Industrial automation was pure, unadulterated therapy.
In the center of Subterranean Floor 1, Austin stood beside the newly completed pride of his workshop: a sixty-foot automated conveyor transport line.
Stretched across twenty precision-machined rollers turned from solid Azure-Dragon Spirit Iron was a heavy, three-ply canvas belt. He had reinforced it with cross-woven hemp fiber, boiled it in natural resin, and spliced the ends with brass alligator clips hammered flush into the carcass. Driven by an enclosed step-up gearbox bolted directly to the fifteen-foot Pelton waterwheel turbine, the belt hummed along at a brisk fifteen miles per hour: *whir-click, whir-click.*
Along the perimeter of the timber frame, Austin had laid down two crisp, bright yellow hazard lines using ground sulfur mixed with boiled pine oil.
"Proper work-zone demarcation," Austin muttered, wiping his fingers on a dry cotton rag. "If a machine has moving parts running past sixty revolutions per minute, you paint a thirty-six-inch designated pedestrian walkway. No wandering into pinch points. You get your hemp sleeve caught between a drive pulley and a three-ply belt, and you're leaving your forearm behind. First rule of industrial safety."
Beside the intake hopper, Pug was sprawled across the cool obsidian flagstones, his three heads resting on his front paws. The Three-Headed Nether-Solar Cerberus had his eyes half-closed, his stubby tail giving a lazy *thump, thump* against the stone every time the waterwheel buckets slapped through the flume. Every few minutes, Pug’s nostrils would flare, sniffing the faint scent of refined mineral grease drifting from the roller bearings.
At the far end of the conveyor line sat the crown jewel: the Automated Mechanical Sorting Arm.
It was a counterbalanced rocker mechanism equipped with magnetic induction plates and a spring-loaded balance scale. As material glided down the belt, the rocker checked weight and density in a split second. Pure thirty-pound spirit-iron blocks were nudged down an angled cedar slide into storage bays. Rogue shale chunks, quartz river stones, and scrap rock were shunted off the edge into a ten-foot-deep vertical basalt chute stenciled with white lead paint: `[SLAG RECYCLING BIN]`.
Austin held his flat iron clipboard in the crook of his elbow, watching a fresh blue crystal block glide past the balance arm.
*Snick. Clack. Sorted.*
The block dropped cleanly into coordinate `[Rack: 04, Slot: 12]`.
"Flawless mechanical throughput," Austin said softly, a tired smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Sixty blocks a minute. Zero back strain. Zero stamina drain. Once I get the bucket elevator hooked up to the surface shed, the whole mine-to-stockpile loop runs completely autonomous. You just sit back and watch the numbers tick up."
Suddenly, Pug’s six ears snapped straight up.
The hound's three heads rose in unison, ruby star-eyes locking onto the solid granite of the eastern wall. A low, multi-tonal rumble vibrated deep in Pug's chest, hair standing up along his black-scaled spine.
"What is it, boy?" Austin frowned, lowering his clipboard. "Did a water valve stick?"
*KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!*
The entire eastern wall detonated inward.
A concussive blast wave blew out three quartz lanterns. The air vanished in a blinding spray of pulverized rock dust, fractured basalt gravel, and choking black smoke.
Through the shattered stone came the snout of the twenty-foot snail-skiff.
Studded with thousands of rotating diamond teeth, the conical drill head punched through the vitrified granite like a boot through drywall. The hybrid combustion engine screamed at maximum throttle, belching clouds of foul, greasy diesel-spirit exhaust straight into the pristine subterranean hall.
Austin stood frozen.
A thick cloud of grey quartz grit drifted through the air. It settled across his mirror-smooth obsidian floor. It coated the hand-planed pine storage racks.
And then, Austin watched in silent horror as a shower of sticky, black diesel soot rained down directly into the exposed, freshly greased roller bearings of his humming conveyor line.
His fingers went numb.
The iron clipboard slipped from his hand, hitting the floor with a hollow metallic clang: *CLAT-CLATTER.*
Before his eyes, the developer interface flared with furious, pulsing amber alert boxes:
Austin’s left eye twitched.
His jaw set so hard his molars ground together like millstones. A cold, suffocating, contractor fury—the murderous wrath of a craftsman whose fresh finish coat was just keyed by a reckless forklift driver—ignited in his chest.
From the smoking breach behind the idling cutter head, thirty heavily armored figures jumped down into the hall.
Dressed in black-iron plate armor and brandishing diamond-tipped drilling picks and heavy tower shields, the battle-miners fanned out into a broad wedge.
At their head marched Director Tie Feng, his spirit-steel mechanical arm whirring with angry yellow sparks, his scarred face twisted in triumphant arrogance:
"SECURE THE CAVERN!" Tie Feng bellowed, his voice echoing off the vaulted stone. "BY SACRED MANDATE OF THE GREAT YAN DYNASTY, ALL SPIRIT VEINS, ORE DEPOSITS, AND SUBTERRANEAN ASSETS WITHIN THIS SECTOR ARE CONFISCATED FOR THE CROWN! ANYONE WHO RESISTS SHALL BE EXECUTED FOR HIGH TREASON!"
Tie Feng took a proud, aggressive combat lunge forward to plant his authority.
His heavy, steel-shod military boot landed squarely in the center of Austin's resin-coated canvas conveyor belt.
The belt was traveling at fifteen miles per hour.
*WHIRRRRRRRRR!*
Basic workshop physics took over.
Between the smooth, iron-plated soles of Tie Feng’s military boots and the slick, resin-sealed canvas running at full speed, kinetic friction dropped to zero.
Tie Feng’s front foot was violently ripped out from under him.
He flipped backward into the air like a startled acrobat, arms flailing, before crashing onto his armored rear with a bone-jarring *CRUNCH!*
"WHAT IN THE NINE—?!" Tie Feng gasped, wind knocked clean out of his chest as his mechanical hand clawed uselessly at the passing belt.
Behind him, thirty battle-miners were already charging forward at full sprint in tight ranks, war cries ringing from their helms:
"FOR THE IRON PAVILION! SEIZE THE—!"
*Crash! Tumble! Clatter!*
The lead five miners stepped directly onto the high-speed canvas, tripped over their groaning director, and pitched headfirst into the deck!
The next rank couldn't check their stride. They tumbled over the fallen men like a row of collapsing scaffolding! Within three seconds, all thirty battle-miners and Director Tie Feng had balled up into a single, flailing, cursing tangle of black-iron plate, drill pikes, dented shields, and thrashing boots.
*WHIRRRRRRRRR!*
The Pelton waterwheel turbine, backed by forty horsepower of roaring water pressure, didn't care about Golden Core spiritual weight.
The sixty-foot canvas belt carried the squirming mountain of thirty-one imperial cultivators smoothly down the line at fifteen miles per hour.
Straight toward the sorting station.
As the writhing mass passed beneath the overhead magnetic induction scale, the sorting rocker clicked sharply into position:
*CLACK.*
Driven by direct waterwheel torque through a cast-iron lever arm, the heavy sorting plow swung across the conveyor belt like a railway snowplow clearing a snowdrift.
*SWWWWWWWIPE!*
The iron beam caught Tie Feng, his whirring mechanical arm, and all thirty miners in a single, clean, panoramic shove!
"WAIT! CEASE! WE ARE THE IMPERIAL IRON PAVI—AAGGHHH!"
*SPLOOSH-THUD-CRASH-CLATTER!*
All thirty-one cultivators were swept off the edge and tumbled ten feet down the vertical basalt disposal chute!
They hit bottom with a thunderous clatter of dented armor and groans.
*SLAM.*
The two-inch-thick solid basalt trapdoor swung shut above their heads, latching with a heavy magnetic *CLICK*.
Inside the bin, total, suffocating darkness closed in.
Director Tie Feng was pinned beneath two heavy tower shields, an enforcer's muddy greave wedged under his chin. Blind fury flooded his skull.
"Insolent mountain heretics!" Tie Feng roared, channeling his Late Golden Core cultivation. Yellow spiritual energy ignited along his blackened prosthetic arm, forming a lethal aura blade. "You dare use a petty pitfall trap on an Imperial Director?! Break the walls! Sunder the stone! Grind this wretched box to powder!"
Tie Feng drove his spirit-charged fist into the basalt wall with everything he had!
*BOOM!*
A dull, dead thud echoed through the stone.
The basalt wall—vitrified by Austin's plasma exhaust and backed by three hundred feet of mountain bedrock—didn't shed a single grain of dust. The concussive rebound slammed straight back into Tie Feng’s prosthetic shoulder, making his internal spirit-stone pistons shriek: *SKRRRRT.*
"Director..." an enforcer whimpered from the dark. "My spiritual sense is blocked! The stone... it eats spiritual qi! We're sealed in!"
Up on the clean factory floor, Austin walked slowly over to the waste bin.
In his right hand, he held his five-foot Stellar-Steel pipe wrench, resting the twenty-pound jaw against his thigh. He stood above the iron inspection grate in the floor, looking down through the narrow bars into the dark pit. Pug trotted up beside him, sniffing the iron grate and letting out a low, disapproving snort.
Austin let out a long, slow, contractor sigh that sounded like air bleeding from a pneumatic brake line.
"Unbelievable," Austin muttered, shaking his head. "Look at that pathfinding. Absolutely pathetic. Thirty burrowing mobs spawned inside the wall mesh, marched straight onto the moving conveyor line, and jumped into the scrap bin."
He leaned down and tapped the iron bars twice with the jaw of his wrench:
*CLINK. CLINK.*
The harmonic chime rang through the enclosed stone pit like a temple bell, making thirty-one men drop their weapons and clutch their ears in agony.
"Hey! Down in the compost pit!" Austin called out, his voice dead flat. "Keep the racket down. You’re exceeding the seventy-decibel limit for an active workshop. And if you scratch the vitrified basalt lining in that bin, I'm hooking the high-pressure waterwheel flush straight to the top grate and washing out the sludge."
A chorus of terrified whimpers drifted up from the dark.
"Who... who are you?!" Tie Feng's voice croaked upward through the bars. "We are the Imperial Iron Pavilion! We hold the Emperor’s mandate!"
"I don't care if you have an endorsement from the developer's mother," Austin said coldly. "You tracked diesel soot all over my canvas belt and dumped quartz grit into my roller bearings. Do you have any idea how long it takes to turn replacement sleeve bearings on a hand lathe? You’re lucky the scrap recycler hasn't cycled yet."
Austin stepped away from the hatch, pushing his brass goggles up onto his forehead with an irritated grunt:
"Worst mob AI I've seen in an early access alpha. If the developers don't patch subterranean collision meshes soon, I'm building automated plasma turrets and wiring them to motion sensors."