Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 827: Hive Resource Management I

CH0827 Hive Resource Management I

***

Beyond the attention of any observer, the eastern region of the Ashwell Mountains quietly became a hotbed—or perhaps more fittingly, a beehive—of activity, as Hive drones relentlessly hunted prey to satisfy the Hive’s ever-growing demand for flesh and blood, fuelling its continuously expanding drone production.

Zora’s suggestion had made Alex realise that he still lacked a complete understanding of Ava’s production capabilities—particularly her limitations.

In fact, there were many things he still needed to determine.

For instance, he needed a reliable method of calculating the maximum number of drones Ava could keep online at any given time, taking into account factors such as drone type, size, quality, as well as the quantity and nature of the abilities possessed by each drone design.

Alex also wanted to better understand how the rank and quality of the carcasses consumed by the Hive influenced drone production and its other biological processes.

For now, the only conclusion he had reached was that consuming higher-Class beasts generated a greater amount of energy—in other words, more drone carrion honey.

That, however, led to another problem Alex wanted to solve.

At present, there was effectively no distinction between the different batches of carrion honey produced by the Hive. If any grading system existed at all, it was simply that some spheres were larger than others, depending on the Class of the beast whose carcass had been consumed to produce them.

In other words, a higher-Class beast produced a larger carrion honey sphere.

A rather intuitive outcome.

However, Alex considered this inefficient.

It meant that stronger drones, which required significantly larger energy reserves, would have to spend more time consuming multiple energy spheres just to replenish their internal stores.

Depending on the drone’s intended role, that lost time could become a significant operational disadvantage.

This prompted Alex to instruct Ava and the Hive to research more efficient alternatives without introducing an excessive logistical burden upon the Hive itself.

Energy wasn’t his only concern, either.

Another area Alex intended to investigate was the relationship between the ranking system and the actual combat effectiveness of Ava and her drones.

Since Ava was recognised as a tool in the eyes of the Universe’s natural order, she was not classified using the conventional Class ranking system.

Instead, like an artefact, she was ranked by Tier.

At present, Ava was a Tier II artefact lifeform.

Her cultivation method was remarkably simple.

Gluttony.

She needed only to consume flesh and blood.

Once she had devoured enough biological matter, her Tier would naturally rise.

Unfortunately, accomplishing that was far from easy.

Even after consuming all the beast carcasses left behind in the aftermath of Alex’s battle with the Tribulation Doppelganger—amounting to roughly several hundred thousand beasts—Ava had only advanced to Tier II, which appeared to grant her the ability to produce drones below Class 3.

However, it seemed that by overclocking herself, she could forcibly create the core of a Class 3 drone. Doing so, however, would require several hours to complete, and the more complex the intended drone, the longer the process would take.

Furthermore, actually gestating such a drone demanded an enormous amount of energy—in the form of carrion honey—that could otherwise have been used to gestate hundreds, if not thousands, of slightly weaker drones.

In the grand scheme of things, although the Royal Guard drones were the most sophisticated drones Ava had produced so far, Alex only estimated them to be at the Early Class 3 level.

While they were technically stronger than Verdantis’ One-Star Gold-rank Combat Warriors, they were still considered weak for Class 3 combatants from a Pangean’s perspective.

In fact, it was entirely possible for a sufficiently experienced One-Star Gold-rank Verdantian Combat Warrior to defeat a Royal Guard drone, provided the former possessed enough practical combat experience.

Fortunately, this was a problem that could be addressed on the software side of things.

The instruction packet injected into each drone after production contained its biological programming, including its life functions, command hierarchy, behavioural routines, and—amongst many other things—its combat methods.

In theory, the more a particular drone type engaged in combat—or indeed performed any activity at all—the more experience would be accumulated within the Hive’s collective memory archive.

This shared memory archive could then be accessed and analysed by Alex—or more precisely, Orion—to update the instruction packet for that specific drone type, thereby granting all subsequently produced drones of that design greater ‘innate combat experience’.

Essentially, this meant that even these lifeless drones could continue to improve.

Their hardware could not change, but their software certainly could.

After all, their fundamental combat potential was fixed from the moment they were created. It was one of the few shortcomings of the Hive that Alex found particularly frustrating, yet one he had no choice but to accept.

A drone was permanently locked to the rank it possessed at birth.

A Class 2 drone would forever remain a Class 2 drone.

The drones were, in essence, biological robots.

They were constructed from living organic matter, yet functioned no differently from machines. Like any robot, they were incapable of growing beyond the limitations of their hardware—limitations that, once again, were determined the moment they came into existence.

Thus, ‘upgrading’ their software—that is, their birth Instruction Packet—was perhaps the only means by which a particular drone type could truly grow, enabling it to make better use of the hardware to which it was inherently limited.

This, however, introduced yet another resource management problem.

Ava—or rather, Alex—had to formulate a production strategy that took into account Ava’s ever-increasing production capacity, the intended role of each drone type, their operational demand, and, of course, their lifespan.

Yes, lifespan.

Every drone type possessed its own expected operational lifespan—or, more accurately, an expiration date.

Technically speaking, the higher the drone’s Class, the longer its projected lifespan.

However, drones naturally experienced wear and tear through continuous operation. As such, even amongst drones of the same Class, combat drones or those subjected to constant activity would inevitably have shorter operational lifespans than non-combat or less-active drones.

In essence, managing the Hive had become an exercise in resource management for Alex—almost no different from governing a domain.

As such, he needed a far deeper understanding of the Hive’s limitations.

To achieve that, Alex turned to the most reliable method he knew—active field testing and experimentation—which would also provide useful benefits along the way.

He ordered Ava to push the Hive’s production capacity to its current limits while simultaneously dispatching as many drones as possible to hunt the nearby berserk beasts, with particular priority given to carnivorous species.

As always, Alex was never pursuing a single objective.

He was pursuing many at once.

The first objectives were the obvious ones.

Ordering the drones to engage the berserk beasts more aggressively would reduce their numbers around his territory. At the same time, it would allow each drone type to accumulate more combat experience while supplying the Hive with additional flesh and blood to sustain the heightened production rate he had just authorised.

However, his orders also concealed several less obvious objectives.

Alex had specifically prioritised carnivorous berserk beasts because he intended to conduct an ecological experiment.

Naturally, carnivorous berserk beasts represented the greatest immediate threat amongst the local beast population. Eliminating them would therefore reduce the most dangerous element surrounding his territory.

More importantly, however, by systematically targeting the region’s apex predators, Alex hoped to disrupt the local food chain.

With fewer predators hunting them, the herbivorous and smaller prey species would be expected to flourish.

In this way, although he could neither prevent nor completely avoid the beast tide that would arrive in the coming years, he could at least weaken it to some extent by ensuring that a greater proportion of the eventual tide consisted of comparatively easier-to-handle herbivorous beasts.

***