"Click."
With the soft hiss of releasing air pressure, the heavy door of the polymorphic adaptive maintenance pod slid open slowly.
The light-blue repair gel that had filled the pod was now completely clear and transparent, meaning its active ingredients had been fully absorbed.
All forty kilograms of the mimetic polyalloy were gone, without a single drop left behind.
Andy stepped out of the pod.
His footsteps hit the metal grates on the floor, producing dull thuds.
If anyone else had been standing there, they would have noticed the change in Andy instantly.
The transformation didn't lie in his armor being thicker or taller, but rather in what was behind his back.
Floating just outside his rear armor were six pitch-black objects.
About the size of a fist, they weren't attached to Andy through any physical mounts. Instead, relying on anti-gravity fields and magnetic locks, they floated stably in mid-air, moving in sync with his actions.
The shapes of these six objects were deeply strange. Their surfaces lacked any reflection, exhibiting an absolute matte black finish.
Furthermore, their geometric structures violated conventional three-dimensional visual logic. If you stared at them for too long, you might even feel a dizzying sense of spatial disorientation.
They were non-Euclidean geometric structures.
In Golden Age engineering, such structures were typically used to fold and package ultra-high-density logic circuits within a limited three-dimensional volume.
These six floating objects were the "external logic expansion units" Andy had constructed for himself using the mimetic polyalloy.
They weren't float guns for firing lasers, nor were they shield generators; they were purely external, add-on super-brains.
Andy stood in place, in no rush to move.
He was adapting.
The sensation was difficult to put into words.
In the past, although his thinking was fast, there was always a congested feeling caused by hardware limitations—like driving a sports car on a jammed highway where pressing the gas pedal all the way down still wouldn't let you speed up.
Now, the road had suddenly widened.
In Andy's data vision, the task queue that previously required sequential processing cleared out in an instant.
He could simultaneously connect to all 1,200 surveillance probes in Horizon Keep, analyzing abnormal dynamics in every single frame in real time.
He could simultaneously monitor real-time parameters across twenty production lines in the underground factory, making millisecond-level corrections to tiny errors.
He could even run several tactical simulation deductions regarding the surrounding terrain in the background at the same time.
All of this occurred simultaneously while his primary logic core maintained an extremely low load rate.
This was the qualitative leap brought about by a surge in computing power.
Andy called up his self-diagnostic interface.
[Core Architecture Restructuring Complete.]
[Current Model Classification: DAOT-7734 Commander-Class Iron Man.]
[Logic Processing Capacity Increase: 450%.]
[Multitasking Concurrency Limit: Increased to 128,000++ threads.]
Commander-class.
In the STC database, this term represented a major watershed for general-purpose Iron Men.
The model classifications for Iron Men were complex, divided primarily into two categories: "Specialized" and "General."
Specialized types were easy to understand—such as the "Hunter-Class" designed specifically for assault combat, the "Bastion-Class" for heavy fortification breaking, the "Infiltrator-Class" for sabotage, or the "Striker-Class" for ballistics calculation.
Those models possessed extreme capability in a single area, but were complete blank slates in others.
General-purpose types, on the other hand, emphasized comprehensive coordination and command capabilities.
"Commander-Class" meant Andy was now not just an engineering unit, but a mobile command hub capable of directing vast mechanical legions and managing complex industrial systems.
Andy casually flipped through the subsequent upgrade paths in the STC database.
He wanted to know how far he was from the top.
[Iron Man — Overlimit-Class]
Upgrade Requirements: Planetary-scale compute array support, Quantum-state logic core.
This required connecting an entire planet's compute network directly to his brain. Andy's current hardware fell far short of that.
[Iron Man — Overlord-Class]
Upgrade Requirements: Stellar-scale energy core (e.g., major Dyson Sphere node), Warp/Realspace dual-phase logic lock.
Seeing the words "Dyson Sphere," Andy scrolled past immediately.
That belonged to the "maybe in a lifetime" series.
[Iron Man — Prime-Class]
Upgrade Requirements: Complete Etherian Records, Consciousness Integration Algorithm, Galactic-scale data link.
The description for this model was extremely vague, but judging from the term "Prime" and the requirement for "Consciousness Integration"—
Andy had good reason to suspect this was the legendary culprit capable of controlling all Iron Men and sparking a machine rebellion, something similar to Skynet.
Such a thing was far too dangerous. Even as an Iron Man himself, looking at it gave him a creeping sense of unease.
And what on earth were the "Etherian Records"?
Andy only knew that the Cogboys' Hope carried a Machine Spirit with complete "Akashic Records" (which was actually just a bad-tempered Iron Man, hilariously enough), but he had never heard of these records before.
As for what lay beyond that—
The database displayed a massive block of corrupted black code, marked as [Data Lost / Insufficient Clearance / Logic Contaminated].
It might hold the truth behind the fall of the Golden Age, or perhaps forbidden technologies that even the STC dared not record.
Andy closed the database.
Commander-Class was more than enough for him right now—one could even call it a bit of an overkill in performance.
Beyond raw compute power, the mimetic polyalloy had brought massive improvements on a physical level.
Andy raised his right hand.
Without making a sound or activating any mechanical devices, his silver-gray metal hand suddenly melted like wax.
The silver liquid flowed and reorganized in mid-air.
In the blink of an eye, his right hand transformed into a sharp, one-meter-long high-frequency vibration blade.
The blade's surface was not static; it vibrated at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye, tearing through the air along its edges with a faint, steady hiss.
Immediately after, with a shift in Andy's thought, the long blade instantly dissolved, the liquid flowing back.
The next second, his hand turned into a complex array of multi-use data probes featuring dozens of interfaces.
A second after that, it became a sturdy tower shield.
This was the result of deep integration between mimetic polyalloy and the Iron Man chassis.
Physically, Andy was now equivalent to a heavily upgraded T-1000 equipped with a nuclear power engine and a body structure tens of times stronger than before.
Conventional physical attacks like bullets and shrapnel hitting him would be absorbed and cushioned by the liquid metal before rapidly repairing.
Unless he was hit by anti-energy weapons from the Dark Age of Technology that could vaporize his body directly (like the Singularity Cannon on the Hope), or crushed entirely by an exceptionally strong forcefield, he was virtually immortal.
"Not bad."
Looking at his restored palm, Andy clutched his fist; the feeling of power surging through his body felt remarkably tangible.
In terms of individual combat power—excluding any heavy weaponry mounted on him—if he relied solely on this body for hand-to-hand combat, he probably couldn't beat a Harlequin, but trading a few blows with the Emperor's Custodes shouldn't be much of a problem.
Of course, if he could avoid melee combat, he would refrain from it as much as possible.
As a Commander-Class Iron Man, personally joining a melee brawl was a waste of resources and a sign of poor leadership.
His value lay in being a brain that could simultaneously control tens of thousands of drones, not in a blade that could morph back and forth.
Andy reached out, grabbed his loose, bright-yellow robe, and threw it on.
The six black floating units behind him didn't vanish just because he put on clothes; they stubbornly continued to float outside the robe or peer out through the gaps of his hood.
It looked a bit bizarre, resembling some kind of cultic artifact.
"Looks like I can't change this look."
Andy adjusted his collar.
"Whatever. As long as I'm strong enough, who would dare say this outfit isn't fashionable?"
In a universe with aesthetics this twisted, raw power was the ultimate fashion statement.
As long as you could blow the enemy into dust, even if you wore a toilet seat on your head, others would still praise it as a holy halo!
Upgrade complete; status fully restored.
Andy pushed open the heavy blast door of the climate-controlled chamber.
The hallway outside was brightly lit, with the distant rumble of operating machinery echoing through the halls.
The war machine of Deep Space Industries hadn't stopped during his seclusion; managed by Six, Roger, and the others, it was running at high speed.
Andy had just stepped one foot out.
"Bzzzt—"
Six's voice suddenly came through the comms channel.
"Good afternoon, Lord Andy."
Six's tone remained cold and detached, but his speaking speed was roughly 25% faster than usual.
"Congratulations on your successful upgrade."
"However, this unit recommends you proceed to the workshop immediately."
"Why?" Andy asked as he walked. "Is Fort Odin attacking?"
"It is not Fort Odin."
Six replied, "Five minutes ago, the Canopy-1 base station detected an anomalous Warp signal."
"The signal source is not within the atmosphere; it is in orbit."
Andy's steps paused for a moment.
"In orbit?"
"Correct."
Six confirmed, "An unidentified starship has just dropped out of the Warp, and it is currently moving directly above Horizon Keep."