The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary

The start of the meeting between Jin and Qiu Yue was rather productive (along with the leftovers they had from Supper.) She managed to convince Jin that Man Tang was looking to expand her instances to be more entertainment-oriented. She proposed for additional instances like billiards, bowling and even a cinema theatre which Jin felt it was viable and definitely money making in the long run.

"She said that she wants to get off from the crooked deals that she had been doing. But in order to supplement her lost profit margins, she wanted more of this." Qiu Yue said which Jin agreed and already had ideas for those instances.

"Sure. I will create those for her, but those additional instances won't be cheap as compared to the first." Jin replied, and Qiu Yue nodded her head.

"Definitely, she knew that the additional instances will definitely be more expensive than the initial ones as written in the contract. But she was hinting whether a discount could be given since she was asking for so much more." Qiu Yue lied through her teeth when she knew that she would be the one paying for her instances in exchange for Man Tang's secrecy.

"Haha, that I will think about that. Now let's go to the main issue." Jin asked the System to call Moloch into the meeting and pulled out from the digital consoles and projected out a hologram layout on the table. It showed the current constructed buildings and sectors within the Dungeon City Fortress.

"I trust you want to know about the defences more than anything else?" Qiu Yue as she looked at the hologram layout and expanded the entrance of the dungeon fortress city. As Jin's city was built in a cave unlike compared to the humans' towns and cities, there was only one way in or out of the area.

Sometimes, Jin regretted he did not build something similar to a defensive fortress city like the dwarves in his board games. However, Moloch previously told Jin that those layouts were exactly how his former King Baal had created his underground metropolis. The very thing that protected the dungeon metropolis was high walls and with layers of it to prevent the attackers.

"I bet when his army stepped into our territory, they would literally scoff at this place when the general in command knows how terrible 'defenceless' this place is," Moloch said in a sarcastic way.

While Jin still severely underestimated the urgency, Lord Moloch repeatedly guarantee him that King Baal will attack with his army the moment the shield barriers are down.

"But there are no buildups of any massive monster army or whatsoever in the neighbouring areas based on the wide scans from the System," Jin said which Moloch shook his head.

"You are not the only one who have portal magic. He has mages that can do that too -well, yours is basically a hundred times way more advanced than his, since you can travel across worlds. Anyway, out of point. Erm, yeah, the portal magic will bring in his armies to the entrance of the dungeon cave because King Baal never liked any deserters or mutineers no matter how small the crime was." Moloch explained but that suddenly made Jin panicked.

"User there is nothing to worry about. Regardless of how highly sophisticated one's portal magic can be, King Baal will always be teleported to the cave entrance." The System spoke out and Moloch concurred. The System later explained it is something similar to the laws of nature in their world. That was why Jin was previously teleported to Moloch's cave and not straight to the dungeon treasure room or dungeon core room.

"Can we look at this quickly and get over it for the day? I feel kinda sleepy." Qiu Yue, who was at the sideline listening to them talk, made her bored. Returning back to the discussion with regards to the defence of the dungeon's entrance, it had already been filled with hundreds of clay statues as ordered by Jin. The manually crafted clay statues had already been thoroughly analysed by the System, and a factory had started to produce them with the aid of the Goblin Craftsmen.

As the new clay statues were mass produced, Qiu Yue and Moloch who were the temporary mayors of the city had continued to utilised the goblin clay craftsmen' expertise to correct the moulds by inspecting the quality for every batch of fifty. This way, each and newer bunch of clay statues would be more detailed through the moulding process while the System finetuned the methods to make it cheaper.

The runes, on the other hand, was still a bit of a manual process but Jespa had managed to scout for a few Orc apprentices, and with a mix of lost technology by Ayse, they had managed to create a simple 'Animate Dead' rune to be mass produced . Of course, the crafted rune by Jespa was still superior though she began to fear her work would eventually be lost to automation.

However, Moloch convinced her that automating her craft would then give her the time to explore the effects of new rune combinations, or maybe craft new ones. Eventually, her increased depth of knowledge could never be outstripped by automation. Jespa hesitantly agreed to it, but when she did found out that she had more time for herself, she gave more freedom to the orcs.

With the defences within 500 metres of the dungeon entrance secured, Jin looked at the other matters. The Pand-Atlantis City were in the final stages for Dome 1 and 2 while the rest were still in basic construction.

However, the glass domes were readily secured, and along with the pipes and tunnels required for the underwater transportation network. Moloch had stated in his reports that all that was left was to pour seawater and procure possibly defensive sea creatures. He had recommended the Fishing World where he found the Deep Ones as well as the ocean water from there.

Likewise, for the Floating City, each sector were all shielded with a gadget created by both Peppers and Research Team's effort. A magical shield generator that used oil, magical crystals as well as Jin's black sludges. The System estimated that a litre of black sludge was as efficient as 1 ton of oil.

With it, the power generated will be able to hold and produce a magical force of five megatons for each of the platforms that were equipped with the Lost Tech inspired Magical Shield Generator.

This was partly due to the experiments on expanding Peppers' explosive powers. It had allowed Ayse to understand and apply her understanding onto a few Lost Tech theories, resulting in tremendous results of the revised production of the Magical Shield Generator and upgrades.

However, she and her team believed that more can be done when the System had investigated that the efficacy rate to turn the black sludge into oil was roughly 4%. While both the System and Research Team knew it was not possible to get a 100% efficacy, bumping it up in the future to at least 20% would be a major breakthrough.

In addition, they had to treat Jin's black sludge as precious as gold. What if Jin one day does not produce the black sludge anymore? Therefore, they had been using oil as a substitute until they could improve the efficacy of the magical shield or find alternatives to the black sludge. Nevertheless, in the event of an offensive or defensive battle, the generators would automatically be switched by the System to use the black sludge.

While the Dungeon Core could essentially protect the Dungeon Fortress City, Jin believed that the power it routes throughout the entire grid should only be used as the last resort for the magical shield generators to be utilised. This was mainly because the core would have its hands full powering up floating city and an underwater city.

That was when Qiu Yue questioned Jin's decision to retrieve the additional broken dungeon core. It was supposedly be used to power up a city wide barrier and used along with the magical shield generators or at least reduce the burden of the current dungeon core.

That was when he begged to differ due to an email Ayse recently sent to him which he did not read until this morning. (Ayse did scold him in subsequent emails for not reading it any earlier.) He found that it could still be used for defensive manoeuvres but just not for mere shielding purposes.

The Dungeon Core which Lord Wolte possessed had a hidden function which the System and Moloch did not know until Ayse's research team accidentally stumbled on it while they deciphered the broken dungeon core.

They eventually required Lord Wolte's aid to activate it, and he told them that he knew about this all along. Only to not use it because of the lack of magical powers on his side.

It was the ability to create phantom soldiers.