Antikythera found her inside one of the unoccupied rooms. It was occupied now, he supposed. Hana sat around various mechanical parts while humming a tune known only to herself. She was working on something unseen, but judging by the bck line on her forearm, it must have been some kind of experimental impnt.

  "Hana," Antikythera announced his presence and called on the artificer at the same time. Hana looked away from what she was working on and hastily stood up to shake his hand. The artificer was always like this—excited to meet him because of his nature as an automaton.

  "Antikythera, sir." Out of the three heads of the hospital, it was also she who oddly addressed him in a more respectful manner. "Do you need anything?" she asked, panicking. "Do automatons eat—no, they don't, you moron!" she hissed before freezing. "Uhm. Do you need anything?"

  "I do, yes." Antikythera found a wall to lean against to give the girl more space as she cleaned the junk on the floor. "Nazarick, as you may know, has suddenly been relocated, and we are in for a time when we will start to ck resources. Possibly, this could get so bad that we will face a decline in the factory's efficiency."

  "Uh-huh!" Hana tossed some random orb into a faraway pile. "I totally get what you're saying. We need to mine stuff, right? I think I have something here—"

  As the girl began to rummage through the piles of junk searching for something—mining equipment?—Antikythera reached out with his technopathy and turned off the bomb she had just thrown and accidentally activated. The automaton continued, "You are going to be tasked with making an external factory far from Nazarick."

  Hana paused her rummaging. "What?"

  "Do not worry, it will involve mining," Antikythera reassured. "Keep digging for whatever machine it is you were searching for. I'll tell you the specifics of the task all the while." As Hana went back to her search, Antikythera went on, "Multiple automatons will be assigned to you, and you will use them to build the factory. Resources will be sourced from the local nd—make a quarry. On that note, I should tell Sakai to begin designing mining units."

  Antikythera paused for a bit and activated [Message]. He informed Sakai of the development, and the hologram, in turn, told him that she had given the scouting units specific queries to find during their search, such as familiar outfits, professions, or even ndmarks. Stars and consteltions would be mapped, and the yout of the nd would be fed into the control tower by the scouts to create a digital map for them to download into the automatons for future endeavors.

  "Well, that is done," said Antikythera. "Hana, as I expined, you will be making a quarry. You will slowly build factories around this quarry over time until it is surrounded on all sides by buildings that will utilize the resources we can gather from it to the fullest. We will decide what to do with the resulting sinkhole once we have emptied it of resources."

  "Yep! Of course! I'll gdly do it! Here!" Hana presented him with a weird-looking machine—no, it was a bionic arm with drills at the tips of its fingers. Antikythera did not see a use for it, deeming the drills too small for any sort of ndscaping. Perhaps wood carving?

  "It is a good impnt," Antikythera lied. There were parts missing, and the exposed wiring looked like it would hurt its user more than aid them, but it could be quite functional once Hana spent more than an hour working on it.

  Antikythera returned the arm. "But you will have dedicated drilling units in the future, and should you make any kind of machine, I want you to build them in such a way that they would be useful in rge-scale operations." The automaton tilted its head. "Beyond that, I have no more to say."

  He realized that he had been caught up in the tasks he wished to give Sakai when programming the scouting units and that he had nothing more to say to Hana once he informed her of her new task.

  "I wish you the best of luck, Hana, but I have to take my leave. Sakai will give you information on what kind of machinery will be produced by your factory and what type of resources you will harvest from the quarry." Antikythera began making his way out of the room. "I will inform Sakai that you can open one—" and Antikythera emphasized this, "—of the automatons given to you."

  "Yes!" Hana pumped her fist. "I'll do it!"

  "Good. Do well." Antikythera headed for the elevator. Now to inform Albedo, Demiurge, and Lord Ainz of his pns.

  The throne room was empty when he got there. No one sat on the Throne of Kings. A homunculus maid passing him by bowed before heading deeper into the tomb. Curious, Antikythera followed after her and entered the regal chambers of the Supreme Beings. He walked until he reached the overseer's office and, from there, knocked.

  "Antikythera," Albedo said from behind the closed door, recognizing him despite not being visible. Antikythera opened the obstruction and nodded in respect to the Guardian Overseer. "Any news?"

  "I want to inform you of my pns." He stood in front of her desk. The room was so much more spartan than he realized. Antikythera had expected bookshelves full of data about the tomb, but he supposed if one was as smart as Albedo, her own memory was more secure than some book.

  "Do tell." Albedo, realizing that it wasn't an emergency, went back to the paper she was reading.

  "My floor has sent scouts out to survey the area. Sakai will write a report on anything they find," Antikythera started off with the best news he could give her. "Beyond that, I have tasked Asuka and Aoi to start working on the production of magical fauna we can use to make scrolls or as alchemical ingredients."

  "Tell me more about that." Albedo briefly broke out of her focus to ask the question.

  "I am going to breed stallions as a start. Bicorns from Nazarick will be bred with the local species simir to them, and if I see results, then I will continue with a rger variety of candidates. I pn on stopping when the quality gets high enough that we will not need to worry about cking important one-use items."

  "I'll inform Demiurge of your pn. He has something simir." Albedo nodded in approval.

  "I am also making factories outside of Nazarick. They will be independent and thus will not consume the tomb's resources. Hana will be manning them."

  "Of course." Albedo stopped reading and faced him. "These scouts of yours," she said, "can we use them to scour the world?"

  "With enough time, yes," Antikythera confirmed. "Can I ask why you are curious?"

  "Nothing," Albedo cryptically responded. "Lord Ainz is currently searching for something outside of the tomb. He is using a Mirror of Divining rather than automaton scouts."

  "It is limited in range," Antikythera muttered. "But also, using it would mean that we can test if this world has defenses against divination."

  "Quite so," Albedo nodded. "But let us go back to your scouts. Tell me everything about them—their operations, functions, followed commands, and internal mechanisms."

  Antikythera opened his memory and began a search for the appropriate answers. This was when he saw the data packet that Sakai had sent him some time back. It had everything he needed to know about the newly produced scouting units. "The ST-UN-0000 is a multi-directional war drone that can move on nd, water, and air—the st one only briefly. They are equipped with Artificer Rifles armed with bullet spells that can stun, pierce, or explode depending on the situation. They have six legs, two front legs they use as weapons, and a multi-purpose tail. Their energy sources consist of consumed matter and sor panels. They have battery packs at the bottom of their belly, which they can extend to power their rifle, limbs, or utilities."

  Albedo finished writing down Antikythera's report just as the automaton stopped talking. "Where are you sending them? What is their current purpose?"

  "To start—"