97: Chapter 97 We call this a technology verification model

Water droplets seeped from the walls on both sides of the stone steps, the torchlight reflecting off the damp stone in shimmering ripples, yet failing to dispel the bone-deep chill.

Levi could feel every breath like inhaling tiny ice shards, a tightening sensation coming from his lungs.

This wasn't physical low temperature, but a form of psychological pressure—the instinctive resistance of ordered life forms toward chaos and entropy.

He glanced to his side; Evelyn's face was somewhat pale, her beautiful brows tightly furrowed, the knuckles of her hand gripping the sword hilt clearly visible.

Caroline, however, fared much better. Accustomed to the shadows, she possessed a higher tolerance for such negative energy environments, though her gaze was sharper than usual, like a cheetah entering unknown territory.

At the end of the stone steps was a heavy door cast from black iron, engraved with layers of dwarven runes that emitted a faint, rhythmic silver glow.

These runes acted like a dam, barely holding back the malice and cold that almost overflowed from behind the door.

A stout figure stood at the entrance—it was the Dwarven Chief Engineer, Borin "The Anvil."

His signature large beard was free of grease today, meticulously groomed and braided into three thick plaits hanging over his chest.

He wore heavy leather work clothes inlaid with anti-magic crystals and held a crystal tablet, muttering as he recorded something in front of the door.

Hearing footsteps, Borin turned around, his rugged face a complex mix of exhaustion and excitement.

"My Lord, you've arrived," he said in a muffled voice that echoed through the narrow passage. "This thing... is truly a temperamental bastard."

He stepped aside to clear the way and pointed at the door. "For safety, I set up three isolation rune arrays, but the energy seepage is still beyond imagination. The temperature of the outer iron door has dropped enough to freeze a mug of ale within twelve hourglasses."

Levi reached out, not touching the iron door directly, but hovering his palm in mid-air.

A frigid suction emanated from the door's seams, like an invisible hand trying to drain the warmth from his palm.

He could clearly feel the dwarven runes slowly dimming at a visible rate, as if a battery were being rapidly depleted.

"Open it," Levi said calmly.

Borin nodded, took a uniquely shaped rune key from his waist, inserted it into the lock in the center of the door, and turned it with force.

Accompanied by a series of dull mechanical clicks, the heavy iron door slowly swung inward.

The sight behind the door made Evelyn instinctively gasp.

It was a circular stone chamber about half the size of a training field, with no windows.

In the center of the chamber, the "abyssal contract core" floated silently in mid-air.

Four thick chains, also shimmering with silver runes, extended from four directions on the floor, binding it tightly, their other ends deeply embedded in specialized pedestals.

However, this seemingly sturdy containment appeared precarious.

With every pulse of the heart, a visible ripple of ink-black energy would spread out.

When the ripples touched the rune chains, they produced a "sizzling" corrosive sound, like hot oil on ice, causing the light of the runes on the chains to flicker violently.

The walls of the entire stone chamber were covered in a thin layer of black frost, and tiny shadow particles like dust floated in the air.

Levi felt as if he had stepped into the body of a massive, slowly rotting organism; the surrounding walls, air, and even the light carried a deathly viscosity.

"Report on the situation." Levi's gaze remained locked on the core, never wavering.

Borin walked to a makeshift workbench, picked up his crystal recording tablet, and his expression became incredibly serious. "My Lord, the preliminary survey results are terrible. This thing's energy reaction is extremely unstable, like a volcano ready to erupt at any moment, but what spews out isn't magma, but pure, highly concentrated Abyssal energy."

He tapped a violently fluctuating graph on the crystal tablet with his short, stubby finger. "More troublesome is its strong mental pollution characteristic. Two of my apprentices stayed here for less than an hourglass and developed auditory hallucinations and a strong urge to attack; I've already forced them to rest. Any known direct-contact energy-guiding arrays based on traditional mana circuits won't last three minutes before it. In three minutes, they would be completely corrupted and assimilated by its power, turning into a 'diode' that expands the pollution."

"I've tried designing sealing plans based on three of our top ancient dwarven techniques," Borin said, spreading three large parchment blueprints on the workbench.

The first blueprint showed an extremely complex cube composed of countless concentric nested rune spheres.

"This is the 'Eternal Cage' plan. The core materials are Mithril and Star Iron. Theoretically, it can seal it for at least three hundred years without maintenance."

Evelyn leaned in to glance at the material list in the corner of the blueprint, and her face instantly turned whiter than the frost on the walls.

Borin didn't notice her expression and continued pointing at the second blueprint. "This is the 'Heart of the Earth' plan. The idea is to bury it ten thousand meters underground, using the rock pressure and leyline energy of the entire earth to suppress it. The scale of engineering is massive, requiring the mobilization of all labor in the territory and taking at least ten years."

Finally, he pointed to the third blueprint, a relatively simpler cylindrical container.

"This is the most economical 'Inert Metal Coffin' plan. Using an Orichalcum alloy fused with 'Stasis Runes' to build a container can guarantee no large-scale energy leakage for fifty years. But..." Borin sighed, a look of pain on his face. "Even this cheapest plan is estimated to exhaust the entire fiscal revenue of Blackstone Territory for the next five years. And that's just the material costs."

The entire stone chamber fell into a deathly silence, save for the "thump, thump" of the heart, which sounded like a heavy hammer striking everyone's heart.

Exhausting five years of fiscal revenue just to build a "trash can" that brings no profit would be an unacceptable option to anyone.

"These plans..." Levi finally spoke, slowly shaking his head, "none of them will work."

Borin seemed to have expected this result. He grimaced and spread his hands. "My Lord, I know it's expensive, but facing an Abyssal creation of this level, any corner-cutting could lead to catastrophic consequences. Our dwarven creed is: if you do it, do it to last a thousand years!"

"Your creed is fine, but my territory is going bankrupt." Levi walked to the workbench and picked up a blank piece of parchment and a charcoal pencil.

Ignoring the three complex blueprints that condensed top dwarven craftsmanship, he began to sketch roughly on the white paper.

His drawing skills were poor, the lines wobbly—just a crude schematic made of several boxes and arrows.

"Borin, let's change our thinking." Levi pushed the finished sketch toward the dwarven engineer. "I don't want a seal; I want to utilize it."

Borin looked down, his eyebrows instantly knitting into a knot, his face full of "what nonsense are you talking about."

"Look," Levi's finger pointed to the first box, "why are we always thinking about 'permanent protection'? The cost is too high. Can we design a 'consumable' guiding array? This stage is the first-level filter."

He drew a heavy circle over the first box with the charcoal pencil.

"We build it using the cheapest, most accessible materials, like lead, or any base metal that has a retarding effect on dark energy. Its sole task is to be actively corrupted, bearing the first and most violent wave of energy impact. We can set a replacement cycle—say, a day, or an hour. When it's broken, we swap it out, just like changing a dirty rag."

Borin's eyes widened, his mouth slightly agape, seemingly wanting to refute this idea that bordered on technical blasphemy, but he was interrupted by Levi's next move.

Levi's pencil moved to the second box. "After the first level 'filters' out some of the corrosiveness, the relatively 'milder' energy is then guided into our second-level array. The materials for this stage can be a bit better, like black iron. Its task is further conversion and purification. Of course, it's also a consumable, just with a longer replacement cycle."

"Finally," the pencil landed on the third and smallest box, "the energy, weakened and converted through two stages, is ultimately guided here to be processed by a truly precise and expensive array, turning it into energy we can store and use. You see, a multi-stage filtration system—trading cost for wear and tear, and managing risk through process."

In the stone chamber, only Levi's calm narration and the ominous thumping of the heart remained.

Borin stared blankly at the laughably crude sketch, completely stunned.

This completely overturned all his knowledge as a master craftsman.

Dwarven craftsmanship pursued eternity, sturdiness, and beauty, while what Levi proposed was a cheap, disposable, assembly-line "waste processing" solution.

"This... this... this is the raving of a madman!" Borin finally roared after a long silence, his spit nearly spraying onto the sketch. "Treating sacred rune arrays as consumables? My Lord, this is an insult to technology! And what kind of qualitative changes will occur during the energy conversion? No one knows! This is too dangerous!"

Levi didn't get angry; he just looked calmly at the agitated dwarf and threw out one question after another, like a cold project manager conducting a technical review.

"Roughly how long is the replacement cycle?"

"I... how should I know!"

"Then go estimate it. Based on its current energy dissipation rate, how long can a first-level lead array last? An hour? Half an hour? Ten minutes?"

"This... probably... needs calculation..." Borin's anger was stalled by this string of precise questions.

"What is the replacement cost? One lead ingot plus the labor hours of two workers—what does that convert to in copper coins?"

"What is the filtration efficiency? After the first level of filtration, by what percentage will the energy's corrosiveness decay? Ten percent? Or thirty percent?"

"What is the converted energy output power? Can it light up a single illumination rune, or can it drive a forging furnace?"

"How much manpower is needed to maintain the entire system? What skills are required? Can ordinary people be trained to do the job?"

The series of questions, like a rapid drumbeat, left Borin's head spinning.

His original anger, based on "craftsman's honor" and "traditional experience," was shattered by these cold, realistic, and highly quantified questions.

He was forced to stop his meaningless roaring, and his brain involuntarily began to follow Levi's logic, performing rapid calculations and deductions from a technical implementation perspective.

He grabbed a crystal tablet, muttering to himself, his fingers sliding across it quickly as various data and rune formulas flashed by.

The stone chamber became quiet again, but the atmosphere had changed completely.

Evelyn and Caroline looked at Levi with some awe.

They didn't understand the technical details at all, but they could see how Levi was taking a seemingly crazy, far-fetched idea and dragging it into the track of "technical feasibility" through a series of indisputable, logically rigorous questions.

After a long time, Borin suddenly looked up.

"My Lord..." His voice was somewhat raspy. "Theoretically... it's theoretically feasible. But the energy decay rate and conversion efficiency are just theoretical values. I need to conduct a small-scale physical model test to obtain accurate data."

"We call this a Technology Verification Model," Levi calmly corrected him with a term from his past life, then turned to Evelyn. "Risk Control Director, calculate the costs."

Evelyn almost immediately pulled a ledger and a quill from her bag and began calculating rapidly.

A moment later, she looked up, her expression solemn. "My Lord, based on the minimum material standards Master Borin just mentioned, building a small-scale 'Technology Verification Model' will cost enough in materials and labor for us to purchase full equipment for another hundred elite soldiers. I must remind you, this is a massive gamble; if it fails, we will lose everything."

She took a deep breath and offered her suggestion. "From a risk control perspective, I still believe that disclosing information about this object to the Holy See of Radiance and letting them handle it is our current optimal solution. Not only can we save this huge expense, but we can also gain the Church's friendship and a certain amount of political prestige."

After hearing this, a mysterious smile appeared on Levi's face.

"Evelyn, giving a unique core raw material with extremely high potential value to your potential competitor for free, and expecting them to be grateful?" He shook his head. "That is the stupidest business move possible."

He walked to the center of the stone chamber and observed the pulsing heart up close through the rune chains.

That deep darkness, which seemed capable of swallowing all light, was no longer a threat in his eyes, but an untapped rich mine with staggering reserves.

"Approve Borin's test plan." His voice wasn't loud, but it carried an unquestionable decisiveness. "What we are putting in now isn't money; it's R&D funds. This money isn't a cost; it's an investment."

"Remember, once successful, what we possess will not just be an energy source. It will be a unique, monopolistic technology that can turn 'curses' into 'gold'."

Having said that, he turned to look at the perpetually silent Caroline.

"From now on, use all your intelligence networks to gather information on all 'Abyssal Pollution Sources,' legends of 'Ancient Cursed Lands,' or any evil areas judged 'unpurifiable' by the Church across the entire continent."

The corners of Levi's mouth curled into a cold arc, his eyes flashing with the fanaticism of a capitalist seeing a blue ocean market.

"Then, conduct a preliminary 'development potential' assessment of these locations and submit a report to me. The mines in Blackstone Territory are almost tapped out; it's time... to expand into some new business."

Caroline's body gave a barely perceptible shudder. She suddenly looked up, and for the first time, her gaze toward Levi revealed a complex mix of shock and fanaticism.

She suddenly understood that this man's ambition was not at all limited to the small Blackstone Territory, or even the Empire.

His gaze was already set on those dark corners of the world that even the gods found troublesome and had abandoned.

Levi said no more and walked out of the cold secret chamber, leaving behind the heart that bred both destruction and opportunity for his excited engineer and shocked subordinates.

He had more important things to attend to—a key node that would test the quality of his management system was about to arrive.

The first month's point settlement day was almost here.