Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 54: Dreaming of a miner

"So that’s how…"

Bound by the preconception of what he had already figured out, Theo found it rather hard to crack the secret of the alleged other use of his tool.

It was no button. Or, not exactly just a matter of pressing one.

To change mode from harvesting to scanning mode, Theo first had to twist the whole thing, turning its upper half against the lower. Only then would the button switch its function, allowing Theo to perform the next expected step of his tutorial.

[Use the basher’s resource scanner: 1/1]

And with it, merely a few moments later…

[Locate the nearest unoccupied resource vein: 1/1]

The last step, one that made Theo worried about actually exhausting his ore vein…

Contrary to his expectations, though, the notification appeared right as he finished reading through the last one.

[Mine out ten units of ore: 30/10]

[Mine out ten units of ore: Completed]

[Universal Basher’s tutorial: Completed]

[Reward: Added a selection mode for scannable veins]

[You can now scan for:

- Iron Ore

- Copper Ore

- Richstone]

Theo blinked his eyes a few times, not sure what to even make of the message that flashed before his eyes.

’Wait, just like that?’

This, in quite the broad way, was one of the most important steps Theo could recognize from the gameplay loop of all the factory-building series he played.

No matter what, a player should be able to tell where to get the resources his projects required. Accessing those was a whole other topic, but…

Now that Theo could tell not only where to look for specific stuff but that also it would be those three resources that he would likely need to progress, growth relied no longer on timers and delays, but on Theo’s ability to get his hands on what he needed.

And that meant, in the grand scheme of things, one of the first crucial steps of breaking the chain between getting the mundane work done and his own efforts. Or, in much simpler terms, automation.

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"This scanner is but the first step to all of this." Theo gazed down at the universal tool before gripping it a bit harder in his hand. "But now that I’m here…"

With over three hundred pieces of ore his mining guild provided all on its own, Theo was now left with merely thirty pieces of the new, refined ore.

And now that he was not only just a few steps away from the vein and easily able to excavate vast areas faster than it should be possible…

’Yeah, there’s no use waiting. And seeing the reward for completing the first of the tutorials,’ Theo couldn’t help but grin as he switched from dangling his feet over the hole to rushing down the mineshaft, eager to reach the vein’s location.

Yet, even though he only needed a second to create a small warehouse-sized hole just above the vein… there was still one element that Theo absolutely had to take care of.

’Once I take this step, pollution is likely to start being a proper consideration,’ Theo thought as he looked around the suddenly opened-up space, with nothing but the light of his torch illuminating the unexpectedly vast insides of the cavern he had created.

Soon, Theo’s head locked as he looked up to the stone ceiling above.

And, after a moment of mental gymnastics later, he somehow managed to modulate his Basher to switch from excavating a perfect cube of the voxel-like material it selected to a single blocky-block-sized hole that easily stretched all the way out to the sky.

Ultimately, the size of the volume excavated wouldn’t change, save for what Theo’s universal tool simply couldn’t mark anything already above the ground, for there was nothing more but air to remove. And so, within a single second, he managed to dig a perfectly square vent reaching from the cavern he had just created all the way up to the surface.

"Dang…"

For a moment, Theo simply stared at the work of his universal tool, its weight suddenly growing in his hand as he realized the scope of potential he could achieve with just this tool alone.

"While it shouldn’t work this way, if I could select hostile organisms with this…"

Theo gulped his saliva down as the prospect of an ungodly ability to just… remove anything at some ungodly range appeared before his eyes.

’Yeah, that would be way too overpowered for it to happen…’ the young man breathed out a slightly amused, exhausted sigh.

Still, even if only for construction, this kind of tool was simply invaluable. And now, thanks to what Theo had achieved with it…

"I guess it’s finally the time, huh?"

Taking a momentary break from his constant, desperate growth, Theo took a second to contemplate his position.

He stood on the stone floor of a perfectly shaped, massive cube of an underground cave that, by all intents and purposes, had no business collapsing under its own weight. And now he had a proper vent in the roof and a mineral vein right below his feet.

"Well…"

Theo summoned his system, this time focusing on the remaining prompts for his second tutorial quest.

[Construct a miner (level 1) on top of an unoccupied resource vein: 0/1]

[Construct a smelter: 0/1]

[Construct a constructor: 0/1]

[Assign the workpoints to each of the proto-industry machines: 0/3]

[Assign workpoints to the logistic lines connecting each of the machines: 0/2]

[Automate the production of at least 10 iron plates/minute: 0/1]

Theo took a deep breath.

’If I recall correctly, in some, you only needed materials for the building, while in others, you had to craft the building ahead of placing it down.’

Eager to test which of the two applied, Theo summoned his now slightly reformed inventory before… just willing for the window responsible for construction to appear.

Yet, as soon as he selected the icon that quite obviously indicated a miner, with the huge, spinning and animated drill taking over the majority of its image, Theo was once again slapped with the one element of his system that he was quickly growing to abhor the most.

[Crafting in process: 4:28 until completion]

’Damn you…’

Gripping his hands tight, Theo forced a simple smile on his face.

Things were going way too well for him to spoil it by angering the system for no apparent reason.

’Now that I’ve secured all that time, I can afford four damn minutes…’

With the deadline until the next invasion now moving from a measly twenty hours to still quite a lot over forty, Theo finally could give up on his extreme hurry.

And while every second still counted, he no longer had to squeeze each of those seconds to the limits of what could be done with them!

’But as soon as this miner is up…’

Theo’s quest, exactly as was the case for his Basher’s tutorial, followed exactly the same steps Theo would impose on himself without it.

First, he had to get the extraction of the ore running.

Then, a different system to smelt the ore into ingots—its more easily usable form.

Finally, those ingots would be transformed into items of various tiers, allowing the construction of different buildings and… adding up to the design without the need for a manual acquisition of the resources!

And all of it… would start with Theo setting up his first miner… for which, he had no other choice but to sit down and patiently wait while holding back curses over his system imposing those damn cooldowns!