Chapter 411

Chapter 412: The Staffing Problem Is Solved!

To be fair, after Irene broke everything down, Yu Sheng realized that among all the special materials used to make mass-produced dolls, his own blood was actually the cheapest. The only real cost was time, about thirty minutes to “produce” one batch.

The good news was he didn’t have to worry about the output for mass-producing Irene for now. There was a natural bottleneck, but he figured he wouldn’t need an army of hundreds of thousands of dolls any time soon. [We’ll build them up slowly.]

When the third mass-produced doll sat up from the Alchemic Platform, Yu Sheng also discovered that even the final step in the Spirit Infusion Ritual, giving the name, could be done by the mass-production unit that handled the operation.

As two mass-produced dolls clumsily shaped their “new sister,” then copied Yu Sheng’s earlier steps and stuttered out the name “Irene” at the Alchemy Bench, the cold lump of clay and metal suddenly came alive. Before he even reacted, the rough shell flushed with a thin red hue. The clay’s parts of “blood” and “spirit” fused in a blink, and the new doll opened her eyes.

Yu Sheng stared as the two mass-produced dolls helped their freshly awakened “sister” down from the Alchemy Bench, then watched the new doll, through the link between Machine Spirits, learn the others’ experience in an instant and trot off to another platform to prepare the next mass-production unit. He muttered in disbelief: “This works? So even the ‘naming’ step doesn’t need a Human anymore?”

Even Irene looked stunned as she said: “I didn’t know either. I never even thought about using a doll to make a doll. I’m figuring it out like you are.”

Yu Sheng frowned, then spoke as his thoughts sped up: “Maybe it’s because every mass-produced doll carries my blood, so they can also ‘give a name’ to a newborn doll? Or maybe it’s some kind of resonance? Or… since all mass-produced dolls are linked, once the first one is named, the rest can follow?”

Irene thought hard, then looked him straight in the eyes and said: “I think it’s still because of your creepy The Door blood. Even that huge ship came crawling back to us after touching it.”

Yu Sheng neither agreed nor denied it. He watched the Irenes running between Alchemic Platforms, each carrying a tiny cup of fresh blood. He said nothing for a long time. [This is getting out of hand.]

After a while, he blurted out: “I should store more.”

Irene blinked and asked: “Store more what?”

Yu Sheng answered casually: “Blood. It regenerates, and now it has new uses. We’ll clearly use more day to day. I could draw some and keep it on hand. As long as I don’t bleed out on the spot, the blood won’t disappear. Leaving it all flowing around inside me feels wasteful.”

Irene stared at him, then finally yelped: “You sound even less human than I did just now!”

Yu Sheng shot the little doll a look and said: “Please. When you talk, you aim to drain me dry. I’m at least trying to cling to life.”

Irene blinked and asked: “Is ‘cling to life’ used like that?”

Yu Sheng lifted his chin and said: “Of course. I’m a writer. My word choice is precise.”

Irene hummed and said: “Is that so?”

Foxy watched Yu Sheng sweet-talk Irene without a word, busily pouring molten iron to cast skeletal parts.

And so the mass-produced dolls began to multiply-one became two, two became four, four became a crowd.

A whole crowd of black-dressed, black-haired, red-eyed Gothic Dolls ran all over the huge alchemy lab, working hard to make more dolls and wake more sisters. They would keep following that order until the current batch of raw materials ran out.

Yu Sheng found a spot out of the way, sat down, and watched the swarm of Irenes dashing around the lab with a look that was half amazed, half complicated.

For a second he shivered, remembering an old nightmare he once imagined: hundreds and thousands of Irenes squirming around him, crawling across the floor, squealing and chirping, jumping all over the place and rattling his nerves. [No, do not think about that.]

He quickly shook his head to throw off the bad image.

The sight of hundreds of Irenes crawling everywhere might soon be real, but the mass-produced ones were far quieter than he had feared.

Most of the time they just followed orders. If they ran into a task they couldn’t do yet, they briefly “talked” with each other in a way outsiders couldn’t understand, then stood aside to wait. They spoke rarely, even though they obviously could.

Seeing these quiet, busy little ones made Yu Sheng a bit uneasy, especially since the original Irene beside him was still chattering away nonstop with the same face as the others.

By then, Foxy had finished casting the last batch of skeleton parts. With a puff of smoke from the tip of her tail, she walked over and asked curiously: “Benefactor, if we aren’t fighting, what are we going to have all these mass-produced dolls do?”

Yu Sheng smiled, clearly already having a plan: “Plenty. Our base is short-handed everywhere. Daily maintenance at Youth Formport, caring for kids in the town, cleaning and watching over the Nexus, and the many facilities the Special Affairs Bureau built are all short on people.

“Right now we mostly rely on support from the Special Affairs Bureau to keep those places running, but we can’t owe them forever.

“I was going to wait for Fairy Tale to expand recruitment and send people to take over some facilities in the Valley, but that could look like hiring child labor. Now that we have mass-produced dolls, half the problem is solved.”

Irene immediately squawked: “So since you can’t hire kids, you make me do it? I’m a single mass-production unit and only 66 centimeters tall! I’m shorter than those brats by half!”

Yu Sheng laughed and poked the little doll: “Oh, now you remember you’re 66 centimeters? Who was it who said the Valley is all our family’s property, got so excited you ran around the room at midnight and sat on the bed giggling? If it’s our own place, what’s wrong with handling it ourselves?”

Irene huffed and said: “But if you think about it…”

Foxy still looked worried as she glanced at the little ones running between Alchemic Platforms and sometimes bumping into each other: “Can they really do these jobs? Simple tasks are fine, but maintaining large equipment… I’m afraid they’ll fall into the machines. They seem clumsy.”

Yu Sheng stayed confident as he said: “The Machine Spirit grows. See how they already move better than at the start? They share knowledge and experience, and they know the basics of teamwork and learning. I’m very optimistic about how they’ll develop. And I won’t give them anything too complex at the start.”

Foxy thought it over, her big furry ears twitching: “That’s good, then.”

Yu Sheng waved away their worries and stood from the Alchemy Bench: “Alright, enough second-guessing. At least they can handle day-to-day cleaning here at the Nexus. We’ve been cooped up long enough. Let’s take part of them out for some air and say hello to the others. Irene, arrange it: leave half here to keep molding mass-production units, and take the other half out through The Door.”

Irene snapped a salute and said: “Got it!”

Thirty minutes later, Rapunzel sat on a rooftop in Fairy Tale Town, staring as Yu Sheng walked down the street with a grand line of a dozen Irenes behind him.

A long string of mass-produced dolls marched in perfect order, eyes forward, following the “host” Irene, the rebar-bodied one. They were identical in every way. Even Little Red Riding Hood, usually so calm and mature, nearly fell over at the sight.

Rapunzel tumbled off the roof and ran to Red Hood, shouting: “Hey… hey! Red Hood! Did you see that? Irene just multiplied… she added a whole group!”

Red Hood was dazed as she said: “I don’t know. I thought I’d done so many driving-test questions my eyes were playing tricks on me.”

By the time they finished talking, Yu Sheng had led the Irenes over. Red Hood stepped up to meet them, stared straight at the line of little dolls for a long half minute, then finally asked: “You didn’t… slip and make too many by accident, right?”

Yu Sheng laughed and raised a hand to introduce them: “Come meet the mass-produced Irene model.”

Red Hood looked at Yu Sheng, then at the only Irene whose eyes had a bright highlight-the obvious “host.” After a while she blurted out: “What were you even thinking?!”

Yu Sheng grinned and explained: “You can’t let your imagination fall behind. Think of this as a new tech developed by the Hotel. You said the power plant is short on people, right? This group will be assigned to watch the generators. I’ll teach you how to communicate with them. Another batch will be coming out of the Pyramid later for Youth Formport and the Black Forest logging camp. Also, from now on, an ‘Irene’ will walk out of the Nexus every so often. If you see one lost or wandering around the town, bring her to the Castle to gather. These mass-produced dolls haven’t been fully tested yet, so there may be instability.”

Red Hood blinked and said: “Uh?”