Chapter 206 – Forklift Certified Florida Man Successfully Implemented AI to His Ore Refinery. Engineers Protested As Machines Didn't Need AI. Florida Man Converted Engineers into AI Instead.
The mountain was peaceful without the influence of the ghost blade. Leo no longer hallucinated, and his view of the blackest mountain got better.
After Leo toured the mountain for another hour, he came across a cave. A trail of black smoke came from the inside, which aroused Leo's interest. He waltzed into the cave to explore.
Unlike the outward appearance of the mountain, the cave's interior was blindingly bright. Leo was forced to revert his pupil color to green as the light hurt him.
When Leo's sight adjusted to the light, he found a manmade spiral staircase without a handrail. It headed down so deep that Leo couldn't see the bottom.
The stairs kept glowing and shining randomly. It produced extreme heat and emitted transparent flame sometimes. When Leo stepped on it, the flame enveloped his body and threatened to burn him alive.
However, Leo didn't feel anything. On the contrary, it was as lukewarm as room-temperature water.
As Leo didn't feel like walking down, he jumped off and fell through the center hole of the spiral staircase. The deeper Leo descended, the lights of the stairs changed to a darker tone.
Leo lost count of how many seconds he fell from the atmosphere. When he landed on the ground, he found a boiling pit of black lava.
What interested Leo wasn't the black liquid. Instead, there was a red arrow system ping, pointing at the pit.
"Wut da hail?"
The red triangle arrow let out a loud DING sound every five seconds. Whenever it chimed, the lava erupted like a fountain, splashing black liquid everywhere. Some of the droplets hit the walls of the cave and transformed into black crystals.
Leo swiped away the liquid that got on his suit and his face. It was as sticky as tar, but it wasn't as smelly. Instead, it smelled like burnt sugar.
DING
Again, the arrow wanted Leo's attention. He also had enough of the system, so he flew toward the system arrow. Then, he touched it.
DING
<Strategic Resource Detected!>
<A new construction has been unlocked!>
<Would you like to build a mineral refinery on top of this place?>
<Warning, building a mineral refinery outside of your domain requires 1,000,000 years of lifespan.>
"…"
Leo's hands trembled while he glanced at his lifespan balance menu. He struggled for so long to collect his first million after the transmigration. However, the damn system wanted to rob everything from him.
"THIS IS A SCAM! WHY DON'T YOU JUST ROB ME, DAMN SYSTEM!?"
DING
<Strategic resources are "STRATEGIC" for a reason. Secondly, this building is the only structure that can be built outside of your territory.>
"…"
For once, the system argued with Leo. The latter didn't expect the system to respond, and he was speechless.
Despite being angry, Leo pondered the pros and cons. In the end, he invested his lifespan in the system anyway.
"This better be worth it!"
Leo pressed the confirmation menu.
RUMBLE
.
.
Earthquake struck the black mountain. Esen, Ivy, Marc, and Beatrice looked at the ground and maintained their balance. They also gazed at the mountain, wondering what happened.
They still sensed the life signature of Leo inside the mountain. Thus, they chose to wait and see how Leo would fare inside the mountain.
However, the earthquake changed everything. A series of steel walls and a metal refinery factory emerged from the ground. Countless machines came out from the factory structure without anybody controlling them.
A thousand industrial drills flew toward the mountain and began extracting the ores. Loud screeches and screaming metals echoed in the area. Within 10 seconds, large chunks of black mineral were extracted from the mountain, and auto-piloting forklifts carried them into the large refinery building.
Esen and her crew were stunned. They might have witnessed Leo's greatness and abilities in the past, but this one exceeded everything.
Ivy came to her senses first. She reminded Esen.
"Let's go in and see, Your Majesty. The Holy One must have done something to the mountain!"
"…"
Esen nodded in agreement as there was no point waiting there anymore. She steeled her heart and led her team to inspect the new structure.
.
The group entered the refinery building. Upon seeing the belts and the industrial machines, everybody dropped their jaws.
Soulless machines automatically threw raw ores into a pool of transparent liquid. Then, the ores were hardened while the impurity was dissolved in the water.
Looking at the pool reminded Esen and everybody of the recycling center. They wondered if they had the same functions.
After the ores had been purified, a claw machine picked it up and put it down on an industrial belt. The belt carried the large hardened ore to a smelter next.
The flame of the smelter had the same air and aura as Leo. When the cleaned ore entered the burning machine, the black ore melted into black liquid. Then, the smelting machine squeezed, compressed, and cut it into ingots. After the ores had been condensed, the belt brought them toward another pool of transparent liquid.
ZAAAA
The burning hot ingots fell into the freezing cold water, making countless popping sounds and bubbles. Had the ingots been other types of metal, they would have deformed or exploded. However, the Immortalium didn't react to the conflicted extreme temperature.
ZAAAA
A few seconds later, underwater claw machines picked up the ingots and transferred them to another industrial belt, which also carried the ingots toward another station.
The last station was oddly an empty warehouse. Inside the refinery warehouse was a black muscular humanoid mannequin, who collected the ingots and arranged them on the shelves as if they were treasures.
Esen and everybody didn't interfere with the machines or the mannequin. However, when the mannequin didn't pay attention to them, Esen reached out and picked one of the 10kg ingots. She brought it closer to her eyes to see it up closer.
The ingot retained the nature of the mountain. No light reflected from the surface of this piece of ingot, but it was full of intense essence and life force.
The mannequin turned around and found that Esen had one of the ingots. It paused for a moment before it resumed its job.
Realizing that the mannequin ignored them, everybody was relieved.
"This must be the Holy One's work!" Ivy muttered.
"Yeah, this place has that geezer's perverting aura. He built this for sure." Esen approved.
"But this structure of this magnitude should have required a thorough planning, calculating, and consideration. He must have envisioned this place before we came here!"
"…Doubt it."
Esen pursed her lips and looked away from the machine. She turned her attention to Leo's life signature, which quickly faded.
His life force was so bright before. But at the moment, it was so faint that it resembled weak immortals.
"…He must have spent a lot of energy. Geezer, you idiot. You should have asked me for help."
