Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 76: Ammo out of the whazoo!

"Ha… ha… ha…"

Sitting back on top of the huge column he had just erected, Theo looked down at the extensive yet rather simplistic system he had just finished.

The rows upon rows of constructors turned copper ingots into bullet casings, only for those to then be combined with copper ingots again, turning them into actual bullets.

Where did the gunpowder and primer inside of those come from? Were they supposed to be shot by some magnetic or maybe even magical means? That, Theo didn’t know.

And since he didn’t really need to know the answer to those questions, he just opted not to think about it.

"This really looks nice," Theo muttered to himself instead, taking a bite out of the berry only to let its rich, fruity juices flush his parched mouth and then flow down his throat.

Even though his thirst and hunger meters were nowhere close to drying up, this was nothing more than self-indulgence, an act of rewarding himself for working hard.

And contrary to how it might seem from up above the whole factory, he indeed had to work hard to get this whole system up and running.

From the problem of properly balancing the two copper ingot belts that fed directly into the combiner machines, through the madness of laying down a labyrinth of belts due to how slow they were when compared to the numbers Theo needed for this part of the factory to output…

From the outside, his now-finished project looked simple. Yet, as soon as anyone took a closer look, they would be able to witness its true complexity.

’Even though it was obvious from the moment I realized how many bullets I needed to produce per minute, to think it wouldn’t dawn on me all the way until the moment I actually had to belt them out of the machines…’

Six hundred ammo boxes per minute. That’s how much ammunition Theo needed if he wanted a total of a hundred guns to be able to operate ad infinitum. And while, by every rational means, it was one hell of an overshoot when compared to just creating a much smaller factory coupled with a massive stockpile of ammunition instead…

After witnessing firsthand what kind of dangers awaited him in the areas deeper into the forest, Theo dared not to take any shortcuts.

That is, he dared not to take any shortcuts save for those he now didn’t really have a choice but to take.

And so, even though he originally planned to go get some rest as soon as he finished the ammunition factory, Theo gritted his teeth and suckled on another berry before pushing himself for just a little longer to get just one more small project done.

A project that allowed him to temporarily circumvent the need for a Richstone vein by creating a rather huge chain of storage units in a small, freshly excavated cave to the side of the whole production area, only to then spend the next two hours going back and forth between his mine and said storage area, doing nothing but filling the storage units with the Richstone he excavated from the depths.

Now, however, everything was ready for the next step of his plan. And with a single look at his system showing that the time until the next invasion now had a number two at the very front of the timer, it was already much later than when Theo originally thought he would have it done.

Still, occupying just a fraction of the ammo factory area, directly linked to the Richstone storage area, was now a small, laughably tiny processing plant where the Richstone Theo manually excavated would be turned into concrete bags.

Or, as he already saw them, materials he could instantly use with the addition of some iron rods—which was another change to the recipes he knew from the game his subsystem was based on—to create slabs of reinforced concrete, the strongest material he had access to as of now.

Due to the size of the plant, it produced barely enough cement bags for around ten slabs of concrete per minute. And that meant the very next step on Theo’s list… was to leave the production area and go back to the surface, either to continue the dirt-excavation task or to finally succumb to his exhaustion and take a proper rest.

’Judging by the time I still have left until the invasion…’ Taking a look at his system prompts, Theo couldn’t help but sigh when he saw it.

[27:39:11]

By now, he only had a little bit over a single day left before the monsters would once again swarm his claim. And if his worries about how this monster statue of his worked were on point…

’If I’m right, it won’t be just a single wave of challengers like the last time,’ Theo thought, gritting his teeth while trying to ignore the cold sweat that permeated his back at the mere thought of how the next invasion was likely to look. ’And thinking about it…’

With his thoughts centered around the coming combat, Theo managed to somehow push himself up the stairs and to the surface.

This content is taken from freёnovelkiss.com.

Yet, rather than heading for the bedroom in his mansion right away, he still went for a short trip to the outside of the first ring of his walls, only to then stop just a few steps away from the edge of the short stretch of the ditch he had completed before.

"Will monsters of the level of that Voiderling be susceptible to the bullets, though?" Standing over the edge of the ditch, Theo couldn’t help but worry.

Yet, while there was another weapon he knew how to make with just a little bit of system shenanigans… Not only would it be insanely more expensive than the current setup he hadn’t even finished building, it would also take a lot more time, effort, and most importantly, materials to set it all up.

In other words, for the coming invasion… Theo had pretty much no chance of getting his hands on the rocket launchers that he already planned to get. And that left him with nothing more than simple kinetic weapons…

Weapons that the fantasy literature he enjoyed was infamously bad against monsters of sufficiently high level!

’While I could never agree with the idea of modern weapons not working against monsters that could be slashed or crushed with cold weapons, it’s not like I’m the one making the rules here, is it?’ Theo thought, gritting his teeth at the prospect of all of his plans falling apart, thus forcing him to abandon all that he worked hard to construct.

A prospect that would be akin to a proper death sentence, given the absolute lack of mineral veins he could sense in the direction of the open plain he had come from!

"Just in case, I guess I should stock up on those berries as much as I can," Theo thought, heaving a long sigh as he turned away from the ditch, finally ready to go back to his manor and get some proper rest. "That, and to make those berries last longer, a proper source of water."

Shaking his head, Theo nearly crossed the wooden gate when a simple, stray thought—an idea that was either ingenious or extremely stupid—popped into his head.

"Water, huh?" he muttered to himself as he looked back at the short stretch of the ditch he had made quite some time ago. "And coupled with all that I have easy access to right now…"

The worry on Theo’s face disappeared, replaced with just exhaustion and but a fleeting spark of hope and vicious amusement.

"Let’s leave it for tomorrow. But if it works…"

The grin on Theo’s lips only continued to grow wider by the moment as he continued to build up on the idea that had floated into his head, turning it into a seedling for a fresh plan for tomorrow.

"Then I might just have a way to fully secure my manor from invasions of any kind!"