Ch.7676. Private Jet

Before creating the mech, I naturally began by drawing up the blueprints.

Since I would be facing a mechanical angel possessed by the Pyongyang Hive Mind, after much deliberation, I reached a conclusion.

‘······If I specialize in psychic abilities, there’s absolutely no way I can win.’

I determined that no matter how powerful a psychic-specialized mech I created, it would be ineffective against the Pyongyang Hive Mind’s psychic abilities. So I changed direction and decided to build a close-combat specialized mech that would use psychic abilities only as a supplement.

Therefore, my mech’s physical specifications would be slightly larger than the mechanical angel, which I estimated to be about 2 meters tall. At roughly 2.5 meters, my mech would be far superior. Unlike the mechanical angel, which is entirely made of mythril and specialized for psychic use—my mech will be constructed from a mixture of three materials.

The black metal used to create the skeleton, which closely resembles a human’s, is adamantium—a material I’ve mentioned before that’s also used in Seri’s armor and the outer shell of the royal guards.

Adamantium, also called black iron, is the sturdiest among common materials—excluding specific items like certain bones—and once properly processed, it boasts enough strength to maintain its form even if a nuclear warhead detonated right beside it.

Although its psychic conductivity is inferior to mythril, it still ranks 4th among common materials. Moreover, its sturdiness allows it to support the mech even when channeling the violent energies of primal psychic power.

However, since mythril is a better conductor of psychic energy than adamantium, all the internal circuits and major components were made of mythril.

Ranking 2nd in psychic conductivity among all common materials—1st being the red crystal, the psychic crystal that was embedded in the rock giant—these mythril components will process the psychic energy I pump from my soul through the psychic dimension, and distribute this processed energy throughout the body, functioning like a human circulatory system.

With the skeleton and internal components in place, the mech naturally needs a body.

For the material that would serve as both muscle and skin in biological terms, I decided to use a metal called “orichalcum” for the mech’s body.

Orichalcum, inspired by the divine metal Oreichalkos (ορείχαλκος) from Greco-Roman mythology, is one of the three major common metals, also known as divine gold or divine copper.

This metal, with a color somewhere between gold and copper, isn’t particularly outstanding compared to the other two major common metals (mythril and adamantium).

Its strength falls far short of adamantium, and its psychic conductivity ranks 3rd, below not only the psychic crystal but also mythril.

However, conversely, this means it’s sturdier than mythril and has far superior psychic conductivity compared to adamantium.

Thanks to its position between the other two metals, it actually surpasses both in versatility, making it the most expensive of the three major common metals. It also possesses the unique ability to glow with rainbow light when psychic energy flows through it, partially taking on the properties of that psychic energy.

In other words, there’s no better metal for the body’s material.

Anyway, now that I’ve decided how to use the three major common metals to create the mech, the next step is naturally to determine its form.

After suspending the black adamantium skeleton in the air, I insert the main mythril components that will supply psychic energy into the empty sternum area.

Then I place combat support components made of mythril into the empty abdomen, and add additional adamantium skeleton to protect these components from external impacts. With that, the first phase is complete.

Now it’s time to add flesh to this bare mech.

I place mythril tubes resembling blood vessels over the skeleton, connecting them throughout the body to ensure psychic energy flows well throughout the entire mech. Finally, liquid orichalcum, which will serve as muscles, takes its place over the skeleton and components.

Thanks to technology that defies the laws of physics—allowing orichalcum to remain liquid at room temperature and compress its density to dozens of times that of normal metals—a whopping 150 tons of metal is used for this 2.5-meter tall mech.

The value of the orichalcum alone easily exceeds 60 billion dollars, and all of it is positioned like muscles throughout the body.

Thus, the foundation of the mech is complete.

However, this mech is still incomplete.

Although it has a muscular body full of vitality, its entire surface is smooth, and in its current state, it lacks not only means of attack but also physical ways to perceive its surroundings.

From this current state—literally just an obscenely expensive mannequin—I need to add further processing to turn it into a combat mech.

※ ※ ※

First and foremost, I needed a function to physically perceive the surrounding environment.

Although I could use psychic abilities, I felt I wouldn’t have the luxury to solve such trivial issues in urgent situations, so I needed this function—and the solution was surprisingly simple.

I attached “Shining Eyes”—devices made by gold-plating psychic crystals with mythril circuits that activate psychic abilities for information gathering and recording—all over the body to an almost paranoid degree, around 200 in total.

This allows for simultaneous information collection through both physical and psychic means, and eliminates blind spots in vision, making it easy to counter enemy surprise attacks or deceptions.

······And since the parts of the mech where the Shining Eyes operate twinkle like LED lights, it also satisfies the aesthetic aspect.

Anyway, now that I’ve secured visibility, it’s time to create and equip weapons that can be directly used in combat.

I could use psychic abilities to transform the orichalcum that makes up the body into close-combat weapons, but······this should literally be used only as a last resort.

To guard against enemies exploiting orichalcum’s characteristic of being freely transformable with psychic energy, the entire body operates with interference-blocking psychic energy. Using the orichalcum that constitutes the body could create gaps in this psychic defense.

Therefore, my choice was to use additional orichalcum to create a suit that would achieve both defense and offensive capabilities.

This armor—a suit that reinterprets medieval fantasy knight armor in a sci-fi style—was made using not only orichalcum but also mythril.

The suit, with its gold (orichalcum) base color accented with white (mythril), looks quite good. Thanks to the circuits engraved inside, it activates a thick psychic barrier that clings tightly to the skin, and its psychic conductivity is even superior to pure mythril due to the partial use of processed psychic crystals.

Additionally, the extra armor on the arm sections can deploy additional psychic barriers to use as shields, so I’m confident that the suit’s defensive capabilities—especially its protection against psychic attacks—are top-tier.

It’s also well-equipped with offensive functions.

For ranged attacks, there’s only one function since it’s meant for long-distance control—simple but powerful.

A red crystal about the size of a fourth-grader’s fist—a psychic crystal—has a function engraved on its surface that refines psychic energy and emits it from a single point.

Yes, to put it bluntly, it’s a beam.

This crystal, which fires a beam of pure psychic energy with a red glow, is mounted in the center of the face and on each palm, for a total of three.

Focusing solely on power and being unbreakable rather than complex functions or techniques, its power increases proportionally to the psychic energy invested, making it exceptionally powerful for a simple ranged attack.

Anyway, in contrast to the ranged attack with its single versatile function, close combat features dozens of functions focused on specific aspects.

Apart from the fact that they transform parts of the suit into weapons, each weapon has its own characteristics, and none of their functions overlap.

A dagger with a superheated blade, a gladius (Roman short sword) with a subtly vibrating cutting edge that enhances its slicing power, a battle hammer that generates shock waves internally to crush enemies, and massive gauntlets specialized in pushing enemies away with shock waves.

A chain-axe with nanometer-scale rotating saw teeth, a zweihander with psychic flames eternally burning on its blade, and even a beam sword with an intangible blade that cuts through psychic energy.

I’ve equipped this suit with numerous weapons that have excellent functions but were too impractical due to poor cost-effectiveness.