Chapter 410

Chapter 411: Multiplying…

What could a group of mass produced dolls do if each one had a preinstalled Door inside? Irene could not help mulling it over. Many ideas popped into her small head, but none were clear. After a while, a hazy plan began to take shape.

“Let me think. If you can summon them here, can you also teleport them away?” she asked, looking up at Yu Sheng with open curiosity. “Can you send them straight to places you have been before?”

“That is one use,” Yu Sheng said with a nod, answering easily. “Besides that, these mass produced dolls can serve as moving beacons. You know my door opening needs a ‘beacon,’ either a place I have been or a location I recorded during a random opening. I cannot use any kind of clone technique. But with these mass produced dolls it is different. The built in Door inside them is a full beacon. Wherever a mass produced doll walks, it is like my Door extends there.”

“Also, because they have full blood permission, the dolls can activate the Door inside themselves. Add that to their evacuation knowledge. If they face deadly danger while out on a task, they can instantly teleport back to the Valley.”

“Last, in theory, mass produced dolls can chain summon. One mass produced doll can summon other mass produced dolls to her side. The hardware can do it. I do not know if the ‘software’ can keep up. It depends on how good their self control and judgment are. In the end, the mass produced line does not think well, so this kind of complex operation is hard.”

“That is not a big problem,” said Irene with a confident hands on hips pose as soon as she heard it. “When their brains are not enough, they still have me. I usually run these mass production units in low bandwidth mode, but at key moments I can log in myself.”

“That is true,” said Yu Sheng, rubbing his chin. He had almost forgotten Irene could personally jump in. That thought opened his mind, then made him worry a bit. “If that is so, your main consciousness can move at will among a bunch of mass produced dolls. If you switch too much, will you split your personality?”

He only tossed the question out, but the little doll really thought about it: “I do not think so. I already control four ‘hosts’ at once and I have not split. To be honest, running four lines makes me feel more and more energetic. Lately I am studying if I can schedule only one body to sleep at night while the other three stay up all night. I already see a path. Right now I can make it so that while one body sleeps, the other three can sleepwalk around the room.”

“So the reason you creep around your room in the middle of the night like a haunting is this?” said Yu Sheng.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Irene.

Yu Sheng: “…”

He stared at the little doll for a while. She did not react at all. In the end he could only shake his head helplessly while his mind tugged at her strange spirit makeup. She had no brain, yet she not only thought, she could think on four threads at once. [Though to be fair, her daily ‘thinking’ is pretty limited.]

Yu Sheng shook his head and pushed those off track thoughts aside. He focused on the mass production unit before him.

He knew the precast gate inside a mass produced doll could do more than what he and Irene had just listed. As long as your imagination keeps up, these units with special functions can do a lot. Even if you ignore the add ons, the mass production units themselves have some combat power.

Their skeletons cut many costs, but they still counted as a youth version of spirit fox dark iron. On a normal day, a quick biu of an Irene ray could still go to war. They could also go out alone on exploration tasks and protect themselves.

Thinking of this, Yu Sheng rubbed his chin and muttered: “Step out through The Door to explore, fight if you meet an enemy, and run if you cannot win. That is a natural born scouting body.” [What a perfect scout.]

The little doll’s eyes lit up: “What was that, search, fight, run?”

“You should play fewer games that are too hard for you,” said Yu Sheng, giving the tiny one at his feet a side eye as he walked toward the alchemy bench. “Do you even understand those games?”

Irene hurried after him on short legs, talking loudly the whole time: “Hey, do not say that. I am very good. When I play, nobody can kill me. Hey, why are you not listening? I am really very goo- hey, what are you doing next?”

“The first test unit passed. Of course we keep making more,” said Yu Sheng, glancing back at the little doll. “Mass production unit means mass production. If output does not go up, how can we call it mass production?”

As he spoke, he instantly formed more than a dozen molds on the floor for casting doll skeletons. Then he raised rows of operating platforms across the wide alchemic lab and began sending a steady stream of “earth” from the Valley to the platforms. He clearly meant to scale up at once.

Only now did Irene remember the “mass production” part again. Then she frowned as she watched Yu Sheng work, feeling something off: “So you are just going to stand here hand making dolls from now on? That is not what I imagined.”

“Who said I would hand make them from here on?” Yu Sheng laughed. After the prep was set, he pointed at the mass produced doll still standing there on standby with a blank face. “Next, let her learn.”

Irene blinked, then got it: “Nice.”

The mass produced doll got the order and came over, then scrambled up onto the alchemic platform and stared straight at Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng began directing Foxy to prepare the youth version skeletons while he demonstrated for the mass produced doll how to carve the spirit infusion array, lay out the ritual materials, and shape the clay. He explained as he worked: “The mass production line cannot control the Valley’s dirt and rock the way I can to ‘insta shape’ things, so we need to prepare those materials for them. The shaping later will be slower too. But once the numbers go up, the lack of single unit speed will be covered by scale.”

As he spoke, sparks and fire were already flying on Foxy’s side as she smelted the dark iron and poured skeletons. Yu Sheng finished the array and material setup on the first alchemic platform, then handed the engraving knife to the mass produced doll and told the little one to repeat the process on the other platforms.

The tiny mass produced doll hugged the knife, which was almost a short staff to her, ran to the nearest alchemic platform, and began clumsily reproducing what she had just “learned.” She worked slowly at first, but grew more skilled at a speed you could see, then did better and better.

Watching the little one busy on the platform, wholly focused and more and more nimble, Yu Sheng had a moment where he wondered if Irene was secretly logging in. He soon dropped the idea. Irene herself could not do it this well. She did not have the patience to repeat such boring work over and over.

[This might count as a machine spirit in a happy mood,] Yu Sheng thought with a sigh.

Then he found a cup and started drawing blood into it. This was the other key material for making a living doll. It might even be the most important.

The skeleton Foxy had refined with spells and cooled was set on the alchemic platform. Yu Sheng demonstrated for the mass produced doll how to mix a tiny bit of blood into the earth, then wrap the earth around the skeleton to form a rough human shape.

This step was hard for a worker only 66.6 centimeters tall.

“When we have more mass produced units, we can set them up in teams of three or four to build new dolls,” said Yu Sheng after watching the little one knead the mud with full focus. He turned to Irene and Foxy and added, “We can also switch the material to normal light clay. It is easier to handle than mud, and bulk orders are cheap.”

Foxy had just poured another batch of doll skeletons. After hearing Yu Sheng, she thought a moment and said: “So running the spirit infusion ritual and shaping the dolls can be done by the mass produced dolls themselves. For smelting and casting the skeletons, we can build a furnace and a simple foundry later and let them handle it. We will just need to adapt the equipment to their height. Right now the only limit on output is the two key materials.”

“Key materials,” Yu Sheng murmured, folding his arms and thinking.

One was Foxy’s spirit fox dark iron. It gave the mass produced dolls their spark of spirit.

The other was his own blood. It gave the mass produced dolls life.

“To be fair, the silly fox’s iron blocks have pretty high output,” said Irene casually. “Every so often she pulls out a big lump and even has leftovers after selling some to the Special Affairs Bureau. And each doll skeleton needs very little, since you cut costs so hard you shrank the skeleton down to almost wire.”

As she finished, her eyes fell on Yu Sheng. Irene thought a moment.

“Hey, Yu Sheng, your blood output seems high too. If we drained you dry once, I feel like we could make at least a few hundred. If we were careful, maybe a thousand.”

Yu Sheng saw the little doll’s eyes rolling and knew she was up to no good. Sure enough, she went on: “But if you really died, your blood would disappear by itself after a bit, and we would not have time to use it. So I guess we can only bleed you half to death.”

“Is that really the key point here?” said Yu Sheng.