Chapter 70 - Essence Furnace

Finding out a new currency and with a name that somehow eludes him to what was its purpose, Aldrin hurriedly tried to prompt its tooltip.

"It's not working. The explanation for it isn't here."

Aldrin then looked around only to find that he could walk around this small dimension.

"So, this is what it means to 'Inspect Storage'. I can freely check the whole place. But what's the point in this?"

Having gotten his answer, Aldrin began exploring the Small Dimension that the IDLE Database provided for Idle Storage.

Apart from the mountain of ant corpses, the first thing he noticed was that he was under a roof.

Unlike the Small Ant Colony wherein there's an edge one could fall off in all directions, this storage or rather, this warehouse was bordered by four tall walls without any exit in sight.

Furthermore, because he could see the underside of the roof which was around 10 meters from the ground, the place was just a plain warehouse at this point.

He went around the corpses and they're the same ones he killed in the Dungeon and outside of it before leaving the Dimension.

It thoroughly amazed him that the Idle Storage could transfer all of those as soon as he killed them.

And on another note, he also found it convenient. He wouldn't be leaving any trail of bodies that the insects could use to track him.

Satisfied with that information, he continued his tour and eventually reached the empty spaces or the remaining 80% of the storage. Then right in the middle was a large furnace with a violet fire seemingly perpetually burning inside it.

Since the body he's using isn't his, Aldrin couldn't feel the heat it was emitting but the moment he stepped within five meters of it, a warning popped up in front of him.

[Warning! Please step away from the Essence Furnace. Your current body is bound to melt from it]

"Essence Furnace..." Upon reading that, Aldrin stopped his exploration and ended his 'inspection'.

Following that, he picked the second option 'Manage Resources'.

As soon as he did that, a chair mechanically popped out in front of him followed by a holographic mainframe.

As soon as the screen loaded, Aldrin was faced with an interface seemingly similar to the multi-tab interface of Idle Shopping and Idle Adventure.

However, compared to those two, there were no locked tabs. All five tabs were already unlocked and accessible.

Resources

Essence Furnace

Craft

Upgrades

Units

The first tab 'Resources' was self-explanatory, it showed the current contents stored in Idle Storage.

[1x Level 21 Guardian Ant Corpse]

[87x Level 15 Elite Royal Soldier Ant Corpse]

[271x Level 10 Royal Soldier Ant Corpse]

[5x Level 9 Commander Ant Corpse]

[10x Level 7 Elite Soldier Ant Corpse]

[110x Level 5 Soldier Ant Corpse]

[1x Guardian Ant Core]

"That's close to 500 corpses. No wonder it became a mountain. However, that only amounted to 20% of total storage. I could fit more than 2500 corpses here, huh?"

After speeding through the corpses, his eyes then got fixed to the lone core.

He tapped into it and its description popped up.

[Guardian Ant Core: The Core of a Dimensional Creature. You can melt it in the furnace to get five times the Essence of its corpse or use it at the Units tab to gain the ability to summon a Guardian Ant using Essences]

Upon reading that, Aldrin's expression didn't change. After seeing the interior and the contents of this Idle Storage, most specifically the Essence Furnace, he arrived at a conclusion about what Idle Storage was meant to be.

It's a type of idle game that deals with managing limited resources.

However, only at first would the resources be limited. The player needed to click something to produce some and use it to upgrade something. That was the most tedious part of most resource-management idle games. When the 'automation' upgrade was brought up and activated, the resource would become unlimited as long as the automation was working.

Thinking about the Automatic Renewal, that's already a form of 'Automation'. He hadn't started the 2nd run for Idle Adventure yet but he'd expect that more corpses would be piled up in this space.

Moving on, by transforming those resources to another form of resource, in this case, the 'Essence', he could then use it for other specialized use.

That's where the 2nd tab would come in. The Essence Furnace.

His first thought that it's another form of currency like IDLE Points was probably wrong. However, not entirely, Essence could probably only be used in Idle Storage, unlike IDLE Points that could be used anywhere in any feature produced by the IDLE Database.

Summoning the Guardian Ant was one thing but the prerequisite was the Core. That means, even if he couldn't get a core, Essence has other uses. And that's where the third and fourth tab would come in.

"There's no time to waste, let's start playing this game." Aldrin picked the second tab and inspect the features in it as well as its current statistics

[Production: 0 Essence/hour]

[Essence Furnace: ON]

[Worker Bots: 0]

[Essence Storage: 0/100]

[Furnace Booster: OFF]

"I see so I still have to hire Worker Bots that will toss those corpses to the furnace."

Aldrin tapped the Worker Bots and an Idle Shopping interface popped up in front of him with the list of Worker Bots he could purchase.

[Worker Bot

Durability: 1000

Cost: 100 IDLE Points]

[Worker Bot EX

Durability: 5000

Cost: 400 IDLE Points]

[Giga Worker Bot

Durability: 50000

Cost: 3500 IDLE Points]

"Let's see. Durability will surely wear off because of the heat. By buying those with higher durability, they will last longer. However, there's no indication whether they all have the same efficiency. Let's buy the cheapest first."

[Purchased 5x Worker Bots for 500 IDLE Points]

As soon as Aldrin tapped the 'Buy' button, a hole in space suddenly appeared next to the mountain of corpses that spewed out the five Worker Bots. The bots didn't look like a humanoid at all. They're wheeled robots with clamp hands.

Without waiting for his order, the Worker Bots mechanically whirled as they grabbed one Soldier Ant corpse each before moving to the Essence Furnace.

As soon as they reached within five meters of it, they all threw the corpses, accurately shooting them inside the furnace.

When the corpses began to burn, Aldrin noticed the change in Essence Furnace Tab

[Production: 25 Essence/hour]

[Essence Furnace: ON]

[Worker Bots: 5]

[Essence Storage: 0/100]

[Furnace Booster: OFF]

"Only 25 per hour. Is it too low? Wait... I think I somehow get it."

Aldrin watched the Worker Bots make a round trip as they threw another set of Soldier Ant corpses inside the Furnace.

"If I'm not wrong... the production should increase this time."

And as he expected, 25 became 50.

"Soldier Ant is only Level 5. So, the Essence that could be squeezed from it depends on the level... One last thing to check is the efficiency."

Aldrin focused once more at the Worker Bots, throwing the third set of Soldier Ant corpses.

[Production: 60 Essence/hour]

"That's it! The efficiency is pretty low. 1 per minute. However, there are 1440 minutes in a day. At most, it can produce 1440 Essence as long as the Worker Bots worked nonstop... And that's where the Furnace Booster will come in. To increase the efficiency. Even without checking it, it will surely need IDLE Points to activate."

After uttering the last word, Aldrin already moved his finger and tapped it. He gulped down imaginary saliva and prepared himself.

[Furnace Booster]

[2x Efficiency]

[Duration: 1 hour]

[Cost: 100 IDLE Points]

[4x Efficiency]

[Duration: 1 hour]

[Cost: 300 IDLE Points]

[8x Efficiency]

[Duration: 1 hour]

[Cost: 500 IDLE Points]