The Witch Hunter System - Chapter 1031

As wealthy merchants and big busineses across the world headed toward Celestial Airport, the UN continued to enjoy immense profits regardless of success or failure in their ventures.

Due to the number of goods occupying large spaces, additional fees were charged for storage space on the commercial starships.

Every passenger was limited to 40kg of baggage per ticket, and any excess weight incurred additional charges accordingly. An extra 40kg of baggage would cost the same price as a new ticket.

Such a pricing system made it impossible for merchants who brought tons of goods to afford. Even if they could, they wouldn't profit. Thus, they wouldn't be willing. After all, there was no point bringing their goods to conduct business in the Celestial Kingdom if they lost most, if not all, of their wealth in transit.

As such, a different commercial starship was prepared to handle large numbers of goods and merchandise.

The commercial starships used for transporting travelers between the UN and the Celestial Kingdom were the 100,000-ton transport-class starships, which were capable of carrying over 60,000 passengers comfortably.

Of course, this number could be multiple times greater if passengers didn't mind standing and cramming together throughout the duration of the trip.

However, over the past two weeks, hardly anyone desired this option, even though tickets for each flight were always sold out. After all, the ticket itself was already so expensive, and no one wanted to be deprived of an enjoyable flight experience.

If the flights were overcrowded, many people would miss out on the opportunity to sightsee the ocean world during transit.

Meanwhile, big merchants and businesses would wait for the single 1-million-ton freighter-class starship to bring their goods to the Celestial Kingdom.

Naturally, the 1-million-ton freighter-class starship wasn't the only one of its kind, but it was the only one used for commercial purposes. The rest of the 1-million-ton freighter-class starships were all used for outer space development.

Nevertheless, after the first several merchants and businesses blindly entered the Celestial Kingdom's market and suffered disastrously, no one dared to bring any more goods to the underwater cities again.

The valuable goods in their eyes, while it wasn't completely worthless, were as cheap as cabbages in the roadside stores. They were only useful as collections during the first few days.

After that, the goods served no other purpose than to be raw minerals.

After all, the goods far from the land were considered far too primitive. The Celestials simply viewed them as antiques and relics. After collecting the first time, any additions were just fake imitations.

Although the merchants and businesses from the surface failed to sell their products, they could still purchase the Celestial Kingdom's local goods to resell in their home countries.

That would help them cut their losses.

As for the large numbers of goods that failed to sell in the Celestial Kingdom, the UN ended up profiting from their cheap sales. The foreign merchants and businesses were fine as long as they could dump their useless goods for more purchasing power in the Celestial Kingdom.

...

Ever since Valefor started wreaking havoc in Celestial City, the expanding space station in outer space became the new home for AI Pangea's core after Vaan took advantage of the chaos to take it away from the Dragon King Palace.

Considering AI Pangea's core was the Celestial Kingdom's supercomputer, her installation completely overhauled Valhalla Station's primitive system and upgraded it by multiple levels with the help of Celestial engineers and specialists.

As a result, Valhalla Station's development didn't just advance by leaps and bounds; it also became the most powerful satellite in the Pangea Star System.

With its superior optical communication technology installed, contact with Pangea and the Lunar Base was established in real-time. All it took was a single beam of infrared laser to transmit large amounts of data to and from the celestial bodies in under two seconds.

Once Valhalla Station became fully operational, AI Pangea immediately worked on three pending projects under Vaan's directives.

The first and most important task was to develop state-of-the-art sensors and scanner modules that could cover the entire star system and beyond. To deal with threats, they needed time to prepare.

However, if they couldn't detect existing and incoming threats, the reinforcement would be meaningless. After all, what was the point of reinforcing the front if they suddenly got struck in the back?

The second task was the refitting and maintenance of a 10-million-ton Dreadnought-class starship, one of very few of its kind. In the entire Celestial Kingdom, there were only seven of them.

No one had ever imagined that such large starships had been dormant at the bottom of the ocean. Many people were already astonished by the 1-million-ton Freighter-class starships, but the 10-million-ton Dreadnought-class starships were in a completely different league.

Their emergence sent countless waves of shock across the world.

In fact, the 10-million-ton Dreadnought-class starship still wasn't the largest of its kind in the Celestial Kingdom's possession. There was still an eighth Dreadnought-class starship.

However, it wasn't a 10-million-ton starship like the other seven; it was a 20-million-ton starship. It was also the original flagship of the Celestial Kingdom. Still, despite being the most powerful starship in the Celestial Kingdom's possession, it wasn't chosen as a priority for refitting and maintenance at the spaceport.

After all, Vaan had no intention of sending their flagship out of the Pangea Star System any time soon.

So, why would it become a priority?

On the other hand, the 10-million-ton Dreadnought-class starship chosen was going to be the spearhead of mankind, searching for threats and other life in the vast unknown.

As such, the chosen 10-million-tony Dreadnought-class starship was also given a name—SS Voyager.

After refitting, AI Pangea would be able to control it and scout the vast asteroid field in the outer region of the star system, which Vaan later learned was labeled as the Celestial Belt by the Celestial Kingdom.

Finally, Vaan's last task to AI Pangea was to develop the automaton factory for robotics and android production. Naturally, this wasn't something AI Pangea could do on her own at the start.

She required the physical labor of skilled Celestial engineers and technicians.

Once the automaton factories became functional, AI Pangea would be able to handle maintenance and production independently.

Although she could pilot the SS Voyager remotely, robots and androids were still necessary for the ship's maintenance and repair if it were damaged during exploration.

Vaan was fully aware of the risk of giving AI Pangea such power. However, it was a necessary risk to take. After all, automatons were far too useful for boosting the civilization's development.

Automatons only required energy and maintenance and didn't have any biological needs or sustenance. Moreover, they wouldn't attract Outer Beings since they weren't biological life forms.

As such, besides scouting, it would also allow Pangea to harvest resources from other star systems without bringing trouble back home.

More importantly, automatons were essentially required if they wanted to build new starships on the level of the 10-million-ton Dreadnought-class starship or bigger.

After all, when dealing with construction on such scales, precision was simply far too important. There was zero tolerance for any margin of error since a single faulty component could result in the entire starship's collapse.

Automatons had far too many commercial and industrial applications to be abandoned. For example, in the commercial aspect, sex androids would be a hot sale anywhere.

There were simply far too many unhappy men in the world who may have been abused or mistreated by women due to the empowerment of mana. The opposite was even more true due to the superiority of male strength in the past.

In other words, unhappy men and women were everywhere.

While they wouldn't want partners, they would still have physical and psychological needs. As such, owning a sex android that could obey their every command would not only improve their happiness but also their way of life.

Who wouldn't want an obedient android maid who could handle all of their menial tasks and comfort them?

Even Vaan was interested.

Ahem, his interest in sex androids was definitely not the most important reason for producing them. Definitely not. He had so many women around him. What was he unhappy about?

Nevertheless, once the sex android was released, it would be a dream come true for many unhappy men and women to own one.

After all, everyone would be able to have their own Mr or Ms Perfect.

Although the existence of sex androids would definitely impact the already low reproduction rate, the issue was no longer unsolvable with the Celestial Kingdom's biological research and technology.

In fact, reproduction wasn't a difficult problem to solve. Vaan had already figured out the solution when he discovered spirit energy.

After all, the biggest problem didn't lie in the fertilization of the egg but due to the fetus's rejection and incompatibility with mana. Humanity's low reproduction was mostly due to miscarriage.

As long as spirit energy or another source of similar power was used to protect the fetus from mana, it would be able to survive until birth.

Mana itself was not a poison to the fetus.

However, the two simply did not mix well. It was equivalent to letting a baby play with a sharp knife.