Once the routine Ves established went to work, the forging machine spat out a steady amount of raw materials. Like an assembly line, the gravitic lifter bot kept retrieving the mysterious escape pod from the escape compartment and brought it into the mech workshop. From there, the bot threw the object into the forging machine, which carefully melted it down and separated the various high-value exotics and metals left behind. Wary of the power of the mummified woman, Ves remained alert and stayed awake for the entire night in case anything changed. The moment the woman did something to escape this loop, he would immediately shoot her dried corpse down with his heavy assault rifle! To his relief, no deviations occurred. Even if the escape pod and its half-dead occupant continually underwent a brutal transformation inside the forging machine, Ves saw no break in the pattern! "It seems that I can really sustain this loop indefinitely!" Ves uttered with astonishment. He really had no idea what was going on. Stuff did not materialize out of nowhere for free. Reality simply didn’t work this way. Yet what he witnessed all night seemed to defy what was possible! Gloriana would probably call this miracle! Of course, Ves did not let his ignorant and gullible side take over. From a rational perspective, just because he didn’t understand what was taking place didn’t mean it was a miracle. Just like how ancient humans looked up at the sky and witnessed a thunderstorm, many people had a tendency to believe such might and power came from gods rather than nature. As soon as science advanced and the secret behind thunderstorms became known, humanity’s fascination towards thunder and lightning subsided. In fact, humanity even began to harness its understanding of electricity to great effect! Ves was not at that level yet. He truly had no idea why the escape pod kept renewing and coming back to the Scarlet Rose. Even when he clearly exploited its perpetual reappearances to accumulate a stockpile of valuable exotics, the cycle showed no signs of stopping! Observing the escape pod and its sometimes-living, sometimes-dead occupant was an exercise in futility. No sensors or scanners aboard the Scarlet Rose noticed anything unusual about its appearance. It simply materialized in place at an instant as long as the old escape pod disappeared or broke down. Studying the pod and the body inside with his spiritual vision yielded a bit more results, but not as much as he expected. Something was clearly going on at the spiritual level. Careful study revealed that the flows of spiritual energy followed along a large number of very mysterious patterns. These patterns reminded him of the Grand Dynamo inside his mind, but of a different nature. It was as if he was observing a form of spiritual circuitry! Many patterns showed up in different places, reinforcing his suspicion that the corpse or underlying spiritual entity actively maintained some sort of spiritual process! Due to the potency of the spiritual energy emanating from the woman, Ves did not dare to investigate too carefully. He mainly relied on his spiritual vision and passive observation methods to avoid triggering a counterattack or disturbing the process. He would feel endless regret if his spiritual prodding inadvertently interrupted the loop and ended his source of free exotics! As long as this process continued, Ves could build all manner of fantastic machines out of these high-quality materials! "It’s really absurd!" Ves muttered in confusion. "Am I being delusional or can I really repeat this process ad infinitum?" He really couldn’t believe such a powerful witch whose spiritual strength rivaled or surpassed that of Qilanxo could fall victim to his trivial scheme. Was she really dead? Did her powerful spiritual remnant lack consciousness? Or was she stuck in some sort of semi-dead coma? Ves indulged in all kinds of speculation, but without any solid proof, he had no way to tell for sure. He tried to identify the woman. In the moments before chucking the escape pod and the body in the forging machine, Ves took many samples and performed many scans. When handling the corpse, Ves did not dare to touch it directly anymore in case of waking her up. He doubted the witch would be pleased to find out that Ves mistreated her and her powers for his own gain. In fact, before he took an organic tissue sample from both the dead and living to the infirmary, he stopped and reconsidered his actions. "Does it matter if I know her identity? Do I really find out who she is or where she comes from?" The woman obviously carried a lot of mysteries, and as a curious mech designer, Ves felt compelled to figure out the answers. Yet Ves also dreaded the woman. Why did she come in the form of both a dried husk and a living woman? Which was fake and which was real? Why did she decide to haunt him? Was she calling for help or was she attempting to recover by siphoning his powers? Whether she was friend or foe, Ves did not think he would benefit by finding out the answer! If she turned out to be a malicious enemy who wanted to take advantage of him, then it was in his best interest to keep her suppressed! It was a bit more complicated if the opposite turned out to be true. What if this woman was some sort or ally or friendly entity who could offer him all kinds of benefits in exchange for rescuing her? Perhaps he could trade all sorts of favors with her in order to learn some of her spiritual tricks! Yet... regardless of whether she was friend or foe, the chance that she would overpower him when she woke was very significant! The strong had no patience for the weak! Just comparing their respective spiritual strength and prowess was enough to make him understand that he would definitely be the disadvantaged party in any interaction! "She’s way too strong! Even in her supposedly dormant state, she’s already strong enough to sustain this renewal process!" Ves had no idea how her powers even worked. Whether she manipulated time, space, causality or other fundamental forces and concepts of nature, it appeared she wasn’t running out of energy anytime soon! Perhaps her spiritual powers had reached a more advanced level, allowing her to sustain this continuous renewal process by drawing her energy from some other source! For a brief moment of time, Ves entertained a very dreadful possibility. "What if... the body belongs to my mother?" His mind almost blanked out. What would his mother think if she found out he treated a part of her as a renewable exotics mine? "Let’s stop here!" Though he didn’t consider this possibility to be likely, he nonetheless decided to cease all attempts at investigating the woman any further. The risks were too great while the rewards were too uncertain! Rather than risk losing control and put himself at the mercy of a wrathful spiritual sorceress, Ves would rather maintain the status quo and secure his current arrangement! Besides, someone who tried to deceive him by camouflaging her ugly, mummified corpse with the visage of an attractive, living body was bound to be untrustworthy! Whether she was a helper or not, whether she came to assist him in some way, Ves did not wish to follow along someone else’s arrangements! Compared to the potentially wondrous opportunities he missed out on, he would rather follow his current trajectory and climb to power through his own efforts. Only by relying on himself rather than others would he be able to maintain control over his own life! Neither the Bright Republic, the Ylvaine Protectorate, the Friday Coalition or the Hexadric Hegemony had the right to dictate his life! For this reason, Ves resolutely threw out any desire to investigate the woman or wake her up. Even if he was making a colossal mistake, he trusted in his judgement and his belief that it was better to rely on himself! "Sorry woman, but if you came with good intentions, then it was a mistake to come to me! I don’t need your help!" He disassembled the escape pod after annihilating the corpse in order to see if he could spot any serial numbers, manufacturer markings and the like. He also retrieved the advanced processors that were tasked with regulating the escape pod’s many functions. Since the escape pod was still somewhat functional, Ves finally managed to retrieve some useful information. After supplementing his investigation by referencing some information from the galactic net, he finally figured out its origin. A company called the VZI Corporation used to produce the escape pod model over 170 years ago. What interested Ves the most was that the VZI Corporation exclusively operated in the galactic heartland. There was a huge distance between the Komodo Star Sector and the area of operations of the VZI Corporation! The escape pod model only sold for a couple decades, and according to the production date embedded in the operating system, the pod that fell into his hands had been manufactured roughly 150 years ago. Curiously enough, Ves did not find any data about the ship that carried the pod or the people or organizations who bought it. He also didn’t find any information regarding its occupant or any human for that matter. "Someone scrubbed this data!" 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞 Barring some marginal tidbits, the only data the escape pod’s operating system retained were those related to its functioning. Without this essential data, the escape pod would cease to function! Still, Ves was happy with what he learned so far. The escape pod was a standard product from the galactic heartland instead of some mysterious creation that originated from some alternate universe. Pinning down the concrete origin of the escape pod helped demystify it in his mind. Ves feared the escape pod and the unknown female corpse a lot less now that he could definitely conclude that their origins were less than magical! After learning all he could know about the escape pod model, Ves directed his attention to the valuable materials he stood to gain. The escape pod produced by the VZI Corporation had to meet all kinds of industry requirements. The escape pod had to be tough enough to survive all kinds of anomalous hazards in space, including radiation, microimpacts, asteroid collisions, proximity to stars and other possible threats. While an escape pod could never sufficiently protect against any hazard, they should at least be able to give their occupant a decent chance to survive. The specifications of the VZI escape pod were much more superior than the special escape pods used by Aisling! The bountiful resources available in the galactic heartland allowed the VZI Corporation to apply a high-quality alloy formula that incorporated various medium to high-grade exotics to form a very strong core structure. Ves tested the samples in some of the analysis equipment in the mech workshop and correlated the results with the information he retrieved from the galactic net. The name of the formula was officially registered as 235-C Breyer Alloy. Breyer alloy actually stood for an entire family of alloy formulas, of which 235-C was one of the cheaper and more affordable ones in the galactic heartland. Of course, its cheapness was only relative. Whereas the alloy was only useful for lesser products such as escape pods, in a barren place like the Komodo Star Sector, such a material could absolutely stand equal to many of the common armor systems in the Friday Coalition and the Hexadric Hegemony! "Breyer alloy is absolutely valuable!" And Ves just secured an endless, renewable source of this material! As long as he retained the Scarlet Rose and perpetuated the loop, he could steadily produce enough Breyer alloy to produce a lot of powerful and expensive mechs at a much lower cost! He could even save up a lot of Breyer alloy to build an extraordinarily resilient ship! Since the mysterious woman functioned as a source of Breyer alloy, Ves decided to call her Cassandra Breyer. Regardless of her true name, as Cassandra Breyer, producing Breyer alloy was her only use to him! Nothing else mattered!