Necromancer, summoning 055? What the heck?

Chapter 133 Restoration Workshop, The Steelmaking Log of the Earthbound Undead
Aurelio's father was once the leader of a famous knightly family in the North. His family was well-off, so Aurelio received a formal education in literature and martial arts from a young age, growing up amidst the scent of ink on parchment scrolls and the clear sound of longswords cutting through the wind.

His future is as bright as the morning sun.

However, with the arrival of the beast tide, everything changed.

My grandfather died in battle, my two uncles died in battle, my father died in battle, my eldest brother died in battle...

The Li family's reputation for loyalty and bravery was widely praised throughout the White Deer Kingdom.

Yes, Aurelio's full name is Aurelio Zelin Lee.

For the sake of convenience, Chen Mo decided to call him Li Zelin, since the Earthbound Undead didn't seem to care about that anyway.

When Li Zelin was nine years old, he followed his family to the battlefield and fought for twelve years.

With his exceptional talent, he grew into a seventh-tier Sky-Splitting Sword Saint amidst the blood and smoke of the battlefield. At the same time, the population of his family plummeted from over three hundred to less than sixty.

The old and the young, the injured and the disabled.

Although hope is slim, we are still resisting; this is the only motivation for the human warriors of the North to persevere.

Then, the white stag crown fell to the ground. The king and his courtiers, those bloated nobles, abandoned their land and people, and vanished without a trace.

The backbone of the resistance was completely broken by this blatant betrayal.

That year was known as the Year of the Bloody Sunset.

Unable to escape, the city guards and minor nobles, feeling betrayed, became despondent and hysterical. They knelt at the feet of their former mortal enemies, the orcs, turned their blades, and frantically slaughtered their former comrades.

With the help of these guides who were familiar with the environment and resistance strategies, the entire White Deer Plain was completely turned into a pasture where orcs roamed freely.

In just one year, half of the population of the North was lost, and more than three million innocent souls perished on the White Deer Plain.

With the complete disappearance of organized resistance forces, these surrendered minor nobles discovered that they had lost their value to the orcs, who began to abuse them without restraint, beating and killing them at will.

It seems that orcs understand the principle of "the rabbit dies, the hound is cooked" better.

What can you do? You chose this path, so you have to bear the consequences.

In this bloody battle, only Aurelio, also known as Li Zelin, persisted in raising the banner of resistance and relied on his strong personal abilities to wage guerrilla warfare.

There are more than 300 tribes of varying sizes among the northern orcs, and more than 260 of them have blood-red wanted posters for this guy.

However, in a place full of valleys, dense forests, and swamps, it is extremely difficult to take down a clear-headed and decisive seventh-tier Void Breaker.

At times like these, it's time for the surrender faction among the humans to make their move.

They devised a blood law called "Whoever sees Li will die."

Along Li Zelin's route, anyone who saw this resistance leader and did not immediately report to the orcs or provide food supplies to the resistance army faced the slaughter of their entire family, village, or even city.

As a leader determined to resist the orcs, he could not simply turn his sword against ordinary civilians like the orcs he hated. Soon, Li Zelin found himself in a desperate situation with no water or food.

Even so, the swordsman did not consider surrendering. He dismissed all his men and, alone with his sword, ate wild beasts in the mountains and drank mud in the swamps, killing every orc he could see, whether they were warriors or civilians, shamans or laborers.

One day, while being chased by a high-ranking orc warrior, he accidentally bumped into a human civilian who was picking wild vegetables with a child.

Realizing that if he fled, this family of civilians would inevitably be slaughtered, Li Zelin risked serious injury to forcibly exchange blows with his pursuers.

But when he turned around, his body covered in blood, he saw the scene that would plunge him into the abyss.

The civilian man not only gouged out his own eyes, but also gouged out the child's eyeballs, splattering warm blood and murky liquid onto his terrified face.

The man, clutching his child who was writhing on the ground in pain, knelt and repeatedly kowtowed to the air, pleading pitifully:

"We didn't see anything, we didn't see anything!"

At that moment, Li Zelin was utterly despondent.

The human race's "wise men" used the most despicable methods to precisely strike Li Zelin's weak spot. When the common people began to fear and be afraid of this leader, Li Zelin seemed to have lost the meaning of continuing to resist.

The last swordsman of the Void, the banner of resistance in the North, disappeared sadly into the twilight of the White Deer Plain.

His remaining life revolved around one thing: killing orcs, and seizing every opportunity to kill orcs!

For this reason, he refused offers of high-ranking official positions and generous salaries from several countries, and even slapped away the envoy sent by the former King of Bailu.

When the founding duke of Emerald promised to build a fortress at the forefront of the people's war, he resolutely accepted the seal of lord of this "Razor Fortress".

Fate mocked him once again. Razorfen Downs, the fortress that held his last beliefs, was betrayed once more by the higher-ups of the human race on the continent.

The isolated city was defended to the death, and the entire army was wiped out.

After the orcs razed the entire Razorfen Downs, they hung the body of the resistance leader they hated so much on the gate of the city's mansion, and carved a stone tablet beside him to boast of their power and intimidate those who would follow.

The destroyed magical protective array triggered a chaotic psychic surge that swept through the fortress. Aurelio Zelin Lee, consumed by an overwhelming obsession, became a bound undead.

Even if they die and turn to ashes, the orcs will never be able to set foot in this majestic fortress.

Therefore, the old ox that is seen will inevitably be struck by a sword.

As a result, hundreds of orc corpses piled up like mountains, and Chen Mo declared with righteous indignation: "I killed them!" The earthbound undead chose to trust this seemingly weak lord and accepted the soul-binding chains.

Having acquired an incredibly powerful contracted undead creature, Chen Mo almost thought he could do whatever he wanted, but he soon realized that things weren't that simple.

As a bound undead, Li Zelin was unable to leave the area that bound him, which was the core of the ruins.

When the core of the ruins is excavated and moved, the earthbound undead will fall into a dormant state within the area of ​​the ruins core until the ruins core is repositioned and activated. Only then will the earthbound undead awaken and continue to roam the area around the ruins core.

The bad news is, there's no way you can command the earthbound undead to go out and fight!
Even if you take the relic core out to seek revenge, you have to simultaneously meet a number of necessary conditions, such as finding an elemental concentration area that can activate the core, being undisturbed during the activation process, and having enemies enter the radiation range of your relic core. This is simply too much to ask.

The good news is that by activating the core of the ruins in a suitable area within the territory of the Vast Ocean Territory, Chen Mo will essentially have a safe zone with extremely strong protection. If anything happens, he can hide in his lair, and the enemy will have to attack this incredibly troublesome iron-blooded fortress as if it were a large ruin.

Therefore, the greatest use of this relic core is to create a nest. By absorbing the spiritual energy of the elemental core area to replenish the core, the core gives birth to nest creatures. Killing the nest creatures yields mana crystals, forming a virtuous cycle of mana crystal production supply chain.

On the continent of Starry Sky, where psionic energy flourishes, finding a concentrated area of ​​elements is not difficult. During the time Chen Mo was away, the two experts sent by the Magic Academy had already marked several possible locations for the Vast Ocean Territory.

However, during his communication with Li Zelin, Chen Mo discovered a potential bug. The core of this relic possesses the characteristic of the Ironblood Manifestation of the Blood Fortress.

During the manifestation process, when the born nest creatures attach themselves to the element of "iron," psionic energy strips away other elements unrelated to iron.

For example, when the cameras inside the nest were revealed, the non-metallic components inside the cameras were dissolved and squeezed out.

Chen Mo suddenly had a brilliant idea: if he put iron ore in and made it manifest, could he also get rid of the impurities inside?

In the original development plan for the steel industry in the territory of Dongxia, at least two months' worth of main transportation capacity had to be used to construct the reduction equipment for the steel plant.
The worst part is that, due to the lack of a stable coal supply, electricity will have to be used instead of coal, further straining the power supply in industrial zones.

In addition to adding more solar panels, special rectifier transformers with ultra-high power and high overload capacity, core power modules and control units for dynamic reactive power compensation and harmonic control devices, various key circuit breaker contacts and insulation materials, large-capacity solid-state battery energy storage units, and so on, are needed to meet the special requirements of the restoration equipment.

This will consume a large portion of transportation capacity.

As for installation and maintenance, those were major headaches for Lord Chen.

Now, if we can skip the restoration step, the remaining transport capacity can be directly put into the backend casting system, saving a lot of valuable territory development time.

Chen Mo decisively placed the core of the ruins in an elemental concentration area closest to the industrial zone.

The experimental results came out quickly.

The effect is indeed there; during the process of revealing the ruins, it is indeed able to eliminate many impurities that are unrelated to metal.

However, the purification process is not pure enough; the resulting material is not even pig iron. To expect to obtain refined iron or even steel in one step is wishful thinking.

Regardless, this was a significant step forward for the Vast Ocean Territory. Soon, under the Lord's meticulous design, a brand-new process for developing the steel industry and acquiring mana crystals was unveiled.

Comrade Li Zelin will have to work a bit harder.

After initial crushing and magnetic attraction at the washing plant, the iron ore fragments are packed by workers into crude earthenware jars, each weighing about three kilograms after tare.

The workers at the washing plant arranged these pottery jars neatly and used flatcars to push them into the newly constructed "Iron Nest".

This is the name given to the Magic Academy; the actual sign hanging at the entrance reads: "[Hanhai Territory First Steel Plant Restoration Workshop]".

Low-key and pragmatic.

Upon entering the workshop, which is also the lair, there is a huge pit in front of you, clearly marked as: First Restoration Pit.

Wooden ramps were set up at the edge of the pit, and flatcars were pushed directly to the bottom of the pit. Skilled porters quickly removed the earthenware pots and arranged them neatly along the bottom of the pit.

The entire pit was filled with two hundred earthen jars, totaling about six hundred kilograms of iron ore.

The porters and flatbed trucks left, the ramp panels were removed, and all personnel evacuated in turn.

A few minutes later, Li Zelin, having received the signal, activated the core of the nest. A thick black mist swept through the nest, and after about thirty minutes of soaking, the iron ore at the bottom of the pit completed its elemental manifestation and grew into a nest guardian.

The reason for piling three kilograms of iron ore into each container is that this amount is sufficient to ensure the spawning of a mid-tier nest guardian.

The quality of the magic crystals produced is higher.

These newly born nest guards wandered aimlessly at the bottom of the pit.

The pit walls were compacted and burned with flames, and the height was repeatedly tested, so even the mid-level nest guards stacked on top of each other couldn't climb out.

The guards who entered the site threw torches and ignited the tinder prepared in the pit. In just over ten minutes, all of the mid-level nest guards were wiped out.

After lowering the ramp, the guards went down to finish off the remaining enemies, and a special group of mage apprentices carefully collected the remaining spell crystals in the arena.

After confirming that everything was safe and complete, the transport team went back down into the reduction pit to begin recovering the ore.

During the process of element manifestation, the original iron ore will be tempered by the black fog, and the iron-containing part will remain unchanged, while other impurities such as silicon, aluminum, sulfur and phosphorus will be squeezed to the outer layer, forming an impurity shell.

Wearing work gloves and carrying thick wooden sticks, the workers smashed the outer shell, obtaining what was essentially pig iron still containing a small amount of slag.

These lumps of cast iron were thrown into the baskets by the pit. Once they were almost full, the workers above used pulleys to hoist the baskets up.

Clean up the crushed clay pots at the bottom of the pit, tidy up the site, and wait for the next batch of clay pots to arrive.

The earthbound undead Li Zelin, with a vacant look in his eyes, once again activated the core of the nest.

The psionic energy consumed in the process will be replenished through an activation-type psionic array, and the power source of the psionic array is the psionic crystal that has just been harvested.

The whole process was smooth and efficient. Apart from being quite labor-intensive, the biggest expense was the crudely made clay pots.

Of course, both the elemental concentration in the elemental concentration zone and the black mist that generates the core of the nest take time to form. Therefore, the [Han Hai Ling First Steel Plant Reduction Workshop] strictly follows the eight-hour work system.

Work two hours every four hours, for a total of eight hours per day.

Because impurities have already been removed during the washing and sorting process, the refining efficiency of the reduction workshop is around 50%, producing a total of about 1,200 catties of pig iron and 800 magic crystals per day.

However, in order to power this large-scale psionic array at full capacity, 320 more mana crystals will be needed.

Of course, this is the ideal maximum efficiency. If there is a shortage of iron ore or clay pots, or if the poor earthbound undead are in a bad mood and want to take a break, a lot of production will be lost.

It's okay, this production line has been completed, and Hanhai finally has its own real industrial output.

Of course, iron ore, as a core strategic element and a fundamental resource for future territory development, must not be sold to outsiders.

The setting sun stretched the tall outline of the workshop into a long shadow on the ground. This was no longer the blood-soaked fortress shrouded in black mist, but a well-organized production workshop.

To calm the emotions of his contracted undead, Lord Chen Mo would come in every now and then to have a heart-to-heart talk with Li Zelin.

They talked about ideals, the future, the significance of steel development for the territory, and its importance for future counterattacks against the orcs and the recapture of White Deer Plains.

I wonder if the dead believed it...

In short, this former Sword Saint of the Sky-Slaying Sword became the production manager of the restoration workshop.

With a mix of helplessness and anticipation, it stands as a milestone in the development of Hanhai Steel Industry.

(End of this chapter)