What Do You Mean I Have To Comprehend Dao As A Mortal God?

Over the last few years of my experience in being a Vanguard, I have witnessed the mining process of Mana Crystals multiple times.

I remembered how we first had to mine the crystals manually with literal pickaxes since we didn’t know the properties of Mana Crystals yet but the moment we knew it was a new power source, they went all in on researching tech on how to automate the mining process.

They made mobile miners that were like giant drills and cutters on caterpillar threads and I would watch them cut away at the crystals to break them down before they get transported into trucks and carts to be brought out of the rift.

What I’m trying to say is... I’m quite familiar with how people from our world mine Mana Crystals.

But when it came to the Bunarfs...

I realised that I didn’t really have a chance to see them in action before this.

The last time I went to their colony, their mining machines were all offline since they were planning to expand the tunnel that day.

In fact, most of their machines had been switched off before I even got a chance to see how they work.

So right now, when I see the bunny girls setting up an entire mining facility in just a few minutes, I think it’s understandable that I would be surprised by what I was seeing.

The machines they used for mining the crystals was, according to them, using sound waves to break them apart.

They quite literally just set the machine in front of the Mana Crystal veins and then turned it on. The Mana Crystals would start vibrating and then slowly detach themselves from the wall and into smaller pieces.

There would then be a conveyor belt below to catch them to be transported away, all of it without requiring anyone to watch over the process.

As for the other minerals that the bunny girls were mining from the caverns, they used a more hands on approach.

And by that, I mean that they put on dark visors, slipped some kind of backpack behind them, then started carving away on the walls with a handheld laser cannon which seemed to only slice through rock and earth but left the minerals untouched.

For some reason, I felt the sight of them carving away at the wall looked familiar until I realised the backpack and the laser cannon looked like a certain fictional backpack that a specific group of people would use to capture ghosts.

The only difference was that the backpack the bunny girls made looked more streamlined without any exposed wires.

Well... I can’t say that I hate the sight of several bunny girls shooting that thing.

I wasn’t the only one that was surprised as Olivia was also taking notes and pictures of the machines the bunny girls were making, making me wonder if she was planning to market them as new tech to sell to our government.

As long as she doesn’t exploit the bunny girls I guess... And if the bunny girls are ok with it, of course. I’m fine with exploiting people outside of our circle but let’s at least treat our own people well, you know?

I watched as the Mana Crystals moved along the conveyor belts towards the top of the chasm.

With the amount of crystals that were being transported down the conveyor belts...

”Correct me if I’m wrong... But judging by the amount of Mana Crystals... It feels like they might finish mining it... Pretty quickly?” I commented.

Maylene popped up beside me, ”Oh! I think we can finish mining all of it by today actually!”

I turned to look at her, ”What? Wait... You can finish mining the entire vein in just a single day?”

She nodded, ”That’s right! Since Miss Olivia said that it would be best if we can mine this as fast as possible, we’re doing it quickly!”

I frowned, ”But... If I remember... The Mana Crystal vein that you girls were mining in the other chasm was smaller than this... And if I’m not wrong, you’ve been mining that one for over ten years? Now you’re telling me you can mine out two caverns worth of Mana Crystals in a single day?”

Maylene, ”Oh, we only mined what we needed from the veins since we didn’t know how big the vein was. We were really frugal with the mining which was how we managed to make it last for so long. But if we really wanted to deplete the vein, we could have also mined everything in a day too.”

I turned to look at the cavern as chunks of the Mana Crystals kept falling off the walls to settle on the conveyor belts below.

Yeah... I can believe them...

”What about the other metals?” Olivia asked, gesturing to the bunny girls carving away at the walls with their laser guns.

”Hmm... That’s hard to say since we haven’t exactly finished prospecting the entire chasm yet... I think we should be able to mine out this cavern by the week at least? No wait... If we start fabricating the autominers tonight... We should be able to finish mining the cavern in three days. Then judging by my estimates... We could finish stripping the chasm in maybe two weeks?”

Ok... So first of all, there’s multiple different ore veins that have been found inside this cavern, all of them having been hidden under the Mana Crystals but were then revealed after the Mana Crystals were mined.

The mining company that was contracted to mine the Mana Crystals even ended up paying us to be allowed to mine the mineral veins that were exposed after the Mana Crystals were mined.

Seeing that it would have been weird to deny them, we ended up agreeing, which was why they went ahead to set up more facilities than they usually would in jobs like this.

Even after they were done, the bunny girls seemed to have used a scanner to scan the place and found that the entire chasm might be a motherlode of minerals that they could mine which means this entire place was filled with minerals.

If a mining company were to come here, I think they could spend the next decade or more just mining this place out.

Then this bunny girl is now telling us that they could do what a company needs a few decades to do in just two weeks?

Olivia frowned, ”You have tech that allows you to mine this entire chasm in just two weeks?”

”Yeah~ We just need to position the autominers around and have them work all day. Then reposition them once they deplete a vein to move on to the next vein. It’ll be easy.”

”How does your autominer work?” I asked.

She gestured at the Bunarfs that were still carving away at the walls, ”Something like that but it would be attached to a machine and the area of coverage will be much, much bigger. The reason why it needs to take so long is setting up the belts to remove the excess dirt away actually.”

At that point, the Bunarf miners had already exposed the entire ore vein with their laser cannons and they flipped the switch on their backpack before they started shooting at the ore vein itself.

The ore vein started breaking into chunks that fell onto the floor, all of them then flying over to deposit themselves on the conveyor belts as though they were magnetised to it.

Ok, that was pretty cool.

Oliva tapped on her smartphone as though she was noting down something before looking at Maylene, ”If we want to patent and sell this technology... Would you be interested in that?”

Maylene looked up in surprise, ”Eh? Sell it? Do you think we can? These are all pretty outdated though?”

I couldn’t help but gasp, ”What? This is outdated? What do you mean it’s outdated? Outdated by what?”

She nodded, ”We have more advanced machines but... Most of them were actually stored at the bottom of the colony and were destroyed when those Anomalies stormed in... That’s why we’re stuck using our reserves right now... The tech they’re using are like... From two generations ago?”

Two generations? Ah... I’m assuming she meant they updated their equipment twice and these were older models from two updates before the newest models.

Olivia gave me a pointed look before tapping into her smartphone, ”I’ll ask this just in case, Maylene... If I were to set up a R and D department, would your people be interested in taking up positions inside it?”

”What’s R and D?”

”Research and development. You’ll basically be trying to innovate and create new things. We’ll provide the materials and space. You’ll just need to find a place on the island to set up the location for building all of the tech that you can come up with.”

”Wait... You’re telling me that you would actually be willing to just let us do that?!”

”We expect results of course.”

”Oh!!! If I tell them that, they’re going to literally worship the ground you walk on!!”

Olivia then pointed at me, ”You’ll have to seek my Lord’s approval though. It’s his island after all.”

Maylene turned to me and gave me the most pleading look I have ever seen someone make.

Well... I don’t know what you’re thinking but... I don’t see a reason to say no?