Origin Seeker

Dream checked his status after chatting with Idona and Ciroc.

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Name: Dream

Species: Human Male

Class: [Master Artificer]

Titles: [Origin Seeker]

Level: 175

Stats: Strength- B      Agility- B+

Stamina- B       Magic- A-

Passive Skills: [Sophia] Lvl. 81, [Magic] Lvl. 71

Active Skills: [Summons From Another World], [Material Magic] Lvl. 64

'11 levels. Sweet. Even my two magics leveled up.'

He smiled seeing the numbers. Both of his Magics leveled up 3 times as well. It was always nice to see progress.

Since all the demons were taken care of, everyone loaded back up into the carriages and set off again. Dream relaxed in his seat with his eyes closed, pondering.

'It won't be long until I reach class 3. Do you think I would be able to level up one of my skills before then? You, perhaps?'

[Maybe. Though I'm worried about what might become of me should that happen. It's unpredictable what it might turn me into. And I don't think I'll be able to fight it.]

'Hmm, I didn't think of that. Though I don't think it would be anything bad. What happened last time when Savant evolved?'

[Actually, I don't know. All I remember was when I was born. It was a weird and sudden process. It was also very enlightening because that's when I became one with you. I got all of your memories and feelings and understood who I was. It was the greatest day of my life.]

'Aww. Look at you making me feel all fuzzy inside.'

[Either way, we don't know how this is going to go. And call me selfish, but I don't want to lose what we have. Especially to that damn system. But I also won't shy from it. It's a necessary step that we need to face eventually. And if anything is going to change, I think it should happen during a class advancement. That'll give the best results, whatever they might be.]

'...I also don't want to lose what we have, but you're right. We will need to cross that bridge. Although, I don't think that'll be for a while. After how far we've come, you're still only level 80. And at the rate I'm leveling up, I don't think you're going to evolve anytime soon. We'll have to wait for the class 4 advancement, so we have time. Let's enjoy it.'

[We will enjoy it. In fact, let's start now.]

Dream's consciousness was pulled into his mind space. He didn't resist and was quickly put face to face with Sophia inside the cabin. 

[Comere.]

Sophia jumped on him and wrapped him up, sealing their lips. 

[Mmm....]

"...Excited?"

Dream spoke after they separated. He looked into her eyes and could swear he saw hearts.

[Little bit. We've been working hard lately. I think a bit of stress relief is in order.]

"Huhu, I enthusiastically concur."

[Hehe, nerd.]

Sophia laughed as Dream walked them to the bedroom. He dropped her on the bed and they began undressing each other. 

"Let's dance."

...........

.......

Several hours later, Dream and Sophia were lazily relaxing on a couch. 

The expedition had cleared out another couple of demon outposts, though Dream didn't fight for any of them and just chilled in the carriage. 

He wasn't worried about losing out on experience. There would be plenty when they crossed the landbridge. He knew this because of the information the robot army was sending back every minute. 

There were even more outposts on the third continent than what they were encountering, and all of them were bigger, and had stronger enemies manning them. The army had even taken down several class 3's, which led to Dream making several observations about experience gain. 

He had actually discovered before he left that his robots that were made with his cores did indeed give him experience from the enemies that they killed. Additionally, this experience ignored distance and wasn't reduced despite being killed by his machines. When he had discovered this, he was obviously very excited. His machines were running every hour of the day and although they may not be fighting all those hours, they were fighting more often than him. 

The number of class 2 and below demons that had been killed by his mechanical legion was already within the hundreds of thousands. though the number of class 3's that had fallen under them could be counted on one hand. In fact, out of the initial 5,000 soldiers, only 2,300 remained. These soldiers had fallen under the class 3's that they encountered. And although they tried to take the class 3's down with them, they were just too strong to be killed that easily. 

So after all the fighting they had done, the robots didn't really help Dream gain any experience. Killing anything under his level gave a minuscule amount of experience that, even with his title bonus, wouldn't ever make a large impact even when multiplied by several hundred thousand. The experience necessary to get to the next level was becoming more and more ridiculous, and only class 3's would give him an amount that could be considered effective. 

Out of everything they killed, he might have gained a couple levels. But with him fighting class 3's and leveling up on the daily, it wasn't noticeable. 

So for now he gave up on using a robot army as a means of gaining adequate experience. But that didn't mean they were totally useless. Dream couldn't fight millions of demons alone, especially when they were spread out. So he could use robots to make up for his lack of numbers. His 5,000 robots had already been extremely efficient. Imagine if he had 50,000. Or maybe even 500,000. He would have no problems with felling demon hordes by the million.

Although they wouldn't be able to handle anything above their level, that's what he was there for. Class 3's were lesser in number, and it was nothing that he couldn't handle himself. So with the robots, he had his fronts covered.

......

Over the next several days, the expedition team went from outpost to outpost and cleared them all without any casualties. 

In this time, Dream had actually been coming and going from the team. He had spent most of his time up in the space factory which had resumed operations. And he was there to experiment with demon corpses and complete one project. Aegis' upgrade.

He wanted to be fully prepared for when they crossed the land bridge, and Aegis was his strongest assurance. But even besides making Aegis stronger for protection, Dream also wanted to do the upgrade just because it was interesting. Because this time, instead of using mithril for the material, they were going to use his enhanced steel.

Before the nuclear explosion that obliterated most of his materials, the bots at the station had been able to produce grade 7 steel, which was equivalent to grade 8 mithril. They had also been able to produce a very decent amount, and this steel had stayed in his inventory since it was his most precious resource. 

But despite having this grade 7 steel, Dream wasn't satisfied and decided to shoot higher. So for those few days before reaching the land bridge, he worked on enhancing the steel to grade 8. Which surprisingly, wasn't that difficult. 

He first used the globe network system that they developed to transfer the flux from the newly acquired class 3 demon material to the grade 7 steel. This process was much easier than before due to his increased mana pool density and went smoothly, saving them lots of material and boosting the steel to grade 7.5.

When that was done, he personally enhanced the steel further. And after going through 40% of the material he had, he was able to create 300 pounds of grade 8.3 steel. 

Dream sat on a chair in the station staring at the pile of steel spheres in front of him. 

"...Alright. We have two days before we reach the land bridge. How long will it take to upgrade Aegis?"

[Depends on the extent of the upgrade. I know you want to bring out its fullest capabilities, so I'll make it simple. We will first decrease the size of each metal cell. Aegis' silver cells are currently the size of a blood cell. We can cut that size down by over 90%, making it about a micrometer in size. This will obviously mean more cells and therefore a more complex network. But with Aegis' help and our improved magic abilities, this shouldn't take too long. We will then pass over Aegis' intelligence by integrating him with his new steel skin. This will also not take very long.]

"So around a day or so?"

[For this yes. But the hard part comes when we decide to increase Aegis' mana reserves. We will have to extract the liquid mana from his silver cells and move it over, and we will also have to retrofit the cells' cores. This is what will take a long time, and I'm estimating at least 5 days to complete this.]

"...Are we keeping his silver cells?"

[No. Once we transferred his intelligence and liquid mana over, we could use it for whatever we want.]

"Hmm...I have two ideas. One, we use Aegis' silver cells as flux fuel for the steel suit. Two, we try and produce liquid mana."

[Produce it?]

"Yes. You said that if we increase the density of mana enough, it'll change form into this liquid mana. Well, my mana is beginning to reach a positively high density, so I think we should try and attempt it. Besides, that little diamond orb had all that liquid mana in it and it was just found in the mountains. Why couldn't we make it?"

[We can give it a shot. No guarantees though.]

"Sure. Even if we can't, we can at least try to integrate the liquid mana with the cell cores instead of it being just a secondary mana pool. If it comes to that, I also have ideas for things we could do."

[Very well. First and foremost though, let's get the steel cells formed. We'll start now.]

Saying so, Sophia brought over the grade 8 steel that they had. Aegis also came out and turned into a silver cloud.

"I am thankful for your consideration, my lord."

"Of course. Now, let's get to work."

Suddenly, the metal in front of him began to disintegrate into particles. These particles went over and were merged with Aegis in his cloud form and stabilized inside. 

As they shaved off particles from the steel, Dream and Sophia were forming the particles to how they wanted them. This time, instead of making the cell-like structure as with the silver, they ditched the membrane and only used steel spheres. The steel was formed into millions of simple micro balls, which drastically cut down on the time it took to form everything. 

After a few hours, Dream and Sophia had gone through all the grade 8 steel they had. Though they wouldn't be using it all for Aegis, they decided to form the steel this way should they want to use it for any future projects. 

So with all the necessary material stabilized within Aegis, they got to work on enchanting. Sophia immediately formed the globe network and attached it to Aegis and the cloud of steel particles. 

Using the same infection technique as last time along with a much more powerful enchanting method, the billions of steel particles were enchanted, filled with dense mana, and interconnected electromagnetically as well as magically. Sophia also had several improvements that she enacted which would greatly increase performance and utility. 

All of this took 5 hours, and within the same day, Dream was able to make the hardware for Aegis.

"*sigh* Nice. By ditching the membrane and just sticking with the core, not only did we cut down on size but also time."

Dream had actually proposed this while they were making the steel particles. He wasn't sure why they needed to have a cell-like structure, so after bringing up the simple idea of getting rid of the outer wall, it was adopted and put into action. 

[Although the wall was mainly for added protection, the tradeoff for more material is indeed better. Individually the particles wouldn't be as strong as a cell, but there are more of them to make up for that. It also makes for better utility and mobility among the particles.]

"I know. I'm quite the genius aren't I? Anyway, we've got them connected, and now we just need to port Aegis over?"

[Yes. Aegis has his instructions.]

"I shall begin now."

Aegis spoke up, and right after, a connection was made over mana and electricity from the silver cells to the steel particles. 

Sophia obviously assisted and it wasn't long before Aegis was successfully transferred to his new skin.

"...It feels...stronger."

He immediately adapted to his new body. Sophia had already given him the data in order to use the steel and how to handle it optimally. Dream nodded in satisfaction.

"Good. Now this liquid mana, bring it out."

"Of course, my lord."

Aegis went to work. His nearly few trillion particles went up to the billions of silver cells that were his previous skin and broke them open, extracting the liquid mana. It was only a few seconds before Aegis had conglomerated the ball of liquid mana and brought it to Dream in a steel flask.

"Thanks."

Dream took the steel flask and checked out the mana inside. He then proceeded to dump a bit into his hand.

"The peculiar thing about liquid mana is that it can be interacted with in the 3rd dimension, unlike regular mana which can only be interacted with in the 4th dimension. You said it was 4th dimension becoming dense enough to cast a shadow into the 3rd dimension. So to use this liquid mana, we need to just dismantle it in the 4th dimension and it'll evaporate which will change its form into something I can use. Now that I think of it, we have yet to actually use this liquid mana through Aegis."

[We've never had a situation in which we've needed to consume it, no.]

"But we also weren't able to recover it should it be consumed. Though that may change today. Aegis."

"My lord."

Aegis conglomerated into his humanoid form and bowed to Dream. This form was basically the same as before except metallic grey instead of lighter silver. It was also bigger by about 40%, and just standing Aegis was actually taller than Dream. 

"I want you to form into a sphere. We're going to condense the shit out of some mana."

"Understood."

Aegis diffused and reformed into a solid steel sphere with a small hollow center. Dream put the liquid mana back in the flask and set it down before putting his hands on the sphere.

"This'll take lots of raw effort. We need to shove mana into the hollow center and maintain it while adding more. Though this will all take place in the 4th dimension, if we succeed we'll see results in the third and come out with liquid mana. You've got more mana than I do, but that doesn't mean it's denser, so you'll be in charge of supply while I'm in charge of condensation. Comprendo?"

"Compris."

"Good. Then let's begin."