Lucien left Moltsage in the care of Seren and the Liberators for the time being.

If memory had been stripped from him layer by layer, then perhaps familiarity would do what force could not. Sometimes the mind returned not because it was ordered to, but because enough of the world around it became recognizable again.

For now, that was the better path.

Lucien turned his attention elsewhere and went to the manufacturing sector of the communication devices.

The moment he entered, he could feel the pulse of organized obsession.

The place had already begun turning into a world of its own.

At one section, Eirene and Elk were surrounded by drafted diagrams and projected structures.

They were designing machines.

Specialized production units tailored to each stage of device manufacturing. One for shell shaping. One for fine channel engraving. One for imprint-thread layering. One for safe array seating. One for calibration verification.

Lucien did not interrupt them.

Elk had narrowed eyes and the dangerous stillness of a woman currently improving the future faster than most people could emotionally prepare for it. Eirene, calmer beside her, kept adjusting the internal logic of each blueprint with little drifting points of green light. She checked tolerances and energy flow the way a gardener might inspect root health.

A little farther in, Seren, Rurik, Morphy, and the crafting workers continued the current production by hand.

Morphy had become an outright menace to ordinary labor expectations.

The Mimic Slime had split its body repeatedly into working forms, then used the Law of Reflection to mimic Seren’s and Rurik’s technical motions with alarming accuracy. Morphys moved at once through the floor, each taking a different station, each working without fatigue, complaint, or confusion.

Lucien paused and watched for a moment.

Morphy alone looked like an entire department.

Which, in practical terms, it nearly was.

Its mental capacity never faltered. Its coordination never tangled. It was a slime, and worse, it was a slime that genuinely enjoyed work.

Then he noticed the automatons.

Six bio-metal figures moved through the facility with perfect timing, lifting heavier material crates, sorting finished components, transferring arrays to calibration lines, and catching microscopic deviations before human eyes would have.

Rurik had clearly embedded command sequences into them specifically for this site, and they executed their roles with such brutal precision that the entire sector felt more like a living factory than a workshop.

Lucien smiled.

He did not stay idle long.

First, he used his Craft feature directly.

He fed in the proper materials and set a first large-scale fabrication order for one hundred thousand communication devices.

A progress bar unfolded before him.

It was working.

It was also too slow for his liking.

Lucien stared at the pace for a second, then snorted softly.

He did not wait for the feature to finish.

Instead, he stepped onto the floor, watched the rhythm of the workers for a few breaths, and then joined them properly.

Split Body activated.

Parallel Thoughts unfolded.

Cosmic magic followed.

He used Cosmic Convergence and called upon his past selves. Hundreds of Luciens emerged into the work lines, each one taking a station, each one moving with perfect synchronization.

The manufacturing hall changed instantly.

Workers stopped for only a heartbeat before resuming at greater speed. The sight was too absurd to dwell on for long. The quota still had to be met.

Hundreds of Luciens worked like a law of efficiency given shape. Their rhythm never broke. Their coordination did not slip.

Even with tens of thousands of workers already present, the added momentum changed the atmosphere of the whole site.

The quota surged.

The stockpile rose.

And because Lucien was not merely helping assemble the devices but would later personally integrate them into the Origin Core network, every hour saved here multiplied later.

That part mattered.

He was still the primary owner and root authority of the system.

If he handled the final binding stage himself, the network integration would become vastly faster and cleaner than letting others’ hands brute-force it.

So he worked.

And the hall became a machine.

•••

By the next day, Elk brought the first new massive batch out in properly prepared storage rings.

They were separated by class.

The new devices for civilians were also now available.

Everything had been packed with exacting care.

Lucien sent word to Kael immediately.

The next selling wave was ready.

Departure would be the following day.

Condoriano and Saber came to see Lucien not long after.

Condoriano spoke first.

"The second wave will be uglier."

Lucien raised an eyebrow.

"That sounds reassuring."

Saber, in his usual economical way, simply said, "The rumors have spread."

They were right.

The first wave had created fascination. The second wave would create competition sharpened by scarcity.

Now the outer powers knew three things:

The devices were real. The devices mattered. And supply was not infinite.

That combination always made fools dangerous.

Saber folded his arms and tilted his head slightly.

"The merchant boy will need more than one quiet disaster following him around."

That was his way of volunteering.

Lucien understood at once.

"With you two joining Uncle Tortoise, the caravan should be safe."

Condoriano grinned. Saber said nothing, which in this case meant agreement.

Lucien let them go with his blessing.

He had been thinking the same thing already. Good guards were one thing. Layered deterrence was better.

•••

Later that day, he checked on Moltsage.

The result surprised him.

He had adapted with suspicious speed.

He was already training.

Not gently, either.

Astraea had found him.

Lucien should have expected that.

She respected strength, will, and those who bled themselves dry for a meaningful cause.

Moltsage had done exactly that.

What Lucien found, however, looked less like guided rehabilitation and more like beautifully controlled torment.

Astraea stood in the field with the young Serpentile boy before her, correcting his stance while he endured pressure, balance disruption, repeated collapse, and recovery drills at a pace that would have made most adults cry for mercy.

Moltsage did not complain once.

If anything, he looked dissatisfied whenever the training stopped.

Lucien watched in silence for a while.

Then he sighed.

Perhaps this was helping.

If nothing else, the stubborn old-man spirit in Moltsage had clearly survived the memory loss.

•••

The next morning, the second caravan departed.

And Lucien nearly coughed blood when he saw who had joined this time.

Sylvia had come with Edric.

Not only that, the two of them had left Lucian behind in Lootwell.

That part nearly made Lucien say something unreasonable on principle.

Fortunately, Lucian himself was sensible, increasingly obsessed with reading, and currently too absorbed by the Grand Archives and the new skill-learning systems to miss his parents properly. The communication devices also meant he was not truly isolated.

Even so, the sight of Edric and Sylvia together made the whole departure line look less like a protected merchant wave and more like a traveling honeymoon that happened to include high-value cargo and monstrous escorts.

Maxim and Ellen were there too. Kael, of course, looked delighted. Morveth stood like a quiet calamity. Condoriano looked entertained. Saber looked like a man already bored of future enemies.

Only then did Lucien truly feel at ease.

With those three ancient beasts guarding the route, the selling group would not merely survive. It would become a moving warning to anyone stupid enough to think the network could be bullied into surrender.

He watched them leave, then turned back toward the territory.

•••

That same day, the Crafting Division began the next major phase.

Mass production machinery.

Lucien gave one very clear instruction before they started.

"Prototype first."

He did not want six thousand flawed machines created through hurried enthusiasm only to waste materials and demand future redesign. He wanted one perfect prototype for each production role. Once those were calibrated, proven, refined, and stabilized, then he would duplicate them through Craft.

That was the correct order.

Make the first one right. Then multiply perfection.

Everyone agreed.

So the work began.

Machine frames. Movement arms. Runic insertion rails. Array engravers. Pressure calibrators. Shell assembly spindles. Imprint-lock stations.

It was the kind of project that made Rurik frighteningly happy.

Lucien left them to it after ensuring the conceptual line remained clean. The future manufacturing world could wait until the core systems were worthy of being multiplied.

Then he finally returned to the instant teleportation array.

This time, he committed fully.

The day disappeared into layered light.

He built the main array carefully, stroke by stroke, though "stroke" was not the right word once Imprint Manifestation entered the process.

The array was too vast and too complicated for ordinary manual work to remain efficient. So he projected segments into being, overlapped lawful correspondences, fixed the sequence anchors, and seated the deeper reference geometry with a precision no ordinary artisan could have achieved in a century.

Even then, it took him the entire day.

That was how intricate it was.

By the time he finished, the chamber thrummed with clean dormant pressure. The central ring sat ready. The layered circles beneath it gleamed faintly under formation light. The chamber itself felt less like a room and more like a promise waiting for a destination.

Lucien stood in the center and looked at what he had made with satisfaction.

Now he needed to test it.

And not on a nearby point.

He wanted a result that would prove whether this was merely good or truly worthy.

So he went to Anvil-Horn. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Lucien approached and said simply, "Uncle, can you take me to the conquered world in the void?"

Anvil-Horn turned.

"Are you going to visit my daughter?"

Lucien smiled faintly and didn’t answer his question.

"I just finished an instant teleportation array. I want to see if it works..."

That was enough for Anvil-Horn.

The old master agreed at once when Lucien explained that principle behind it.

They had been using teleportation discs and route methods to go back and forth. Functional, yes. Elegant, no. This would change that.

Lucien found himself smiling too.

Because beyond the technical success and the branch future and the strategic possibilities, there was another reason he wanted to go.

He would finally see the Starforge’s conquered world in the void properly.

And perhaps, if fortune aligned—

he would see Lilith again.