The Discarded, Half-Eaten Apple Core New Life

As we traveled north, approaching the Winter Wonderland of the original colonies, picking up people, deploying kill bunkers along the way... I stared at a notification I pulled up.

> You learned how to Replicate IBM Falcon r1 (R) 28 qubits processor.

They were definitely shitting me. If nanometric silicon circuits shortened because of magic, how the fuck would a quantum computer work? The answer was, "no fucking way". Something was happening here. Never mind the fact I didn't have the software to run this thing or that I couldn't combine processors. Two 28 qubits machines didn't make a 56 one.

Forget this computer replica, how did all of quantum mechanics work under magic? The matter still existed and electricity was still very much a thing but what about other things? Quarks, subatomic particles, and so on?

Perhaps ditching the Perk that allowed me to see the microscopic circuits was a mistake. I disassembled one of these and only found a sandwich of metal plates that were supposed to become superconductive when as close to zero Kelvin as humanly possible.

I had the schematic for a quantum computer. It was an upside-down steampunk wedding cake with hundreds of tubes of cryogenic fluids that would work in stages to bring the processor to the required temperature.

I searched the GitHub projects for those involving Quantum computing. After I earmarked some for later use, I tried to see if NASA had a finger in that pie. Boy, oh, boy. NASA didn't disappoint. They had a whole lab dedicated to it. They had a partnership with Google and other tech companies to push this frontier further. Called the QuAIL lab, they were interested in modeling A.I. software using quantum computers to emulate the neural networks used in deep learning. The time necessary to train the A.I. model could, theoretically, be cut down by orders of magnitude [1].

I had all of their white papers and research notes. The lab worked with other aspects of quantum computing but the A.I. projects drew my attention the most.

After I sank two weeks into reading and testing some prototypes, I noticed the quantum processors I was using were also magical imitations of the real thing. Many of the surfaces inside the processor had some lines and glyphs I've seen Enchanters use. I should take an enchanter sub-Class next. Didn't I have one Legendary that was about that? Yeah. That was the one unless something better happened in between.

Following the documentation I had, I created one such quantum computer, using my Dungeon powers to isolate the machine with a layer of vacuum. The cooling coils needed heavy isotopes of Helium, which I could source with but a thought. It used a normal computer to interface with the quantum one and it had a whole new programming language to translate the normal program instructions into quantum machine instructions.

I'm going to use the word quantum a lot. Get ready for it.

Another month passed by as I tested and played with five hundred quantum computers at the same time, each running different experiments. I reckon humans would have trouble getting that kind of technological park working but for me, it was all a matter of spending the DM to make another machine. Though expensive, my DM regeneration was off the charts.

*

*

A large and well-protected circle 160 feet in diameter occupied the center of the first wagon. A veritable forest grew on it. I upgraded my "Core Room" to make the most out of my Green Energy Perk. The one that gave me more Mana if I was surrounded by trees. I found a Canadian tree that was almost a shrub, the Saskatoon berry tree. These trees grew only fifteen feet tall, reached maturity at three years old, and could be planted close to one another. In nature, they could even grow stem-to-stem but I needed to give them some room to make them count as individual trees by the System.

Regardless, I could plant one such tree every four square feet. Yes, it meant only two feet between each tree. With enough room for a chair in the middle and a path to walk out, I squeezed four thousand such trees in the nineteen thousand square feet affected by my Perk. With each giving me 0.5% of my maximum MP per hour, I was getting more than two million MP every hour I stayed in that spot. Not to mention each of these trees also generated DM through "Orchard Mana". 207 MP from each tree, 828,000 DM per day.

Giving biodiversity the middle finger, I started growing these trees everywhere along the land train. Every wagon had at least two decks dedicated to these trees. 40,000 trees in each wagon, 115 wagons. Nines out, the land train was giving me 953 million DM per day. With the trees embedded inside Speranza's outer walls and everywhere in the city, I easily surpassed a billion DM per day.

With that amount of energy to play with, I started a new game.

I had the rangers battle earlier versions of my Mecha, to gather telemetry data on damage and sub-systems resilience. It also granted me Exp every time I Replicated a new machine. To stop the System from giving me any penalties, We started to leave behind the broken chassis of dead giant robots. I bet archeologists in the future will spin a thousand wild theories about why these machines were left behind in such a state of destruction. Titanic wars must've been fought here, these were the defenders of humanity, or even bring about a new age of giant robots when they find the machined and reverse-engineer them.

When in fact it was just one bored deity throwing away broken toys for some marginal benefit. That was also a lie.

The Experience was very welcome. Also, the telemetry data gave me a lot of information regarding weak spots in my designs. That led me to another round of evolutive design improvements.

> Your knowledge and training improved your Engineering Skill to rank X: — Gain a cumulative, multiplicative 0.5% discount (maximum 50%) when Replicating the same structure or item again. Each item keeps its own tally and this bonus doesn't carry onto upgraded models.

> Your knowledge and training improved your Computer Sciences to rank IX: — Complex Algorithms take (5*Rank)% less time to design and process.

The bonuses were welcome. I had finally mastered the very first Skill I earned in this new life. We kept traveling and I watched the results of my experiments.

*

*

I let Róta negotiate with the settlements and get people to enter Speranza or live in the land train. I had twelve miles of train to host people. Most chose to go to the Demiplane city. Valhalla and Fólkvangr had finished growing to their maximum size. They both had the same surface area as the city, which meant 307 square miles each. These places were off-limits to civilians. The 750-foot drop from the wall was not an issue but the fact these were places for the dead was. Mortals who trespassed upon these hallowed lands didn't keep being mortals for too long. Instead, they joined the dead and became permanent residents.

Fólkvangr became the new green belt. People in Speranza still had their home gardens to grow some vegetables and their chickens or pigs in the backyard but the majority of the grain, fruit, and vegetables the city consumed now came from Fólkvangr.

My evolution quest, however, was still a long way from finishing.

> To evolve your species, you need to rescue 4,000,000 humans and keep them safe from harm for 1 year. No time limit.

> Current tally: 356,491 / 4,000,000

I had doubled the number of inhabitants living in my Inner Realm and around fifty thousand people remained on the surface, sheltered in my weaponized enclaves. Organic growth was always a choice. With the proper incentives and based on population data, I was able to collate, I could make my humans grow at a 6% per annum rate. That would mean I could double my population every 12 years. 712 thousand in 12 years, 1.4 million in 24 years, 2.8 million in 36 years, and the quest would be complete in forty-one years, one hundred and seventy-nine days, twenty hours, and fifty-four minutes. Give or take a few births and deaths.

Who got that kind of time lying around? Not this immortal God-Dungeon, let me tell you. I increased the throttle on the land train. Sensors along the coupling joints relayed the relative speed of each wagon to their CPU units. The CPU units negotiated and started the acceleration process, speeding up the rear slightly sooner than the front.

We would stop by the former capital of this ruined country, then go north to check if the city that never sleeps had kept its eyes open in the Apocalypse.

*

*

With the new processors, better and faster computers became available. The people of Speranza were asked to turn in their old computers and get new touchscreen tablet PCs. They ran on a fork of Android I got from the GitHub repositories and were faster, better, and didn't have the bulky keyboard the other model had. They were also all 4G ready and I wanted to switch everyone to the cell network, leaving the DAN connection strictly for government use. My use.

I also started on the upgrade to Bricks Windows. The next-gen spider mecha had lower reaction times, faster actuators, and better protection due to our live-fire test on the units we wrecked along the way, and it also could turn around faster. This was crucial in fast-paced combat. I placed the legs in a circular base, with a wider range of movement. The torso could spin freely over the leg base (in some cases one leg or two need to be lower to let the bulk move past).

That would allow the spider Mecha to turn in a different direction without burning jump jet fuel or doing complicated turn maneuvers. The weapons had independent targeting computers that would aid in aiming and lessen the strain on Dungeon Automation. I had so many things going on at once that I was afraid of one day running out of slots for automated tasks.

I named my new Mecha "Bricks Swing Windows".

> For creating level 185 (Epic) Spider Giant Mecha "Bickering Widow", you gained 1,538 Experience.

Great! Now I knew how to make the System spell "Widow" correctly.

[1]: This paragraph is entirely true IRL.