Chương 19: The Industrial Machine

The sensory immersion hit Ethan like a physical blow. The sudden, violent rush of wild leeks and sun-baked mud brick slammed into his lungs, making his real-world stomach heave. His Level 3 avatar materialised in the lower ward of Hazor, but Ethan barely saw the digital city. A phantom migraine, born from staring at a flashing neural interface for over a day straight, throbbed behind his eyes. He had exactly thirty-one hours left in his real-world window. He could not afford a single second of rest.

His inner math engine dragged his screaming mind forward, mapping the absolute highest-velocity extraction route inside the city walls. He wasn't foraging by the basket anymore; he was industrialising. He just had to ignore the phantom weight dragging down his virtual limbs. First rotation: The Gleaning Node. Ethan marched straight through the eastern gates into the corporate barley fields.

The Pixel Rex guards were busy running escort missions for wealthy secondary-year trainees, their heavy iron swords clinking uselessly. Ethan dropped to his knees. The motion made his head spin, a cold sweat breaking out across his real-world skin back in his capsule. His bare hands swept through the dry soil under Leket custom protection, skin scraping against rocks until his digital fingers felt raw.

Because his Level 3 attributes had expanded his passive perception metrics, his resource detection speed was up by five clean percent—forcing a relentless torrent of bright green data tags straight into his exhausted retinas. One measure. Five measures. Twenty measures. He dragged the heavy sacks, his breath hitching in his throat, straight to the alleyway widow. He cut the same tax-free fifty-fifty split on her recheiym hand-mill, the repetitive grinding sound drilling directly into his headache.

He did not sell the flour. He bartered five jars of it directly to a local NPC mule-driver in exchange for three massive baskets of low-grade flax waste left behind by the royal weavers. Zero shekels spent on input. Second rotation: The Dung Gate Loop. With his shoulders aching under the weight of raw flax fibers and barley flour, Ethan navigated the western wall to the Dung Gate. Every step felt like wading through wet cement.

He didn't pay F2P players this time; he forced his dry, raspy throat to speak, using his upgraded linguistic syntax to negotiate directly with an independent NPC stable-hand. He traded two scoops of fresh flour for three massive sacks of desiccated sheep manure. The stench was foul, triggering a wave of nausea through his sensory-immersion suit, but he swallowed it down. He dragged the fuel sacks straight to the industrial quarter, dumping them outside the apprentice smithy.

"The palace charcoal line is still blocked," Ethan told the junior smith, Joram. His voice was a harsh whisper, cutting through the heavy furnace smoke that made his eyes water.

"Your master is coming back from the wine stalls in twenty minutes. Take the manure fuel. Give me the unrefined copper slag crust from the discard bins." The advanced AI computed the inventory emergency instantly. Joram reached into the stone bins, dumping nearly fifteen kilograms of greenish-black metallic crust straight into Ethan's leather pouch. Total tax applied: zero. Third rotation: The Carbon Reduction Matrix. Ethan's vision blurred at the edges, dark gray spots dancing in his eyes.

He did not wait for the communal baking oven to clear. Moving like a mechanical automaton, his fingers trembling with fatigue, he wove a series of tight, coarse mesh filters. He packed the crushed copper powder and charcoal ash inside three borrowed clay keli cheresh vessels. He buried them deep beneath the public ovens, letting the community's free thermodynamic energy execute the carbon monoxide reduction while he collapsed into the dust-choked shade.

Every forty minutes, his display flashed blindingly green: [Arayut Clause Triggered] Laborer metabolic depletion detected. Procuring: [Coarse Barley Porridge x1] Cost: 0. 15 Silver Shekels. Billing Status: Transferred to Primary Covenant Holder [Player: Bochim]. Ethan watched the silver decimals bleed systematically out of Bochim's remote ledger. The virtual food forced a artificial spike of stamina through his avatar's veins, but it did nothing for the bone-deep lethargy freezing his brain.

He was running a frictionless, closed-loop industrial extraction engine right inside the Canaanite slums, operating on pure, stubborn survival instinct. By the third repetition of the cycle, the public ovens cooled. Ethan smashed the brittle clay seals with a heavy stone, the impact jarring up his brittle wrists. Crack. Crack. Crack. Three clusters of porous, glittering, high-purity pink sponge copper nodules spilled onto the dirt. Total weight: 15 kilograms of merchantable metal.

He didn't go to the low-tier silversmith this time. Dragging the fifteen kilograms of refined sponge copper, he forced his trembling legs to carry him straight to the Upper City trade boundaries. He confronted a high-tier NPC bronze-caster who supplied the royal chariot corps. The old smith picked up a nodule, his digital face shifting into an expression of intense, algorithmic greed as he scraped the raw pink surface against his testing stone.

"This is soft earth-blood. No iron sand to ruin the molds. I can alloy this into three dozen elite spearheads by dusk. Name your weight."

"No copper shekels," Ethan said. He leaned heavily over the stone counter, using it to keep his knees from buckling under him.

"Weigh the Hacksilber scrap. Pure weight. No palace merchant tax." The smith hesitated, then reached into his heavy cedar chest, pulling out a thick, coiled silver arm-ring. He used his iron shears to clip four massive, jagged chunks of scrap silver, letting them drop onto his bronze balance scale until the weights levelled. Clink. [System Alert: High-Value Liquidation Successful] You have traded: [Pure Sponge Copper Pellets x15. 0 kg] You have received: [Hacksilber Scrap — Weight: 916 Grams] Current Wallet Balance: 680. 00 Silver Shekels. Ethan's fingers closed tightly around the cold, jagged hoard of silver scrap inside his leather pouch. The sharp metal bit into his raw palms, the pain anchoring him to reality. Six hundred and eighty shekels. He had shattered the target milestone. Six hundred and thirty shekels would be converted instantly to S$302.

40 SGD, anchoring his grandmother's medical pod and air filtration lines for seven solid, unthrottled days. A heavy, shaky breath escaped his lips. She could breathe for another week. The remaining fifty shekels sat completely untouched, pristine, and ready to clear the enlistment bond for the Chariot Commander class. He had beaten the system's economic constraints without spending a single copper bit of his own capital. He turned his back on the Upper City markets.

His bare feet moved with a rapid, clinical, yet agonizingly heavy stride down the limestone avenue toward the Garrison Quarter. The barracks gates loomed ahead—a massive, iron-reinforced portal of dark oak wood where the elite mercenary paths were locked. Ethan gripped his pouch of silver, his vision narrowing down to a tight tunnel. A cold, sharp grin cut through his pale, dirt-streaked face as he forced his aching boots up the stone steps.

He was running on absolute empty, but he was ready to buy his way into the big money.