Pillar of Yita

Punch needle, pin extractor, the next item is... a screwdriver. Fang Hong’s hand searched through a pile of parts on the wooden table, looking for what he wanted. Inside his left-hand glove lay a half-finished Clockwork Fairy, the brass shell not yet closed, exposing the gears and escapement mechanism to the air.

If you looked closely, you’d find this Clockwork Fairy was much more complex than ordinary ones. In the usual spot for Communication Crystal on the ’Communications Type’ (II) Clockwork Fairy was a complex mechanical structure—a revolving chamber device that could hold lead bullets with a diameter of seven millimeters, a total of six, connected to an iron tube about two inches long with rifling.

This was a Clockwork Fairy made by Fang Hong according to Aquitez’s blueprint, of course, directly improved from the II type Clockwork Fairy. Some details hadn’t been polished yet, appearing quite rough. A major issue with this Clockwork Fairy was being overweight; the revolving chamber structure and bullets together weighed over 220 grams, nearly 130% of the load-bearing capacity of a standard II type Clockwork Fairy.

Although generally speaking, agile constructs intentionally leave power margins, so this Combat Fairy could still fly, but its maneuverability, speed, and controllability significantly decreased.

He carefully unscrewed the screws on both sides with a screwdriver, placing them in a small box beside him. To outsiders, the work of a craftsman seems whimsical, but to insiders, carefulness and seriousness are paramount.

Fang Hong removed an ear needle with the pin extractor, exhaled, and pinned the needle to the thick collar of his Alchemist’s robe—underneath the shining golden Cross Star. Looking up, a magnifying lens assembly composed of multiple lenses covered half of the clear-cut face of the young man.

He moved a magnifying lens barrel aside to prevent it from blocking the system interface.

He looked up again at the attributes on the interface.

The basic attributes were not much different from a standard Clockwork Fairy, except the total weight was close to a Talia pound, around 550 grams. In this level of agility construct, it couldn’t be considered light.

From the start of the design, seeing Aquitez’s blueprint, he realized — the primary issue with Combat Fairies is weight reduction; however, this six-chamber revolving structure had practically been pushed to the limit by his current technical level. To further reduce weight, unless compromising on power, would require further progress in materials and craftsmanship.

But the attack power was only 23-31, mainly because of bullet lethality, and like all firearms, it had 50% armor-piercing attribute within effective range. However, the effective range of this simplified shooting device was actually very short, less than twenty feet.

When Fang Hong himself used it, it was mostly close-range shooting.

This power was already very small; any smaller, it would be a toy, losing meaning as a weapon. Material relates to cost, craftsmanship relates to level and skill, and these were not things that could be improved in the short term.

Moreover, even if weight was further reduced, 220 grams was already very light, and the room for further reduction was not large.

Simply put, this Combat Fairy modified from the II type Clockwork Fairy had no potential for further improvement; he realized it was time to design a dedicated platform specifically for Combat Fairies.

In recent days, the situation in the Southern Region, Miss Sicape’s warning, and the words left by the Archmage before departure all vaguely made him aware of something.

And as the Princess’s mission once again lost clues, the Floating Ship was being constructed in an orderly manner, plus the Grey Crystal matter had someone to handle for him—these days, people were unusually idle.

But no one was idle.

Everyone was busy transforming the cognitive experience gained before into knowledge and skills and true combat power.

Fang Hong was no exception.

With the Construct Sea Monster, he could now generate a large amount of ’gray-white,’ a cheap substitute for Clockwork Fairies in combat. This meant that the labor role originally carried by Clockwork Fairies had shifted, and their manufacturing costs were no longer as sensitive as before.

’Gray-white’ constructs could be seen as simple Clockwork Fairies, but they lacked visual linkage capability and couldn’t hold Explosive Crystals—this was because Fang Hong could not yet achieve the complex elemental construction of Explosive Crystals, and there were still a series of problems like triggering device, stabilizing device, and closed loop device that needed solving—and they had no communication capability.

So the upgraded Clockwork Fairy still needed to continue combining these three capabilities.

Scout, Liaison, Attacker, and launching a suicidal attack when necessary.

After some thought, he decided to divide the Clockwork Fairy into three types.

The first type is gray-white, to replace the ’disgraceful’ tasks of the original Clockwork Fairy.

The second type is the Fire Giant, mainly for launching suicide attacks. For this type of Clockwork Fairy, he had only one requirement—that it be cheap enough—for this, he removed all unnecessary parts, even including cooling components, visual and audio transmission were all unnecessary, and even the balance system could be compromised.

It actually had only four necessary parts: Core Crystal, power, closed loop device, and Explosive Crystal.

The redesigned Fire Giant had excellent results, not only costing only a third of the original but also, after weight reduction, its maneuverability, speed, and controllability were further improved. Now Fang Hong could call it a dedicated suicide machine.