'Til Kingdom Comes - The Banished Prince Vol 3: The Prophecy

Fusion Chamber

I was standing right in front of the machines and was wondering how come there are 10 of these similar machines in this room. Before I got to think and ponder further, Ceres had provided me with the best viable answer.

"Your old self was duplicating a lot of weapons, armours and accessories. Once he had upgraded the pieces mentioned, the weapons, armours and accessories had sockets in them. You can take a look at the trinkets that had been left over at the sides over there in the crates. There are two bracelets and two anklets and a necklace plus earrings as well."

"Your previous old self before this had made their trinkets that were made from wood and then enhanced them by placing a single piece of steel plate. Once he had done so, each wooden trinket was fused and became steel accessories instead."

"For each steel plate, the machine fused and duplicated at least 100 pieces and that steel plate is stackable inside the machines."

"However, one drawback is that you do not have spatial storage space and only this realm would represent your spatial storage space for all the goods that had been created, fused and enhanced."

Ceres finished speaking and I was peering at all the crates they were available in this room. "So no wonder, this room has so many machines to do so many things at one time."

"That's right, Audemars. Your former self called this the Fusion Chamber and the one the had the smelter and plates was simply called the Smelter."

"At least giving these simple names we would know where you would be heading next since the study room that you had created would be called the White Room instead."

I was about to call it something else but was christened by Ceres instead. Oh well, its better than some lengthy names they share to remember. So Fusion Chamber it is then.

"Audemars, since you only have one piece of armour, why not you try to duplicate it first? I won't be able to turn the dials and even pull the lever to activate it but I could do the storage for you once it's done. All you have to do is allocate the crates and that's it, the rest would be done by me."

" Hmm, seems a good feasible idea to duplicate these pieces of armour first. Let me duplicate one set each and see how it goes then." I thought to myself as I went to one of the machines and opened its sliding door and peered inside it.

There was a single large circular plate in the centre where I'm supposed to place the item for duplication or fusing. After placing the toughened leather vest inside, I closed the sliding door and looked at the dials.

It was simple and straightforward as I turned the dial to duplicate > multiple > armours and I turned the drum dial to indicate how many pieces I wished to duplicate.

So I chose one dozen and I made sure I had made the correct choices, I then pulled the lever and the machines suddenly came alive...!

I jumped back in surprise because I never knew the machines would do that at all...!

Since the old self had done the duplication with several machines, I repeated the process with the other three machines and pulled the lever once I had checked to ensure I had chosen the right methods.

"Ceres, does staying here longer in this realm enhances what I could do? You mentioned staying here for three hours is considered as only an hour back in the real world, right? So that means, I could only stay here for only a certain number of hours, am I right?"

"That's right, Audemars. You only have to spend three hours here since you have a very tight schedule ahead of you."

"Besides, as times goes by you would not only be able to stay longer here but also to run a few rooms operationally at the same time."

"You would not lose too much energy in your meditative state and therefore since you're gone for an hour, you would be considered as taking a nap."

It seems like a good idea. I could only stay here for 3 hours during the day and would stay longer in the night time then.

Suddenly a series of notifications rang out and I discovered that the duplication process for the pieces of armour had been completed. The items that had been duplicated were now stacked inside the crates that had been set within the marked out box on the floor.

I checked out the pieces of the duplicated ones against the original ones and found that there was no difference at all and as if a factory was being used to churn out these pieces instead and the workers were all living inside those machines...!

How wonderful is the technology of the future...! If only I could bring it back to my own real world then it would be most beneficial to the development of the town...! Not only through military forces but also in its agriculture and other aspects...!

I went over the machine once more and this time I placed the steel plate inside one of the smaller holders and closed the sliding door. I turned the first dial to fuse and the second option was automatically greyed out. The third dial does not need me to do anything and I pulled the lever since there was nothing else to be changed.

I did the same thing to the other three machines and soon the four machines were humming and a series of lights were pulsating and moving in a circular motion like some sort of wheel.

Once again, the notifications rang out and I heard that the pieces of armour had a new name. When I opened up the sliding door to one of the machines, I discovered that the steel piece had gone and only the original piece of armour was left inside.

"Congratulations, Audemars. You had successfully fused the steel plate into this piece of armour and it's now called 'Reinforced Steel Mesh Armoured Vest'. This vest had three free sockets and also armour rating of +20 to it."

"Since you are using toughened leather, this upgrade would be considered Stage 2. Stage 1 was soft leather mainly used by hunters. Stage 3 would be studded leather and it's considered as one of the toughest leather armour in its Class 2 of armour sets."

"As for Class 1 would be cloth armours, Class 3 would be chain mail while Class 4 would be plated armour. It would be best to read the encyclopedia to find out more about the types of armours in detail. Besides, this is a tip for you and you could easily enhance the armours of the whole militia."

I can't help ponder what Ceres was mentioning since this was rather intriguing. She would not mention something that would not be manipulated or be made use in the future but somehow since she had mentioned about the armours worn by the militia, I think there's something behind the reason it was mentioned.

Besides, the militia was wearing only cloth armour but it would be great if they were equipped with some kind of protective armour that would be beneficial to them.

"Where did the steel plate go to and what do you mean by Reinforced Steel Mesh?" I asked Ceres and she later explained the steel mesh looked like my hair and had been integrated inside the whole vest, therefore making the vest to be enhanced with a layer of added protection.

Although it was an old technology in the future it was considered as a new technology for us right here in the real world.

"What's the technology that was used in the future? Do they have a type of new metal that Priest Michael conjured up before? The metal they had a watery and wavy design after being forged?"

I was intrigued about this new technology of armours and was told it was made of a kind of modular plastic and was greatly advised to read it up about modern warfare and armours in the encyclopedia. Well, there's no way you could be the system and this is just an example...!

The outlook of the armour was similar but the weight of the steel plate had distributed evenly around it, making it more resistant to puncture wounds made by a knife or an arrowhead.

After this was explained by Ceres, I went to place the armour back inside the machines and chose duplicate > multiple > armours and chose the same amount of a dozen.

I closed the sliding door and franked the lever and soon the lights began to rotate around like a wheel as I went around the machines and did the same to the rest of them.

I removed the pieces of armour in the crates and placed them on a piece of wooden pallet and to observe if the experiments would be successful or not.

Since the duplicated pieces of armours were not reinforced, I placed them on the pallets to separate them from the ones that were reinforced and being duplicated right now.

"It seems you had gotten through a loophole in the system, just as I had expected from the old self, Audemars."

You indeed were able to duplicate those pieces of weapons and armours they had been reinforced."

"But remember, you are unable to reproduce those items they had been enhanced such as gemstones they had been socketed inside the pieces of armour."

What I had done was not premeditated but it was rather unplanned as I just follow my own reflexes and intuition, that's all. What I had done now was actually what was done by the previous old self of mine...!

Little did I knew that my actions had been replicated once in the future, the parallel universe as well as the present...!

I heard a series of notifications rang out inside the room and as I had expected, the 12 pieces of reinforced steel mesh armours had been duplicated successfully. Every single one of them...!

Woah... What a proud achievement that I had got...!

"When I leave this place and leave my meditative state of mind, does the countdown timer reset back once again or could I resume and add more time to it?"

I asked Ceres and she told me that the timer would be reset back and I would be starting back as usual right now.

"That means I would be able to duplicate these pieces of armour and leave this realm and back to the real world as it continues to perform its tasks even for a 100 pieces at one go?"

I was happily gathering the pieces of armour in my hand like a child holding to his precious Christmas presents...!

"That's right, Audemars. In fact, you could churn out 999 pieces of armour at any one time. The production would still be ongoing and since these pieces of armours are not for sale, like what your old self was doing, you could prepare for the Shadow unit members instead."

"I am sure they would be most glad to receive such an improved piece of armour even though it weighed slightly more than before."

"For your information, there's a total of 82 known Shadow unit members as well as 12 others who chose to remain as anonymous."

"I suggest you turn up the duplication dial to make another 87 more pieces while leaving the one inside the machine as your very own set."

"There are 12 more Shadow units they chose to remain anonymous? Who would that be? The only ones I knew would be the troubadour group that had 12 members."

"Why do they wished to remain as anonymous then?" I asked myself as I turned the tumbler dial to duplicate another 87 pieces and cranked the lever for all the machines.

Very soon the 4 machines were quietly humming as I gathered the pieces of reinforced mesh steel armour in front of me as I sat down and focused to leave the realm and back to my real world.

It was some time before I opened up my eyes as I travelled earlier in a vortex and arrived back at the settee. The finished products were stacked in front of me and I quickly bundled them together and head downstairs.

True enough, I had spent less than an hour in my meditative state within the real world and was gingerly walking towards where Eagle was usually stationed.