Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 41: At last, this damned industry is getting built!

The wait for the ore to smelt was one of the most insufferable that Theo ever went through in his life.

And it wasn’t just because he had to watch his clock tick away while sitting down and pretty much doing nothing.

No.

It was because while he sat down and did quite a lot, he couldn’t help but keep glancing at the ticking clock.

[12:27:01]

[12:25:55]

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[12:24:00]

It took roughly one minute for a single batch of ore to smelt through in Theo’s furnaces. Then, just a few more seconds for him to set up the new batch of nail crafting that would use up all the freshly baked iron ingots.

And then, the whole process would repeat, forcing Theo to watch how the seconds on the crafting timer matched the passing of the seconds on the invasion clock, all the while trying his absolute utmost not to just… lose his grip and fall asleep.

’Come on, man, hang in there for just a little bit longer!’

Even though it wasn’t even all that long since he woke up all perfectly fresh and well-rested, Theo struggled to remain on the right side of reality, the exhaustion from all the effort, toil, and stress finally catching up to him.

Now that he actually had to slow down and mostly just… wait around, staying awake proved to be a lot more herculean of a task than it was back when he was running around and doing stuff.

And yet, fall asleep he could not.

Not until the industry would be up and running properly, just in case the crafting process of the one item he desired the most right now would actually come with a rather hefty time-wise price tag. Or, in other words…

Even after he would be done crafting, he would still have to wait for quite a lot more ore to smelt through, then survive through the construction of the building itself, and then at least one of its crafting cycles before he could finally allow himself to go to sleep.

Or, at the very least, that was the original plan.

"I don’t think I can make it, after all," Theo muttered to himself, resigning to just accept his reality pretty much as soon as he went in the green nail-wise, entering the lengthy process of just sitting down and waiting for the rest of the ore to smelt through. "Not… not when all I do is sit down and wait, that is!"

Fully aware of the current, rather vulnerable state he was in, Theo jumped up to his feet and rushed down the mining hall, this time refusing to just give his consciousness away to his zoned-in state.

He couldn’t do so when the only way for him to measure the passage of time was to check how far the invasion clock would progress. After all, there would be no notification for when the smelted ingots in all of his furnaces would cumulatively reach the number necessary for Theo to finally put the specialized industry into construction!

And so, pretty much as soon as he entered the shadowy bellows of his mining shaft, Theo whipped out his trusty, iron pickaxe… only to turn his side over to the main flight of the tunnel and start mining into its wall, finally putting his plan of parallel digging into use.

’Four blocks high and, let’s say…’ Theo took a moment to translate his gaming knowledge into the circumstances of his own situation. ’Ten blocks deep? Or should I make it twelve?’ he thought while his tired arms already swung his pick, removing one block after the other from his way.

After all, back in the game, having a two-block high mineshaft would be perfectly fine for the character to move through, while having a three-block high one was nothing more than a sign of picking luxury and long-term benefit over actual, practical benefits.

In reality, however, while a two-block high tunnel was something Theo could still squeeze through, it was by no means big enough of a hole for him to just… walk through.

And so, not only did he have to double the minimal height of the tunnel to match his real-life situation, he also opted to space it out quite a bit more than he would back in the blocky game. After all, with his oresmeller perk of the blocky subroutine, he didn’t need to mine out shafts exactly two blocks apart from each other to ensure he wasn’t missing out on any of the ore—his perk would do that for him instead.

In the end, however, Theo decided to space the two tunnels only eight blocks apart, matching the standard he knew from the game translated through the much smaller size of the blocks in the reality he had no other choice but to face.

After all, this short digging bout wasn’t about finding ore or, even though it surely was an added benefit, mining out more stone blocks for future use.

It was all about staying awake for just long enough for the invasion clock to progress several more minutes, indicating the timing for when the rest of the iron ore would smelt back in Theo’s simplistic furnace array.

’Thinking back, it wouldn’t hurt to add more furnaces to the place, even if it means it’s going to be quite a lot more of a drag to not only juggle them all but also to keep all of them properly fueled,’ Theo thought, pressing his lips into a thin line in frustration over how much of a late realization that was.

Between all the decisions, mining, and translating of the gaming standards to the standards Theo encountered in this world and through his system, the time finally came for him to stash his axe away into his inventory before rushing back to his mining base.

There, in a frantic frenzy, he emptied out all the furnaces but one… the one he ended up waiting an additional twenty seconds to finish smelting, before finally watching as the last requirement for his specialized industry resource cost list finally went from red to a beautiful, welcoming green.

’That sure took a while,’ Theo thought, already willing for the construction to happen…

Only for a new problem to slap him in the face, with how he could feel the construction was possible… and yet, no matter how much he wished for it to start, it just wouldn’t happen!

A problem… that somehow, Theo could just guess the possible cause and thus the solution for.

’At times, this system really isn’t giving me even the slightest of a breaks,’ Theo sighed, already rushing up the stairs with just the minimal level of caution not to make this short trip up to the surface a lethal event of him slipping and dying a dog’s death purely because of the mismatch between the levels of his excitement and exhaustion.

Emerging up on the surface a literal moment later, however, allowed Theo to confirm that—at least on this point—his gut feeling was right.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t build the specialized industry, not in the slightest.

Instead, it was the fault of this particular upgrade being slightly different from the rest, where his system would find the perfect spot to build up.

No, right now, pretty much as soon as he appeared on the surface, Theo found his vision instantly switching over to the building mode with one extremely basic difference.

Rather than seeing a see-through projection of a block for him to place, what he saw in the middle of his vision that perfectly followed everywhere he looked, was a see-through hologram of a rather sizable building—one roughly half the size of his mansion itself!

"Yeah, let’s not get too fancy with it."

Theo didn’t have the time—in every sense possible—nor the willpower to turn this whole thing into a prolonged drag to his plans. Instead, he just went outside of the wooden gate and then slapped the building down right in the area he had cleared from the trees back when he still believed there was a practical point to clearing up a perimeter around his wooden fence—an idea that he had abandoned ever since.

And pretty much as soon as the see-through hologram vanished from Theo’s building vision the moment he felt satisfied with its placement…

It copied over to the real world, now turning into yet another building projection like all the other constructions in progress that Theo witnessed before.

This time, however, it came with an added perk, one that Theo couldn’t really tell whether it came from just how special of an expansion to his mansion this project was or whether it was the positive influence of the constructor’s office.

Either way, now, for yet another time, a second timer appeared in the bottom corner of his vision, right next to the clock that patiently ticked away the seconds that separated Theo’s rushed, although still peaceful, life from the period of lethal struggle.

[Time until the construction of "Specialized Industry: Ballistarii1" completion: 59:28]

Changed from "Crossbow Makers" for better vibes