After emerging from the subspace warehouse, Suho checked on the condition of the people who had temporarily relocated to TDM.
Everyone was likely very confused and afraid.
He went around meticulously checking whether anyone was sick, whether there were any inconveniences in their daily lives, and various other matters.
And so, everyone who saw Suho for the first time in a while widened their eyes at the change in his appearance.
Those who were not particularly close to him merely stole glances, but his family, including his younger sister Suji, questioned him persistently.
“Oppa, where did you get surgery?”
“Surgery? What surgery?”
“It looks like you got some kind of procedure done... Hmm... Your skin wasn’t like this before. Have you been working out lately?”
Suho vaguely brushed it off, saying things like it was thanks to an anti-aging elixir, or that he had recently started exercising.
Aside from checking on the situation of the relocated people, there was something he absolutely had to do. In fact, this was the main reason he had come outside.
- Are you referring to reinforced exoskeletons?
“Yes, Director. I absolutely need about three of them. Would it be possible to obtain them?”
- Not at all. Exoskeletons are far simpler in structure than androids, so how difficult could it be to acquire some? Aren’t there plenty of work-use exoskeletons sold on the market as well?
“That’s true. There are plenty for labor and construction, but I need military-use ones. Would that be difficult?”
- Hmm... I think I can procure a few. But surely... Admittee Suho, you are not planning to wear a reinforced exoskeleton and clash with the OAE directly, are you...? If that is the case...
“Haha, Director, come now. How could a frail production-type like me possibly face the worst Admittee terrorist? Please don’t worry about that. I’ll be hiding safely behind Sanarae and the people the Administration Bureau sent over.”
- You promised. Then I will acquire three reinforced exoskeletons as you requested and send them to the TDM building.
“Yes, thank you. If possible, please make them the latest model.”
- Of course. I will take measures so that you can receive them within the day.
That afternoon,
Suho disappeared somewhere with the three reinforced exoskeletons that had been delivered, tightly sealed inside large hard cases.
* * *
The place Suho entered was, as expected, the subspace warehouse.
Since he had a lot to do, he entered without delay as soon as he obtained the exoskeletons.
After making one failed shield,
he realized that even with EX-rank crafting, if he made something half-heartedly, the result would come out half-hearted as well.
To produce at least a normal-grade item, he had to avoid the combined 58 percent probability of 15 percent failure and 43 percent low-grade.
Clatter—
The A-rank shield he had made as a test was tossed aside carelessly.
An A-rank item might be considered top-tier, but that was only by the standards of ordinary Admittees.
“Something like this is trash... I need to prepare everything properly and do it right.”
Instead of trying to make more things, Suho began expanding his facilities in order to create items properly.
The next thing he made after the smithy was a large carpentry workshop.
Back when Suho had been desperately trying to move Earth’s resources wholesale into the subspace, he had brought in quite a lot of tools and machinery as well, and among them were many pieces of equipment related to woodworking.
However, the equipment he intended to make from now on were things that did not exist on Earth.
Since the materials themselves were cosmic and transcendent, ordinary processing equipment from Earth could not handle them.
Suho used the existing equipment as reference while creating upgraded facilities and tools.
“Ravi, this is a saw blade for the table saw. This one is just steel, so carve magrite into the exact same shape.”
“Yes.”
“Ravi, this is for the band cutter. Please do this one too. Thank you.”
“...Yes.”
“Ravi, this is a photon router for upgrading the router that trims wood edges. This part is too weak. Replace these components with leblinium so this section can be reinforced.”
“...Understood.”
“I need the wood not to warp during the drying process, while making the wood structure stronger and the drying speed faster. I’m going to make a special dry chamber, and it needs a gravity field inside. Please install one appropriately.”
“......”
After that as well, it took a great deal of time to set up a special paint room, ventilation system, carving machine, planer, joiner, sander, and so on,
and accordingly, Ravi also became increasingly busier.
Twenty days in subspace warehouse time. That was how long it took to establish the large-scale carpentry workshop.
After that, Suho kept moving diligently and created a large leather workshop in ten days,
and before he knew it, more than thirty days had passed since he had entered the subspace warehouse.
“Now this is the last one. Let’s make an alchemy laboratory.”
“...Suho-nim, have you not been staying awake for too long without sleeping?”
“So what? Fatigue barely builds up inside the subspace warehouse anyway.”
“That is true, but in the past, you slept a lot even when you didn’t have much to do.”
“Did I? Back then, it wasn’t because I was tired; I just slept because I was bored. Now, not only am I not bored, my body is overflowing with energy. It must be the influence of immortality.”
“Hmm... In many ways...”
“Come on, come on, let’s work! Who has time to sleep? I’ve only been awake for thirty days. What sleep? Are you tired, Ravi?”
“...There is no way. Let us continue working.”
The “alchemy laboratory” Suho had conceived for the purpose of not only creating various magical chemicals but also enchanting equipment was, in truth, a space he had never seen or heard of before.
He had never seen one even once, yet astonishingly, the entire framework for the facility had been laid out in his head.
Among production and support-type Admittees, it was not as though there were no alchemists or enchanters, but awakenings were rare, so only an extremely small number existed, and in particular, there was no one who could create anything high-grade.
The Admittee called the world’s greatest enchanter could only enchant equipment with magic of about C-rank, and even that required a great deal of materials and ether.
Even so, high-level Admittees who wanted to enhance even the smallest plus alpha on their equipment sought out the few enchanters and commissioned them at high prices.
As a result, those few enchanters lived in wealth far beyond what their skills and abilities warranted, while also suffering from great threats.
The circumstances of alchemists were slightly different.
They were support-type Admittees who used herbs that could be gathered in the Tower to create various potions, but unfortunately, alchemists were in far worse conditions than enchanters.
The potions they created were far inferior in quality compared to the potions harvested in liquid form from the Tower, and even then, because herbs for alchemical production were rare, what they could produce was almost exclusively “low-grade and in small quantities.”
Still, since Tower potions were so precious, there had been demand from Admittees for the potions made by alchemists,
but recently, as Suho had released intermediate potions in large quantities, even that foothold had disappeared.
“I’m going to place the central table here. The elemental storage room goes on this side, the magical vacuum chamber on this side, and I’ll set up a circular theater that also serves as a mixing room here, with the purification room behind the table. The large cauldron... should be installed here. The magical distiller goes here, and the elemental agitator right beside it. The elemental orb table will go there too. The etherium engraver here. Got it?”
“Roughly.”
Watching Suho run here and there, expressing things with hand gestures and body language, even drawing a development diagram, Ravi nodded.
“Oh, as expected, Ravi, you’re smart. Then you roughly know what materials you need to bring out, right?”
“No. Not at all...”
“Sigh... Fine. I’ll call them out one by one. Let’s start by making the large cauldron. First, give me [VoidSteel], which has a strong property of absorbing energy.”
“......”
Ravi felt strangely hurt in his pride.
The alchemy laboratory had a completely different level of difficulty from the smithy, carpentry workshop, or leather workshop he had made before, so it took a long time to create as well.
There were many dangerous, powerful, and sensitive materials, and also many tools with continuity that had to be linked to one another, making it an even more complex task.
Because of that, after going through several trials and errors, it took seventy days just to complete the alchemy laboratory.
Before he knew it, it was the hundredth day since he had entered the subspace warehouse.
At last, he had equipped the bare minimum of facilities.
‘Yes, this is the minimum. If I want to make something bigger and higher-performance in the future, I’ll need to keep upgrading the facilities...’
Looking at the smithy, carpentry workshop, leather workshop, and alchemy laboratory set up inside the subspace warehouse, Suho smiled proudly.
“Ravi, you worked hard. Thank you so much. Without your help, it probably would have taken ten times longer.”
“It is fortunate that you know.”
“Hey, are you sulking?”
“Not at all. I am simply a little tired.”
“Oh... You get tired too? So the Blue Dragon race can feel fatigue! Even inside the subspace warehouse.”
“Not physically, but mentally... Ha, no. It is nothing. I am fine.”
Pretending not to be tired while being tired,
Ravi, who at some point had begun to seem subtly competitive toward Suho, was adorable.
As Suho chuckled and hugged Ravi, Ravi struggled to escape.
The kind of work he was doing now was, even if he did not know for sure, unlikely to be a duty naturally assigned to a warehouse keeper.
Moreover, Ravi’s role as warehouse keeper was only contractual; Ravi was not Suho’s servant.
So no matter what anyone said, the fact that Ravi was actively assisting him was largely due to the creature’s goodwill.
“In any case, thanks are thanks. Even at my company TDM, I never make anyone work unpaid, so I can’t do that to my one and only warehouse keeper.”
“Hmm...? What do you mean?”
Looking at Ravi, whose eyes had begun to shine as if he was expecting something, Suho asked,
“Just because I already received an item worth one yangwon, that doesn’t mean I can’t request it again, right?”
“Of course. There is no such restriction at all.”
“Then that’s perfect. Give me one more yangwon worth of Runes. Was it a hundred thousand?”
“...Yes!? Runes? Why, why?”
“I’m going to give you compensation for your trouble whenever I ask you to work from now on. Ah, I won’t give them all at once. So for now, manifest the hundred thousand neatly in the jewel area beside Dream Village.”
“...Understood.”
One hundred thousand Runes densely filled a space about ten meters wide and ten meters long.
Glowing stones with a brilliant purple hue.
Ravi had said that as compensation for serving as warehouse keeper, he received ten Runes per year from the Cosmic Administrator.
‘The owner of Cheonyangwon can’t pay such a stingy salary.’
Suho organized his thoughts and held the presentation ceremony.
“You worked incredibly hard over the past hundred days. Ravi. I’ll give you one thousand Runes. You may take them.”
“Huh......”
Ravi’s eyes sparkled brightly after earning a high income in a short time.
“I look forward to your help going forward as well.”
“I will work hard.”
The oil king Paul Getty once said, “If there is something money cannot do, consider whether the amount of money is insufficient.”
Those words were exactly right.
Holding one thousand Runes, each valued at one thousand hae won, Ravi rejoiced like a child.
It seemed that for the Blue Dragon race as well, the more Runes they had, the better.
* * *
Although the facilities were all prepared, there was still a slight insufficiency for making the item Suho wanted to create.
It was a facility to handle mechanical engineering design and manufacturing, but since what Suho was making was not based on an advanced system, he did not need a full-fledged research lab.
So, in order to handle mechanical engineering work as well, he brought over the high-performance computer and 3D printer from Dream Village and installed them beside the milling lathe in the smithy.
He intended to have the smithy double as a mechanical engineering lab.
Suho took out one reinforced exoskeleton procured from outside and one android from the countless ones in the subspace warehouse, laid them both on a large workbench, and began dismantling them.
“This is insanely fascinating... To think that a humanities major like me can handle machines like this...”
In truth, there was no way Suho possessed the knowledge to handle such complex machinery.
All of it was awakened knowledge as an EX-rank Crafter.
He did not understand all the software, but the more he disassembled the mechanical parts, the more he understood their operating principles.
Androids and reinforced exoskeletons were similar, yet very different.
Perhaps that was only natural, since there was a difference between a machine that moved autonomously and a device meant to assist the human body.
Even so, certain parts were similar—the principle of transmitting power, the mechanism, artificial muscles, hydraulic systems, control algorithms, sensor technology, and the like. The same went for the structural design and frames modeled after the human body.
After spending nearly a month disassembling and understanding every last detail of the two machines, Suho took out another enhanced exoskeleton, his eyes shining.
This time, he began disassembling it not for understanding and analysis, but to use it as a model for producing new equipment.
He tore apart the overall frame of the enhanced exoskeleton, handed each component to Rabi, and asked her to make them out of Magrite,
and he had the panels that would serve a bulletproof function newly made in the same way.
Then, rather than an enhanced exoskeleton, he added a design in the form of a suit that could cover the entire body,
removed the power unit operated by hydrogen cells, switched it to a small ether generator, and installed as many as five EX-grade Etheriums.
As for weapons, he threw out all the existing machine guns that spat 7.62mm rounds,
mounted a miniaturized [Ether Core Hilt] on the back of the right hand so that it could draw out an Ethereal Blade,
and installed a [Small Railgun], fired by the electrical force generated by ether, on the left forearm.
For this work, disassembling the [Ether Core Hilt] he had confiscated from Takeda, the OAE attacker from last time, served as a good reference.
Suho was a complete outsider when it came to swords, but since his ether sensitivity alone was EX-grade, drawing an Ethereal Blade from an Ether Core was not particularly difficult.
For a flight device that neither the android nor the exoskeleton had, he fixed [Stormbringer Wings] onto the back and added an enchantment to increase flight speed.
For the helmet as well, he transferred and installed the android’s AI assistant system and added an AI-based HUD function.
On top of such advanced scientific technology, he also added magical enchantments such as “Shock Absorption,” “Enhanced Vision,” and “Night Vision.”
Scientific equipment and magical enchantments were not compatible with each other, but that did not matter.
Even if each operated separately, it was fine as long as Suho, the user, knew how to utilize both.
The inside of the suit was carefully lined with innerwear items that regulated body temperature, and he filled it with leather highly efficient at absorbing impact, engraving the “Shock Absorption” enchantment there as well.
After finishing the enchantments for each part here and there, he tried it on and checked whether the installed functions were working properly.
No abnormalities.
Everything was perfect.
When he took the suit off again and set it upright on the fixed stand, the completed exoskeleton suit looked nothing short of imposing.
And so, at last, from Suho’s fingertips, a “cosmic yet advanced scientific magic equipment item” was completed.
As he looked at it, satisfaction seeped up from the bottom of his heart. His chest swelled with joy, as if something he had long been waiting for had finally found its rightful place, and he felt as though he might cry.
A full 130 days. Aside from the 100 days spent expanding various facilities, it had taken 130 days just to make this suit.
“This is truly amazing.”
Rabi, who had faithfully acted as his assistant at his side during the past 130 days while Suho had been absorbed in making this suit, did not hold back her praise. Since she was not originally the type to give compliments often, it felt unfamiliar.
“Now… I suppose I should appraise it.”
Rabi, too, sat on Suho’s shoulder with a tense expression.
A nervousness on an entirely different level from when he had appraised the roughly made shield before washed over him.
What if the result this time was something like “production failure” again?
Honestly, if the evaluation was poor this time as well, he felt like it would be unfair.
“Whew… Let’s do it… Oh, right. I need to decide on a name.”
He remembered that last time, when he had not given it a name, the item name had been decided on its own.
He could not give some ridiculous name to a masterpiece that had taken 130 days to make.
“What would be good… Since it’s an enhanced exoskeleton suit made by an EX-grade crafter and powered by EX-grade Etherium… Let’s go with this!”
“With what?”
“Extreme Powered Armor.”
“Hmm.”
“What do you think?”
“It’s long.”
“Tsk. I’m still going with it. Now, the name of this equipment is Extreme Powered Armor. Appraise!”
When he activated the Appraisal skill, the result of the production immediately appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Appraising equipment.
You have succeeded in producing a high-grade item (upper).
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Wow!!”
“Oh, did it turn out well?”
“This is huge! It says it’s a high-grade item!”
He had hit the production probability of a mere 0.9 percent.
Although it was not the highest-grade item (0.1 percent), it was the second-highest grade!
That was more than enough to be completely satisfied.
Then, detailed item information appeared as a system message.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Item Name: [Extreme Powered Armor]
Item Grade: EX-grade
Creator: Jeong Suho
With outstanding talent, extensive knowledge, and an indomitable will that does not give up, you have succeeded in producing a high-grade item (upper).
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Awesome! It’s the second grade! EX-grade!”
“Whoa…!”
Excited, Suho jumped up and down. Rabi, who had also struggled alongside him for a long time, congratulated him and rejoiced together with him.
But at some point, Rabi felt something off and suddenly stopped in place.
“Huh, Suho-nim…?”
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Didn’t you just say it was the second grade?”
“Yeah, I did! Didn’t I tell you before? If production completely fails, that’s 15 percent, and that’s A-grade. And the chance of producing a low-grade item is 43 percent, which is probably S-grade, right? And the production probability for a normal-grade item is 30 percent, so I think that’s SS-grade, and the production probability for a high-grade item is 0.9 percent, so that’s probably SSS-grade, right? And since the production probability for the highest-grade item is 0.1 percent… EX… Huh?”
“One grade is missing.”
“You’re right… EX-grade isn’t the highest… is it?”
Rabi’s face went pale, as if she had gotten goosebumps.
“Rabi, is there another grade above EX-grade? There isn’t one for Etherium.”
“…That’s correct. Etherium ends at EX-grade. However, in the case of items, depending on the circumstances, a grade above that can exist.”
“Really? What is… above that?”
Even in Suho’s infused knowledge, it only said “highest-grade,” and he had no memory of the specific grade name.
Fortunately, Rabi knew.
“Above that is ‘U-grade.’ It is called the eternal grade, above the EX-grade mythic grade.”
“That means…”
“We cannot know for certain yet, but… it seems an EX-grade crafter may have the possibility of creating even U-grade items…”
“Wow… Damn…”
He had no idea what was what, but he could only feel dazed.
It had been so long since he had entered the subspace warehouse that the outside world was beginning to feel hazy.
But he had to come to his senses. Outside, in real time, they were under threat from the OAE and the Ashen Oath Enforcement Corps.
Now was the time to counterattack.
Making items in the subspace warehouse had been so much fun that he had spent a full 230 days absorbed in nothing but that.
Before he knew it, nearly eight months had passed.
Even with a time ratio of “ten million to one,” it was no trivial amount of time.
In reality outside the warehouse, it was an enormous amount of time equivalent to two whole seconds.
“Shall we head out now?”
Suho crossed the dimensional gate.