The underground core workshop of the Vault was now so silent that only the faint hum of electrical currents remained.
Four oddly shaped maintenance drones, resembling oversized metal discs, hovered in mid-air. Beneath them, multi-functional mechanical arms were undergoing self-checks; occasional sparks of blue arc lightning flickered from the nozzles of their plasma cutters.
Andy stood among them, data streams flashing frantically across his eyes. He was doing something extremely violent: rewriting the low-level protocols of these little guys.
These drones were originally appendages of the "Molecular Matter Reconstructor." Their control logic had been tethered to the Black Box's sub-systems, making them sluggish. Worse, every command had to be relayed through the Black Box's central processor first.
To Andy, this back-and-forth was an intolerable waste of time. He directly severed their connection to the Black Box and burned his own supreme authority code into their logic cores.
[Protocol Reset.]
[Direct Link Established: Andy (DAOT-7734 Autonomous Engineering Unit) · Main Control Unit.]
A few seconds later, the drones' standby lights—originally a flickering yellow—suddenly snapped into the same ghostly blue as Andy's electronic eyes. Their movements became incredibly agile, even predicting shifts based on the subtle micro-movements of Andy's thoughts.
This wasn't just gaining a few more pairs of hands; it represented a physical extension of Andy's computing power. From now on, tasks requiring micron-level precision—welding, cutting, assembly—no longer required Andy to bend over personally. He only needed to generate a blueprint in his mind, and these four drones would replicate his operations perfectly with microsecond latency.
With the "laborers" sorted, it was time for the main event.
The Molecular Matter Reconstructor—the Black Box Andy had just salvaged. It had been reinstalled in a specially excavated, temperature-controlled workshop, powered by a high-voltage dedicated line secured from the Iron Brotherhood.
Andy stood at the console, watching the intake port swallow a pile of rusted scrap iron and rotten steel plates. Minutes later, the output port spat out gleaming, silver-white metal ingots.
Ultra-high-strength Chrome-Molybdenum steel. Hardness: HRC60. Impurity content: less than one part in a hundred thousand.
What did this represent in the industrial hierarchy of the Warhammer universe?
On a modern Adeptus Mechanicus Forge World, reaching a purity of one part in ten thousand would be cause for prayer and celebration. Such materials were reserved for repairing the skeletal frames of Titans or forging Artificer Power Armor for Space Marines.
One part in a hundred thousand meant the material's physical properties were pushed to their theoretical limits. It was, for all intents and purposes, touching the ceiling of conventional physical laws.
Of course, as impressive as this Reconstructor was, it wasn't one of those god-tier creations integrated into a complete STC terminal. A true STC terminal could ignore the laws of entropy at a subatomic level, turning common stones into antimatter.
As for this machine's actual performance...
Many unrefined locals, or those with a skewed understanding of Dark Age of Technology (DAOT) relics, might treat this as an omnipotent "Wish Machine"—thinking they could toss in some trash, make a wish, and have it spit out Antimatter or Adamantium.
That was pure nonsense.
In the STC product hierarchy, this Reconstructor belonged to the support facilities for mid-range Industrial Mother Machines. Its working principle was based on molecular rearrangement within conventional physical laws; its upper limit was naturally stuck within the category of "Conventional Matter."
You could toss in a pile of electronic waste mixed with copper, iron, and tin, and it would separate them into pure copper, pure iron, and pure tin—or even synthesize them directly into specialized alloys. But if you threw in a pile of rocks, it would only spit out high-purity silicon or specialized glass; it would absolutely never turn into Vibranium.
Regardless, there was no doubt that this machine had pushed physical reconstruction at its level to the absolute limit. Anything higher was beyond the scope of this mid-range device. This was its performance boundary—and the limit of what Andy could currently utilize.
But even so, in any conventional industrial field, it could be summarized in two words: "Material Freedom."
With this realization, Andy's "farming" strategy became crystal clear. The first project he tackled was the rocket launcher that had been giving him a headache for a long time: the XPG-200 Individual Rocket Launcher.
Setting aside the fuse reliability issues, the launcher itself was deeply flawed. During previous test fires, it had a habit of exploding in the tube or veering wildly off-course mid-flight. The culprit was the nozzle material. The Vault's previous casting process was too primitive; the nozzles couldn't withstand the thousands of degrees and high pressure of the rocket engine, leading to severe erosion and uneven thrust.
That problem was now a thing of the past.
Andy had the Reconstructor synthesize a batch of high-melting-point Tungsten-Titanium alloy. In the past, this was a luxury material reserved for the aerospace sector. Now, Andy was using it for rocket launcher nozzles.
When Bauer received this batch of new nozzles, his hands were shaking. He cried out at the perceived extravagance: "You animal! What a waste!"
Andy: "Who's an animal?"
"I mean... I dreamed last night I was eating Grox tenderloin. That beast tasted so fresh!"
Wasteful or not, the results were immediate. In the next test fire, the rockets' trajectories were as straight as lasers—accurate enough to hit whatever they were pointed at within two hundred meters.
The warheads were also upgraded. With high-strength alloy steel available, the shell walls could be made thinner, allowing for a larger explosive payload.
As for the fuses? For the current Andy, were fuses even a problem anymore?
Then there were the new "Triple-Base" explosives Andy developed. Normally used as propellant for large-caliber artillery, they possessed extremely high energy density. Andy, having some spare time, gave them a slight "mod" based on STC blueprints to make the properties stable enough to cram into individual weaponry.
The most ingenious part was that the chemical structure of this stuff was—of all things—reversible! If Andy ever built large-caliber heavy weapons, these explosives could be recycled back into standard military propellant at any time.
One hit from this—let alone an armored vehicle—even a Space Marine in Power Armor would have to think twice about taking a direct hit to the chest.
Mass production! It had to be mass-produced! This kind of heavy firepower, capable of "vaporizing" the opposition from hundreds of meters away, was Truth. It was Justice.
Next, Andy turned his gaze toward another weapon: the High-Explosive Crossbow. A DAOT individual breach weapon, codenamed "CBS-12 Silent Arrow."
Though it sounded like a primitive cold weapon, it possessed advantages guns couldn't match: it was silent, flashless, and had no heat signature.
Andy used high-elasticity carbon fiber composites produced by the Reconstructor to craft the crossbow arms. The tension was staggering—no ordinary human could pull it back; it required a winch or exoskeleton assistance to cock.
While the principle was that of a crossbow, when paired with specialized high-explosive tipped arrows with impact fuses, this thing could theoretically blow apart a fully armored Leman Russ Battle Tank.
The only reason he hadn't done that yet was simply that Andy hadn't started stuffing fusion charges into the arrowheads. But it was already more than enough for any enemy to handle. A single shot could level a concrete wall two hundred meters away, and the enemy wouldn't even know where the fire came from.
Cheap, effective, and devious. This was the essence of war!
As for the Bolters Andy had been dreaming of...
Well, he did hand-craft a few samples of standard Bolt shells. The principle was actually simple: a miniature rocket-propelled, armor-piercing high-explosive shell. A primer kicks the bullet out of the barrel, then the rocket motor ignites to accelerate it, finally detonating once it buries itself inside the target.
With his current material quality and processing precision, Andy could absolutely build them. But after running the numbers, he decisively abandoned the mass-production plan.
The resources required for a single standard Bolt shell were enough to produce ten rockets or fifty high-explosive crossbow bolts. Furthermore, a Bolter's recoil was immense—ordinary humans couldn't use them without Power Armor or mechanical limb augmentation.
At this stage, equipping a bunch of refugees who had only just started getting full meals with Bolters would be a severe waste of resources and a strategic blunder. This tech would remain in the "reserve" pile, to be brought out only when they were rich enough—or when they encountered a monster that conventional firepower couldn't touch.
Military tech aside, the Vault's infrastructure also saw a qualitative leap.
Andy commanded the four drones to use high-purity monocrystalline silicon and copper wiring from the Reconstructor to craft the first batch of Electronic Servo-Terminals. They looked a bit like old-fashioned ATMs, featuring green monochromatic screens and several physical buttons.
"Hiss... not very aesthetic..."
But it didn't matter. For the Vault, this was era-defining. Previously, controlling the temperature of a reaction kettle relied entirely on workers manually turning valves—high error margins and a waste of manpower. Now, all key equipment was linked to Servo-Terminals. Temperature, pressure, RPM—all data was displayed on screens in real-time.
Andy even wrote a simple automation control program.
When Gamma-9 first saw the data jumping automatically on the screen and valves adjusting themselves because the temperature was too high, he knelt on the spot. He wept bitter tears, believing this was the "Machine Spirit" manifesting—the Omnissiah speaking to mortals through the screen.
Andy remained in his usual state of being unable to muster a retort. However, this was exactly the charm of automation: liberating humans from heavy, repetitive labor to do things with more value.
Like... going out to scavenge more trash to feed the Black Box. That was valuable enough, wasn't it?
Mhmm. Extremely valuable!