Warhammer: The Time Traveler

Chapter 73 Restricted Modification (Fourth Update)

Inside the workshop beneath the abandoned town, Chen Yu was somewhat agitated, because he

The renovation process is far behind the original perfect plan.

The obstacle did not stem from a lack of technical understanding or design flaws, but from a cold reality: this cyberpunk world was not the resource-rich, industrially complete Warhammer Forging world, and he was certainly not in that exclusive workshop equipped with top-notch facilities and automated minions.

The widespread scarcity of key materials severely limited his ability to transform blueprints into tangible objects, becoming an insurmountable obstacle in the process.

Therefore, he had to invest far more time and energy than he had anticipated.

Those highly precise bionic implantable components that should have been produced on standardized assembly lines now need to be made by him by hand.

He could only use the limited equipment at hand, as well as the basic materials of varying quality collected by the Mann team, to carry out the tedious handcrafting.

From shaping the basic structure and etching the internal microcircuits to spraying and curing the biocompatible coating, every step must be done personally and meticulously monitored.

This greatly consumed the time he could have used for core research or more complex system integration.

The more serious impact lies in the lack of basic strategic resources.

Adamantite and terracotta—these core materials that form the base materials for advanced armor and weapons in the Warhammer universe—are almost nowhere to be found in the known material library of this world.

Without these ideal materials with special atomic structures that can efficiently conduct energy or withstand extreme impacts, many design performance indicators would be impossible to achieve, forcing him to make performance compromises at every stage, further increasing the complexity and time consumption of the work.

While adamantite and terracotta are scarce resources in the Warhammer world, a Mechanicus priest of a certain status can obtain them simply by asking, drawing upon the resources of the Foundry world.

Even the rarer Yaojin is not entirely out of reach for Chen Yu thanks to his past achievements and network of connections.

But on this strange planet where the technology tree has gone astray, these materials, which are commonplace in many parts of the galaxy, have become extremely rare, and may not even exist in the known technology tree of the native planet.

Chen Yu's memory database stores the synthesis formula for ceramic steel and the preliminary smelting process for refined gold.

Ceramic steel requires a specific iron ore substrate and a series of complex catalysts to react under high temperature and high pressure; the extraction of refined gold is even more complicated, requiring it to be obtained from certain special asteroid minerals, whose atomic structure is exceptionally stable and whose processing is extremely difficult.

However, knowing the method does not mean being able to achieve it.

Lacking the most basic raw materials, as well as the high-temperature furnaces and gravity field controllers necessary for large-scale industrial production, he was powerless to do anything.

He tried using some local high-strength alloys as substitutes, but the test results were unsatisfactory. Either the density was too high, affecting mobility, or the protective performance was far below expectations.

Ultimately, he had to completely overhaul the design, shifting to using composite materials with slightly inferior performance but which could be sourced or synthesized locally, to replace ideal materials like refined gold and ceramic steel.

In terms of the main structure, he chose a high-density titanium-tantalum polymer as the core framework.

While this material's energy conduction efficiency is not as high as refined gold, its strength-to-weight ratio is excellent for local technology, providing solid yet relatively lightweight support for the body. To improve the toughness and fatigue resistance of key components, Chen Yu attempted to incorporate a special biomaterial intercepted by MAN's team from a biotechnology transport convoy into the polymer matrix in a specific ratio and weaving method.

This high-strength bio-fiber, cultivated through gene editing, exhibits remarkable energy damping characteristics and structural stability, which to some extent compensates for the shortcomings of the main material under extreme loads.

The armor system employs a more complex multi-layered, nested configuration.

The outermost layer is a hardened ceramic coating processed with a special technique, which is mainly responsible for withstanding high-speed impacts and direct hits from energy weapons.

The intermediate layer used depleted uranium armor plates that the Mann team found at an abandoned military base. Although Chen Yu re-solidified the plates to improve structural consistency and reduce toxicity, their inherent radiation characteristics still require additional processes for effective shielding.

The innermost layer combines a self-healing bioactive gel with a shape memory metal mesh, designed to absorb residual impact, cushion vibrations, and automatically heal cracks or restore deformation to a certain extent after damage.

This series of alternatives based on local conditions, while barely meeting basic defense targets in laboratory simulations, comes at a significant cost.

The weight of the overall components exceeded the original design budget, affecting the theoretical limit of maneuverability.

The heat dissipation efficiency is greatly reduced due to the insufficient thermal conductivity of the material, which poses a potential constraint on sustained high-intensity combat.

More importantly, energy loss increases significantly when transmitted through these non-ideal materials, which significantly impacts the power and sustained combat time of weapon systems such as sonic blades that rely on efficient energy supply.

This comprehensive technological compromise stirred up a near-sharp agitation within Chen Yu's meticulously operating logic.

For a mechanical priest, research bottlenecks or experimental failures are nothing to worry about; they are simply necessary stepping stones on the path to the truth.

However, the current situation is quite different.

He had a clear technical blueprint in his mind, with the ideal parameters of every component and the perfect form of every energy circuit in mind, but he was trapped by the almost primitive obstacle of the lack of external resources.

This sense of powerlessness does not stem from a fog of knowledge, but from a lack of material resources, like a master craftsman being deprived of his usual tools and materials and forced to use crude substitutes to sculpt a perfect creation.

A sense of suffocation, bound by invisible chains, mixed with a deep aversion to the extremely inefficient state, surged in the depths of his mind, which was usually dominated by cold data and absolute rationality. Like an unusual ripple suddenly stirred on the surface of a stable data lake, it was particularly glaring and uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, his agitated mood did not shake his determination to carry out the plan.

Chen Yu suppressed this discordant fluctuation with strong willpower, forcing himself to return to the framework of absolute rationality.

Following the compromise-filled adjustment plan, he mobilized every available processing unit in the workshop, handling the subpar materials with near-obsessive precision, and methodically advancing the transformation process for Lieutenant Mowell.

He was completely focused on every drive of the micro servo motor, every calibration of the laser welding point, and every docking of the neural interface with the bionic fiber, striving to achieve the theoretically optimal solution under limited conditions.

When the last piece of biomimetic synthetic skin, indistinguishable from human skin, was precisely fitted onto Mowell's chest area, perfectly concealing the miniaturized plasma reactor beneath it that was operating stably and providing powerful energy, this challenging transformation project was finally completed.

(End of this chapter)