Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 108: Just a contingency plan (3)

"I don't have the confidence to say that upon my return, I will still be the same."

According to both Theo's calculations and the plan he based on them, his time should run out right as he spoke out those words.

And yet…

Nothing happened.

'Huh?'

Squinting his eyes a bit, he looked down before doing a quick scan of his own energy. And contrary to all reason and logic… the energy that sustained his presence in the future was nowhere near exhaustion!

Heck, it was actually increasing with every passing second, making it seem as if he was… draining it from somewhere?

"What the…?"

Looking around, Theo moved away from the machine he rested his hand on, taking a step back as he looked around and then inwards, only to realize that whatever it was that gave him the energy was no longer there.

"Why…"

Blind to Theo's current plight and confusion, Callane was still stuck on the words he originally wanted to leave her with before allowing the future to get back on its originally designed track.

Yet, rather than confronting the girl, Theodore focused all of his attention on this new mystery, quickly advancing the step and touching the machine again.

'That's…'

The energy-draining process resumed nearly instantly, as if merely coming into contact with his future creation was enough to somehow provide him with the insane amount of energy to not only offset the drain of the spell… but still refill the reserves he had nearly exhausted already!

"Why are you telling me this, now of all times?!" Callane cried out, falling down to her knees as tears started to stream down her cheeks. "Even if I knew, even if I always knew, up until this point I could still…"

Jerking her head up, Callane cast an intense stare at Theo's face, only to finally realize that something was wrong.

Not bad… just not as expected.

"What's happening now?!" Already highly emotional, she blurted out a half-shout and half-cry, desperately clinging to every second that Theo, her Theo, was still there for her to converse with.

"To be honest, I only have half of a clue," Theo admitted, wasting no time posing to be smarter or more knowledgeable than he was in reality. "Originally, I was supposed to be gone by now, but for some reason…"

For a moment, Theo cut his words short, staring at the machine he was touching.

"It seems I can somehow drain energy from this system?" he muttered, still nearly as confused as the girl beside him even though finding an answer to the current curiosity was supposed to be well within his realm of expertise.

'But how could that be? This amount of energy… it could even compare with the output from that runestone I used to cast the main spell to begin with!'

And that was all just a comparison of output. But from what Theo could somehow tell, the system he suddenly started to drain energy from…

The intensity of the energy it was outputting did not decrease!

Or, in simpler terms, rather than draining away the energy still left in the machine, he was merely siphoning off the excess that wasn't getting used anyway!

"This place…" Theo muttered, stepping away from the machine only to quickly touch his hand down against another one, slightly deeper into the underground floor. "Damn, am I really responsible for it all?!"

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Even though Theo's focus was always more on magic than management or trade, as the designated heir of the family he couldn't be a stranger to those things. As a leader of a powerful house-to-be, he had to understand the basics of those fields if he wanted to prevent his subjects from doing as they wished only to then throw sand in his eyes by clouding his judgment with some empty words and pointless jargon.

"Where the hell do you think you are going?!"

Stumped by her own raging emotions, Callane quickly ran up after Theo only to then wrap her hands around his waist as she pressed herself against his back, holding him in place in a desperate bid to stop him from leaving.

"Just wanted to see more of this place," Theodore muttered, fully entranced by what he could see from his poor vantage point.

The machine he touched, a great mystery all on its own… was just one of the kind, perfectly the same as several dozen more stacked one after the other in a neat line.

The self-moving roads that transported what looked like raw iron ore into the machines and then carried away the perfectly shaped smelted iron ingots were a whole other thing.

But how did all of those machines move? What put them in motion?

'It's not a spell,' Theodore thought, certain of his judgment after scanning the machine with his mana sense.

While there was some residual energy left in them, it was way too faint for it to be a byproduct of the machine operating. So, while their origin was likely of a magical kind, when it came to them just operating… there was absolutely nothing magical about it!

"Theo!"

Callane's shout, coming from just a few inches away from Theodore's ear, finally snapped him out of his trance, forcing him to slowly turn around within her embrace while carefully repositioning his hand so that he would keep on touching… no, keep on siphoning that excess energy from the machine.

Yet, as he looked down at Callane's face now buried not in his back but his chest instead, she suddenly perked her head up and looked into his face with her moist eyes.

"After what you just said, are you seriously going to just get all fascinated by some stupid machines?!"

There was obvious anger, dejection, and annoyance in her voice. But so was there desire, sadness, hunger…

A whole slew of emotions Theodore already saw individually on her face in the past, but never in such a complex, interwoven mix.

When it came to the last part of it, her hunger, though...