Preparations Before The Conquest.

We had an immense volume of administrative tasks to manage, and the past five days flew past in a single flash of runtime. However, thanks to every single member of the platoon pushing their limits, it was a highly fruitful stretch that yielded a barrage of meaningful achievements.

The most significant transition unfolded on the eighth floor.

The exact fraction of a second we discovered that Curved-Horn Sheep could successfully yield milk, we executed a logistical transfer to relocate ten heads to function permanently as dairy sheep. We had initially harbored an administrative concern that their systems might strictly restrict their dietary intake to Dream-Viewing Grass, but the moment they stepped onto the floor, they began casually grazing on the undergrowth alongside the Antlered Deer, systematically rendering our anxieties a complete cliché.

Perhaps because their baseline environmental programming was anchored to steep cliff-dwellings, they easily scaled the giant trunks using miniature footholds we attached to the bark, navigating straight up to the high-altitude hollows without a single issue. They adjusted so flawlessly it felt as though they had been integrated into this stratum from the very beginning. The goblins and fairies warmly welcomed their integration, especially since harvesting their fleece allowed us to manufacture fluffy pillows and thick winter bedding.

However, the units who displayed the absolute highest volume of happiness were undeniably Yoru and Kuu.

The sweet flavor profile of the sheep milk completely captured their obsession; the exact fraction of a second they spotted a sheep, they would hang tightly from its underbelly and aggressively vacuum the milk straight from the source. Furthermore, even after their consumption routines verified complete, the two little freaks would happily straddle the sheep’s neck together, completely treating the animal as a personal transit vehicle.

It appeared the tightly curved horns wrapping around the front functioned perfectly as makeshift steering handles, making it exceptionally easy for them to lock down their balance.

“Launch the vanguard~!”

“Kyuu~!”

Granted, while their operational battle cries were exceptionally grand, our <Subjugation> matrix had long since expired, meaning the Curved-Horn Sheep felt absolutely zero mechanical obligation to process their commands. Watching the two beast-girls throwing a massive celebration atop a completely motionless sheep that blankly continued chewing grass, while our Blue Slimes happily bounced around their perimeter, was an comprehensively adorable panoramic view.

As for the actual milking routines, that sector became the absolute monopoly of the goblins, who possessed an exceptionally high manual dexterity stat. However, Mia turned out to be quite proficient at the minigame as well; she and the goblins would routinely run a competitive loop to see who could harvest the fastest, slamming back their fresh bowls and laughing together in pure satisfaction.

“Phew~! There is absolutely zero competition, fresh milk is the absolute best~!”

“Ghee-hee-hee-hee!”

“Gah-heh-heh-heh!”

While the raw sheep milk was enjoying a spectacular popularity metric across our roster, our secondary objective was to map out high-value utility paths for the resource. Right now, its lifecycle ended strictly with the goblins and surface volunteers drinking it raw, but our long-term blueprint explicitly required processing the asset into high-tier commodities like butter, cheese, and yogurt.

Consequently, my daily queue was heavily backed up with running various prototype synthesis trials.

As far as manufacturing butter was concerned, deploying my alchemy matrix to launch a <Mixing> loop allowed me to smoothly craft a substance that flawlessly matched fresh table butter. Synthesizing fresh unaged cheese also felt entirely within my parameters as long as I combined a <Decomposition> cycle with a localized <Coagulation> loop.

However, locking down the parameters for authentic, long-term fermentation remained a cataclysmic bottleneck.

Nesting deep within the highest tier of my Magitech Alchemy repertoire was an advanced process designated as <Putrefaction>. This specific application was engineered to artificially induce immediate decay, accelerating fermentation cycles down to a highly compressed timeframe—but managing the fine equilibrium of the variables was exceptionally tedious. The exact fraction of a second I successfully finalized a batch, the interface would permanently log the blueprint into my recipe database, but arriving at that milestone was bound to require quite a bit of additional chronological runtime.

I had briefly pondered delegating the processing queues to surface volunteers who possessed textbook livestock experience, but the farming data enveloping our community revealed that their agricultural lifestyle relied strictly on a one-option matrix: swine husbandry. Furthermore, pig milk yields an exceptionally sparse volume metric, making it completely non-viable to harvest for human consumption anyway.

Evaluating these parameters, our network urgently required a specialized reinforcement unit possessing high-tier dairy farming data in their profile.

Stepping past the sheep demographic, the secondary asset that optimized our operational efficiency was our dragonfly thrall.

It required absolutely zero structural scaffolding to navigate, it could easily access high-altitude coordinates without a single drop in quality, and its sword-like abdomen could execute a clean bisection maneuver on practically any material in existence. When a monster model boasts that level of raw utility data, there is absolutely zero probability it won’t maximize your labor yields.

Up until now, the eighth floor’s timber corridors had been heavily blanketed by an overgrown forest canopy, which flatly blocked the solar stones’ rays and left the stratum trapped in a dingy, dim twilight environment even during peak daytime parameters.

But now, look at what a magnificent transformation has triggered!

Thanks to the dragonfly rapidly executing our intensive tree-pruning queues, the entire sector has become spectacularly illuminated, completely altering its aesthetic parameters.

Naturally, to prevent a cataclysmic drop in our mushroom cultivation metrics, every single logging path was executed under the strict supervision of Ethan-san. Even so, simply engineering a network of localized sunbeams to slice through the canopy completely flipped the script on the area’s atmosphere.

Furthermore, the colossal payload of harvested branches and timber provided an immediate, massive boost to our construction and fuel reserves. To state the unvarnished reality, securing that fuel cache had been my absolute primary target from the start.

Granted, because the interior wood fibers still retained their natural moisture, I was dictated to manually execute a sweeping <Dehydration> loop across the entire inventory mass—a labor cycle that presented quite a grueling drain on my personal mana loops.

The vast majority of the lumber payload was manually hauled back by the youth alliance, routed straight to Goblin Village No. 1 and our surface community, while the remaining stock was currently being smoke-cured by the goblins inside the charcoal kilns. With this loop locked in, our settlement’s fuel crisis was right on the verge of being permanently archived.

Speaking of the youth alliance, their platoon leader reported that they performed beautifully during yesterday’s encounter, successfully repelling the second monthly wave of the Assault Bird invasion completely independent of our high-tier intervention. They harvested a massive payload of premium hides and meat, driving the goblins to push their processing parameters into overdrive to handle the volume.

Based on this fresh batch of field metrics, we officially mapped the Assault Bird spawn frequency to loop every ten to fifteen days.

While our upper infrastructure sectors were booming, our elite vanguard spent the bulk of its runtime running detailed behavioral audits on the insect classes dominating the tenth floor. Having braved consecutive hostile ambushes to systematically verify their triggers, the underlying mechanics were flawlessly brought to light.

First, we mapped out the hard-coded Aggression Triggers governing the insects. To state it in plain terminology, these are the exact environmental changes that command their AI to launch immediate hostile vectors against a party.

For the Great-Eyed Moths commanding the twilight parameters of the tenth floor, their absolute aggression trigger is strictly Luminous Energy. If a unit vents even a micro-fraction of visible light across the lower coordinates, their tracking arrays will automatically lock onto the signal, causing a high-volume swarm to converge on the position.

Next, for the giant-species Sword-Tail Dragonflies patrolling the central lake airspace, their trigger is perfectly straightforward: Spatial Intrusion into their aquatic sovereign territory. While they will instantly initiate a high-velocity airborne blitz the exact fraction of a second a frame approaches the shoreline, their programming restricts them from voluntarily abandoning their designated airspace, meaning that maintaining a strict tactical distance makes them an comprehensively safe demographic to bypass.

Finally, we audited the Hornet Swarms guarding the deep hinterlands of Area Four. Stripping down their variables required an exceptionally grueling expenditure of mental and physical fortitude, given that their behavioral patterns drove them to ruthlessly hunt our unit down across consecutive sectors every single time.

However, the exact calculation underlying their aggression trigger was an absolute shock: Crabapple Extraction.

The system flagged an immediate penalty the precise moment a unit attempted to log a tree or harvest high volumes of the red fruit. Our granular diagnostics revealed that every single crabapple tree came pre-outfitted with a single hidden hornet nestled inside the canopy in a permanent state of hibernation; the exact fraction of a second an environmental anomaly triggered across its branch nodes, its system would execute an immediate wake loop, venting a high-volume distress signal to summon the swarm.

No wonder Paula’s exceptional tamer intuition and Ethan-san’s veteran hunter tracking had both completely omitted the presence of the threat from their analytics.

Furthermore, our data logs confirmed that the entire hill sector effectively functions as a massive, living colony for the Hornet Swarm. The terrain across those ridges is punctuated by numerous structural apertures large enough to swallow a human being, and our scouting sweeps have verified a constant stream of hornets navigating into those tunnels.

Evaluating these architectural parameters, there is a ninety-nine percent probability that the staircase leading down to the eleventh floor is anchored directly within the core nest of that colony.

What a comprehensively tedious bottleneck to calculate.

“To think that after pushing all the way inside a subterranean labyrinth, we’d be forced to run a literal dungeon-crawler sweep inside a giant bug nest,” I muttered, shaking my head.

“My Lord, the vanguard platoon reports all systems verified ready,” Paula purred, stepping beside me.

“Excellent. Let’s initiate the campaign.”

The ambient light of the solar stones was right on the verge of dipping into night parameters.

The conquest of the 10th floor was officially active.