Global Crossing: Empire of Stars

In the Warhammer Instance World, machine spirits were a fascinating concept. At least, in Lin Zhichen's view, they were less like souls and more like "incomplete souls with certain biological traits."

They really were incomplete souls. Living beings had a full range of emotions—joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness—but machine spirits were different. These peculiar souls were more like programmed souls imbued with certain traits. For instance, he had once sensed the emotion of "greed" in a machine-spirit weapon held by a Heroic Spirit:

"Greed: Attacks consume twice the ammunition but deal +50% damage."

Using this machine-spirit weapon doubled its ammunition consumption, but it dealt 150% of a standard weapon's damage. It was hard to say whether that was good or bad, since its damage against a single target had increased.

Some machine spirits, however, had purely beneficial buffs:

"Fanatical Loyalty: The machine spirit of this weapon is permanently in a state of fanatical loyalty. In combat, rate of fire +100%; ammunition fired ×2."

Its rate of fire doubled, and it fired twice the number of rounds loaded. In other words, for the same amount of ammunition, this machine-spirit weapon fired twice as fast, while its sustained fire time remained on par with a standard weapon.

Those were all machine-spirit traits found in individual equipment. He had never imagined that the Forging Factory, built by all the Tech-Priests in the Divine Realm working together, would give birth to a machine spirit of its own!

"Blessing of the Omnissiah: The chance of machine spirits being born in machinery produced at this factory is +5%."

It had only one trait, but Lin Zhichen was delighted. "Excellent. This is exactly what the Divine Realm needs."

It was when he saw the factory come into being that a sudden realization flashed through his mind. Without