structural volume?" he wondered.

He picked up the Witch Gold Long Curved Saber, a spoil of war confiscated from Musa, and slowly pressed his palm against it, attempting to shape the Witch Gold using the functions of the Nether Copper Printer.

The Witch Gold Long Curved Saber glowed faintly from the high-temperature scorching, but otherwise, there was no reaction.

"Completely useless," Samael thought, scratching his helmet.

He wondered how he was supposed to process and shape Demonization metals other than Nether Copper. Rummaging through the UI database, he eventually found an entry for the Spiritual Forger on the [Basic Materials Science] tech tree, followed by clearly marked large characters: