Chapter 11
Chapter 11
I woke from a ridiculous dream, opened the lid of the smokeless barbecue barrel, and placed a [Blade-Beak Chicken] inside to roast.
“Thanks for the meal.”
It was chicken again for the second consecutive meal after last night, yet I didn’t feel tired of it at all.
After finishing breakfast with half a chicken, I wiped my mouth with satisfaction.
Breakfast was done, so it was time to work again.
I pulled out the spoils I had buried deep in my bag.
Two [F-Grade Cores] taken from the raider’s secret pocket.
“I’ll use just one for power.”
I slipped one of the cores back into my pocket.
It was insurance.
No matter how excellent this workshop was, if its location were discovered I might have to abandon it and flee.
If that happened and I had nothing left, recovery would be impossible.
Carrying at least one piece of seed money so I could start over anywhere made me feel more secure.
“Alright, let’s start investing.”
Holding the remaining [F-Grade Core], I stared at the interface floating in the center of the workshop.
All I had to do was insert the core and issue the command.
[Power Supply]
Vrrrr—
A low, heavy operating sound echoed through the underground space.
The core vanished from my hand, converted into energy.
Along the panel lines embedded in the floor and walls, blue light surged outward like blood flowing through veins.
At the same time, the gauge on the central panel began to fill.
[Power Status: 25% (Operational)]
“Twenty-five percent…”
Only a quarter.
But the weight of that number was far from light.
I pressed various buttons on the panel and began analyzing it.
If I turned the lights on at full brightness in maintenance mode, the power would last about twenty days.
If I kept them dim, it could last over a hundred days.
But that was only if I did nothing but breathe.
“What about running equipment?”
The battery would drain like when running a high-performance game on a smartphone.
Maybe not even a day.
Maybe only a few hours.
“So the conclusion is obvious.”
Production was not free.
To comfortably run [Production] through the workshop facilities required enormous numbers of cores.
With my current core supply uncertain, that was a luxury.
“For now, I’ll have to grind down my own body.”
My main method would have to be manual manufacturing, using my naturally recovering biological energy.
It would be slower and harder, but it was safe.
Of course, I desperately needed another way to generate electricity.
If raiders could keep batteries charged, there must be methods—solar power, generators, something.
Until then, I had to conserve cores.
“But I can’t just hoard them forever.”
Still.
Vrrrr—
The faint hum of the workshop machinery.
And even with charcoal filters, the faint smell of roasted chicken lingering in the air.
The door was closed now, but the moment I opened it for ventilation, the smell and noise would leak outside.
“It’s basically advertising that I live here.”
If this base—powered by an entire D-grade core—were discovered, it would be the end.
I needed ventilation ducts to block machine noise and redirect the smell far away.
Most urgent of all was the crude camouflage covering the workshop.
“I need to hide it perfectly.”
Originally this supply warehouse had been half buried underground.
Later it had simply been covered with debris.
Now it was exposed because I had used [Disassembly].
I had covered it roughly with [Manufacture], but to fully conceal a warehouse this large that way would take at least a week.
A shelter hunting squad would definitely pass nearby before then.
The concealment had to be finished quickly.
I need heavy equipment.
I remembered the hydraulic arms of the massive machines I had seen during shelter construction.
Right.
That would be my first workshop facility.
This was exactly why I had spent precious power earlier.
I immediately opened the [Manufacture] tab and entered the design in my mind.
A hydraulic robotic arm modeled after an excavator.
Flash!
The workshop lights flickered.
All the ceiling lights focused on one point.
A massive iron structure began forming on the workbench.
At the same time, the energy gauge on the panel dropped sharply.
“Wait, what the—!”
[Power Status: 15% (Operational)]
Ten percent vanished just to create this metal arm.
Nearly half of the power I had charged—25%—was gone in an instant.
My stomach twisted, but it was already built.
All that mattered now was whether it worked.
Whirr—clank.
The giant robotic arm installed near the entrance began moving with a heavy mechanical sound.
As a test, I commanded it to lift a massive piece of concrete rubble nearby.
Creeeak…
CRACK!
“Huh?”
With a horrifying snapping sound, the robotic arm’s elbow joint screamed.
The rubble fell with a thud.
The arm hung limply.
The joint had twisted and shattered under the weight.
“Damn it, my precious power!!”
I screamed and clutched my head.
Half an F-grade core’s worth of electricity wasted just trying to lift that thing.
Staring at the robotic arm reduced to scrap metal, rage boiled up.
“Damn… I thought about it too simply.”
Because my ability moved materials so easily, I had overlooked the problem.
A simple joint structure couldn’t withstand the massive load of scrap metal.
I took a deep breath and calmly analyzed the cause.
Examining the broken pieces, I recalled the heavy machinery from memory.
Those machines weren’t just thick.
They had a two-stage boom structure to distribute force.
And dual hydraulic cylinders supporting both sides.
“Right… that’s how it should’ve been made.”
After redesigning it, I stood before the broken arm with a wrench.
If I destroyed everything and built a new one, it would cost power again.
[Repair]
I collapsed to the ground, soaked in sweat, and bitterly admitted the truth.
“Something this big… can’t be fixed with mental energy alone.”
This kind of thing required the workshop’s power.
I gathered the remaining materials and injected power again.
Since it was a modification, it only consumed 5%.
[Power Status: 10% (Operational)]
Hiss—
The broken arm melted away.
A new frame and cylinders formed on top of it.
Thicker.
More precise.
Mechanical elegance in its design.
[Large Retractable Hydraulic Robotic Arm]
“Please work this time…”
With trembling hands, I pressed the activation button.
Pshhhh—
With the smooth sound of hydraulic pressure releasing, the two-stage boom extended.
The dual cylinders moved with heavy power.
The same concrete rubble that had broken the arm earlier—
This time it lifted as lightly as cotton candy.
Thud.
The massive debris covered the entrance.
But the robotic arm remained completely stable.
When the work was finished, the arm folded smoothly into a gap in the wall and stored itself.
From the outside, it looked like nothing more than a pile of debris.
Even better concealment than when I had first discovered the warehouse.
The workshop was located in ruins formed by collapsed villas.
The garbage hill was an artificial mountain created by fallen apartment complexes, so fewer eyes came this way.
It was open ground without hiding places, which meant mutants rarely came here.
“Oh! It worked…!”
Relief and exhilaration burst out at the same time.
At that moment, the system reacted.
Just as expected, manufacturing a complex machine produced a reward.
Seeing the message erased my fatigue instantly.
[Work Protocol] Level 2 Achieved
It wasn’t just a number increase.
A huge list of blueprints had been unlocked.
So many different devices existed in the world.
A wide smile spread across my face as I scrolled through the long list.
Precision machining.
The meaning of that phrase was obvious.
When I first obtained the [Grenade] blueprint, [Manufacture] failed.
That was why yesterday I had to create and use a [Crude Fragmentation Grenade] through multiple steps.
But now things were different.
With [Work Protocol] Level 2, I could now mass-produce [Military Grenades] with precision manufacturing.
After finishing the workshop camouflage—
It was time to organize the interior.
[Storage Lv.1]
Current Capacity: 752 / 1,000 kg
After endlessly feeding the garbage hill into the system, the warehouse was almost full.
Mostly useless chunks of concrete.
“One ton… even scrap metal would fill it quickly.”
The entire garbage hill was my resource.
But that didn’t mean I could digitize all of it and carry it in my pocket.
Expecting an infinite inventory like a video game would be greedy.
Efficient management was necessary.
I immediately opened the settings menu and adjusted the filtering options.
“Copper, lithium, gunpowder, semiconductors… important materials go straight to storage.”
These were lightweight but difficult-to-obtain key resources.
Common materials required different treatment.
“Scrap metal, concrete, plastic. You’re expelled.”
I couldn’t waste precious capacity on abundant materials.
I changed the [Disassembly] option to [Selective Storage].
Only key materials would enter [Storage], while the rest would remain in physical form.
Did that mean I would throw them away?
Of course not.
There might be situations where I was trapped in the workshop and unable to gather materials outside.
So I began taking scrap metal out of Storage.
The workshop interior was spacious anyway.
I could pile it up on one side.
Whirr.
Using the Large Hydraulic Robotic Arm, a massive 300-kg compressed scrap cube was placed in a corner.
Even an Awakened couldn’t lift something like this.
Moving it so easily reminded me of the days when I carried 30-kg loads up and down three basement floors.
“This is ridiculous.”
But once placed down, the cube was barely noticeable.
The warehouse ceiling was over six meters high.
The area exceeded 200 pyeong.
A one-meter cube was nothing.
Even after removing all scrap metal from storage, it hardly showed.
“There’s too much space.”
Looking at the empty walls of the workshop made me greedy.
Leaving such a huge space unused was practically negligence.
I made a decision.
“I’ll fill an entire wall.”
Since I used the space alone, there was no downside to storing large quantities of materials.
I headed back outside to the garbage hill.
[Disassembly]
Without physical labor, resources poured in as soon as I touched things.
However, there was something to watch out for.
If I filled the entire wall, the garbage hill itself might noticeably shrink.
“I’ll hollow it out from the inside.”
Like an ant digging a tunnel, I carefully dismantled the interior of the hill.
The resources were sorted in real time.
Copper, lithium, rare earth metals, chemicals—anything valuable relative to weight went straight into Storage.
Common construction materials—scrap metal, concrete, plastic—were placed into Storage temporarily and then expelled.
Then I returned and set the robotic arm to work.
Moving the arm consumed very little power.
The square cubes expelled from storage were stacked along the wall.
Hiss—thud.
Hiss—thud.
The rhythmic hydraulic sounds filled the vast workshop.
It felt like managing a giant logistics center.
Neatly.
Without gaps.
I stacked the cubes along the wall like Tetris blocks.
The repetitive task wasn’t boring at all.
Instead, it gave a strange sense of satisfaction.
Watching the wall of resources grow higher felt like filling my stomach.
After one hour—
“Whew.”
Wiping sweat from my forehead, I looked up at the result.
It was spectacular.
Thirty meters wide.
Five meters high.
An entire wall of the massive workshop was filled with resource cubes.
It looked like a giant fortress wall.
I checked my assets.
The largest portion consisted of black [Scrap Metal Cubes], about 300 of them.
Converted by weight, that was 300 tons.
Enough to manufacture one hundred thousand rifles by rough calculation.
Next to them were about 100 tons of gray [Concrete Blocks].
Colorful piles of [Plastic], [Rubber], and [Wood] totaling around 30 to 40 tons.
“This is insane.”
The emptiness I felt when placing the first cube had disappeared.
My whole life had been spent carrying other people’s burdens with nothing of my own.
“And all of this is mine.”
My chest swelled with pride.
[Work Protocol] was now Level 2.
The workshop was organized.
…Wait.
Not quite.
In the corner lay the leather sack I had tossed aside earlier.
The prepared Blade-Beak Chickens.
“Hm. Will these go into storage too?”
I had already eaten half a roasted one.
I had considered making jerky, but I didn’t have salt.
If I left them like this, they would soon spoil.
“I’m curious. Let’s try.”
I placed the processed Blade-Beak Chicken meat into Storage.
When I checked the status window, I froze.
[Freshness: 87% (Preserved)]
“Preserved…?”
As if possessed, I tapped the detailed description.
[As long as power is maintained, organic matter inside the Storage will experience no change of state.]
My breath caught.
No change of state.
That meant…
“Time stop?”
This was insane.
Refrigerators? Freezers?
None of that was necessary.
As long as electricity didn’t run out, freshly hunted meat would remain fresh forever.
The biggest problem in food storage—spoilage—was solved instantly.
“Eureka!”
This was incredible.
Now I didn’t have to hunt every day.
I could hunt large quantities at once, store them, and take them out one by one.
Storage capacity: 1,000 kg.
Clearly, filling it with scrap metal would have been a waste.