//------------------------------//
// Chapter 12: Stone 
// Story: Mystic Machinery: Industry is Magic 
// by Conglomerate 
//------------------------------//

Rock and stone. That was my life for the next few days.

As expected, the Oleite drill finished first, and around the same time the Plumbite line had been cleared enough to the point where I could also begin clearing the offshoot. I had begun laying tracks as well, but with little Erudite to spare, I had to do it all manually. Thankfully, now that one of the drills was free, I could begin looking for a place to dump all the extra material.

I wanted it to be close, but remote enough that it wouldn’t be easily spotted. Preferably it would be someplace to actually put the material instead of just piling it on the ground, but if it was far enough away then it wouldn’t matter. Really the only constraint was time, as this needed to be done before anything else, and the longer it took, the longer it would take to get everything running at peak efficiency.

I hadn’t managed to find any good places for a dumping ground in my previous expeditions, and while there were a few holes and a couple ravines that could be filled, they were all too close to pony settlements, meaning I had to find someplace else. There weren’t many better options among the resource locations either. This led me to searching further West, as all previous expeditions only reached the very plateau I was based on. Of course I had gone past it a few times, I needed to know if there was anything in the immediate vicinity before basing, and with the same arid landscape stretching far into the horizon in all directions, it was in the clear.

Of course, that meant there weren’t any good places immediately nearby, so I would have to continue further. My first few outward findings held similar results, with the same shrubland remaining uninterrupted for miles on end, with only the occasional tree to break up the flat monotony. This continued Westward, with only a few minor divots or trenches that would immediately be filled to capacity with only a single trainload.

Eventually, I reached a coastline, and with no more land in the distance, I was forced to stop. I would’ve stopped here anyway, as I was nearing the limit of reasonable tunneling distance, and any further just wouldn’t be worth it. A quick trip North and South revealed a bit more, with a decently sized peninsula extending out South, and some more favorable land to the North.

I would’ve gone straight to the rocky landscape up North, the terrain was incredibly uneven, and there were countless places to simply start putting rubble. However, there was a coastal city nearby. It resided a bit further up the coastline, but it was well within view of my future dump, which meant I probably couldn’t use it as a dump. The South wasn’t looking much better, it was barren and flat, and while I’m sure it could hold a decent amount of material, it would be more noticeable once things reached a certain height, it certainly didn't help that it was more in line with the rest of my base as well..

This was pretty much the end of the line too, with no other good places behind me, so I had to choose one.

I needed someplace to actually put all the excess material so that it wouldn’t be too visible in the future, but I also didn’t want to risk putting it too close to a settlement. Sure it wasn’t going to a very valuable site, but once the military showed up it would be difficult to actually unload a bunch of stone without complications, especially if I dug a tunnel straight here.

Why not just compromise and pick the middle option? I could just dump straight into the ocean. It would be far enough away from the city, and hidden enough to not be easily discovered. The waves would certainly help with breaking it up and carrying it away, and it wasn’t like I was going to be dumping anything toxic either, just rock and stone, so not much environmental impact is to be expected.

That would work. I placed the beacon, and the drill started a moment later.

271 km : 1 km

Now all that was left to do was wait. In the meantime, I could work on the trainline, seeing as I pretty much had to do it all myself anyway, or at least until one of the other A.I. cabins became available.

Thankfully, it wasn’t as boring as just holding down the throttle on a plane or drill, but that didn’t mean it was very fun to begin with. I was clicking together sections of tracks one by one, each one about the size of four standard blocks in a two by two fashion.

I had to do this for miles, and the worst part was I could only carry so much with me, so every time I ran out, I would have to go back an increasingly long distance just to restock. At least I could do it in a train, I could carry a decent amount, but the repeated trips were quickly becoming annoying.

Head out, lay tracks, come back, resupply. Head out, lay tracks, come back, resupply. Head out, lay tracks, come back, resupply.

But enough complaining. Like I said before, this is something that comes with the job, and I was used to it. So with or without a radio station to listen to, I was going to get it done. 

Progress was steady, if not increasingly slow. Each section of track was about two meters long, a train car could hold about fifty sections of track, and with the resources and space restrictions I had I could only use five cars at a time. Doing the math, each trip would end up placing five hundred meters of track. On a line of about five hundred kilometers, I would need to make one thousand trips.

My trains were fast, very fast, I even made a speedometer to check. At top speed, a train could travel the entire Plumbite line in a little over an hour. Of course that doesn’t account for cargo limitations, and with the reduced speed, it took even longer just to go back and forth to resupply on tracks.

All that time allowed me to think. Automating this process would be easy, as opposed to going back and forth repeatedly, there would be two techs working in unison. One placing tracks and moving forward, and the other taking that time to resupply it regularly, reducing total construction time. It would go even faster for the second track, and if I really squeezed, I could probably fit a third track into the tunnel as well. That would require an alteration of the train cars though, and two tracks would work well enough as different one ways.

Head out, lay tracks, come back, resupply.

There came a point where I caught up with the cleaner tech, which was fine by me. I was running out of Plumbite anyway, and would need to restock if I wanted to go further. Checking my progress, I was about a third of the way done. After many hours of work, I wasn’t even halfway, and it would only get longer from here on out.

Ding

The Rodite drill had stopped. I didn’t know where, but if it had taken this long, there was a good chance it didn’t get flooded. Switching over, I was elated to see the beacon directly above, meaning it had made it all the way to the resource location. There was hardly a trace of Rodite in the ground however, but I knew that most of it was in the mountain itself, I was just underneath it. It was still a little disappointing to see it didn’t go that far down though.

Still, I was here, and I could begin work on planning a mine by surveying the area a little more closely. The drill turned upwards, chewing through the stone and ascending at a decent pace. Based on the beacon’s location, I could tell I was more or less digging through the center of the mountain, meaning it would take a bit for me to actually breach the surface. The veins of Rodite only increased as I went up, but it was still nowhere near the saturation of the Plumbite zone.

It never got to that point either, as not long after the stone gave way to much looser material. I stopped, and backed up a bit, only for it to follow me down, collapsing in on itself as sunlight began to bleed through. I had reached the surface.

I exited the tunnel and took a look at my surroundings. I was about halfway up the mountain, adjacent to one of the many green tinted runoff channels. There was plenty of Rodite in and around the ground, up and down the mountain, and to the left and right of me. It was less saturated and more spread out, but it would last, at least for the immediate future.

The main issue came from it being on a mountain, it was pretty much guaranteed that I would be working on the surface downwards, and if I wasn’t careful, any number of avalanches could be created. Those things tend to be pretty visible, and while this area was remote enough on its own, it was a risk I wasn’t too keen on taking.

This was the only major Rodite seam I could find in the greater area though, so it was either this or try to find some somewhere else, without the support of the local inhabitants while also trying not to be detected by them either.

I reversed the drill back into the hole, packing up the beacon and taking it with me. This place would suffice for now, but I couldn’t just leave unattended machinery out in the open. That just left the problem of the massive hole I had just dug in the side of a mountain. I couldn’t exactly patch it up, however it was with the terrain, making it partially obscured by the slopes around it. You could definitely see it from the other peaks, but not from the ground.

And so I was left with another free drill, with three different options on what to do with it. One, take it further up North in an attempt to harvest some Celestite. Two, bring it back down to begin work on another resource tunnel, one that would reach both Carbite and Cuprite. Three, break it down for parts to partially complete an automated track layer.

Celestite would require some additional setup. Despite being this far North already, it would take weeks, if not months for the drill to reach the frozen wastes. Not to mention the time and resources it would take to clear the tunnel, then lay tracks. In my mind, it still wasn’t worth it. However, there was another option, if I could just get the drill up there, I could modify it to harvest Celestite without having to worry about an avalanche. If it was tough enough to take a hit, it could just keep mining, though it would have to become self-sufficient in order to last up there. Then I could just fly up every once and a while, collect the spoils, and head home.

Or I could work on some other resources that I need. Bringing the drill back down would mean traversing the tunnels again, breaking up the stone further, and adding that much more work in order to clear them. It would then have to go over already laid tracks, and I was unsure if they could survive such a beating, nor did I want to move that many out of the way. Unfortunately, I had effectively prevented the drill from coming back on its own, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t bring it back at all.

Salvaging it would allow me to create part of an automated construction team, emphasis on part. The drill only had the one A.I. cabin, and I knew for a fact that I needed two. With only one Erudite left at base, there just wasn’t enough to make a second. At the very least, I could create a supplier tech that would regularly supply me with rails to lay. Or, I could use the A.I. elsewhere, like another cleaner tech to help speed up tunnel clearing. All of that would be invalidated once I got my next shipment of Erudite of course, but I was still giving the dogs some downtime before trading again.

All three options required additional work, none of which I could do from the drill. So I just left it in the tunnel, it wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

Back at base, things were looking pretty good. The construction techs had gotten to the point where they were almost level with the plateau, they only needed a few more rounds to complete the base expansion. From there I would have them construct some simple defenses, then turn them inwards so that my base didn’t just have a big hole in the center. Those things shouldn’t take as long, meaning their A.I.s could be repurposed soon, and it would finish off the stockpile of stone that was still inside my base.

Yes, things were certainly looking up, and I only had about a week and a half before I met with Twilight.

All of the repair and shield bubbles around my base shut down in unison.

To Be Continued…