While all hell was breaking loose on the surface, Apophis and Antanria entered the Zetark underground shipyard.
Hidden inside a hollowed-out mountain, the shipyard lay in a huge cubic chamber five hundred meters in each dimension.
Unfortunately, most of that space was completely unused.
Apophis was disappointed. He'd hoped to find some Zetark ships here, but only found a set of elaborate machines which were completely alien to him.
The place was completely intact, and Apophis knew that he could probably find 'something' useful within it. After all, Zetark technology was particularly resistant to the passage of time, as he'd found out on two previous occasions!
Though Apophis was overwhelmed by the Zetark technology, Antanria was there to assist! As she'd hinted at previously, she was quite familiar with her people's technology.
Even if she hadn't been specially educated as a princess, the Zetark put quite a lot of emphasis on educating their children. Almost any Zetark child would have been able to fully utilize the basic aspects of their technology.
Remembering what Antanria had told him about her knowledge of Zetark shipyards, Apophis asked her to access whatever computer systems were present and learn what secrets they hid!
In Apophis's first life, simply cloning Zetark to resurrect the race had, of course, not brought back the memories of the original race's bodies.
The language barrier between modern races and the ancient Zetark made the use of most of their technology impossible, since people could not easily interact with their computer systems.
Even if Apophis understood their language, though, the quirks of their engineering were bizarre to him. So it was fantastic to have Antanria along!
But the princess found herself in a difficult situation.
She had accepted Apophis's offer to help her find the reason her people went extinct, but this went beyond that. Apophis was asking her to betray the technological secrets of her species!
Yet, even though she initially rebelled against this concept, another problem came to her mind.
Antanria knew absolutely no one in this new world except for Apophis, and he was so incredibly powerful that he could surely protect her from any danger. Despite herself, Antanria understood that she had developed an attachment to Apophis, emotionally seeing him as a substitute father.
And she also knew that this attachment was not completely reciprocated. Apophis was a strange person with his own goals and motivations… and protecting her was clearly not at the top of the list.
To protect herself, both physically and emotionally, Antanria had to prove herself to be absolutely indispensable to Apophis! She had to remove any possibility that he might abandon her in the future!
Upon this decision, Antanria finally spoke up. "This place is a corvette shipyard, a dormant one. Though it is empty of ships at the moment, this machinery can automatically assemble a whole fleet! Nevertheless, only specially trained technicians from my people have the knowledge to begin such an assembly."
Apophis was impressed and regained his optimism. "Thank you," he said, and rubbed the top of her head, making Antanria blush!
Apophis looked around at the nearly empty chamber. "Fortunately, I already have a Zetark corvette blueprint, which I found at the high command base!"
Antanria was surprised! She wondered if perhaps it was fate that this man had been the one to wake her up.
Apophis gave her the blueprint and asked her to begin assembly.
Antanria fed the blueprint into the computer and then interacted with the systems, watching carefully for errors. "Good! The computer recognized the plan without issue. Now we need to find materials!"
Trade Notification: Antanria requested 300,000 GC to assemble a [Zetark Experimental Corvette(Rare)].
"Accept."
Antanria nodded. "Well, everything seems to be in order! According to the computer, the construction will be completed in three days."
Apophis didn't care about construction delays. After all, a hostile Federation fleet was orbiting the planet! If he tried to fly away right now, he'd probably be shot down immediately!
Just as he thought this, a notification popped up.
***********Server Announcement***********
"Federation troops have landed on Era! For the duration of the war, NPCs and players will receive and reward additional EXP."
It was time for Apophis to make a lot of EXP!
