Chapter 609: The ultimate robot (part-1)
The giant meteor is the dowry Shen Ling gave him for the marriage. Back then, Shen Ling didn't know much about it, apart from the fact that it was constantly used by the Shen Dynasty to make more than a hundred semi-divine weapons over the years.
Mark, however, knew that it was an adamantium alloy with over 46% adamantium and other materials. It was the very reason he was tempted to marry her in the first place.
After the extraction of adamantium over the years on the island, they were used to manufacture colossal robots. But, pure adamantium is too tough to handle even for rank-10 robots. Not to mention, it isn't known to be a flexible material either. While it makes great shields, but for the robots, Mark needed something else.
Using Ark Alpha's material composition as the base, he designed colossal robots, each as big as 500 feet, made of 60% adamantium, 35% titanium, and 5% iridium and other materials.
He used iron to manufacture steel in a steel mill built on the island. However, for titanium, he had to buy tons of them every week to fill his needs for the manufacture of titanium-steel humanoid robots and adamantium-titanium colossal robots.
To his bad luck, the Dragon continent was sitting on the largest titanium reserves on the planet. Its sales are so controlled that they aren't easily available in the market.
In the past, he went through various influential merchants to import them at high costs.
To solve this, he had to make a personal visit to the White Tiger continent, aka the Beast Continent, ruled by intelligent magical beasts, as they had the second largest reserves of titanium, which they weren't aware of. Most importantly, they also had the third largest reserves of uranium, the first being the Vermillion Bird continent itself.
They only care about ether crystal mines, which Mark took advantage of and gave them something in exchange for an exclusive mining contract of their continent, except for ether crystals.
Due to the loss of their king, the Werewolf lord, more than two years ago, the continent entered into a state of civil war between various tribes. Without the Werewolf lord, the hegemony of werewolves collapsed. It became so chaotic for even Void Temple to intervene. The loss of their Matriarch also weakened them and caused a set of problems.
In such a situation, Mark first showed off his transformation of the Gargantuan Leviathan to instill fear and then ordered the Gold Dragon as well as Lan Ju to move from Western Yan to the Beast Continent.
Unlike the human empires, the beast world was quite simple. The strongest rules the land. In this situation, Zheng is the strongest. Everyone submitted to the demigod beast. However, Zheng didn't assume the role of the emperor. Instead, it assumed the role of the Beast Empire's guardian while Gold Dragon sat on the throne.
He then called various powerful tribe leaders for the meeting and promised them that he wouldn't interfere in their matters. Using Ark's help, Mark also separated the continent into various regions in a way that every tribe would get a sizable land to live in peace without any war for hegemony.
Those who rejected his proposal were exterminated coldly, and everyone was forced to submit to his peace treaty.
After bringing peace to the Beast Empire, Mark demanded the price of mining contracts for rare materials over the entire region, except for ether ores.
Had he touched ether mines, the beasts would rebel as they are extremely important to them. The energy leaked from the mines itself can be considered food for the majority of the beasts. It's because werewolves are part-human and don't need them, while they were ruling, they allowed exports of ether crystals from the empire in exchange for aquatic creatures. Even though they are in abundance all over the world, for the beast living there, fishes and other marine creatures are just exotic and often considered a delicacy. Continue reading on My Virtual Library Empire
Anyway, with the constant supply of titanium ores from the beast continent, where Ark Sextus and his robot division are in charge of the mining, the production of robots has gone smoothly over time so far.
Back to the present, Mark and Ark Alpha made their way to the building site, where various parts spread everywhere. Out of these, the ones that stood out were two large heads, each more than twice as big as compared to Ark Alpha.
"I see only three heads, Ark Alpha," said Mark. "Where's the remaining two?"
Ark Alpha replied, "We haven't assembled the parts yet, Chancellor."
"Okay, I see no tail part either. Still need to assemble?" As Mark asked, looking around, Ark Alpha answered, "We actually made the tail, but the adamantium-titanium tail isn't flexible enough. We received orders from Primordial One (Ark core) that would please you more if the tail could properly function as a dragon tail for aesthetic purposes. The best option to do it is NiTi-mythril ores. But, our entire extracted mythril is being used for the wings. There's not enough for the tail. We are also 65 tons of nickel short of what we need."
"Hmm… understood. You will get your materials soon enough. Ark Sextus will take care of the nickel sulfide and nickel laterite mineral ore extraction and I will take another trip to Earth-486 to get another batch of Mythril ores.
Okay, let's go to the prime factory."
They entered the system factory, which only looked like it was spread about 100,000 sq.m from outside but inside, it is a whole lot bigger.
They went directly to the Building section, where engine components are being manufactured.
Iridium reserves he had were used in making these missile guidance systems, and high-temperature parts like nozzles and spark plugs for missile propulsion.
"The progress, Ark Alpha?"
The robot answered, "We have manufactured enough components for 84 advanced missile guidance systems. 156 missile engine nozzle. Please come here…"
He took Mark to another room of the building section. There, large ammunition was being manufactured, although at the moment production seemed stopped. Iridium is also used in this production due to its high density and strength. An enormous number of them were kept on the corner, forming several heaps. "How many?" Mark asked, awed by their numbers, as he raised his head.
"342,741 high-performance anti-tank rounds, 672 heavy warheads."
"How much is left?"
"1549 tons. As requested by Primordial One, we kept them aside for aerospace and jet components for the future."
"Okay, is there anything new to see here?"
"I'm afraid nothing else, Chancellor. However, there is some new progress in our research facility," replied the robot. Mark nodded and finally inspected the research facility.
Of the remaining reserves of the materials he extracted from the meteor, all the reserves of Palladium and Silicate were continuously sold in the market worldwide for money as the former is used in fine jewelry production, especially white gold and wedding bands, while the latter is used in making the glass, cement, and to some extent—paints.
From the steady pace of selling, he was making atleast 100,000 gold coins every month and would continue to make for the next two decades too, with the enormous reserves he had.
Ruthenium could be utilized in fuel cell production for green energy, which he didn't have time or energy to work on, and no one in the world has an idea that rhodium could be used to plate white gold, silver, and platinum. Hence, they were kept in Mark's inventory only.
As for the reserves of Graphite, they were used in building Li-On batteries, the key opponent for the robots.
Little did Shen Ling know that Mark was building an entire empire from her dowry. And since Mark wouldn't tell her this either, he could only pay her back by giving her equal attention as Song Yue and giving her the highest seat of the Vermillion Bird continent, not just a puppet but the true authority.
One week later;
Mark returned to the Arms Factory island again and went straight to facility 2, where the assembly was finished.
Mark saw a giant five-headed robotic dragon with a curved long tail and glowing mythril wings, standing straight and looking down at him with blank eyes. Its blue eyes don't have power at the moment, and there are five cube-sized holes: one at the middle head, two at its back, one in the underside around the belly region, and the last one just below its five necks, at the joint.
"If you will, Chancellor…"
Ark Alpha brought five glowing cube-shaped cores on a platter.
"Fuu… let's do this…"
Taking a heavy breath, Mark grabbed one and flew to the head, inserting it while muttering under his breath, "Ark, set to gravity."
*Ding! The Gravity Attribute essence is being extracted.
He pushed the cube into the hole while his attribute energy lit it up in a dark aura.
*Ding! Proceeding the integration…