Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 103: Just a step away from the modern-grade tools

'Are you for real?'

Theo stared at the last prompt from his system, not sure whether to blink or not in fear such a vitally important decision could just dissipate in the air, never to be seen again.

'How do I pet the cat, though,' Theo then asked himself as he attempted to take a mental step back from his shock, 'when I don't have a cat?'

Realizing something, Theo took a breath and then quickly looked around, expecting a random cat to appear out of nowhere for some reason…

But no such thing happened.

'Well, one can't blame me for expecting something. After all that I've seen this system of mine do, somehow manifesting a cat for me to pet wouldn't even be all that surprising.'

Shaking his head, Theo put aside what was clearly a distraction before focusing on the rest of the actually important prompts.

'Save the night, huh?' Theo thought, his attention moving back to the very first project in line. 'An apex version of 'save the day' from the original game, huh?'

Noticing the connection, Theo sighed out and shook his head as he nearly started to question the integrity of whoever was behind the creation of his system in the first place.

'If you are going to ape something, at least have the balls to do it properly, would you?'

Raising his eyes up to the ceiling, Theo sighed again before focusing on the last two important prompts.

Yet, while the first — by opening up a whole slew of new opportunities ranging from new scannable resources through a whole array of new and upgraded buildings he could craft — would normally be the more important of the two...

"Early modern tools, huh?" Theo muttered to himself, using his voice for the very first time since he actually went through the upgrade process.

"Hmm?" From the back, Callane stepped up, cordially reminding Theo of her presence.

In the rush given by the tangible sense of progress, he had momentarily forgotten all about her, to the point of actually muttering potential key information out loud, even if only with a whisper.

'It shouldn't be a problem, though,' Theo quickly thought, assessing the damage caused by his lapse of attention. 'She shouldn't have enough context to make any sense out of it,' he decided, only to then turn his focus back to the most critical aspect of this part of his progress.

'Just one step away, huh?'

With the early modern tools now at Theo's disposal — whatever that actually meant — the next logical upgrade would be the modern tools.

'And if my memory serves me right…' Theo took in a deep breath, already relishing in the thought. 'Isn't this what I need to break through that wall all on my own?'

This thought lingered in Theo's thoughts for a moment.

By all means, even if the world on the other side went all to shit, having the option to go there still beat not having it. What's more, by gaining the ability to burrow straight through the wall, he could move in and out of the execution grounds at will rather than relying on some finicky artifact Callane's group used to pass through the wall!

For now, however, those early modern tools would have to suffice, for with the now proper expansion of his blueprints, Theo could already tell just how busy he was going to get in the near future.

'First, I need to get some coal. Then, steel and coal power. After that, better belts, advanced steel products, and finally, parts necessary for the next upgrade.'

The plan was simple.

What wasn't simple, though, was designing several different factories, each requiring different inputs and struggling with different problems before giving them all enough time for the production to ramp up and reach its full potential.

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Thankfully, when it came to the parts necessary for the next upgrade, while quite complex to make...

The upgrade didn't even need all that many of them! And that allowed Theo to already skip the idea of setting up factories for those in his plans, opting instead to just stockpile necessary materials in the storage units and then use said stockpiles to half-automate the production of what he needed to progress even further.

To a degree, it was a short-sighted way of satisfying the progress requirements, for the very items he needed for the upgrade would likely become a part he needed to produce anyway for even higher tiers of items...

But with the rush to get to the modern tools and the insane variety that Theo could already expect from the blueprints locked behind the next step of the progression, he didn't mind delegating this particular task for later.

'And then there's the obvious problem of not knowing how much of those I would need to produce before I actually unlock the higher tier so that I can check the recipes for upgrade items of the higher tier.'

Shaking his head, Theo finalized the rough estimate for his plans before taking a step back — both mentally and physically — from where he stood and calling out to the system.

'Which way to the coal?'

Just like many times before, Theo's vision changed, only for the rings of light to soon coalesce out of nothing around his hips, forming two distinctively brighter points on the circle.

"Good," Theo muttered.

"What's good?" Callane asked, never further than a step behind him.

"Hopefully, you will see soon. But for now, we are going on a small trip," Theo announced before picking the brighter of the two spots and then moving down to the factory floor, pushing as far in the direction pointed by the arrow of light as he could without using his excavator tool.

"To here?" Callane asked with a slight hint of anxiety in her voice as Theo stopped in a shadowy corner of his production facility, "a seemingly random corner?"

Theo simply shook his head before whipping out his universal tool.

"And what makes you think that?" he asked while pushing the excavation zone into the usual shape of a tunnel, anchoring it on the wall ahead of him, and then twisting his hand and pressing the button. "This is not where our trip ends, but where it begins."