The Way Back to Civilization - Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Business Alliance

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Thanks to the factory’s all-out dedication, the current state of the Glory Queen was very different from the first time he saw it.

Although some precision equipment and minor errors in the program still needed a long time to be adjusted, all in all, this did not prevent Gu Fan from beginning to explore this unfamiliar universe.

“Ship status, nothing out of the ordinary.”

In the center of the bridge, Xue Feng was sitting quietly on the body of the Dark Wasp drone, reporting the current situation of the ship while swinging its two fair legs leisurely.

After a simple self-repair, her left arm, which had been damaged by overload, had barely recovered some of its functions. However, her movements were still stiff and uncoordinated. In short, it was not a big problem.

At this moment, the Glory Queen was located in a deep space in the Centaur Galaxy. According to the intelligence, there might have been a temporary station for the human fleet in this galaxy.

Although this had happened more than a thousand years ago, Gu Fan still tried to conduct a large-scale detection of the star system in front of him, hoping to obtain any useful information.

However, in the end, the sensor showed the same result.

[The corresponding signal has not been detected in the range.]

The ship’s scan did not find any information related to humans in the surrounding starfields. In the past day, Gu Fan had been repeating similar operations and carrying out a detailed measurement of the star system.

He had basically confirmed that there were no clues in the Centaur Galaxy that he wanted.

At the thought of this, Gu Fan sighed silently. He leaned back in his chair and began to study the next step of the plan.

At the moment, the resources taken away from the solar system were still abundant. However, these resources were non-renewable after all. Sooner or later, they would dry up.

In order to plan for the long term, he had to start thinking about these realistic problems now.

Where should he replenish the missing supplies and where should he start looking for clues about humans? Clearly, Gu Fan did not have an accurate answer in his heart for the time being.

As he pondered, his gaze landed on Xue Feng…

For some reason, looking at that thin figure, Gu Fan recalled the scene when he communicated with 301.

He wanted to find humans and was afraid that he would be abandoned. He remembered that this was what 301 had told him.

In the past, Gu Fan had repeatedly chewed on this sentence in his heart.

No matter how he thought about it, these words did not seem to come from a mechanical language module.

As for whether artificial intelligence had souls and emotions, even for humans in the Golden Age in the past, this was often a topic of debate.

If there was, how did it come about? After all, when these machines were made, the technicians had never set up a similar program for them.

In the past, people would call it a bug, a loophole of unknown origin.

Gradually, an interesting thought arose in his heart. Would the girl in front of him coincidentally have such a “loophole”?

“Xue Feng, I want to know what you think of me.”

Hearing the question, Xue Feng gradually put down his foot and jumped off the drone. He then looked at Gu Fan.

“You’re the person I need to protect, the person I need to serve, and the person I need to be absolutely obedient to.”

It had to be said that this was a rather standard and procedural answer.

However, looking at the other party’s beautiful wine-red pupils, he felt a little disappointed.

…

…

Not long after, while Xue Feng was replenishing energy in the engine room, Gu Fan came to the production center alone.

In order to ensure the safety of the ship as much as possible, 200 fully armed iron guards were assigned to patrol the ship under Xue Feng’s suggestion to prevent anyone from trespassing.

At this moment, after seeing Gu Fan traveling alone, three guards spontaneously followed behind him and accompanied him into the factory.

As the cabin door slowly opened, a highly intelligent production center appeared in front of Gu Fan. As the command ship, the Glory Queen class sometimes needed to provide emergency supplies for an entire fleet, so the corresponding ability was specially strengthened in the early stages of the ship design.

Gathering, smelting, manufacturing, assembling, and other functions required for production, with sufficient basic resources, the warship itself could transform into a mobile military factory, producing batch after batch of war machinery from the shimmering quantum forging furnaces.

Unfortunately, because Gu Fan was the only one on the entire battleship, and Xue Feng was not carrying a production program, this seemingly omnipotent factory could only produce some less complicated small items with the most basic preset program.

For example, it could produce infantry standard issue laser rifles, thermal fusion grenades, and a small number of heavy weapons. As for the war machines, it could only produce some weak and retarded army puppets. These were extremely cheap resources that carried light weapons and basic logic AI.

In the past wars between mankind and the Star Gods and the Ancient Saints, the huge and tragic consumption had caused mankind to urgently need this kind of cheap but almost inexhaustible machinery to supplement some of the fragile protrusions of the key battlefronts.

Some commanders would even use them to conduct reckless suicide charges to find out the enemy’s firepower.

As for how weak these guys were, to put it simply, even a human infantry with basic training could easily deal with about three puppets attacking at the same time.

However, the problem was that there were too many of them. There were still batches after batches of them fell. With the advantage of hundreds of millions or even billions of them.

Even Ancient Saints had a headache over these iron lumps that were comparable to cockroaches.

“Let’s not think about heavy machinery. Even the technology template is missing so much…”

“And even if I have a template, I don’t have enough resources to make it…”

Standing in front of the factory’s operating platform and facing the almost blank database, Gu Fan’s mood could be said to have suffered.

It seemed that along the way, other than collecting the clues left behind by their compatriots and uncovering the truth of the disappearance of humans.

He still had to think of a way to collect more useful resources. At the same time, he had to recycle as many technological templates as possible. Only then could he develop himself better.

After sighing silently, Gu Fan turned to look at the tall and mighty iron guards beside him.

These were even harder to deal with. They needed living metal and energy crystals which were both not easy to deal with.

If he could not create it, he would not be able to create it no matter how he thought about it.

Helpless, after weighing the pros and cons, he finally issued an order to the ship factories to manufacture army puppets.

Although Gu Fan considered himself a pacifist, he was not naive. His communication with the other races would not be smooth sailing. Conflict would be inevitable, and he had to be prepared for it.

Using the local specialties he brought back from his home planet, the first batch of 5,000 units of puppets and the accompanying standard equipment successfully entered the production line under his orders.

Once a conflict broke out on the ground with the enemy, these puppets could provide good cover for the Iron Man Army and the Titan Army.

“Ha…”

Looking at the gradually bustling factory, Gu Fan stretched lazily. At this moment, Xue Feng’s voice suddenly came from the radio inside the factory.

“Caught an unidentified signal from outside. Do you want to connect?”

The unidentified signal must have come from another race. He had already expected such a situation. It was time to listen to the voices from outside.

“Connect.”

As soon as he finished speaking, after a few seconds of silence, the radio suddenly burst out with a series of screams of rodents.

…

“Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!”

“Zhi zhi zhi~~~~”

What was this? It sounded like a large group of rats locked in a cage. Accompanied by a violent explosion, the voice on the communicator sounded so ear-piercing.

“Xue Feng, turn on the translator. I want to know what those things are talking about.”

After receiving the order, the signal on the radio was cut off for a moment.

Not long after, the squeaking sound came again, but this time was a little different.

“Squeak squeak! Mayday! Mayday!”

…

“This is the Trade Federation’s Horned Rat! We are being attacked by a group of idiots! Mayday! Mayday!”

“Squeak squeak! I can already smell the stench on those idiots!”

Trade Federation?

‘A group of businessmen?’