Chapter 196 – Anticipation

Over the next day, Dream and Sophia continually made progress, trying out many different frameworks, scripting out various enchantments, and creating some possible containment techniques. And things went well. They soon had an overall image and a way to implement it. 

There were two ways Dream could do this. He could either create a solid vessel that would contain the energies, or create a magic vessel. The solid vessel would be tangible, something similar to Aegis's heart. It would have to be a material that could exist on the same dimension as his soul. As for the magic vessel, it would be created purely from mana.

After they made the vessel out of either of these, they could input the energies and guide them with powerful enchantments and influence. The energies would combine in a vortex and annihilate each other, spitting out gray mist. 

It seemed very simple, and after they planned everything out, Dream went on to try and implement the system. However, this was when he ran into some problems. 

First, Dream didn't have any 4-dimensional material. Aegis's heart was all he had, and that wasn't suitable for what he was doing. This forced him to attempt the project with mana. He already knew how to enchant pure mana, so he created a vessel between Luna and Iris's contracts using all the power he had. He applied extremely complex enchantments and even attached some of the skill strings from his particle and arcana skills to the vessel. 

This mana vessel was built to accommodate the entire energy output of the contract and, theoretically, control it all. The reason it was theoretical was because even Sophia couldn't tell exactly how well things would go. It was hard to quantify the strength of influence after all. 

And so, with the vessel built and ready to go, Dream went on to do some test runs. He went over to a capillary and detached the two strings that were filled with black and white energy. Then, he plugged the strings into the vessel on opposite sides. Upon doing so, the black and white energies flooded into the vessel.

The two energies, for some reason, always knew where the other was. So when they were put into the vessel, they immediately flew towards each other. However, before they could annihilate each other, the enchantments on the vessel activated and diverted them from their original paths. 

The black and white streams suddenly made sharp 90 degree turns. They closely slid past each other and were led down sporadic spiral paths. On each side, one stream was split into three. One headed in an upward spiral, another headed in a downward spiral, and one spiraled into the center point. Soon, a rapidly spinning sphere of black and white energy was made. 

Along the surface of the sphere, the two energies gradually crashed into each other as they headed from the outer edges of the equator toward the point at the north and south poles. Dream's clear mana was also inserted to be the mediary, guiding the formation of the sphere and allowing the energies to mix.

The theory was, by the time they hit the north and south poles, the energy would have annihilated enough overtime to produce the gray mist. This should not only increase the efficiency of its creation, but also allow for lots of energy to be added to the sphere and still maintain control. Instead of bashing the energies together, the two would be gradually led toward a path of destruction. Dream just had to maintain the paths, and they would follow.

And sure enough, after waiting for a while, he could see gray mist be ejected out of the north and south poles. It wasn't a lot, but the energy being inputted was only a single capillaries worth. 

<[Arcana] has leveled up!>

<[Arcana] has leveled up!>

<[Particle Manipulation] has leveled up!>

....

Dream smiled at the level ups and his success. Arcana had gone up to level 33 and Particle Manipulation went up to level 26. It had been too long since he's seen notifications from something other than killing.

"Heh, I did it."

"Really?"

Luna and Iris looked toward him when he said that. While they could actually sense the energy in his soul as it was theirs, they didn't know exactly what was going on with it. So hearing that his dangerous experiment had gone well was a relief.

"Yessir. Only a small amount was used though. It's time to scale it up."

"Slowly. Baby steps."

"I was thinking more of a brisk walking pace, but sure."

Smiling, Dream proceeded to do as he said and scale-up. 

Doing the same as with the first two, Dream started unplugging strings from the capillaries and plugging them into the vessel. He did it one at a time, and only when the energy was assimilated properly into the sphere did he move on to the next. 

This went on for a while, but after he plugged in the 30th string, Dream frowned.

'The energy is more intense than I thought.'

The sphere inside the vessel had grown respective to the increased energy input. Of course, Dream had made the vessel big enough to fit all the energy, so there was no worry about running out of space. But as he put in more and more, he found that the energy required to maintain the sphere went up more than expected. 

[We're not utilizing very much of the vessel's power, but at the rate things are going, we're not going to be able to plug in all the strings.]

'How many do you think?'

[...We might be able to plug in half.]

'...The energies get somewhat stronger as they group up, not unlike how demons would. That's what's throwing us off. Although I have no idea why, we'll just have to deal with it. Now, let's continue.'

Putting the issue aside, Dream went back to plugging in strings, increasing the size and power of the sphere as well as the load on the vessel.

And sure enough, it was as they expected. One vessel wasn't enough to maintain it all. In fact, it was much less than they expected. While the sphere had only grown to fill a third of the vessel, it was already starting to overpower it. 

'Sheesh. How are these powers so strong? I didn't think dividing them up into capillaries would decrease their power so much. We've only gone through a third of them.'

[I guess the powers really do compound off each other as they gather. That's kind of normal though. They probably had lesser densities after being divided up in the capillaries.]

'Maybe. Either way, we're not going to be able to contain it all. I used basically all my power to create and enchant that vessel, so there's not much I can do about its power limit.'

[...It's doing its job well though. We're already getting a good amount of gray mist. If we compare it to before, the production rate per capillary had easily tripled.]

'That's good. Although the power increased, so has production.'

[There's definitely some tweaks I can make to the enchantments, so the efficiency may go up later, but yes, it's a significant jump.]

'Yes it is. But we're not stopping here. Let's just make another two vessels and plug in the rest of the strings. After that, our total gray mist production will have tripled.'

[Alright.]

With that, Dream left the vessel as it was and moved on to create another. After spending a few hours and almost all of his energy, he finished a vessel that was identical to the first. He then waited another several hours to completely recover, after which he went on to start plugging in strings.

"Ok, let's do this."

Smiling, Dream unplugged dozens of string from their capillaries and quickly plugged them into the vessel. Just like last time, a swirling sphere of black and white formed in the middle. And also similar to last time, he could only plug in another third of the strings before the vessel reached its limit.

It wasn't of any consequence to him though, and after the second vessel was situated, he created the third. 

From the creation of the first vessel to the completion of the third, only a day passed. After that day, Dream had three vessels, inside which swirled three black and white spheres.

"Sigh, finally done."

Kicking his feet up, Dream relaxed into the couch he was on. Seeing that he was done, Luna and Iris looked to his soul to see what exactly he did.

"...What the hell? Are those orbs?"

"Spheres."

"Sure. But why did you gather them up in one place like that? And they're spinning pretty fast. They aren't going to fly out of control are they?"

Iris looked at the vessels worriedly as she spoke. Dream just waved it off though.

"It's all under control. I brought them together to manage it in a different way. Though I didn't expect the overall power to increase after doing that, it wasn't anything I couldn't work around."

"...If you say so. But how can you be so relaxed? You literally have three swirling bombs in the middle of your soul."

"I see them more as production centers. I'll be getting a lot more gray mist out of these. Besides, they're not that unlike my reactors. Those things generate power from nuclear explosions, but with the right confinement and guidance, the energy can be contained and extracted. These vessels work the same way. Conceptually at least."

Dream casually explained his thinking, but after hearing it, Iris came to two conclusions. One, Dream was crazy for even trying to do what he did, especially with the risk to his soul. Two, she would be much more cautious around the fusion reactors. Would those things explode if damaged? And didn't he use those things everywhere? Were they surrounded by nuclear bombs?

As Iris started to leer around at all the reactors in the factory with wariness, Luna sighed to herself.

"Just don't let your guard down. And protect those vessels well. You can't let them get damaged in battle."

"Of course. Those things consist of my strongest enchantments. Aegis will also be hanging around it. Isn't that right Aegis?"

"I will protect the ticking time bombs my lord has created."

"Atta boy."

"...Sigh. Not helping Aegis."

Hearing them joke, Luna just sighed tiredly. 

.........

.....

After Dream completed the vessels, he immediately got busy building.

The demons were working to call upon some kind of demon lord, so he needed to do everything in his power to prevent that from happening. He needed an army, one bigger than he's ever made before, and he needed powerful weapons surpassing what he currently had. There wasn't much time to study like he wanted. That would have to wait for after they truly wiped out the demons. 

Luckily, Dream had the materials for anything he could possibly want. Millions upon millions of tons of material were just sitting around, stockpiling endlessly in his factory and on the moon. He had thousands of mining teams that worked ceaselessly. If he went on long enough, he would start putting holes in the moon's surface from all the excavation. 

He had the capital, and he had the foundation. Even now construction bots were pumping out combat bots. But if he wanted as big of an army as he was thinking, he would need to expand even further. His factory was massive, spanning nearly 30 miles far and wide. But things were about to change again. 

The first thing he did was prepare for a redesign. All this time, Dream had his legions of construction bots build things themselves. They took ingots, processed them into whatever they were assigned to, and then enchanted them. And things worked out great that way. However, he now needed to pump out millions of machines as fast as possible. Unfortunately, his bots wouldn't cut it. 

So he got to working on assembly lines. 

For this, Dream first went to expand the factory. He needed lots of space for lots of machines. However, instead of building out like he usually did, he built up. 

Originally, the factory was 30 miles long and wide with 2 miles of height, like a flat metal square in space. It housed everything on a single level, and until now, that worked great. Now though, Dream decided to future-proof his factory and expand it dramatically. He turned the square factory into a full cube, 30 miles long, wide, and tall.

He turned it into a giant Borg cube!

After seeing the giant metal cube from afar, Dream giggled maniacally. It was a source of great joy to be able to build something like this. And while the girls didn't get it, at least he did. He thought about culturing them with sci-fi movies after this was all done. 

So, with the factory expanded by many times, it was time to fill it. This was when Dream unleashed his construction abilities to their fullest extent. Sophia also used her calculator skills to construct blueprints and models of everything they wanted to build. She planned out an unbelievable system that could be scaled to fit the entire cube.

And after the designing was done, Dream alongside his legions of bots got to work. First, they built hundreds of fusion reactors. These would obviously be used to power everything. Next, they went on to build the framework for everything. 

These assembly lines would work rather simply. They would work mostly without magic, and the lines would output the bots, weapons, supplies, and everything else they needed to mass produce. Only their shells though. After the shells were constructed, they would then be enchanted. For mass enchantments, they would build magical stamps that punched the enchantments into all the bots. 

It was a simple two-step process. Build and enchant. The bots would be smelted, built, and enchanted by the thousand. And while the enchantment stamps would likely run through their energy quickly, systems were put in place so that they could all be easily recharged. Everything that required Dream's input was minimized as much as possible while maintaining peak production rates. And everything that required his input was made really simple, such as the enchantments that ran off of massive cores. In fact, Dream decided to use the cores laying around that he attained alongside the heart from the United Empire for this. 

However, it wasn't just assembly lines he decided to build. Dream designed a system of enhancement that would raise the grade of materials. Like construction, this had been taken care of by bots. But now it would have dedicated facilities. 

These facilities would do as the bots did, just in a repetitive and organized fashion. Ingots would be inserted into something similar to a pressure cooker, they would be reshaped physically according to the difference in grade, and then the facility would use a hybrid system utilizing both mana overload and direct flux manipulation. This would make things easier on the machines as well as more efficient. It was definitely better than what he currently had. The bots weren't really enchanted for flux manipulation. 

With all that, Dream had everything he needed. Materials would be enhanced then used to build things. It was both simple and complex, and with all the designs and layouts completed, all attention from both him and the bots was focused purely on construction. He just needed to get these up and running, and then he would be set. Everything else was put on hold. 

And he did. Dream worked for a month straight, utilizing his full power the entire time. He ran around all hours of the day, constantly doing everything that Sophia told him to do. The bots were also constantly swarming around, following the endless list of orders that streamed through their systems. 

During this time, neither Luna nor Iris received any attention. They were a little bummed, but they wouldn't even think about trying to pull his attention away. They knew what was important right now. 

With that, construction went smoothly, and by the time the month was over, Dream had a new and improved factory that filled nearly 60% of the Cube.  It couldn't even be compared to before, in either scale or function. It was optimized to the extreme, and it would be able to carry out production on a never before seen magnitude. With this, he would easily be able to produce enough soldiers, all of which would have a minimum combat ability of a mid level class 2. There would also be an unbelievable amount of class 3 bots. And to top it all off, Dream was going to attempt to create some class 4 bots himself.

With such construction ability, Dream knew that he had reached a point where he could out produce and outgun the demons by himself. The thought filled him with euphoria. At the same time, he also wondered how things would change when he did his class advancement. His curiosity and anticipation skyrocketed.