I also planned before to relieve these research team members, send them back to continue their marvellous job. Yet I changed my mind when I saw this arrogant dude and his fellows.
"But… Lord… Please… Show mercy!"
"Please lord, show mercy!"
He knelt on the ground with a trembling body, and soon enough all the rest of his team knelt and did the same, shouting and pleading for mercy.
I knew they had weak hearts and wills thanks to the long time they spent living under the umbrella of peace. But seeing them act in this way, not tolerating being in the middle of all this brutal world for five hours made me inwardly sigh.
These people didn't need a wake up call, they needed a miracle!
"Alright, but where are the machines you trained everyone on?" I moved my eyes around, not seeing anything of those proclaimed huge machines and such.
"We got to take them into our inventory," the leader with a name I couldn't even remember said, scratching his head before adding, "we spent lots of time and effort on making these machines. And so we decided to take them back, find a way to turn them into the ball version again."
"Fine," I paused, feeling not that much satisfaction with what they did, "you'll stick around for a bit longer."
"Lord, please show mercy!" they knelt and weep this time, pleading for mercy.
"It's not negotiable," I coldly said, "I have to see with my eyes how capable these machines are. Plus, I needed to see if my warriors and the people you brought can work on them efficiently and perfectly before sending you back."
"..."
From the look over their faces, I knew they didn't like such an end. But what could they do? I was the lord, the one handling everything and holding up the power to kill or let them live.
"Follow me," I opened a portal towards one of the places I saved before using my staff, "let's see how effective these machines are."
I took them towards a new place, where it was located just at the base of one mountain. This mountain was very huge and big, enough to form an entire island on its own.
The place where the bombs were located was underneath this mountain. "Show me your brilliant performance," I stood by the side of this mountain, crossed my arms, and waited to see a miracle.
And soon enough I indeed witnessed one.
Saying that these machines were huge was an understatement! I didn't know how these dudes came up with such an idea, or how they managed to build it up.
However, in front of my eyes, a huge skyscraper-like machine appeared. It stood on the ground using many huge metallic legs, got at least one hundred drilling blades that were so sharp, each were gathered along one huge pillar like rod.
The moment they took these out, people started to work. As these folks promised, the people here were quite efficient and knew what to do.
They operated the machines, ten of them, and in the next few minutes, they managed to clear up a huge crater in the ground.
It reached depths of a few hundred metres in no time. And seeing this made me realise that even grand mountains wouldn't stand a chance against them.
"Good work," I finally said to those scared faces of the research department folks, "you can go back now."
"Phew!"
"Thanks lord."
"Thanks for your mercy."
They shouted, cried, and celebrated getting freed from all this torture. Seeing them hurry and chase after each other out of here made me sigh inwardly.
If these folks considered staying here as the most tormenting experience ever in their lives, then how about my warriors? My generals? How about everyone fighting in this shitty world for a long time like myself?
I sighed, didn't know what to think about any of this.
I threw all these useless thoughts behind, left the people here to do their work after leaving strict instructions to not touch any bomb once found.
Then I started to open more portals, leaving five of each machine with tons of workers and warriors to accompany them and dig for the bombs.
And soon enough I started to see the main weakness of such tactics.
"These balls… They aren't enough to even cover up the places in one continent!" I knew I just worked to cover up around ten percent of the entire continent before I entered my mirror world.
And from the remaining balls after sending five each to every single bomb location, I could simply tell these bombs wouldn't even suffice one continent.
[Send word back to the research department, we need more, much more of these machines, at least one hundred fold]
[One hundred?!! Isn't it… A bit too much?]
[If they can find a way to recycle and move these machines around then it's ok. But they don't have such means right now. And we need to solve this problem of bombs quite fast]
[Got it! By the way, the war here is pretty bad! When are you planning to come and help?]
[In your dreams!] I laughed while closing the chat window with her. I knew the situation back there wasn't that good. But the war here wasn't yet over at my side.
I still got many continents to visit, lots of bombs to find, and races to save. And then I'd return back, and lead everyone to crush enemies everywhere.
All I was asking for was to endure. I didn't ask much of them, and at least they could do this task.
I then shifted my full attention towards dealing with bombs in this continent. I took a day before finishing scattering all the machines and people trained over them all over the continent.
As I expected, the number of machines barely satisfied this continent. And only a few of these machines were left behind. I stored the rest, before jumping to a new continent, towards another base.
And there, I found a grand surprise waiting for me.