Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!

Chapter 54 Dreaming of a miner

"So that's how..."

Bound by the preconception of what he had already figured out, Theo found it rather hard to crack the secret of the alleged other use of his tool.

It was no button. Or, not exactly just a matter of pressing one.

To change mode from harvesting to scanning mode, Theo first had to twist the whole thing, turning its upper half against the lower. Only then would the button switch its function, allowing Theo to perform the next expected step of his tutorial.

[Use the basher's resource scanner: 1/1]

And with it, merely a few moments later...

[Locate the nearest unoccupied resource vein: 1/1]

The last step, one that made Theo worried about actually exhausting his ore vein...

Contrary to his expectations, though, the notification appeared right as he finished reading through the last one.

[Mine out ten units of ore: 30/10]

[Mine out ten units of ore: Completed]

[Universal Basher's tutorial: Completed]

[Reward: Added a selection mode for scannable veins]

[You can now scan for:

- Iron Ore

- Copper Ore

- Richstone]

Theo blinked his eyes a few times, not sure what to even make of the message that flashed before his eyes.

'Wait, just like that?'

This, in quite the broad way, was one of the most important steps Theo could recognize from the gameplay loop of all the factory-building series he played.

No matter what, a player should be able to tell where to get the resources his projects required. Accessing those was a whole other topic, but...

Now that Theo could tell not only where to look for specific stuff but that also it would be those three resources that he would likely need to progress, growth relied no longer on timers and delays, but on Theo's ability to get his hands on what he needed.

[Construct a smelter: 0/1]

[Construct a constructor: 0/1]

[Assign the workpoints to each of the proto-industry machines: 0/3]

[Assign workpoints to the logistic lines connecting each of the machines: 0/2]

[Automate the production of at least 10 iron plates/minute: 0/1]

Theo took a deep breath.

'If I recall correctly, in some, you only needed materials for the building, while in others, you had to craft the building ahead of placing it down.'

Eager to test which of the two applied, Theo summoned his now slightly reformed inventory before... just willing for the window responsible for construction to appear.

Yet, as soon as he selected the icon that quite obviously indicated a miner, with the huge, spinning and animated drill taking over the majority of its image, Theo was once again slapped with the one element of his system that he was quickly growing to abhor the most.

[Crafting in process: 4:28 until completion]

'Damn you...'

Gripping his hands tight, Theo forced a simple smile on his face.

Things were going way too well for him to spoil it by angering the system for no apparent reason.

'Now that I've secured all that time, I can afford four damn minutes...'

With the deadline until the next invasion now moving from a measly twenty hours to still quite a lot over forty, Theo finally could give up on his extreme hurry.

And while every second still counted, he no longer had to squeeze each of those seconds to the limits of what could be done with them!

'But as soon as this miner is up...'

Theo's quest, exactly as was the case for his Basher's tutorial, followed exactly the same steps Theo would impose on himself without it.

First, he had to get the extraction of the ore running.

Then, a different system to smelt the ore into ingots—its more easily usable form.

Finally, those ingots would be transformed into items of various tiers, allowing the construction of different buildings and... adding up to the design without the need for a manual acquisition of the resources!

And all of it... would start with Theo setting up his first miner... for which, he had no other choice but to sit down and patiently wait while holding back curses over his system imposing those damn cooldowns!