Chapter 128: Hovercraft

Kyle returned to Desham, pondering over the question. Now that he had obviously found a market for the products of the factory, he needed a good way to fly them over, preferably stealth.

While the venom-spitting hornet was good, it had a limited range with a short flight time than what Kyle would like. It’s ability to carry cargo was also already limited by the arcia fuel system that powered its stealth engraving. Furthermore, there was only a fixed number of mineral ants, meaning he had a hard limit on his fleet. Until Kyle figured out a method of upgrading the Artificial Hive Core, he had no way of increasing the number of mineral ants.

He could not reorganise the remaining mineral ants – ten were used for hunting, while he used the remaining two, now both modified with stealth engravings. Kyle did not plan on wasting his time on trying to find the upgrade method when he already had a good understanding of an alternative solution.

“I hope it’s not a tunnel again,” Feldon remarked in a meeting with Kyle and Hayden on this topic. “No fucking way we’re digging a tunnel that far! We wont even have enough base resources to build a support structure for it!”

The weapons factory was running on scrap metal collected from the town and the former slums, but that pile would soon run out. Kyle had to work fast to get a buyer for the products, which was why this entire operation was planned.

“We’re not miners, and we don’t have any existing tunnels towards Ocra either. Its too damn far!” Hayden joined in.

“Stop talking about tunnels, I wasn’t planning on making one. Instead, we’re going to make an arctech hovercraft.”

“A what what?”

Kyle laid out the requirements for the machine, with Hayden immediately rejected as far too insane. “You want to fly like a mineral ant and a wyrm? Are you crazy? The material cost would be insane! You’ll need enough arcia energy to counteract the weight, control its vertical acceleration AND push it horizontally.”Updated from novelbIn.(c)om

Kyle placed the Advanced Arcia Crystal on the table. “I understand. It’s all a matter of energy. However, we do have a source for this.”

Feldon shook his head rapidly as he soon realized what Kyle was planning. “Nonononono, we’re not going back there!”

“Back where?” Hayden was lost.

“Feldon and I know of an outcrop that has crystals just like this. If we can harvest all of them, we can create a corresponding amount.”

Hayden examined the crystal that was nearly half the size of her forearm in length, but she was still unsure of how much energy the arcia crystal could hole. She knew that the crystal could power Kyle’s railgun and arctech armour for days on end, but she had only seen one so far.

“But this time, we’ll be going back with a full raiding party to mine it properly.” And kill whatever that thing is attached to. “For now, let us design around the idea of a crystal that can store up arcia energy and move with that.”

Hayden nodded, aware of the existence of the regenerators. They weren’t exactly efficient, with the mechanical regenerators only having a fifteen percent efficiency, meaning it was completely economically unprofitable to use animals to charge arcite ore, as there was still a food cost and limited stamina.

Kyle continued drawing out his plan on a piece of paper. “The energy issue can be solved simply:

We collect the crystals from the outcrop We use them in the hovercraft. We charge them using a watermill.

And this loop can be repeated infinitely. We can convert ambient mechanical energy in the environment to our benefit.”

The hovercraft was assembled over the next week in a small clearing at the Keru Forest, far away from prying eyes. Kyle ensured that everyone involved in the production only knew a part, with only Feldon and Hayden knowing the true configuration of the entire thing. Kyle used his Advanced Arcia crystal temporarily as a placeholder.

Drake stood in awe at the unpolished raw metallic machine, which looked like a dagger with two oblong cylindrical tubes attached to its side via mounting shafts that could rotate.

The dashboard was exceedingly simple for Kyle – a simple joystick with throttle configuration to control the engine. As he flicked a switch, the twin arctech ramjet engines on the side swapped from their horizontal position to face downwards, preparing for a vertical takeoff.

“Ready for the first test flight.”

“Clear!” Hayden yelled, prompting Feldon and Drake to scamper away, avoiding the ensuing air blast. Kyle increased the throttle slightly, the hovercraft’s engine quietly sucking in air and pushing it downwards.

“5% throttle insufficient for takeoff, attempting 10%,” Kyle reported his actions into the arctech radio, with Hayden marking down each test checkpoint on paper.

[Report on dashboard readings.] Her voice crackled through the radio, prompting Kyle to read off the indicators such as energy gauge, stealth engraving operation and so on.

“10% throttle now.”

The hovercraft began to jerk slightly, the air blasting the surrounding grass like a helicopter’s air draft, swaying wildly in the rapid wind.

“15%”

At this stage, the hovercraft began to rise slowly, ascending upwards.

“Activating stealth engraving.” Kyle flicked another switch as the hovercraft disappeared from view, the stealth engraving still equally pixelated and blocky. Drake rubbed his eyes as though he was staring at different patches of the sky despite looking in the same direction.

[Sound is quite noticeable.] Feldon remarked as the air draft was quite audible to him even as Kyle rose ten meters into the air.

“Nothing we can do about that. We just have to land in a less populated area.” Kyle could not control anything about the speed of sound in the air, nor did he think there was any arctech engraving that could mitigate the effect. The stealth hornets had a similar issue as well when they flew with their wings beating rapidly.

Suddenly, the left engine cut out randomly as Kyle hit twenty meters, causing Kyle to suddenly turn into a spiral as the right engine spun him around along the long axis of the hovercraft.

Fighting the immense G-forces that threatened to squash his brain, his high G-force training from the Galactic Era quickly kicked in, flicking a switch to cut off the engine. “Where’s the ejection button?!” Kyle grunted through clenched teeth as his vision swirled.

“Huh?! What’s an ejection?”

Fuck me. The hovercraft nosedived into the ground, the metal parts flung and splintered as it crashed, digging up a trail of the soil before coming to a half as the nose slammed into a tree trunk.

Kyle shoved the broken metal plates away from him, panting heavily from the crash as he stood up shakily from the vehicle. Feldon and Hayden quickly rushed over towards him, but instead of checking whether he was alright, they sprinted past him, quickly salvaging whatever parts were left of the hovercraft. “NOOOO! PROTOTYPE 1!” Feldon wailed as his hard work was all flushed down the drain in a single moment.

Kyle was surprised that his body managed to stay awake during the high G-forces in the spiral. A normal, unmodified human would have fainted immediately, impressing onto him just how good the Arcian physique was. Not my worst crash landing either. Time for Prototype 2.