Chapter 695: What Lurks in the Forbidden Zone
"We completed the order some time ago."
Taking Marcellin to a private area, Nash took out a storage ring containing 9 billion dark energy purification devices.
Over the past month, the number of their industrial machines has reached 608 thousand, generating 608 million purification devices per day.
Unfortunately, their available manpower was only sufficient to configure 500 million purification devices at a time, leaving the rest sitting idle in stock.
As a result, despite the mother core ship continuing to ramp up production, their effective output had reached a limit.
Checking the contents of the storage ring Nash handed over, Marcellin finally broke into a smile.
"You actually produced 9 billion purification devices in a single month!"
"It was nothing."
In truth, beyond the 9 billion set aside for Marcellin, Nash had also stockpiled roughly 2 billion purification devices for his own use.
"Here are the materials for the dark gate. The cost has been rounded to 300 quintillion for you."
"300 quintillion?" Nash murmured, drawing a sharp breath.
It was too expensive, and this was only for a single dark gate.
In the future, each sector area and domain area would need one, multiplying the total cost by millions of times over.
"This is already the best price I could negotiate for you. Sourcing these materials from within the forbidden zones demands an enormous amount of manpower and energy."
Understanding the difficulty involved, Nash didn’t complain and shifted to something else on his mind.
"Can you tell me what’s actually inside a forbidden zone?"
"Every forbidden zone is different. But one thing is certain: each one harbors a tier 9 dark beast."
"A tier 9 dark beast?! Isn’t the ceiling for this wild void territory tier 8?"
Although only a single tier apart, the gap between a tier 8 and a tier 9 was a chasm as vast as the difference between a mortal and a war god.
Once a being reached the planetary realm, they could forge a domain stretching endlessly through the void, a domain imbued with their comprehension of laws and elements, every skill they had mastered, and the full breadth of their abilities.
No wonder the Sun Star Void Area was being dragged toward the forbidden zone like iron to a magnet.
"While this wild void territory prevents the birth of new tier 9 dark beasts, it cannot remove those that were already here when it was formed."
"I see."
From the very inception of the wild void territory, those dark beasts had already existed within it.
Whatever rules were imposed afterward could only restrict them, not erase them.
"Wait, does that mean there’s even a possibility of tier 10 or tier 11 dark beasts lurking out there?" Nash asked, his expression tightening.
If something like that appeared, Nash would have no choice but to declare any ambitions of conquering this wild void territory over.
"No. From what I’ve heard, various powers have already hunted down dark beasts of those tiers in the past."
What a relief. A tier 9 dark beast alone was already enough to push the difficulty to the edge of impossibility. Adding higher tiers to the equation would have been nothing short of a death sentence.
"That’s good to hear."
Still, he quietly filed the possibility away in the back of his mind.
With enough misfortune and the right conditions, who was to say a tier 10 dark beast couldn’t emerge through some mutation?
"On another note, here are the materials you requested for the defensive modules and the industrial mining mother ships. The total comes to 2 quintillion. I’ll add it to your running tab."
"That’s fine."
The materials for each unit of the defensive module ran to 10 trillion, while each mining mother ship ran to 1 quintillion.
Purchasing materials for 100,000 defensive modules and 1,000 mining mother ships, the figures worked out precisely.
In total, he now owed the Azure Heaven Alliance 212 quintillion.
At their current production capacity, it would take no more than a month and a half to settle the debt.
After chatting with Marcellin for a while longer, they parted ways.
---
With the materials in hand, Nash brought them to the allied teams and set them to work building defensive modules for the Neon Defense System.
Rather than continuing to produce industrial machines, they lacked the manpower to operate; it made far more sense to redirect that capacity toward defensive modules.
"I need you to build 100 thousand defensive modules. I’ll pay 1 trillion for every unit you produce."
"No problem. We’ll begin production immediately!"
Between them, the allied teams had already earned over 1.2 quintillion simply from helping Nash produce dark energy purification devices.
Although he had paid them in materials, treasures, and technology rather than direct currency, the value was undeniable.
With those earnings, they had reinforced their defensive arrays, trained their people, and built things they otherwise never could have afforded.
In fact, most of them were already one step away from crossing the line and formally joining the Neon Star Alliance.
Now handed another order worth 100 quadrillion, they threw themselves into it without hesitation.
"I’ll leave it all to you. And remember, if you need anything, just say the word."
"Understood, Lord Nash."
---
Before leaving, Nash also transferred the remaining materials back to the Sun Star Void Area for the tier 8 mother core ship to continue producing industrial mining mother ships.
With everything accounted for, he finally sat down to study the blueprint for the dark gate he planned to construct.
"This is far more complex than I expected." Nash frowned, activating his state of enlightenment to work through the blueprint’s underlying structure more quickly.
This blueprint hadn’t been purchased from anyone; it had been distributed to every cosmic team participating in the cosmic competition, a standard design derived by the Void Administrator itself.
Nash had assumed it would be a relatively straightforward construction project. Instead, the deeper he comprehended what lay within it, the deeper his frown became.
"How did those top-level and major-level teams complete this structure in just a few months?"
Based on the Neon Star Alliance’s current capabilities, constructing the entire thing would take years.
The array work alone was more intricate than the grand array they had erected across the entire Sun Star Void Area.
"It seems I’ll need to enlist the help of the Chronos Alliance."
Placing a call to Hanna, Nash quickly laid out his intentions.
"I can provide scientists and manpower to help you construct the dark gate. But what do I get in return? And when are you planning to put the dark energy purification devices on the open market?"
Although Nash had promised them 10% priority access to his production output, so far, it had gone all exclusively to the Azure Heaven Alliance.
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