Inside the study, the faint light of a deep-sea leviathan breaching the surface filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting long, thin shadows on the floor.

Although the documents on artificial souls were inaccessible, Allen didn’t close the page. Instead, he followed the related citations below the entry and clicked open a subdirectory titled "Mechanical Ascension Branch: Core Constructs."

The light screen refreshed, and a massive amount of data cascaded down.

In the academic system of the Alchemy Wizards’ Mechanical Ascension Branch, Humanoid Golems had their own exclusive classification: Puppets.

This was a field with a history so long it had even gone a bit "off the rails."

A group of Alchemy Wizards who advocated for transplanting their consciousness pushed Puppet technology to its zenith.

Allen quickly scanned the list of categories.

The Puppet technology on the market was already mature, primarily divided into two major categories: service-type and combat-type.

He clicked on service-type Puppets in the Association’s product database, and the light screen was instantly filled with thousands of dazzling subcategories.

Dancers, songstresses, companions, body doubles, all-purpose butlers...

Allen’s mind flashed to Ah Fu from the Cybertron Workshop, who was currently responsible for serving tea. He also counted as a service-type Puppet, although in hindsight, the technology back then was extremely crude.

He casually clicked on a product: a "Night Elf Companion-Type Puppet" priced at fifty thousand Mid-Level Magic Stones.

The list of parameters was extremely detailed: homeostatic bionic silicone skin; simulated respiratory frequency system; a micro-expression actuator array constructed from 120,000 micro-nodes; an adaptive emotional feedback logic module.

It even came with five different preset personality types.

From appearance to touch, top-of-the-line products were physically indistinguishable from real living beings.

Allen stared expressionlessly at the 3D projection on the details page, which depicted a scantily clad figure with a sultry gaze.

His gaze lingered on the description for the "Companion-Type · Deep Interaction Module" for half a second.

With a swipe of his finger, the page closed.

’This technology is over-engineered,’ he mentally concluded about the service-type Puppets.

Using such precise micro-arrays and logic modules for the sake of pleasing others was a pure waste of resources to ascetic Wizards, but they were wildly popular among mortals and apprentices.

What he was truly interested in were the combat-type Puppets.

The light screen shifted, entering a high-clearance trade zone. The number of products here dropped sharply, but every single one was incredibly valuable.

Allen’s gaze swept upwards, skipping right past the regular items priced in the tens or hundreds of thousands of Mid-Level Magic Stones, and settled on a pinned entry at the very top of the page.

It was a combat-type Puppet, about 1.9 meters tall, with no superfluous decoration. It looked like a warrior clad in armor.

Morning Star Level Combat Puppet · Codename: Meteorfall

Creator: Radiant Moon Archwizard · "Hand of Truth"

Core Power Source: Stellar-Mimic Furnace (Permanent)

Armor Material: Void Star Gold Alloy

Price: 5,020,000,000 Mid-Level Magic Stones

Note: Comes with a full self-repair system and a 300-year free maintenance warranty. Only accepts Planar Origin Crystals or strategic materials of equivalent value as payment.

Allen stared at the long number for a full five seconds.

The study was very quiet.

"Heh."

He let out a soft, inscrutable chuckle.

After twenty years of toiling away in the warzone, the Magic Stones he had accumulated weren’t even enough to buy a clothing accessory for this Puppet.

This was the pinnacle of technology in the Wizarding World, the true high-end market. A combat power on the level of Master Mercer was nothing more than a commodity in the marketplace.

Allen pulled up all the blueprints for the Golems he had designed and built over the past twenty years.

From the Peacekeeper to the Freedom Gundam and the Cyclops, and then to the Hive Mother Ship, his High-Level Golems were mostly colossal machines.

He looked at his own designs. This was Master Mercer’s influence, as well as a practical requirement for offensive and defensive warfare in the warzone. It had led him to develop a fixed mindset:

To get more firepower, you needed a bigger Magic Furnace; to get thicker armor, you needed a larger load-bearing surface area.

But now, this 1.9-meter Puppet could reduce the 48-meter Cyclops to a pile of scrap metal with a single punch.

Allen typed a few keywords into the knowledge base’s search bar.

A few seconds later, he paid 30 Mid-Level Magic Stones and downloaded a paid document titled "An Introduction to Miniaturization Technology for Humanoid Combat Golem Power Engines."

It was a basic reader. Allen didn’t bother with the lengthy theoretical derivations and flipped directly to the data charts at the end.

He compared the parameters of the Freedom Gundam against it.

The results came quickly.

In the core metric of "Magic Power output efficiency per unit volume," a two-meter-tall, top-tier combat Puppet was 4.7 times more efficient than the Freedom Gundam.

A full 4.7 times.

Allen leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping lightly on the desk.

He was silent for a long time.

What did this mean? It meant that if the combat Puppet’s power engine technology were reverse-engineered and transplanted into the Freedom Gundam’s design framework—even with only a thirty percent increase in efficiency—the Freedom Gundam’s operational duration would double, and its peak output would increase by at least forty percent.

"I’ve been making ’big’ things this whole time."

Allen’s voice was soft, his gaze falling on the dense charts before him.

"But true technological breakthroughs... often happen in the ’small’ domains."

He remembered a piece of common knowledge from his past life.

The chip manufacturing process went from micrometers to nanometers. The core logic wasn’t to make the chip bigger, but to make the transistors smaller. Packing more transistors into the same unit of area was what led to an exponential leap in computing power.

Miniaturization wasn’t just about shrinking; it was about packing a higher density of functions into the same amount of space.

Applied to the context of Alchemy, it meant that the precision of Rune inscriptions had to be further improved, energy conduction pathways had to be redesigned to reduce attenuation loss at the micro-scale, and the material strength limits had to withstand higher energy densities on smaller cross-sections.

Each of these was a tough nut to crack.

But once achieved, each breakthrough, when fed back into the large-scale Golems, would bring about a revolutionary improvement.

Making things smaller was the way to make the big things stronger.

Allen closed his eyes. When he opened them three seconds later, he already had a clear direction for the next iteration of his Golem technology.

"DSeek, perform a comprehensive analysis of the feasibility, resource requirements, and expected returns of ’Humanoid Combat Golems’ as a core R&D direction. Comparative dimensions should include, but are not limited to: technical barriers, coverage of available literature in the knowledge base, estimated credit point investment, synergy with the existing Golem technology system, and strategic value to the Weisren Heavy Industry product line."

Eight minutes later, the analysis report unfolded in his field of vision.

The conclusion was perfectly aligned with his own judgment.

[Recommendation: List "Humanoid Combat Golems (Puppets)" as a mid-to-long-term core R&D direction and adjust a portion of the credit point investment plan.]

[Short-term Plan: Build up a foundational theoretical reserve using existing free and Magic Stone-paid literature.]

[Mid-term Goal: Accumulate sufficient credit points to unlock three key technical documents—"Basic Puppet Power Engine" (300 credit points), "Fundamental Framework for Artificial Souls" (220 credit points), and "Key Points in Miniaturized Weapon System Design" (150 credit points).]

[Long-term Goal: Independently design and manufacture the first "Weisren Heavy Industry" branded combat Puppet prototype.]

[Additional Recommendation: Begin designing a combat Puppet concept while simultaneously studying the theory. Identify specific technical bottlenecks during the actual production process to precisely guide subsequent learning and credit point investment. All breakthroughs in the field of miniaturization can be applied to existing large-scale Golem products, achieving a holistic leap for the entire technological system.]

[Overall Assessment: Strategic Value—Extremely High.]

Allen archived the report and called up a blank design draft.

He wrote two words at the top.

Puppet Zero

His finger hovered for a moment before he added a line of small text below it.

Design Goal: Two-meter class Humanoid Combat Golem. Magic Power output efficiency per unit volume—to meet current industry average parameters.

Outside the window, in the night sky of the Great Library’s plane, a deep-sea leviathan breached the surface, its phosphorescence tracing an arc hundreds of meters long, illuminating half the horizon.

Allen didn’t look up.

His full attention was already immersed in the blank blueprint.

’One day, this kind of product will appear on Weisren Heavy Industry’s price list.’