Devil Emperor

"You can go, General Borke."

After finishing the discussion of important topics with General, I let him go, as I wanted to focus on other things that required my attention. One of the most prominent ones was the creation of a potion that would break my physical limits.

"Architect, how are your calculations going?"

[Slowly, it will take seven days to complete such a complex potion refinement process. Unfortunately, your library doesn't have enough books on Alchemy, so my database is rather limited. I need to work with the knowledge that is available, and some parts of it, need to be changed to suit the creation of this potion, as it is from General Level Monster.]

"Tch. Unfortunately, devils don't have enough materials for proper alchemy. Maybe some Houses have it for Potioneering, but for refinement of pills, that knowledge is only at hands of Pantheons and Celestial Court. I will need to make a trip to the Three Realms at some point. They have tons of knowledge that would be useful to us."

I said out of loud. Afterward, I fell into deep thought, as I was thinking about something.

"Architect, take out the Project Arachne. It should be optimized by now, right?"

[Are you sure, sir?]

"Yes. Even if I construct some basic drones, they would be good for some menial tasks, I need to create and maintain a laboratory. They would be proto-type for the Arcanotechnology. Another advantage our race has but wasn't even developed."

Arcanotechnology was basically magical technology. Asgard mainly used it, they had developed their magical technology to the extreme. It allowed them to create vessels able to travel through the Dimensional Gap or energy-based weapons. It was no wonder, runes worked best with Arcanotechnology, Pantheons as Egyptian or Celtic also had a decent level of such technologies.

Big G developed Sacred Gears based on that, basically, Sacred Gears are nothing more just very advanced Arcano Soul Weapons, tied to God's System in Heaven.

[Very well. With current materials, we could construct probably 100 Drones. Their firepower is abysmal, and their combat level should be only around Low-Class, depending on the quality of material and runes inscribed onto them.]

Siad Architect, as I went to the work. There was an entire branch of magic, called Golemancy that was all about creating golems. My own invention was something similar and yet so different. My creations, were Automatons, mechanical constructs, that were enhanced by runes and worked on runes.

For example, I didn't need to control them manually, as they had some basic level of intelligence, they could be programmed to understand everything from basic orders to complex blueprints. Also, they could be controlled by Architect directly.

Drone-Type was the basic unit of these Arcane Mechanical Automatons. They were used mainly to dig, work and construct or deconstruct things and objects.

When I proposed this, I wasn't aware that how annoying work this would be. Truth be told, it wasn't that hard to construct one drone. They looked like a spider and were made from metal, ordinary ones found in the Underworld. With countless forges and blacksmiths, I had read them in several hours.

The troublesome part was the runic inscription. There were three steps in the creation of Arcane Mechanical Automatons. The first step was to create a mechanical construct. That could be done by a skilled blacksmith. The second step was the inscription of runes and the creation of a runic matrix in "brain" of the automaton. The third step was to connect all rune points with the runic matrix in the brain and activate the automaton.

The second and third steps were the hardest, and they must be done by me alone. Fortunately for me, I was well versed in Norse Magic, and my runework was very good, so I was completing the inscription process fast and without any mistakes.

The first drone took me one hour to make, as I was especially careful when inscribing the runes onto the body of the automaton. When creating the Runic Matrix, I needed to be even more careful, because if I make a single mistake, it could easily explode.

"When I finish these drones, the first thing I will make is Factory. Hopefully, these drones could do inscription process instead of my, and maybe even creation of Runic Matrix."

I muttered out of frustration, as I was finishing making the 30th drone. It was tiring work, and I was already being fed up with it, but these little cuties would be a great boon for me. Maybe I can even sell some.

The death toll of devils in the Great War was counted in hundreds of millions, probably reaching several billion, so it would be better to use golems or automatons for battles, they could lessen casualties. And in the future, it would mean more devils survived and when Evil Pieces are invited, we won't be dependent on them.

Evil Pieces were useful, for example, we could get Sacred Gear users, talented humans, or members of other factions that went rouge or left. On the other side, they were used to enslave other species and members of other Pantheons. They were created mainly for the repopulation of devils, which was stupid in my opinion.

If we save enough population in the Great War, and the Civil War would be solved with a Coup, I could pressure for Evil Pieces to be given only to an extremely small amount of people. In canon, every High-Class Devil had set, I planned to give them only to Ultimate-Class devils, that would obtain recommendation letters and to Heirs of Houses, that passed an examination. With this move, we could reduce the number of reincarnated devils by more than 90% and also, motivate holders of Evil Pieces to reincarnate only people with strong potential.

After working for three days straight, I finished all drones, and before me were 100 Arcane Mechanical Automatons, of Drone-Type, of Arachne-Class.

"Architect, control the drones and let them construct underground place, big enough to house my magical experiments, and also production line for automatons."